Carolingian Politics

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The Carolingian dynasty dominated western Europe from 751 to 888 and the reputation of its greatest ruler, Charlemagne, haunted European imaginations for generations. In 751, Charlemagne's father, Pippin III, rose from the ranks of the aristocracy to become king and found a royal line. In 888, that line lost its exclusivity and non-Carolingian 'kinglets' sprang up in the Frankish world. This book differs from other distinguished recent work on the Carolingians: it covers the whole period of exclusive Carolingian rule; it focuses on centres rather than regions; and it argues that this was less a world regulated by consensus than one characterised by the vigorous assertion of a distinctive form of unassailable authority: the special status of the royal family itself. That period of 751 to 888 had the Carolingian royal family as the defining institution of its age, and this book explores how it triumphantly negotiated its transition from the ranks of the aristocracy to the exalted status of royalty, a status that it guarded jealously and succesfully for over a century. But guarding that status was an endless task; the dynasty could not relax; its special status had to be constantly articulated and proclaimed. To argue that the royal family was itself the most important institution in the realm, because it gave that realm its specific identity, is not to argue that this world was 'primitive', patrimonial and simple. On the contrary, the complex and creative ways in which this family made itself universally present in its world testify to the political creativity of Carolingian political culture. This was a family as an institution that constantly performed its identity in a variety of ways. The great kings and their wars, assemblies, treasures and palaces are the most familiar figures buth they were only part of a much larger royal cast. Young children played key roles in defining, broadcasting and performing the charismatic specialness of Frankish royalty; tough warriors carried the baptismal shawl of an infant Carolingian girl all the way to Rome; the accidental fall of a young roayl boy from a palace window in Bavaria triggered contemporary reflections on the gloomy prospects of the dynasty. The life-cycle of the royals set the pace for politics. And all this was displayed and performed in the great palaces and sacred places of the realm. The copying of royal genealogies testified to belief in the specialness of the Carolingian past, and an implied future. This book combines analysis of such practices with survey of the political conflicts of the period. Such conflicts, ranging from, e.g., the revolt of Bernard of Italy in 817 to the stripping of his Carolingian identity from Carloman, son of Charles the Bald in the 870s, turned on the status of the dynasty's members. In fact, the Carolingians were too successful in convincing their world that they were special. The aristocracy accepted the claims of a variety of discontented and marginalised Carolingian family members with the result that attempts by Louis the Pious (814-840) and his successors to define their family more narrowly foundered on the very feature that was the dynasty's strength: its unique charisma.