An Empire of Memory (26 page)

72 On Robert’s journey, see Charles Verlinden, Robert Ier le Frison, comte de Flandre (Paris, 1935),

151–9. On Fulk’s pilgrimages, see Bernard S. Bachrach, ‘The Pilgrimages of Fulk Nerra, Count of the

Angevins, 987–1040’, in Thomas F. X. Noble and John J. Contreni (eds.), Religion, Culture, and

Society in the Early Middle Ages: Studies in Honor of Richard E. Sullivan (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1987),

205–17. On Robert of Normandy, see Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, ‘Normandy and Byzantium in the

Eleventh Century’, Byzantion, 55 (1985), 544–59.

73 Fulton, Judgment, 77.

74 On Berengar, see Synodum Helense, RHG 11: 514.

75 In 1026, 1047, 1054, and 1064, this leader was an ecclesiastic. At other times, such as c.1033,

these pilgrimages could be led by the lay nobility themselves. This latter structure is strikingly similar to how Benedict of Monte Soratte’s Chronicon and Charroux’s Historia portray Charlemagne’s voyage to

the East––a large group, comprised of aristocrats and ecclesiastics, following a central figure.

New Jerusalems and Pilgrimage to the East before 1100

91

Functionally, the increasing availability of horses to the aristocracy in this period

may have increased the ability of large groups to stay together on a journey. In

addition, large groups could afford more protection against external threats, as

shown in the ability of the pilgrims of 1026–7 and 1064–5 to defend themselves

from raiders, but large groups also presented logistical nightmares for their organi-

zers regarding food, water, and shelter. Breakdowns in discipline, such as raiding

into the countryside, could incite the ire of the local populace, leading to the closure

of available markets or even outright armed hostility.76 Furthermore, brigands did

not suddenly appear in the eleventh century. If anything, the eleventh century was a

safer time than most to travel to the East. Byzantine power in the Balkans and Asia

Minor was greater than it had been in the tenth century. Hungary was now

Christian as well. Centralized Muslim control of Syria and Palestine may have

been weaker towards the end of the eleventh century but, as seen in 1064–5,

Islamic authorities did attempt to protect pilgrims during their journey.

Nor did the nature of pilgrimage suddenly change between the tenth and

eleventh centuries. In addition to the appeal of a possible cure at a cult center,

pilgrimage as a form of penance had been practiced in the West since at least the

eighth century. Through confession, a sinner could be immediately reconciled to

the Church, but that person still had to atone for that sin. Pilgrimage filled that gap.

Cyrille Vogel has explained that this form of penitential pilgrimage evolved from

insular monasticism. But whereas Irish monks had practiced a pilgrimage akin to

exile (wandering without destination) to atone for their sins, Carolingian religious

added a firm destination to the journey in the ninth century. Exile and return.

Despite immediate Carolingian resistance to the practice by Charlemagne and his

court circle, it quickly became popular and one can find few complaints about the

practice by the end of the ninth century.77 It didn’t disappear thereafter. Certainly,

concern for the state of one’s soul might explain why some such as Duke Robert of

Normandy (who was suspected of murdering his brother) and Fulk Nerra of Anjou

(who killed just about everyone he could, including his first wife and the king’s

favorite, Hugh of Beauvais) sought the Holy Sepulcher, or why others like Count

William IV of Angoulême in 1026 attached themselves to already-formed pilgrimages

organized by clerical elites.

Perhaps related to this, we can perceive a new surge in Western pilgrims

deliberately spending their last days in the holy city during the eleventh century.

76 Indeed, this may have been part of the problem in 1064–5. Think e.g. of the general chaos that

accompanied the progress of the First Crusade armies through the Balkans, recounted in Hans

Eberhard Mayer, The Crusades, tr. John Gillingham (Oxford, 1972), 40–4. On the relationship

between horses and pilgrimage, see Bull, Knightly Piety, 206.

