Places

Frankish travelogue: Saxony

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“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.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Tacitus, Germania, bk. 5, p.104
↑2 Bede, Ecclesiastical History, bk. I, ch. 15, p. 63.

Eternal Jerusalem

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When medieval Europe was young, Jerusalem was already ancient. As laborers laid the first stones of the great pyramid of Giza, fifty generations of Jerusalemites had come and gone. After another twenty-five centuries a rustic carpenter’s son started throwing tables around at the Jewish temple located on the city’s high ground. Then another eight centuries or so went by, before a son was born to an usurper king in Europe, who would go on to found the empire that would bear his name.

Jerusalem occupied a special place in the minds and souls of eighth century Europeans. Constantinople was the other great eastern city known (if any would have been known), it was regarded more as the seat of the ‘other’ Christian empire, the palace that gave orders to popes. A rival power.

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Dorestad, crossroads of the north

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Dorestad was the largest of what are (and were then) called emporia. An emporium was founded by a king or high ruler with the express purpose of facilitating the trade and production of high-status goods. Emporia were always located on large rivers or harbors, in order to enable wares from the interior to be exported, and provide an exceptional port for merchandise to come from abroad. They were very much working class towns, and in general the nobility and the religious avoided making the towns centers of non-economic activity.

Dorestad was located at the junction of the Rhine and Lek rivers, in what is today the Netherlands, and what was then called Frisia. In addition to the obvious advantages that a port on the Rhine provided, there was an old Roman fortress near the site that probably contributed some feeling of security. One disadvantage of Dorestad was that it was located very close to the undefined but fiercely contested border between Frisia and Austrasia. As a result the town changed rulers fairly frequently after its founding in the early seventh century.

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We’re on the map!

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After more than TWO YEARS of futzing around, I have finally put together a first cut of a map of Francia.

Many thanks for Dr. Laura Morreale of Fordham University, who turned me onto the application called Carto.1.Also many thanks to Dr. Scott Bruce, who organized the symposium that brought Dr. Morreale to Boulder. Dr. Morreale is using Carto to map locations and times when French was the language of record in Italy, as part of a wider series of projects that apply digital methodologies to the study of medieval history. As a career telecom guy who dabbles in medieval history, it is great to see those musty historians dipping their toes in the digital world.

Carto is web-based mapping platform that has a pretty robust set of features, and is available in a limited, non-commercial form without cost. It is intuitive and simple – I had a map up and running in an hour. By comparison, I worked with ArcGIS for a couple of months, and was never able to get a grip on the vast array of features and functionality it offers. While Carto is more limited, a layman like me can get moving pretty quickly. And if I can do it, so can you.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Also many thanks to Dr. Scott Bruce, who organized the symposium that brought Dr. Morreale to Boulder.

Frankish travelogue: Brittany

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Early medieval Brittany is a difficult place to explore. One scholar has noted “the complete absence of information about Brittany in the first half of the eighth century…”1.Smith, Julia M.H., The Sack of Vannes by Pippin III, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, Number 11, Summer 1986, p.25. With one notable, almost startling exception, which I will get to below, there is almost nothing in the sources about what was going on in Brittany during the eighth century. But let’s see what we can dredge up.

Brittany, for the cartographically challenged, is the peninsula jutting into the Atlantic on France’s north-west coast. It is a region of some 13,000 square miles, a land dominated by the sea, rocky and sparse. The hills reach heights of 1200 feet within just five miles of the coast. There was no traditional physical boundary between Francia and Brittany, although the Vilaine river is definitely Brittany, and the later eighth century Breton March was east of the river. On the other hand, the town of Nantes, just north of the mouth of the river Loire, was also considered part of the region. Other major towns include Rennes, and Vienne, and the monastery of Redon, which was established in 832. These population hubs are all along the Vilaine valley. West of the Vilaine there were only a few minor population centers.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Smith, Julia M.H., The Sack of Vannes by Pippin III, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, Number 11, Summer 1986, p.25.