Subversive Memory in the Historical of School of Rheims Michael Edward Moore What follows is a discussion of a tradition of historical writing, based in the cathedral school of Rheims, which included the learned Archbishop Hincmar (845-882), Flodoard, a canon of Rheims cathedral (ca.893-966), and the monk Richer (between 950/960- ca. 998). Together these historians provide the indispensible record of French history from the late-ninth through the tenth centuries. According to this tradition, Rheims was the only appropriate venue for royal anointing , and the maintainance of royal monuments and memory. In short, Rheims was the guardian of royal legitimacy in France. The Rheims version of Frankish history, despite its royalist focus, was quite different from the version of Frankish history long relied on by the Carolingian dynasty itself, hence the term “subversive memory” of my title.1 The counter-history of Rheims was subversive of the old Carolingian royal narrative of history, to the extent that it could later serve the purposes of 1 Jacque Duquesne interroge le Pére Chenu (Paris: Centurion, 1975), pp.62-63; cited in Charles Dumont, Sagesse ardente. À l’école cistercienne de l’amour dans la tradition bénédictine; Pain de Cîteaux, 8 (Oka, Quebec: Abbaye cistercienne NotreDame-du-lac, 1995), p.249. 1 the new Capetian dynasty, with the rise to power of Hugh Capet. Let me take as a starting point the old saw that “History is written by the victors.” It would be easy to find confirmation for this view in the history of the Carolingian Empire. The disciplined control of memory played a role in the very rise of the dynasty. The Royal Frankish Annals is a major instance of this: a record of historical events, compiled at the Carolingian court, covering the period from 741 to 829.2 The Annals assume that God favored the victories of Carolingian kings, and that the rise of a Frankish empire was the unfolding of a divine plan. They insist that Frankish identity revolves around the Carolingian royal family. Historians must often rely on the Annals, even while recognizing that they are highly ideological.3 Carolingian efforts to control the past were aggressive and pervasive. The most famous example is Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne, which begins with a damnatio memoriae of the former Merovingian dynasty, portraying those kings as useless 2 Annales regni francorum, Reinhold Rau, ed., Quellen zur karolingischen Reichsgeschichte, vol.1 (Darmstadt, 1955), pp.10-155. This edition is accompanied by a German translation. For an English translation, see Bernhard Walter Scholz, Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard's Histories (Ann Arbor, 1972), pp.37-125. 3 Matthew Innes and Rosamond McKitterick, "The Writing of History," in McKitterick, ed., Carolingian Culture:Emulation and Innovation (Cambridge, 1994), pp.193-220; esp. p.208. 2 do-nothings, mocked for their long hair, to show how right it was that the Carolingians took power. Two primary themes emerged in the historical project of the Carolingians: the Carolingian Empire was the leading edge of God’s plan for history, and secondly, a righteous world order was shaped and guided by the emperors in Aachen, with the assistance of the popes in Rome. The culmination of this aspiration was the anointing of Charlemagne as emperor in Rome in 800. The historical tradition of Rheims did not follow up on the agenda of Carolingian royal history. Hincmar prepared the ground for this series of historians, and demonstrated that the history of the Franks could meaningfully be viewed from a ‘Rheims perspective.’4 The historians of Rheims gradually elaborated the independent history of the city, highlighting its royal associations. This vision of history can even be called ‘the historical epic of Rheims.’ Closely involved in royal affairs from the beginning of the Carolingian dynasty, the clerics (and historians) of Rheims were 4 Rosamond McKitterick, “The Carolingian Kings and the See of Rheims, 882-987,” in Patrick Wormald, ed., Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies Presented to J.M. Wallace-Hadrill (London: Basil Blackwell, 1983), pp.228249. See p.245. 