An Empire of Memory (32 page)

cities of the world. They will greet him with palms and branches and open their

gates to him, just as Jerusalem did for Jesus on Palm Sunday.68

T H E F R A N K S A T T H E E N D O F H I S T O R Y

Stephen Nichols has remarked that, ‘by the year 1000 . . . , [in] art, literature, and

history, we find a tendency to refer to Charlemagne in terms of an expressive system

usually reserved for Christ’.69 In the Descriptio qualiter, Charlemagne primarily

65 Benzo, Ad Heinricum, ed. Seyffert, 148–52; and cf. 548–50. The claim that Henry received these

specific relics from the Byzantine ruler almost exactly mimics the claims in the Descriptio qualiter. The Descriptio qualiter, of course, had said that these very relics had been brought to the West by

Charlemagne himself, given as gifts by an emperor Constantine and eventually donated to Saint-

Corneille and Saint-Denis. In 1082, Henry IV had supposedly received these relics in Rome from the

Byzantine ruler at that time, Alexius Comnenus. See Gerold Meyer von Knonau, Jahrbücher des

deutschen Reiches unter Heinrich IV. und Heinrich V., iii (Leipzig, 1900), 448; and Struve, ‘Kaisertum und Romgedanke’, 448 n.109. On the dating of the Descriptio qualiter, see Ch. 2 above.

66 Alexander, ‘Emperor’, 6–9; idem, ‘Medieval’, 5, 8; McGinn, Antichrist, 88–9; idem, ‘End of the

World’, 78; and Konrad, De ortu et tempore Antichristi, 50–1. More generally, see Erich Auerbach,

‘Figura’, in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (New York, 1959), 41. The example

Auerbach provides is: Moses (figure) ! Christ of the Gospels (fulfillment/figure) ! Christ of Last

Days (fulfillment). Mayke de Jong has noted another example: Antiochus (figure) ! Charles the Bald

(fulfillment/figure) ! Antichrist (fulfillment). See Mayke de Jong, ‘The Empire as Ecclesia: Hrabanus

Maurus and Biblical Historia for Rulers’, in Uses of the Past, 223.

67 ‘Dies utique Palmarum, quando Dominus ad Hierosolymam venit, et ei turba cum palmis

occurrit, est illud tempus cujus ultimus Romanorum imperator Hierosolymam ibit, regnum Deo et

Patri dabit, ut Sibylla scribit.’ Honorius Augustodunensis, Gemma animae, PL 172: 679.

68 Benzo, Ad Heinricum, ed. Seyffert, 140. Henry is also referred to as divus imperator augustus

Romanorum, divus rex, divus cesar augustus, and christus. Ibid. 116; 282, 284, 458; 118, 140;

respectively. On Henry as messiah in Benzo’s work, see Struve, ‘Kaisertum und Romgedanke’, 447.

69 Stephen G. Nichols, Jr., Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography (New

Haven, Conn., 1983), 76.

116

The Franks Recreate Empire

mimics Christ’s eschatological roles as King and Conqueror. For example, in the

Byzantine ruler’s vision of Charlemagne, he stands clad as a resplendent warrior,

described in language that seems to allude to the Son of Man in Revelation. Both

figures stand girded for battle, with beautiful faces and white flowing locks.70 Also,

Charlemagne’s christological relics in the Descriptio qualiter sanctify him as much as

their new resting place, the relics twinning with the ruler, recalling Charlemagne’s

statement to St William of Gellone in his early twelfth-century Vita.

These [relics of the Passion] will always be true and most certain symbols, an eternal memorial, a

means of frequently recalling [my] affection [for you]. For without doubt, as often as you

gaze upon . . . or touch . . . these holy objects, you will not be able to forget your lord Charles.71

Charlemagne in the Descriptio qualiter, called king and emperor, defender of the

Church, and designated protector of the Holy Places by God himself, may, in fact,

legitimately be called God’s champion, a terrestrial image of Christ himself as heavenly

king.72 But also, it would seem, Charlemagne was a universal Christian ruler who

destroyed the power of the pagans in the East, hence an image of the Last Emperor.

