Mad Mothers: Frankish Queen Gerberga

By Kim Rendfeld

Empress costume from
The Costumes of All Nations (1882)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**From The Cross and the Dragon**

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

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

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

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

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

“Where are they now?” Alda asked.

“I know not.”

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

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

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

Sources

Charlemagne: Translated Sources, P.D. King

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

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

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

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

The Intellectuals: The Start of the Carolingian Renaissance

By Kim Rendfeld

In 780, Frankish King Charles might have been thinking about his realm’s long-term future and wanted to give his empire an intellectual foundation, one to associate Francia with ancient Rome and rival the Byzantines.

At that time, the man we today call Charlemagne had ruled for 12 years and had conquered Aquitaine and Lombardy. Although he was still warring with Saxon tribes, he had gained significant territory. The father of six (with No. 7 on the way) was 32, no longer a young man by medieval standards.

He and his queen, Hildegard, who was from a long-established, powerful family, started a journey to Rome, perhaps with empire-building on their minds, judging by what happened in Rome the following spring.

But first the royal family needed to spend the winter in Pavia. There, Charles might have met Paul the Deacon, a Lombard who wrote Historia Romana and other works and had taught in the overthrown court of Pavia, and Peter of Pisa, a deacon and poet who would later teach the king Latin grammar.

A public domain image from 1830 of Alcuin
presenting a manuscript to Charlemagne

When the Frankish royals resumed their journey in warmer weather, Charles met Alcuin in Parma. Alcuin, a Saxon from Britain, already earned a reputation as master of the cathedral school at York, and Charles invited him to lead the Palace School in Francia. Alcuin agreed, after he got permission from his superior upon his return to York.

In Rome, the pope anointed Charles and Hildegard's three- and four-year-old sons as subkings, and their six-year-old daughter was betrothed to the child emperor of Byzantium. The Frankish king and the pope apparently discussed Charles's uneasy relations with his cousin the duke of Bavaria, resulting in high-level diplomatic talks later.

After Easter, Charles and Hildegard returned to Francia in the company of intelligent men: Peter of Pisa; Paul the Deacon; Paulinus of Aquileia, who would later write about theology and play a role in converting the conquered Avars in the 790s, and Fardulf, a poet who in the 790s exposed a plot to overthrow Charles and was rewarded with the abbey of Saint-Denis.

Charles’s intellectuals would come and go in fulfilling their other roles, and his circle of scholars would expand to include other nationalities such as Theodulf, a Visigoth from Hispania and leading satirist, poet, author, and bishop of Orléans, and Dungal from Ireland. The circle had a few Franks such as Angilbert, Charles's trusted aide, diplomat, poet, lay abbot of Saint-Riquier who would transform the place into a center for learning, and later almost-husband (technically a Friedelmann) of Charles's daughter Bertha.

These thinkers and writers were sometimes rivals who were not above teasing and sniping at each other in their poetry. But thanks to them and others, Francia produced more literary work than before.

Charles's own education level in the 780s is unclear, but it was higher than most of his illiterate countrymen's. Likely, his mother taught him his first lessons, and she hired a churchman to tutor him as he got older. By the end of his life, he could read but not write. He could converse in Latin in addition to his native Frankish and understood Greek better than he could speak it. He enjoyed the liberal arts ranging from literature to math to music and astronomy, studied philosophy, and had his sons and his daughters educated.

He never stopped learning, and in old age, he tried his hand at writing. He didn't need that skill. He had clerks for that as did the rest of the nobility. But this hunger for knowledge might been another reason he recruited intellectuals.

Sources

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

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

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

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

Kim Rendfeld's third novel, Queen of the Darkest Hour, about Charlemagne's fourth wife, Fastrada, includes the early days of the Palace School. She is also the author of The Cross and the Dragon and The Ashes of Heaven's Pillar. Connect with Kim on Facebook (facebook.com/authorkimrendfeld), Twitter (@kimrendfeld) her blog (kimrendfeld.wordpress.com) or her website (kimrendfeld.com).

