This is the third of six volumes, now all published, in a series that “aims to develop a critical methodology that harnesses the potential of identity studies to enhance our understanding of the construction and impact of historiography” in the pre-modern world. Several instalments, including the present one, are happily available as Open Access downloads via the publisher’s website. This volume focuses on the Carolingian Empire, which, as much research over the last few decades has shown, witnessed astounding growth in the production and diversification of historical writing. Several of those in the vanguard of this scholarship are among the contributors to this book. “History and identity” is hardly a new topic as far as the study of Frankish historiography is concerned, but this literature has often focused on political ideology, broadly conceived, examining how Carolingian histories--especially the Royal Frankish Annals, Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne, the continuations of the Fredegar-Chronicle, and the Annals of Metz--sought to justify the Carolingian regime and to celebrate the deeds of the Franks. As Helmut Reimitz sets out in his framing introduction, this book seeks to broaden the discussion in two key respects. First, the contributors here aim to highlight the multiplicity of possible identifications Carolingian authors could adopt and adapt from the late Roman and earlier medieval histories they encountered. Second, this book shifts the focus away from a small canon of habitually privileged Frankish histories (principally, those mentioned above) in order to interrogate and compare the characteristics of historical works of all shapes and sizes. Many of the texts examined here were long considered historiographical background noise: insignificant, derivative distortions of better, “original,” or “official” works. As this volume amply demonstrates, however, these supposedly inferior histories in fact reveal far-reaching, complex networks of media, communication, and debate, enabling scholars to analyze the relationship between post-Roman textual inheritance and the new possibilities of experimentation fostered by the Carolingian Empire. The result is a well-marshalled collection of studies that provides a feast for specialists of medieval historiography, albeit with a somewhat uneven focus on “identity,” which is often pursued quite broadly according to the particular interests of individual contributors.
The book is divided into three sections. Mayke de Jong opens part one, “Carolingian Uses of History,” with an instructive comparison of Paschasius Radbertus’s Vita Adalhardi and Epitaphium Arsenii, examining how the author’s invocations of ethnic identity between the late 820s and early 850s shifted in accordance with the era’s great political turmoil--that is, the rebellions of Louis the Pious’s sons and the civil wars of 840-43. References to Frankish and Saxon identity in Radbert’s earlier writings were supplanted in the 850s by a new vision of community featuring a range of identifications that drew largely from the Christian Roman Empire of late antiquity. Radbert thus offers a clear view of a declining rhetoric of Frankish triumph in the ninth century. Matthias Tischler examines what the Carolingians knew about Ostrogothic Italy, hypothesizing that “Theoderic the Great, as a Romanized Germanic ruler, and his court were the perfect model of political and cultural orientation for Charlemagne and his own political counsellors for their activities in the Mediterranean areas” (65). Carolingian historians inherited a portrait of Theoderic from Bede’sChronica maiora (i.e., chapter 66 of his De temporum ratione), a work that, as several other chapters in this book certify, exhibited vast influence on Carolingian historiography, being frequently edited, expanded, and continued. Following Charlemagne’s conquest of the Lombard kingdom in 774, Carolingian authors increasingly encountered other images of Theoderic transmitted by Jordanes, Boethius, and others that nuanced their understanding of the Ostrogothic past and allowed them to meditate on the tension between power and wisdom in court culture. Next, Robert Evans and Rosamond McKitterick turn to Carolingian abridgements of Orosius’s Seven Books of History against the Pagans, a hugely popular work throughout the Middle Ages. Orosius was not simply copied out in Carolingian scriptoria, but rather excerpted and adapted by readers according to their interests. The authors focus on the idiosyncrasies of an epitome compiled at Tours in the mid ninth century. In this case, the epitomizer largely stripped out Orosius’s Roman-historical framework and Christian apologetic, which were less relevant for Carolingian audiences. The Tours editor seems to have aimed at producing a work of general edification for contemporary Christians: a history more concerned with highlighting God’s agency through historical example rather than polemic or theory. Richard Corradini also explores Carolingian interest in Orosius by means of a study of Walahfrid Strabo’s engagement with historiographical texts in his Vademecum (personal handbook), compiled between c. 824 and 849. Walahfrid’s knowledge of Orosius ran deep: he copied extracts from each of the Histories’ seven books (which “read like the bad news of the news ticker of a news channel,” p. 168) and appears to have compared different versions of the text. Walahfrid’s principal historical interest was to understand the “provocative contradiction between the existence of God and the cruel reality of human suffering” (182). In his Vademecum, Walahfrid connects historiography to cosmology, chronology, and medicine, integrating them as a science of humankind: human events are one layer of the cosmological process. Reading the handbook against the backdrop of profound ninth-century historical change, Corradini shows just how fundamental the study of history was to the entire Carolingian intellectual project.