3 supremely aware of the dignity of the city and its bishops.5 They pointed to the fact that their city was really a second Rome, for Rheims had been founded by Remus, the brother of Romulus. A brothers’ quarrel had made Rome too small for the both of them.6 The bishopric of Rheims was a densely historical place, possessing the Cathedral of St Mary; attendant chapels and monasteries; the graves of saints and kings.7 The chapels were full of relics and sacred objects, around which historical tradition formed, most notably the body of Remigius († ca.532), the founder of the see of Rheims, and the Holy Ampule, both preserved in the Abbey of St-Rémi. The Ampule was held to contain oil, continuously replenished by supernatural means, from the long-ago baptism of Clovis by St Remigius, a physical guarantee of the royal dimension of Rheims.8 5 Guillaume Marlot (†1667), Histoire de la ville, cité et université de Reims, (Posthumous edition by the Académie de Reims) 4 Vols., (Rheims: L. Jacquet, 1843), vol. 1, p.201. 6 Heinrich Fichtenau, Living in the Tenth Century: Mentalities and Social Orders, trans. Patrick Geary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p.9. The story was recounted by Flodoard, Historia Remensis ecclesiae, J. Heller and G. Waitz, eds., MGH SS, 13 (Hannover: Impensi Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1881), p.412. 7 Patrick Demouy, Notre-Dame de Reims. Sanctuaire de la monarchie sacrée (Paris: CNRS, 1995). Hans Reinhardt, La cathédrale de Reims. Son histoire, son architecture, sa sculpture, ses vitraux (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1963). 8 Marlot, Histoire, vol. 1, p.693. 4 After the first anointing of a Carolingian king, in 751 in Soissons, a Rheims tradition developed that the first royal anointing had actually taken place much earlier, in Rheims, when Remigius had baptized Clovis.9 Later coronations took place sometimes in Rheims, often elsewhere. But wherever the ceremony was held, the presiding bishop was almost always the bishop of Rheims.10 Rheims was thus a royal and priestly city. The historical writing undertaken in Rheims was an effort to engage this massive archeological and mental landscape of law and letters, monuments and records, ancient bones and ancient buildings, and to find in them a basis for understanding urgent daily happenings. At the center of efforts to record and make sense of this “landscape of memory,” was the library of Rheims, 11 which 9 Jean de Pange, "Doutes sur la certitude de cette opinion que le sacre de Pépin est la première époque du sacre des rois de France," in Mélanges d'histoire du Moyen Âge dédiés a la mémoire de Louis Halphen, Charles-Edmond Perrin, ed. (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1951), pp.557-564; see also Michael E. Hoenicke Moore, “The King’s New Clothes: Royal and Episcopal Regalia in the Frankish Empire,” in Stewart Gordon, ed. Robes and Honor: The Medieval World of Investiture (New York: St. Martin's / Palgrave, 2000), pp.95–135. 10 Jacques Le Goff, Reims, Krönungsstadt, trans. Bernd Schwibs; Kleine kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek, 58 (Berlin: Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, 1997), pp.21-27. 11 Frederick M. Carey, “The Scriptorium of Reims During the Archbishopric of Hincmar (845-882 A.D.),” in Classical and Mediaeval Studies in Honor of Edward 5 collected history-books ranging from Ammianus Marcellinus to Gregory of Tours, from Suetonius to Einhard,12 and a vast archive of ecclesiastical records, forgeries, letters of Rheims’ bishops, and letters of popes.13 The library was the chief repository of the memory of Rheims.14 The purpose and significance of the library came into focus during the episcopacy of Hincmar, and his own Nachlass was one of the most significant sections of the archive. At the same time, the history of Rheims came into focus. The possibility emerged, as a result of Hincmar’s industry, of viewing the history of Rheims as the coherent unfolding of the city’s ancient significance. One example is Hincmar’s Life of Remigius, explaining the mythic origins of Rheims’ role in history.15 At the outset Hincmar gestured to the existence in Rheims of an oral tradition (vulgata receptio) concerning Remigius, the founder of the bishopric. But upsettingly, no book existed to tell about the life of a figure so important for the history of the city. Old Kennard Rand, Leslie Webber Jones, ed. (Freeport: Books for Libraries, 1938), pp.41-60. 12 Sot, Historien, pp.69-70. 13 Michel Sot, Un historien et son église au Xe siècle: Flodoard de Reims (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1993), pp.69-77. 14 Le Goff, Reims, p.31. 15 Vita Remigii episcopi Remensis auctore Hincmaro, MGH SRM 3, Bruno Krusch, ed. (Hannover: Impensi Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1896), pp.239-341. 