How much did kings care about ordinary people in the early Middle Ages? How far did they see it as the king’s role to intervene in their lives? The text translated below is a fascinating glimpse into one answer to that question. Known as the Capitulary of Le Mans (Capitulare in pago cenomannico datum), it […]
On Christmas Day 800, Charlemagne was crowned emperor in Rome. What decisions and discussions led to that event? The account by Charlemagne’s biographer, Einhard, is well-known. But here’s a source that’s often neglected, though it was written much closer to events than Einhard’s Vita Karoli. The ‘Cologne Notice’ is not strictly speaking a historical work, […]
What did Carolingian kings know about the Roman army? The Latin treatise translated below is part of the answer to that question. It is a précis of Vegetius’s De re militari (c. 400), and it was probably written for the young king Lothar II by Archbishop Hraban Maurus in 855. The purpose of the treatise, and […]
Around 804, a dispute broke out in Istria, in what is now Slovenia. This region north of the Adriatic sea had traditionally been under Byzantine control; around 788, however, it was conquered by Charlemagne, king and later emperor of the Franks. The Frankish agents that Charlemagne appointed in Istria, especially Duke John, introduced new practices […]
For a discussion of this ninth-century letter from a Frankish priest to an abbot, see https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article/81/1/1/2385576 (open access). Translation* The Letter of Hubert the Priest to Haimin. Doing my best to satisfy your instructions, my dearest instructor, I will thoroughly reveal the depths of my own ignorance, and will describe the vision manifestly shown […]
