McKitterick’s Charlemagne

Rosamond McKitterick. Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

When a historian is tasked with reading an original document, it is to be expected that he or she will utilize every faculty of the mind to analyze the clues hidden between the lines.  This and more can be said of Rosamond McKitterick.  In her 2011 work, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity, this author delves into the world of the man who has been “the object of commentary and study for the past 1,200 years.”   By scrutinizing the written evidence most contemporary to her subject, McKitterick delivers a stunning in-depth look into what the sources can say about Charlemagne and his times.

Seeking to “chart the formation of Frankish political identity during the reign of Charlemagne” McKitterick’s work offers a protagonist not so much in the titular king, as his rule.   McKitterick’s stated purpose is to differentiate between “what we can know about Charlemagne and what we think we know,” having “tried to free Charlemagne’s reign from the clutter of arguments, assumptions and hypotheses that have somehow become facts.”   As such, the range of time covered in Charlemagne is rather limited, its evidence drawn from materials produced between the mid-700s and Charlemagne’s death in the early 800s.   Covering such topics as rule of law, religion in government, and court structure, Charlemagne hovers between biography and political theory.  Unfortunately, the tale regularly devolves into lists of names and manuscripts rather than delivering a visual image of Charlemagne’s life and times.  Indeed, McKitterick herself declares that Charlemagne’s identity ultimately remains a mystery.

Although a “European Identity” is promised in the book’s subtitle, there does not appear to be much by way of a holistic view.  McKitterick seems more to provide a look at the personal world of Charlemagne – his contacts, his policies, his books – than at the man himself or Carolingian society.  Seeking to present herself as staunchly objective, McKitterick’s brief accounts of social interaction are hastily put aside in favor of catalogues of names, dueling Latin translations, and number crunching, the author preferring to consider such social fluff as feasts and hunts as unreliable guess-work.   Rather, a great deal of space is spent presenting McKitterick’s painstaking research into Carolingian texts, sometimes simply listing out the possible members of the royal household that are named in original texts – for instance, she is pleased to discover that a royal chaplain called the apocrisiarius “undoubtedly existed.”   However, the lengths to which McKitterick is willing to go for answers are quite extraordinary, as she happily produces evidence drawn from single lines within texts, such as the disagreement between two sources over whether Pippin III was consecrated or anointed, the words lending different tones to his ascension to kingship.   However, McKitterick occasionally allows her objectivity to slip, such as describing the misdeeds committed by Franks at war – often associated with the church – while blandly taking the side of Charlemagne’s enemies, even placing their own supposed evils in quotes rather than taking them at face value.   Yet whatever McKitterick’s view, it is undoubtedly that of an aristocrat.   The choice of sources listed in Charlemagne are predominantly print-based, and therefore represent the worldviews of those men educated enough to write and of others wealthy enough to hire such individuals.  Thus the book remains a view of Charlemagne’s Frankia from the top drawer.

Considering that writing was among Charlemagne’s “most lasting legacies,” it only stands to reason that McKitterick should utilize such sources almost exclusively.   And this is fitting, as her strong point as a historian is clearly the careful and insightful critiquing of Medieval manuscripts.  The texts chosen (many accompanied by sophisticated classifications like “BnF lat. 4629” ) are justified as being supposedly those “first produced between [AD] 747/8 and 814, not because they may or may not be more truthful than accounts produced after Charlemagne’s death … but because they have at least the merit of being contemporary.”   There are numerous types of works considered: official histories by famed worthies such as Einhard; court annals; charters; letters; capitularies; books, many with a religious bent; and even relic labels, these latter used to determine roughly when the royal convent of Chelles expanded its collection.   Apparently many of these works were exhaustively researched by McKitterick and others, but a few earned her especial favor or ire.  As stated above, McKitterick takes issue with those histories written after Charlemagne’s life, especially the biographer Einhard, as his history begins “a process of distortion simply by writing in hindsight, after the king’s death.”   Indeed, in some ways, says McKitterick, Einhard may be credited with creating Charlemagne as future readers would know him.   Letters are naturally found to be more fun by this exacting historian (she points out those that the Carolingians chose to renew and even rewrite ) but more, perhaps, is made of other contemporary documents, the legal charters and capitularies. 

The former leads to one of McKitterick’s lengthy examinations and reveals her strengths as an historian of manuscripts.  It has been argued, says she, that “where the charter was drawn up, there was the king and his court.  Unfortunately, it is not as simple as that.”   That is, in attempting to recreate Charlemagne’s itinerant court, historians sought out his charters and assumed that, “by order of the king,” so to speak, his presence may be logically inferred.  Here McKitterick leaps into the fray, arguing instead for a presence of notaries and scribes rather than an extremely mobile monarch.   This is perhaps the shining example of how written text can be used to determine the facts of the matter, as McKitterick tracks down the sundry scribes earning a royal paycheck, and, along with one of her lists of names, charts out their supposed locations within the empire and painting a picture of Carolingian state organization.

Capitularies are another area of demonstrated expertise.   A means of governance and administration – through communicating the wishes of an authority figure and taking many forms, from the letters of St. Paul to “checklists of things to be done or matters to be investigated”  – they were issued as imperial orders and were often accompanied by oral instructions; cases exist where recipient nobles were enjoined to reread the capitularies in their possession and to recall the said oral instructions.   Capitularies performed numerous practical functions, and also serve to inform the studious reader about contemporary conditions within the empire.  They granted authority to the king’s representatives, demonstrated in their regional and “early programmatic” forms the “imposition of Frankish rule in the newly conquered areas” and became a means of inspiration for the later codifying of the duties of officials.   They also reflect many religious themes and some capitularies dealt directly with Church concerns, often overlapping with the secular world with regards to crime and punishment.

Religion is naturally a recurring theme in Charlemagne, at least in political terms; as McKitterick declares, “Christian Latin culture and the Christian religion were the means of moulding [sic] Charlemagne’s empire in to a coherent polity.”   In keeping with her commitment to objectivity, McKitterick seems to avoid any speculation into the nature of religious belief in Frankia, focusing instead upon what writings are available for dissection to determine the religious dialogues exchanged in the course of Charlemagne’s life.  McKitterick refrains from making any concrete judgments on the matter and instead seems to link politics to piety throughout her book, especially where relations with the pope are concerned.   Of central importance is the notion of correctio or “correct thinking and correct language” – here “the acquisition of knowledge and the exercise of power were yoked together” in Charlemagne’s Frankia.   McKitterick’s sources provide numerous examples of this merger of royal and ecclesiastical interests.  Support of the church became a royal duty, as emphasized in the omnipresent charters – which also provided an opportunity to look into the monarch’s mind and see how he understood his role  – and the capitularies make plenty of appearances as they call for the abandonment of paganism and the imposition of right practice in newly conquered territories, demands certainly amiable to both church and state.   These attitudes are also reflected in the histories of the times, the Poeta Saxo placing emphasis on “the conversion of the Saxons rather than their conquest” in an attempt to make Charlemagne an apostle among kings.   In this worldview, service to the king came to be equated with service to God.

It is safe to argue that McKitterick, whatever one makes of her conclusions, presents an excellent example of intuitive research.  By combining non-committal interest with an eagle’s eye for telling detail, she succeeds in reminding the reader just how much can be discovered and how much is taken for granted.  Written with the initiated experts in mind, Charlemagne is perfectly at home on the historian’s bookshelf.