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 of Carinthia and Louis the Child by Johann Jakob Jung (1840).
The (German) drive eastwards
King Arnulf had a new palace built in Regensburg. The city had already been the central palace of Louis the German, a centre of the mission to the East, and of caravan trade with Bohemia, Moravia and Hungary—everything essentially Christian and Western world was concentrated here: the power of state, church and money. Regensburg became the city with which Arnulf (who often, like his father and grandfather, also visited the palaces of Ötting and Ranshofen) probably felt the closest connection, where a third of his charters were issued and held at least four imperial assemblies and numerous stays are attested. For researchers, this choice of his heartland not only reflects his past, ‘but also the emphasis on the tradition of Louis the German and the priority given to south-east policy, but also Arnulf’s keen sense of political realities’ (Störmer). In other words, the German urge towards the East, already evident in King Arnulf, is already clear.
Immediately after his coup d’état he retired to consolidate his position on his most important power base, now strong enough to easily suppress the attempted rebellion of his younger cousin Bernhard in Swabia. Bernhard (ca. 876-891/89), illegitimate like Arnulf, was the son of Emperor Charles III, who in 885 was unable to secure Bernhard as heir to the throne (just as Charles also failed to adopt Louis, son of Boso of Vienne and a Carolingian on his mother’s side, two years later). However, Bernhard, who sought to re-establish his father’s original kingdom, did not want to relinquish his rights to the throne even after Arnulf’s elevation to East Frankish king. In 889, he allied with nobles from Raetia and Alemannia, including Abbot Bernhard of St. Gall (then deposed by Arnulf). Still, he was killed a year later when Margrave Rudolf of Raetia defeated the Putsches.
Arnulf himself marched against the Abodrites in the late summer of 889 as the leader of a strong army, having met with his men and many bishops, including Sunderold of Mainz and Willibert of Cologne, in Frankfurt shortly beforehand. However, this time he was unable to achieve anything in the north and once again celebrated ‘the Lord’s birthday in Regensburg in a dignified manner’.
And he continued to go to church, go to war, pray and kill all the time. In particular, Arnulf intervened almost continuously in Moravia in the last years of the 9th century. He had made peace with it in 985, as it had gradually become too strong, and had even made Swatopluk the godfather of his son Zwentibold. But all this did not last long, and soon they returned to their usual mode of communication.
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 storming the Norman defences on the River Dyle, 891 (engraving).
‘… a battle cry to the heavens’
Arnulf, who had been characterised by the battles in the south-eastern Marches, had been entrusted with the administration of the old Slovenian duchy of Carinthia, his actual power base in the east, by his father, the Bavarian king Carloman, shortly after 876 after the removal of several border counts; hence his nickname ‘of Carinthia’. However, while he was able to expand in Lower Pannonia, he initially failed (with his paralysed father) in the northern Danube region due to opposition from within Bavaria. His opponents, first Count Ermbert of Isengau, then Margrave Aribo, won the support of Arnulf’s powerful relatives, Louis the Younger and Charles III the Fat, his father’s brothers, who were able to assert themselves in Bavaria.
After all, Arnulf had learnt political tactics, he had learnt to bide his time and, of course, to fight. He had proven himself as a warhorse, including at Elsloo in 882 as commander of the Bavarian army against the Normans, where he had admittedly been unable to achieve anything. At the same time, he defeated them in mid-October 891 at Leuven on the Dyle (now Belgium). Incidentally, this was a declared act of revenge. Shortly before, in June, an ‘army of Christians, oh pain, as a result of his sins’ had been defeated at the Geule and one of the army leaders, Archbishop Sunderold of Mainz, appointed by Arnulf, had fallen (Regino von Prüm).
But now, at the Dyle, ‘God gave them strength from heaven’. This was obvious as the Alemanni, who had also been mobilised, had previously turned back with excuses and ‘crept back home from the king’. But how pithily he urged ‘the noble lords of the Franks’: ‘You men, since you honour the Lord and have always been invincible when you have defended your homeland under God´s grace, take courage when you think of avenging the pious blood of your parents that has been shed against your enemies, who after all are quite pagan and frenzied… Now, warriors, now that you have the criminals themselves before your eyes, follow me… Not to avenge our dishonour, but that of the Almighty, we attack our enemies in God´s name’ (Annales Fuldenses).
