The Past and Present Society

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
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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 altera-
tions 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 pub-
lished 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
26 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 137

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 fourth-
and earlyfifth-centuryChristianworld 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
come to be seen also as a region, designatingat first Thrace- the
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 Ge-
schichte, i, Stuttgart, 1976), pp. 1-21.
2
"Europe", in G. Wissowa et al. (eds.), Paulys Real-Encyclopddieder classischen
Altertumswissenschaft, 81 vols. (Stuttgart, 1893-1978), vi.1, cols. 1291-2.
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
episcopi etymologiarumsive originumlibri XX, xiv.4 (ed. W. M. Lindsay, 2 vols.,
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,
marenostrum,severed them from one another.5Otto of Freising
begins the first book of his world history, the Chronicaor History
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
nostrumis from Orosius: Pauli Orosiihistoriarumadversumpaganos,i.2 (ed. Zangemeis-
ter, 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).
28 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 137

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 tripartitedivi-
sion.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 fleetingappear-
ance 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 civiliza-
tion 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
matters.10This raises more generally the question of the milieu
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 Lango-
bardicarum, 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 geograph-
ical, 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 accompan-
ied a Carolingianor Ottonianroyal overlordall the way to Rome
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 Europeanbear-
ings. 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 Franks-
for 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 concludedfriend-
ship 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.
30 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 137

century)had been able to vanquishthe Franks.They built another

Troy on the Rhine; it may have been Xanten.12All this is flour-
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' HistoriaBrit-
tonum is a very specific source here, and enshrines seventh-
century 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-Occidens-
Europa, 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.
 CONCEPTS OF EUROPE IN THE EARLY AND HIGH MIDDLE AGES 31

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
monksleavingthe communitieswherethey hadmadetheirvows -
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".16Once 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 Mediterraneanworld, 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 Europeancircumscrip-
tion 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 neigh-
bours and unwilling subject peoples, soon dwarfed all previous
scales and dimensions of Frankish rule. Einhard, quoting from
the inscriptionon Charlemagne'stomb, 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 Carolingianking.
Einhardthen proceededto recite the emperor'sconquests:Aqui-
taine, 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, Oriens-
Occidens-Europa,pp. 47-8.
32 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 137

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 summarycomprehen-
sion. For Einhardthe regnumFrancorumwas the be-all and end-
all of his world. Yet other literati, letter-writers and poets of
Charlemagne'sand his successors'courtsand environmentsfound
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 strong-
holds 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'sinsistence,be it by gifts or by threats,been
converted.19Yet this was far from being the end of Saxon resist-
ance, 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 Charle-
17 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 EpistolaevariorumCarlo
Magnoregnantescriptae,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).
 CONCEPTS OF EUROPE IN THE EARLY AND HIGH MIDDLE AGES 33

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 offens-
ive in Spain was progressing under Charlemagne'scounts and
missi,and here the writerpausedto deplorethe Saracens'domina-
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 Lindisfarneby the Vikingsand the expulsionof Bishop
Higbald reachedhim, he wrote a letter of consolation,but it was
again full of 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 over-
whelmed 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 devast-
ated 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.21The letter cannot
have given much comfort and cheer to Higbald, but it is note-
worthy 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
already before 800 spoken of the Reich as an imperiumChristi-
anum. The fact that Pope Leo III, unsafe in Rome, had had to
20
Ibid., no. 81 (p. 124).
21
Ibid., no. 20 (p. 57).
34 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 137

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
magnificationof just these events in the poem KarolusMagnuset
LeoPapa that the person of Charlemagneitself 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.22Europe is here the geographical
and spiritualsetting of that world order which alone counted, the
Christianone, centred on Charlemagne,his religious and secular
followingat court and in the bishoprics,monasteriesand the lands
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
merely Mediterraneanand Gallic; it was moving eastwardsand
furthernorth. The emperorshipof 800 only enhancedand under-
lined 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,ErmoldusNig-
22
KarolusMagnus 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
widely available new edition: KarolusMagnus et Leo Papa: Ein PaderbornerEpos vom
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
GroJ3e,das Papsttumund Byzanz, 3rd edn., ed. H. Fuhrmann and C. Martl (Beitrage
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).
 CONCEPTS OF EUROPE IN THE EARLY AND HIGH MIDDLE AGES 35

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-
anissimicaesarisaugusti,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. Europeneces-
sarily 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 Burgundi-
ans. "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 Carolingiankings like Charlesthe
Bald and Louis the Germanruled over smallerrealms than their
father and grandfatherhad done did not discourage the poets
from endowingthem with Europeanepithetaand horizons,if only
through their descent from Charlemagne. When Sedulius
25
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.
36 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 137

addressedCharlesthe Bald his grandfatherwas Europaeprinceps,

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 Carolingianhouse.
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
brightenedEurope.31HrabanusMaurus,Louis'serstwhileoppon-
ent, spoke in a letter to the king of his good name which was
spread in all the provinces of Germany and Gaul, and of his
praiseswhich were being sung aloudin nearly(againthe rhetorical
paene)all parts of Europe.32In an equally encomiasticletter sent
by Abbot Ermenrichof Ellwangento Abbot Grimald,Louis the
German'sarch-chaplain,it is not just Grimaldwho is lauded, but
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
Italy"; yet she was not the only CarolingianBerthafor whom the
epitaph might have been composed.34
28
Sedulii Scotti carmina,ii.14.8 (ed. L. Traube, M.G.H., Poetae, iii, p. 182).
29
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 ErmanriciElwangensisepistolaad Grimaldumabbatem,ed. E. Dummler (M.G.H.,
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
(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
emblemratherthan a solid, firm geographicaland ethnic concept.
It was flauntedliberallyand with much repetition in the context
of flattery and praise when addressingthe great. The European
scaleand comparativewere to hand and readilyexchangedamong
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
patria.35In a cosmographicpoem of unknown,late eighth-century
origin, Europeas a whole had become a homeland,and the author
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
who set Einhard'sLife of Charlemagne and the reworkedFrankish
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.)
(eds.), Karl der Grofie, Lebenswerkund Nachleben, 5 vols. (Diisseldorf, 1967-75), iv,
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.
38 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 137