77 Sumption, Pilgrimage, 100–1; Cyrille Vogel, ‘Le Pèlerinage pénitentiel’, Revue des Sciences

Religieuses, 38 (1964), 113–53; Bat-Sheva Albert, Le Pèlerinage à l’époque carolingienne (Brussels,

1999), 49–99; Graboïs, Le Pèlerin occidental, 54–5, 67; and Sarah Hamilton, The Practice of

Penance, 900–1050 (Rochester, NY, 2001), 173–4. See also the intriguing connection between

penitential pilgrimage and monastic correctio suggested in Valerie I. J. Flint, ‘Space and Discipline in Early Medieval Europe’, in Barbara A. Hanawalt and Michael Kobialka (eds.), Medieval Practices of

Space (Minneapolis, 2000), 149–66.

92

Jerusalem

At the time of the Last Judgment, pilgrims would profit both from the spiritually

beneficial nature of their journey––perishing in an at least semi-sanctified state––as

well as from proximity to both the resting places of the powerful saints of the Holy

Land and the actual place of Judgment.78 The laity of the eleventh were almost

certainly concerned for the state of their souls but so too were those who lived in

preceding centuries.79 Penitential pilgrimage to Jerusalem may have been more

common in the eleventh century but penitential pilgrimage itself was not.

So, what can we say about pilgrimage and Jerusalem in the eleventh century?

What distinguishes pilgrimages of the eleventh century from those that came

before was not that the poor began to go, nor that eleventh-century elites had

fundamentally different ideas about what pilgrimage was, nor that they practiced it

more often, but simply that groups of elites began to travel together, merging their

retinues and pooling their resources in common cause. This development, how-

ever, was, as Fulton earlier suggested, not evolutionary towards 1095 but rather

episodic. This type of large-scale pilgrimage tended to cluster around specific dates.

Many seem to have gone to the East on their own throughout the period but

unprecedented numbers of people appear to have decided to travel east, and travel

together, at certain times––between 1000 and 1033,80 then around 1054, 1064–5,

and 1095.

In the eleventh century, Jerusalem became firmly entrenched in the Western

consciousness. The holy city came to the West, memorialized in stone throughout

Europe, but at the same time, the West looked east. The importance of the

anagogical Jerusalem continued unabated, while the historical (literal/terrestrial)

Jerusalem emerged periodically to supplant it. The cloister echoed the heavenly

Jerusalem but took on characteristics of the terrestrial city. The liturgy evoked the

heavenly city, as well as the Jerusalem of Christ’s humanity. Pilgrimage to the East

increased. The flow (both real and imagined) of christological relics from East to

West became steadier, with increasing numbers of Western religious houses seeking

them out. Nevertheless, we should be conscious of the fact that these developments

78 See Sumption, Pilgrimage, 130–2. Adso Dervensis in 992, Ademar of Chabannes in 1034, and a

pilgrim by the name of Lethbaud in 1033 all almost certainly intentionally died during their respective pilgrimages. Udalric of Celle similarly went to Jerusalem c.1000 desiring martyrdom but was robbed of

it when God intervened to save him from some Saracen attackers. See Françoise Micheau, ‘Les

Itinéraires maritimes’, 84; Landes, Relics, 279–81; Glaber, Five Books, 199; Vita posteriore s. Udalrici, 256. On this practice generally see Bredero, ‘Jérusalem’, 267; Sumption, Pilgrimage, 130.

79 Hamilton, Practice of Penance. Though she does not deal specifically with pilgrimage, Mayke de

Jong has now shown how central the conception of lay penance was to the Franks under Louis the

Pious and his heirs. Marcus Bull, speaking just of SW Francia but with findings more broadly

applicable, perhaps inadvertently has shown how this idea was passed into the 10th and 11th cents.

See Mayke de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–

840 (Cambridge, 2009), esp. 148–259; and Bull, Knightly Piety, particularly 163–203, but also see his

comments on lay piety and pilgrimage, 204–49.

80 Jonathan Riley-Smith has recently claimed that pilgrimage to Palestine ‘restarted’ around 1025

after a hiatus caused by events in the East. Martin Biddle, however, says that the flow of pilgrims was uninterrupted. Cf. Jonathan Riley-Smith, ‘Pilgrims and Crusaders in Western Latin Sources’, in Mary

Whitby (ed.), Byzantines and Crusaders in Non-Greek Sources, 1025–1204 (Oxford, 2007), 5; and

Martin Biddle, The Tomb of Christ (Stroud, 1999), 81.

