Origins of the Holy Roman Empire: Part 4
The penultimate part of this series will explore the Carolingian legal changes at the turn of the 9th century with regard to the eastern half of the Frankish lands.
A recent article by Hilary White on the Sacred Images Project substack covered the exciting period that has been called the ‘Carolingian Renaissance’. The article made a deep dive into the cultural, educational, and artistic reforms of the time, highlighting some of the key achievements of the Carolingians. Today’s article, in contrast, will explore the legal and structural method in which the Carolingians achieved those reforms.
In the previous part of this series, we explored the critical role of the monasteries in propelling Pippin II (Pippin of Herstal) to the political heights as palatial mayor in both Neustria and Austrasia. The article ended with a description of Charles Martel’s similar feats, emphasizing his push towards the east.
Now we will extend our gaze to the legal and social reforms brought about by the Carolingians that laid the framework for the structure of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) established nearly 150 years after Charlemagne’s death.
A Carolingian Renaissance?
From the 4th until the 8th centuries, Christian rulers were expected to serve as the moral leaders of their territories—as vice-regents of God. Now, the lives of these rulers typically fell far short of that goal, particularly when considering the vicious behaviors of the Merovingian Franks and Lombards until the early 8th century.
Nevertheless, the obligation of a leader to morally correct his people was included in the Civil Code of Emperor Justinian I, in which Christian rulers were to ‘correct what is necessary’ and to ensure the purity of both religious doctrine and clerical morals. Saint Pope Gregory the Great often used the word rector when referring to both secular and ecclesiastical rulers,[1] further cementing that expectation.
By the late 7th century, most Christian rulers had gravitated closer to that ideal than their predecessors, largely due to the active engagement of the clergy that sought to correct their secular rulers. Such examples included the Neustrian Saint Corbinian, who led the reform of the Duchy of Bavaria by ridding it of an incestuous duke with the political and martial support of Charles Martel.
Interestingly, most of the new rulers of the 8th century did not come from royal stock, but rather from the status of the dukes, like the Pippinids, Agilolfings, and others. Their ability to see the larger canvas, unblemished by the nearly limitless temptations within arm’s reach that their Merovingian Kings suffered from, was perhaps why they were better rulers in the end. Furthermore, they bound themselves to the most stable and lasting institution in Europe—the Church.
The massive endowments that the Frankish monasteries received during the tenure of Pippin II, as described in part three, led to their ability to host more missionaries, build larger scriptoria, construct chapels with better acoustics, and house bigger granaries that could outlast famines or other plights caused by either political or natural disasters. These monasteries also became nexuses for training future leaders of the various courts by honing their knowledge of the classics, improving their Latin, and connecting them to peers visiting from other kingdoms throughout Europe.
It is important to note that Carolingians were not the only ones associated with a ‘renaissance’ in which their lands were developing culturally and socially. Nor were they the first to increasingly take on more responsibility with regard to ruling their people justly and morally.
The Visigothic kings of Spain preceded the Carolingian Franks in these reforms through the initiative of their bishops, who followed the outline provided by Saint Isidore of Seville, who viewed his king as a praesulatus (superintendent). In fact, the anointing of Visigothic kings in 672 AD set these reforms into motion long before the other Western European kingdoms who later followed suit, albeit at their own pace.
Similar reforms were highlighted by Saint Bede with regard to the increase of the arts that rose in direct proportion with an increase in religiosity in Anglo-Saxon England. It is not a matter of coincidence that the Kingdom of Northumbria at the turn of the 8th century produced a number of contemporary saints including Boniface, Wilibad, Winnibald, Walpurga, Wilibrord, among others. These Anglo-Saxon saints were all missionaries who came to the Frankish kingdoms to assist them in converting the eastern Germanic people.
