Month: September 2024

Criminal History, 192

For the context of these translations click here.
PDFs of entries 1-183 (several of Karlheinz Deschner’s
books abridged into two) can be read here and here.

Bishop Liutward of Vercelli – celebrated and fired

This man, a Swabian from (according to hostile sources) a very lowly family, was a monk at Reichenau, a monastery that only accepted nobles in the 10th century, and Charles’ chancellor during his Swabian reign. The up-and-comer took advantage of his high patron’s career. He became bishop of Vercelli in 879/880, Charles’ arch-chancellor and arch-chaplain, his most influential advisor and finally ‘more honoured and feared by all than the emperor’ (Annales Fuldenses). After all, the clerical upstart had an almost unimaginable wealth and took great care of his relatives. Brother Chadolt became Bishop of Novara in 882, and a nephew with the same name Liutward became Bishop of Como a little later.

As a result of his progressive hereditary illness, the emperor increasingly left governance to Liutward. In the end, he held most of the strings in his hands, led all important delegations and, in particular, organised all negotiations with the Pope from the very beginning. In short, the bishop stood as ‘the all-powerful minister next to the weak ruler’, was ‘virtually the head of Charles III’s policy’ (Schur) and ‘the key figure of his reign’ (Fleckenstein).

Gradually, however, Bishop Liutward increasingly incurred the wrath of wider circles. Not only because he sought to oust everyone from the emperor’s side, not only through his concessions to the Normans in Elsloo, where he is said to have been bribed by them but also through his greed, his nepotism and his infamous clan politics in general, whereby he had girls from the noblest families from Swabia and Italy stolen to give them to relatives as wives. He even ordered a break-in at the nunnery of St Salvatore in Brescia to extract a daughter of Margrave Unruoch of Friuli for a nephew, a granddaughter of Louis the Pious on her mother’s side: a splendid match. ‘But the nuns of this place turned to prayer and asked the Lord to avenge the dishonour inflicted on the holy place; their request was immediately granted. The one who wanted to consummate the marriage with the girl in the usual way died that night and the girl remained untouched (intacta). This was reported to a nun from the above-mentioned convent’ (Annales Fuldenses).

The abrupt death of the bishop’s nephew on the night of the bride seemed too little for the uncle of the bridegroom, Margrave Berengar of Friuli. He hurried to Vercelli, ‘and once there, he stole as much of the bishop´s belongings as he wished’. Not enough, Liutward was also accused of ‘heresy’, namely ‘belittling our Saviour by claiming that He is One through the unity of substance, not of person’ (Annales Fuldenses). He was also accused of adultery, even with the empress herself—all of which was publicly brought up in the summer of 887 at the Imperial Diet in Kirchen (near Lörrach).

Charles the Fat, however, was not only comfortable and unambitious by nature, he was also ill, physically and perhaps mentally. In the spring, in the Palatinate of Bodmann, his favoured region of Lake Constance, he had his head ‘incised in pain’ (incisionem): a mistranslation, it is now thought, not a trepanation, less dramatic.

Nevertheless, the emperor was almost incapable of ruling (admittedly the fate of many rulers). And in this fatal situation, he also exposed his first man to general anger and disappointment. Without any dialogue with Liutward, he stripped him of many fiefs ‘and drove him out of the palace in disgrace as a heretic hated by all. But the latter went to Baiem to Arnulf and discussed with him how he could rob the emperor of his rule’.

Criminal History, 191

For the context of these translations click here.
PDFs of entries 1-183 (several of Karlheinz Deschner’s
books abridged into two) can be read here and here.

Domestic politics: until the genitals were cut off, ‘that no trace of them remained’

In 882, a bloody feud broke out between the Saxons and the Thuringians: between Poppo, the Count of Sorbenmark, and the Frankish Count Egino, whereby we do not learn the reason for the war, but only that ‘Poppo was defeated by the Thuringians with heavy losses’. The next year, too, the same source only laconically reports ‘a cruel war’, which Poppo lost again, ‘as was usual before’. He escaped ‘barely with a few men, while all the others fell’. On the other hand, he was very successful against the Slavs in 880, against Daleminzians, Bohemians, Sorbs ‘and the other neighbours all around, trusting in God’s help, he defeated them in such a way that none of this great multitude remained’ (Annales Fuldenses). He lost his life in 892.