Part two, “Carolingian Histories,” begins with Sören Kaschke’s fresh look at the neglectedChronicon universale, an early Carolingian universal chronicle produced sometime between 741 and 775. The Chronicon is usually disregarded as an interpolated copy of Bede’s Chronica maiorawith a brief continuation; consequently, only the final third of the text, from the time of Emperor Honorius onwards, has been edited. Kaschke shows that the work and its textual tradition are rather more intricate and varied, observing that in most manuscripts the text “enhances” Bede’s De temporum ratione, substituting chapter 66 (i.e., the Chronica maiora) with the Chronicon universale. This context suggests that the work may be less of a politically driven history than has sometimes been thought. The surviving witnesses of the Chronicon differ widely in content, and the work’s particular openness seems to have helped it enjoy a brief but widespread period of influence in the early ninth century. One of its continuations, written in southern Gaul and known today as theChronicon Moissiacense (Chronicle of Moissac), is treated by Rutger Kramer in the following chapter. This text, written by the 820s, has been prized by modern scholars because it preserves information not otherwise transmitted by the “mainstream” court-connected annalistic tradition. This chronicle, Kramer argues, offers an alternative, localized version of events, albeit one that was still anchored to the wider politics of the realm. Analysis of the work’s depiction of the imperial coronations of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious suggests that the chronicler wanted to emphasize the Christian character of the imperium rather than invoke Roman tradition or describe any kind of providential Frankish history. The Chronicon Moissiacense presents a southern, Septimanian-angled narrative of empire and ecclesia, much in keeping with the wider political rhetoric of Louis the Pious’s reign. The localization of history is further pursued in the next chapter by Sukanya Raisharma, who surveys the neglected Chronicon of Ado of Vienne (c. 869). Dismissed by earlier scholarship as derivative and trivial, this work demonstrates the changing concerns of Frankish historiography in the later ninth century. Ado also took Bede’s Chronica maiora as his baseline, augmenting it with extracts from an array of historiographical and exegetical sources. This universal chronicle narrows to become a history of the Franks with a particular emphasis on the history of Vienne. To enunciate his city’s past, however, Ado had to piggy-back on the better-attested traditions of its Rhône rivals Arles and Lyons. The episcopal focus of Ado’s Chronicon challenges distinctions of genre, pointing the way to the many bishop-centric histories of the late ninth and tenth centuries. Graeme Ward turns to Frechulf of Lisieux’s Histories (completed c. 830), revisiting the vexed question of why the author chose to end his work some two hundred years before his own time. Explanations have hitherto focused on the political or theological implications of this decision, but by reevaluating the Histories’ structure and sources (Orosius once again plays a starring role), Ward argues that Frechulf’s purposes were rather more devotional: to “instruct the minds of his readers in heavenly matters” (296). Frechulf’s two-book structure divided world history into the times before Christ and after, mirroring the biblical narrative of the Old and New Testaments. This scheme underscored divine providence and showed how the ecclesia had grown within and beyond the frontiers of Rome; Frechulf’s ending shortly after the pontificate of Gregory the Great therefore signified the triumph of orthodoxy in the West. Ward’s study is a salutary reminder of the importance of looking past the possible political objectives of historiography in order to consider the didactic, religious contexts in which most of early medieval history was read and written.
Two chapters in part three, “Uses of Carolingian History,” conclude the volume. Walter Pohl examines questions of disillusion and identity in the Historiola of Erchempert of Montecassino (c. 888). Much Italian historiography was written under the long shadow of Paul the Deacon’s influential and open-ended History of the Lombards. Erchempert did not directly continue Paul’s work, but he explicitly responded to it, juxtaposing the good old days of the Lombard kingdom with the turmoil and division of late-ninth-century southern Italy. Erchempert lamented the loss of Lombard unity, but hoped it might one day be restored. His disillusion with contemporary politics led him to produce a Lombard history in which “Lombard identity mostly receded into the background” (344). A vision of Lombard community was thus still possible, though not one that Erchempert particularly wished to affirm. Finally, Eric Goldberg turns to the historiographical and literary representations of a curious episode of dynastic misfortune: the death of Charles the Bald’s son Charles the Young following an accident in 864. Hincmar of Rheims, in the Annals of Saint-Bertin, explained this as an accidental wound received from a companion while Charles was returning from a hunt, an account that has been accepted at face value. Thanks to some excellent detective work that takes in other chronicles and later medieval evidence, Goldberg convincingly argues that this was most likely a cover-up for a serious political embarrassment: the young Charles appears to have ambushed a leading aristocrat but died in the attack. The intrigue surrounding this affair once more reveals the anxious, downcast tenor of late Carolingian historians.
As a collection of essays, Carolingian Approaches has much to commend. These studies all succeed in presenting thoughtful variations on what at first glance might seem a relatively well-trodden path. Contributors are able to take advantage of and respond to scholarly advances in the broader study of Carolingian politics and culture, thereby further nuancing our understanding of the period’s remarkable historiographical impetus. This book also frequently highlights the continued benefits to be gained from intensive manuscript study, as well as the fruits of mass digitization, which should continue to help correct old assumptions and stereotypes concerning supposedly inferior or “minor” historiographical traditions. As the preceding summary may indicate, however, the individual focus of contributors on “identity” is rather variable. Some chapters put questions of identity and identification at the center of their investigations. In others, discussion of identity is totally absent, or implicit, leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions about whether possible ethnic, political, cultural, religious, or local identities should inform our understanding of the texts. Nevertheless, these chapters present a compelling case for a more panoramic view of Carolingian historiography that situates the writing of history in a multitude of contexts. The volume’s laudable Open Access availability will hopefully garner it a very wide readership.