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Concepts of Europe in the Early and High Middle Ages Author(s): Karl J. Leyser Source: Past & Present, No. 137, The Cultural and Political Construction of Europe (Nov., 1992), pp. 25-47 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/650850 Accessed: 05/11/2009 05:14
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CONCEPTSOF EUROPEIN THE EARLY AND HIGH MIDDLE AGES*

At the time of his sudden death earlier this year, Professor Leyser was completing his contributionfor this special issue of Past and Present. Doubtless had he lived he would have made various alterations to his text. None the less we are pleased to publish, with the kind consent of Henrietta Leyser, this important contribution to historical studies. We are very grateful to Dr. Timothy Reuter for providing the referencesand in other ways completing the final published text. Like so much else, Bede, Fredegarius and the Carolingian savants inherited their ideas of Europe from late antiquity, above all from the luminaries who conveyed the substance of this disintegrating world to their eager and anxiously waiting disciples in the eighth and ninth centuries and eventually to the high Middle Ages altogether. Both the mythology and the cosmology in which Europe emerged as one of the constituent parts of the world intrigued and exercised the imaginations of the Carolingian court circles they reached and, it could be said, poured into their lavish poetry up to the very end of the ninth century. Most of this, if not all, resounded again in the festive notes struck by Ottonian historiography and panegyric to celebrate the triumphs of the tenth-century Saxon rulers and their following. They too wanted to be seen and measured by European scales. Among their writers one at least, Liudprand of Cremona, nursed truly continental
* Karl Leyser was still working on this article when he was overtaken by the stroke from which he was not to recover; he died on 27 May 1992. He left a text which he had not finally revised and whose final paragraphwas incomplete. For the first thirty footnotes there were drafts, for the remainder merely indications of where they should be. I have completed the footnotes, confining myself largely to references to the primary sources, but knowing how much he resented impertinent copy-editing I have left the text largely as it stood, except to correct obvious slips and infelicities and to complete the last paragraph. Readers should be aware that the text as it stands may not represent what would have been his final formulations, though it does accurately represent his thinking on the subject. TimothyReuter

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cultural perspectives, and it is tempting almost to call him the first European.1 The threepillarsof wisdom- andthis is not meantironically through whom the early and high Middle Ages received the traditions to bolster their sense of European belonging, thus giving a past to their refashionedpolitical and military present, were St. Augustine,Isidoreof Sevilleand aboveall the late fourthand earlyfifth-centuryChristian world historian,Orosius.Theirs, however, was a messy inheritance.The ancientworld had fostered a myth of Europe, the story of Zeus, his desire aroused by the sight of the daughterof King Agenor picking flowers, abducting her in the shape of a bull over the waters to Crete (which later countedas part of Europe)and, once againa man, begettingthree sons by her. Returned to earthly converse Europe married the king of Crete, Asterios, and brought up her three sons.2 Of our three transmitters,St. Augustine and Isidore of Seville marshal this story, the former only to write wryly of the public shows and games to which it gave rise. They were stagedto placatefalse deities and furnish occasions for popular holidays.3The Europa theme belonged to a polite education, the urbane bearing of elevatedsocialmilieux and those who dancedattendanceon them. Bishops in the world of late Roman antiquity had to master its languageand conventionsin order to convert it. Their medieval successorsdid the same. Side by side with this myth and stemmingfrom it Europe had at first Thrace- the come to be seen also as a region, designating Greek mainland,but not the Peloponnese - but then growing
1J. Fischer, Oriens-Occidens-Europa: Begriff und Gedanke"Europa" in der spdten Antike und im friihen Mittelalter (Ver6ffentlichungen des Instituts fir Europaische Geschichte, Mainz, xv, Wiesbaden, 1957), has sought to survey systematically how the term "Europe" was used from the fifth to the end of the eleventh century, when he oddly thought it became extinct for the time being. See also D. Hay, Europe: The Emergenceof an Idea (Edinburgh, 1957). In all fairness I start off acknowledging indebtedness to Fischer's expose, which suffers, however, from being too detached from the sorts of pressures that shaped and changed the concept and its traditions. Also of value is T. Schieder, "Vorwort zum Gesamtwerk", in T. Schieffer (ed.), Europa im Wandelvon der Antike zum Mittelalter (Handbuch der europdischen Geschichte, i, Stuttgart, 1976), pp. 1-21. 2 der classischen "Europe", in G. Wissowa et al. (eds.), Paulys Real-Encyclopddie 81 vols. (Stuttgart, 1893-1978), vi.1, cols. 1291-2. Altertumswissenschaft, 3 Augustine, De civitate Dei, xviii.12 (ed. B. Dombart and A. Kalb, 2 vols., Corpus Christianorum,ser. Lat., xlvii-xlviii, Turnhout, 1955, ii, pp. 602-3); IsidoriHispalensis sive originumlibri XX, xiv.4 (ed. W. M. Lindsay, 2 vols., episcopi etymologiarum Oxford, 1911, ii, no pag.).

CONCEPTS OF EUROPE IN THE EARLY AND HIGH MIDDLE AGES 27

ever larger northwards and westwards as travellers ventured inland and mariners sailed round the Pillars of Hercules and discoveredthe Atlanticcoasts and Britain,graduallyforcing their knowledge on reluctantgeographers.Whether the orbisterrarum was tripartite or made up of only two segments, Africa and Europe rather than Asia and Europe counting as one, had remainedfor a long time in dispute. But a universemade of three parts, Asia, Europe and Africa, became the shared view of our three authorities. There was more dispute about the frontiers between them, especially that between Europe and Asia. While the river Phasis flowing into the Black Sea from the east was often mentioned, by Orosius' time and for centuries later the
river Don, the Sea of Azoff and much harder to trace what

were called the Riphean Mountains counted as the boundaries between the two continents.4 Westernand centralEuropeanliterati,above all historians,thus inherited and took over this geographicallyand cosmologically orientatedunderstandingof Europe. Richer of St. Remy in the later tenth century began his history of France with a brief account of the tripartiteearth, orbisplaga, as the cosmographers explained it, and here he leaned wholly on Orosius. Africa and Europe he envisaged surroundedby ocean. The Mediterranean, severed them from one another.5Otto of Freising marenostrum, or History begins the first book of his world history, the Chronica of the Two Cities, with a brief account of the known human habitat, just as Orosiushad done in the opening sentences of his
Adversus paganos libri VII, and he quotes Orosius verbatim. He

ends the chapter by directing his readers to consult Orosius if they want to know about the provinces of the continents, their exact situationand regions.6Here it is worth noting that Europe was thought to be much larger than Africa. Both together could not equal Asia. The assumed smallnessof Africa explained why
4 Pauli Orosii historiarumadversum paganos libri VII, i.2 (ed. C. Zangemeister, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, v, Vienna, 1882, p. 10). 5 Richer, Histoire de France (888-995), i.1 (ed. R. Latouche, 2 vols., Classiques de l'histoire de France au moyen age, xii, xvii, Paris, 1930-7, i, p. 6). The term mare nostrum is from Orosius: Pauli Orosiihistoriarum adversum paganos,i.2 (ed. Zangemeister, p. 10). 6 Ottonis episcopiFrisingensischronicasive historia de duabuscivitatibus, i. 1 (ed. A. Hofmeister, Monumenta Germaniae Historica [hereafter M.G.H.], Scriptores rerum Germanicarum [hereafter S.R.G.], xlv, Hanover, 1912, pp. 37-8).

