While everyone loves the good King Charles today, much of that goodwill is retrospective. The hagiographies by Einhard and Notker, and the plentiful platitudes in the Annals were written after his death, and intended to both burnish the past and reinforce the future. But no one is universally loved, particularly not those who impose their will on others, even with the best of intentions.
In 786, Thuringian nobles launched some sort of a rebellion against Charles and his rule. They were found out, confessed, and punished. And that is the extent of what is known with any certainty. Before we get too deep into an analysis of what might have happened, who might have been involved, and other such questions, let’s take a look at the sources.
In June of 2022 INRAP (National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research) began excavating the remains of a boat discovered south of Bordeaux, on the Garonne river. Based on the size (about fifty by twenty feet), construction (crude but sturdy), and location (abandoned in a creek that emptied into a navigable river), it is most probably a seventh or eighth century riverine cargo vessel. While that may sound mundane, this is a major find! Most of our water-borne archaeological record is of warships like the Sutton Hoo vessel – sleek, polished, fit for a king.
The Garonne ship is, most assuredly, not sleek or polished. Take a look at the overview picture, below. And while you’re taking it all in, let’s get some terminology out of the way.
(Sorry for the delay – I’ve been learning the WordPress editor that was introduced during my hiatus)
I bet you thought my first post after a four-year absence would be a blockbuster. Did I discover Pepin’s personal diary while rummaging through a ruined church in Budapest? Found an early Roland manuscript that explains what “AOI” is all about? Oh no, my friends, something much better:
Clothing is perhaps the most perishable item of all material culture. Even in our modern age clothing is quick to deteriorate – what do you think the odds of your socks surviving to be marveled over a thousand years from now? Without archaeological evidence we have to turn to the sources for information about how people dressed in the eighth century. We are fortunate to have a detailed description of Charlemagne’s everyday clothing, courtesy of his biographer Einhard. Fortunately for us Charles was a man of the people, and so his choices reflect, to some extent, everyday styles.
He wore ancestral, that is, Frankish, clothing. Next to his body, he wore a linen shirt and linen drawers, then a tunic ringed with silk fringe, and stockings. Then he wrapped his lower legs in cloth bands and put shoes on his feet. In winter he covered his chest and shoulders with a jacket 1.The Dutton translation says vest. made from otter or ermine skins, put on a blue cloak, and always girded himself with a sword, whose hilt and belt were either gold or silver. Sometimes he used a jeweled sword, but only on important feast days or when the envoys of foreign peoples arrived. He rejected foreign clothing, even if very beautiful, and never put up with wearing it except at Rome, when once on the plea of Pope Hadrian, and again on the request of his successor, Leo, he wore a long tunic and chlamys2.A short mantle fastened at the shoulders, worn by men in the Greek East since ancient times., and shoes made in the Roman fashion. On feast days he walked around wearing clothes woven with gold thread, bejeweled shoes, a cloak fastened with a gold pin, and a golden crown with jewels. The rest of the time, his dress was hardly different from that of the common people.3.Einhard, Life, ch. 23, p. 41.
Charles in the center, from a mid-9th century manuscript
“The appearance of the country differs considerably in different parts; but in general it is covered either by bristling forests or by foul swamps.”1.Tacitus, Germania, bk. 5, p.104
Thus did the late first century Roman historian and ethnographer Tacitus describe the country of what we (and he, for that matter) call Germany. The part of Germany called Saxony occupied the northeast portion of the country, east of the Rhine, south of the North Sea, to the southern hills. One of the tribes that occupied this area became known as Saxons, around the time of the fall of the Western Roman Empire. We know the Saxons as one of the three tribes who began crossing that sea and invading Britain, along with the Angles and the Jutes, those the Venerable Bede called “the three most formidable races of Germany.”2.Bede, Ecclesiastical History, bk. I, ch. 15, p. 63.