This ‘Northumbrian Golden Age’ also featured numerous artistic influences from Western Europe and Byzantium at the turn of the 8the century. This was the same time in which the Lombard kingdom allowed their architects to serve in other kingdoms—the undisputed champions of monumental architecture—all while the Frankish monasteries were becoming elite centers of education.
Thus, it is necessary to question the term ‘Carolingian Renaissance’ as it infers a preceding period from which a renewal was necessary. Within strictly the Frankish context, renewal was necessary in order to live up to the role of a Christian leader, as codified by Emperor Justinian. However, the idea of renewal was certainly not a Carolingian one.
Carolingian Might
The rule of the Carolingians is best described by Alcuin, an Anglo-Saxon chronicler who wrote to Charlemagne’s son, Louis, in the early 9th century:
‘…a king should be strong against his enemies, humble to Christians, feared by pagans, loved by the poor and judicious in counsel and maintaining justice.’
It is quite clear that the ideal set by Emperor Justinian in the early 6th century had continued to live on well into the 9th. In fact, Alcuin was not just writing to the king, but a future emperor—and a Roman one at that.
Charlemagne’s coronation as emperor, was not merely an attempt to challenge the Byzantines, but rather a transfer of their power and title. After all, Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Romans. Furthermore, his empire minted coins of a new system consisting of the libra (English: Pound; German: Pfund), solidus (English: Shilling; German: Schilling), and denarius (English: Penny; German: Pfennig).
This new monetary standard replaced the Roman one of Late Antiquity that had been in use by the western kingdoms—as described in part two of this series—and relegated the solidi to second tier. However, these new solidi no longer bore the image of a Byzantine emperor, as the western kingdoms had all previously minted. Instead, the new face was a Carolingian one.
Charlemagne’s coronation solidified his status as the long-awaited successor in the west, through which he gained a substantially higher perception among foreign realms, such as the Abbasids in Baghdad. He was essentially showered with gifts by rulers from around the Mediterranean, though the Byzantines were not eager to congratulate him.
The catalyst of transferring the imperial office was the pope—or rather a series of popes beginning with Saint Gregory the Great—who had already been the religious leader of Christianity for many centuries to whom the Byzantines also answered. It is for this reason that many people erroneously assume that Charlemagne was a Holy Roman Emperor, when in fact he was the Roman Emperor.
Nevertheless, the role of the Church in the rise and flourishing of the Carolingians was not only important, but absolutely essential—without the Church, the Carolingians would never have succeeded. In turn, the Carolingians provided the Church with endowments and privileges that rivaled anything that the Byzantines had done.
Territorial Policies
Although the Alemannians, Alsatians, Bavarians, Swabians, and Thuringians had long converted to Christianity by the early 8th century and quickly fell under the influence of the Carolingians by the second half of that century, the Saxons and Frisians remained staunchly pagan—as did the people of Scandinavia—controlling the north and all avenues to the Baltic Sea.
The Frisians and Saxons controlled the region along the Elbe River as well as the area that is now Netherlands and northwestern Germany, from which they launched regular attacks into the Frankish and Thuringian territories.
This antagonistic area that directly bordered the Frankish Kingdom of Austrasia (the home of the Carolingians) along its northern and eastern sides was a key point of concern for the mayors of the palace, like Charles Martel. His second marriage to a Bavarian princess, Swanahild, secured the support of the largest eastern duchy near the Franks.
Charles and his son never succeeded in submitting the Saxons, who had wrought devastating counter attacks. None of the Saxon or Frisian retaliations troubled Christendom as much as the murder of Saint Boniface in 754 AD—three years after Pippin III (Pippin the Short) took the Frankish throne.
It was during the 8th century that the Frankish kingdoms and duchies became collectively known as francia, with the designations of francia occidentalis and francia orientalis referring to the western and eastern halves, respectively.[2] The separation began at first as a manner of reference, but quickly evolved into matter of policy as each half faced different challenges.
