Charlemagne and Roland

by Allan Massie

Genres: General Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Third in Allan Massie's celebrated Dark Ages series A truly European monarch, Charlemagne was king of the Franks from 768 to 814 and for some of that time king of the Lombards, too. From 800, when at Mass on Christmas day in Rome, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Imperator Romanorum (Emperor of the Romans) he became the renewer of the Western Empire, which had expired in the 5th century. His dual role as Emperor and King of the Franks provided the historical link between the Imperial dignity and the Frankish kingdoms and later Germany. Today both France and Germany look to him as a founding figure of their respective countries. His nephew, Roland, was also renowned for his prowess in battle and was the inspiration for the Chanson de Roland which recounts the story of the battle of Roncesvalles, in which he died.

Release date: December 8, 2011

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Print pages: 240

Sample

This novel follows The Evening of the World and Arthur the King, but is complete in itself. The connecting thread is that all three books have the same narrator, Michael Scott, and the same audience, this being his pupil, the boy who was to be the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II.

Michael Scott was born in the Scottish Borders around 1175 and died there circa 1230. He was famous in his time as a scholar and astrologer, and re-introduced the works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle to western Europe by his translations of Arabic versions of the original Greek text. Reputed to be a wizard or sorcerer, he was put by Dante in the eighth circle of the Inferno. In Border folklore he is credited with having ‘cleft the Eildon Hill in three and bridled the Tweed with a curb of stone’, and his grave may be found in Melrose Abbey.

In this book he tells the story of the first Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne and his nephew Roland, the hero of the greatest of French medieval Romances, the Chanson de Roland. He does so for the enlightenment and amusement of the young Frederick; no doubt the narrative was intended as relief from his more arduous studies. Scott is a lively but prejudiced narrator. His bias against the papacy is extreme, and may well have contributed to the quarrels with successive popes which marked Frederick’s reign. On the other hand, he displays a sympathetic understanding of Islam, and what he has to say about the relation of that religion to Christianity is curiously relevant to the modern world. It cannot be claimed that he was an accurate historian, but he is, I would suggest, an agreeably lively one.

An account of the discovery – or supposed discovery – in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris of Scott’s Latin manuscript (which I claim to have translated to the best of my ability) is given in the introduction to The Evening of the World, but it is not necessary to know the circumstances of its discovery to read and, I hope, enjoy this extraordinary Romance.

Charlemagne, the Great King, the Emperor, was a mother’s boy. The expression ‘tied to a woman’s apron strings’ was not then current, but had it been, would have sprung to men’s lips. His mother Berthrada dressed him in girls’ clothing till he was six, and some say that it is for this reason his voice never broke but remained high and piping like the treble of a boy chorister. But to my mind this is ridiculous, and the shrill voice that accorded so ill with his fine, manly figure was more likely to be the result of a childhood illness that is sometimes termed ‘mumps’. On the other hand, it is well known that in the case of boys stricken with that illness misfortune ensues and their testicles never descend as they should; so they are called often ‘eunuchs by nature’. Yet it is equally well attested that Charlemagne was no eunuch. On the contrary, he fathered many children, at least a dozen born in wedlock and more than that number born to his many concubines. So he may not have suffered from the mumps, though some accounts of his childhood insist he did; or it may be that the illness was not sufficiently severe to have prevented his testicles from descending. We must therefore conclude that any explanation offered for the shrillness of his voice is mere conjecture, and that the truth is veiled in the mist of ages.

What is certain is that Berthrada adored him and disliked his elder brother Carloman, almost as intensely as she loathed Pepin, her husband and the boys’ father. That loathing was such that she never admitted him to her bed after the night – or, as may be, afternoon – on which the younger of the princes was conceived. But precisely because she evinced such distaste for the act of congress – never, as is well attested, taking a lover in the remaining fifty-three years of her life, not even a youth at that age when women in their maturity are often enraptured by soft skins and strong legs – no one ever questioned the future Emperor’s paternity.

