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.     

Narratives of success and narratives of failure: representations of the career of King Hugh of Italy (c.885–948)

Hugh of Arles, king of Italy between 926 and 947, has come to be regarded as one of the more successful kings of Italy in the tenth century. The evidence of his charters supports this conclusion, showing how effectively he managed to insert members of his own Provençal family into the existing political fabric of northern Italy. Contemporary narrative sources tell the same story, but as one of failure. For Rather of Verona, Liutprand of Cremona and even Flodoard of Reims, Hugh and his family were suspect and their sexual mores questionable. Their texts intervened in contemporary politics not simply as records of Hugh's inadequacies but as real political actors that helped to make that failure happen.     

Hegemony,rebellion and history: Flodoard's Historia Remensis ecclesiae in Ottonian perspective

This article considers the growth of Ottonian hegemony through a close examination of Flodoard's Historia Remensis ecclesiae. Specifically, it scrutinises Flodoard's laconic account of a property dispute between the church of Rheims and Conrad the Red, Otto the Great's powerful duke of Lotharingia. Reading Flodoard's testimony alongside diplomatic evidence and Ottonian narratives, this study argues that the controversy was a factor in Conrad's rebellion against Otto in 953. Both the central role of Rheims' property in an Ottonian political conflict and Flodoard's silence on numerous aspects of the affair reveal that the church was deeply enmeshed in Ottonian politics. The Historia therefore offers an unrecognised angle on the expansion of Ottonian power, while further investigation of its content suggests that this emergent hegemony may indeed have been welcomed by Flodoard and his superiors at Rheims.     

Social monsters and the walking dead in William of Newburgh's Historia rerum Anglicarum

William of Newburgh's Historia rerum Anglicarum (c.1198) is one of the foremost literary artefacts of the late twelfth century. Contained within Book V are four narratives that detail encounters with the walking dead (‘revenants’). This article contends that the specific placement of these narratives within the Historia encourages the reader to make a metaphysical connection between the activities of the revenant and the conduct of social malcontents. The paper analyses the medieval concept of monstrousness and the cultural context of the Historia’s creation, and argues that learned theories of disease causation underscored the base narratology of the four revenant encounters. Following an appraisal of the unrest caused by Williams FitzOsbert and Longchamp, as well as the kings of England and France, the paper concludes by evaluating the ways in which their social monstrosity was encapsulated by the destabilising and destructive tendencies of the walking corpse.     

Penance and the law: the penitential canons of the Collection in Nine Books

This article examines the south Italian tenth‐century Collection in Nine Books, one of the first Italian compilations of canon law to incorporate a penitential handbook. It places this work in the context of other tenth‐century collections, investigating its sources, and the way in which its compiler chose to include penitential canons. It therefore contributes to the current debate about the purpose and function of penitentials as a genre in this period, arguing that they were probably intended to support the efforts of bishops to educate priests in the administration of penance.     

From prophecy to apocalypse: the verb tenses of Jerusalem in Robert the Monk's Historia of the First Crusade

In the prologue to his Historia of the First Crusade, Robert the Monk posed this rhetorical question: ‘since the creation of the world what more miraculous undertaking has there been (other than the mystery of the redeeming Cross) than what was achieved in our own time by the journey of our own people to Jerusalem?’ For Robert, the answer was of course simple: nothing was more miraculous. Yet when we answer that question along with Robert, we lose sight of its significance, and how staggering that claim actually would have been in the early twelfth century. For Robert, the events of 1095–9 signalled a new moment in sacred history. Old Testament prophecy had come true in his own day. What ‘was to come’ became what simply ‘was’. For Robert the Monk, prophecy became apocalypse.     

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.     

