The Canal Blunder Of Charlemagne

In the year 793, the Saxons launched one of many rebellions against Charlemagne and the empire of the Franks. This rebellion, however, was particularly dire, as the Saxons began their revolt by slaughtering a Frankish army led by Count Theodoric. With that blow, the Saxons had the momentum and the Franks needed to crush the rebellion before the rebels could recruit more fighters amid the wave of Saxon enthusiasm. Nevertheless, Charlemagne set his eye on a more long-term goal—instead of marching straight for Saxony, he moved his troops to southern Germany, where the Danube and the Main Rivers run parallel, but do not touch. Charlemagne envisioned connecting the two huge rivers with a canal. If he succeeded, it would be a feat of infrastructure engineering that would have both economic and military benefits.

Charlemagne put his men to work on the canal in the Autumn of 793. His plan was to connect the Main and the Danube by linking two smaller offshoots of the rivers—the River Rednitz and the Altmühl. Yet, almost immediately, it became apparent to the whole army that the canal was going to be much more difficult to construct than their king had previously believed. The ground where the army was digging turned out to be too swampy and muddy for a viable canal to be built at that time. Stubbornly, Charlemagne continued to fight against Mother Nature in hopes of completing his canal, but he was forced to abandon the project by the end of the year. Over a millennia later, however, Germany would accomplish Charlemagne’s vision by completing a Rhine-Main-Danube canal in 1992.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Charlemagne Receives the Submission of Widukind, by Ary Scheffer (1795–1858), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, translated by Bernhard Scholz and Barbara Rogers. Ann Arbor Paperbacks / University of Michigan Press, 1972.

The Odd Saxon Siege Of Syburg

Of the lands invaded and subjugated by Charlemagne, none irritated the Frankish king like Saxony. From the year 772 to 785, Charlemagne launched a military invasion of Saxony on almost a yearly basis. His motive, according to the chroniclers of the Royal Frankish Annals, was “to attack the treacherous and treaty-breaking tribe of the Saxons and to persist in this war until they were either defeated and forced to accept the Christian religion or entirely exterminated” (RFA, year 775). The rebellions in Saxony slowed down after a mass execution at Verdun in 782 and the conversion to Christianity of major Saxon leaders in 785, but the Saxon War would not officially end until 804, when thousands of Saxons were forcibly relocated from their homeland.

For most of the war, the Saxons kept to a cautious and defensive strategy. They would wait until Charlemagne had traveled to a periphery of his empire, such as Italy or Spain, before revolting against the Franks. Nevertheless, to the dismay of the Saxons, Charlemagne, or one of his generals, would always eventually cross into Saxony and crush the rebellion within a year or two.

Despite the generally defensive trend of the Saxon rebels, they did go on the offensive every now and then, especially in the 770s. In 774, for instance, the Saxon rebels reached as far as the borderland castle of Büraburg. Two years later, in 776, they marched even further westward and took the castles of Eresburg and Syburg. Finally, in 778, the Saxon rebels advanced as far as the Rhine.

Of these particularly aggressive years of rebellion, the battle for Syburg was one of the more peculiar encounters between the Franks and the Saxons. It all began when Charlemagne marched into Italy in 776 to deal with a rebellious subordinate by the name of Hrodgaud. When the Saxons learned that the Frankish king was away, they rebelled and forced the castle of Eresburg to surrender. After the capitulation of Eresburg, the Saxons marched against Syburg and offered the garrison a chance to surrender. The defenders of Syburg, however, were more stubborn than those of Eresburg, so they kept their gate firmly shut and refused the Saxon offer. In response, the rebels settled in for a siege.

At this time, the bulk of Charlemagne’s army must have been in the south, for the Saxons felt they had enough time to build catapults at Syburg. The Saxon army, however, apparently had poor engineers, or terrible aim, for the siege weapons reportedly misfired or imploded, ultimately causing more damage to the besieging army than to the defenders. When the Saxons saw that their siege engines were not working, they decided to resort to simpler methods. In the end, the Saxon leadership told the engineers to abandon the dangerous catapults and to instead construct ladders and other tools that would be useful in scaling a wall.