Berthrada was a pious woman, on her knees, praying, for several hours a day, and, sometimes in the season of Lent, for three days and three nights without intermission. Being of conspicuous virtue, she let it be known that she prayed for all the poor of the world, and this had some influence on Charles, for he was always forward in succouring the poor, and when in his old age he discovered that there were Christians living in poverty in Syria, Egypt and Africa, at Jerusalem, Alexandria and Carthage, he had compassion on their wants and would send money over the seas to them. So says his biographer, the holy Einhard. Being myself, as you know, my Prince, inclined to scepticism, I would guess that little of this money reached those for whom it was intended, but was intercepted by courtiers or applied to their own purposes by the abbots and priests by way of whom it was transmitted. In Scotland where, as you know, I was born and reared, we have an expression: ‘tarry-handed’, which is to say, sticky-fingered; and I have observed that charitable donations often suffer this fate. They are so attractive that those charged with the duty of dispensation are loath to fulfil it, but discover a more urgent use for the money; and it is for this reason that I have made it my habit or custom to give alms freely into a beggar’s hand, but to refuse money to all who beseech it on behalf of some brotherhood of charity.

But I digress. Which is not, as some say, reprehensible, for it is often from digressions that wisdom may be plucked, and in this instance the advice I have given you is good. Beware of institutions.

As I was saying, Berthrada detested her husband, not without reason; for this Pepin, short and squat, ill-proportioned, his arms being as long as those of the apes in the menagerie collected by your royal grandfather, was possessed of a vile temper. Once, for example, when Charles grew pale at the sight of a corpse much eaten by maggots, Pepin picked the youth up by his collar and the tail of his tunic, and rubbed his face in the carcass, shouting that this would cure him of his namby-pamby, ladylike airs and graces. Then he laughed when the young man spewed, and threw him on to a midden. Pepin was not only choleric, but violent and uncouth, much given to rape. It was no wonder Berthrada loathed him.

Nevertheless, he was not without qualities, and may indeed be reckoned a remarkable man. He was the first of his family to assume the crown. It happened like this.

You must know that for many centuries the kings of the Franks had been taken from the family of the Merovings, which race was of a nigh-impossible antiquity. According to pagan legend, they sprang first from the coupling of the god Wotan with a water-sprite, but this is improbable. Others – Christian heretics – report what I scarce dare write, so impious is the claim: that they were descendants of a marriage, or perhaps liaison, between Our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the harlot Mary Magdalene.

However, it is true that the ancestral line of the Merovings was of unfathomable antiquity, and that before your ancestors the Franks saw the light of the True Faith, and heard the Gospel of Christ, they held their kings to be gods, or at least supposed that they sat on footstools by the throne of the gods.

Be that as it may, by the time of which I now write, they were sorely fallen from this high estate, and the former divinities had dwindled into being no better than drivelling idiots. They still received reverence, but wielded no power. That was now exercised by their chief minister, who was given the title mayor of the palace.

He ordered all things and there was nothing left for the King to do but be content with the name of King, his flowing hair (which it was deemed impious to cut) and his long beard. He sat on his throne and pretended to rule. He received ambassadors and gave ear to them, but offered no answer till he was supplied with one by the mayor of the palace. He had nothing that he could call his own and no money save the pittance that the mayor granted him. His palace would not be recognised as such by any monarch in Christendom today; it was a long hut made of wood. Once a year he was driven thence to an Assembly of the People, and his mode of transport was a farm cart pulled by oxen and guided by a servant who on other days of the year performed the duties of a ploughman.

Nevertheless, for a long time not even the boldest mayor of the palace dared to usurp his place, for an odour of sanctity hung about this idle and useless King.

Even Charlemagne’s grandfather, the mighty Charles the Hammer, who, in two great battles, had routed the Saracens, or Moors, and driven them from the fair land of France (which they had thought to make their own, as they had Spain) did not choose, or did not dare, to dethrone these royal idiots. It was enough for him to enjoy the reality of power as mayor of the palace; he cared nothing for its semblance.