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it and Europe were regardedby some as a single unit, just one part of the cosmos. In Richer there is a small but startlingovertone soundedin the citationof Orosius.Richer spoke of "that part of the earth which is commodiousto men" when he introducedthe tripartitedivision.7He thus introduceda criterionnot to be foundin his source, habitability.Europehere alreadyhas an economy. It served above all to introduce Gaul, "White Gaul", as the country where his civilizedaffectionslay. Europemakesmore thana fleetingappearance in Lombardtexts of the late seventh and eighth centuries. A Master Stephanus(c. 698) praised the exalted origins of the Lombardroyal house in the confines of Europe and then turned to their king, Aripert (653-62), the pious and Catholicruler who had extirpated Arian heresy among his people and so made the Christianfaith grow.8 If the Franks had migratedfrom Asia into Europe, the Lombards,in their reflectionson the past, cultivated their own Europeanorigins. Their historian,Paul the Deacon (d. 787 + ), had a largervision of these antecedentsin the migrations of Germantribes, and he saw Germanyas the homeland of all the gentesthat had afflictedEurope. The Lombards,even if they came from an island he called Scandinavia,were none the less a Germanicpeople. He even purportedto know the cause of their migration:they becametoo numerousso that they could no longer all live together. Some had to migrate.9It seems as if Paul would not regard the original homes of these gentes, their barbaric hinterland,as part of Europe. By implication,a degree of civilization was alreadyattachedto the Europeanname. Alreadyin seventh-centuryhagiographyEurope could furnish a topos for boastful grandiloquence.In the Life of St. Gertrude we read "Who is there living in Europe who does not know the loftiness of her forebears,their names and habitatsand the places they owned?", as if there were a Europeanpublic to discuss such This raises more generally the question of the milieu matters.10
7 Richer, Histoire, i. 1 (ed. Latouche, i, p. 6): "orbis itaque plaga, quae mortalibus sese commodam praebet". 8 Rhythmi aevi Merovingiciet Carolini, no. 145 (ed. K. Strecker, M.G.H., Poetae Latini medii aevii [hereafter Poetae], 6 vols., Berlin, 1881-1979, iv.2, p. 728). 9 Pauli historiaLangobardorum, i.2 (ed. G. Waitz, M.G.H., Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum, Hanover, 1878, pp. 48-9). 10 Vita Sanctae Geretrudis,prologue (ed. B. Krusch, M.G.H., Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum [hereafter S.R.M.], 7 vols., Hanover, 1884-1920, ii, p. 454), in both the A and B versions.

CONCEPTS OF EUROPE IN THE EARLY AND HIGH MIDDLE AGES 29

in which some familiaritywith the concept of Europe was at home, whether mythologicalor as one of the constituentparts of the known world. The clerical literati, historians and poets, in whose works references to Europe have here been searchedfor and traced, were for the most part a small elite drawn from the ranks of a larger elite, the clerical order as such. They often belonged to the ambience of rulers, and in this way the idea of the continentsand of Europe's distinctive quality as one of them might be impartedalso to the lay aristocracy.Not many of them had sat in schoolrooms, though a clerical tutor at home could have impartednot only an element of literacybut also geographical, historicaland other knowledge. To be awareof itself and its roles, duties, rank and privileges, the aristocracy of any gens needed to know about its past and cultivate it, and this could not be done without some elementary geographicalframeworkand knowledge.11Itineracy, moreover, was the lot of emperors and kings, and hence also of their lay warrior entourages. Europe could come to mean somethingto a lay noble who had accompanor Ottonianroyal overlordall the way to Rome ied a Carolingian and back. Such knowledge could be communicatedalso to their fellows who had stayed at home. It is to the author so tantalizinglyidentified with Fredegarius and his Chronicaethat we must turn for the most fertile and enduringmyth of Frankishbeginningsand their Europeanbearings. Here is, for the first time, the story of the Franks' Trojan origins. Priamus was their first king. Part of them migrated to Macedonia,where they becamethe staunchestwarriors.Not only Troy and its ruler, but the MacedoniansPhilip and Alexander, were unblushinglyenlisted as Frankishroyal forebearsand cited to exemplify early Frankishprowess. A second host of Franksfor peoples were then seen first and foremost as warriors and armies- followed a king namedFranciowhom they had elected, and he directed them from Asia into Europe and settled them between the Rhine and the Danube. For a time they were subject to the "ConsulPompey". Then, however, they concludedfriendship with the Saxons, rebelled, and shook off his domination. Thereafter no people up to the present day (the early eighth
11P. Riche, Educationet culturedans l'Occidentbarbare,6e-8e siecles (Paris, 1962), p. 273, thought it probable, however, that most Frankish aristocrats received a minimum of instruction. R. McKitterick, The Carolingiansand the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 211-70, ch. 6, esp. p. 227, agrees.

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century)had been able to vanquishthe Franks.They built another All this is flourTroy on the Rhine; it may have been Xanten.12 ishing fictionhandeddown over many generations.In St. Martin, moreover, the Franks possessed and boasted of a patron saint of Europeanstature. Thanks to him Europe could be said to have a saint no less eminentand potent than those of Asia and Africa.13 At the same time the Occident, Latin Christendom,would not rest content with King Priamus and a merely pagan account of origins in the story of the daughterof King Agenor, even if she was countenanceda little by Isidore of Seville and also, albeit with disdain, by St. Augustine. It needed also a biblical one and found it in the descent of the sons of Noah. Alreadyin Isidore of Seville they were the founders of towns and regions in Europe, Asia and Africa.14The whole human race must be descended from them and they, Shem, Ham and Japheth,thereforedivided the world between them. Europe was Japheth's share, and his numerous offspring and their descendants in turn were the ancestors of all the greater European peoples: Franks, Latins, Alemansand Britons, to name but some. Nennius' HistoriaBrittonum is a very specific source here, and enshrines seventhcentury traditions.15 Yet what gave shape, relevance and durationto the notion of Europe from the early seventh century onwards was Rome, or ratherthe Roman churchand its head, the papacy.The addresses of two letters by St. Columba, to Pope Gregory I and Pope Boniface IV respectively, deserve to be quoted in full: "To the holy lord and father in Christ, the most beautiful ornament of the Roman church, to the most august, as it were, ornamentof
12 Fredegarii et aliorum chronica, ii.4-6 (ed. B. Krusch, M.G.H., S.R.M., ii, pp. 45-6). On Xanten, see J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, "Fredegar and the History of France", in his The Long-Haired Kings and Other Essays in Merovingian History (London, 1962), pp. 71-94, at p. 82. Wallace-Hadrill also discusses the question of (single or multiple) authorship of "Fredegar's" text; for a more recent discussion, see the introduction to the edition of the text in Quellenzur Geschichtedes 7. und 8. Jahrhundert,ed. H. Wolfram, A. Kustering and H. Haupt (Ausgewahlte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters, iv.a, Darmstadt, 1982), pp. 9-13. 13 As argued by Sulpicius Severus, his biographer. See Fischer, Oriens-OccidensEuropa, p. 42. For poetic echoes of this theme in the Carolingianperiod, see Alcuini carmina, no. 90.21 (ed. E. Diimmler, M.G.H., Poetae, i, p. 316); Radbod, In translationeSancti Martini sequentia,ed. P. von Winterfeld (M.G.H., Poetae, iv.l), p. 165b. 14 Isidore, Etymologiae,ix.2. 15 F. Lot, Nennius et l'HistoriaBrittonum:etudecritique(Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des hautes etudes, cclxiii, Paris, 1934), pp. 160-1.