Contemporary to the Descriptio qualiter, the Oxford Chanson de Roland also

appears to have been heavily influenced by the legend of the Last Emperor.73

Analogous to the Descriptio qualiter, the Old French epic only implicitly makes the

connection between Charlemagne and Last Emperor but the poem is still suffused

with echoes of Charles’s messianic christomimesis. For example, in Charlemagne’s

second dream, a boar (Ganelon) set his teeth into Charles’s right arm while a

leopard (Marsile) attacked his body. A greyhound (Roland) then charged out of the

hall to defend his lord against the attack, biting off the boar’s right ear in a manner

reminiscent of Peter’s attack on the high priest’s servant in the garden of Gethsem-

ane. Here we have the leader of the twelve peers/apostles (Roland/Peter) defending

his lord (Charlemagne/Christ) from a traitor (Ganelon/Judas).74

70 Cf. Descriptio qualiter, 106–7; and Rev. 1: 13–16.

71 ‘Haec tibi semper erunt nostrae dilectionis vera et certissima signa, frequens recordatio, memoria

sempiterna, Haud enim dubium, quia quoties cumque haec sancta vel oculis aspexeris, vel manibus

tenueris, Domini tui Caroli oblivisci non poteris.’ Vita s. Willelmo monachi Gellonensis, AASS 6 May:

805. English tr. from Remensnyder, Remembering, 169.

72 Remensnyder, Remembering, 171. Remensnyder’s argument in her book is based on Aquitainian

monasteries, removed from contemporary secular centers of power. The Descriptio qualiter, however,

was composed in an intimately Capetian atmosphere. Still, it seems that her comments regarding the

connection between Charlemagne and Christ are appropriate for the West more generally during this

period. See also Nichols, Romanesque Signs, 76.

73 Matthew Gabriele, ‘Asleep at the Wheel? Messianism, Apocalypticism and Charlemagne’s

Passivity in the Oxford Chanson de Roland ’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 43 (2003), 46–72; and

Karl Heisig, ‘Die Geschichtsmetaphysik des Rolandsliedes und ihre Vorgeschichte’, Zeitschrift für

Romanische Philologie, 55 (1935), 72–5. As for the dating of the Oxford Roland, I follow (what seems to be) the majority of scholars in accepting that an anonymous northern Frankish author composed the

version in the Oxford manuscript c.1100, with the poem predating the manuscript by at least fifty

years. See Wolfgang van Emden, La Chanson de Roland (London, 1995), 10.

74 La Chanson de Roland, ed. Gerard J. Brault (University Park, Pa., 1978), ll. 725–36. Cf. Matt.

26: 51–4; John 18: 10–11. The interpretation of this particular dream has been hotly contested.

I follow the interpretation which sees the second dream as foreshadowing Roncevaux, rather than

Ganelon’s trial. See Frederick Whitehead, ‘Charlemagne’s Second Dream’, in G. R. Mellor (ed.),

Société Rencesvals: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference (Salford, 1977), 71; and Marianne The Franks’ Imagined Empire

117

The key to understanding Charlemagne’s role in the story, however, lies in his

quick transition from passivity to activity just after Roland’s death. This shift in

state reveals the Oxford Chanson de Roland ’s dependence on Pseudo-Methodius,

which prophesied the Last Emperor’s re-emergence, ‘roused as from a drunken

stupor like one whom men had thought dead and worthless’.75 Painfully aware of

Ganelon’s imminent betrayal, Charlemagne cannot act. But Charlemagne awakens

from his stupor after Roland’s death, destroying the Muslims to a man, bringing the

Muslim queen Bramimonde to baptism, and punishing Ganelon for his betrayal.

This consistent narrative emphasis on the extermination of the Muslims by

conversion or death implies the eschatological significance of the whole world

coming to Christ before the end.76 Moreover, the poem’s list of Charlemagne’s

conquests and his actions against the Muslims––figures of antichrist and the hordes

of Gog and Magog––reinforce his role as God’s champion and Christianity’s

protector: key elements, along with Charles’s quick switch from passivity to

activity, in many versions of the Last Emperor legend.

Another, albeit earlier, eleventh-century text that shows a substantial dependence

on the Last Emperor legend is the c.1032 Annales Altahenses Maiores.77 The entry

for the year 800 in Niederaltaich’s Annales is only two sentences long but is

extraordinarily rich with meaning, combining clear dependence on a well-known

Carolingian source (the Annales regni Francorum) with new features that only serve

to enhance a very particular portrait of Charlemagne. The annals from Nieder-

altaich have Charlemagne going to Rome, where he received emissaries from the

patriarch of Jerusalem, who had brought great gifts for both Charles and the Pope.

Some of the gifts listed, including a relic of the Cross and mementoes from the

Holy Sepulcher and Calvary, were taken directly from the ARF. But the patriarch’s

additional gifts of a lance, mementoes from the Mount of Olives, two writing

tablets with two inkwells, and keys for the ‘Beautiful Gate, which was last opened

by Peter’ were entirely new. Also new was the annals’ closing, which hoped that

Charles, perhaps using these gifts, would liberate the populus christianus.78

Cramer Vos, ‘Aspects démoniaques de quelques protagonistes rolandiens’, in Charlemagne et l’Épopée

Romane: Actes du VIIe Congrès International de la Société Rencesvals, 2 vols. (Paris, 1978), i. 580.

