Tag: Carolingian dynasty

Criminal History, 194

A modern illustration of Fat Charles.

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.

 
Arnulf’s coup d’état and Charles’ quick demise

Liutward of Vercelli was replaced in June 887 by his opponent, Archbishop Liutbert of Mainz (863-889), a valiant Norman butcher who sometimes struck down ‘not a few’, sometimes ‘very many’ (Annales Fuldenses), but whom the same Catholic source also calls ‘patient, humble and kind’, which harmonises beautifully from a Christian point of view. Liutward, once arch-chaplain to Louis the German and Louis the Younger, became arch-chancellor to Duke Arnulf of Carinthia after his fall. And Archbishop Liutbert of Mainz, who became the emperor’s most important advisor in 887, soon did the same. His change of party at the imperial assembly in Tribur, which established Arnulf’s kingship as it were, helped to decide Charles’s deposition. Still, the archbishop had to ‘improve his tarnished position’ (W. Hartmann). And would he not have played his way back to the top with the new lord had he not already died in February 889?

Arnulf’s anger, his coup d’état, began when he caused the Bavarians to apostatise and soon moved with them and his Carthaginian troops to Frankfurt, where the East Franks, especially the Conradines, elevated him to king in November 887. Charles evaded the advancing forces to Tribur. However, his attempt to recruit a fighting force against Arnulf at the Imperial Diet failed miserably. An influential conspiracy of the nobility spread and forced him to abdicate. Even his Alemanni deserted him. The court disbanded and even his servants ran away. They went over to Arnulf ‘on a bet’, writes Abbot Regino, ‘so that after three days there was hardly anyone left who would even have shown him the duties of philanthropy’.

Practical Christianity in both senses of the word…

As usual, the bishops left in droves. Indeed, they paid homage to the usurper ‘without exception and willingly’ (Dümmler). Just two months after Charles’ deposition, his notary and chancellor Bishop Waldo of Freising visited the new ruler. According to the synodal records, the great assembly in Mainz, which met just six months later, did not say a word of disapproval about the overthrow of the emperor. On the contrary. The synod, which once again spoke at length in favour of the (indeed immense) church property and the payment of tithes to the clergy and against the fornication of clerics—had they even fathered children with their sisters—already ordered everyone to pray for the new King Arnulf and his wife in its first canon.

Of course, it did not help at all that Charles sent the rebellious nephew that supposed piece of ‘wood from the holy cross of Christ’ on which Arnulf had once sworn allegiance to him, ‘so that he would not act so cruelly and barbarously against him, remembering his oaths’. For even if the rather hardened prince shed tears at the sight, he naturally ‘ruled the realm at will’ (Annales Fuldenses). After all, Archbishop Liutbert of Mainz provided the emperor, who had ‘become a beggar’, with a minimum subsistence level until the new lord—begged by the fallen prince—gave him a few farms in Alemannia ‘out of mercy, for his usufruct until the end of his life…’

But the end of his life came surprisingly quickly for Emperor Charles III, who died on 13 January 888, abandoned by all, near Neudingen on the upper Danube. According to the Annales Vedastini even ‘strangled by his own’, not so impossible; ‘in any case he soon ended his present life in order, as we believe, to possess the heavenly one’. The Fulda Yearbooks, however, claim ‘for he stayed only a few days full of piety in the places granted to him by the king, and after Christ’s birthday he happily ended his life on 13 January; and miraculously, while he was honourably buried in the church of Reichenau, many spectators saw heaven open’. The everlasting Christian lies! Meanwhile, the victor allowed himself to be courted by the East Frankish and Slavic nobility in Regensburg ‘and celebrated the Lord’s birthday and Easter there with honour’.

After the end of the last ruler over the Carolingian empire as a whole, a series of kingdoms emerged, now forever. The only Carolingian among the new rulers was Arnulf of Carinthia, albeit an illegitimate scion of the dynasty and therefore with at least a dubious right to the throne. The West Franks raised Count Odo of Paris, the legendary defender of the city. In Burgundy, the Guelph Rudolf founded a new kingship in 888. In Italy, two members of the Frankish high nobility, Berengar of Friuli and Wido of Spoleto, fought for power.

The Carolingian state as a whole had played out its role. The title of emperor became a bone of contention between Italian petty princes. The last shadow emperor of the dynasty, Louis III the Blind, a son of Boso, died around 928, having become emperor in Italy in 901, blinded there in 905 and thus practically incapable of ruling. However, the papacy had gained considerable power under the Carolingians of the 9th century, the foundation of its further rise in the 11th century.

Criminal History, 193

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.

 
25 years of Joseph’s marriage – the acid test passed

Like their first husband (or their second?), the high couple did not want to let the adultery sit on them. After only a few days, Charles, therefore, brought his wife Richardis ‘before the Imperial Assembly on the same matter and’, writes Abbot Regino with delight, ‘it sounds marvellous that she publicly confesses that he has never mingled with her in a carnal embrace, although they have been in his company for more than ten years through a lawful marriage’.

More than ten years? Twenty-five years. Because Karl the Fat had already married the daughter of the Alsatian and Breisgau count Erchanger in 862, a quarter of a century of Joseph’s marriage. No, much more beautiful, even purer: ‘She even claims that she has remained free not only of his, but of all male concomitance (omni virili commixtione). She praises the integrity of her courage and confidently offers to prove this, if it pleases her husband, by the judgement of Almighty God, either through a single battle or through the test of the glowing ploughshares; for she was a godly woman.’ This is why, after the divorce, Empress Richardis withdrew to the Andlau monastery in Alsace, which she had built on her estates, no longer for the sake of any men but, says Abbot Regino, ‘to serve God’.