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all languishing Europe, the egregious look-out, expert in the knowledge of divine causality,I, lowly Columba,send salutation in Christ". The rhetoricalcontrast between wilting Europe and its spiritualhead, bathed in light and clothed in imperialepitheta, revealsa new culturallandscape,howeverruggedand as yet fitful. The questionsColumbaraised- the date of Easter, simony, and wherethey hadmadetheirvows monksleavingthe communities called for authoritativeanswers, and this on a Europeanplane. The letter he addressedto Pope Boniface IV opened on an even more histrionicnote: "To the most beauteoushead of all churches in the whole of Europe, the dear pope, the exalted prelate, pastor of pastors, the most reverend overseer: the humblest to the highest, the least to the greatest, the rustic to the polished, the short of speech to the most eloquent, the last to the first, the strangerto the native, the poor to the mighty - strange to say and novelty - the exiguous bird Columbaventures to write to Father Boniface".16 Once again the missive is full of urgent and outspoken injunctionsand warnings, but more clearly still than in the earlierletter the pope is seen to be the head of a European body of churches. In the early seventh century this meant above all the northernshores of the Mediterranean world, and north of the Alps mainly Merovingian Gaul and the Rhineland which counted as part of it. Certainclassicalcontinuities, but also the possibilityof expansion,were latentin this Europeancircumscription of the papacy. The ascent of the Carolingians,who built their authorityand power, first mayoraland then regal, on the resumptionof fiercely aggressive policies towards the Merovingian kingdom's neighbours and unwilling subject peoples, soon dwarfed all previous scales and dimensions of Frankish rule. Einhard, quoting from the inscriptionon Charlemagne's tomb, wrote of him that he had nobly enhanced the kingdom of the Franks so that it was now nearly twice as large as the already great and mighty Reich he had taken over from his father Pippin, the first Carolingian king. Einhardthen proceededto recite the emperor'sconquests:Aquitaine, Gascony, the Pyrenees, northern Spain up to the Ebro, Italy from Aosta to lower Calabria,Saxony, Pannonia, Dacia, Istria, Dalmatiaand Liburnia(adjoiningIstriaand Carniola).He,
16 Columbaesive Columbani. . . epistolae, nos. 1, 5 (ed. W. Gundlach, M.G.H., Epistolae in quarto, 8 vols., Berlin, 1887-1939, iii, pp. 156, 170); Fischer, OriensOccidens-Europa, pp. 47-8.

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Charlemagne,also made a whole host of wild and barbarian peoples tributary,and here Einhardcited a numberof Slav tribes in Germany,east of the Rhine up to the Vistulaand between the Danube and the sea.17WhateverEinhard'sexaggerations- and there were some - the conquestsand the ill-assortedensembleof regionsand peoples broughtunder Frankishclientagecried aloud for a common designationand vehicle for summarycomprehension. For Einhardthe regnum Francorum was the be-all and endall of his world. Yet other literati, letter-writers and poets of and his successors'courtsand environmentsfound Charlemagne's such a designationin Europe. If referencesto it in Merovingian writings had been sparse, they became plentiful from the later eighth century onwards. In the homily Cathwulf addressed to Charlemagnearound 775, the author, after reminding the king of his successes and good fortune - like the timely death of his brotherand rival Karlmann,the flight of the Lombardhost, the bloodlessseizure of Pavia with all its treasures,and the first visit to Rome - exhortedthe king to show gratitudeto God "because he has raisedyou to the honourof the kingdomof Europe's(regni
Europae) glory".l8 Even greater divine gifts than all these would

follow if the king honoured God and his churches. Cathwulf almost certainlydid not wish Europeto be understoodas a single kingdom when he used this term. He meant that Charlemagne had been exalted to wield rule in all Europe. In 775 the Frankishking was still far from the full overthrow of the Saxons, nor had he yet ventured to strike at Arab strongholds in northern Spain. In 790, when writing to his erstwhile masterColcu in Northumbria,Alcuin also somewhatexaggerated Charlemagne'ssuccesses. By God's mercy, he wrote, his holy church in the parts of Europe had peace and was growing and flourishing,and he stated that the Old Saxons and the Frisians had, at Charlemagne's insistence,be it by gifts or by threats,been converted.19 Yet this was far from being the end of Saxon resistance, and from 794 onwards hosts still marched year after year into Saxony to complete the work of conquest and to cope with risings. The letter all the same conveyed something of Charle17 Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, chs. 15, 31 (ed. O. Holder-Egger, M.G.H., S.R.G., xxv, Hanover, 1911, pp. 17-18, 35-6). 18 Epistolae variorumCarloMagnoregnante scriptae,no. 7 (ed. E. Diimmler, M.G.H., Epistolae in quarto, iv, pp. 502-5). 19 Alcuini epistolae,no. 7 (ed. E. Diimmler, M.G.H., Epistolae in quarto, iv, p. 32).

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magne's European-wide commitments: the year before he had marched against the Slavs, the Greeks had sent a fleet to Italy, and the Avarshad threatenedboth Italy and Bavaria.The offensive in Spain was progressing under Charlemagne'scounts and dominamissi,and here the writerpausedto deplorethe Saracens' tion of Africa and over most of Asia, thus duly linking Europe with the other constituentpartsof the world. A letter to a disciple about numbers is didactically illustrated by, among other examples, the division of the earth into three parts: Europe, Africaand India, in all of which God was to be worshippedwith faith, hope and charity.20 Alcuin was and remained a schoolmaster.When the news of the sackof Lindisfarne by the Vikingsand the expulsionof Bishop he reached him, wrote a letter of consolation,but it was Higbald full of again warningsand injunctions.Higbald must correct any shortcomingsin his own ways to regain the help of his patron saints. There must be no vaingloryin dress, no drunkenness.To have the protectionof their saints, the bishop and his people must walk in their ways. Higbald was also advised not to be overwhelmed by dismay. God chastized those whom he loved, and perhaps he castigated the bishop more because he loved him more. There followed a history lesson. Jerusalemhad perishedin flames;Rome, where apostlesand martyrsabounded,was devastated by pagans, but by God's mercy soon recovered. Nearly all
Europe and these writers were fond of their "nearly" was

emptied and devastatedby the swords of the Goths and Huns, but now, thanksto God, it shone with churches,like the heavens with stars,and in them the holy officesthrove.21 The letter cannot have given much comfort and cheer to Higbald, but it is noteworthy that Europe could be seen by Alcuin as having a history, a past and a present to which he felt he belonged. He sharedthis awarenessand grasp of the Europeanpast with Paul the Deacon, as we have seen. If Britainis excepted, if it belonged to Europe only marginally
if at all and this despite Alcuin then Charlemagne's empire

covered nearly all of it and his court, increasinglystationaryat Aachen, became for a time its centre. The men of letters had Christialready before 800 spoken of the Reich as an imperium anum. The fact that Pope Leo III, unsafe in Rome, had had to
20

21

Ibid., no. 81 (p. 124). Ibid., no. 20 (p. 57).