The pious Franks now ‘raised a battle cry to heaven’ and were promptly answered, which is not always the case. But now that ‘the Christians were attacking with murder’, they threw the pagans ‘in heaps’ into the river, ‘by the hundreds and thousands… so that their corpses dammed up the water’[emphasis added by Ed.]. Two kings, Siegfried and Gottfried, were killed, sixteen royal standards were sent to Bavaria in triumph and processions were ordered. Arnulf himself ‘marched with the whole army, singing praises to God, who gave such victory to his own…’
For, yes, indeed, only uno homine had lost the Christian side (what a devil that must have been!), but the other tanta milia hominum Catholic historiography! There were ‘criminals’ there but at the same time, as the annalist proudly emphasises to enhance his achievement, ‘the Danes fought, the bravest of the Normans’, who had ‘never before’ been defeated in an entrenchment. For centuries, people in Leuven celebrated this marvellous victory, since the Normans had at least spared the East Frankish Empire (a final raid to Bonn and Prüm the following year aside).
It was a marvellous year in general.
For in 891, when Bishop Embricho of Regensburg died old and ‘happy’, Regensburg also burned down: ‘by divine vengeance, suddenly and miraculously engulfed in flames, burned on 10 August with all buildings, including churches, except the house of St. Emmeram the Martyr and the church of St. Cassian, which, although located in the middle of the city, were protected against the fire by God’. There, divine vengeance devoured (almost) the entire city, including churches; there, however, two church buildings were saved ‘for God’s sake’ (Annales Fuldenses).
O this marvellous work of the Lord!
‘The paths are often crooked and yet straight, on which you let the children go to you; there it often looks wondrous, but in the end your high counsel triumphs.’
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.
The Martyrdom of St Emmeram.
St Emmeram or ‘Praising God without tongues’
Emmeram, a rather mysterious bishop and martyr (difficult to say which he was less, if he was both) from the late 7th century, was accused of seducing the pregnant duke’s daughter Uta. In the days of the Bavarian prince Theodo, he was charged with luring the pregnant duke’s daughter Uta and then slain by her brother Lantpert on his way to Rome in Helfendorf (now Kleinhelfendorf, Upper Bavaria). The legend panels of the local chapel of martyrdom have immortalised the ‘event’ in pictures and verse:
O cruelty of torment and agony,
So Emmeram suffered,
His gliders were all and all cut away from the body,
The hands and feet, even the fingers too,
were all chopped off,
Acquires thereby the kingdom of heaven…
When this was, if it was, is completely uncertain and disputed, like almost everything about this figure, his origins, his episcopal office, especially the reasons that led to his murder; perhaps, but this too is quite uncertain, 685. Did the ‘martyr’ fall as a representative of Frankish power in Bavaria, striving for independence? Did he win the palm of martyrdom as the seducer of the duke’s pregnant daughter? Or did he voluntarily take the guilt of seduction upon himself, as the pious version of his first hagiographer, Bishop Arbeo of Freising, implies in his Vita Haimhrammi, but ‘probably only according to the embellishing romantic folk tale’, according to the Catholic Kirchen-Lexikon which adds, moreover, ‘which contradicts his narrative’.
Bishop Arbeo only wrote his opus in 772 and apparently for quite selfish reasons, namely, according to the Catholic Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche in 1931 (which in its latest edition of 1995 no longer mentions the ‘martyr’ at all), ‘primarily in the interest of the places of Emmeram´s veneration in his diocese’. And Bishop Arbeo, from the noble house of the Huosi, who was able to occupy the Freising bishop’s see several times, was a very enterprising prelate who was able to expand the possessions and rights of his diocese. However, almost all popular Catholic portrayals spread a more rather than less gruesome kitsch, as is appropriate for Arbeo’s supernatural exploits. After Uta’s brother has chased after the departed ‘saint’, he dies like a great Christian blood witness. Duke’s son Lantpert has hired ‘five butchers who will chop the haggard man’s corpse to pieces from vein to vein, from limb to limb’. And while he is horribly mutilated, his eyes torn out, noses and ears cut off, hands, feet and the (of course only supposedly) unchaste member, he thanks God ‘with great devotion’ for the marvellous ordeal.