6 monks consulted by Hincmar claimed that they remembered a mysterious book of impressive size, now lost, “written in an ancient hand.”16 Hincmar set out to rewrite the missing book, which, he learnedly explained, should be included in the ranks of the great, lost books, such as the Wars of the Lord, the writings of the prophet Nathan, and the many other “volumes which are known to have been written, but which today are no longer extant.”17 In ‘re-writing’ the Life of Remigius, Hincmar could draw on documents in the cathedral library but others had to be improvised, such as a spurious letter from St. Benedict to Remigius.18 The baptism of King Clovis forms the climax of the work, with Remigius kneeling in prayer because the ampules of holy oil were empty, ‘but rising up from his prayer, he found them full.’19 The Life of Remigius thus helped explain and confirm one of Rheims’ most precious possessions, the 16 “…eos vidisse librum maxime quantitatis manu antiquaria scriptum de ortu ac vita et virtutibus atque obitu beati Remigii sanctissimi patronis nostri.” Hincmar, Vita Remigii, p.250. 17 Hincmar, Vita Remigii, pp.252-253. 18 J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired Kings (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), pp.97-105; see also his “History in the Mind of Archbishop Hincmar,” in R.H.C. Davis and J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, eds., The Writing of History in the Middle Ages. Essays presented to R.W. Southern (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp.43-70. 19 “Surgens autem ab oratione, ampullam, in qua brevis habebatur olei exorcizati, et alteram ampullam, in qua brevis continebatur sacri chrismatis, plenas invenit.” Hincmar, Vita Remigii, p.290. 7 constantly renewed oil of the Holy Ampule. By means of it, the bishops of Rheims had established Christian kingship among the Franks. Hincmar also compiled an Annal covering the period 830882, continuing the Royal Frankish Annals in his Annals of StBertin (AB), but along very different lines.20 Hincmar’s Annal reflected the interests of the see of Rheims and the deeds of Hincmar himself as a great representative of archiepiscopal power. The theme of Rheims’ involvement in royal affairs was a constant leitmotif.21 The work provides detailed information about rituals of anointing and crowning, such as when Hincmar anointed and crowned Charles the Bald in 869, in a special ceremony intended to recreate the ancient anointing of Clovis by Remigius.22 During the period of some twenty years in which Hincmar was Charles’ advisor, he used the annal-entries to record his criticisms and second thoughts regarding the king’s 20 Annales de Saint-Bertin, Felix Grat, Jeanne Vielliard and Suzanne Clémencet, eds. ; Société de l'histoire de France, 470 (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1964). An earlier edition, still widely used: Annales Bertiniani, G.H. Pertz, ed., MGH SS 1, pp.419515. For a commentary and translation, The Annals of St-Bertin, trans. Janet L. Nelson, Ninth-Century Histories 1 (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1991). 21 Janet L. Nelson, "Hincmar of Reims on King-making: The Evidence of the Annals of St. Bertin, 861-882," in János M. Bak, ed., Coronations. Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp.16-34. See also Nelson, "Kingship, Law and Liturgy in the Political Thought of Hincmar of Rheims," in her Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London: Hambledon Press, 1986), pp.133-171. 22 F. Grat, Annales de Saint-Bertin, anno 869, pp.157-164. 8 actions.23 A Rheims perspective on history had emerged that would also mark the work of Hincmar’s successor-historians, Flodoard and Richer. A period of political struggle and invasion during the last years of Hincmar’s episcopacy and through the end of the ninth century were difficult times for the library and community of Rheims. From the earliest entries, Flodoard’s Annals are emotionally haunted by the Vikings, perceived as enemies of the Frankish order and of all cultural accomplishment. Indeed, Viking raids had reached all the way to Rheims by the death of Hincmar in 882. The sense of emergency continued under Bishop Fulco.24 King Odo and Count Baldwin of Flanders also threatened Rheims, and the bishop proved to be a competent military leader, fending off threats and refurbishing the city walls.25 Fulco’s successor Archbishop Heriveus (900-922) was also an intense competitor in the field of politics, and staunch defender of Rheims.26 It was under this bishop that Flodoard began to compile his record of the history of the see, in the Annals, which 23 Janet L. Nelson, “ History-Writing at the Courts of Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald,” in Scharer, Historiographie im frühen Mittelalter, op. cit., pp.435-442. 