Bishop Altfrid of Hildesheim’s Report, summer 862
In 862, King Louis the German sent envoys to meet with King Charles the Bald. En route, they met King Lothar II, who added his own envoys to their group. However, the two sets of envoys met with very different receptions at Charles’s court, as this text describes.
This is a complete English translation of the 1965 printed edition of a transcription preserved by the 18th-century archivist Nikolaus Kindlinger, but made in 1641 in Cologne from a now lost medieval (Carolingian?) manuscript which included a copy of the text here translated, Altfrid’s letter – a reminder of how complex the transmission of early medieval sources can be.
Already in 1641, the (now vanished) medieval manuscript was damaged and in places difficult to read. The transcriber, the Jesuit Johannes Veldes, could not decipher a few sentences, and left gaps represented by ellipses (…). In two cases, the modern editor, Joseph Prinz, supplied what the missing words might have been; however, I have not included these, since they steer the interpretation of the text.
The early modern manuscript that preserves Veldes’s transcription, on which the edition is based, is in the Nordrhein-Westfalen Landesarchiv in Münster, Kindlingersche Sammlung vol. 40, and has been digitised: http://www.landesarchiv-nrw.de/digitalisate/Abt_Westfalen/Msc_II/00040/MSC_II_00040_235.jpg
Edition: Joseph Prinz, ‘Ein unbekanntes Aktenstück zum Ehestreit König Lothars II’, Deutsches Archiv 21 (1965), 249-63, currently available online. Note that the transcription manuscript has been refoliated since Prinz’s edition, and the transcription is now fols. 210-211.
I am grateful to Hayley Harrison for her part in drafting an early version of this translation in 2019.
To the most glorious and most fervent ruler (gubernator) of the Christian religion, Louis [the German] the most excellent king, Bishop Altfrid [of Hildesheim] and his colleagues…, your supplicant servants, send faithful service and devoted prayers.
We have anxiously striven to complete the embassy which your Eminence had enjoined upon our humble selves, according to the grasp of our intelligence. For hastening to Asselt, we met Lord Lothar [II] there.
When we announced to him all the true and intimate benevolences of your Clemency, he gave thanks for these with most genuine affection, and instructed that his thanks in every way be reported back. He promised that, after God and his saints, to no-one else would he be more obedient in all things, and that he would serve according to his strength as long as he lived. Finally, he sent two of his men, that is Count Nanthar and Berand his chaplain, with us to your brother [King Charles the Bald].
When we later found him [Charles] in the palace of Compiègne, we were all led at the same time to his presence. We set out to him everything you had instructed, as far as the small measure of our ability permitted, in the presence of Lothar’s envoys. Charles most graciously heard everything, and he replied about all the matters with kindly affection, with the exception of the case of Lothar.
Concerning this, he said that he could do or promise nothing before he personally had the chance to speak with you, in Lothar’s absence. And this he wanted and asked for most pressingly, in order that it might happen as quickly as possible. When we in turn replied to him that, due to the immediate time of your departure, this could in no way happen at the moment, he replied that he would meet your Eminence wherever was convenient.
Finally, when he had listened in no way calmly to the embassy of Lothar’s envoys, he said to them ‘… …. in accordance with the practices of the Christian religion and to hear ……. and to save himself, I shall gladly repay him with good deeds of loyalty and love, as is right. But if not, I refuse to have dealings with the sins of others, as the Apostle orders’. And after these words he allowed them to leave, saying to us that we should wait there, so that he might be able to indicate to your Excellency more intimately and privately what he wanted.
So, as if at your feet, we therefore thank your Majesty for all things, that Charles hosted us intimately and with benevolence far beyond our merits, on account of your love and honour, supporting us with provisions and gifting us money.
And so, to sum everything up in a few words, whatever your Benevolence had entrusted to Charles, whether about the unique love of your brotherhood or about mutual business for the salvation of your souls, or about your kingdom, which ought to be united in Christ, guarding it unanimously and watching over the advancement of the Christian religion, or even about provision for your nephews and relatives which should not be overlooked, and indeed concerning many other things which your Clemency had entrusted to him – Charles declared (contestatus est) in his own truth that he was willing to undertake and willingly to keep watch over everything freely; with the exception that he decreed the case of Lothar had to be discussed with you. This your Prudence will be able to see in this other record (scedula), which… etc.