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come all the way to Paderbornto meet the protector he needed in order to be reinstatedand defended against his accusersonly enhanced the European stature Charlemagnealready possessed and gave it a new political and ecclesiasticalclout. It is in the of just these events in the poem KarolusMagnuset magnification LeoPapa that the person of Charlemagne itself attractedthe most glowing Europeanepithets. Here he is the head of the world, the venerableapex of Europe ruling his second Rome, Aachen, that was rising in new splendour. Here also, and this twice, he was called Europe's lighthouse and finally rex, pater Europebefore Leo, the highest earthlypastor.22 Europe is here the geographical and spiritualsetting of that world order which alone counted, the his religious and secular Christianone, centred on Charlemagne, at court in the and monasteries and the lands following bishoprics, of the regnaunder his lordship. That he should have attempted to shape this society, police it and harness it to common tasks without of course destroying its ethnic identities and pasts, was the first attempt of its kind since Roman imperial times. It was a Europeanattempt all the more since it embracedpeoples and areasthat had remainedoutside the Romanfrontiers,as the Poeta Saxo later pointed out.23His Europe, moreover, was no longer and Gallic; it was moving eastwardsand merely Mediterranean furthernorth. The emperorshipof 800 only enhancedand underlined ideas alreadycurrentduring the 790s. The eulogistsof Louis the Pious clung to this Europeanmantle which they inherited from Charlemagne'spoets and flatterers. One indeed, Theodulf of Orleans,had been a member of the old emperor'scircle. Disgraced and banishedunder his successorhe pleaded in verse with his friends to intervene on his behalf. In
his poem, the Battle of the Birds, Europe is the opimus ager, the

best and most nourishingsoil for every speciesof flyingcreature.24 Another victim of Louis the Pious's displeasure,ErmoldusNigKarolusMagnus et Leo Papa, 11.92-3 (apex), 12, 169 (lighthouse), 529 (father of Europe) (ed. E. Dummler, M.G.H., Poetae, i, pp. 368, 366, 370, 379); there is a less Epos vom widely available new edition: KarolusMagnus et Leo Papa: Ein Paderborner Jahre 799, ed. H. Beumann, F. Brunholzl and W. Winkelmann (Paderborn, 1966). On the events leading up to Leo III's journey to Paderborn, see P. Classen, Karl der das Papsttumund Byzanz, 3rd edn., ed. H. Fuhrmann and C. Martl (Beitrage GroJ3e, zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters, ix, Sigmaringen, 1986), pp. 42-57. 23 Poeta Saxo, Annalium de gestis Caroli Magni imperatorislibri quinque,v.651-2 (ed. P. von Winterfeld, M.G.H., Poetae, iv.l, p. 70): "Quorum Romani nomina nescierunt". 24 Theodulficarmina,no. 72.202 (ed. E. Dummler, M.G.H., Poetae, i, p. 568).
22

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ellus, sought to regain favour more directly with a poem setting out and praisingthe deeds and achievementsof the emperor up
to date (826). The elegiacumcarmen, In honoremHludowici Christi-

anissimi caesaris augusti,whateverits faults, is a masterlynarrative poem that depicts the routines,feastsand great occasionsof Louis the Pious's court all the more vividly in that its author yearned to returnand take part againat least in the doings of the palatium of his patron, Pippin of Aquitaine. He knew also where power lay in that hotbed of intriguesand rancoursaroundthe emperor's personof which he himself had become the victim. Europenecessarily figured in his grandiose attempt to please. In describing Louis's meeting with the pope, Stephen IV, in 816, Ermold addresses him: "You, pious emperor, have the kingdoms of Europe (Europaeregna)in your powerful grip".25The echo of Cathwulf'sletter is very striking.Europealso clincheda rhetorical climax Ermold created to describeLouis the Pious's host for the Breton campaignof August-September818. He had summoned contingentsfrom all over the Reich and orderedthem to assemble at a place Ermold mistakenlythought to have been Vannes. It is interesting also that he called the gathering a placitum. The emperor had summoned the Franks and the peoples subject to them. There were Swabians,Saxons, Thuringiansand Burgundians. "I forbear", Ermold continued, "to cite all the peoples and tribes of Europe that had come to fight the Breton prince".26 Ermold wanted the largest stage for his flatteries. In an earlier letter addressed to King Pippin, he exhorted him to obey his fatheralways, "whose faith, uprightness,wisdom and fame were known in all Europe and Asia".27 Poets like WalafridStraboand Sedulius Scottus, when hailing patronsor high-rankingfriendsand well-wishersless exaltedthan kings, still pluckedthe Europe-stringto play their tunes of flattery and ingratiation.The fact that Carolingian kings like Charlesthe Bald and Louis the Germanruled over smallerrealms than their father and grandfatherhad done did not discourage the poets from endowingthem with Europeanepitheta and horizons,if only through their descent from Charlemagne. When Sedulius
In honoremHludowici, 1. 923, in Ermold le Noire, Poeme sur Louis le Pieux et epitres au Roi Pepin, ed. E. Faral (Classiques de l'histoire de France au moyen age, xiv, Paris, 1964), p. 72. 26Ibid., 11.1510-20 (p. 116). 27 Ermold, Ad eundemPippinum, 11. 189-90, in Ermold, Poeme sur Louis le Pieux, ed. Faral, p. 230.
25

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addressedCharlesthe Bald his grandfather was Europae princeps, imperialedecus ("ruler of Europe, imperial glory"),28 and he repeatedthese lines in a later piece and more aptly: Charlemagne was a Caesar, renowned in the whole world and again Europae
princeps, imperialedecus.29Europe was made to rejoice or to grieve