The emperor generously refrained from proving their unimpaired might through judicial duels or glowing ploughshares.

Church propaganda, however, took up the miraculous case of chastity and, with fantastic embellishments, had the empress gloriously pass the fiery ordeal. The Martyrology of Germania (with the imprimatur of 6 May 1939) still holds fast to such a ‘passed trial by fire’. For centuries, a wax shirt was also presented in the Etival monastery which, when ignited at all four ends on the naked body of the tested person, neither destroyed the virgin body of the majesty nor was it damaged. And while the perpetrator atones for the filthy lie on the gallows, poor Richardis (who was not entirely poor; she had already been given several women’s convents at the end of the 70s) distributes ‘everything she still had to the poor and convents’.

And she also went into the convent, living only for the salvation of her soul, humility and prayer; which is why God glorified her tomb through miracles and finally, in 1049, Pope Leo IX elevated her holy body, which was ‘tantamount to canonisation’, writes in his Legend of the Saints the Capuchin priest Wilhelm Auer of Reisbach, ‘with the approval of the Most Reverend Bishop´s Ordinary of Augsburg and the permission of the superiors’. Immediately afterwards, he gives us the Church Prayer: ‘O God, who has freed your Blessed Virgin Richardis from the slander of men and crowned her with eternal glory: we ask you to grant us that we may love our neighbour in word and deed according to her example and through her intercession, so that we may attain the rewards of eternal love. Amen.’

Well said, in passing, to love our neighbour in word and deed according to their example… One must not think of poor Charles the Fat. After twenty-five years of Joseph’s marriage to a saint he is not even beatified! Of course, according to Capuchin priest Wilhelm Auer von Reisbach: ‘He had become weaker and weaker in spirit… and now rejected the noblewoman, even though she declared herself ready for all tests of her innocence and purity.’

Priests don’t know what to do with someone like Charles the Fat, who loses his nerve at every outrage. And historians not much more. Both idolise gentlemen of a completely different ilk, men with a punch above all, yes, with a punch, men of the criminal calibre of Charlemagne I for example; bandits of the state, devourers of nations, scourges of humanity, great leaders who razed hundreds of thousands of square kilometres to the ground and walked over corpses like cannibals of secular stature or world-historical terrorists. This is called Carolingian universal politics, while Charles III the Fat always ‘fails again’ (Handbuch der Europäischen Geschichte), and historians generally abhor nothing as much as weakness and failure, and love nothing as much as strength and success, regardless of the price.

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.

Criminal History, 187

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.

Charles the Fat, to whom everything falls

The youngest son of Louis the German, Charles III (839-888), who was only given the nickname ‘the Fat’ (Crassus) in the 12th century by historians who probably wanted to express his meagre energy, was the heir to the smallest part of the empire—Alemannia and Alsace—and was initially unusually successful. But he was simply lucky. Without ambition, thirst for action or lust for power, everything fell to him as if by magic: Italy in 880, the imperial crown in 881, then the whole of East Franconia.

Having initially only ruled over the small Swabian kingdom since 876, he reigned after the death of his brothers, the ailing Bavarian King Carloman, who had renounced in favour of Charles in his last charter in 879, and King Ludwig III the Younger, who died on January 882 in Frankfurt without heirs. And after the death of the two West Frankish kings, Louis III, the victor of Saucourt, on 5 August 882, and his brother Carloman in December 884—the former lord of the north, the latter of the south of the Western Empire—Charles III was also recognised as emperor there. In 885, all secular and spiritual rulers submitted to him in the Palatinate of Ponthion, thus restoring the Frankish Empire.

However, he did not fight the Saracens, as the Pope had expected, but the Normans, as he had been constantly urged to do north of the Alps. And of course, he fought in his way; on his return from Italy, he first paid homage in Bavaria, then in Worms, before he surrounded the Norman camp in Asselt (Elsloo) on the lower reaches of the Meuse in July 882 with a huge army, including Lombard troops. But even when a lucky chance came to his aid when a terrible thunderstorm broke a breach in the walled fortifications, he did not storm off. He began to negotiate with the Normans after twelve days and bought their withdrawal with major concessions.

In return for an oath of allegiance and the promise of their leader Gottfried to become a Christian [emphasis by Editor], Charles ceded the province of Friesland to him. Gottfried, probably related to the Danish royal dynasty and often called king in the sources, was personally ‘raised from the holy spring’ by the emperor and allowed to marry Gisla, Lothar II and Waldrada’s illegitimate daughter. However, the attempt to integrate the prince into the Carolingian dynasty failed. And King Siegfried and the other Normans, reports Abbot Regino again, received ‘an immense amount of gold and silver: several thousand pounds of silver and gold’ (Annales Bertiniani), confessing that the pious emperor ‘had taken them from the treasury of St Stephen at Metz and other saints, and allowed them to remain, as they have done ever since, to devastate his and his cousin’s part of the empire’.

At the time, the emperor’s archchancellor, Bishop Liutward of Vercelli, was openly accused of having been bribed by the enemy and of having brokered the settlement together with one Count Wikbert. (In 887 the same ecclesiastical prince sued for adultery with the empress, and lost his court offices, whereupon he switched to Charles’ opponent Arnulf of Carinthia; in 899 the Hungarians slew him.)

Of course, the Norman misery did not end with all this, least of all in the Western Empire.