For a layman there is never enough translated material. There is little more frustrating than jumping to the notes in some scholarly volume, and finding a reference to some obscure source that requires a lifetime of Latin to access. While there is a surprising amount of primary source material available in English, there is much that needs to be done. This is an initial survey of what else from the eighth century needs a translator’s touch:
Sources
Roman roads
While rivers have always played an important role in commerce and conquest, if you really want to get things done, you have to have roads. The Romans understood this better than anyone, and their road network is a testament to their foresight, energy, and engineering acumen.
Why discuss Roman roads in a website devoted to the eighth century? Because the roads were essential to Carolingian expansion and imperial development, just as they were to the Romans. Let’s consider an example.
In 734 Charles Martel was expanding his kingdom into Provence. One of the lordlings who offered resistance was chased from Marseilles into Avignon, at which point he made the unfortunate decision to ally himself with the Muslims of Septimania. Charles proceeded to lay siege to Avignon and defeated Frank and Arab alike. After defeating the occupiers Charles turned west and laid waste to a host of Muslim towns in Septimania, from Nimes to Narbonne. He then turned and besieged Avignon a second time, as the Muslims had made a second sortie and recaptured it. All of this was accomplished in the span of a single campaign season.
Boniface’s women
There has been much ink spilled and many pixels energized about Saint Boniface. Missionary, bishop, cleanser of the church, correspondent of popes, counselor to kings, saint. A very impressive life. Not as well known was that he was also a friend to many women, in an age when women’s public roles were strictly limited. His correspondence includes a dozen letters with a half-dozen women. These letters offer a fascinating window into Boniface’s own mind and the life of a few English (they are all English) ecclesiastical women.
Many of the letters are of a type: the writer speaks of the pains of his or her life, and then requests something. The single letter from Abbess Egberga written sometime around 716-18 is typical. She calls herself the “least of your disciples,” and then recounts how desolate she has been since her brother died, and her sister became a recluse in Rome. In their absence “I have cherished you in my affection above almost all other men.” But she knows that Boniface is blessed. “So I say: the lord of high Olympus wishes you happiness with joy unspeakable.” Finally she asks for his prayers, or “some little remembrance, perhaps a holy relic or at least a few written words, that so I may always have you with me.” 1.Letters, V, p.12. No reply are recorded.
Monk’s lives, in words and a picture
There are two outstanding documents that define the life of a Benedictine monk in the abstract. Both are purely theoretical, in that they do not deal with any particular instance or event, but rather prescribe what should be. One of these documents consists of words, while the other is a drawing.
The first is the Rule of Benedict, the collection of rules written down by St. Benedict himself in the 6th century. The Rule comprises 73 different chapters (or rules, I suppose) that cover a wide range of topics. Benedict describes the proper amount of food and drink for monks, how to welcome guests, correction of the young,1.Boys who don’t understand how severe a punishment excommunication is “should either be punished by means of severe fasting or chastised with harsh beatings to cure them.” In case you were wondering. Rule 30. “The times for singing Alleluia,” and many other matters.
The Rule, as you may have gathered, is a comprehensive list of dos and don’ts that regulate monastic living. Part of detailing life in the monastery inevitably requires some description of different roles that need to be fulfilled, as well as the inevitably hierarchy that evolves whenever groups of people come together and organize themselves.
Footnotes
| ↑1 | Boys who don’t understand how severe a punishment excommunication is “should either be punished by means of severe fasting or chastised with harsh beatings to cure them.” In case you were wondering. Rule 30. |
|---|
Private letters between popes and kings
When Charlemagne had been king for about twenty-three years he decided to enhance the royal archives by preserving a collection of letters written by the various popes to his grandfather, his father, and himself. The letters, some of which must have been more than fifty years old, were probably written on papyrus, and would last longer if transcribed to parchment. The king gave his rational for this effort in the preface to the collection, “So that no testimony whatsoever of the holy church which will be of use in the future should be seen wasting to his successors.” The work involved was not large, and comprised less than a hundred letters. The single compilation that has come down to us, from the ninth century, concludes with a biblical quotation, “The wise man will seek out the wisdom of all the ancients.”1.King, Charlemagne, Translated Sources, pp.36-38. This collection is called the codex carolinus.
The codex is heavily skewed, not too surprisingly, to Charlemagne’s end of the time scale. Two of the letters were sent to grandfather Martel, forty-two to father Pepin, and fifty-four to Charlemagne. There are almost certainly letters missing, both from the original collection, and from what has come down to us. No doubt some were cast aside in the initial survey as duplicative, incomplete, or inappropriate, and some were cleaned up. “This does not seem to have been a simple process of recopying, for some of the original letters, no doubt written on papyrus, were said to be in very poor condition and there was an effort both to renew (renovare) and rewrite (rescribere) the texts from memory onto parchment.” Some of the letters that were initially included are now lost, as the preface to the collection references letters from the emperor in Byzantium which we do not have.
Footnotes
| ↑1 | King, Charlemagne, Translated Sources, pp.36-38. |
|---|