Mad Mothers: Frankish Queen Gerberga

By Kim Rendfeld

Empress costume from
The Costumes of All Nations (1882)

When brother-in-law King Charles (Charlemagne) seized her late husband’s lands, Gerberga decided to fight for her two sons’ inheritance and her own power as queen mother and regent.

After Frankish King Carloman died at age 20 in December 771, Charles moved swiftly to seize the kingdom. Was it determination or desperation that made Gerberga flee with two little boys and an entourage to Lombardy?

We don’t know how she reached the realm of Charles’s ex-father-in-law. She would have either had to cross the Alps or go by sea. The slow travel, in general, posed the danger of brigands, but add winter weather and at least one child too young to ride, and this journey becomes especially risky.

We don’t know much about Gerberga, except that she was a Frankish noblewoman selected by father-in-law Pepin to marry Carloman, but we can make a few guesses. Women typically were teenagers when they married, often at age 13. Men could marry at age 16. The most Gerberga and Carloman could have been married was four years, and their elder son was no more than 3 years old, barely old enough to start riding.

That this queen mother, perhaps as young as 17, made a dangerous journey to Lombardy with these two small children tells us something about her character. 

Seeking aid from Desiderius, king of the Lombards, was not the safest thing to do, either, but she had no other choice. Desiderius had seized power in a coup in the 750s and clashed violently with Rome before. His retaliation, blinding an enemy, was brutal and typically medieval. However, he was the powerful ally she needed—and he had his own grudge against Charles. The Frankish monarch had repudiated Desiderius’s daughter to free himself to marry into the powerful Agilolfing clan, an alliance to help him claim his late brother’s lands.

Desiderius' court, from
the tragedy Adelchi (published 1845)

Desiderius saw Gerberga’s sons as a way to get back at Charles for the insult to his daughter and restore his alliance with Francia. He tried to get the pope to anoint the little boys as kings, even seizing papal lands to pressure him. The pope refused and eventually asked Charles to fulfill his vow as protector of Rome and come to his aid.

When Charles invaded in 773, Desiderius retreated to Pavia, and Gerberga and her sons lit out for Verona, along with Lombard Prince Adalgis and a Frankish nobleman named Autchar. Adalgis escaped Verona and headed toward the Byzantine empire.

Charles, learning of Adalgis’s flight, went to Verona with a contingent of Franks, while most of the army held siege in Pavia. Gerberga surrendered voluntarily when Charles arrived.

The sources don’t say why she surrendered. Perhaps she realized she was deserted, knew there was no way she could win, and wished to avoid further bloodshed or the starvation and disease that accompanies a siege. Perhaps, she thought if she surrendered now, she and her sons would be sent to the cloister rather than be executed.

The sources are silent about her fate, but having Gerberga and her sons in the cloister is plausible. They would have been among other troublesome relatives Charles sent to the monastery such as Desiderius and later on Charles’s first cousin Bavarian Duke Tassilo and even his own eldest son, Pepin (often called Pepin the Hunchback—medieval folk were a tad insensitive).

Gerberga did not win her battle against her brother-in-law, but her story illustrates that medieval women were not damsels in distress waiting for a hero to rescue them.

My characters see Gerberga as the strong-willed young woman she is. My aristocratic Franks don’t have much sympathy for her, though, as you will see in this excerpt 

**From The Cross and the Dragon**

“It’s God’s will.” Theodelinda laid her hand over Alda’s. “I will have our priest dedicate tomorrow’s prime Mass to the princess. The rest of the royal family, are they well?”

“Yes, Countess. Did you know Gerberga and her sons surrendered in Verona?” he asked excitedly.

With wide eyes, Alda and Theodelinda shook their heads. “I thought our army was holding siege at Pavia, where Desiderius is hiding like the rat he is,” Alda said.

“This is the first we’ve heard about the king’s sister-by-marriage,” Theodelinda added, leaning forward. “Please, have some more wine.”

“Lady Alda, you are correct.” The merchant took a drink. “Our army has had an enormous camp outside Pavia’s walls since autumn, but Gerberga and her sons fled to Verona with Desiderius’s son. Our king and some of his men gave chase. The Lombard prince escaped, but Gerberga did not resist.”

“Where are they now?” Alda asked.

“I know not.”

“And Desiderius is still in Pavia?” Theodelinda asked.

“Yes. Our king even spent the Feast of the Resurrection in Rome and prayed for the Lord’s aid. Yet the siege continues, and the Lombard king refuses to surrender.”

“Damned Lombards!” Alda said. “The queen mother was right. They are strong, stubborn sons of whores.”

Sources

Charlemagne: Translated Sources, P.D. King

Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, translated by Bernhard Walters Scholz with Barbara Rogers

“Pavia and Rome: The Lombard Monarchy and the Papacy in the Eighth Century,” Jan T. Hallenbeck, published in 1982 by Transactions of the American Philosophical Society

The Life of Charlemagne, Einhard, translated by Evelyn Scherabon Firchow and Edwin H. Zeydel

Kim Rendfeld is the author of two novels set in 8th century Francia: The Cross and the Dragon, about a young noblewoman contending with a vengeful jilted suitor and the anxiety of losing her husband in battle, and The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar, about a peasant going to great lengths to protect her children. Her work in progress, Queen of the Darkest Hour, features Fastrada, Charlemagne’s influential fourth wife. Connect with Kim on her website (kimrendfeld.com), her blog (kimrendfeld.wordpress.com), Facebook (facebook.com/authorkimrendfeld), and Twitter (@kimrendfeld).

Beyond Our Stars: What Does the Sky Tell Us about God?

By Kim Rendfeld

In Charlemagne’s day (748-814), astronomy was a blend of natural philosophy and religion, a study of the creation — and the creator.

Medieval people saw God’s hand in everything, from providing a good harvest to feed them through winter to healing the sick to deciding the victor of the war. So they would do what they could to gain God’s favor. Three days of litanies were part of the military strategy. In the medieval mind, searching the night sky for clues to God’s will made sense.

The universe had to be orderly, and Carolingians relied on Roman books to explain it: Pliny’s Natural History, Macrobius’s Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, Martianus Capella’s Marriage of Philology and Mercury, and Calcidius’s Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus. Early medieval intellectuals placed Earth at the center of the universe and the sun, moon, and seven planets revolving around it in eccentric patterns — that is, circles within each other but not sharing the same center — and at different angles to the Earth’s plane. Planets, the keepers of God’s time, could also move in epicycles, loops along a circle.

King Charles himself took a keen interest in astronomy and corresponded with scholars about phenomena such as eclipses and the size of the moon. His biographer Einhard elaborates, “He learned how to calculate and with great diligence and curiosity investigated the course of the stars.”  Charles passed on his interest in astronomy, along with the six other liberal arts, to his children, both sons and daughters. In a poem, the scholar Alcuin mentions a daughter gazing at the night sky and praising God, who created it.

The pursuit of knowledge fit into Charles’s imperial ambitions. In 780, he recruited foreign intellectuals, and in the decade that followed, workers were converting the royal villa at Aachen to a palace, one of many construction projects Charles would undertake.

Astronomical events were important enough to record in the annals. The year 810 saw two eclipses of the sun and the moon, and 812 had a midday eclipse of the sun. To Einhard, those eclipses, spots on the sun lasting seven days, and a ball of brilliant fire that fell from the sky during a war were among the signs that Charles was near the end of his life.

Einhard says Charles ignored the omens. Perhaps the emperor decided not to make a big deal of them publicly. But a year after that last eclipse, the 65-year-old monarch in declining health appeared to be putting his affairs in order. He invited his son Louis, the king of Aquitaine, to the assembly in Aachen, placed a crown on Louis’s head, and named him co-emperor. Charles also ordered that his grandson Bernard be called king of Italy, succeeding Louis’s late brother.

A few months after the assembly, a high fever and pleurisy sent Charles to his bed. He died a week later on January 28, 814. The annals say nothing about the sky that night.

Sources

• Einhard's The Life of Charlemagne translated by Evelyn Scherabon Firchow and Edwin H. Zeydel
• Carolingian Chronicles, which includes the Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard's Histories, translated by Bernard Walter Scholz with Barbara Rogers
• P.D. King's Charlemagne: Translated Sources
• Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne, by Pierre Riché, translated by Jo Ann McNamara
• Planetary Diagrams for Roman Astronomy in Medieval Europe, Ca. 800-1500, Volume 94, Part 3, by Bruce Eastwood and Gerd Grasshoff
• A History of Western Astrology Volume II: The Medieval and Modern Worlds by Nicholas Campion
• Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe by Stephen C. McCluskey
• Ordering the Heavens: Roman Astronomy and Cosmology in the Carolingian Renaissance by Bruce Eastwood

---

Kim Rendfeld’s debut novel, The Cross and the Dragon, is set in the early years of Charlemagne’s reign. The story about a young woman contending with a jilted suitor and the anxiety her husband will be killed in battle will be re-released August 3, 2016, in print and ebook formats and is available for pre-order. Connect with Kim on her website, her blog, Facebook, and Twitter.

My Characters Lived in Charlemagne's Empire

By Kim Rendfeld

In Charlemagne's day, the monarch's personal life and politics were intertwined, and too many heirs presented a problem. God had a hand in everything, but magic was still very much a part of life.

Such are the societal complexities and contradictions that have me hooked on eighth century Francia enough to write two novels and be working on a third. Whole books have been written about Carolingian Francia. In the limits of a blog post, I can provide only a flavor of it.

When Charlemagne died in 814, the empire comprised today's France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, and parts of Hungary and Italy. Much of the land was forested, and travel was slow—armies moved 12 to 15 miles a day.

With that reality, a count, bishop, abbot, or abbess were rulers of their own lands and acted independently. Charles could rule only if he secured alliances throughout his realm, and he rewarded loyal clerics by appointing them masters of church lands.

Marriage, Family, and Politics

Louis the Pious (Ludwik I Pobozny)

The need for political alliances affected whom Charles married. Ironically, a peasant family had more flexibility. Their first consideration might be whether the suitor would make a good husband and father, and the bride's sentiments might have made more of an impact.

For Charles, the stakes were higher, and politics trumped affection. His father picked out his first wife.  The queen had an important role beyond bearing sons. She managed her husband's household and controlled access to him. When houseguests were foreign emissaries, what they got for dinner had international implications. If her husband died, she could rule as regent until her son reached his majority.

Charles set aside two wives to free himself of other political marriages, but he would learn that spurning women had national and international consequences. After divorcing his second wife, he was literally at war in 773-74 with his ex-father-in-law, the king of the Lombards, over who would inherit the kingdom of Charles's late brother. Charles won, but after many months of holding siege. In 792, his first ex-wife or her family might have been involved with eldest son Pepin's rebellion.

Charles was a steadfast husband to his last three wives, but all of those marriages had political underpinnings. When he married Hildegard (spouse No. 3), he was from a powerful family, but his father had taken the crown in a coup. Hildegard was the one with the higher pedigree. As an Agilolfing, she was related to the rulers of Bavaria and came from one of the great and most established families in the realm.

Months after Hildegard died in 783, Charles married Fastrada to secure his alliances on the eastern part of the realm, which he needed during his ongoing wars with the Saxons. Their marriage lasted until her death in 794.

He married a fifth and final time in 794 or 796 to Luitgard, and he might have chosen her because he was fond of her and was certain she couldn't have children. Charles had three grown heirs already, and following Frankish custom, each one expected a kingdom. Charles's plan was that Young Charles would rule the bulk of Francia while Louis inherited Aquitaine and another son named Pepin got Italy. If Charles wanted his empire to stay intact, he would not want any more sons born in wedlock.

After Luitgard's death in 800, he had mistresses and begat more children, including boys. Having the concubines proved his virility, a sign of physical perfection and his worthiness to rule. Deformities and other physical imperfections were believed to be God's curse.

Christian Beliefs and Magic

Stuttgart Psalter

Charles and his Frankish subjects believed in the power of prayer. The siege in Lombardy ended after Charles traveled to Rome to visit the pope. Before the war with the Avars in 791, priests held three days of litanies and the faithful abstained from wine and meat.

Most of the laity did not understand the Latin prayers at Mass, but they believed in divine intervention in daily life. Although marriage was not a sacrament at the time, husband and wife often sought the blessing of a priest. The same God who determined victors in war also could decide whether a couple had children.

If the harvest was bad or someone became ill or disabled, they might believe God was punishing them for a sin and pray to a saint to intervene on their behalf or take it a step further and go on a pilgrimage. Or they might attribute the misfortune to sorcery.

Incantations, charms, and other magical means were ingrained in the society despite the Church's official stand against witchcraft. Desperate parents of a sick child might pray to a saint and give alms, then take the child to the peak of the roof, where herbs were cooked while a spell was recited. Even clerics might ask an expert to interpret their dreams, or a manuscript copied by monks might contain a square to predict the course of an illness with the letters of the patient’s name and the number of the day they got sick.

Eventually, the Church took a different tack and made creative substitutions. Want rain? Don't use an incantation. Say a prayer instead. If you need to recite something while gathering medicinal herbs, try the Pater and the Credo.

I could talk about how Charles try to convert pagans by force with limited success, how slavery was alive and well in this era, how horses and other farm animals were different, how literacy was limited to a select few, how every family likely lost a child before age five, and how art and literature survived despite constant war and disease. But as I said earlier, that would take more than a blog post.

I would never want to live in this time period—I happen to like human rights, instant communication, and modern medicine. But it is more multifaceted and intriguing than what I was taught in school, which is why it continues to fascinate me.

Sources

Carolingian Chronicles, which includes the Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, translated by

Bernard Walter Scholz with Barbara Rogers

Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne, by Pierre Riché, translated by Jo Ann McNamara

Courts, Elites, and Gendered Power in the Early Middle Ages: Charlemagne and Others, Janet L. Nelson

Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, edited with an introduction by Peter Godman

Kim Rendfeld is the author of The Cross and the Dragon and The Ashes of Heaven's Pillar, which will soon be reissued. She is working on a third novel, Queen of the Darkest Hour.

Lovers: Charlemagne and Fastrada

By Kim Rendfeld

It’s an unlikely love story: a teenager and a 35-year-old widowed father of seven. Child No. 8 with a girlfriend was on the way, and the man was also twice divorced. The teenager is Queen Fastrada, and the much older man is King Charles, whom we today call Charlemagne.

To those who are familiar with Fastrada, she seems to be an unusual choice for the lovers theme. After all, Charles’s biographer Einhard blames her cruelty as the cause of two conspiracies against the king, including one involving Charles’s eldest son, Pepin. Never mind that both sets of conspirators had other reasons to rebel. Or that Einhard never elaborates on what she did. Or that Charles and Fastrada were dead when Einhard wrote those words.

My take on Fastrada is that she was maligned, the victim of a backlash against strong women and the inspiration for my work in progress. Yet the reason I want to write about this queen is her relationship with Charles. Or more accurately, the relationship the sources hint at.

Fastrada’s birth date is not known, but she likely was between the ages of 13 and 19 when she wed Charles in 783, a few months after Queen Hildegard’s death. Charles was still fighting the Saxons, and the probable reason behind the marriage was to solidify a Frankish alliance east of the Rhine, where Fastrada was from.

But there seems to be more than politics in the couple’s union. The 787 entry in the Royal Frankish Annals includes: “The same most gracious king reached his wife, the Lady Fastrada, in the city of Worms. There they rejoiced over each other and were happy together and praised God’s mercy.”

Those two sentences are very unusual for Frankish annals. Most of the time, the authors write about wars and politics. They don’t trouble themselves with how a couple felt about their reunion after months apart. Might Fastrada have been overseeing the annals and making sure they included that information?

Another clue of the affection the couple shared comes from Charles himself in a surviving letter to Fastrada, composed before he went to war with the Avars in 791. Charles greets her as “our beloved and most loving wife.” Perhaps that can be dismissed as a flourish by the person who actually put quill to parchment. (Charles and the vast majority of Franks couldn’t write, but the monarch was among the minority who could read.) Yet the letter gives the impression the greeting is not a mere platitude.

Charles describes the litanies to ensure victory and asks Fastrada to make sure the prayers and rituals are carried out at home, adding that she can decide for herself if she’s well enough to abstain from wine and meat. Gotta like a man who says his wife can make up her own mind.

Then Charles says he is surprised he hasn’t heard from his wife lately. “As to which, it is our desire that you should notify us more frequently concerning your health and other matters.” Not the sentiment of an apathetic husband.

Did Charles and Fastrada’s love survive the heartbreak of his son’s plot to overthrow him? In 794, two years after the conspiracy, the annalists are more concerned with an assembly that Charles held with the pope’s envoys in Frankfurt and the heresy of a cleric named Felix. But the entry also mentions that Fastrada died there and was buried with honors at St. Albans in nearby Mainz.

The rites around Fastrada’s death were similar to those of Charlemagne’s third wife, Hildegard, whom he also loved. Fastrada’s remains were interred within a church – the most desirable of hallowed ground, a monument was dedicated to her, land was donated to the Church on her behalf so that she wouldn’t spend time in purgatory, and Charles commissioned an epitaph. The writer, Theodulf, called Charles “the better part of her soul.” 

In this case, “better half” doesn’t mean “superior”; its original meaning is more than half of one’s being such as an intimate friend. So, Theodulf was acknowledging the couple’s close relationship in an age where love was not a requirement for marriage.

Charles and Fastrada’s story shows us love can thrive, even where it seems unlikely.

Sources

Carolingian Chronicles, which includes the Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, translated by Bernhard Walter Scholtz with Barbara Rogers

Charlemagne: Translated Sources, P.D. King

A History of Charles the Great (Charlemagne), Jacob Isidor Mombert

A Dictionary of Slang and Its Analogue

Kim Rendfeld is writing a novel about Fastrada. It will be her third set in eighth-century Francia, joining The Cross and the Dragon (2012, Fireship Press) and The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar (2014, Fireship Press). To read excerpts and the first chapters her published books, visit kimrendfeld.com. You’re also welcome to check out her blog Outtakes of a Historical Novelist at kimrendfeld.wordpress.com, like her on Facebook at facebook.com/authorkimrendfeld, or follow her on Twitter at @kimrendfeld, or contact her at kim [at] kimrendfeld [dot] com.

HEA or Not x 5: Charlemagne’s Marriages

By Kim Rendfeld

One thing I did not make up in my historical novels is Charlemagne’s complicated family life and how his personal decisions had consequences for his kingdom in the eighth and ninth centuries. Charles was married five times, and politics influenced his choices.

Wife No. 1, Himiltrude: Some scholars believe the contemporary sources that say Himiltrude, mother of Charles’s eldest son Pepin, was a concubine. But I’m going to believe Pope Stephen, who cited the fact that Charles and his younger brother, Carloman, were already married on their father’s order as a reason not to wed a Lombard princess, the daughter of the pope’s enemy.

For one thing, Charles’s son was named after his paternal grandfather. Parents chose names with a purpose in mind, not out of sentiment or a whim. Besides, it would make no sense for King Pepin to order the younger son to be married and not the other. No one disputed that Gerberga was Carloman’s widow.

Charlemagne coin (Karl-i-money) A coin with
Charles’s image, minted around 812.

When King Pepin died in 768, Charles was 20 and likely was a teenager when he married Himiltrude. We don’t know much about her, other than that she was a Frank. Charles set her aside to marry the Lombard princess. Himiltrude might have wound up in the royal abbey of Nivelles after the divorce, and one academic paper has presented the tantalizing possibility that the scorned ex-wife might have played a role in her son’s attempt to overthrow his father years later.

Wife No. 2, the Lombard princess: Even her name is lost to us. Because of a misreading of a medieval book, she has been called Desiderata, but her name might have been Gerperga. She was a daughter of Lombard King Desiderius and Queen Ansa, and her marriage to Charles was part of a complicated plan to build an alliance and Queen Mother Bertrada’s efforts to keep peace between Charles and Carloman, who each inherited a kingdom when their father died. For the most part, the peace and the alliance held, but it fell apart when Carloman died of an illness and Charles seized his late brother’s lands. Charles set Gerperga aside to marry a girl from an important family in Carloman’s former kingdom.

Wife No. 3, Hildegard: The Swabian might have been 12 or 13, an age the Franks considered marriageable, when she became queen. She was marrying a robust young man in 20s rather than someone much older, but did she have any trepidation about how he had treated his first two wives? The Frankish sources are silent.

Hildegard image – 16th century
drawing of Hildegard

During their approximately 11-year marriage, Charles was a steadfast husband. Hildegard bore nine children, six of whom survived infancy. Two of her sons, Louis and Pepin (the latter originally named Carloman and yes, Charles had two sons named Pepin), became subkings of Aquitaine and Italy, and her eldest son, Charles (called Karl in my novels), stood to inherit the rest. We don’t know what caused her death in 783, but it happened shortly after the birth of her ninth child, a girl who lived only 40 days. In addition to commissioning an epitaph for his queen, Charles gave land to the Church and financed daily Masses on behalf of her soul. She is entombed at St. Arnulf in Metz, and candles were burned on the anniversary of her death.

Wife No. 4, Fastrada (the heroine of my work in progress): A few months after Hildegard’s death, Charles made another political marriage, this one to a noblewoman whose family was east of the Rhine. He needed that alliance as the war with Saxony to the east and north continued. Charles might have fathered a child between his marriages to Hildegard and Fastrada, but he was a steadfast husband to his fourth wife. Despite a possible 20-year age difference, they seemed fond of each other.

When authors of the Royal Frankish Annals usually did not trouble themselves with how a couple felt about their reunion after months apart, the 787 entry says that Charles and Fastrada “rejoiced over each other and were happy together and praised God’s mercy.”

In a letter from Charles to Fastrada, composed before he went to war with the Avars in 791, he greets her as “our beloved and most loving wife.” After filling her in on the litanies to ensure God’s favor and asking her to make sure the ritual is carried out at home, Charles says he is surprised he hasn’t heard from her lately. “As to which, it is our desire that you should notify us more frequently concerning your health and other matters.”

A crisis arose in their family and the kingdom in 792 when Charles’s eldest son, Pepin (also known as Pepin the Hunchback), was involved in a plot to overthrow his father. When caught, the conspirators blame the cruelty of Queen Fastrada. Written years after her and Charles’s deaths, neither author who cited her supposed cruelty specified what she did, which leads me to believe she was a scapegoat.

When she died in 794, Charles had her buried with the honors due a queen. At Mainz, she was interred in a crypt in front of the altar of the apostles. Charles commissioned an epitaph, gave land to St. Alban, and paid for Masses on behalf of her soul.

Charles and Pepin – 10th century
copy of a ninth century illustration

Wife No. 5, Liutgard: When Fastrada died, Charles’s heirs, the three sons he had with Hildegard, were young men, and each expected to inherit a kingdom. (His son with Himiltrude was imprisoned in a monastery.) With a family history of civil wars over who would get to rule, it’s possible Charles did not want any more claimants to the throne. He might have been ecstatic that Fastrada bore only two girls. He adored his daughters and relied on them.

Charles might have dated Liutgard for two years before marrying her, which makes me suspect he wanted a woman who couldn’t have kids. If that’s the case, he got his wish. Their six-year marriage did not produce any children. The poet Theodulf praised her for her beauty and grace: “Open-handed, gentle spirited, sweet in words, she is ready to help all and obstruct none. She labors hard and well at her study and learning, and retains the noble disciplines in her memory.” 

Liutgard died of an illness in Tours in 800 and is buried there. Charles was 52.

Perhaps intent on limiting his successors to three, Charles did not marry again, and in 806, divided his kingdom among Young Charles, Pepin, and Louis. At age 58 – old by medieval standards – Charles introduced stability into his kingdom.

However, Charles was not celibate. Between 800 and his death in 814, he fathered five more children by four concubines. I can see you all rolling your eyes - an aging man trying to prove he’s still got it. Well, yes, but the reason is not only male vanity. Even here, politics plays a role. Virility was proof of Charles’s physical perfection and his fitness to rule.

Sources

Einhard’s The Life of Charlemagne, translated by Evelyn Scherabon Firchow and Edwin H.

Zeydel

Carolingian Chronicles, which includes the Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, translated by

Bernard Walter Scholz with Barbara Rogers

Charlemagne: Translated Sources, P.D. King

“Making a Difference in Eighth-Century Politics: The Daughters of Desiderius,” Janet L. Nelson, After Rome's Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History

Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, edited by Peter Godman

Courts, Elites, and Gendered Power in the Early Middle Ages: Charlemagne and Others, Janet L. Nelson

Hildegard is Charles’s queen and a minor character in Kim Rendfeld’s two published novels, The Cross and the Dragon (2012, Fireship Press) and The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar (August 28, 2014, Fireship Press). Kim is working on her third novel, which features Queen Fastrada. For more about Kim, visit kimrendfeld.com, her blog Outtakes of a Historical Novelist at kimrendfeld.wordpress.com, like her on Facebook at facebook.com/authorkimrendfeld, follow her on Twitter at @kimrendfeld, or contact her at kim [at] kimrendfeld [dot] com.

Five Fascinating Facts about Charlemagne’s Francia

By Kim Rendfeld

Charlemagne’s personal life rivals a soap opera. In 773, the beginning of my first novel, The Cross and the Dragon, he is twice divorced, married to wife No. 3, and about to go to war with his ex-father-in-law, the king of Lombardy, who is threatening Rome. I didn’t make any of that up. Oh, and his first cousin, the duke of Bavaria, is married to the sister of wife No. 2. And Charles had two sons named after their grandfather Pepin (the younger originally called Carloman).

A coin with Charles’s image from late in his reign
(from Wikimedia Commons, permission granted
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License)

But wait, there’s more. After Hildegard, wife No. 3, died, Charles married Fastrada. In 792, his eldest son, Pepin (also called Pepin the Hunchback) rebelled, planning to kill his dad and three half-brothers (the sons of Hildegard), and at least one scholar has speculated that Pepin’s mother, Himiltrude, wife No. 1, might have been involved. When caught, Pepin and his coconspirators blamed Queen Fastrada’s unspecified cruelty. Considering that Pepin had other reasons, like not receiving a subkingdom as his baby brothers did, one may rightly suspect Fastrada is being made a scapegoat.

After Fastrada died, Charles married Luitgard, probably after dating her for two years. Luitgard did not bear Charles any children, and that was probably why he married her. At the time, the emperor had three grown sons, each of whom expected a kingdom. If he had any more sons born in wedlock, it could lead to civil unrest. And that’s probably why he did not remarry after Luitgard died. Instead, he had several mistresses, who bore children. Those mistresses proved Charles’s virility and thus his physical perfection, a qualification for a king to rule. Physical abnormalities were believed to be a sign of God’s anger.

When a Frankish king died, each son born in wedlock got a kingdom. Although aristocrats did try to divorce childless wives, there was also such a thing as having too many sons as Charles’s son Louis the Pious found out the hard way. Louis’s first wife bore three healthy sons, and he divided his kingdom among them. Unfortunately, she died, and he could not remain celibate. So he married a girl half his age. The problem is she was fertile. And when she bore Louis’s fourth son, he had to find a way to accommodate the prince. One of the three older sons did not want to give up his land, and that led to civil war, the very thing Charles was trying to avoid later in his life.

Bertha Broadfoot, 1848, by Eugène Oudiné
at Luxembourg Garden, Paris.
(copyrighted photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen
via Wikimedia Commons)

Early medieval women were not delicate flowers awaiting rescue. Here are just a few examples. In the 770s, Charles’s mother, Bertrada, was a diplomat working to ensure peace between her sons, both of whom were kings, as well as Rome and Lombardy.

When Frankish King Carloman died, Charles seized his younger brother’s lands. But the widowed Queen Gerberga was not about to let her young sons lose their inheritance (or give up her power as regent) without a fight, even if it meant forming an alliance with the Lombard king, Charles’ ex-father-law angry over the divorce from wife No. 2.

Queen Fastrada was influential. A surviving letter from Charles to her implies that he counted on her to make sure the litanies to ensure God’s favor in a coming war were performed, very important in an age that believed in divine intervention.

A 14th century depiction of the
Battle of Roncevaux Pass
(public domain image via
Wikimedia commons)

The historical event that inspired The Song of Roland was not written down for decades. Many of us are introduced to Roland through the 11th century epic poem, but it is a form of historical fiction, light on the history and heavy on the fiction. For one thing, the perpetrators of the massacre were Christian Gascons (Basques), not Muslim Saracens. While researching what really happened during the 778 ambush at Roncevaux for The Cross and the Dragon, I found the earliest accounts were written a few years after the emperor died in 814. In fact, Charles’s official record says everything went well. So this massacre must have been traumatic to him. For more about the actual event, see my post about the attack. 

Medieval people bathed. Aristocrats would take a bath once a week. OK, that is not as often as most of us in 21st century America, but it is more frequent than my teachers led me to believe.

Baths were a requirement for palaces, and bathhouses contained hot and cold pools. The bathhouse at the Charlemagne’s palace at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle in French) was spring fed and could accommodate up to 100 bathers. Abbeys also had baths for the residents, guests, and the sick.

Some people abstained from bathing but that was to atone for sin, similar to fasting. (For more, see my post about that misconception.

Kim Rendfeld is the author of two books set in Charlemagne’s Francia, The Cross and the Dragon (2012, Fireship Press) and The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar (forthcoming, Fireship Press). You can connect with her at her website, www.kimrendfeld.com, her blog, Outtakes of a Historical Novelist, Facebook or Twitter.

Executed: The Day the River Ran Red

By Kim Rendfeld

Photos of where the Wesser and Aller Rivers meet in today’s Germany reveal a pastoral area, a far cry from the beheading of 4,500 men in 782. In one day. On the orders of King Charles, whom we now call Charlemagne.

Why would Charles do such a brutal act? Retribution.

The Franks and Continental Saxon peoples had been fighting for 10 years, off and on. Frankish sources say they would win the battles and the Saxons would give hostages and swear oaths of loyalty, only to make war again, destroying churches and killing indiscriminately.

“The Franks have never been involved in any struggle more prolonged, more bitter, or more laborious,” wrote Einhard, Charlemagne’s biographer. “For the Saxons—like almost all of the nations inhabiting Germania—are savage by nature, given to the cult of demons, and hostile to our religion. They do not find it dishonorable to violate or break divine or human laws.”

Unfortunately, we don’t have the Saxon side. At the time, they did not have a written language as we know it. What they might say, though, is an oath at knifepoint isn’t valid.

Not the First Fight

Widukind memorial in Herford, Germany,
rebuilt from an 1899 sculpture by
Heinrich Wefing, via Wikimedia Commons,
used under the terms of the GNU
Free Documentation License

The Franks blamed much of the trouble on Widukind. The Westphalian Saxon overlord had led the rebellion in 778, while Charles was busy in Spain (see my prior post on Unusual Historicals about the massacre atRoncevaux for more). The Royal Frankish Annals say the Saxons “committed many atrocities, such as burning the churches of God in the monasteries and other acts too loathsome to enumerate.”

Soldiers sent by Charles conquered the Saxons and another war followed in 779. A Frankish army advanced into Saxony in 780, but matters were settled.

So the spring of 782 held some promise for Charles. The Frankish king crossed the Rhine and held an assembly in Saxony at the source of the River Lippe. He received Norse and Avar dignitaries. All the Saxons were there, except Widukind.

Charles returned to Francia and sent an army to fight the Sorbs, a people between the Elbe and Salle, who were pillaging Saxon and Thuringian lands. But Widukind incited rebellion in Saxony. Instead of fighting the Sorbs, the Franks pursued Widukind and were joined by East Franks and a force led by Count Theodoric, Charles’s kinsman.

This combined force tracked the Saxon rebels to the Suntel Mountains, with plans to attack later. Had the Franks followed this original plan, the execution at Verden might not have taken place at all. But some East Franks were worried that Theodoric would get all the glory and decided not to wait.

“They took up their arms,” says the Revised Royal Frankish Annals, “and as if he were chasing runaways and going after booty instead of facing an enemy lined up for battle, everybody dashed as fast as his horse would carry him for the place outside the Saxon camp, where the Saxons were standing in battle array.

“The battle was as bad as the approach. As soon as the fighting began, they were surrounded by the Saxons and slain almost to a man.”

A Political Vengeance

Verden, from the Aller River, via Wikimedia Commons,
used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

The casualties included two of Charles’s envoys, four counts, and up to 20 other noblemen. When he learned of this disaster, Charles himself led a charge into Saxony. He caught up with the enemy to where the Aller and Wesser Rivers meet. “All denounced Widukind as the instigator of this wicked rebellion,” says the Revised RFA. But the Westphalian warrior was not among them, having escaped to Nordmannia (Denmark).

Charlemagne, around 812,
via Wikimedia Commons,
used under the terms of the
GNU Free Documentation License

Instead, the Saxons submitted to Charles and surrendered 4,500 leaders. Four years earlier, Charles had suffered a loss in the Pyrenees, one that could not be avenged because the perpetrators had scattered. And the Basques who had caused the massacre at Roncevaux were not about to burn churches or kill civilians.

The Saxons were different and had a history to prove it. Charles’s own counts likely would have demanded that the enemy who destroyed holy places and slaughtered young and old, men and women, pay a price.

“He never allowed any of them who perpetrated such perfidy to go unpunished,” Einhard wrote.

If Charles hoped to beat the Saxon peoples into submission with the execution of 4,500 men, he was mistaken. They attacked the very next year and would keep on fighting for years to come. He did make peace with Widukind in 785 with the Saxon leader’s baptism, where Charles served as godfather and by implication offered his protection. But even that peace came with a political price, a subject for another post.

Kim Rendfeld is the author of The Cross and the Dragon, which takes place in King Charles’s Francia 773-779, when the wars with the Saxons have already started. Her novel has been published by Fireship Press. For more about Kim and her fiction, visit www.kimrendfeld.com, read her blog at www.kimrendfeld.wordpress.com, like her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/authorkimrendfeld, connect with her on Goodreads at www.goodreads.com/Kim_Rendfeld, check out her Amazon page at www.amazon.com/author/kimrendfeld, or follow her on Twitter at @kimrendfeld.