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 humili-
ationsat 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.38It 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.40A clear awarenessof Europe with its advan-
tages 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 Carolingianrule was, like its growth by con-
quest, seen in a Europeanframeworkand as a Europeanphenom-
enon. The Fulda Annals in a famous passage report under the
year 888 that while the new (andillegitimate)Carolingian,Arnulf,
receivedthe homagesof Bavarians,EasternFranks,Saxons,Thur-
ingiansand 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

37 Poeta Saxo, Annalium, v.29-32 (ed. von Winterfeld, p. 56).

38 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).
 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.
These Frankish-Europeanhorizonsand eulogies were matched
by similar Byzantine ones. Writing from Naples, Eugenius Vul-
garius sought to ingratiatehimself with the emperor Leo VI in
verse. He describedhim as vanquishingEuropeand overthrowing
Africa,thus fulfillingan emperor'sperennialtask of subduingthe
barbarianworld. He was the rerumdominus,whateverthe reality
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 Carolingianwestern 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
culturaland religiousimportance,like Thessalonikaand Adriano-
ple, but in the ranking of the themes and the desirabilityand
salariesof these commandsthose of Asia had precedencefor the
most partand countedfor more even thanMacedoniaand 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 panegyr-
ical 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
regniFrancorumorientalis,ed. F. Kurze (M.G.H.,
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
general, CostantinoPorfirogenito:de thematibus,ed. A. Pertusi (Studi e
testi, clx, Vatican City, 1952); W. Treadgold, The Byzantine Recovery,780-842 (Stan-
ford, 1988), pp. 14-17, 337-41.
40 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 137

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 west-
wards, 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
characteristicthat Leo's successor,Nicholas I, evaded such ques-
tions of frontiersby speakingprincipallyof 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
belles-lettresand the courtly converse of the elite, and essential
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
Charlemagneand Louis the Pious. It was a unique experience in
the early medieval Occident, which in itself buttressedthe Euro-
pean 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-Europeanphenom-
enon. 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.48Europe 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 inhabitantsand 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
Europanel secolo10 (Florence, 1945); S. de Vajay,Der Eintritt desungarischenStammes-
bundesin die europaischenGeschichte,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.
42 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 137

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
Europe.50The Antapodosis,where Liudprandlooked back on the
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
emperor. From this, the introduction to the Antapodosis,it is
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 Constantinoplewhich 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
Liudprand, Antapodosis,i. 13, in Liudprandiopera,ed. J. Becker (M.G.H., S.R.G.,
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,seem-

ingly from oral sources, in such detail that he must be counted
among the prime sources for the palacerevolution. With him we
have also reachedthe beginningsof Ottonianhistoriography.The
Saxonroyalhouse built up an imperiumby 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 hor-
rendousfor their victims. Widukindjustifiedhis detaileddescrip-
tion 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 Europeanengage-
ment, 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).
44 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 137

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 Euro-
pean eulogies and grandiloquenceas the Carolingianpoets and
historianshad done, and do this regardlessof the fact that the
Ottoniansdid not seek to regainthe fullnessof Carolingianover-
lordship. 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
956 with their exotic presents.61Widukindhimselfhadmentioned
them. It was an honour paid only to powerful and victorious
kings. The QuedlinburgAnnalslaterunhesitatinglybestowedthis
Europeandimension on the empress Theophano and the young
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
their respects and render obeisanceto the imperialhonour.62All
broughttheir most preciouspossessionsto offer as gifts and were
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 Merse-
burg 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,
58
Leyser, "Battle at the Lech", pp. 24-5.
59 Widukind, RerumgestarumSaxonicarum,i.41 (ed. Hirsch and Lohmann, p. 60).
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, Han-
over, 1839), p. 68.
63
Ibid., p. 73.
64
Ibid., p. 86.
 CONCEPTS OF EUROPE IN THE EARLY AND HIGH MIDDLE AGES 45

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
to hold a synod.65MaterEuropa,the expressionthe annalistused,
suggests sentimentsof warmth, of belongingand the existence of
common bonds, over and above tribaland local links and identit-
ies. Yet parallelpassagesare not readily at hand, and it is note-
worthy 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 centur-
ies 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
65
Ibid.,p. 88.
66
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 per-
spective.
46 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 137

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-Christianculture. 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'
journey from the Elbe. Not only barbarians,but also Greeks
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
thoughtit the greatestcity of Europe.69He wrote his greathistory
of the church of Hamburg-Bremenfrom 1072 onwards,and this
reveals the existence and vitality of a northern and Slavonic
Europenot yet part of Latin Christianity,but wealthy, not unciv-
ilized and in touch with the Mediterraneanby its own means and
commercialroutes.
Post-Carolingianand post-Ottonian Europe thus consisted of
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.
(Gulf Breeze, 1974); J. Fried, Otto III. und Boleslaw Chrobry:Das Widmungsbilddes
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 Hammaburgensisecclesiae 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
imperialhabitusand the side-by-side of late Ottoniansand Salians
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.70Latin 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 self-
awareness.For some decadesLatin Christianityhad 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 Norm-
ans, 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 enter-
prises, 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.