Criminal History, 185
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Killing ‘with God’s help’ and being defeated without it
For almost two decades, tribute payments by Charles the Bald had limited the attacks of the invaders. From 878-879, however, the raids increased again. At the time, the English king Alfred ‘the Great’, who supported the church with donations, monastery foundations and money sent annually to Rome, later known as ‘St Peter’s pence’, had at least halted the constant Viking attacks for the time being by reforming the army, establishing bases, castles and large ships. However, under pressure from the Anglo-Saxons, a new wave of Normans, the ‘Great Army’, swept across the sea from Britain and devastated the Morin city of Therouanne ‘with fire and sword, finding no resistance. And when they saw how well they had succeeded in the beginning, they ravaged the whole country of the Menapians with fire and sword. Then they invaded the Scheldt and destroyed all of Brabant with fire and sword.’ The rich monastery of St Omer was also burnt to the ground. The East Franconian king Louis III the Younger, the victor of Andernach, drove them out; indeed, he killed many ‘with God’s help’ (Annales Bertiniani), ‘by God’s hand the greater part’ (Reginonis chronica), ‘more than 5000’ (Annales Fuldenses). But Hugh, an illegitimate son of the king, also perished—otherwise ‘he would have won a marvellous victory over them’ (Annales Vedastini).
However, they were far too seldom chased away ‘and killed’, as the Fulda Yearbooks so beautifully put it in Christian terms, ‘by God forgiving them what they had earned’. In fact, on 2 February 880 near Hamburg, the Normans annihilated the army under Duke Bruno of Saxony. He, the queen’s brother, fell, as did Bishop Theoderic of Minden, Bishop Markward of Hildesheim, eleven counts, eighteen royal satellites, and all their men.
At the end of the year 880, a group of Normans, who advanced up the Rhine as far as the region of Xanten, burned down the magnificent palace built by Charlemagne in Nijmegen. On 28 December, the Northmen burnt the monastery of St. Vaast in Arras, burnt the town and all the farms in the area, killed, expelled, crossed the country as far as the Somme, dragged away people, cattle and horses, destroyed Cambrai, devastated all the monasteries on the Hisscar, all the monasteries and towns by the sea, raided Amiens, Corbie, reappeared in Arras ‘and killed everyone they found; and after ravaging all the surrounding country with fire and sword, they returned unharmed to their camp’ (Annales Vedastini). On 3 August 881, however, the young West Franconian Louis III (the eldest son of the stammerer from his first marriage to Ansgard) defeated the robbers at Saucourt-en-Vimeu (near Abbeville) at the mouth of the river Sommers, and an Old High German song of praise, the Ludwigslied, made him ‘immortal’. Written in the Rhine-Franconian dialect, it is the first free German rhyming poem and the oldest surviving historical song in our literature.
Of course, the unknown, presumably spiritual pen-hero blurs the story, overhyping everything in Christian terms. There heidine man fights godes holdon, the Franks, the lord’s chosen fighters. They battle with Kyrieleison [Medieval Latin: alternative form of Kyrie eleison or 'Lord, have mercy'—Ed.], Louis himself as the Lord’s representative, full of godes strength, noble love of enemies and, of course, mercy. ‘Suman thuruhskluog her, Suman thruhstah her’ (some he smashed in half, some he stabbed through). Yes, he who trusts God, he who lashes out bravely… He is said to have ‘killed 9000 horsemen’ (Annales Fuldenses). ‘Uuolar abur Hluduig, Kuning unser sälig!’ (Hail to thee, Louis, our blessed king!)
But now ‘the heathen’ under their princes Gottfried and Siegfried came to the defence. With a fleet and a land army reinforced by cavalry, they advanced far into the East Franconian kingdom, ravaging not only Maastricht, Tongern and Liège but also Cologne and Bonn ‘with churches and buildings’ (Annales Fuldenses) as well as the fortresses of Zülpich, Jülich and Neuss. In Aachen, they turned St Mary’s Church, the burial place of Charlemagne, into a stable and set fire to the magnificent palace. They also set fire to the monasteries of Inden (Cornelimünster), Stablo, Malmedy and Prüm. They mowed down the rising rural population ‘like stupid cattle’ (Regino von Prüm) and the streams of refugees poured into Mainz.