75 ‘Expergiscitur tamquam homo a somno vini, quem extimabant homines tamquam mortuum esse

et in nihilo utilem profecisse.’ Pseudo-Methodius, Sermo 89. Gabriele, ‘Asleep at the Wheel’, 56–7.

76 It must be remembered that the conversion of non-believers––in Gospel accounts and in the Last

Emperor legends––will precede the end of time. See e.g. Isa. 6: 4–13; Matt. 24: 14, 28: 18–20; Mark

13: 10; Acts 2: 17. This belief in the coming end, Bernard McGinn has suggested, was a major factor in the great missionary push of the early Middle Ages, and even such well-known missionaries as St

Patrick, Martin of Braga, and St Gregory the Great believed they lived in the ‘shadow of the Second

Coming’. Bernard McGinn, ‘The End of the World and the Beginning of Christendom’, in Marcus

Bull (ed.), Apocalypse Theory and the Ends of the World (Oxford, 1995), 63, 66. See also Matthew

Gabriele, ‘Against the Enemies of Christ: The Role of Count Emicho in the Anti-Jewish Violence of

the First Crusade’, in Michael Frassetto (ed.), Christian Attitudes toward the Jews in the Middle Ages: A Casebook (New York, 2006), 61–82.

77 The early part of the Annales Altahenses, up to the year 1032, was composed before the monastery

of Niederaltaich burnt down in that year. Annales Altahenses Maiores, ed. Edmund L. B. A. B. Oefele,

MGH SRG (Hanover, 1891), 4, pp. xi–xiv.

78 ‘Advenere Hierusalem legati cum legato Caroli Zacharia, attulere vexillum, lanceam, duas tabulas

duobus attramentariis scriptas, claves sepulcri Christi, de loco Calvariae, monte Oliveti, de porta

118

The Franks Recreate Empire

The key to the passage is the gift of the inkwell. The Latin for inkwell in the text is

atramentarium and it occurs in the Vulgate only once. In Ezekiel 9, the prophet was

watching the destruction of Jerusalem when he saw six men arrive at the northern-

most gate to the city. All carried battle-axes but one was specifically dressed in linen

and carried a pen and inkwell (atramentarium) on his belt. God told these men to go

through the city killing everyone they found, except for those whom the figure

carrying the inkwell had marked with a Thau. Exegesis since Jerome (including

Paschasius Radbertus in the ninth century and Rupert of Deutz in the twelfth) had

consistently read this singular figure as Christ Himself, assuring the final salvation

of those who bore his sign.79 Now Charlemagne carries such an inkwell.

The patriarch’s gifts, coming from the Beautiful Gate and Mount of Olives, only

strengthened the annalist’s allusion to Christ. In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter

healed a crippled man just outside of the Beautiful, or Golden, Gate. Then that same

gate miraculously opened to him so that Peter could flee the city (hence the reference

to ‘the gate which was last opened by Peter’).80 Since at least the sixth century,

Western pilgrims believed that the Beautiful Gate was the same as the blocked gate

on the eastern wall of the Temple mount; the gate through which Christ entered on

Palm Sunday and through which he would return at the end of time.81 Regarding the

Mount of Olives, the ARF had simply recorded that the patriarch had sent a

memento of ‘the mountain’ (montis), while the ninth-century Annales Mettenses

Priores and Chronicon Moissiacense explicitly said it was to Mount Zion.82 The

annalist of Niederaltaich understood ‘mountain’ as the Mount of Olives though, a

Speciosa, quae ultro aperta Petro. Optabant, ut omnia Carolo patefiant ad liberandum populum

christianum.’ Annales Altahenses, ed. Oefele, 4. Incidentally, the Annales of Niederaltaich make no

mention of Charlemagne’s coronation either here or in the entry for 801. A similar theme of

Charlemagne’s responsibility to protect Christians everywhere (including those in Jerusalem) can be

found in Annales Nordhumbranis, MGH SS 13: 156.

79 Ezek. 9: 1–11. The entire prophetic destruction of Jerusalem is described in Ezek. 3: 22–4: 27.

Jerome, Commentarii in Ezechielem, ed. François Glorie, CCSL (Turnhout, 1964), 75: 105. Also

Paschasius Radbertus, De corpore et sanguine Domini, ed. Bede Paulus, CCCM (Turnhout, 1969), 16: