Today let’s climb into the wayback machine and revisit a topic I first wrote about back in 2015. Capitularies are a critical resource for understanding society, government, the economy, and religion in the eighth century. This new post is necessary to better understand the definition of capitularies, introduce some scholarly opinions about their overarching purposes, as well as. Finally we’ll take a look at a new section to the Resources link: a list of every capitulary you can find in English translation, the generally accepted title, a number (which we’ll get into in a moment), probable date of issue, and where you can find it. Let’s jump in.
It is critical to remember that Pepin the Short and Charlemagne were not the pomp and circumstance figureheads we today call kings. Their authority was absolute, and their word was law, straight from God. In consultation with their leading men the king would ponder, debate, and then make his will known. Strictly speaking the law went into effect as soon as the words were spoken. As a practical matter scribes wrote down each of these decisions and directives, generally in no more than a few sentences. Each entry was given a new heading, called a capitula in Latin. We have come to call these documents capitularies, although that wasn’t generally a term used contemporaneously.1.Innes, Charlemagne’s Government, in Empire and Society, p. 77.
While it is easy to simply call these documents “edicts” and move on (as I did those years ago), scholars have identified a variety of functions: “…royal orders of general application, letters of admonition and instruction for specific officials, the results of the deliberations of assemblies on secular and ecclesiastical affairs, lists of approved additions and alterations to extant written laws, administrative memoranda, even surveys of royal estates.”2.Ibid. With such a broad definition there is no firm consensus as to what is and is not a capitulary. So where did the definition and list come from?
The scholar most connected with capitularies is Alfred Boretius, a 19th century German scholar. He assembled more than one hundred documents from manuscripts all over Europe. The numbers he assigned to each capitulary (i.e. the Capitulary de Villis is Boretius number 32) are still used today, even as additional documents are discovered and added to the corpus.
It was the Belgian Francois Louis Ganshof who next did good work with the capitularies with his article Recherches sur les Capitulaires in 1958 (which has never been translated. Quel dommage.). Since then Rosamond McKitterick3.Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identify. and Jennifer Davis4.Charlemagne’s Practice of Empire. have continued to examine capitularies and their role in Frankish administration and society. But much work remains.
The aforementioned Ganshof declared, in 1961, “A new edition of the capitularies is one of the most pressing needs of medieval scholarship”5.Capitularia. I’ve quoted P.D. King more than once, from 1987, “nothing is more necessary in the field of Carolingian scholarship than that this edition [Boretius], often seriously defective, should be replaced.”6.Translated Sources, p. 23. But now a new edition is under construction.
Capitularia, the Edition of the Frankish Decrees, is underway in Germany. “The project is part of the German Academies’ Programme since 2014. It is funded by the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts. As a long-term project it will run for 16 years with an endowment of € 5.28m. The director of the project is Karl Ubl, professor of early and high medieval history at the University of Cologne.”
That is a serious investment of time and money. That makes us happy, right? Well… while they are collecting and re-ordering the complete body of capitularies, they’re not offering any new translations. Nor are they even translating some of their commentary from German to English. Yes, you can use Google Translate, but this is more technical than tourism or literature. Their bibliography is extensive, but I have not found any other English translations that aren’t already in my list of primary sources. As a tool for scholars, no doubt this is a boon of the highest order. For those of us who just want to read the damn things, not so much.
There are a few translated and available online at the Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook, including the first Saxon Capitulary of 782, the General Capitulary of 802, and the Capitulary De Villis from 800 (which is actually pretty interesting, as it details how to run a royal estate – something like forty different varieties of trees are mentioned).
All the rest that have been translated, almost forty of them, are copyrighted and in book form. There are eight in H.R. Loyn and J. Percival, with a general introduction and a couple of sentences introducing each one. King is the best, as he has translated thirty capitularies, with a more extensive general introduction and a paragraph or two about each. Unfortunately he omits De Villis, which means you also have to pick up Loyn and Percival, or look at the Fordham copy. With the exception of the De Villis, there is a lot of overlap between those two volumes. Lastly Dutton provides a few, but he has excerpted only certain chapters from each to illustrate certain themes, such as vassalage or the army.
To assist with your research I’ve compiled a list of all the capitularies in translation, their title, date, Boretius number, and where you can find them. Check out the new page. Enjoy!
Footnotes
| ↑1 | Innes, Charlemagne’s Government, in Empire and Society, p. 77. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | Ibid. |
| ↑3 | Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identify. |
| ↑4 | Charlemagne’s Practice of Empire. |
| ↑5 | Capitularia |
| ↑6 | Translated Sources, p. 23. |