"The publication history of Carolingian diplomas is long and full of pitfalls" Theo Kölzer observed in the opening sentence of his introduction to the first critical edition of Louis the Pious's (778-840) diplomas (ix). That history began in 1791 and was punctuated by the French Revolution, two World Wars, fire, the ebb and flow of institutional support, and the personal histories of chains of editors. That this magnificent MGH edition of Louis's diplomas has been brought safely to port 1200 years after Louis became sole emperor (Kölzer dated his preface poignantly to 2014, dem Epochenjahr Ludwigs) testifies to the perseverance, skill, and pedagogy of the editor and to the new conditions of twentieth- and twenty-first-century scholarship. Internet databases (lxxxvii) certainly abetted the editorial project. But the key to the richness of the edition, especially its learned and intricate contextualization of the format and production of Louis's diplomas along with detailed descriptions and histories of each, is signaled on the project's title page: this is a work of deep collaboration. The contributors named on the title page "and others" worked with Kölzer at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn (the edition is Seminario Bonnensi Iunioribus Indefessis Sacrum [v]) and produced dissertations on various aspects of the diplomas as prolegomena to the edition.
First, the view from 30,000 feet. Of the 418 diplomas preserved in some 200 archives and libraries, 92 (22%) survive as originals. About a third of them (34.6%) have been "manipulated" in some way, either interpolated, revised, or falsified, flipping the ratio for Merovingian diplomas of which a third are authentic and two-thirds are not (xxi). About a half of Louis's authentic diplomas were issued before 820, suggesting that recipients were eager to reconfirm with the new emperor the rights and privileges they held under his father. That the years 824, 827, 830, and 840 saw the fewest diplomas issued correlates with years marked by military campaigns and political turmoil. Ninety percent of the diplomas concern places in modern France, Germany, and Italy (in that order), while 93% of the parties were religious houses with Saint-Denis, Aniane, and Farfa leading the pack. The edition also publishes 231 deperdita, documents that have been lost, but that are mentioned or summarized in the diplomas of later monarchs or in other sources such as saints' lives or episcopal or monastic histories. Fifty-two Ludovician documents survive as Formulae imperiales, mostly copied in Tironian notes in a Paris manuscript (BNF, lat. 2718); 21 documents are mentioned in Louis's correspondence. Six "modern" (seventeenth-nineteen centuries) spuriaround out the collection.
Looking closer, the heart of Kölzer's introduction focuses on what the diplomas reveal about Louis's chancery (xxvi-xlii), an important topic with potential to reveal much about how Carolingian government functioned and represented itself. Even formal details are suggestive. Charlemagne addressed his diplomas to "our faithful people" (fideles nostri), a patently personal locution that Louis replaced with a more expansive and patently religious form, "to all the faithful people of the holy church of God" (cunctis / omnibus fidelibus sanctae dei ecclesiae) (lix). Louis's diplomas, as might be expected of the second generation of the Carolingian reform of education and literacy, were redacted in better Latin than were his father's. However, where one might conjure a highly organized and tightly controlled imperial chancery during Louis's reign, Kölzer injected a strong note of skepticism, particularly against what Georges Tessier warned was a manie de la certitude (xxxvi). The paleography of the diplomas suggests an abundance of scribes who were trained to redact legal documents, who did not necessarily reside at court, but rather were drawn from a "reservoir" of diploma redactors situated in the empire's great monastic houses (lii). That many diplomas were prepared by their recipients belies the notion of a bureaucratized chancery and points to a reality that, with most elements of the Carolingian experience, was more local and fluid than one might expect. Kölzer reserved his strongest reservation for the putative existence of a "Leges scriptorium," a center that Bernhard Bischoff hypothesized might have specialized in producing lawbooks, a suggestion that subsequently became reified as an adjunct of Louis's chancery (xlii).
Reading 418 diplomas that stretch from 794 when Louis was king of Aquitaine (1-8) to the end of his reign in 840 (1031-4) over the period of several weeks is an interesting experience. Forty-six years of documentary evidence compressed into a brief period of broad analysis becomes almost dizzying and not only in terms of the multitudinous people and places that parade through the records. The index ofPersonen (1245-83) lists about 2,000 individuals from Aaron, brother of Moses, to Zuppo, homo liber. After Louis, John, Benedict, Bernard, and Peter appear as the most popular names in the roster. Archbishop Noto of Arles shares space with Noto mancipium (1271). Place names, Orte (1284-1366), from Abaria to Zullenshein are too numerous to tally!