Two Remarks on Michael Attaleiates’ Account of the Preliminaries to the Battle of Mantzikert†

The ability to extract fully the contextualized interpretations of Michael Attaleiates’ Historia is a rather difficult task without the parallel study of sources chronicling the same period. This article reconsiders Attaleiates’ justification for the division of the army by Diogenes before the battle of Mantzikert in 1071, and argues that the author is as critical of this emperor’s strategy as his close contemporary, Psellos, though his criticism is more subtly formulated. Another section discusses a gap in the narrative structure of the Historia and goes on to fill it with information derived from the Hyle Historias of Bryennios and from the chronicles of al-Bundari and Ibn al-‘Adim.     

The Lance of St Maurice as a component of the early Ottonian campaign against paganism

The so‐called Holy Lance that formed part of the Holy Roman imperial insignia from the middle of the tenth century was for a time believed to be identical with that carried by the early Christian soldier‐martyr, St Maurice. While the earliest documentary evidence for a Maurician identification dates to 1008, I argue that Otto I (936–73) already associated the blade with this saint in the context of his anti‐pagan campaign along the empire's eastern borders, in which the figure of the saint played a significant role. Construed as the lance of St Maurice, this weapon was a potent visual tool of early Ottonian proselytism.     

Orderic Vitalis and the First Crusade

This article examines the narrative of the First Crusade written by the Norman monk and historian Orderic Vitalis, which spans Book IX of his Historia ecclesiastica. Though hitherto little-studied, Orderic's account of the First Crusade, which was probably written in 1135, occupies an important place in the Historia and reveals much about his wider historical method. The significance of Orderic's editorial interaction with Baldric of Bourgueil's Historia Ierosolimitana, through the omission and addition of material, forms the focus of the study. By making only a small number of insertions into the story of the First Crusade which he had inherited from Baldric, Orderic transformed its meaning so that it became suitable for incorporation into the Historia as a whole, linking the First Crusade to the history of his monastery, Saint-Evroult.     

Between parson and poet: a re-examination of the Latin Continuation of William of Tyre

Although historians of the crusades and the Latin East are familiar with the Old French translation and continuations of William of Tyre’s Historia, very little has ever been written about the narrative of the Third Crusade generally known as ‘the Latin Continuation of William of Tyre’. This article re-examines the probable date and sources of the Continuatio. Challenging long-standing assumptions about when the Continuatio was written and where the continuator drew his information from, it argues that the evidence points to an original date of composition in the early thirteenth century, not c.1194, as is commonly believed, and that the continuator used Roger of Howden’s Chronica, not his Gesta, as a principal written source. Furthermore, analysis of numerous parallels between the Continuatio and the vernacular Estoire de la guerre sainte attributed to the poet Ambroise reveals a possible relationship between the two texts that has hitherto gone largely unnoticed.     

Reconstructing the past in medieval Iceland

Locating and dating sagas is a difficult but still important task. This paper examines the relationship between the Sagas of Icelanders, which are concerned with tenth‐ and eleventh‐century events, and the contemporary sagas of the mid‐thirteenth century. Drawing upon models from anthropology, it looks at how contemporary ideas permeated these historicizing texts and how genealogy and geography act as structures around which the past is remembered. The many political relationships which occur in Laxdæla saga are analysed in relation to those from contemporary sagas from the same area of western Iceland. Since it appears that there is relatively little in common between the political situations depicted in Laxdæla saga and those portrayed in the contemporary sagas, it is likely that Laxdæla saga and the contemporary sagas were actually written down in different periods. It is possible, therefore, that the Sagas of Icelanders give us a view of the past which originates earlier than is usually suggested.     

An abbot between two cultures: Maiolus of Cluny considers the Muslims of La Garde‐Freinet

In July 972, Muslim raiders from the citadel of Fraxinetum (modern La Garde‐Freinet) abducted Abbot Maiolus of Cluny and his entourage as they crossed the Great Saint Bernard Pass (Mons Iovis) in the western Alps. This article analyses a little‐known letter that Maiolus sent to his Cluniac brethren to secure payment for his release. Interwoven with biblical passages drawn from the Book of Samuel and the Psalter, the abbot's ransom letter provides the rare opportunity to examine how one of the most influential Christian leaders of the tenth century perceived his Muslim captors and their religion.     