The Saxons, however, would not get to storm the walls of Syburg with their freshly constructed ladders. Before the siege preparations were complete, something odd reportedly appeared above a church in Syburg. The authors of the Royal Frankish Annals wrote that there were sightings of two fiery red shields hovering above the church. This oddity has been interpreted various ways, from the possibility of it being a signal flag for the defenders or maybe even some sort of natural phenomenon or optical illusion. Whatever the case, the sighting caused the defenders of Syburg to rally and led the Saxons into despair.

After the sign appeared above the church—whether it was caused by man, weather or God—the warriors of Syburg poured out from their defenses to attack the besieging Saxons. With the force of their sudden sortie, the Franks successfully broke the siege and pursued the fleeing Saxons toward the River Lippe. Not long after the battle, Charlemagne marched into Saxony with his main army and quickly forced the Saxons to surrender.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Depiction of a battle between Saxons and Franks, by Alphonse de Neuville (1836–1885), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, translated by Bernhard Scholz and Barbara Rogers. Ann Arbor Paperbacks / University of Michigan Press, 1972.
• Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammer, translated by David Ganz. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008.  

Emperor Charlemagne And Empress Irene Almost United Their Empires

For those who like to contemplate the alternative paths where history might have led under different circumstances, the almost-achieved marriage between Emperor Charlemagne of the Franks and Empress Irene of Constantinople is an intriguing concept. Charlemagne began his reign in 768, as a co-king alongside his brother, Carloman. In 671, however, Carloman died, leaving Charlemagne as sole ruler of the Franks. During his years on the throne, he sent his army in all directions, campaigning over the years in Italy, Saxony, Spain, Brittany, Dalmatia, and several Eastern European regions. Throughout his long reign, Charlemagne cultivated a strong relationship with the popes of Rome and was crowned as emperor in the Roman fashion by Pope Leo III in the year 800.

In Rome’s rival city, Constantinople, Empress Irene was making her own remarkable rise to power. Irene was said to have been a commoner from Athens who joined the nobility by marrying Emperor Leo IV in 769, after she was discovered in an imperial beauty contest. After her husband died of a fever in 780, Empress Irene served as regent ruler for her son, Emperor Constantine VI, who was around ten years old at the time. Irene kept power in her own hands until 790, when she was ousted by the military in favor of her son. Despite this, Constantine VI interestingly asked Irene to return as co-ruler in 792, a proposition which she, of course, accepted. Irene, however, was not content with sharing power. In 797, after Constantine VI had lost support among the populace, the clergy and the military, Irene successfully usurped sole power in Constantinople and had her son blinded. The blinding must have been particularly brutal or botched, for Constantine VI reportedly died of the wounds.

Empress Irene and Charlemagne began sending emissaries to each other’s courts as early as the year 787, when the two were considering a marriage between Constantine VI and one of Charlemagne’s daughters, either Rotrude or Hruodtrude. The match, however, fell through and, like a true break-up, both sides claimed their liege was the one that broke it off, with the Franks writing that Charlemagne refused and the Greeks swearing that it was Irene who changed her mind. Interestingly, the two officially became pen pals in 798, one year after Constantine VI was blinded. Charlemagne received a letter from Empress Irene expressing her wish to maintain peace between their empires. In response to her letter, Charlemagne sent an emissary to her court in Constantinople.

Liutgarda, Charlemagne’s fourth wife, died only months before her husband was crowned as a Roman emperor in the year 800. Within two years of that date, in 802, Irene and Charlemagne were again exchanging high-ranking emissaries to each other’s courts. According to the writing of Theophanes the Confessor (c. 782-818), Charlemagne and Irene were negotiating a marriage to each other that could have put most of the lands between the Pyrenees and Anatolia under a single political entity. This intriguing possibility, however, never came to fruition, as Empress Irene was forced into exile and died in 803. Her most trusted officials had conspired against her, possibly in resistance to the alleged marriage proposal of Charlemagne. When the Frankish emissaries returned from Constantinople in 803, they did not bring with them a marriage acceptance letter, but instead brought news of Irene’s removal from power, and an entreaty of peace from the new emperor of Constantinople, Nicephorus I, who was Irene’s former minister of finance.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Woodcut Illustration of Empress Irene and Charlemagne, printed by Johannes Zainer Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammer, translated by David Ganz. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008. at Ulm ca. 1474, uploaded by Kladcat, [Public Domain/CC 2.0] via Flickr and Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, translated by Bernhard Scholz and Barbara Rogers. Ann Arbor Paperbacks / University of Michigan Press, 1972.
• Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammer, translated by David Ganz. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008.
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Irene-Byzantine-empress-752-803 
• https://www.ancient.eu/Empress_Irene/ 
• https://www.ancient.eu/Constantine_VI/ 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Theophanes-the-Confessor  