when either good fortune or death struck the Carolingian house. The birth of Lothar's son Charlesby Ermengarda, his first wife, in 845, was greeted in a joyful poem: he was a "bright new star, the glory of the world, the hope of Rome", and this new star shone for the peoples of Europe.30He did not live beyond his eighteenth year. SeduliusScottus was no less assiduousin paying his court to Louis the German.He too was likened to a star that Hrabanus Maurus,Louis'serstwhileopponbrightenedEurope.31 in a letter to the ent, spoke king of his good name which was in all the of provinces Germany and Gaul, and of his spread which were praises being sung aloudin nearly(againthe rhetorical all of In an equally encomiasticletter sent paene) parts Europe.32 Abbot Ermenrich of Ellwangento Abbot Grimald,Louis the by it is not just Grimaldwho is lauded, but German'sarch-chaplain, even more his masterLouis, "our beloved king". Louis is likened to the pleasantestof rivers flowing from the foremost springs of all Europe. Even though he now rules over a more limited realm, that is, his share of the divided FrankishReich, by his virtue he outshines Hercules, who had lorded it over the centaurs,and by his skill Ulysses. Ask the Slavs (againstwhom Louis had warred on the whole not unsuccessfully)and you will not marvel at my notice of him.33The death of Bertha, Lothar II's daughter,who had been marriedto MargraveAdalbert II of Tuscany, in 925, evoked an epitaph reminiscent of greater days: "Now Europe sighs, now grieves all Francia, Corsica, Sardinia, Greece and Berthafor whom the Italy"; yet she was not the only Carolingian epitaph might have been composed.34
Sedulii Scotti carmina,ii.14.8 (ed. L. Traube, M.G.H., Poetae, iii, p. 182). Ibid., ii.28.1-2 (p. 193). 30 Ibid., ii.23.6-7 (p. 189). 31 Ibid., ii.30.27-8 (p. 195). 32 Hrabani Mauri epistolae,no. 37 (ed. E. Diimmler, M.G.H., Epistolae in quarto, v, p. 472). 33 ErmanriciElwangensis abbatem,ed. E. Dummler (M.G.H., epistolaad Grimaldum Epistolae in quarto, v), p. 536. 34 EpitaphiumBerthae, 11.23-4 (ed. K. Strecker, M.G.H., Poetae, iv.3, p. 1008). For other Carolingian Berthas, see K. F. Werner, "Die Nachkommen Karls des Grossen bis um das Jahr 1000 (1.-8. Generation)", in W. Braunfelsand P. E. Schramm
29 28

(cont. on p. 37)

CONCEPTS OF EUROPE IN THE EARLY AND HIGH MIDDLE AGES 37

From these examples- and there are a good many others not cited here - one conclusionabout ninth-centuryuses of the term "Europe" forces itself upon the reader of so much occasional Carolingian poetry and schooled letter-writing. Europe had become more than anything else a topos of panegyric,a cultural and ethnic concept. emblemratherthan a solid, firm geographical It was flauntedliberallyand with much repetition in the context of flattery and praise when addressingthe great. The European were to hand and readilyexchangedamong scaleand comparative the literati, and these ninth-century savants and men of letters were also awareof that tripartiteworld of which Europewas one constituent element. They even paradedtheir knowledge of the classicalmythology of the continent in their verses. They knew that Europa,daughterof Agenor, had been ravishedby Zeus who took her to Greece, and that she had given her name to the In a cosmographic poem of unknown,late eighth-century patria.35 whole had become a homeland,and the author as a origin, Europe set about describingit country by country and people by people beginningwith Scythiaand the MaeoticSwamps(southernRussia and the Sea of Azoff). Towardsthe north the Don girdled it; this was the correct tradition. The whole account has a strongly Frankish ring, though the Saxons too are cited as an "agile", hard and warlike people. In Gallia Belgica between Rhine and Seinethe royaldemesneand the princelywarriorswho came from there were lauded.36 The final note in this genre of Carolingiannarrativehistorical poetry was struck by the Poeta Saxo of the late ninth century and the reworkedFrankish who set Einhard'sLife of Charlemagne royal annals in verse, though these were not his sole annalistic source. He did not disguise either the intensity, durationor the ferocity of Charlemagne'swars to overcome the Saxons, but observed with pride that it was done with enormous effort and sweat and that to "drag us away from the cult of demons the
(n. 34 cont.)

und Nachleben, 5 vols. (Diisseldorf, 1967-75), iv, (eds.), Karl der Grofie, Lebenswerk Das Nachleben, pp. 444 (daughter of Charlemagne), 449 (daughter of Lothar I), 451 (daughter of Louis the German), table (Generation V, a27, daughter of Berengar I). 35 Rhythmi aevi Merovingiciet Carolini, no. 39 (ed. Strecker, p. 552). 36 Uersus de Asia et de uniuersi mundi rota, strophes 15 (Europe/Agenor), 16-17 (boundaries), 23 (Saxons), 25 (Gallia Belgica), in Itinerariaet alia geographica,2 vols. (Corpus Christianorum, ser. Lat., clxxv-clxxvi, Turnhout, 1965), i, pp. 445, 446, 448, 449.

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peoples of all Europe had to be mobilizedand called to arms".37 But his was not a lone voice. When Notker the Stammerer addressed himself to a failing Carolingian,Charles III, in his nostalgic Gesta Karoli (composed around 887), he once again struck the Carolingian-Frankish-European chords with all their self-assertivegrandiloquence. Despite recent failuresand humiliationsat the handsof the Vikingsthis theme flourished,reminding men of better days and spurring them on to renewed efforts. Nearly all Europehad assembledround Charlesafter his triumph over the Avars. All Europe was recruitedand hence had a share in one of the emperor'sgreatestworks, building the bridge over the Rhine at Mainz.38 It was a joint and immenselywell-ordered and well-organized effort, by which Notker perhaps wished to imply that such a European-wideenterprisewould now be quite impossible. Harun al-Rashid's envoys, moreover, were invited by Charlemagneto partakeof his banquet, where the foremost man of all Francia and Europe would dine.39Europe here was but an enlargedFrancia.To relieve the dearthof the Lybians, so Notker narrated,Charlesdispatchedgrain, wine and even oil, the riches of Europe.40 A clear awarenessof Europe with its advantages and potential as against north Africa seems to underline these proud reminiscences.The Lybianseven becametributaries. Some faint recollectionof the presents the embassy from Fustat may have offered in 801 perhapsunderlaythese tales.41 The breakupof Carolingian rule was, like its growth by conand as a Europeanphenomquest, seen in a Europeanframework enon. The Fulda Annals in a famous passage report under the Arnulf, year 888 that while the new (andillegitimate)Carolingian, receivedthe homagesof Bavarians, EasternFranks,Saxons,Thuringiansand Slavs at Regensburgand dwelt there for a long time, "many kinglets sprangup in Europe", which is then more or less equated with the Carolingianrealm of the sick, deserted and abandonedCharlesIII. The annalistthen enumeratesarrogations and attempted arrogationsin Italy, upper Burgundy, Provence
Poeta Saxo, Annalium, v.29-32 (ed. von Winterfeld, p. 56). Notker der Stammler, Gesta Karoli Magni imperatoris,i.30 (ed. H. F. Haefele, rev. edn., M.G.H., S.R.G., new ser., xii, Berlin, 1980, pp. 40-1). 39 Ibid., ii.8 (p. 60). 40 Ibid., ii.9 (p. 63). 41 As suggested by H. F. Haefele, ibid. (p. 63 n. 3).
37 38

