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).

First Ladies: Cuthburga, an Ex-Queen Who Founded an Influential Abbey

By Kim Rendfeld

Cuthburga’s greatness came after she left her royal husband.

The sister of King Ine of Wessex would go on to found Wimborne Minster in Dorset, a double monastery that would influence Christianity on the Continent. It became a training ground of female missionaries, burial place of royalty, and college of secular (nonmonastic) canons.

Wimborne

But we’re left with more questions than answers about the early medieval Saxon responsible for its existence. Her birth date is unknown, and she died August 31, perhaps in 725. She was married to Northumbrian King Aldfrith, who ruled a realm about 300 miles from her home.

Like almost all marriages in the Dark Ages, Aldfrith and Cuthburga would have wed for political reasons rather than love. Whether they parted before or after their marriage was consummated depends on whether we believe manuscripts written in the 12th and 14th centuries. In the latter manuscript, whose author took the creative liberties of a historical novelist, Cuthburga wanted Christ as her spouse, and on the night of her nuptials, she quoted Scripture to her husband to extol the virtues of virginity, a higher calling than wedlock. Although Aldfrith desired her, he released Cuthburga from her marital vows and even asked her to pray for him.

Such a scene is good for drama, but it’s highly unlikely. Medieval wedding nights were not private events. In a state of undress, the bride and groom accepted each other in front of witnesses.

A more plausible possibility is that Cuthburga became a nun after failing to produce an heir. The couple might have seen the lack of a child as a sign from God, especially if she was already drawn to a spiritual life. Her taking the veil proved mutually beneficial. As an abbess, Cuthburga would still have a position of wealth, importance, and power – plus the independence of not having a man telling her what to do.   Aldfrith would consent to letting his wife go because it would free him to marry a fertile woman.

Aldfrith had a son, Osred, around 696, but Cuthburga did not act like the boy’s mother. Osred was 8 when his father died around 704. In such cases, the widowed queen often was regent until the son came of age. Cuthburga did not play that influential role. In fact, she seemed to have nothing to with Northumbrian politics.

After leaving her husband, Cuthburga went to Barking, perhaps for a yearlong novitiate under Abbess Hildelith. By 705, she founded the double monastery at Wimborne and was joined by her sister and later successor Cwenburga. Her abbey became a center for teaching religious women. Later, Saint Boniface turned to Tetta, another of Cuthburga’s successors, when he needed nuns to serve as missionaries on the Continent.

If we are to believe Rudolf of Fulda in his ninth century hagiography about Saint Lioba, men and women at Wimborne lived on the grounds in their own houses and did not interact. The only time the women saw a man was when the priest celebrated Mass. Three centuries later, William of Malmesbury calls Cuthburga’s community “a full company of virgins, dead to earthly desires and breathing only aspirations towards heaven.”

Yet her fate in afterlife is uncertain. According to an eighth-century anonymous monk, the former queen is screaming in a penitential pit with a couple of other aristocrats, having their carnal sins thrown in their faces like boiling mud. Could the monk have meant a different Cuthburga? He mentions her once being a queen but nothing of her being an abbess.

However, she was canonized by the 14th century, and I prefer this entry from a manuscript of that era: “She was buried with fitting honour in the same church which she had built to the holy mother of God, where by her merits very many miracles were wrought and many benefits were bestowed on the sick; the power of walking was restored to the lame, hearing to the deaf, sight to the blind, through the tender mercy of Jesus our Christ, whose majesty and sway remain for ever and ever.”

Sources

A Dictionary of Saintly Women, Volume 1, by Agnes Baillie Cuninghame Dunbar

William of Malmesbury's Chronicle of the Kings of England: From the Earliest Period to the Reign of King Stephen (12th century, 1866 translation)

Hell and Its Afterlife: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Isabel Moreira and Margaret Toscano

Woman under Monasticism: Chapters on Saint-Lore and Convent Life between A.D. 500 and A.D. 1500, Lina Eckenstein

A Biographical Dictionary of Dark Age Britain: England, Scotland, and Wales, c. 500-c. 1050, Ann Williams, D. P. Kirby

The Collegiate Church of Wimborne Minster, Patricia Helen Coulstock

“The Marriage of St. Cuthburga, Who Was afterwards Foundress of the Monastery at Winiborne,” by the Rev. Canon J.M.J. Fletcher, Proceedings - Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, Vol. 27 [http://www.archive.org/stream/proceedingsdorse34dors/proceedingsdorse34dors_djvu.txt]

Medieval Sourcebook: Rudolph of Fulda: Life of Leoba [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/leoba.asp]

Kim Rendfeld was curious about Cuthburga because Wimborne trained female missionaries who played an influential role in medieval Francia, the setting for her novels, The Cross and the Dragon and The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar, and her work in progress, Queen of the Darkest Hour.

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.

Mad Monarchs: Divine Justice on Duchess Geilana

By Kim Rendfeld

Geilana wasn't crazy to order the death of the missionary who had told her husband to separate from her.

The seventh century Thuringian duchess was following a common practice of dispatching enemies. When I researched the history of my novels set in eighth century Francia, again and again, I came across blindings and assassinations, from Rome to Francia to Constantinople.