The Wrath Of The Carolingian King Pippin III Against Duke Waifar Of Aquitaine

Pippin III was the first official king of the Carolingian Dynasty, although his family had long ruled over the Franks from their hereditary position as mayors of the palace. In the year 750, after acting as mayor of the palace for nine years, Pippin III finally usurped the title of king from Childerich, the last Merovingian puppet monarch, and did so with the support of Pope Stephen II. The pope’s support of Pippin marked the close relationship between the Carolingian Dynasty and the Papacy. As a result of this relationship, Pippin would fight many wars on behalf of the church and the pope. In addition, learning from how easily he had dethroned the weak Merovingian kings, Pippin and his descendants would rule their vassals with an iron fist.

Of all the nobles in King Pippin’s sphere of influence, Duke Waifar of Aquitaine (r. 744-768) was arguably the monarch’s greatest annoyance. Pippin had shown an interest in Aquitaine as early as the year 742, when he and his brother, Carloman, launched a joint invasion of the region (then controlled by Waifar’s father, Hunald) and seized at least one castle.  Several years later, in 748, Duke Waifar personally earned the displeasure of the future Carolingian king when he gave shelter to a man named Grifo, who happened to be the rebellious and wayward brother of Pippin III.

Excluding the Grifo incident, Duke Waifar and Pippin were able to coexist for well over a decade. The Royal Frankish Annals, covering events from 741-829, made little mention of Duke Waifar until the year 760. At that point in the annals, however, the duke began to make constant appearances in the yearly entries.  It is actually surprising that it took so long for Pippin III and Duke Waifar to come to blows, for the duke was the type of person that the Carolingian king loathed the most—an obstinately independent-minded noble and an alleged opponent of the church.

In 760, Pippin invaded Aquitaine in a punitive military campaign after he had heard reports that Duke Waifar was seizing church land. The campaign ended quickly, with the duke handing over hostages and promising to clean up his act. While the 760 campaign may seem unassuming and undramatic, it was actually the first bout in the so-called Aquitanian War, a bloody feud which would last for nearly a decade.

Instead of changing his ways, Duke Waifar mobilized an army in 761 and marched against King Pippin. The duke’s lofty ambition, however, far outweighed his military capabilities. Pippin and his famous son, Charlemagne, quickly pushed Waifar’s army back and launched a counter-attack against Aquitaine. Before the year’s end, the Carolingians conquered Bourbon, Chantelle, Clermont and other smaller settlements. After halting for the winter, Pippin returned to Aquitaine in 762 and 763, capturing several more cities, including Thouars and Bourges. After that, Pippin took a break from his war effort, or considerably scaled down his campaigning, for the Royal Frankish Annals mentioned no excursions to Aquitaine during the years 764 and 765.

In 766 and 767,  however, the king of the Franks renewed his offensive against Duke Waifar with greater enthusiasm than ever before. In the later year, Pippin captured important cities such as Toulouse, Albi and Gevaudan, as well as several castles at Ally, Turenne and Peyrusse. In 768, Pippin stepped up his game even further, by capturing and executing Waifar’s uncle, Remistagnus. In addition to this, Pippin also captured Waifar’s mother, two sisters and an unspecified number of the duke’s nieces. Shortly after these events, still in the year 768, Duke Waifar met with a violent death. The Royal Frankish Annals simply state that he was killed, and make no mention of a battle or an arrest as the cause, leading many to presume Duke Waifar was assassinated.  

Interestingly, King Pippin III did not outlive his rival by long. Before the end of 768, the victorious Carolingian king contracted a serious illness, reported by Charlemagne’s biographer, Einhard (c.770-840), to have been edema or dropsy. Whatever the case, Pippin III died as a result of his poor health on September 24, 768.