New Jerusalems and Pilgrimage to the East before 1100

93

moved in fits and starts, becoming more prominent at specific times during the

period. Nothing in the eleventh-century West’s understanding of Jerusalem––not

in its allegorization of the city, nor in its devotion to pilgrimage––can lead us

to believe that Jerusalem alone was calling the West inexorably towards it be-

fore 1095.

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P A R T I I I

T H E FR A N K S RE C RE A T E E M P I R E

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4

The Franks’ Imagined Empire

In the 1060s, the Annales of Saint-Amand (in Flanders) recorded that in the year

771 Charles, king of the Franks, went to Saxony. By way of identification, the

annalist helpfully added, ‘this is the emperor (imperator) Charles, son of Pippin the

Short, who acquired territory (regnum) all the way to Jerusalem’.1 There is much to

unpack from this short sentence. This entry was the first time the Saint-Amand

annalist used the title imperator to describe a ruler and the only time he used it to

describe Charlemagne. Note that our Flemish annalist linked military activities in

Saxony with a more general memory of Frankish expansion. Indeed, the annalist’s

use of imperator does not seem to have anything to do with Rome or the papacy but

rather seems tied to Frankish expansion, specifically to power in the East, all the

way to Jerusalem. Finally, and related to all of these preceding points, by the second

half of the eleventh century, at least at Saint-Amand, none of these claims needed

justification or elaboration. Indeed, they were what would allow a reader to

understand who the annalist was talking about––this Charles, the emperor,

whose rule extended to Jerusalem.

Several strands from previous chapters begin to come together. Chapters 1 and

2 examined the formation of a Frankish Golden Age, remembered in the tenth and

eleventh centuries to have existed under Charlemagne. Einhard, Notker, and their

later readers understood that Charlemagne’s power extended to and enveloped the

East. Eleventh-century texts like Charroux’s Historia, the Descriptio qualiter, and

others such as the Annales of Saint-Amand began to close the intellectual distance

separating their own time from that Golden Age. Narratives of Charlemagne’s

journey to Jerusalem were part and parcel of the same themes uncovered in Chapter

1, belying the notion that ‘East’ and ‘West’ were considered distinct, irreconcilable

entities. Chapter 3 reinforced the intellectual ‘closeness’ felt between West and

East, especially in the eleventh century, by looking at the image of Jerusalem in the

West, even if nothing in that period seems to have been leading us towards a

peculiar brand of Christian religious violence that would erupt in 1095.

So now, we must ask harder questions. For example, in the case of the Annales of

Saint-Amand, what did it mean in the eleventh century to evoke Charlemagne’s

empire and to associate the Franks with power over the East? What did it mean to

remember Frankish power as stemming from conquest? Was it simply a memory of

past glories or was it something more?

1 ‘Hic est Karolus imperator, filius Pipini parvi, qui acquisivit regnum usque Hierosolimis.’ Annales

Elnonenses minores, MGH SS 5: 18. The text seems to have been written c.1064.

98

The Franks Recreate Empire

A C H R IS T IA N R E A L M

In the Chronicon of Benedict of Monte Soratte, scholars have commented on the

fact that Charlemagne appears to become an emperor in Rome only after his return

from the East.2 But that is not entirely accurate. Charles is first called imperator

while he is at Constantinople. The title does not stay with him though and he

becomes a rex again when he returns to Francia at the very end of the account.

Benedict thinks that Charlemagne’s imperial credentials have been established

before his acclamation at Rome; that the acclamation ceremony is something

else. Charlemagne’s power stems from his pilgrimage, not his new title.3 Charles’s

possession of the Holy Places and clear dominance over the Byzantines––that he

has been acknowledged as the head of a universal Christianity, both in Europe and

the East––warranted Benedict calling him an emperor.

Charroux’s Historia shows a similar understanding of ‘emperor’. The text imme-

diately assigns Charlemagne the title of rex but as soon as he reaches Jerusalem,

welcomed personally by the patriarch outside the walls, Charlemagne becomes an