An Empire of Memory (11 page)

be surprising that, although Einhard seems to deviate from the ARF account in detail,

he ended up enhancing it in overall effect. Einhard omitted the patriarch of Jerusalem

and portrayed the Byzantines as little more than petty and paranoid, particularly in the

wake of Charles’s coronation. The source of Charlemagne’s power over the East

instead derived from his close friendship with the Caliph Harun al-Rashid. These

two were ‘on such friendly terms that Harun valued [Charlemagne’s] goodwill more

than the approval of all the other kings . . . in the entire world, and considered that he

alone was worthy of being honoured and propitiated with gifts’. Already ruling to the

farthest reaches of the West, Charlemagne sends an embassy to the Caliph, asking

Harun if they might deliver the Frankish ruler’s offerings for Jerusalem and the Holy

111 ‘Eadem die Zacharias cum duobus monachis, uno de monte Oliveti, altero de sancto Saba, de

Oriente reversus Romam venit; quos patriarcha Hierosolimitanus cum Zacharia ad regem misit, qui

benedictionis causa claves sepulchri Dominici ac loci calvariae, claves etiam civitatis et montis cum

vexillo detulerunt.’ Annales regni, ed. Krauze, 112. Compare translation with Royal Frankish Annals, in Carolingian Chronicles, tr. Bernhard Walter Scholz (Ann Arbor, 1970), 80–1. I have modified Scholz’s

tr., based on Colin Morris’s recent reassessment of the nature of these gifts. Morris suggests vexillum should be read to mean a relic from the cross (as in the liturgical phrase vexillum crucis) and that the claves ought to be understood as eulogiae (sacred gifts or contact relics, often stones or other mementoes from the holy places). See Morris, Sepulchre of Christ, 94–5.

112 Runciman, ‘Charlemagne’, 610–11. Nor do the Annals of Lorsch. On the program behind that

set of annals, see Roger Collins, ‘Charlemagne’s Imperial Coronation and the Annals of Lorsch’, in

Joanna Story (ed.), Charlemagne: Empire and Society (Manchester, 2005), 52–70.

113 Robert Folz, The Coronation of Charlemagne: 25 December 800, tr. J. E. Anderson (London,

1974), 142–3; Sidney Griffith, ‘What has Constantinople to Do with Jerusalem? Palestine in the

Ninth Century: Byzantine Orthodoxy and the World of Islam’, in Leslie Brubaker (ed.), Byzantium in

the Ninth Century: Dead or Alive? (Brookfield, Vt., 1998), 193; Collins, Charlemagne, 146; and Morris, Sepulchre of Christ, 93–4.

114 On the dating of the Vita Karoli, see n. 11 above.

115 On Morrissey and the logic of accumulation, see above, n. 53.

36

The Franks Remember Empire

Sepulcher. Impressed, Harun acceded to their request and ‘not only allowed them to

complete their mission, but even handed over that sacred and salvific place, so that it

might be considered as under Charles’s control’.116 Although the source of the gifts

differed between the ARF and Vita Karoli, the effect was the same. The Holy Places

had again been symbolically given to Charlemagne, this time simply as a token of

friendship. Read together, as perhaps they should, the Vita Karoli and ARF reinforced

one another, telling the same story.

Because of Notker the Stammerer’s familiarity with Einhard’s Vita Karoli, it

should be no surprise that the transfer of power in the Holy Land as described in

the late ninth-century Gesta Karoli Magni follows Einhard in originating with

Harun’s magnanimity. But whereas Einhard said that Charles was only given

jurisdiction over the Holy Sepulcher, Notker notes that Harun was so impressed

by the hunting prowess of some German dogs and their Frankish masters that he

recognized Charlemagne’s superiority as a ruler. Thus Harun decided to offer

Charles some gift befitting his stature, finally proclaiming that he deserved the

entire Holy Land––‘the land which was promised to Abraham and shown to

Joshua’. As a pragmatic gesture, given the distance that separated the two rulers,

Harun would remain the land’s caretaker on behalf of Charles.117 These must have

been impressive dogs. Notker emphasized this transfer of power later in his

narrative when he reminded his dedicatee (Charles the Fat) that Charles’s father

(Louis the German) had instituted a tax dedicated to freeing Christians living in the

Holy Land, ‘in view of the former dominion exercised over them by your great-

grandfather Charles and by your grandfather Lewis the Pious’.118

Notker may not have been entirely original in his claims but, again like Einhard,