In the Ostmark, Count Aribo raged against the descendants of his predecessors, the sons of the margraves William and Engilschalk, who had fallen in battle against the Moravians in 871, in a two-and-a-half-year slaughter, whereby the marchio even joined forces with the Moravian duke Swatopluk, the vassal of the empire, who supported him militarily on several occasions. After Aribo’s expulsion in 882 by the margrave’s sons, Swatopluk repeatedly raided the Ostmark and killed ‘inhumanly and bloodthirstily like a wolf’. In 884, Pannonia was plundered up to the Raab, most of the country ‘devastated, destroyed and annihilated with fire and sword’. Indeed, the Moravian invaded here a second time in the same year, ‘in order, if anything had remained before, to devour it completely now as in the wolf’s raven’. All the possessions of the margrave’s sons were also burnt down. The two eldest of them, Megingoz and Poppo, drowned in the Raab while fleeing. But Werinhar, one of Engilschalk’s sons, and his relative, Count Wezzilo, were mutilated, their right hands and tongues cut off, as well as ‘their private parts and genitals, so that no trace of them remained. Some of their men also came back without right and left hands. Servants and maidservants with their children were killed… All this happened without a doubt through the mercy or wrath of God’ (Annales Fuldenses).

It happened without any demand for atonement from the emperor. The Moravian’s homage and his oath ‘never to invade the empire with an enemy army as long as Charles lives’ were enough for him.

In the meantime, the monarch’s star had sunk ever lower, and his great fortune at the beginning of his career had increasingly turned into the opposite. After the death of King Boso of Vienne on January 9, 887, Provence, the last country still outside the empire, had formally submitted itself to the emperor’s feudal sovereignty again in the spring of 887, for which he adopted Boso’s underage son Louis (by the daughter of King Louis of Italy). But this was of little importance in view of his behaviour towards the Normans, his generally resented retreat from Paris, his abandonment of Burgundy and the continued devastation caused by the privateers, not least in view of the scandalous events in his immediate environment, above all the fall of his archchancellor Liutward (d. 899).

Criminal History, 190

For the context of these translations click here.
PDFs of entries 1-183 (several of Karlheinz Deschner’s
books abridged into two) can be read here and here.

Divine providence operates in a murderous manner: the end of Norman rule in Friesland

Sometimes there were triumphs.

For example, against Gottfried. Through his agreement in 882 with Charles Christian, husband of King Lothar II’s daughter Gisla (fathered by Waldrada), he became ruler of the area that is roughly present-day Holland. When he was accused of conspiring against the empire with his brother-in-law Hugo, King Lothar II’s illegitimate son and Gisla’s brother, ‘God was against it,’ and ‘the Lord gave him the reward he deserved’ (Annales Fuldenses).

Divine providence did not operate openly.

The emperor – Gottfried’s godfather – had him murdered by one of his accusers, the East Frankish Count Henry, Poppo’s brother. Henry, ‘a very clever man’, who apparently concocted the plot, and Willibert, ‘the venerable bishop of Cologne’ (Regino von Prüm), meet the unsuspecting Gottfried ‘in the year of the divine incarnation 885’ on the island of Betuwe (between the Lower Rhine and the Waal). On the second day of the ‘negotiations’, Bishop Willibert summons Gottfried’s wife Gisla from the island in order to ‘stir up her zeal for peace’ elsewhere, while Henry’s companions secretly stab the king during the bishop’s pacifist endeavours elsewhere. As if that wasn’t enough, ‘all his companions, all the Normans who found themselves on the Betuwe, were also massacred.’

And only a few days later, Hugh, ‘who behaved imprudently in the emperor´s realm’ (Annales Fuldenses), was also lured to Gondreville, to the imperial court, on the advice of the same Henry, had his eyes gouged out by the same noble count and all his followers were deprived of their fiefs. Later, in the monastery of Prüm, where his grandfather Emperor Lothar I had already ended up as a monk, Hugo was shorn by Abbot Regino, who reported all this, and died after a few years, while his sister Gisla, Gottfried’s widow, ended her life in the nunnery of Nivelles near Namur.

A pious family.

The Norman regiment in Friesland came to an end at the time. They were defeated in battle with the Frisians near Norden ‘and many of them were killed’. And in the year of Gottfried’s death, the Fulda yearbooks again report:

Finally, the Christians raged against them with such bloodshed that few remained of such a large crowd. Then these same Frisians stormed their ships and found so many treasures of gold and silver, together with various implements, that everyone from the lowest to the highest became rich.

The old dream of mankind, including Christians: treasures of silver and gold! As if a camel wouldn’t go through the eye of a needle… But be that as it may, ‘Norman rule in Friesland ended without leaving any tangible traces’ (Blök).