CONCEPTS OF EUROPE IN THE EARLY AND HIGH MIDDLE AGES 39

and northernFrance.42Regino of Priim, when he describedthe same events, also reflectedon them. All the kingdomswhich had obeyed CharlesIII fell away from their mutual connection and set aboutraisingkings from their own midst (viscera).This caused great wars, for there were plenty of Frankishprinces capableof ruling, yet they chancedto be so nearlyequal to one anotherthat they would not deign to bow to their peers.43Regino described the new kings and their kingdomslike the Fulda annalist,but he saw them only in an all-Frankishsetting. horizonsand eulogies were matched These Frankish-European by similar Byzantine ones. Writing from Naples, Eugenius Vulgarius sought to ingratiatehimself with the emperor Leo VI in verse. He describedhim as vanquishingEuropeand overthrowing Africa,thus fulfillingan emperor'sperennialtask of subduingthe whateverthe reality barbarian world. He was the rerum dominus, of his Bulgarian wars with their defeats and costly tactics of buying off this formidable enemy may have been.44 For the Byzantines,however, Europe could never gain the significanceit came to have for their Carolingian western rivalsand adversaries. The European provinces of their empire were but a part, and that not the richestpart, of a whole which had its centreof gravity in Asia Minor. True, there were Europeancities of the greatest and Adrianoculturaland religiousimportance,like Thessalonika ple, but in the ranking of the themes and the desirabilityand salariesof these commandsthose of Asia had precedencefor the most partand countedfor more even thanMacedonia and Thrace, even though the first was the home of the reigning dynasty from the later ninth century onwards.45 However trivialand occasionalthe contexts of all the panegyrical ninth-century verse that has been surveyed here may have been, its authorsand their courtly audiencefelt themselvesto be Europeans. They were the owners of a literary tradition which carriedweight precisely because it was shared, an erudite lingua
42Annales Fuldensessive Annales orientalis,ed. F. Kurze (M.G.H., regniFrancorum S.R.G., vii, Hanover, 1891), p. 116. 43ReginonisabbatisPrumiensischroniconcum continuationeTreverensi,ed. F. Kurze (M.G.H., S.R.G., 1, Hanover, 1890), p. 129. 44 Eugenii Vulgarii sylloga, no. 18 (ed. P. von Winterfeld, M.G.H., Poetae, iv.l, p. 425). 45 See, in de thematibus,ed. A. Pertusi (Studi e general, CostantinoPorfirogenito: testi, clx, Vatican City, 1952); W. Treadgold, The Byzantine Recovery,780-842 (Stanford, 1988), pp. 14-17, 337-41.

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franca. It was a common possession which crossed new, and as yet very unstable, regnalfrontiersand ethnic boundaries,part of a culturethat began to distinguishand bear the hallmarkof Latin Christianity.More self-consciously than anyone, however, the papacy gave body, action and reality to this awareness.Despite its vicissitudes in Rome it never ceased to pronounce itself the head and foremost authority in the western church, indeed the churchas a whole. As an institution,therefore,it came to be less dependent on its political fortunes in Rome than on its rising precedenceand the awe which its privilegesinspiredamong often hard-pressedpetitioners from everywhere, not only Francia. A letter of Pope Leo IV (d. 858) to the patriarchof Constantinople of circa853 shows him vaunting a European-widejurisdictionin all its undefinedamplitude. The patriarchIgnatius (847-58) had sent a palliumto the pope, as a token, no doubt, of fraternaland collegial amity. The gift was firmly refused, not without a note of deliberatecondescension.No doubt, Leo causedto be written, the present was kindly meant; but as the Roman church was clearlythe head and mistressof all churchesit was not its custom to accept a pallium from elsewhere (the aliundewas distinctly offensive), but ratherto bestow it on those on whom it was to be conferredall over Europe (per totamEuropam). For this reason the pope asked the patriarchnot to take it ill that he sent the gift back to its donor. The text stressed first of all the fullness of papaldiscretionto honoursubjectprelatesin this way.46The use of the term Europe, moreover,opened up the widest perspectives for papal supremacy.It could extend eastwardsas well as westwards, and so markedthe patriarchof Constantinopleclearly as less than equal to the bishop of Rome. Yet could it also entail a narrowing, a curtailmentof the European dimension, if it was coterminouswith the reachof papalprivilegesand favours?Were the provinces of Byzantiumpart of papal Europe?It is perhaps characteristic that Leo's successor,Nicholas I, evaded such questions of frontiersby speakingprincipally of Orientand Occident.47 Europeanconsciousnessin the Carolingianninth century was not only an urbane, literary self-indulgence. It gained a sterner complexion and urgency with the catastrophesthat began to
46 Epistolae selectae Leonis IV, ed. A. von Hirsch-Gereuth (M.G.H., Epistolae in quarto, v), p. 607. 47 See, for example, Nicholae I papae epistolae,nos. 46, 87, 88, 107 (ed. E. Perels, M.G.H., Epistolae in quarto, vi, pp. 325, 452, 475, 620).

CONCEPTS OF EUROPE IN THE EARLY AND HIGH MIDDLE AGES 41

threaten the Carolingianworld, the movements of the Vikings and their shatteringblows and devastationsin the heartlandsof erstwhile Carolingian well-being. Underlying the poetry, the and the courtly converse of the elite, and essential belles-lettres for the formationof a sense of Europe,had been the manydecades of internalpeace which the heartlandsof the Reich, west Francia, east Franciaand Italy, had enjoyed for almost sixty years under and Louis the Pious. It was a unique experience in Charlemagne the early medieval Occident, which in itself buttressedthe European horizonsof the men of letters and their audience.When this peace broke down, thanks to the relentlessfraternalfeuds of the Carolingianfamily, their respective followers and the greater nobles, as well as the attacksof the Vikings, the crisis also had a profound impact on the European mentalitethat animated the articulate few. The Vikings were an inner-Europeanphenomenon. They came from a north that had hithertoscarcelycounted. Their unwelcome visitations gave, however, a new inflexion to the meaning of Europe in the historiographyof the struggling Frankishkingdoms. They crystallizedthe notion of Europe and associatedit with a degree of civilization, goods and values that had to be defended against enemies, occasionallydescribed as barbarians.48 Europe was, and wanted to be seen as, Christian. The Vikings were not. Such a conception of Europe, a continent threatenedand on the defensive, becameeven more pressingwhen the enemieswere strangersfrom the Eurasiansteppes, differentin aspect, bearing and basic equipmentfrom the settled inhabitants and the warriors of centraland westernEurope. Horse-bornenomadsand archers, the Magyarsstruckdeep and often into east Francia,west Francia, Burgundyand Italy so that they could be perceived clearly as a menace to all Europe.49Liudprand of Cremona accused King
48 For Vikings as barbarians,see, for example, Sedulii Scotti carmina,ii. 15.5-6 (ed. Traube, p. 183); lohannis Scotti carmina, iii.6 (ed. L. Traube, M.G.H., Poetae, iii, p. 541); Les annalesde Saint-Bertin, ed. F. Grat et al. (Paris, 1964), p. 31 (the famous passage on the Rus coming from Byzantium through Francia in 839). For the eastern Franks it was rather the Slavs who were barbarians, as can be seen from Notker, Gesta Karoli, i.30, ii.12 (ed. Haefele, pp. 17, 70, 74); Annales Fuldenses,ed. Kurze, s.a. 840, p. 30. The antithesis of Europe and barbarism is also offered by Eugenius Vulgarius in the poem cited above, n. 44. 49The best summaries of the Hungarian raids are G. Fasoli, Le incurzioniungarein StammesEuropanel secolo10 (Florence, 1945); S. de Vajay,Der Eintritt desungarischen bundesin die europaischen Geschichte,862-933 (Mainz, 1968); see also K. J. Leyser, "The Battle at the Lech, 955: A Study in Tenth-Century Warfare", History, 1(1965), pp. 1-25.