His son Pepin thought otherwise, perhaps because he was so much a lesser man. It irked him to be obliged to approach the last of the Merovings, whose name was Childeric, as one doing homage to his master.

There had been a time when the Merovings were formidable, in the days of the wars between Chilperic, who ruled northern and western France, and his sister-in-law, the terrible Brunnhilda, daughter of a prince of the Visigoths, who, as Regent for her sons, governed the south and east of the realm. Chilperic, compared by the monkish chronicler, Gregory of Tours, to Herod and Nero, on account of his impiety, heresy and cruelty, denied the reality of the Holy Trinity. Brunnhilda, ruthless as Jezebel (wife of Ahab, King of Israel), burned the castles of the nobility and had the Bishop of Verdun murdered, stoned somewhat in the manner of the first Christian martyr St Stephen. Brunnhilda, hated as deeply as she was feared, was at last seized by her enemies on the shore of Lake Neufchâtel. She was subjected to three days of torture, and then tied to the tail of a vicious horse, which was whipped to the gallop. This was rough treatment for a woman then in the seventh decade of her life.

Pepin listened to palace bards sing of these monsters, and blenched, yet could not withhold admiration. This in itself deepened or intensified the contempt in which he held his current master, the amiable, blond and vacant-minded Meroving Childeric. Yet for some time he hesitated, biting his nails to the quick in his perplexity. Despicable as the King was, he yet retained something of the mysterious sanctity of the now-distant pagan times. No one might now worship Wotan, nor credit his liaison with a sea-nymph. Nevertheless …

There must be an answer, and Pepin found it in the Pope. Having first won the approval and loyalty of the Frankish bishops and abbots by generous donations, Pepin led an embassy to the Holy Father, himself sore beset in Italy by the Lombard kings, who were ambitious to seize what was already known as the Patrimony of St Peter. He proposed a deal: if His Holiness would sanction the deposition of the wretched Childeric, then he, Pepin, would constitute himself the arm of Holy Church and True Religion.

‘As my father, Charles the Hammer, expelled the infidel from the fair land of France,’ he said, ‘so also will I serve as the sword and shield of St Peter.’

What could be more agreeable to the Pope, Stephen II? It cost him nothing to dispose of the Meroving. Accordingly, the miserable Childeric was seized and his long hair was cut – an act that would formerly have been regarded as sacrilege, and the remaining loyalists may have condemned it as such. He was compelled to submit to the tonsure. His eyes were put out (though Pepin let it be known that the guards who had done this had exceeded their orders), and he was confined in a monastery where – it is to be hoped – he devoted the remaining years of his wretched existence to prayer, fasting and submission to the will of God.

Yet, even in his hour of triumph, Pepin remained uneasy. Men observed that he sat silent at feasts, drinking deep and biting his long moustaches. ‘Uneasy,’ some said, ‘lies the head that wears an ill-gotten crown.’ The Pope remarked his ally’s perturbation, and understood its cause. Pepin had been accepted as King by the Assembly of the People, which in truth had had no choice but to do so. But something was lacking, and this the Pope was now ready to supply.

He came to Paris. He spoke, long and secretly, to Pepin, in a manner which both flattered the new King and disturbed him.

His Holiness said, ‘There are those who regard you as a usurper; at the first check you receive they will rise in rebellion and seek to depose you. Do not delude yourself that this may never happen. No man is blessed with good fortune from the cradle to the grave. It is related in the Holy Scriptures that even the mighty King David, though the favourite of the Lord, was driven from his royal palace and the city in Jerusalem when his son Absalom rose up against him. I cannot guarantee your fortune. Such power is denied even to the successor of St Peter. Moreover, the Evil One, even Satan, conspires against the most virtuous of men. But, though I cannot secure you utterly against his wiles, it is within the power vested in me by the Almighty, and confirmed by the Donation the great Emperor Constantine made to the throne of St Peter, to supply you with the legitimacy which you now fear you lack.’

