Power and Its Problems in Carolingian Europe

Stuart Airlie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351219242
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

A key theme in this collection of thirteen essays is the creative tension between the Carolingian dynasty and its aristocratic followers across 250 years. The first section explores the rising dynasty's attempts to consolidate its power through war and rewards. The second section focuses on the exercise of authority through a complex system of governance and representation, and the pivotal role played by the courts of Charlemagne and his successors. In the third section, we see the Carolingian system undergoing a crisis of legitimacy, challenged by civil war, royal divorce, and aristocratic encroachment on dynastic exclusivity. These essays anatomise the dynamics of power relations in the greatest empire of the early medieval west.

I


The Frankish Aristocracy as Supporters and Opponents of Boniface

It is all too easy to see Boniface as an isolated figure in the Frankish world, fighting a lone battle against the vested interests of the aristocracy, clerical and lay. Theodor Schieffer’s vivid account of this situation has been developed and refined by later work from scholars such as E. Ewig, M. Wallace-Hadrill and F. Staab.¹ We know now that not all Frankish bishops were like Milo ‘and his kind’; we have learnt to understand Milo and others like him; we have identified ‘reforming’ Franks such as Chrodegang and we have grasped how dependent Boniface and the Carolingian rulers were upon each other. In this sort of historical picture in which battle lines are not clearly demarcated and where connections are manifold and far-reaching, Boniface appears a much less embattled and lonely figure. He was close to the family of the great aristocratic lady Adela of Pfalzel. But while this family was close to another Anglo-Saxon monk, Willibrord, it was also happy to have dealings with the bishops of Trier, i.e. the episcopal ‘dynasty’ from which Boniface’s bugbear Milo stemmed. In fact, Adela handed over her own foundation of Pfalzel into the protection of the bishops of Trier.² Such interwoven relationships and the varying fate of individual monastic foundations in this period means that we should be wary of characterising developments in this historical landscape in such blanket terms as „Germanisierung und Feudalisierung”.³

But we should not let this weighty historiography muffle Boniface’s cry of alarm. Pope Zacharias’ complaint, in his letter of 751, that ‘they do much harm to the churches of God’ was seen by the late Tim Reuter as referring to more serious and dangerous matters than mere hunting.⁴ The pope believed Boniface. Perhaps the pope had received only partial briefings on the actual state of the Frankish church but his negative picture of the Frankish church had been conveyed to the Franks themselves in his letter of 745. Here he rebuked them for having tolerated unworthy priests, above all priests who fought in battle.⁵ The Franks did try to impose a new discipline upon their clergy by focusing on the bearing of weapons, exactly as Boniface and the pope did.⁶ Boniface’s condemnation of the exuberantly aristocratic qualities of Frankish churchmen was communicated to and internalised by that church itself. Contemporaries recognised that there was a problem. Boniface was not simply an observer; he was an actor. All this means that we should not seek to soften the impact of the sort of reforms proposed by Boniface or to doubt that he meant what he said that ‘any layman or emperor or king or official or count’ who snatches a monastery and begins to reign there is a ‘murderer of the poor’.⁷ To say this is not to propose that we return to a simple view of Boniface being at loggerheads with a monolithic Frankish establishment. Rather there was a dialectical relationship between Boniface and a Frankish establishment that was itself far from monolithic. When we think about Boniface confronting that establishment we would do well to bear in mind a famous remark of Nietzsche:”When you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you”. In this paper, I will argue that Boniface was not an isolated figure but rather that he was in fact himself an active figure within the Frankish establishment and that he helped to create a Carolingian elite. We might think here of John Contreni’s luminous study of the ninth-century Haimo of Auxerre, an austere monastic critic of a later generation who turned a coldly disapproving eye on the worldly bishops and kings of his own day but who, for that very reason, was all the more approving of genuinely pious aristocrats when he did encounter them.⁸ We shall examine Boniface from three angles: communication and contacts; the court; the making of a new Frankish empire.