24 G. Schneider, Erzbischof Fulco von Reims 883-900 und das Frankenreich (Munich: Arbeo-Gesellschaft, 1973). 25 McKitterick, “Carolingian Kings,” p.230. 26 Gerhard Schmitz, “Heriveus von Reims (900-922). Zur Geschichte des Erzbistums Reims am Beginn des 10. Jahrhunderts,” in Francia 6 (1978), 59-105. 9 Flodoard maintained for most of his life, from the age of 25, in 919, until his death in 966.27 These Annals form a brooding record of the brutal events surrounding the bishops of Rheims and their involvement in political struggles. Fulco’s episcopacy came to a tragic end. He took the side of the Carolingian Charles the Simple in his struggle with Baldwin II of Flanders, and Count Baldwin had the bishop assassinated. Drawing on the extensive archives and letters left behind by Hincmar, Flodoard went on to compose his History of the Church of Rheims, which told the history of the city and its bishops from the time of Remigius to Flodoard’s day.28 The History was an ambitious formulation of the historical epic of Rheims. Perhaps the assassination of Fulco impressed on Flodoard’s mind that the continuity of the see of Rheims could not rely on individuals, but only on the greater historical destiny of the city and its preserved memory. During the Capetian period, the cathedral and city of Rheims continued to be at the 27 Ph. Lauer, Les Annales de Flodoard (Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1905), Annales de Flodoard, Intro., p.xiv. 28 Bautier, “L’Historiographie en France,” p.815. 10 center of royal politics, and was often attacked by armies, as in 987 and 991.29 The History of the Church of Rheims built directly on the achievement of Hincmar, always connecting Rheims to the larger scene of royal power. He also benefitted from Hincmar’s library. Here Flodoard could find letters from Archbishop Fulco to Charles the Simple and King Odo. Here was a letter to King Alfred, to congratulate the Anglo-Saxon king for appointing a good candidate to the see of Canterbury.30 The historical achievement of Rheims was impressive, and especially poignant as the theme of Rheims’ royalism was carried into the dangerous era of the last Carolingians. Richer, the next great inheritor of the Rheims historical tradition, studied with Gerbert of Aurillac in the recently renovated cathedral school and began his work while Gerbert was Archbishop of Rheims (after 991). At this point Gerbert was also caught up in the ambiguous and dangerous political world of the Capetians and their counts.31 Richer began his histories by signaling his inheritance of, but also his 29 McKitterick, “Carolingian Kings,” p.245; Ferdinand Lot, Études sur le règne de Hugues Capet et la fin du Xe siècle; Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études, fasc. 147(Paris: Librairie Émile Bouillon, 1903), pp.27-28. 30 Flodoard Historia Remensis ecclesiae 4.5, p.566. 31 Lot, Études sur le règne de Hugues Capet, pp.20-21. 11 independence from, the historical traditions of Hincmar and Flodoard.32 Richer’s great work the Histories, written between 991 and 998, is an authentic part of the rich historical tradition of Rheims, relying on the Rheims archive and library, now further deepened and ordered by the work of Flodoard. Richer commends Flodoard’s History of the Church of Rheims to anyone wishing to learn about that city. He describes it as commencing ‘from the founding of the city’ (ab urbe condita) – the title of Livy’s massive history of Rome – thus drawing a comparison between Flodoard and Livy, Rheims and Rome.33 Richer was the beneficiary of a phase of cultural renovation under Archbishop Adalbero (969-988) in a Rheims whose outlook was brighter than it had been since the time of Hincmar. He gratefully recorded Adalbero’s renewal of the cathedral library.34 Gerbert of Aurillac, later the well-known “pope of the year 1000” and the most learned European of his day, was schoolmaster of the cathedral school before serving as bishop. This Gerbert was Richer’s teacher. It is not surprising, therefore that Richer was so eager to display his mastery of 32 Richer of Reims, Historiae, Hartmut Hoffmann, ed., MGH SS, 38 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1998), prologue p.35. 33 Richer, Historiae, p.56. 34 Richer, Historiae, pp. 181-184. 12 Sallust and Julius Caesar, Sulpicius Severus and Isidore of Seville.35 Richer took his own path in developing the counterhistory offered by the historians of Rheims, and wrote a deeply personal, angular style of history. Like Hincmar and Flodoard before him, Richer was engaged in establishing Rheims as a place where the history of the Frankish kingdom, especially the history of its kings, could be intellectually grasped and made secure.36 For this reason, the last Carolingian, and later Capetian, kings felt compelled to participate in the ‘historical epic of Rheims.’ The cathedral of Rheims, as a center of historical learning and a repository of memory, helped to establish the coherence of the new Capetian order with the Carolingian past.37 Richer nevertheless approached these repositories with a sense of freedom. The passage recording the accession of Hugh Capet is in a dense, Latin style emulating Sallust. Thus he continued the tradition of connecting Rheims to royalty, but with a new voice. The legend of the 'anointing of King Clovis by St. Remigius' proved to be durable and convincing as a symbol for 35 Bautier, “L’Historiographie en France,” p.830. Hoffmann, “Die Historien Richers,” pp.480-482. 37 Le Goff, Reims, pp.24-25. 36 13 concepts of kingship.38 When Hugh Capet was crowned by Adalbero of Rheims in 975, the city was thus assured of a continued role as a center of royal and episcopal contact and cooperation. Meanwhile the new line of kings found a stable and eminently suitable place in which their memory could be laid down. Beginning with the work of Hincmar, the royalist message of the historical school of Rheims helped explain the world of power and the role of Rheims in that story. These traditions gave Flodoard a place to stand when confronting a world so ‘devastated with rape and fire,’ as we read in the last, dire entry of his Annal, for the year 966.39 And they helped Richer and his readers to incorporate further dramatic political changes, the collapse of the Carolingian world order and the rise of the Capetians, by viewing them from a Rheims perspective. We are now in a position to take up a broader perspective on the problem of whether “history is written by the victors,” by pursuing some insights from an essay of Reinhart Koselleck.40 38 Philippe Gabet, "Constantin et Clovis, développements et transformations rémois aux IXe et Xe siècles," in Clovis, histoire et mémoire, dir. by Michel Rouche, 2 vols. (Paris: Presses de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1997), 2:73-81. 39 “Et ipse comes loca quaedam ejusdem episcopii cum suis pervadens, rapinis incendiisque devastat.” Annales de Flodoard, anno 966, p.158. 40 Reinhart Koselleck, “Transformations of Experience and Methodological Change,” in his The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing 14 Koselleck argues that, while the victors can control the valuation of a course of events for a certain period of time, in the end it is only through the incorporation of the viewpoint of the losers that new and conceptually greater histories come to be written. One example is Thucydides, who suffered defeat and thereby found his way to a deeper level of historical insight, open to both sides in the Peloponnesian War. He also points to the acid critique of the imperial system in the histories of Tacitus. As Koselleck suggests: “If history is made in the short run by the victors, historical gains in knowledge stem in the long run from the vanquished.”41 For more than a thousand years, into the eighteenth century, the archdiocese of Rheims would live out its destiny as a major center of royal ceremonial and the place where Frankish and later French kings were crowned, anointed, and often buried. 42 Rheims was always the ‘crowning city.’43 What I Concepts, trans. Todd Samuel Presner, et al. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), pp.45-83. 41 Koselleck, “Transformations,” p. 76. 42 Alaine Erlande-Brandenburg, Le roi est mort. Étude sur les funérailles les sépultures et les tombeaux des rois de France jusqu'à la fin du XIIIe siècle, Bibliothèque de la société française d'archéologie, 7 (Paris: Arts et métiers graphiques, 1975). 43 Jean Sainsaulieu, "De Jérusalem à Reims. Origines et évolution des sacres royaux," in Le Sacre des rois, Actes du Colloque international d'histoire sur les sacres et couronnements royaux, Reims 1975, (Paris, Les Belles Lettres , 1985), pp.17-26. Carlrichard Brühl, Reims als Krönungsstadt des franzosischen Königs bis 15 have tried to show is how Rheims achieved this status as a result the project of its historians to establish a counter-history which placed Rheims at the center of royal legitimacy. And of course, there was the precious oil in the Holy Ampule. zum Ausgang des 14. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main: Heil, 1950). Walter Mohr, "Reichspolitik und Kaiserkrönung in den Jahren 813 und 816," Die Welt als Geschichte 20 (1960), 168-186. 16