Accordingly, having persuaded Pepin, the Pope celebrated a Mass at the basilica of Saint-Denis and anointed the King with holy oil, then formally crowned him. This was a novel rite for the Franks. Whereupon the Pope took Pepin by the hand, embraced him, hailed him as the eldest son of Rome and declared him to be ‘His Christian Majesty’.

Then, a few months later, Pepin at the head of his army descended into Italy, and in two or, as some have it, three battles smote the Lombards hip and thigh. ‘Truly,’ said the Pope, ‘the Almighty has sent me a sword wherewith to destroy the Amalekites.’

Doubtless this was so. Nevertheless, matters, and especially the relationship between the Holy Father and the Frankish monarchs, were more complicated than this easy formulation suggests. It is therefore necessary, my Prince, that I explain them to you, if you are to understand firstly the mystery and majesty of Charlemagne, and secondly, more urgently, the problems that will confront you as his heir when you assume the government of the Empire yourself.

My exposition may be a little dry. But do not for that reason close your ears and eyes to what I have to say. Do not skip the next chapter, in order to hasten to the more alluring delights of the wars of Charlemagne and the Romance of Roland and his peers. There will, I promise you, be delights enough, chivalrous adventures and lovely maidens to be rescued.

But meanwhile you must possess your soul in patience.

You must know that in the time of which I write the Roman Empire in the West had long ceased to exist, even in name. No Emperor since Arthur had been recognised by his colleague who ruled in Byzantium, the city of Constantine. The Germanic tribes had swept over the Empire; Goths, Vandals, Lombards and Franks. The cities were decayed. Learning survived only in a few monasteries. The Latin tongue itself was forgotten in many parts, corrupted in others, so that the language we now call French was already in formation, and even in Italy the tongue of the Empire no longer held sway, but, like a river which, as it approaches the sea, divides into the numerous streams we call a delta, ran not in a single course but had separated itself into dialects.

For a time it had seemed that Christendom itself would not survive in the West, for the Arabs had carried the name of Mohammed into Spain, and established kingdoms and emirates there. They had crossed the Pyrenees and been checked only, as I have already told you, by the valour of Charles the Hammer, grandfather of Charlemagne. But they had also conquered and occupied even this fair island of Sicily, and Arab corsairs ravaged and plundered all the coastal districts of Italy. There, it is true, the Roman Emperor still claimed to rule the exarchate of Ravenna from his palace in Byzantium; but how feeble was his hold, how little regarded his authority!

Yet the city of Rome itself still stood, though sadly fallen from its high estate. The pagan temples had long since been torn down or converted to Christian use; and many of these churches were also dilapidated. The great aqueducts of Augustus and Agrippa still marched across the Campagna, but they did so as mighty ruins, broken in places, and no longer carried water from the mountains to the city. There the Forum, where the heroes of antiquity had in the days of the Republic competed for office and solicited the votes of free citizens, was now a grazing-ground for cattle; and the Palatine, the hill where the emperors had lived in splendour, was deserted by all but goats. Owls nested in the broken masonry, and foxes littered in the ruins of the Colosseum.

But Rome was more than a name, more than a memory to make the world grow pale. It was still lent a radiance by the presence there of its bishop, the Pope. He was its sovereign and he claimed the land around it as the Patrimony of St Peter. More than that, however. There was that document of which I spoke in telling you the story of Arthur, the so-called Donation of Constantine. You have, I fear, forgotten it, or its significance.

Briefly – for I set no store by the tale – the popes asserted that when the Emperor Constantine was miraculously cured of leprosy, by the intervention of the saints, or perhaps by happy chance, he turned to the True Faith. He decreed that henceforth Christianity should be the official religion of the Empire, and that all the old pagan gods were false, impostors or devils. Then, on removing to the city that bears his name, he bestowed on His Holiness, who at that time was named Sylvester, the Imperial Government of the Western Empire. He resigned to him the Lateran Palace, long the seat of emperors, and offered him the diadem and the imperial purple, while his clergy, who were henceforth to replace the ancient Senate of Rome, were granted the privilege of adorning themselves with the senatorial boots, and garbing their horses in the white trappings that denoted senatorial rank. Thus His Holiness in Rome was the equal and colleague of the Emperor in Byzantium, though I must add that in all the history I have studied, no emperor there viewed the Pope in that light; nor did the Patriarch of Constantinople, who held himself to be of equal rank to the Bishop of Rome in all ecclesiastical matters.

