Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (61 page)

There were only four duchies in the ninth-century German kingdom (Bavaria, Franconia, Swabia, Saxony), to which Lorraine was added in the early tenth century. Lorraine was divided into two in 959, while Carinthia was carved out of south-east Bavaria in 976. Burgundy contained no duchies, though its southern and western sections eventually acquired equivalent status as they broke away (
Map 3
). Likewise, ducal structures proved transitory in Italy prior to the thirteenth century (see
pp. 187–94
).

By contrast, there were perhaps 600–700 counties across the entire Frankish realm in the year 800, of which 400 were north of the Alps. Those west of the Rhine were created as secular subdivisions of a diocese and were called
pagi
, the origins of the French word
pays
(country).
¹⁰³
Counties varied in size and were not fixed either in shape or numbers. The title ‘count’ (
comes
) literally meant the king’s
companion. Counts remained ‘free’, directly subject to the emperor, though they owed certain obligations to the dukes. Their main task was to maintain peace and uphold justice in cases of more serious crimes. Those in frontier areas had additional military functions as margraves, or marcher lords (see
pp. 186–9
and
200–202
). Counties were subdivided into ‘hundreds’ (
centenariae
) or ‘vicarages’ (
vicariae
), though neither these nor their associated subordinate officials seem to have survived for long. Charlemagne used emissaries (
missi
) to inspect counties and receive reports. Important missions were entrusted to pairs of bishops and counts. Neither of these control mechanisms survived for long into the ninth century, when monarchs instead relied on trusted abbots and bishops to undertake specific missions as required.

The distinction between function and person was never clear, and these figures should not be confused with modern civil servants. The king named them, but could do little to shape the pool of those considered worthy to hold these titles. There were no training schools prior to the development of the court chapel, which only performed this function for the imperial church. All relied on subvassals rather than salaried staffs. Local knowledge and connections were valued and they discouraged kings from rotating men from one post to another.

Seeking Consensus

Success under these conditions depended on securing acceptance and support for royal policies. Royal assemblies provided the main mechanism to achieve this. These had echoes of the much earlier Germanic tribal gatherings (
Thing
) of free warriors, but by 755 among the Franks they were fairly exclusive affairs meeting under a variety of labels:
placitum
,
synodus
,
conventus
and
Marchfeld
. The latter literally means ‘March field’, deriving from the practice of meeting between March and May as the grass grew long enough to make campaigning possible. Religious beliefs greatly influenced the timing of important meetings, with top-level encounters between the different Carolingian kings after 843 usually being held on prominent holy days like All Saints.

The combination of consultative assembly and military muster reinforced the personal element, since the king’s presence was essential. It also reversed the relationship of the royal progress: rather than touring
his kingdom, the king now made the ‘kingdom’ come to him, with some lords travelling hundreds of miles to meet him and participate in the assembly. Elite sociability was fostered through common activities like hunting, feasting and praying, which accompanied assemblies and provided additional opportunities for discussions, especially those that needed to be more private. Perhaps most importantly, they provided space for the king to present himself and display the virtues associated with good kingship, including leadership, justice, generosity and piety.
¹⁰⁴

Discussion of consensus requires some preliminary qualifications to avoid romanticizing it as some kind of manly, noble warrior culture with the king aided by reasonable, pragmatic and patriotic men. The sources are particularly difficult to interpret. There were no written rules, obliging us to infer these from how chroniclers recorded actual behaviour. Such writers were generally partisan, celebrating or criticizing kings, invoking idealized kingdoms, or airing grievances like Hinkmar, the ninth-century archbishop of Reims who wrote his
De ordine palatii
after his exclusion from the inner circle. His admonition to King Carlmann to follow the advice of wise old men like himself was clearly personally motivated, but Hinkmar’s work, like similar pieces, is still instructive, because his arguments reflected broadly accepted norms.
¹⁰⁵
Hinkmar urged the king to hold a general assembly of important men to test their response to his plans and to assist in determining general objectives. A meeting of ‘seniors and principal advisors’ should follow to agree the specifics. This more select gathering would have something of the character of a friendship group in which members would be freer to express opinions as there would be less risk of humiliation if the king rejected their advice.

The contemporary concept of ‘friendship’ (
amicitia
) allowed the king to widen his inner circle beyond his immediate relations, some of whom might be proving troublesome. Friendship could also shorten the formal hierarchy of vassalage, allowing the king to employ junior but able or materially useful men as his
familiares
. Hierarchy remained fluid, as the above description of Carolingian structures has illustrated, with dukes outranking counts, yet both still considered ‘free’ men directly subject to the king. The king’s friends were already his vassals, but were bound by additional, ritualized activities staged deliberately
to indicate a particular proximity. For instance, the king and his friends might alternate playing the roles of host and guest over different courses at a shared banquet. Gift-giving and exaggerated public displays of joy and sorrow were additional methods. Friends could extend royal influence by acting as brokers between the king and their own relations and clients. This was a major reason for seeking the king’s friendship, since the broker gained prestige amongst his own clientele through his enhanced ability to secure favours and rewards. Those involved had a vested interest in keeping things in proportion. Excessive requests from either the king or his friends risked rejection and humiliating failure. Much of imperial governance thus relied on discreet negotiation, often via friends and other third parties, to find acceptable arrangements that were then presented publicly as if they were spontaneous decisions.
¹⁰⁶

This form of rule was facilitated by the relatively small size of the Carolingian and Ottonian elites. Widukind of Corvey, writing around 970, names 130 people in his chronicle, while even 40 years later Thietmar of Merseburg still only mentions 500, one-fifth of whom were women. The overall number of families was, of course, even smaller.
¹⁰⁷
Moreover, the senior lords employed exactly the same methods to manage their own jurisdictions and wider networks. Social norms and ideals of justice and good kingship were also common currency. Finally, Frankish nobles also practised partible inheritance for their own allodial possessions so that, other than scale, there was no fundamental difference between the Carolingians who partitioned their empire into different kingdoms and their nobles who divided their lands amongst their sons. This sustained the hierarchy of power. What mattered to the lords was their personal proximity to the king, not their accumulation of hereditary possessions.