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Arnulf, the illegitimateCarolingian(d. 899), of allying with the Hungariansto destroy the Moravianprincipalityand cast down its ruler, Sviatopluk. He deplored Arnulf's blind ambition. Thanksto the Magyars,the overthrowof a wretchedlittle man he underestimatedSviatopluk- brought ruin to the whole of The Antapodosis, where Liudprandlooked back on the Europe.50 Magyarraidsafter they had at last been defeatedby Otto I at the Lech in 955, was in fact conceived as a history of Europe even though Liudprandwas well awarethat he had realizedonly part of his design.5'It was a commissionedwork. Liudprandwrote it at the behest of a Spanishbishop in partibusinfidelium, who had come to Frankfurtas the envoy of the caliph, Abd al-Rahman III. Reccemond,the bishop of Elvira, had asked him to set down the deeds of the emperors and kings of all Europe - and here Byzantiumclearly belonged since there was as yet no Ottonian it is emperor. From this, the introduction to the Antapodosis, evident that Liudprandhad a vision of Europe as a whole and could present to his readersat least some of the forces, be they basileis, kings, princes, their women, warriors, servants or resources, which were at work shaping its future.52The vision became large and vivid when he described in much detail, for instance, the events in 944-5 which brought about the downfall of the Lecapenoiin the GreatPalace of Constantinople which he still regardedas the centre of the Christianuniverse.53Stephen and ConstantineLecapenusfound that they had gained nothing by overthrowingtheir father. Their attempt to do away with the legitimist Macedonian basileus, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, ended with their own banishment, imprisonment and death. According to Liudprand, not only Europe but also Asia and Africa, that is to say the whole known world, rejoiced in their downfall and the arrival and now unquestioned authority of Constantine.54 No other westernwriterwas so well informedaboutByzantium
50 i. 13, in Liudprandi opera,ed. J. Becker (M.G.H., S.R.G., Liudprand, Antapodosis, xli, Hanover, 1915), p. 15. 51 See ibid., title, i. 1 (pp. 1, 4), for Recemond's request for a history of the whole of Europe and Liudprand's response that he had only covered a part of it. 52 The background to the work's composition is discussed in K. J. Leyser, "Ends and Means in Liudprand of Cremona", in J. D. Howard-Johnston (ed.), Byzantium and the West, c.850-c.1200 (Amsterdam, 1988), pp. 119-43, esp. pp. 127-30. 53 Liudprand, Antapodosis,v.20-2 (ed. Becker, pp. 141-4). 54 Ibid., v.22 (p. 144).

CONCEPTS OF EUROPE IN THE EARLY AND HIGH MIDDLE AGES 43

as Liudprand,who here describeda Byzantinecoupd'etat,seemingly from oral sources, in such detail that he must be counted among the prime sources for the palacerevolution. With him we The have also reachedthe beginningsof Ottonianhistoriography. Saxonroyalhouse built up an imperium by wagingwars to achieve and to secure their kingship in east Franciaand Lotharingiaand to rewardtheir warriorsas kings must. This meant campaigning in west Franciaand Italy, relentlessand incessantfighting above all to dominateand exploit the Slavonicpeoples to the east of the rivers Elbe and Saale.55But before they could gain a lasting ascendancythey had to perform the Europeantask of defeating the Magyarraiders whose great expeditions left almost none of the important cultural regions and economic strongholdsof the centre, west and south unscathed. Widukind of Corvey told his readers and not least of all his hoped-for patroness, Otto I's daughter Mathilda, what a terrible threat they had been. The very sight of the Hungarians,their dress and bearingwere horrendousfor their victims. Widukindjustifiedhis detaileddescription becauseMathildamust know from what kind of enemies her grandfather,Henry I, and her father had liberated nearly all Europe (he could not deny that they still resided in Pannonia).56 Commentingon the battle at the Lech he remarkedthat no king for two hundred years had rejoiced in such a victory as Otto I had just won, perhaps alluding to Charles Martel's encounter with the Arabs near Poitiers in 732. Before the decisive onset, after a bad start to the battle, Otto I, according to Widukind, addressedand encouragedhis warriors.He did this by extolling their superiority.It would be shamefulfor the lords of nearly all Europe- so he is made to describehis largelyBavarian,Aleman and Rhine-Frankishhost - to give their hands to their enemies, that is promiseto be subjectto them.57Widukindof Corvey thus wanted the battle at the Lech to be seen as a Europeanengagement, nor was he much mistaken in his assessment of what it
55 K. J. Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society: Ottonian Saxony (London, 1979), esp. pp. 109-12, on the structural military problems of the Ottonian rulers; for a convenient survey, see T. Reuter, Germanyin the Early Middle Ages, c. 800-1056 (London, 1991), pp. 160-74. 56 Widukindi monachi Corbeiensisrerum gestarum Saxonicarum libri III, i.18-19 (ed. P. Hirsch and H.-E. Lohmann, M.G.H., S.R.G., Ix, Hanover, 1935, p. 29). 57 Ibid., iii.46 (p. 127).

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meant for the Reich, its neighboursand, not least of all, for the Liudolfinghouse itself.58 Its historiographers, Widukindand the Quedlinburgannalist, could henceforthclothe Ottonianrule in the same genre of European eulogies and grandiloquenceas the Carolingianpoets and historianshad done, and do this regardlessof the fact that the Ottoniansdid not seek to regainthe fullnessof Carolingian overlordship. Yet by and large their hegemony emerged, and their panegyrists were not slow in proclaiming and applauding it.
Already to Widukind Henry I was regum maximus Europae.59In

the preface to book two of the Res gestae SaxonicaeMathildais called the rightful mistress of all Europe, though her father's power also reachedinto Africaand Asia.60This was probablyno more than an allusion to Byzantine and perhaps 'Ummayador even Fatimid embassies that had visited the Ottonian court in Widukindhimselfhadmentioned 956 with their exotic presents.61 them. It was an honour paid only to powerful and victorious Annalslaterunhesitatingly bestowedthis kings. The Quedlinburg dimension on and the young the empress Theophano European Otto III and his successorHenry II. In 991 Theophanoand Otto kept their Easter court with "imperial glory" at Quedlinburg, where Margrave Hugo of Tuscany and Miesco of Poland had come with the other "foremostmen of Europe" in order to pay All their respects and render obeisanceto the imperialhonour.62 were to offer as and most their gifts preciouspossessions brought themselves sent home with gifts in return. In 996 the Salian Gregory V, Otto III's kinsman, was enthroned as pope and on Ascension Day he consecratedOtto emperor "to the plauditsof the people of nearly all Europe".63In 1021 the Quedlinburg annalistagain had all the leading men of Europe flock to Merseburg as well as envoys of diverse peoples, not specified, to pay their due respects to Henry II who had come there for his Easter court.64Next year Henry II's host, on its way back from Rome,
Leyser, "Battle at the Lech", pp. 24-5. Widukind, RerumgestarumSaxonicarum,i.41 (ed. Hirsch and Lohmann, p. 60). Ibid., ii, prologue (p. 61). 61 Ibid., iii.56 (p. 135); see R. Kopke and E. Diimmler, Jahrbucherdes deutschen ReichesunterKaiser Otto der GrofJe (Jahrbucherder deutschen Geschichte, ix, Leipzig, 1876), pp. 278-9. 62 Annales Quedlinburgenses, ed. G. H. Pertz (M.G.H., Scriptores in folio, iii, Hanover, 1839), p. 68. 63 Ibid., p. 73. 64 Ibid., p. 86.
58 59 60