Unlikely Romances: Pepin and Bertrada

By Kim Rendfeld

A man seeks a divorce and, when told he cannot remarry, not only stays with his current wife for the rest of his life but makes her his full partner. Not the typical ending of such a scenario, but that is what happened between Pepin and Bertrada and why I’ve chosen them as an unlikely romance.

Love was not the deciding factor in early medieval marriages. If it happened, great, but husbands and wives felt lucky if they merely got along. Aristocrats wed to solidify political alliances and amass wealth, often in the form of land. By the standards of their time, the marriage of Bertrada of Laon and Pepin, mayor of the palace, in 744 made sense: they came from two noble families in adjoining territories.

At some point, Pepin did seek to end the marriage, but when and why is unclear. It probably had something to do with their not conceiving right away. This was an age when such a failure was a sign of God’s displeasure.

Two years after the nuptials, Pepin sent an emissary to Pope Zachary asking about illicit marriages. Perhaps he was wondering about consanguinity. He and Bertrada were relatives to the fourth degree (they shared a set of great-grandparents), rather than the preferred seventh.

The historical novelist in me has a lot of questions. Did Pepin and Bertrada quarrel? How long did Bertrada pray to God and maybe a saint for a child? Did she agree to the inquiry or fight it? Did someone who didn’t get along with Bertrada put Pepin up to it?

If Pepin wanted to free himself for another marriage, he didn’t get the answer he wanted. In 747, the pope ruled that remarriage after divorce was forbidden.

Medieval husbands had some options. Couples could live apart.  Even with the wife in the same house, a man could take a concubine and see if she would bear children, although this carried the risk of uncertainty with inheritance rights. An unhappy man could also try to convince his spouse to take the veil, which would annul the marriage.

But it seems like Pepin saw this as a sign to try again with Bertrada. Or maybe the couple was still trying despite Pepin’s inquiry. The same year the pope said no, Pepin and Bertrada conceived. When she delivered Charles (today called Charlemagne) in April 748, her position was secure.

Early medieval sources rarely elaborate on a couple’s sentiment for each other. Apparently, Pepin was a steadfast husband. There are no records of children born outside wedlock or concubines. Even more, he relied on Bertrada to accomplish his political ends. In 754, the counts and bishops elected Pepin as king. And they elected Bertrada as queen, an unprecedented move among the Merovingians they replaced.

Pepin and Bertrada would rule together until Pepin’s death in 768. Taking the widow’s veil, she continued working for their cause, mainly making sure the two sons who inherited the kingdom didn’t tear it apart.

Kim Rendfeld is the author of two novels set in early medieval Francia, The Cross and the Dragon and The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar. She is currently working on Queen of the Darkest Hour, a novel about Charlemagne’s fourth wife, Fastrada.

Children's Stories & Pastimes: The Frankish Warrior’s Version of Play with a Purpose

By Kim Rendfeld

Eighth-century Franks had their own version age appropriate, educational toys and games, especially for boys born to noble families.

At age 3, they were given wooden swords, with the expectation that they would wield iron ones in a few years. And I do mean a few years, if we are to believe the annals. Childhood did not last long.

Charlemagne was 13 during his first campaign against Aquitaine in 761 with his father, King Pepin. His son Charles (called Karl in my books) was about 11 or 12 in the 784 battles against the Saxony, and as part an effort to intimidate the duke of Bavaria, Charles’s son Pippin of Italy (spelled this way in self-defense) was about 10 when asked to march an army to Trent in 787, although he did not accompany the soldiers all the way to Balzano. The boys probably led the forces in name only, but taking them even near the battlefield isn’t exactly keeping them out of harm’s way.

So I can imagine medieval fathers taking their sons hands and saying “Hold the hilt like this” and “Move your feet like the way you dance.”

As noble boys got older, their games included archery and simulated combat. To learn to hit a target correctly they aimed a lance at a manikin with a shield. If the blow was not true, they’d been smacked with a bag of flour.