Charlemagne, after succeeding to the throne alongside his brother, Carloman, launched the first war in his kingly career fittingly against Aquitaine. In 769, he invaded the region and forced Waifar’s elderly father, the retired Duke Hunald, to flee to Gascony, where he sought shelter with Duke Lupus. Unfortunately for the Aquitanian refugee, Duke Lupus quickly received an ominous and threatening letter from Charlemagne, which resulted in Hunald being promptly handed over to the king of the Franks.

Written by C. Keith Hansely

Picture Attribution: (Side profile of King Pippin the Short, by François Séraphin Delpech  (1778–1825), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, translated by Bernhard Scholz and Barbara Rogers. Ann Arbor Paperbacks / University of Michigan Press, 1972.
• Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammer, translated by David Ganz. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008. 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pippin-III
   

Emperor Otto III Added A Golden Nose To The Body Of Charlemagne

Otto III, born in 980, was an ambitious, but short-lived, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. He was deemed old enough to rule in 994, at the age of fourteen. His dream was the renewal of the ancient Roman Empire, a passion probably fanned by Otto’s mother, Theophano, an imperial princess from the remnants of the Eastern Roman Empire, centered in the Byzantine city of Constantinople.

Before the turn of the century, Otto III dramatically expanded his influence into Rome. In 996, Otto coerced the church to elect his cousin, Bruno of Carinthia, a man of only twenty-three years, as the next pope. Bruno took the name, Gregory V, and used his papal authority to confer on Otto III the lofty title of Holy Roman Emperor. Almost immediately after Otto left Rome, Pope Gregory was deposed, but the emperor returned to Italy in 997 and, by early 998, he deposed the new rival pope, reinstated Gregory V, and executed the instigator of the resistance. When Pope Gregory V died in 999, Emperor Otto III once again took it upon himself to choose who would be the next head of the church. This time Otto’s own tutor, Gerbert of Aurillac, became pope, taking the name Pope Sylvester II. Around this time, Otto III also made Rome his capital city, a move that unnerved both Germans and Italians.

In the year 1000, Otto III may have wanted some time to reflect. The twenty-year-old emperor took several pilgrimages that year. He went to Gniezno, Poland, to visit the tomb of archbishop Adelbert of Prague. More importantly, he entered the tomb of Charlemagne in Aachen and viewed the great king’s remains. By that point, Charlemagne had been dead for nearly two centuries, so what Otto saw laying in the tomb was quite decayed and shriveled, albeit still decently intact for such an old corpse. According to the tales about Otto’s visit to the tomb of Charlemagne, he trimmed the fingernails of the deceased king, which decomposition had made to seem as if they had grown long. In addition to this, although the body of Charlemagne was still mostly whole, much of the king’s nose had crumbled away. To remedy this, Otto had a golden nose cap fashioned and placed it on Charlemagne’s face. Despite fixing Charlemagne’s countenance, Otto also took with him one of Charlemagne’s teeth as a lucky keepsake. Nevertheless, the relic from the tomb of Charlemagne did not save Emperor Otto III. He died of illness two years later while his empire was faced with revolt.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Sources:

• Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammer (Introduction), translated by David Ganz. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008.
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Otto-III 
• https://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/death-emperor-otto-iii

The Many Wives And Concubines Of Charlemagne

The great king of the Franks, Charlemagne (r.768-814), was remembered by his biographers not only as a masterful warrior, but also as a model king of virtue and Christian principle. Despite this reputation, Charlemagne had several traits that would be frowned on by modern evangelicals. In particular, Charlemagne’s relationships with women are interesting. Despite famously forbidding many of his daughters from marrying during his lifetime, Charlemagne, himself, married at least four times and we know of the names of at least five more concubines.

Wives

Charlemagne first married Desiderata in the year 770, the daughter of King Desiderius of the Lombards. Even though this was Charlemagne’s first marriage, it was not his first serious relationship. By this point, he had already had a son, named Pippin, with a concubine whose name will be mentioned later. The union between Charlemagne and Desiderata was seemingly masterminded by Charlemagne’s mother, Bertrada, but her son did not have any enthusiasm for the match; Charlemagne divorced his Lombard bride after a year of marriage. Einhard, the earliest biographer of the Frankish king, claimed he did not know the reason behind the divorce. Several decades after Einhard, another biographer named Notker the Stammerer drastically charged Desiderata with being a barren invalid. Whatever the reason, Charlemagne divorced her around 771, and in 773 he invaded the lands of his former father-in-law, King Desiderius of Lombardy.

