Aquitaine

What should I wear?

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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

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 The Dutton translation says vest.
↑2 A short mantle fastened at the shoulders, worn by men in the Greek East since ancient times.
↑3 Einhard, Life, ch. 23, p. 41.

Charlemagne gets played

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In the spring of 777 a group of Arab emissaries from northern Spain arrived at Paderborn, Germany to meet with the Frankish King Charles. They had traveled more than a thousand miles, but it was worth it, for they had a proposal of continental scope to put forth. If Charles would raise his armies and march to Spain, he would be granted dominion over all of the lands from the Pyrenees to the Ebro river, if he could defend them against the depredations of the last of the Umayyad emirs, the merciless ‘Abd al-Rahman of Cordova. For a variety of reasons, thoughts of an easy conquest uppermost, Charles agreed. The word went forth throughout the realm to prepare for war.1.All of this is detailed more fully in my previous post.

No details reach us concerning the specific preparations that were undertaken for this particular expedition. The groundwork must have been immense, for the Spanish expedition was one of the larger armies Charles organized. “How big was it?” is, of course, the obvious question, and one to which much thought has been given. To no satisfactory result, it must be said. The sources give ridiculous numbers, in the hundreds of thousands, and must be taken as the rhetorical equivalent of “larger than you can imagine.”

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 All of this is detailed more fully in my previous post.

760: Pepin declares war

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King Pepin of Francia had waged successful battles of conquest and intimidation ever since he had succeeded (along with his brother Carloman) to the leadership of the realm in 741. He had fought in Lombardy, Saxony, Aquitaine, Bavaria, and Burgundy. He had out-maneuvered family and allies and made himself king, with the help and blessing of the pope. The kingdom had expanded under his rule, the Arabs were in retreat, he was friendly with the Byzantines, his family had solidified their grip on power, and he had no reason to believe the future would hold anything different. His son Charles had already fulfilled delicate diplomatic missions, and no doubt showed great promise as a future leader. By the year 760 Pepin was in his mid-forties, at the height of his powers, and the kingdom was at peace.

In other words, it was time to “‘Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war.”1.Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1. The dogs would be loosed on Aquitaine, the last of the great semi-independent kingdoms once ruled by the Merovingians. But even in the eighth century, a king couldn’t simply ride across the border, not a king devoted to Christendom. A casus belli had to be found. From the abduction of Helen in the dark ages of Greece, to Hitler’s invention of a violated radio post on the Polish border, rulers have always needed a reason to invade first.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1.

Frankish Travelogue – Gascony

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Gascony is the area bordered by the Pyrenees to the south, the Atlantic to the west, the Garonne river to the north, and a less defined boundary to the east. It has never included Toulouse. Those distinctions have stayed pretty firm over the centuries, except when the border of the “Duchy of Vasconia” extended as far south as Pamplona in the seventh century.

The early medieval histories of Aquitaine and Gascony are inextricably linked, in the same way the histories of Aquitaine and Francia are linked. The fortunes of one inevitably affected the fortunes of the other. The early history of Gascony is particularly hazy, even by ‘Dark Age’ standards.

In 670 or so a Duke Lupus came to power over Aquitaine and Gascony. The scholar Pierre Riche says, “Victorious over the Basques, Duke Lupus exploited the struggles between Ebroin and the Austrasians to carve out a new princedom for himself south of the Garonne.”1.Riche, Carolingians: Family Who Forged Europe, p.29. This was during a period of retrenchment in Francia, and the outlying areas found themselves able to purse greater independence. In 675 Lupus organized a church synod in Bordeaux, a sign of a rule both enlightened and powerful enough to pull it off. But that is the last we hear of Duke Lupus, despite his terrific name.

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Footnotes

Charlemagne’s annus horribilis

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In November of 1992 Queen Elizabeth II gave a speech in which she lamented the “annus horribilis” she had endured over the last eleven months. Recently a fire had devastated Windsor Castle, and prior to that her children and near relatives had been the subject of much tabloid gossip and exposure.

One person from whom she would have received no sympathy would be Charlemagne. Elizabeth had been forced to see pictures of Duchess Fergie’s toes being nuzzled by a bald American millionaire while her estranged husband Andrew was away performing his princely duties. Truly enough to make any monarch go weak. But twelve centuries before Elizabeth’s travails King Charlemagne had frantically wielded the strings of power over the span of just a few months while his kingdom almost broke apart. It is possible that he felt God Himself had abandoned him.

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