Was Thomas Favent a political pamphleteer? Faction and politics in later fourteenth-century London

Thomas Favent’s Historia has long been recognised as an important source for the turbulent middle years of Richard II’s reign, in particular for its praise of the actions of the Lords Appellant in the Merciless Parliament of 1388. But why did Favent write the Historia and for whom was it written? In recent years the Historia has for the first time been subjected to detailed scrutiny and a case has made for regarding it as a political pamphlet written for a community of reform-minded civil servants eager to celebrate the achievements of parliament. This study offers an alternative explanation. It seeks to place the Historia more squarely within the turbulent environment of London’s factional politics. Favent’s factional affiliations are easily discerned, but his motivations for writing the Historia were complex and multi-faceted. A new reading of this text suggests, in fact, that it was written not to perpetuate divisions within London, but to draw a line underneath them. The article highlights the use of textual representation to shape and ultimately control memories of political conflict.     

Is Robert I in hell?

Can one use the most formal and formulaic type of source left us by the early Middle Ages to probe the beliefs and values of a tenth‐century leader? An enquiry into Robert of Neustria's ‘deposition’ of Charles the Simple, the importance of Saint‐Denis to Robert, and the contemporary meaning of the battle of Soissons.     

Negotiating episcopal support in the Merovingian kingdom of Reims (ad 561–75)

Minimal scholarly attention has been paid to the ecclesiastical policies of King Sigibert I of Reims (r. 561–75). An examination of Sigibert's policies suggests the lengths to which the king went to attract and maintain episcopal allies in strategic and politically divided civitates. While Gregory of Tours in his Decem Libri Historiarum blamed Sigibert's death on his stubborn refusal to heed episcopal counsel, the bishop of Tours recognized that the king of Reims was not consistently hostile to the church and its bishops, and saw the circumstances of Sigibert's untimely death as ultimately tragic.     

All quiet on the western front? Royal politics in Galicia from c.800 to c.950

For complex reasons pertaining to the course of Spanish historiography throughout the twentieth century, the region of Galicia has been seen as politically peripheral to the initial stages of the Reconquista. In this article I argue that Galicia was a key marcher region in the ninth and tenth centuries, and that its magnate class, far from being marginal, was closely implicated in the rudimentary political structures of the kingdom. I propose that documents which seem to disclose little more than idealized abstractions of the political relationships between Astur‐Leonese kings and Galician magnates reveal aspects of elite political practice in action.     

Henry II,liturgical patronage and the birth of the ‘Romano‐German Pontifical’

Variously acclaimed as coepiscopus, saint and Mönchskönig, Henry II of Germany has always had a reputation as a quasi‐religious figure. This article goes a step further, appending to his résumé the creation of the wildly successful liturgical tradition known as the ‘Romano‐German Pontifical’. Formerly dated to the tenth century, its major ordines are here argued to have been cultivated in royal circles in the years 1002–9, before being compiled for the first time as a gift for the new Bamberg Cathedral. The tradition is shown to reflect the king’s concerns, scholarly, political and confessional, as well as projecting an idealistic, Bamberg‐esque notion of Romano‐German unity.     

Reform and the Basque dukes of Gascony: a context for the origins of the Peace of God and the murder of Abbo of Fleury

The tenth‐century Basque rulers of the early medieval duchy of Gascony created novel temporal and ecclesiastical institutions through which to express their power, and negotiated, from a position of some prestige, relationships with both monastic reformers and the Poitevin dukes of neighbouring Aquitaine. There a member of the Gascon ducal family summoned what would come to be known as the first council of the ‘Peace of God’ movement, usually portrayed as an Aquitainian initiative. The impact of the Gascons’ record on their own obscure territories also provides a context for the murder of Abbo, abbot of Fleury.