Not long after divorcing Desiderata, Charlemagne married Hildegard, a woman from Swabia. She was the woman with whom he was married the longest. Together, they had three daughters and three sons, including Charlemagne’s eventual heir, Louis the Pious (r. 814-840). She died in 783.

Soon after the death of Hildegard, Charlemagne married Fastrada, a woman from the German lands of the Franks. She gave him two more daughters and was married to the king of the Franks for over ten years until she died in 794. After Fastrada’s death, Charlemagne married an Alemannian woman by the name of Liutgard. They had no children together, and after Liutgard’s death in the year 800, Charlemagne never remarried.

Concubines

Charlemagne was known to have had several concubines before and after his marriages. Of the numerous concubines, Charlemagne’s earliest biographers gave the names of only four or five of these women. Despite knowing a few of their names, very little information is known about the concubines except, in some cases, their countries of origin and their children with the king.

Einhard wrote that Charlemagne had three or four concubines after the death of his last wife, Liutgard. Most manuscripts of Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne mention at least three names. These include a mistress from Saxony, named Gersuinda, as well as a certain Regina and Adalinda. Charlemagne had children with each of these three women. Other manuscripts mention the name of another concubine named Madelgard.

One of the more interesting concubines of Charlemagne predated Charlemagne's marriages. Before Charlemagne married the daughter of the Lombard king in 770, Charlemagne was in a relationship with a concubine known as Himiltrude. Not much information is known about her, personally, but her son with Charlemagne is a very different matter. Their son was named Pippin, but because of the boy’s appearance, commentators began calling him Pippin the Hunchback. Pippin secured a place for himself in history when, in the year 792, he was involved in a plot against his father. His role in the conspiracy varied depending on the source—Einhard wrote that Pippin was a lesser member of the plot, while Notker portrayed him as the ringleader. Whatever his role in the conspiracy, the plot was discovered and Pippin was condemned to live the remainder of his life in a monastery.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (A picture from the 15th century depicting Emperor Charlemagne. [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammer, translated by David Ganz. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008.
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charlemagne 
• https://www.history.com/topics/charlemagne 
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/charlemagne.shtml  

Pope Leo III Almost Lost His Eyes And Tongue

Upon the death of Pope Adrian I, in 795, Pope Leo III was elected as the new head of the Christian church. Although he claimed to have been elected through an anonymous vote, Leo still had enemies. For unclear reasons, some supporters of the previous pope were bitterly opposed to the new leader of the church. They accused him with charges of immorality and misconduct, and when words failed to have the desired result, the conspirators plotted more physical attacks. In the year 799, a gang of assailants ambushed Pope Leo III as he traveled through the street. The attackers attempted to gouge out his eyes and cut out his tongue. According to Einhard (c. 770-840), the aggressors succeeded in their tasks, but the later commentator, Notker the Stammerer (c. 840-912) claimed that the pope suffered nothing more than a slashed eyelid. Whatever the case, the pope survived the attack and his eyes and tongue either healed or, according to the more fantastic tales, miraculously grew back.

Even though the plot failed, the dissidents in Rome had enough power to threaten Pope Leo’s authority. Fearing for his life and position, Pope Leo III went to Charlemagne and asked for assistance. With the help of the Frankish king, the worst conspirators against the pope were discredited, arrested and faced exile or execution. On Christmas day in the year 800, not long after order was restored in Rome, Pope Leo III bestowed upon Charlemagne the titles of Emperor and Augustus, allowing his heirs to later call their lands the Holy Roman Empire.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Illustration of Pope Leo III, by Artaud de Montor (1772–1849), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammer, translated by David Ganz. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008.
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Leo-III
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Adrian-I
• https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint/st-leo-iii-pope-268
• http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09157b.htm 

The Absolute Cheesiest Tale About Charlemagne

In the 880s, a monk named Notker the Stammerer decided to write about the life of Charlemagne, the famous king of the Franks who took power in 768 and died in 814. Notker, however, was not the king’s first biographer. The Life of Charlemagne by Einhard was written in the 820s and was already a widely read text by the time Notker began writing. Nevertheless, Notker the Stammerer must have felt that Einhard’s text was lacking in one aspect of Charlemagne’s life—religion and the church. In fact, nearly the entire first book of Notker’s Deeds of Charlemagne consisted of numerous bizarre stories told to Notker by a certain cleric named Werinbert. These tales were unfortunately often left devoid of names, locations and dates, so it is difficult to assign any historical validity to the stories of Notker’s first book. Even so, the strange tales are immensely entertaining and can give a window into the mind of a 9th-century author.