Now the ‘men of the north wind’ had come to many countries in the early Middle Ages, including Iceland and Greenland, Spain, Morocco, Russia and Byzantium, and the Church fought them far and wide, bloodlessly and bloodily, through annalists, authors, bishops and popes. However, when the Normans, in the 11th and 12th centuries, provided the best cavalry armies in Europe, the bravest knights, and the most modern fortress builders (they developed the castle with ramparts and moat in the middle of the 11th century), when they also had a strong navy in Sicily, one of the most capable admirals of the Middle Ages in George of Antioch took the lead militarily, the papacy went over to them. They played a major role not only in the Crusades. ‘A people accustomed to war’, as William of Malmesbury said, who could ‘hardly live without war’, they were just right for the representatives of Christ.

Under Charles III the Fat, however, the ruler was not only criticised for his lack of fighting spirit towards them. Increasing insecurity at home, everyday highway robbery, notorious plundering, years of clan feuds, even and especially now in the East Frankish kingdom, none of this strengthened the emperor’s prestige.

Criminal History, 189

For the context of these translations click here.
PDFs of entries 1-183 (several of Deschner’s books
abridged into two) can be read here and here.

De bellis Parisiacis or ‘Nothing that would have been worthy of imperial majesty’

In November 885, the invaders’ Great Army appeared off Paris. Allegedly with countless small ships and 700 larger ships as well as a force of 40,000 men, they travelled up the Seine—possibly an act of revenge for the treacherous murder of their king, Gottfried, in May of the same year, in which Hugo was also blinded.

Together with Count Odo of Paris, the future king, Bishop Gauzlin (from the noble Rorgonid dynasty, once one of Charles the Bald’s closest confidants and archchancellor, chief shepherd of Paris from 884) initially took command of the encircled city, whose famous siege was described by an eyewitness, the monk Abbo, in his epic poem De bellis Parisiacis. When Bishop Gauzlin fell ill and died another clerical warhorse, Abbot Ebolus of St. Germain-des-Prés, led the defence, which became increasingly difficult, especially as the only East Frankish army sent to relieve the city under the notorious Count Henry withdrew without having achieved anything. The Normans had long since pillaged the surrounding countryside according to all the rules of the ‘art of war’ and did not shy away from cruelty in their assaults on the city. They are even said to have slaughtered their prisoners and filled the moats with their corpses. In any case, ‘many were killed on both sides, even more were incapacitated by wounds’. The Normans ‘continued their assault day after day’, they harassed Paris ‘without ceasing with the most diverse armoury of weapons, machines and wall-breakers. But as they all cried out to God with great fervour, they were always saved; and the battle lasted about eight months in various ways before the emperor came to their aid’ (Annales Vedastini).

It did not help, neither that of various count’s troops nor that of the church—Walo of Metz, ‘who took up arms against the holy precept and his episcopal dignity and went to war’. He fell ‘in the year of our Lord 882’ while fleeing from the Normans. Again and again, we read that there was no help at all, no resistance (nemine sibi resistente), or that if military action was taken, ‘nothing happy or profitable’ came of it (nil prospere vel utile), that ‘nothing memorable’ (nihil dignum memoriae) was accomplished. ‘And they accomplished nothing profitable there but returned to their homeland with great dishonour. For instead of striking a fortunate blow, they barely escaped in disgraceful flight, most of them being captured and killed’ (Annales Vedastini).

The emperor was also disappointing.

It was not until October that he finally arrived and encamped on the heights of Montmartre. The army was formidable, but the commander, Count Henry, himself an accomplished treacherous murderer and slayer fell with his horse into a Norman pit and, abandoned by his own, was killed in it. Charles could not make up his mind to do anything. For weeks he remained inactive and ‘did nothing in this place that would have been worthy of imperial majesty’. When it was even rumoured that a relief army under king Siegfried was already approaching the Seine, he bought off Paris and gave the Normans the territories on the other side of the Seine ‘for plundering because the inhabitants of the same would not obey him’ (Regino von Prüm).

Charles also left Burgundy to be plundered by the enemy but remained in the west for the time being. However, King Siegfried had already invaded the Oise and followed Charles, ‘devastating everything with fire and sword. When the emperor learnt of this—and the fire brought him certain news—he quickly returned to his country.’ Siegfried then continued his work of destruction. In the following year, 887, they ‘continued their usual raids as far as the Saone and the Loire and turned the country into a desert by burning and murder’ (Annales Vedastini). King Siegfried, however, turned to Friesland in the autumn, where he was killed.