When it came to the pastime of hunting, young boys wanted to be part of the dangerous sport. In 826, 3-year-old Charles (named after grandfather Charlemagne) imitated his father, Louis. When the child spotted the prey, he called for his horse and a quiver of arrows. His mother and tutor had to literally hold him back. Never fear, though. The young animal was caught and brought to the prince, says the poet Ermold, and “he seized weapons of his own size and struck the trembling beast.”

Even indoor forms of play served a purpose. Toy soldiers made of silver, gold, or bronze and board games similar to chess and backgammon were both good at developing strategy. Aristocratic boys were going to grow up to lead common soldiers, conscripts who would get most of their training on the battlefields. The future lords needed to know how to think.

Sources:

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

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

Daily Life in the Age of Charlemagne, John J. Butt

Kim Rendfeld is the author of two books set in the early days of Charlemagne’s reign:

The Cross and the Dragon (2012, Fireship Press), a tale of love amid wars and blood feuds, and The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar (forthcoming, Fireship Press), a story of the lengths a mother will go to protect her children. For more about Kim and her fiction, visit www.kimrendfeld.com, read her blog at www.kimrendfeld.wordpress.com, like her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/authorkimrendfeld, or follow her on Twitter at @kimrendfeld.

  

Witchcraft and Sorcery: The medieval Franks’ complicated relationship with magic

By Kim Rendfeld

Officially, the Church in the days of Charlemagne prohibited magic, but in practice, the Franks’ employed the supernatural in everyday life.

As noted in other posts in this series, medieval folk were rational, but their world did not include the science and technology that we use to explain and manipulate our reality. For people in the Middle Ages, magic and religion were the means.

Someone hearing voices telling them to burn down the house? Must be demon possession. A hailstorm devastate your crops? Must be an angry God. Or sorcery. Or both.

Interestingly, Bishop Agobard of Lyon did not believe in witches, but he was in a distinct minority. To most medieval folk, you ignored supernatural forces at your peril.

Charlemagne did not take chances. Before a 791 battle with the Avars, he participated in three days of litanies, with barefoot priest and abstinence from wine and meat (or giving alms instead) – and he wrote to his wife, Fastrada, to make sure these rituals were also performed at home. This was all done to make sure God would favor the Franks in the coming war.

A ninth century piece called Talisman of Charlemagne
(photo by Garitan, shared under
Creative Commons Attribution license)

But his contemporaries did not turn to religion only. Both clerics and the laity wore amulets and charms alongside their crosses (like the heroine of my first novel, The Cross and the Dragon) and paid fortune tellers and dream interpreters. A midwife might whisper spells to a woman in labor to hasten the birth, and peasants recited incantations to keep their horses from being injured. A sick child might be brought to the roof a house to heal while herbs burned. Models of arms and legs were hung in trees for healing the actual limb. Funerals included wakes, a way to appease the dead.

The belief in magic was too powerful for the Church to stop, so it adapted. It tried to replace pagan spells with prayers for rain, a good harvest, and healing of the sick. The Host was place in a dead person’s mouth instead of a coin.

But the Church and its followers were not completely tolerant.  After a storm, three men and a woman were brought to in chains Agobard to be stoned. Another penalty: being sealing in a cask and thrown into the river, the fate of a nun Charlemagne’s grandson King Lothar wanted to be rid of.

Empress Judith, as portrayed in
a circa 1510 manuscript
(public domain image)

Allegations of sorcery were a political cudgel, especially against a woman (thought to be more vulnerable to the devil). Lothar’s partisans accused his stepmother, Empress Judith, of ensnaring her husband, Louis the Pious, through witchcraft, and they threw in adultery for good measure. Judith was able to acquit herself by swearing an oath in front of an assembly.

A less friendly audience would have required her champion to go through a trial by ordeal – for instance sticking his hand in boiling water and grabbing a rock. If the wound was not infected, that was a divine sign of innocence. The same system that threatened someone sometimes could free them.

Images via Wikimedia Commons

Kim Rendfeld is the author of The Cross and the Dragon (2012, Fireship Press) and The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar (forthcoming, Fireship Press). Magic and religion play a strong role in both novels, set in the earlier years of Charlemagne’s reign. Learn more about Kim and her work at kimrendfeld.com.