One of Notker’s stories told of an anonymous bishop who resided along an inland route that Charlemagne used frequently for his travels. While the king of the Franks was there, the unnamed bishop offered the king his hospitality, supplying food and drink from his own stores. The local church had plenty of supplies to feed the monarch, but there was a problem—the king arrived on the Friday Fast and, as a devout Christian, Charlemagne refused any dish made with meat from land animals or birds. Fish was an acceptable meal for the fast, but as the king was in an inland bishopric, Charlemagne would have been long gone before any seafood could be carted into town. Unfortunately for Charlemagne, all that the bishop could provide on that Friday was cheese.

Surrounded by his attendants and the bishop, Charlemagne prepared for his meal. As the bishop blushed with embarrassment, a wheel of cheese was brought before the king. It was the best cheese that the region had to offer, but it must have looked unappetizing, especially the rough, dry edges of the wheel. According to the tale, Charlemagne withheld any comment and silently cut away the edges, intending to eat only the smooth and creamy center. When the bishop realized what the king was doing, he hesitantly approached and lightly commented that Charlemagne had cut away the best part. It was a comment that the bishop would likely come to regret.

As the tale goes, Charlemagne trusted the bishop and looked for the choicest section of the unseemly hardened ends of the cheese. He cautiously ate the selected piece, slowly but methodically devouring the specimen. When the king finally swallowed the cheese, he enthusiastically turned to the bishop and agreed that the ends were delicious. Charlemagne was so delighted with the taste that he demanded two full carts of the cheese ends to be shipped to his capital at Aachen on an annual basis. The king even specified how the cheese should be shipped: The cheese wheels were to be cut in half, with the best halves going to the king and the lesser sections staying behind to feed the bishopric. The king’s cheese selections would then be skewered together and placed in a barrel, which, in turn, would be placed in the two carts that would carry the cheese to Aachen.

For three years the bishop meticulously carried out Charlemagne’s orders, selecting, barreling and shipping two cart loads of the excellent cheese to Aachen each year. The burden of finding enough pristine cheese to meet the king’s demands was no easy task, yet the bishop always met his quota and usually drove the carts to Aachen himself. After the third annual shipment was received at Aachen, Charlemagne released the dutiful bishop from the job of being the king’s supplier of cheese. Perhaps, Charlemagne recognized the effort it took for the bishop to collect the cheeses, or the king could have simply grown tired of cheese after three years. Whatever the case, Charlemagne rewarded the bishop for his three years of service by adding to his bishopric new tracts of fertile lands, which were pristine for the cultivation of grain and wine vineyards.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (“Still Life With Cheeses, Almonds and Pretzels”, by Clara Peeters (1594–), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammer, translated by David Ganz. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008.  

The Bizarre Tale Of A Goblin That Gave Away Free Drinks In The Reign Of Charlemagne

In the 9th century, two major biographies were written about the reign of Charlemagne, who became king in 768 and died in 814. Einhard, an intellectual from Charlemagne’s court, wrote the earliest biography about the great king, completing it sometime during the 820s. For the time in which it was written, Einhard’s text was remarkably secular, focusing on the actions and demeanor of Charlemagne rather than the state of Christendom in Charlemagne’s empire.

Several decades later, in the 880s, a monk named Notker the Stammerer decided to publish his own commentary about the great king’s reign and strove to give the church a more significant position in his account of Charlemagne’s life. In fact, nearly the entire first book of Notker’s Deeds of Charlemagne consisted of compiled odd tales that occurred between the great king and his local bishops. These bizarre stories, told to Notker by a certain cleric named Werinbert, were unfortunately often left devoid of names and dates, so it is difficult to assign any historical validity to Notker’s first book. Nevertheless, the strange tales are immensely entertaining and can give a window of insight into what some 9th-century people believed.

