Legislation and politics in late Carolingian Italy: the Ravenna constitutions

This article considers some overlooked evidence for royal legislation in the dying days of the Carolingian empire, a series of charters known as the Ravenna constitutions. These documents, which deal with the status of Italian freemen, are often analysed as sources for social history but rarely as texts in their own right. Reconstructing the context in which the charters were issued enables us to cast light on political events and royal self‐representation in early 880s Italy; and by drawing attention to the peculiarities of their form, we can use them to reflect more broadly on the nature of Carolingian capitulary legislation and the meaning of its disappearance at the end of the ninth century.     

A secular shift in Carolingian history writing?

This article explores a series of Carolingian historians, writing in the early ninth century, who marginalized the role of God’s agency, in sharp contrast to the pattern established by the Annales Regni Francorum. Where this has been noted before, largely in relation to Einhard’s Vita Karoli, it has been explained either as a clash between lay and monastic ideals or as a by-product of the classical renewal at the Carolingian court. Examining this process across multiple texts suggests, however, that these historians can be understood as self-consciously ‘secularizing’ in response to contemporary crises.     

Assembling the Austrasian Letters at Trier and Lorsch

This article is a reconsideration of the Epistulae Austrasicae. We critique the widespread notion that the constituent letters were compiled by a courtier in the late sixth century at Metz as a book of models for use in the Austrasian chancellery. We argue instead that a monk from the monastery of Lorsch assembled the letters in the early ninth century from individual exemplars and groupings that he found in archives at Trier. We conclude by outlining some implications of this rereading for the edition and interpretation of the letters as sources for the Merovingian period, and point out some avenues for future research on their reception in the Carolingian period.     

The bishoprics of Saxony in the first century after Christianization

The eighth and ninth centuries witnessed the foundation of many new bishoprics in the territories on the fringes of the Carolingian Empire. Saxony was one such region. This article seeks to understand the political status of these new bishoprics during the first century of their existence, from their foundation to the end of Carolingian rule in east Francia (805–911). The religious history of the Saxon province, and the Carolingians' lack of interest in this region after its forcible conversion, had a significant effect on the status of its bishoprics during the ninth and early tenth centuries. This study assesses the evidence for both the land-holdings of this new episcopal church and the activities of its bishops, and concludes by arguing for the distinctive position of the Saxon bishoprics within the Frankish and east Frankish churches of this period.     

Waltharius and Carolingian morality: satire and lay values

Some recent interpretations of the early medieval Latin poem Waltharius have seen it as offering a clerical critique of warrior culture. While the poem is difficult to date accurately, it seems more likely to belong to the ninth than the tenth century. When the poem is analysed in the context of contemporary Frankish works providing moral instruction to lay noblemen, its attitudes towards pride, wealth and warfare can be shown to lie within the mainstream of Carolingian reformers' thought. The notoriously bloody ending to the poem is also best seen as emphasizing Walter's successful heroism rather than undermining it.     

Governance,locality and legal culture: the rise and fall of the Carolingian advocates of Saint-Martin of Tours

This article examines the office of advocate at the abbey of Saint-Martin of Tours. It studies what was regionally distinctive about its emergence there in the late ninth century and suggests a reason for the office’s demise in the early tenth century. In doing so, it draws out the important discursive shifts which were part and parcel of both the setting-up and the fading-away of Carolingian ‘reform’, suggesting that the changes seen in the advocatial office were ones of mentality first and of administrative change only secondarily.     

Knowledge of the past and the judgement of history in tenth‐century Trier: Regino of Prüm and the lost manuscript of Bishop Adventius of Metz

Regino of Prüm's chronicle is an invaluable source for ninth‐ and early tenth‐century Frankish history, but also for contemporary perceptions of that history. Though Regino's motivations for writing continue to be discussed, most historians now agree that his account can be read as one of Carolingian rise and fall. This article argues that this interpretative stance should be considered as in part a product of Regino's engagement with the surprisingly limited sources for the ninth century at his disposal. Taken together, these texts suggested a narrative for which Regino could find ample confirmation in the events of his own time.     

Trading places: Quentovic and Dorestad reassessed

In any list of Carolingian emporia, Quentovic and Dorestad feature prominently, yet the numismatic evidence reveals a complete contrast between the two. In the late eighth and early ninth centuries, contrary to popular belief, Quentovic was of very little economic significance. At the same time, Dorestad was booming, reaching the peak of its prosperity around 820. Only thirty years later, the situation was dramatically reversed: Dorestad rapidly declined and disappeared, while Quentovic enjoyed a remarkable renaissance. This challenges the current theory that the emporia disappeared in the mid-ninth century, to be replaced by the emerging towns.     

Between borders: Franks,Danes, and Abodrites in the trans‐Elben world up to 827

This article examines the 804 decision by Charlemagne to cede territory beyond the Elbe to the Slavic confederacy known as the Abodrites. In so doing Charlemagne attempted to create a stable buffer along the Carolingian empire's northern border, in large part as security against the growing power of the Danes. Using textual and archaeological evidence this article demonstrates the ways in which the Abodrite buffer between the Franks and Danes influenced the political and cultural development of the Slavs and set the stage for a series of major political showdowns in the first three decades of the ninth century.     