Of course, Emmeram’s veneration as a saint only began decades after his death, but then accompanied by the most beautiful miracles, healings of the sick, and exorcisms of devils, not to mention Arnulf of Carinthia, East Frankish king and emperor of the last punitive miracles (because the Regensburg bishops repeatedly encroached on his ever-growing property. Even serfs were later given to the saint).
The glorious cult, revitalised in the 17th century, spread beyond Bavaria in the early Middle Ages. Under the East Frankish Carolingians, however, Emmeram achieved his greatest importance as a tribal saint, and under Arnulf he became the personal patron of the emperor, helping him in battle against the Moravians. The ruler believed that he alone was to thank for his rescue from mortal danger during the campaign against Swatopluk in 893, which is why he richly endowed the Bavarian monasteries, especially St Emmeram, which received all the jewellery of his palace, and in 899 his body no longer had its place in the Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche 1995: the entire article on the monastery ‘St Emmeram’, which in 1931 was twice as long as the one on the saint himself, has now been omitted.
However, the monks of Emmeram honoured the memory of their benefactor by celebrating a solemn office every year on the anniversary of his death and by making up and forging documents in his name throughout the year, such as the one claiming that he had bequeathed them the entire Neustadt. In the face of all these scams, even ‘the actual patron saint of the monastery, Emmeram, receded into the background for a long time’ (Babl). Nevertheless, he lives on in the Kleinhelfendorf legends and not only there:
Praising God without tongue, power yes wonder.
The godless Rott could no longer live that
he now always praises God,
Thuet cut off his tongue.
But he still praises God,
burdening us with praise for this miracle,
As if the tongue were on the old ear,
Asking nothing of Wüttrich’s raving.
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 of Carinthia.
Arnulf of Carinthia: East Franconia and the East
Arnulf of Carinthia (c. 850-899) was the eldest illegitimate offspring of the Bavarian king and king of Italy, Carloman, the eldest son of Louis the German and his mother Liutwind, apparently a Luitpoldinger. In addition to his lawful wife Ota, Arnulf had several concubines and had no shortage of children out of wedlock, which did not bother the clergy. On the contrary, the prince, who was thoroughly devout to the Church, was favoured by the community of saints just as much as he favoured them, even though he renounced an anointing.
‘Hail Arnolf, the great king’
From the very beginning, there was a close relationship between the bishops and the new lord, who once called himself the ‘most determined opponent’ of all enemies of the Church, in a document the ‘son and defender of the Catholic Church’, to which he also signalled his benevolence immediately after his elevation through donations and graces. He ‘conspicuously generously’ endowed the bishops with royal estates, forests, minting, market and customs rights with a ‘previously unknown frequency’ (Fried). He convened five synods during his reign of just over 12 years. The authority of the prelates was desirable to him against the rising particular powers. Moreover, it could sanction his illegitimate kingship.
The Church, on the other hand, benefited from the ruler’s power in the conflict with the dukes and the high hereditary nobility. For this reason it immediately supported him, had him prayed for from the outset and immediately interceded for his protection under threat of ecclesiastical punishment. But of course, it also made him aware of the duties of a Christian ruler. And by supporting him, the Church supported itself. Thus began a development that gave the church more say than ever before, with all the fatal consequences that this entailed, making it ‘the most powerful in the state’ (Mühlbacher).
While there is no evidence of counts in the king’s entourage for many years, a series of bishops, many of whom were favoured by the king, continued to tip the political balance. First Archbishop Thietmar of Salzburg, Arnulf’s arch chaplain, head of the court chapel and chancellery; later increasingly the chancellor and deacon Aspert, made bishop of Regensburg by Arnulf in 891, and his successor as chancellor (from 893), Bishop Wiching of Neutra. A key politician close to the ruler was the intelligent and cunning Hatto I of Mainz, whose death (913) was attributed by some to an avenging lightning bolt. Hatto came from a Swabian family, partisans of Charles, but immediately sided with Arnulf after the emperor’s fall and was rewarded by him with the abbeys of Reichenau, Ellwangen, Lorsch and Weissenburg, and in 891 with the archbishopric of Mainz. The prelate accompanied the king to Italy twice and intervened in all important public issues. The bishops Salomon III of Constance (notary since 884, chancellor of Charles III since 885, already Arnulf’s chaplain in 888), Waldo of Freising, Erchanbald of Eichstätt, Engilmar of Passau and the high noble Adalbero of Augsburg, whom Arnulf made his son’s tutor, also carried considerable political weight.
