People

Bertrada of Laon – Not Mother of the Year

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Bertrada of Laon is one of the very few women of the century about whom we can know anything more than just a name and a marital disposition. But from what we can see of her, particularly one series of events late in her life, she must have been a formidable lady.

She was born sometime between 710 and 727, in Laon, France, of noble parents. After that, we get nothing until she reappears as the wife of Pepin about 741, and the details immediately get fuzzy. No one is sure if she was Pepin’s first or second wife. In fact, it is hard to be sure just what a wife was back then, as the line between wife and concubine was not well defined. Also fuzzy were the rules on who could marry whom, based on how closely they were related. Always a problem when the 1% keep marrying each other.

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Frenemies in Christ

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In the middle of the eighth century two religious men became great rivals. They had so much in common, their ages, upbringing, learning, careers, teachers, and, most of all, their mentor and leader, one of the greatest churchmen of the middle ages, that it drove them apart, as it often does with ambitious men.

First we have to talk about Boniface. You’ll get more in another post, but it is sufficient to know that he was, in the words of Norman Cantor1.One of the few scholars to make truly accessible popular medieval history. “one of the truly outstanding creators of the first Europe, as the apostle of Germany, the reformer of the Frankish church, and the chief fomentor of the alliance between the papacy and the Carolingian family.” Boniface traveled widely and hobnobbed with kings and popes. He was a very big deal.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 One of the few scholars to make truly accessible popular medieval history.

Eudo of Many Names

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The first thing to know about Eudo of Aquitaine is that his name is translated several different ways. I’ve seen Odo, Eudes, and Eudo. I like the sound of Odo, but it’s usually Eudo in the books. At least it’s not as bad as some of the transliterations of Arabic names.

Eudo was the ruler of Aquitaine for at least 35 years, a region located between the two great powers in Europe at the beginning of the eighth century, the Franks to the north and the Muslims to the south. It was Eudo’s misfortune to rule just as those two peoples were about to impinge on each other. He spent his career constantly balancing and battling these two forces.

On his father and family, Patrick Geary put it most succinctly when he said, “Nothing is known of his origins or background.”1.Geary, Before France and Germany, p.203. Geary and Fouracre, below, have good overviews of Eudo and his times. It is possible he was Duke of Aquitaine by 700, but no way to know for sure.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Geary, Before France and Germany, p.203. Geary and Fouracre, below, have good overviews of Eudo and his times.

Einhard’s Biography Of Charlemagne

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Einhard initial
Initial from the Vita Karoli

The next source you should know about is a biography of Charlemagne, the Vita Karoli, written not long after his death. But like all sources from this time (or any time), you have to approach it with caution.

A noble and learned man named Einhard, born around 770 of a noble family from the eastern part of the realm, wrote the biography in his retirement, about a decade after Charlemagne’s death. Einhard came to the king’s court in 791 after an extensive monastic education, a group of scholars that Charlemagne had been gathering around him. He was a tiny man with a busy mind – Lewis Thorpe, translator of a popular edition of , notes that the Bishop of Orleans compared him to a busy ant. Einhard was apparently one of the brightest stars in the firmament, and it fell to him to write the great man’s biography after his death in 814.

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