Costambeys’ Carolingia

Marios Costambeys, Matthew Innes, Simon MacLean. The Carolingian World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Every so often historians need to be reminded to “go back to the basics” and revisit established histories in an effort to discover new means of telling an old story.  Answering the call for the “Dark Ages” of Carolingian history are Marios Costambeys, Matthew Innes, and Simon MacLean, whose recent book, The Carolingian World, is intended to study “the contemporary sources [and to see what they] can tell us about the Carolingian period on its own terms.”   Costambeys and his crew attempt to step away from the legends and prejudices and take an impartial look at what is actually said of medieval Europe by those who saw it.  In so doing, these authors also establish a working model for recognizing and interpreting biased historiography.

Of initial concern to the historian is the issue of primary source bias.  Costambeys wastes no ink getting around to the first such obstacle, beginning the introduction to The Carolingian World with the story of Pippin, King of the Franks and father of the future Charlemagne, playing host to the pope, Stephen II, in AD 753.  Whatever the intents of the participants, “political significance was quickly heaped onto their meeting and within a few years the circumstances surrounding it were being intensively rewritten” as a biographer for the pope has Pippin kneeling in homage, contrary to the Frankish account where it is the priest of God who throws himself at the king’s feet.   Having established a running theme for their work, Costambeys and company go on to construct their main arguments around the complexities of historical interpretation.

The Carolingians and their neighbors, it would seem, were eager to pass judgment upon their own world, much like opinion columnists of the present day, be it moralizing hagiography (saints’ lives), recounting the latest political shift, or looking back upon the mighty deeds of past men.  Indeed, one of the challenges faced by historians is struggling through what Costambeys calls an “ideological legacy” that swiftly coalesced into “mythology,” whereby “posterity quickly canonised [sic] Pippin’s family as a benchmark for dynastic prestige.   Thus the Carolingians came to be the “family who forged Europe,” their victories and defeats catalogued as a near-linear path to the Middle Ages.   Indeed, the Carolingians themselves were guilty of “committing” teleology (an historical worldview that sees certain events as leading towards a predetermined conclusion; e.g. the Magna Carta, the Protestant Reformation, and the Stamp Act all leading unerringly to the Bill of Rights),  such as Notker of St Gallen who in the 880s wrote of Charlemagne’s realm as “a divinely ordained successor to the great empires of the past.”

Such interpretations and revisions are by no means reserved for ancient sources.  Historians researching the Carolingians have contributed their share of positive and negative teleology and ideology to compound the mystery of Europe’s First Family.  Significant events are frequent victims.  Enlightenment bias led Edward Gibbon to assert that Tours was a decisive battle that saved Europe from an encroaching Islam.    The meeting between Pippin and the pope has long been considered “the most momentous act of the entire Middle Ages,” notably by the Belgian, Henri Pirenne, who saw this as one of many significant markers of a “new, specifically western, European civilization.”   Some interpretations of the Ordinatio imperii that set forth rules and means for Louis’ successors (Charlemagne’s grandchildren) are based upon the ideals of 20th-century historians “living in an age of European fragmentation.”   The French historian Louis Halphen allowed his memories of World War II to inspire the view of Carolingia “as a great tragedy of failed European unity.”   Social history, too, has long been the playground of preconceived notions, often couched in terms of “‘continuity’ and ‘change’” from late antiquity to Medieval – thanks in part to the work of the likes of Pirenne, who saw “the Carolingian era as a millennium-long transformation”  – rather than considering the Carolingians as a distinct era of their own; thus outside concepts such as Roman slavery or Medieval villages impose themselves upon an era that might have had institutions completely different, while historians of either adjacent period focus their research upon those subjects that most reflect their own field.

As they build a case for a more careful study of Carolingia, Costambeys and company demonstrate how such a study could be conducted by careful analysis of the primary sources.  Carolingianists are quite blessed by the sheer volume of material to be considered, as the Carolingians produced an astonishing 9,000 surviving works, compared to the 1,800 works or fragments thereof that survive from those written on the continent before 800.   Historical works are the most obvious (memoria, the collections of names of the dead; and historia, those annals and records of past deeds), legal charters (such as records of property granted to monasteries), polyptychs (records of estate management) and poetry (the final step in one’s education) constituting the written portion of Carolingian evidence.   Archeology has recently entered the field as well, lending scientific insights previously unavailable to researchers – such as dietary superiority of aristocrats and the presence of “super emporia” in the northern sea-trade that suggest royal financing.

Perhaps the most important advice Costambeys emphasizes is that historians ought to take their primary sources with a grain of salt.  With regards to Pippin’s rise to power, his initial appearance as “mayor of the palace” and his latter designation as “king of the Franks” (in charters dated AD 751 and 752 respectively) hint to Costambeys that other sources for the year 751 were actually written after Pippin’s death as means of easing the succession of his sons.   Such revisionist history has been proven before, such as the accusation from a Chronicle that a certain noble invited Muslims into Francia in a direct prelude to the battle of Tours.   The Carolingian World includes numerous similar examples.  In the case of Charlemagne’s annexation of Bavaria, the Royal Frankish Annals appear to have been structured so as to indict the Bavarian ruler, Tassilo, with plots against the Franks, and make it out that Charlemagne – who at the time was relatively untried and facing a significant foe in Tassilo – was in total control.   And in a more theatrical turn, the lengths to which contemporary authors went to express their grief at Charlemagne’s death is juxtaposed against his son Louis the Pious, who until the 1990s was characterized as a “hapless failure.”

A less obvious source of mistaken history comes in the form of sources that do not even tell readers what was true, but what should have been true, most clearly seen in the various rules issued by holy men like Amalarius of Metz in the 830s, and adopted by monasteries – these explain what the author believed was the proper means of carrying out certain monastic duties, but whether said duties were so executed remains unanswerable by the rules alone.   In a related vein, different types of histories will make for different types of accounts, as Costambeys points out that the priorities of hagiographers differ from those of historians.   Hence the necessity of viewing the Carolingian world through the eyes of those who lived there, the key argument in Costambeys’ book.  And mere substitution will not do.  Perhaps with good intentions, “moderns” both now and in the past have attempted to reconstruct periods under study, but as Costambeys points out, such reconstructions must be carried out honestly and in light of the actual sources; for example, the “Germanic” culture of the Dark Ages is “a modern invention” based upon the etymological association of gods’ names from Icelandic, Saxon, and Frisian traditions and can tell us nothing about what was actually believed in a given locale.   Historians must also come to grips with the understanding that our knowledge is incomplete at best.

The approach best demonstrated in The Carolingian World is that of making educated inferences to avoid modernist misconceptions and to come up with original observations.  Much is made of Charlemagne’s momentous coronation in Rome in 800, but a judicious consideration of the sources can lead to some startling revelations, such as the embassy from Byzantium around 798, which Charlemagne might have considered more politically important than a visit to St Peter’s see.   Similarly, Costambeys shows how a historian can draw new conclusions by quoting Charlemagne’s frustration in 811 with corruption “in the counties” and surmising that, unlike past interpretations that the old king’s power was on the wane, there was a robust and functioning system of governance in place that some worthies had learned to play for their benefit.

Though rather dry and categorical, The Carolingian World makes for an excellent study in scholarly technique.  While acknowledging where others have gone before, the authors put forward their own analyses winningly reasoned.  It will be interesting to see whether their ideas generate criticism or take hold of other fields.