Rethinking the Pseudo‐Eligius sermon collection

St Eligius of Noyon (d. 660) has been credited with the authorship of a collection of sixteen sermons since their publication in the sixteenth century. However, this article demonstrates through a detailed analysis of the sources used in these sermons that the collection cannot have been composed before the end of the ninth century. The sermons were written to be preached by a bishop in the vernacular to a mixed audience of clergy and laity. This article also shows how the sermons for Maundy Thursday can shed light on the theory and practice of public penance in the late Carolingian church.     

Overlooked Husbands: The Paradox of Unfree Marriage in the Carolingian World

Unfree people in the Roman world could not legally marry, while they could in the Middle Ages. This paper explores the marriage of the unfree in the Carolingian empire (750–900 CE), a society with an intense moral concern about marriage. Carolingian churchmen wrote extensively about marriage, using a strongly gendered discourse focusing on how men should approach marriage and behave as husbands. However, these moral and legal texts rarely discussed unfree marriage, even though the practice was common. It is argued that this silence reflects the persistence of late antique class-based gender models, in which masculinity was reserved for married property holders. Although legal prohibitions on unfree marriages had ended, Carolingian moralists continued to be influenced by patristic assumptions that these were not valid relationships. These assumptions, combined with Frankish social practices that largely excluded unfree men from other key male roles, such as arms-bearing, meant that unfree husbands were not conceptualised as sufficiently ‘manly’ to have their marriages discussed. It is only from the tenth century onwards, when images of masculinity began to fragment more along lines of social status, that authors began explicitly to state that the Christian ideas of marriage applied to all, free and unfree.     

Flothilde's visions and Flodoard's histories: a tenth‐century mutation?

Although Flodoard of Reims is best known for his comprehensive historical writings, he also recorded separately the visions of a young girl named Flothilde. Re‐examining Flodoard's varied historical works in light of these visions reveals that he was unusually interested in visions generally, and particularly those of women. The question is why. In proposing answers, it will be suggested that both Flodoard's histories and Flothilde's visions represent a crucial moment in the transformation of ninth‐century Carolingian understandings of history, visions, and reform into the quite different patterns of the early eleventh century.     

‘Bound from Either Side’: The Limits of Power in Carolingian Marriage Disputes, 840–870

The article discusses four marriage disputes in ninth‐century Francia which involved noblemen: Count Stephen of the Auvergne, Count Boso of Italy, Baldwin of Flanders and the royal vassal Falcric. All these men were affected by Carolingian reforming measures on consanguineous marriage, divorce and raptus (abduction). The article examines how gender and social status affected the forms of power and the strategies used by different parties in the cases: archbishops and popes, kings, the women involved and the noblemen themselves. A paradoxical situation is revealed: despite the patriarchal basis of Carolingian society, the power even of elite men over women and marriage was often highly contingent. Yet such restrictions on power did not imperil the gender order: the masculinity of the men involved in these marriage disputes was not questioned.     

Landholding in the Loire valley and the late Carolingian economy (c.840–c.1000)

This article builds on recent work on the Carolingian economy by giving an overview of landholding patterns and associated economic activity in the Loire valley in the ninth and tenth centuries. It demonstrates that only individuals and institutions with access to patronage from the royal fisc possessed large, unified estates; the majority of land was held as small, fragmented farmsteads. Moreover, these small parcels of land changed hands on a regular basis through grants and leases, allowing investment, agricultural development, and social and material returns for their owners. The article suggests that these small-scale property transactions were the basis for growth and dynamism in the late Carolingian economy.     

Frankish military duty and the fate of Roman taxation

Frankish kings exacted unpaid military service from their subjects in both Merovingian and Carolingian times. The basis for this right has long been uncertain. A study of the term ‘manse’ as a Carolingian measure of assets brings to light the ostensibly hidden property on whose basis Franks went to war. This military duty reached back to the origins of the Frankish kingdom, when a large share of Roman taxes was awarded in individual allotments to soldiers obligated to serve, otherwise unpaid, when summoned, and heavily fined if they did not. Both demesne and tributary manses – contributory units – were the main part of state resources applied to military costs. They cannot be simply envisaged as components of an agricultural scheme (grand domaine). A tax‐like military obligation was one among several institutions actively surviving from the fifth century to the ninth, and it suggests that Frankish government was more law‐based and administrative than is often allowed.     

Economic incentives for the Frankish conquest of Saxony

Contrary to received scholarly wisdom, this article argues that the Frankish conquest of Saxony under Charlemagne in the late eighth and early ninth centuries was driven in no small part by the pursuit of material wealth. Specifically, most scholars have viewed pre‐conquest Saxony as too materially impoverished for economic incentives to have played a significant role in Frankish expansion into the lands between the Rhine and the Elbe. However, a thorough review of the written and archaeological evidence suggests that Saxony had much to offer its Carolingian conquerors in the form of plunder and tribute, land and mineral resources, revenue from royal and ecclesiastical renders and taxation, and access to and control of trade routes.