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was struck by a plague, but the emperor escaped it. He had but few warriorsin his company, but more met and joined him en routeuntil Mother Europe sent him on his way back to Germany MaterEuropa,the expressionthe annalistused, to hold a synod.65 suggests sentimentsof warmth, of belongingand the existence of common bonds, over and above tribaland local links and identities. Yet parallelpassagesare not readily at hand, and it is noteworthy also that in the great examples of late Ottonianimperial iconographyOtto III and Henry II are attendedby femalefigures, representingcountries subject or partly subject to them: Italia, Roma, Gallia, Germaniaand Sclavinia.Together these might be deemed to stand for Europe, but no figure of Europe herself appears in these paintings.66West Francia and Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-DanishEnglandin the late tenth and earlyeleventh centuries lay outside and well beyond the reach of the OttonianReich, and Europe is unthinkablewithout them. The Ottonians'concept of Europe was somewhat self-centred and remainedso well into the eleventh century.The Niederalteich Annals, whose compilatory section was put together not long before 1032 from older sources availableto the annalist, give a fairly detailedaccount of the role of Duke Henry of Bavariaand Bishop Abrahamof Freising's rising against Otto II in 974. Had it not been thwarted by the promptitudeof MargraveBerthold of the northern march nearly all Europe might have been laid low and ruined by it.67It was not Henry of Bavaria'slast attempt to seize the kingship from the senior branch of the Ottonian house, but perhaps his alliance with Boleslas of Bohemia and Miesco of Poland presentedan especiallyserious challengeto the order bequeathedby Otto I to his successor.Altogetherthe most lasting and profound change and development in the tenth and early eleventh centurieswas the enlargementand the emergence
Ibid.,p. 88. There are three such illustrations, one in a detached leaf now in Chantilly, one in the Trier RegistrumGregoriiand one in the Gospel-book of Otto III now in Munich. For further details and dating - the current consensus is that the first two date from the end of Otto II's reign and the beginning of Otto III's reign respectively, the third from late in Otto III's reign - see H. Mayr-Harting, OttonianBook Illumination:An Historical Study, 2 vols. (London, 1991), i, pp. 159-62, ii, pp. 30-1, with references to the specialist literature. 67 Annales Altahenses maiores, ed. E. von Oefele (M.G.H., S.R.G., iv, Hanover, 1891), p. 12. Berthold held a march in the Frankish region of Bavaria around Schweinfurt, so the term "northern" is explained by the annalist's Bavarian perspective.
65 66

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of a new east and south-easternEuropeanworld which from then on became a permanent, essential and articulate feature of its ethnic and political make-up and its Latin-Christian culture. By the early eleventh century Bohemia, Poland and Hungary were effective members of the Europeancommunityof regna,the last two with kings and dukes that had their own links with Rome and did not depend on the Reichskirche. If Bohemia remained part of the Empire it none the less gained a very special place in it. What had been ethnic reservoirsbecame orderedpolities that permanently stood between the west and the great spaces of
Russia.68

Not all of Slavonic Europe had been so close to the nobility and social order of the Empireand the regnaof France, England, northern Spain and, eventually, Sicily. Adam of Bremen, the great historianand ethnographerof the northern world, which he watched and knew from his vantage-pointas church provost in Bremen, has left us a descriptionof a flourishingif vigorously heathentown that had its own access to the centresof civilization, like Constantinople. It lay by the mouth of the Oder, seven days' from the Elbe. Not only barbarians,but also Greeks journey dwelt in the vicinity of Jumne (probably to be identified with Wolin on the Baltic coast). Saxons lived there too, but had to keep their Christianityunder wraps. The natives were pagans, but none the less well mannered and hospitable. Jumne was evidently a great emporium, a huge port of exchange, full of everything worthwhile producedin the north. Adam of Bremen He wrote his greathistory thoughtit the greatestcity of Europe.69 from 1072 onwards,and this of the church of Hamburg-Bremen reveals the existence and vitality of a northern and Slavonic but wealthy, not uncivEuropenot yet part of Latin Christianity, ilized and in touch with the Mediterranean by its own means and commercialroutes. and post-Ottonian Europe thus consisted of Post-Carolingian a pluralityof kingdoms, of which the Empire was only the most prestigious, but in no way set over all the others or possessing
68 See on this F. Dvornik, The Making of Central and Eastern Europe, 2nd edn. des (Gulf Breeze, 1974); J. Fried, Otto III. und Boleslaw Chrobry:Das Widmungsbild Aachener Evangeliars, der 'Akt von Gnesen" und das frihe polnische und ungarische Kinigtum (Frankfurter historische Abhandlungen, xxx, Wiesbaden, 1989), on the crucial events of the year 1000. 69Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, ii.22 (ed. B. Schmeidler, M.G.H., S.R.G., ii, Hanover, 1917, p. 79).

CONCEPTS OF EUROPE IN THE EARLY AND HIGH MIDDLE AGES 47

authority in the west and in Anglo-Saxon England. One of its most respected historians, the monk Rodulf Glaber, writing in Burgundy,has given us a fair portraitof this pluralism,of which he was conscious. The downfall of the Carolingianswith their and the side-by-side of late Ottoniansand Salians imperialhabitus and Capetians seem to have given him deep satisfaction. He approvedof the politicalstructureof Europeas it had turnedout, just as he approved of the Europeanpassion for pilgrimagesto the east and to Jerusalem.70 Latin Christianityand the Occident were mouldedby this monasticcultureno less thanby the material developmentwhich in the eleventh century began here and there to gain momentum. Moreover Europe, or the Occident, was in the later eleventh century on the threshold of a new surge of aggressive selfawareness.For some decadesLatin Christianity had been divided and rent by the emergenceof new powers like the Normans and the conflicts that harassedold ones, above all the Empire. But none of these developments,least of all the arrivalof the Normans, diminished Europeanaggressivenesson the frontiers, be it in south Italy or in Spain. No very strong sense of Europe could perhaps emerge from these particularistand acquisitive enterprises, or from the conflicts of the Salianswith their disaffected princes and the papacy. But with the preachingof the crusade,71 which mobilizedFrench, ProvenCal, Italianand Germanwarriors as well, the Occidentbecamea power both militaryand religious as well as intellectuallyself-possessed, a power which remained imposingand frighteninguntil the cumulativelosses of two world wars reduced both its power and its will to continue living in age-old habits and forced its inhabitantsto share a new ethos of living together. K. J. Leyser

70 Rodulfus Glaber, The Five Books of the Histories (ed. J. France, Oxford, 1989), 1, preface.1, l.i.4-5, 16 (pp. 1, 10, 30); 2.i. 1 (pp. 48-50, on the new European order), 4.ii. 18 (p. 198, on pilgrimages to Jerusalem). Note, however, that Rodulfus does not talk explicitly of Europe, but instead contrasts the "Roman Empire" with "distant and barbarous provinces" (1, preface.1, p. 1). 71 According to William of Malmesbury, Urban II himself claimed when preaching the crusade in 1095 that Europe was endangered by the Seljuk advance: see Hay, Europe, pp. 30-1.