Our first angle is communication and contacts and this brings the question of his isolation into sharp focus. Consulting Stefan Schipperges’ very useful prosopographical catalogue of Boniface’s socii for the names of secular aristocrats yields disappointing results.⁹ Only a handful of names emerge, and not all of them are Frankish (Suidger; Sturm), though the presence of an aristocratic Frankish woman (Adela) is noteworthy. But our disappointment should dissipate after a moment’s thought. After all, our concern with the secular aristocracy is, to some extent, based on an artificial distinction. While it would be crassly misleading to see, say, Fulrad of St Denis as a ‘secular’ aristocrat, his aristocratic family identity was a part of his identity as a leading churchman Furthermore, Fulrad’s background and contacts in the Moselle region and, to take another Frankish nobleman as an example, the appointment of Reginfrid at Rouen demonstrate that Boniface’s contacts with Frankish aristocrats could point west as well as in the more expected easterly direction.¹⁰

But Dr Schipperges’ list can be refined in other ways, though this is not a criticism of it. First, it is bound to be incomplete and here one can only agree with the importance of Franz Staab’s statement that the impression given by Boniface’s letters and by Willibald’s Life of a lack of contact between Boniface and Frankish aristocrats need not be an accurate reflection of the historical reality. Arguments from silence remain dangerous.¹¹Secondly, we can make some plausible specific additions to Schipperges’ list. A grant of a vineyard in the well-known region of Dienheim was made to Fulda by a count Leidrat in the summer of 754. This is so soon after the death of Boniface that one is sorely tempted to conclude that Leidrat had known him, or at least had had close connections with the latter’s circle in his lifetime. Leidrat was a member of Hraban Maur’s family and had property at Mainz, Dromersheim and Bingen as well as at Dienheim.¹² Surely we can also count among contacts of Boniface the thirteen named viri magnifici in the letter addressed to them by pope Zacharias in 748, a letter preserved in the Boniface letter collection and indeed the only manuscript to transmit it had, as the late Donald Bullough noted, connections with Fulda and some of these aristocrats can certainly later be connected to that monastery. Some of these men went on to found monasteries themselves and some went on to become prominent in Carolingian service; although we cannot be absolutely certain of the identification of all the individuals here, we can be confident that they were east Frankish magnates.¹³ Admittedly, this letter of Zacharias does not even mention Boniface by name but other papal letters do so and urge the recipients to revere and obey Boniface. Boniface would thus be known by name and reputation to much of the contemporary aristocracy.¹⁴

Of course, this need not mean that they all liked and respected him. It is relevant here to recall the fact that aristocratic grants to Fulda were ‘staggered’, with landowners of the Grabfeld, for example, emerging only belatedly as benefactors to Fulda.¹⁵ Also, even if Boniface’s testimony on Frankish aristocratic clergy, and his relations with them, is partial in every sense of the word, we should not lose sight of the fact that that testimony says that he saw himself as an outsider. He had no family estates in Francia; he was peculiarly beholden to the patronage of popes and mayors of the palace; his Anglo-Saxon kin-groups (natural and/or artificial) were no real substitute for the family links that sustained figures such as Milo of Trier.¹⁶ But it was precisely this and his persona as an outsider that gave Boniface status and reputation. Here, the theme of communication comes into sharp focus.

Boniface’s special status was broadcast, and to an audience that included the aristocracy. After pope Gregory II consecrated Boniface as bishop in Rome in late 722, he wrote to the bishops, priests and deacons as well as to gloriosi duces, magnifici gastaldi and comites urging them to support Boniface’s efforts in Germania; he also wrote to Charles Marte1.¹⁷ Boniface needed this sort of papal recognition and backing but such recognition also publicised him as a distinctive figure and that would have helped to give him an identity, a charismatic identity in the eastern Frankish lands. By early 723, Boniface was at the court of Charles Martel who issued, in his turn, a letter announcing that Boniface was under his protection (sub nostro mundebordio vel defensione). This well known letter, issued in a royal form, has attracted much comment on the nature of the protection and lordship provided by Charles, and such points are also relevant to consideration of Charles’ relations with Pirmin and Willibrord. But what I wish to emphasis here is what this letter tells us about Boniface’s special status. We should visualise this letter as carried by Boniface rather than being universally ‘broadcast’ but we should also note that it is addressed to a very wide range of office-holders: bishops and ducibus, comitibus, vicariis, domesticis vel omnibus agentibus nostris seu missis discurrentibus et amicis nostris. It was expected that Boniface might encounter the full hierarchy from duces and counts to forest officers. Not only was Boniface expected to encounter the secular administrative apparatus of the Frankish world, he was himself, according to the letter, permitted to administer justice. (Significantly, the heading for this letter in one manuscript is epistola caroli ad comites et duces de potentate sancti bonifatii.)¹⁸ Boniface’s need for patronage was thus the very thing that made him known to the aristocracy. This can also be seen much later in the fou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Comments and Bibliographical Updates
• Abbreviations
• 1. The Rise of the Carolingians
• 2. Carolingian Authority
• 3. Crises in the Carolingian World
• Index