In May 895, at the imperial assembly at Tribur, the royal palace near Mainz, at one of the largest and most brilliant synods of the century, the unusually numerous East Frankish episcopate celebrated Arnulf effusively as the king, ‘whose heart’, according to the Synodal Acts, ‘the Holy Spirit inflamed with fire and kindled with the fervour of divine love so that the whole world might recognise that he was chosen not by man and through man, but by God himself’. Old sayings of the prelates. For whom they choose, whom they support, is always from God (i.e., from them)!
At the synod, which according to Regino von Prüm ‘was held against many secularists who endeavoured to diminish the authority of the bishops’, the bishops were all the more eager to increase their authority. They discussed in detail legal disputes between clergy and laity, the mistreatment of clerics, and their wounding or killing, which occurred more frequently than before—even a blinded priest was allowed to appear. One canon contains the king’s order to arrest those who despised the church, whereby the killing of rebels did not cost any defence money! Furthermore, complete submission to the papacy is demanded, ‘even if a hardly bearable yoke is imposed by the Holy See’! Several chapters are devoted to the most important things, money, property, tithes, and church robbers. According to chapter 7, stolen church property is to be replaced threefold, and this concerning the pseudo-Isidoric forgeries (which are also referred to in other canons, such as 8 and 9, but on the other hand orders that presenters of forged papal letters be taken into custody).
Naturally, the king approved the resolutions. Indeed, in response to the rhetorical question as to how much he ‘deigned to defend the Church of Christ and to extend and exalt her ministry’, he first encouraged the ‘shepherds’, also apostrophised as the ‘brightest lights of the world’, to take vigorous action themselves ‘be it in season or out of season, punish, rebuke, admonish with all patience and teaching, so that in watchful care and through unceasing admonition, you may drive the sheep of Christ to the door of eternal life’. But then he emphasised all his solidarity. ‘In me, you have the most determined opponent of all those who are hostile to the Church of Christ and rebellious to your priestly ministry.’ No wonder the venerable Council Fathers rose from their seats and, together with the surrounding clergy, shouted three or four times: ‘Christ, hear us, hail Arnolf, the great King’. (Doesn’t it remind us of the cry of salvation that still rings in our ears?) In addition, the ringing of bells, the Tedeum, all in praise of God, ‘who has deigned to give his holy church such a pious and mild comforter and such a valiant helper for the honour of his name’.
The ruler particularly venerated his patron saint, under whom he even rose to become the patron saint of the empire, a saint of the realm.
______ 卐 ______
Editor’s Note: This is all background on how, over the centuries, the Aryan collective unconscious was forcibly implanted with the malware that has now mutated into a psychotic Wokism (cf. everything I have said on this site about Tom Holland’s work).
It is background because granting such a dimension of power to a human institution cannot but brainwash the white man through a ‘heard mentality’, ‘mass formation’ or whatever you want to call it.
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 of Carinthia,
East Frankish king and
emperor (887-899)
‘Like his father Carloman, Arnulf also went through the political and military “school” as commander in the south-eastern Marches… When the ailing Emperor Charles III became politically weaker and weaker, Arnulf quickly intervened, joining forces with the deposed Archchancellor Liutward in 887 to overthrow Charles… Arnulf was able to rely heavily on the episcopal churches since the Synod of Frankfurt in 888.’
—William Störmer
‘In me, you have the most determined opponent of all those who are hostile to the Church of Christ and rebellious to his priestly ministry.’
—Arnulf of Carinthia
‘The king travelled from Franconia to Alamannia, crowned with victory, and celebrated the Lord’s birthday dignifiedly at the royal court of Ulm. From there he travelled eastwards and arrived in Moravia in July. He stayed there for four weeks with such a superior force—even Hungarians joined his march there—, burning down the whole country… Before Lent, the king visited “monasteries and bishoprics throughout the land of the West Franks” (Lotharingia) “in order to pray”.’
—Annales Fuldenses
‘Anarchy, lawlessness and legal insecurity are the hallmarks of the time, growing out of the feudal structure of society.’
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.
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.
Charles the Fat in a 14th century relief, flanked by a squire and a knight.
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.
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.
Charles the Fat receives the offer of kingship from two West Francian ambassadors.
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’.
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).
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.