In contrast to the Merovingians and other European dynasties who focused upon elevating the dukes, the Carolingian strategy went much further: the elevation of petty counts in the east known at that time as grafio, as opposed to the comes who ruled the western cities of francia. This is why the word for count is Graf in German, but comte in French.
Marriages were arranged between these petty counts and the families of the Frankish courts, mainly in Austrasia and Neustria. The grafio gained notoriety and status, and the Frankish elites marrying their daughters gained territory. In turn, these grafio families slowly changed from petty to rather influential—matching their comes-counterparts in the west.
Prior to this strategy, most counties in the east were appointed by the king or duke, depending upon the territory. However, the Carolingians introduced a heritable system in which the sons of the grafio automatically gained the estate upon the death of their father—a system that increased dramatically after Charlemagne was crowned emperor in 800 AD, resulting in the amplification of everyone’s status in francia.
Much of the land within the Frankish kingdoms that did not belong to the monasteries was the personal property of the kings as their royal estates, known as a fiscus (Königsgut, in German). The forests, known as forestae, were also of great concern for economic reasons, many of which had been established as protected zones by the mid-7th century.[3] These royal estates and forests continued well into the 18th century, and some like the Reichswald of Lautern near the city of Kaiserslautern, Germany, continued with the designation of an imperial forest until the 1980s.
The Foundations of a Bureaucracy
The managers of these estates and forests during the Carolingian period were the grafio, who were given the task of maintaining the estates in the king’s absence. As the Franks expanded their territories through conquest—particularly during the reign of Charlemagne—the availability of larger counties came to the fore.
These administrators would soon become a bulwark of the Carolingian legal and court system as they were quite literally the makers of the empire. It was their role in the expansion of territory and establishment of new cities that gave rise to medieval feudalism.
The grafio ruling the border lands, known as marches, were even given a slightly higher status as a Markgraf, or margrave in English, as their territorial position was more dangerous. These margraves slowly married into the Saxon families upon their defeat in 804 AD at the hands of Charlemagne. This gave rise to the highly influential families in francia orientalis that would later become the leaders of the Kingdom of Germany and the first emperors of the HRE.
For more reading on this topic, check out the following sources:
Bosl, Karl. „Pfalzen und Forsten“. In Deutsche Königspfalzen: Beiträge zu ihrer historischen und archäologischen Erforschung, 1. Aufl., 1:1–29. Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte 11/1. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963.
Brown, Giles. „Introduction: The Carolingian Renaissance“. In Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, herausgegeben von Rosamond McKitterick, 1–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Gerberding, Richard. The Rise of the Carolingians and the Liber Historiae Francorum. Herausgegeben von M.G. Brock, Barbara Harvey, H.M. Mayr-Harting, H.G. Pitt, K.V. Thomas, und A.F. Thompson. Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.
Lubich, Gerhard. Auf dem Weg zur „Güldenen Freiheit“: Herrschaft und Raum in der Francia orientalis von der Karolinger- zur Stauferzeit. Historische Studien 449. Husum: Matthiesen Verlag, 1996.
McKitterick, Rosamond. The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians 751-987. New York, NY: Longman Group Limited, 1983.
[1] Giles Brown, „Introduction: The Carolingian Renaissance“, in Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, hg. von Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 1–51. 2.
[2] Gerhard Lubich, Auf dem Weg zur „Güldenen Freiheit“: Herrschaft und Raum in der Francia orientalis von der Karolinger- zur Stauferzeit, Historische Studien 449 (Husum: Matthiesen Verlag, 1996).
[3] Karl Bosl, „Pfalzen und Forsten“, in Deutsche Königspfalzen: Beiträge zu ihrer historischen und archäologischen Erforschung, 1. Aufl., Bd. 1, Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte 11/1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963), 1–29.
Forgive me for calling it the HRE under Charlemagne. Habits die hard.
An excellent series, Aaron. I now see that we are in complete agreement re. institution of HRE (see my comment on August 24).