Hildegard

Betrayal in the family

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Now let’s crack open a tale of deformity, hatred between brothers, scheming wives and priests, broken promises, and family betrayal. The place is not Mar-a-Lago, but Francia in 769. Pepin the Short, the first true Carolingian king, is dead, felled by a fever after eight years waging a war of scorched earth against Aquitaine.1.Covered extensively, starting here. Before Pepin’s death in 768 both Charles and his brother Carloman, “by your father’s order, joined in lawful marriage” two good Frankish women.2.King, Caroline code, Letter 2, 770, p271. Charles first pulled the trigger, so to speak, and sometime in 7693.No one really knows, but the consensus is prior to 770. his wife Himiltrude gave birth to a healthy son, whom Charles named Pippin, for his father.4.Yes, I know I spell them differently. But it’s the same name.

Naming his first-born son after his father showed that Charles intended this boy to inherit the kingly title in some form or another. Carloman’s wife Gerberga, not to be outdone, gave birth to a son in 770.5.King, Petau Annals, 770, p.149. What name did they bestow? I’m sure you can guess – the conflict between Charles and Carloman had started before their father had cooled in his crypt. Carloman will get his own post soon, but suffice it to say that after a visit from his mother in 772 Carloman died, and his wife and children (including Pippin) fled to Lombardy.6.As noted before, I think this family is much darker than do conventional historians.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Covered extensively, starting here.
↑2 King, Caroline code, Letter 2, 770, p271.
↑3 No one really knows, but the consensus is prior to 770.
↑4 Yes, I know I spell them differently. But it’s the same name.
↑5 King, Petau Annals, 770, p.149.
↑6 As noted before, I think this family is much darker than do conventional historians.

Fastrada, Wife of Charlemagne

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Fastrada was the third wife of Charles the Great. She married Charles in 783, was queen for eleven years, had two daughters, and died at 794, when she was in her mid-twenties. Besides that briefest of bios, things get hazy. But let’s see what we can do.

Charles lived in an age when a king could be expected to have several intimate relationships with women, some of whom were wives, and others concubines. The children of wives could inherit titles and lands, while the children of concubines faced more challenges.1.See, for example, Grifo, son of Charles Martel’s last concubine. That did not end well. Wives were taken for political reasons, while concubines (perhaps) had a more personal connection.

Fastrada was a wife taken to cement a political relationship. Pierre Riche notes that of Charles’ four wives, “Desiderata was to have sealed an alliance with the Lombard kingdom; Hildegard, the mother of eight royal children, came from Swabia; Fastrada was the daughter of a count in eastern Francia; and Liutgard, the fourth and last wife, stemmed from a Alemannian family.”2.Riche, The Carolingians, p. 135. The Revised Royal Annals mention that Fastrada was “the daughter of count Radolf.”3.Revised Royal Annals, in King, year 783, p. 118.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 See, for example, Grifo, son of Charles Martel’s last concubine. That did not end well.
↑2 Riche, The Carolingians, p. 135.
↑3 Revised Royal Annals, in King, year 783, p. 118.

Saxon Wars 3: The war is over! Right?

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At the close of 782 Charles had been waging war in Saxony for almost a decade. The king had been following a pattern of invasion, conquest, law-giving, and the establishment of Frankish governmental and religious institutions in order to pacify the Saxons, and then integrate them into the Frankish kingdom. No measure was too extreme, including the execution of 4500 rebels in a single day. But the Germans were not done yet.

Charles went through a lot of personal turmoil in 783. His wife Hildegard died, and then his mother Bertrada.1.Royal Annals, year 783, King, p. 82. Even though Charles already had children, including, as we shall see, a son (a post on Charles’ family life is on my list), he immediately married a girl named Fastrada. But the king’s concerns that year were not only domestic, as he “undertook an expedition to Saxony, since the Saxons were in rebellion again…” According to the Revised Annals, this latest revolt “enraged” him. His rage must have been great, for this expedition was one which he led in person, a rare event.

Although this war dragged on for a very long time, he himself joined battle with the enemy no more than twice, in a single month with only a few intervening days, once near the mountain that is called Osning in a place called Detmold and again on the River Haase. In these two battles the enemy were so crushed and conquered that subsequently they did not dare to provoke the king or to resist his approach unless they were protected by some fortification.2.Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, in Noble, ch. 8, p. 29.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Royal Annals, year 783, King, p. 82.
↑2 Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, in Noble, ch. 8, p. 29.

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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Leoba, celebrity saint

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Many of the women who corresponded with Boniface were women of power and influence as abbesses. In that they were already exceptional. But there was another woman who was a step above the extraordinary.

Boniface’s most ‘famous’ correspondent was Saint Leoba. She was English, although her exact place and date of birth are unknown. She and Boniface were related through her mother, and her father and Boniface were good friends. She was also a disciple of Abbess Eadburga of Thanet, whom I mentioned in last week’s post. In a letter dated around 732 Leoba writes to Boniface and asks for his friendship and his prayers, “for there is no other man in my kinship in whom I have such confidence as in you… I eagerly pray, my dear brother, that I may be protected by the shield of your prayers from the poisoned darts of the hidden enemy.” She also offered Boniface some beginner’s lines of poetry. As justification she adds that “I have studied this art under the guidance of Eadburga.”1.Letters, XXI, p37.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Letters, XXI, p37.