None of this meant that things necessarily ran smoothly. Admission to the
primores regni
was decided competitively, not consensually. This pinpoints the paradox of early medieval imperial politics. Governance was intended to achieve its goals amicably, but the actual process of seeking agreement was often disruptive and even violent. Consensus both shaped and reflected the shifting power balance, especially that between the king and his leading vassals. Disputes were personal, not constitutional, and generally stemmed from mismanaged expectations.

Carolingian Governance, 800–919

Having established the basic components to the governance of the early Empire, we can now turn to follow how it developed during the ninth century. The rapidity of Carolingian conquests from the 770s stoked expectations of rewards that could no longer be met after the 820s as imperial expansion halted amidst Arab, Viking and Slav incursions. The fratricidal wars after 829 were about dividing the spoils within what was still considered a common Frankish realm. Fighting was relatively brief and punctuated by frequent negotiations, often brokered discreetly by senior clergy. It was accepted that the internal strife differed from the earlier external wars of conquest in that the defeated side were still Christian Franks who could not be expropriated or enslaved. The particularly bloody battle of Fontenoy in June 841 shocked the elite and encouraged the collective lordly pressure that obliged the Carolingian royals to accept the first major partition of the Empire at the Treaty of Verdun (843) (
Map 2
).
¹⁰⁸

The partition into Lotharingia, East Francia and West Francia demonstrated the personal, rather than institutional, character to Carolingian rule in that it did not follow geographical, ethnic, linguistic or ecclesiastical boundaries. Instead, as eldest brother, Lothar went first, choosing to base his imperial authority in the middle kingdom anchored on Aachen and Rome, while Louis II received the lands to the east, and Charles II those to the west. There may be ‘something of a “bargain basement” feel’ to the later Carolingians, but they were neither as inept nor as indolent as both contemporary critics and later writers maintained.
¹⁰⁹
Charles III only acquired his sobriquet ‘the Fat’ in the twelfth century. Their real problem was not irresistible centrifugal forces of dukes and kinglets seeking independence, but their own inability to produce legitimate heirs. This fuelled competition for possession of the different kingdoms created by their partitions. Charles III’s deposition and death without legitimate heirs in 888 ended the last reunification and triggered a particularly vicious round of murderous quarrels amongst the Carolingian aristocracy.

Rivalry within the royal house stirred activism amongst the senior lords. Carolingian kings were obliged to consult their own vassals more often and to tolerate greater autonomy in return for military support. Meanwhile, many lords were left to shift for themselves in difficult
circumstances, including threats from external raiders. Bishoprics and counties were now held successively by members of the same family, creating further vested interests and factions.
¹¹⁰
The Babenberg family, deriving their name from Bamberg, were promoted in Franconia by Charles III, but they lost out through the accession of Arnulf as king in East Francia in 887, since he promoted the rival Conradiner to counter their regional influence. The resulting ‘Babenberger Feud’ from 902 to 906 saw their defeat and the stabilization of the eastern monarchy under Conradiner influence.

Lotharingia broke up completely after 888, though as we have seen (
pp. 47–8
and
187–8
) the imperial title remained associated with the Italian kingdom until 924. Italian bishops like those in Modena and Reggio regained some of the autonomy they had lost under the Lombards, and acquired additional properties entrusted to their own subvassals in return for serving the Carolingians and their local successors based in Friaul, Spoleto and Ivrea. The bishops overshadowed the counts after the 880s, thanks to their control of Italy’s still numerous towns, whereas comital jurisdiction was confined largely to the countryside. By the early tenth century, bishops began extending their jurisdiction over the suburban zones and acquired additional royal properties in return for backing the fairly weak Italian kings.
¹¹¹

West Francia had a larger and longer-established lordly hierarchy enjoying more stable local power. Around seven duchies emerged as the monarchy struggled to repel the Vikings who established themselves permanently in what would become Normandy. The Capetian family assumed a position equivalent to that held by the Carolingians’ forebears at the Merovingian court by establishing a controlling influence in Paris after 885. This enabled the Capetians to eventually displace the Carolingians entirely and to become kings of France after 987.

Despite the Babenberger Feud, East Frankish lords remained appreciative of the positive role their king could play in coordinating defence of the long northern and eastern frontiers. Crucially, an inner group in East Francia had become accustomed to proximity to royal power and had no desire to share the associated benefits more widely. While they continued to bicker amongst themselves, they still wanted the monarchy to succeed, and took steps to avert a series of potential crises. Frankish custom maintained that boys could not be kings and that their lands should revert to the senior adult male of the dynasty. This situation
occurred in 900 at the accession of Louis (IV) ‘the Child’, but the East Frankish lords refused to permit the West Frankish king to inherit and instead held four assemblies between 899 and 905 affirming their loyalty to the boy-king, who was guided by the archbishop of Mainz and other senior clergy.
¹¹²
Similar collective action ensured a transition to Conrad I, leader of the Conradiner family, as the first non-Carolingian king in 911, and again in 919 to recognize Henry I, head of the Liudolfinger (Ottonian) family.