Mayoral Ambitions

We turn now to no less a matter than the origin of Europe. Which of necessity includes the early history of the French…those faint of heart are advised to turn back now.

Actually things are not quite as bad as I make out: we are talking about Charlemagne and his family, so at least they’re people we know. The volume at hand is The Carolingians by Pierre Riché, translated to English by Michael Idomir Allen. That’s right, translated: this month we not only consider the French, we are reading them, a Curmudgeonly novelty. Temporally, the book covers a period from about A.D. 650 to A.D. 1000. Geographically, it covers a lot of Europe…if I tried to explain, you’d never get it: our author attempted a verbal description, and even his normally lucid prose failed. So click here (or check the backmatter of the book) to see Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy, which cover large portions of today’s France, Germany, Italy, and several other equally fine nations; and which are Ground Zero for the origin of the Carolingians.

Riché opens with a pair of ambitious young men, Arnulf and Pippin, whose families give us two of my favorite groups, the Arnulfings and the Pippinids. Arnulf went into religion, first as bishop and then as saint; but Pippin went into civil service and ultimately rose to mayor of the palace under the Merovingian king, Chlotar II. Most of us know about bishops and saints, but the rest of that sentence may mean little. Mayor of the palace was a title applied to the business manager of the royal household, sort of a butler with signing authority. As such he had staff reporting to him, and he was in the position to help the monarch by reliving him of many of the routine matters of the household, and even of the state. In fact, Pippin and his family (by now they had married into the Arnulfings) got so good at “helping” their Merovingian masters that they usurped the running of the kingdom. Pippin’s grandson, Charles Martel, briefly seized the government; Charles’s son, Pippin the Short, seemed to pull back his father's ambitions, but was really building family alliances and amassing even more political power behind the scenes. At his death in 768, Pippin the Short divided his realm between his two sons, Charlemagne and Carloman. The brothers lacked brotherly love and the situation was unstable, resolved by Carloman’s death three years later, in 771. Those events left Charlemagne sole ruler of the former Merovingian empire and poised to reshape the West.

One hears a lot about Charlemagne. Mainly that he united Europe, which he did. And that he became the first Holy Roman Emperor, which he did.

The bit about uniting Europe is pretty straightforward king stuff: wars, battles, geographic gains, enemies either killed or subdued…another day on the throne. Not that it was an easy task, and one that put him on par with people like Alexander and Augustus Caesar. Charlemagne even took “Augustus” as one of his regnal titles, proving he was not unaware of his own merit, also that his PR organization was earning its pay.

It was the Holy Roman Empire that was new. When and how it came into being are undisputed: the papacy, and thereby Western Christianity, needed protection; Charlemagne agreed to provide it, and he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope Leo III on Christmas Day, A.D. 800. A great arrangement, so of course there’s squabbling over whose idea it was. Charlemagne’s camp (including Matthias Becher) claim it was his idea and point out that Leo got released from prison as part of it. Plus the pope got to keep his tongue. Pope Leo’s people (including Walter Ullmann) claim that Leo had to trick Charlemagne into accepting the job, clamping the crown on the guy’s unsuspecting head as he was getting off his knees from a prayer. Riché finally gives us enough detail to resolve the views: to settle the question of what to do with Leo, Charlemagne convened a council of the clergy, who on December 23 agreed to free Leo and who proclaimed Charlemagne emperor of the Romans. That process would have cut the papacy out of matters entirely, so one can easily see Pope Leo scrambling and putting together a religious ceremony two days later to legitimize the elevation. Also to get on top of the situation, or at least give the illusion of getting on top of things, a pretty tall order for a man who only a few days before was about to be sans tongue. So in the end both the election and the coronation happened. It wasn’t the last time two bigwigs sat in the same room having entirely separate meetings.

If Charlemagne’s installation showed evidence of competing traditions, his succession did as well.

Primogeniture, the practice of leaving the family wealth to the eldest male child, gets a lot of heat. Deservedly so, but consider the alternative: split your holdings evenly among your kids, they do the same, and if anybody in the picture has much of a sex life, within a few generations a once powerful estate is reduced to everybody owning a condo in Boca. Charlemagne proved more father than empire builder and directed that his empire be split among three of his sons when the time came. A scheme that was undermined when Dear Old Dad outlived two out of the three, leaving Louis the Pious his sole heir. While Charlemagne believed “king of the Franks” was hereditary, he saw the Holy Roman Emperor title as personal to himself and non-transferrable to his kids. The pope enthusiastically agreed, although he soon enough bestowed the HRE on Louis the Pious.

Louis kept the empire together throughout his life, and he was the one who embraced the idea of primogeniture. In 817 Louis issued the Ordinatio imperii, in which he declared, “…it has not seemed to us nor to any right thinking men that the unity of the empire preserved for us by God should be rent by a human act of division out of regard for our sons….” He made his eldest son, Lothar I, his prime beneficiary and had him installed as co-emperor…his brothers got land but were subservient to Lothar. The populace rejoiced at Louis’s decision (empire had brought with it stability) but the family had a fit: none of the sons wanted to be disinherited, and Louis’s third wife, Judith, had no intent for her kid to get less than the others. A delightful amount of politicking ensued, plus two rebellions which Louis put down, if just barely. In the end Louis, worn by age and by Judith, agreed to a two-way split. Lothar I was to get the empire east of the Meuse River and Charles the Bald, Judith’s kid, was to get the empire west of it. And with that, we have the early division that lead to the later Germany and France.

Is it too much to call this the French Big Bang? Probably…the French themselves would proudly point out that their roots are much older than the Carolingians. And our author makes clear that power devolved to local rulers before anything resembling either modern nation would emerge.

Sad to say, I found nothing specifically gay in the work. I really, really wanted Judith’s kid, Charles the Bald, to be one of us. The man loved books and art, and his love of gemstones was so great that he became an expert, with a side gig appraising jewels. But no…not only did he produce offspring, including the requisite male heir, he married twice, once to the lovely Ermentrude and then a second time to the fair Richildis. It was the second marriage that tipped the scales for me: I figure if Ermentrude didn’t put him off women, he was straight.

Riché is nothing if not French. He writes to an outline, right down to a precis at the start of each chapter, summarizing the material to come. Our English teachers would be proud. His prose style is clear and spare with a certain resulting elegance. The man lets himself go a bit when discussing Charlemagne. The last quarter of the book considers the impact of the so-called Carolingian Renaissance, the flowering of learning and prosperity that accompanied Charlemagne’s reign and the period following. Some readers might wish that Riché had put a little of that “juice” into the forgoing material, which can be a tad dry at points. But to each his own, and the author has presented us with a coherent explanation of an often-glossed period.

The Carolingians ended with more a whimper than a bang: the last Carolingian, Louis V, died in a hunting accident in 987, leaving no heirs. (Also not married, no mention of bastards, and approaching thirty…perhaps things were gayer than they appear.) It was, of course, a long way from the end of the French: a guy named Hugh Capet took over and the rest is history, and quite a lot of it…the French are always involved. But there is a certain symmetry to the Carolingians’ end: they were, after all palace staff who displaced the royals, only to have their power usurped by lesser nobles.

Our moral for today: watch out for pushy help.