Notker was clearly no slavish imitator. This complicated relationship among our

texts should make us remember that sources of the Charlemagne legend are indeed

in debt to those that preceded them but, at the same time, should be regarded as

individual documents, products of a particular time and place, possessed of their

116 ‘Cum Aaron rege Persarum . . . talem habuit in amicitia concordiam, ut is gratiam eius omnium,

qui in toto orbe terrarum erant, regum . . . amicitiae praeponeret solumque illum honore ac

munificentia sibi colendum iudicaret. Ac proinde, cum legati eius, quos cum donariis ad

sacratissimum Domini ac salvatoris nostri locumque resurrectionis miserat, ad eum venissent et ei

domini sui voluntatem indicassent, non solum quae petebantur fieri permisit, sed etiam sacrum illum

et salutarem locum, ut illius potestati adscriberetur, concessit.’ Einhard, Vita, ed. Pertz, 19. English tr.

from Einhard, Vita, tr. Dutton, 26. See also the thoughtful comments in Latowsky, ‘Foreign

Embassies’, 25–57; who suggests, among other things, that moving the giver of the gifts from the

patriarch of Jerusalem to Harun, the rex Persarum, was a classicizing move on Einhard’s part.

117 ‘[Harun says:] “Quid igitur ei [Charles] possum condignum rependere, qui ita me curavit

honorare? Si terram promissam Abrahae et exhibitam Iosuae dedero illi, propter longinquitatem

locorum non potest eam defensare a barbaris . . . ; dabo quidem illam in eius potestatem et ego

advocatus eius ero super eam.”’ Notker, Gesta, ed. Haefele, 64. On the relationship between

Einhard and Notker, see above at n. 19.

118 ‘Ad huius rei testimonium totam ciebo Germaniam, quae temporibus gloriosissimi patris vestri

Hludowici de singulis hobis regalium possessionum singulos denarios reddere compulsa est, qui

darentur ad redemptionem christianorum terram promissionis incolentium, hoc pro antiqua

dominatione atavi vestri Karoli avique vestri Hludowici ab eo miserabiliter implorantium.’ Notker,

Gesta, ed. Haefele, 65. English tr. from Notker, Gesta, tr. Thorpe, 149.

The Birth of a Frankish Golden Age

37

own particular concerns.119 Notker had the tendency to elide past and present to

comment on current politics and so his concern for the East might mirror Charles

the Fat’s, who would later receive a letter from Patriarch Elias of Jerusalem, in which

the patriarch asked for money to help rebuild churches in the East.120 Nonetheless,

the Gesta Karoli Magni is its own document and acts out a complicated conversation

with texts like the ARF and Vita Karoli. Those reading Notker would likely know

how these earlier sources had made more limited claims about Charlemagne’s

sovereignty in Jerusalem but those same readers would also realize how the Gesta

Karoli Magni echoed and enhanced those claims by expanding the scope of Charle-

magne’s power.121 From what most likely was regarded as an honorary gift recorded

in the ARF, to jurisdiction over Jerusalem in Einhard, to possession of the whole

Holy Land and servitude of the Islamic Caliph in Notker, the legends associated with

Charlemagne’s power over the East kept ‘accumulating’. Within just a few genera-

tions, the East had become just another conquest––its integration into Charle-

magne’s empire such a point of common knowledge that many sources seemed to

accept Charlemagne’s power over the Holy Land as incontrovertible fact.

More often than not, references to this transfer of power were brief and derived from

either the ARF or Einhard’s Vita Karoli. Both of these texts were just about everywhere

in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries (Figure 1.1), with the ARF the primary basis

for historical knowledge of Charlemagne’s reign and the Vita Karoli offering supple-

mental information.122 In the late ninth century, the anonymous Saxon Poet, follow-

ing Einhard (with some modifications), recorded that Harun granted (ascribo, concedo)

Jerusalem and an elephant to Charlemagne in 802. In the early eleventh century, the

Annales Quedlinburgenses echoed this account of Harun’s gift. Around 1100, Hugh of

Fleury also used Einhard to write that Harun granted Charlemagne rights over the

Holy Sepulcher but added that Charlemagne also took possession of the monastery of

St Mary’s Latin in Jerusalem. In 1032, the Annales Altahenses maiores embellished the

ARF’s list of gifts given to Charlemagne by the patriarch of Jerusalem to enhance its

claims about a transfer of authority from East to West.123

119 McKitterick, Perceptions of the Past, esp. 67–81.

120 Jean Flori gives the date of this letter as 888. It is printed in Luc D’Achery, Spicilegium, sive, Collectio veterum aliquot scriptorum qui in Galliae bibliothecis delituerant, 3 vols. (Farnborough, 1967–8), i. 363–4; and discussed in Paul Riant, ‘Inventaire critique des lettres historiques des croisades’, Archives de l’Orient Latin, 1 (1881), 26–31; and Jean Flori, L’Islam et la fin des temps (Paris, 2007), 226. On Notker and the East but without mention of this letter, see Latowsky, ‘Imaginative Possession’, 37–58. On Notker’s

tendency to use his history to comment on the current situation, see MacLean, Kingship and Politics,

213–18.

121 There is a vast literature now on how texts were read in the early Middle Ages. Specifically

related to Notker, see Innes, ‘Memory, Orality and Literacy’, 12–18; Siegrist, Herrscherbild, 118–19;

and MacLean, Kingship and Politics, 154.

122 Tischler points to the production of ‘Charles Compendia’ in the centuries after Charlemagne’s

death, the shorter containing the ARF, Einhard, and Thegan, the longer containing the ARF, Einhard,

and Notker the Stammerer. See Tischler, Einharts Vita Karoli, 592–893. On the distribution of the

ARF, see the brief discussion in McKitterick, History and Memory, 111–13. On the distribution of

Einhard, see Tischler, Einharts Vita Karoli, 20–63.

123 Poeta Saxo, Annalium, ed. de Winterfeld, bk. 4, ll. 82–91; and Annales Quedlinburgenses, 40.

Interestingly, although the poet knew the ARF, he nonetheless omits the emissary from the patriarch of Jerusalem and adds Einhard’s version of the transfer of power (from Harun) to the year 802. On the

38

The Franks Remember Empire

Other texts show no perceptible connection to previous ones, apparently seeing

no need to justify their claims. The mid-eleventh-century Annales of Saint-Amand

(in Flanders) said––just in passing––that Charlemagne went to Saxony in the year

771. ‘This is the Emperor Charles, son of Pippin the Short, who gained sovereignty

[over all lands] all the way to Jerusalem.’124 Similar assertions are made in the

aforementioned late eleventh-century Vita Gerardi abbatis Broniensis and contem-

porary Translatio sancti Servatii, as well as the early twelfth-century Annales Nord-

humbranis and its contemporary Vita sancti Willibrordi.

Sometimes references to Charles’s dominion over the Holy Land were more

elaborate. In the first half of the tenth century, the monastery of Reichenau, already

familiar as the source of the dream visions critical of Charlemagne from early in

Louis the Pious’s reign, added yet another layer to the Charlemagne legend.

Reichenau had possessed a relic of the Holy Blood since about 925 but an

anonymous monk at the abbey composed a translatio to accompany the relic later

in that same century.125 In the time of the ‘most glorious emperor Charles’, Azan,

the prefect of Jerusalem and an admirer of Charlemagne, sent legates to Aachen,

asking if Azan could meet with Charles. The two sets of legates met on Corsica,

where Azan’s gave Charlemagne’s an ampula of the blood of Christ, a little cross

reliquary containing a fragment of the True Cross, the crown of thorns, a nail from

the Cross, more pieces of the Cross, a memento of the Holy Sepulcher, and many

other riches. Charles’s legates brought the relics to the church of St Anastasius in

Sicily, to which Charles himself journeyed, personally walking the last fifty miles ‘in

his bare feet’, in order to collect the relics. He then dispersed them to various

monasteries throughout the empire, the Holy Blood and cross reliquary finally

making their way (through several intermediaries) to Reichenau in the tenth

century.126

One must concede that this translatio is a novel elaboration of how Charlemagne

came to acquire Reichenau’s christological relics. Never before had Charlemagne’s

contact in Jerusalem traveled to the West. Never before had Charlemagne been a

sea-farer as he became in going to Sicily. Yet, the text is still heavily dependent on

earlier Carolingian sources, with the core of the narrative of Translatio sanguinis

probably deriving from an elision of two separate entries in the ARF dealing with a

sources for the poem generally, see Jürgen Bohne, Der Poeta Saxo in der historiographischen Tradition

des 8.–10. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt, 1965); and Alfred Ebenbauer, Carmen Historicum: Untersuchungen