And rightly so, for this document, this purported Donation of Constantine, was fraudulent, a forgery concocted in the papal chancery. It was no more authentic than the legend that had the Merovings descended from the union of Wotan and a sea-nymph. The most I shall concede is that by the time of Charlemagne, the popes and the Roman Curia may have persuaded themselves of its authenticity. Men find little difficulty in believing whatever seems of benefit to them.

Meanwhile, as if to mock the lofty claims and transcendent aspirations of the Bishop of Rome, Stephen II and his successors on the throne of St Peter, Hadrian I and Leo III, were sore-pressed by the Lombards, for it was the ambition of the Lombard kings to rule over the whole of Italy, and to suppress even the memory of the Empire. More than once they came close to success. Long before the events of which I write, one Lombard king, Authari, rode into the sea at the southern extremity of Calabria, and touched with his spear a solitary column that rose up from the waves, crying as he did so, ‘And this shall be the boundary of the Lombard realm.’

No wonder the Popes were alarmed. No wonder they feared and hated the Lombards. No wonder they looked to the noble Franks for succour.

Pepin died, to the great delight of his widow Berthrada. She not only expelled his concubines from the palace, but ordered that all but one whom she cherished should be branded with the mark of a whore, that men might know them for what they were. In truth, such was the hatred and contempt she felt for them that they were fortunate to escape with their lives.

As was the custom among the Franks, the kingdom was then divided between Pepin’s two sons born in wedlock, Carloman and Charles. Carloman, the elder, had been his father’s favourite as Charles was his mother’s. Yet Berthrada did not dare try to prevent the division of the kingdom. Charles inherited the north and west of what is now France, so that his kingdom stretched from beyond the Rhine to the River Garonne, while Carloman took the south and east.

The brothers had no love for each other. Carloman thought Charles a mollycoddle, on account of his high voice and because his mother had dressed him as a girl until he was six. Charles hated Carloman because he resembled their father, and resolved to destroy him. He said, ‘There can never be peace between us, and therefore it is better to make an end of my brother as soon as possible.’ To accomplish this he even made an alliance with Didier, then King of the Lombards, and married his daughter Desiderata. So Carloman found himself surrounded by enemies. His nerve failed him, he fell into a decline and died. This was very convenient for Charles, so convenient that it is probable the death was not natural but hastened by poison. Charles always denied this, and once ordered a man who had repeated the story to be blinded and have his tongue torn out. In fact, there is reason to believe Charles innocent of the murder, and that the guilty party was Berthrada. Poison is said to be a woman’s weapon, though I have known many men employ it also.

Charles was resolved to be a mighty warrior, and not only because he was ashamed of his high-pitched voice. As a child he had loved to hear the stories of Alexander and Julius Caesar, and longed to emulate them. So, as Alexander had conquered the Persians and Caesar the Gauls, Charles made war on the Saxons, seeking to expand his empire beyond the River Elbe.

These Saxon wars went on for more than forty years until the Saxons were utterly subdued and incorporated in the Empire. I shall not relate them in detail because the story is wearisome and repetitive. I would ask you to remember only that they continued while the more glorious and interesting adventures that are my proper subject were going on. They were a refrain running through the whole life of Charles. In finally achieving the suppression of the Saxons, and in compelling them to accept the True Religion, he certainly showed himself the equal of Alexander and Caesar, pushing far beyond the limits of the Roman Empire.

In old age he liked to hear the story of Aeneas, the father of the Roman people, and when his reader told him how the gods had promised Aeneas ‘empire without limits’, he would smile comp. . .