The Reign of Charles III the Fat (876-888)
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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ The reign of Charles III the Fat (876-888) Maclean, Simon The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 11. Oct. 2021 THE REIGN OF CHARLES III THE FAT (876-888) Simon MacLean King's College London Submitted for the degree of PhD, March 2000 2 ABSTRACT The subject of this thesis is the reign of the last Carolingian emperor, Charles the Fat. Because the reign ended in disaster, with the deposition of the emperor and the breakup of the empire, historians have generally been content to write Charles off as a failure, and to interpret his reign as conclusive proof that Carolingian power was in terminal decline during the second half of the ninth century. The thesis challenges this conventional wisdom on two grounds. Firstly, it is conceptually questionable, being largely based on the modern teleological assumptions that the emergence of France and Germany and the development of 'feudalism' were inevitable features of the tenth century, and hence were necessarily preceded by a decline of imperial authority in the ninth. Secondly, it is methodologically unsatisfactory, for, on the one hand, it employs a 'cut and paste' approach to the sources in which pieces of evidence are selected to fit the traditional model without due attention to the distinct aims of the authors of each text, and, on the other, it neglects the evidence of charters which allow different perspectives to those of authorial constructs. The thesis argues for an alternative interpretation, considering the reign on its own terms rather than as the final chapter in a grand narrative of decline and fall. The methodology is to approach the contours and chronology of contemporary politics through a reassessment of the sources, principally the different versions of the chronicle known as the Annals of Fulda, the more elaborate literary works of Abbo of St-Germain and Notker the Stammerer, and the plentiful and underused charters. The conclusions are that many of these texts must be read in a very short-term perspective, relating to developments in Charles's reign rather than to the overall course of Carolingian history; that historians have been too pessimistic about the vitality of Carolingian politics in the late ninth century; and, moreover, that many of the trends thought of as symptomatic of this period, such as the rise of aristocratic power, were in fact ever-present features of the early medieval world, whose greater visibility in the late ninth century was not a cause but a consequence of the fragmentation of the empire. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements 5 Preface 7 Abbreviations 8 Maps and figures 10 Map 1: The late Carolingian Empire 10 Map 2: Carolingian divisiones 11 Map 3: The Seine-Oise region 12 Map 4: Carinthia and Pannonia 13 Map 5: Fiscal rights granted to Otting in D CIII 128 14 Map 6: Liutward's Italian interventions 15 Map 7: Alemannia 16 Map 8: Richgard's monastic empire 17 Figure 1: The Carolingian family 18 Figure 2: The Ludwigspsalter's ruler-portrait 19 1. Introduction 20 1.1: Themes and approaches 20 1.2: Early life, 839-76 23 2. Charles the Fat and the Annales Fuldenses, 882-7 33 2.1: A failed king 33 2.2: The Annales Fuldenses 34 2.2.1: Charles and Liutward 38 2.2.2: The siege of Asselt 41 2.2.3: Activity and inactivity 48 2.3: Conclusion 51 3. Carolingian Family Politics and the Revolt of Boso of Vienne, 879-84 55 3.1: The Carolingian family 55 3.2: The significance of Boso 57 3.3: An overlooked succession plan of 880 60 3.4: An overlooked division plan of 880 68 3.5: Conclusion: The Carolingian response 73 4. Emperor, Empire and Aristocracy 78 4.1: Kings and aristocrats 78 4.2: Odo of Paris and the control of Neustria 81 4.2.1: The 'rise of Odo' 81 4.2.2: The evidence of Abbo of St-Germain-des-Prés 86 4.2.3: The charter evidence 89 4.3: The aristocracy and the empire 91 5. Charles the Fat and the West Frankish Kingdom, 885-8 106 5.1: 'A forgotten king' 106 5.2: The succession of 885 108 5.3: Charles's west Frankish supporters 115 5.3.1: Theoderic of Vermandois, Gauzlin of St-Denis, Hugh the Abbot and Aletramnus of Beauvais 118 5.3.2: Askericus of Paris 127 5.3.3: Geilo of Langres 128 5.3.4: Odo of Paris 134 4 6. The Politics of Succession and the Deposition of Charles the Fat, 885-7 143 Verfassungsgeschichte, unity theory and the 6.1: Three explanations: 143 emperor's illness 150 6.2: The attempted legitimation of Bernard, August-October 885 6.3: The position of Arnuif, 876-85 154 6.4: The problem of Charles the Fat's consecration and the revolt 165 of Hugh, September 885 6.5: Bernard and Louis of Provence, April-June 887 181 6.6: The Empress Richgard, Liutward of Vercelli and the 189 governance of the empire 189 6.6.1: The royal divorce 197 6.6.2: The career of Liutward 205 6.6.3: Richgard and Liutward 206 6.6.4: Alemannia: the emperor's kingdom The 'monastic empire' of the Empress Richgard 212 6.6.5: 6.6.6: Conclusion 221 6.7: The deposition of Charles the Fat, November 887 223 Charles the Fat and Notker the Stammerer 231 7. 231 7.1: Introduction Gesta Karoli 233 7.2: The date of the 237 7.3: Notker's bishops Gesta Karoli 246 7.4: Contemporary references in the 252 7.5: Notker and the imperial succession 7.6: Charles the Fat and Charles the Great 257 7.7: Conclusion 262 8. Conclusion: The significance of the year 888 266 Bibliography 276 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This study was made possible by the grant of a Major Scottish Studentship from the Student Awards Agency for Scotland. It was completed with the help of a Scouloudi History Research Fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research. I have incurred many debts during the course of my research, to which these acknowledgements can hardly hope do justice. In the first place I must thank my supervisor Jinty Nelson for her advice and constant encouragement. Her comments on my work and her generosity with ideas have made this thesis immeasurably better than it would otherwise have been. I also thank Stuart Airlie, not only for initially inspiring my interest in the early middle ages and suggesting Charles the Fat as a suitable subject for research, but for allowing me access to his unpublished work and commenting to my profit on sections of the thesis. Matthew limes was kind enough to read the whole text in draft, and I have benefited greatly from his advice; he also helpfiully gave me copies of work in advance of publication. David Ganz, Paul Kershaw and Geoff West all read parts of the thesis, and I thank them for their perceptive comments, which forced me to think harder about my interpretations. I have profited from conversations with many others at the Institute of Historical Research and elsewhere: in particular, I should like to thank Guy Halsall and Alan Thacker for their help and encouragement. For opportunities to present my research at seminars and conferences, I am grateful to David Bates, David Ditchbum, Elina Screen and Andrew Wareham. I also thank my friends, including those named above, for moral support and provision of perspective. In particular, Anne Jenkins, John Kyle and Stephen Marritt listened patiently to more of my whingeing than anyone should reasonably be subjected to, while the players and touring squad of Eskbank Thistle F.C. have been a constant inspiration: propugnatores to a man. Robin Kilpatrick was of great assistance, notably in rescuing me from various self-inflicted computer and bibliographic crises. Special thanks go to Claire Jones for her support and practical help which have made the completion of this thesis a much less traumatic experience than it would otherwise have been. 6 Last, but by no means least, I thank my family, especially my parents. They have given me much more than I have ever thanked them for, and without their support and generosity I would never have made it this far. 7 PREFACE Following conventional practice, I have Anglicised and modernised names of people and places wherever possible.