One of Notker’s many stories took place somewhere in France that was suffering from a drought. In that region, there was a greedy bishop (name left anonymous) who used the opportunity to make money. The bishop opened up his warehouse to provide provisions for the hungry and thirsty, but charged unfair prices for his products. The greed of the bishop and the desperation of the townspeople apparently caught the attention of a supernatural being. According to Notker, a goblin or a mischievous demon entered the area to tempt the bishop’s neglected flock.

The goblin made its rounds through the town, breaking into homes and workshops to play with peoples’ belongings. In particular, the creature apparently had a fondness for the shops of the town’s blacksmiths, where it could spend the nights noisily drumming upon the anvils with hammers. As sightings of the goblin became more numerous, word spread around town that the creature could be banished by simply making the sign of the cross. One day, a certain haunted homeowner decided to try this method to banish the goblin from his home, but, before the sign could be completed, the creature made an interesting counteroffer. The goblin promised that, if he was allowed to stay, he would fill whatever container was left to him (no matter the size) with an alcoholic beverage on a nightly basis. The offer was especially tempting because of the drought that was plaguing the town. Therefore, the homeowner agreed to the proposal and handed over to the goblin the largest tankard or flask that he possessed.

As the goblin had promised, each morning the tankard was filled with wine. For several days this went on—while the rest of the town paid outrages prices to the bishop for supplies, the unnamed homeowner received free wine from the goblin. Nevertheless, all good things must end. After an unknown amount of time, the tankard disappeared and the goblin was nowhere to be seen. That same day, the bishop announced that he had caught a demon in his wine cellar. According to Notker, the bishop had discovered that a barrel of wine from his cellar had been cracked open and spilled on the floor each night. After the thefts kept occurring, the bishop eventually suspected that a foul spirit was the culprit. With this in mind, the bishop made a trap by sprinkling holy water on the floor of the wine cellar. In the end, the unsuspecting goblin somehow found himself trapped in the bishop’s cellar and was apprehended by the local authorities the next morning.

According to Notker, the so-called goblin or demon looked fairly human when it was caught, albeit a bit hairy. Interestingly enough, the supernatural being was apparently flogged for its crime of thievery. In a wholesome scene at the end of the story, when the goblin was being led away for punishment, he expressed sadness and remorse for losing the tankard that was left to him by the homeowner, whom the goblin considered to be a friend.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Scene from the legend of St Benedict, painted by Spinello Aretino (1350–1410), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammer, translated by David Ganz. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008.

Abul Abaz, The War Elephant Of Charlemagne

Around the turn of the 9th century, after Charlemagne (r. 768-814) had spread his influence over much of Europe, the great king of the Franks realized there was a certain thing that he wanted but had not yet obtained—an elephant. Fortunately for Charlemagne, he had become pen pals with just the person who had the means and knowledge of how to acquire such a beast. The king of the Franks had begun corresponding with Harun-al-Rashid (r.786-809), the Caliph of Baghdad, as early as the year 797. So, after the two rulers had become acquainted, Harun-al-Rashid received an interesting message: Charlemagne wanted an elephant.

The Caliph of Baghdad reportedly decided to fulfill Charlemagne’s wish and shipped an Indian or African war elephant across the Mediterranean to the Carolingian Empire, which would later be renamed as the Holy Roman Empire. The elephant, allegedly named Abul Abaz, landed in Italy and was led through the Alps before meeting Charlemagne at Aachen in July, 802. The king apparently decided to let the animal keep its foreign name and integrated the elephant into the military. There is no knowing how much combat Abul Abaz saw, but the elephant would have been present in Europe to witness the end of Charlemagne’s long war with the Saxons (c. 772-804) and participated in the Frankish defense against raids from Denmark. In fact, Abul Abaz died in 810, near the Rhine settlement of Lippeham, where Charlemagne had stationed troops to defend against invasions from the Danes.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Depiction of a military elephant, by Sebastian Münster (1488–1552), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammer, translated by David Ganz. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008.
• https://books.google.com/books?id=WGgYDAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA189&ots=W31caJ489R&dq=Abu%20Abaz&pg=PA60#v=onepage&q=Abul%20Abaz&f=false