More than many names and even more places, relatively rapid reading of the documents conveys the overwhelming impression that, above all else, the business of the empire was business. The nuts-and-bolts details embedded in the diplomas provide fascinating and detailed glimpses into the workings of the Carolingian economy at several levels, from ownership of land and humans to collections and exemptions from tolls and other payments. When the emperor granted immunities from intrusions by imperial officials, he specified in great detail the agents who kept the machinery of imperial economic administration well oiled:Omnibus episcopis, abbatibus, comitibus, vicariis, centenariis, thelonariis, actionariis, vel omnibus rem publicam administrantibus.... (478,25-6). In a diploma for Aniane, the exactions the monastery were spared were likewise spelled out at length: ut nemo teloneum nec pontaticum nec portaticum aut cespitaticum seu rotaticum aut travaticum atque salutaticum vel ullum censum aut ullum redibitionem ab eis exigere presumatis (37,7-9). Louis exempted wagons, pack animals, and ships from tolls. The repeated references to ships (navis is listed as oft in the Wort- und Sachregister [1440], meaning that the term occurs more than ten times) are especially interesting. Louis granted monastic houses exemptions for their ships plying all rivers or limited the exemption to specific rivers. Sometimes his exemption applied to a certain number of ships, four in the case of Saint-Germain of Auxerre (219,31), three in the case of Charroux (793,9). Beneath their formalistic prose the diplomas reveal, to paraphrase Michael McCormick, a dynamic portrait of people on the move and of things travelling. [1]
Dispute settlement also emerges as a common theme. In 827 Louis settled a conflict between Abbot Audo of Stablo-Malmedy and Albricusauctor fisci nostri over the use of a wood. Louis sent Iasto, a count of his palace, and Wirnitum, magister parvulorum nostrorum, to investigate the matter. His decision was that both would share the wood and not hinder the other's use of it (654-6). Sometimes grievances could be longstanding and involve Louis's own interests. In 831 the monastery of Saint-Amand complained that back in the time of his grandfather King Pippin (c.714-768) a wood belonging to the cell of Barisiacus had been taken forcibly from it and attached to the neighboring royal fisc. After sending his vassal Hagan to investigate, he returned the wood to the cell (730-1). In 835 he restored six villas to Fleury that one of Pippin's vassals, Gisleharius, had usurped (888-90). Sometimes a bit of drama attended property disputes. An 821 diploma records that when Fulquin went off to fight Slavs, he left his villa at Meinborn in the hands of a Teuthardus on the condition that it should revert to him upon his return; if he were killed, the property would be used for his soul's benefit. However, something unexpected occurred. Fulquin returned from military service only to discover that Teuthardus had died and that his property had come into Louis's control (in iuris nostri). Fulquin petitioned Louis to look into the facts to determine if his account were truthful or not. Haguno, the emperor's vassal, investigated and reported back that everything Fulquin had said was indeed true. It pleased the emperor to return Fulquin's property to him (483-4). In one of his last diplomas, issued May 12, 840 at Kissingen, Louis restored to quidam homo Helis property that Gerafelt, quidam fiscalini nostri ex fisco nostro (1021,22), unjustly invaded, seized, and joined to Louis's fisc. After Count Poppo investigated, Louis found in favor of Helis and returned his property to him (1019-22). A concern for justice, apparent in frequent entries for iniuste, iniustus, iuste, iustitia, and iustus in the Wort- und Sachregister (1424, 1428), pervaded Louis's interactions with his people.
When Louis was not a direct party to the transactions memorialized in the diplomas by granting, affirming, donating, or exempting, he served often as a third-party witness and guarantor of transactions between others. Hilduin, his archchaplain and abbot of Saint-Denis, called on him several times in 820 and 821 to confirm land swaps between Saint-Denis and quidam homo nomine Theodoanus (462-4), quidam homo nomine Hahirradus (469-71), quidam homo nomine Richboto (497-9), and quidam homo nomine Hildulfus (499-501). In 824 Louis confirmed a land transaction between Abbot Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel and quidam homines his nominibus: Adalhardus, Rodaldus, Aldaruus (584-5). In 835 he confirmed a swap of land and slaves between Abbot Marcward of Prüm and the brothers Heberarius and Hebrardus (891-2). Louis's diplomas record at least one instance of an exchange between a count and a landed priest when he confirmed a transaction between Count Gebehardus and the priest Riculf (773-4). The diplomas specify which properties went to each side. They also make it clear that the exchanges were entered into freely (e.g., pro ambarum partium utilitate [773,25]) and were not the result of a judicial proceeding such as a fine or payment of a debt. The business of the empire involved religious houses, counts, laypeople, and at least one priest, with the emperor watching over all of it. One wonders what motivated the land swaps. Were more distant properties exchanged for nearer ones? Was one sort of land (say, suitable for crops) exchanged for another sort (say, suitable for grazing of animals)? Both sides saw advantages to the exchanges pro eorum oportunitatibus (891,27-28), so decisions were made in calculated self-interest in the context of rational economic management.
The rich lode of Carolingian experience that these three thick books offer no doubt will prompt generations of scholars to mine them with new questions, reconsiderations of earlier findings, and new avenues of research. The magisterial publication of Louis's diplomas fills the last remaining gap in the MGH's series of Frankish diplomas which launched in 1872. It's the jewel in the crown.
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Note:
1. Michael McCormick, The Origins of the European Economy, Communications and Commerce, A.D. 300-900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).