One reply on “Christianity’s”
I made a mistake a couple of days ago by posting the following (which I accidentally took from the previous chapter of Deschner’s book):
Actor John Goodman as Pope Sergius II [Editor’s interpolated image].
In Rome, ‘through the wrong behaviour of several popes’, the official imperial annals reported in 824, the Roman state had ‘fallen into great confusion’ after the accession of Charles I, St Pope Leo III had mercilessly condemned hundreds of people to death in 815, a year before he died. His successor Stephen IV appeared in Reims the following year with a forged ‘crown of Constantine’ The death of his successor Paschalis I, a hated, harsh pope, was met with such tumult in 824 that the planned burial in St Peter’s had to be cancelled and the body initially left unburied (this pope was nevertheless also canonised, but his feast was abolished in 1963). The election of his successor Eugene II (824-827) was followed by months of unrest, as the nobility and clergy had put forward two competing candidates. After that, at least the elections of the next two Holy Fathers went smoothly: Valentine (August-September 827) and Gregory IV (827-844).
Pope Sergius II or ‘As good as we can’
Pope Gregory’s death was again followed by violent actions. Even before the nobility could raise their man, the people had seized the papal palace and placed the deacon John in the coveted chair; a good fortune that he only enjoyed for a short time, apparently just one day. Then the nobility swept him out of the Lateran, crushed the opposition and made an old, gout-ridden archpriest pontifex maximus. Sergius II (844-847), who had his rival imprisoned in a monastery (nothing more is known about his fate), was a representative of the upper classes and supposedly the fifth pope from the House of Colonna, which the Holy Spirit seemed to favour. Imperial authorisation, required according to the Constitutio Romana of 824, was dispensed with in a hurry.
Thus the exasperated Lothair I sent his son Louis, shortly before enthroned as viceroy of Italy in Pavia, and Archbishop Drogo of Metz, the ‘natural’ son of Charlemagne and half-brother of Louis the Pious, with a Frankish army against Rome. It raged through the Papal States as mercilessly as if it were waging war. It was intended to be a punitive expedition. But the old pope knew how to tame the young king, almost to humiliate him, perhaps helped by a coincidence: the horror of a knight in the royal retinue who fell into convulsions on the steps in front of St Peter’s. After a week-long synodal enquiry, Sergius’ election was at least confirmed. However, he had to recognise that the pope-designate could only be consecrated by order of the emperor and in the presence of his envoys; he had to swear an oath of allegiance to Lothair and crown and anoint the young Louis as ‘King of the Lombards’.
But Sergius did not want to put up with everything: if the unity of the empire, and the unity of the West was at stake. If one of the three ruling brothers broke the ‘unity united in faith in the Trinity’ or one of them ‘preferred to follow the author of discord’, then the Pope threatened ‘we will endeavour to chastise him as best we can, with God’s help and according to the principles of canon law’.
Sergius II reigned for only three years. The simony was as obvious as the nepotism. Pope’s brother Benedict became Bishop of Albano: an unscrupulous man, greedy for power and money, who presumably took the reins out of the hands of Sergius, who, although ill, was extremely strong-willed and energetic, who obtained the position of an imperial envoy in Rome through bribery and knocked down bishop’s chairs for top prices, as well as other church offices; probably everything—‘as good as we can’ .
Such news from Roman clerical circles is probably intended to exonerate the Pope himself. In any case: In August 846 around seventy-five Saracen ships arrived at the mouth of the Tiber, when allegedly 11,000 men with 500 horses attacked Rome on the right bank of the Tiber, completely robbed St Peter’s Church outside the Aurelian Wall as well as St Paul’s Basilica, and everything that had not fled was destroyed, St Paul’s Basilica outside the Aurelian Wall and dragged into captivity everything that had not fled, ‘even the monks, men and women’ (Annales Xantenses). Contemporaries saw this as providential retribution for the rampant corruption in Rome. Of course, the divine punishment was by no means accepted without action. On the contrary, they resisted it, throwing Frankish troops against the invaders, militias from Spoleto, the Campagna, and fleets from Naples and Amalfi. And when some of the raiders perished on their stormy journey home along with their booty, it was easy to recognise the punishing hand of the Lord.