But Geilana had chosen the wrong victim, and she paid a high price: her sanity and her life.

We know about Geilana through the various legends about Saint Kilian, an Irish-born cleric. After receiving papal permission, Kilian and two companions started their work in 687 in Würzburg.

Thuringian Duke Gozbert was soon baptized and let Kilian preach wherever he wanted. Within two years, much of the populace accepted Christianity. Just one problem: when Gozbert was still a pagan, he had married his brother's widow, Geilana.

In medieval times, marriage was a means to secure alliances between important families and amass wealth, and that might have been the purpose of Gozbert and Geilana’s union. However in the eyes of the Church, Gozbert and Geilana became spiritual siblings when she married his brother. Her second marriage violated canon law.

Kilian waited a while before he broke the news to the duke, but when he did, he framed the separation as proof of Gozbert's commitment to Christianity. Gozbert responded this was the most difficult sacrifice Kilian had asked of him, but he finally agreed to put his wife aside after he returned from war. 

Perhaps, Gozbert’s reluctance stemmed from the risk a feud with her family, who would see the repudiation as an insult, and he wanted to fight only one battle at a time. Another reason: he apparently was satisfied with his marriage. Geilana’s responsibilities were far more bearing her husband an heir. Aristocratic medieval wives controlled access to their husbands, were responsible for the treasury, and impressed important guests with the family’s wealth. In short, she was a chief of staff, treasurer, and diplomat. Kilian never accused Geilana of being a bad or unfaithful wife. 

The legends portray Geilana as an enraged woman defending her status. When she ordered an assassin to behead Kilian and his companions, she might have justified her decision as a way to avoid a feud and keep peace within Thuringia. On July 8, 689, the missionaries became martyrs. Kilian urged them not to resist. At night, they were buried where they were killed, along with sacred vessels, vestments, and books.

At first, Geilana explained the missionaries’ absence as their leaving town. But the executioner, seized with guilt, revealed the murder and said Kilian's God was burning him with an inextinguishable fire. One version has him tearing at his flesh with his teeth before dying miserably.

Geilana met a similar fate. She was tormented by the devil and died crying out that Kilian was haunting her.

Or she was imprisoned after the murder, and the pagans dared Gozbert to release her, saying they would convert only if they witnessed the Christian God avenge the death of His servant. Geilana did not enjoy her freedom. She went mad and tore her flesh with her teeth until she died.

So is this story true? The older Passio about Kilian’s life might date to the veneration of his relics in 752. He probably was martyred, and it is possible a noblewoman desperate to keep peace in her realm and her status in a ruling family would resort to the brutal tactics of her time.

I will leave the veracity of divine justice to the reader, although I doubt Geilana would have been tormented by a guilty conscience. However, her story would have been real to its early medieval audience. The faithful believed the same God who granted an army victory in battle, gave a family a longed-for heir, and healed the sick also punished sinners.

Sources

-The Roman Breviary: Reformed by Order of the Holy Oecumenical Council of Trent

-Papers of the Manchester Literary Club

-Foxe's Book of Martyrs

-"St. Kilian" by Friedrich Lauchert, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 8

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Kim Rendfeld explores religion, warfare, justice, and love in her novels set in eighth century Francia: The Cross and the Dragon (2012, Fireship Press), in which a young noblewoman contends with a jilted suitor and the fear of losing her husband in battle, and The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar (2014, Fireship Press), where a mother will go to great lengths to protect her children. To read an excerpt and the first chapter of either book, visit kimrendfeld.com. You're also welcome to check out her blog Outtakes of a Historical Novelist, like her on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter, or contact her at kim [at] kimrendfeld [dot] com.

Lovers: Charlemagne and Fastrada

By Kim Rendfeld

It’s an unlikely love story: a teenager and a 35-year-old widowed father of seven. Child No. 8 with a girlfriend was on the way, and the man was also twice divorced. The teenager is Queen Fastrada, and the much older man is King Charles, whom we today call Charlemagne.

To those who are familiar with Fastrada, she seems to be an unusual choice for the lovers theme. After all, Charles’s biographer Einhard blames her cruelty as the cause of two conspiracies against the king, including one involving Charles’s eldest son, Pepin. Never mind that both sets of conspirators had other reasons to rebel. Or that Einhard never elaborates on what she did. Or that Charles and Fastrada were dead when Einhard wrote those words.

My take on Fastrada is that she was maligned, the victim of a backlash against strong women and the inspiration for my work in progress. Yet the reason I want to write about this queen is her relationship with Charles. Or more accurately, the relationship the sources hint at.

Fastrada’s birth date is not known, but she likely was between the ages of 13 and 19 when she wed Charles in 783, a few months after Queen Hildegard’s death. Charles was still fighting the Saxons, and the probable reason behind the marriage was to solidify a Frankish alliance east of the Rhine, where Fastrada was from.

But there seems to be more than politics in the couple’s union. The 787 entry in the Royal Frankish Annals includes: “The same most gracious king reached his wife, the Lady Fastrada, in the city of Worms. There they rejoiced over each other and were happy together and praised God’s mercy.”

Those two sentences are very unusual for Frankish annals. Most of the time, the authors write about wars and politics. They don’t trouble themselves with how a couple felt about their reunion after months apart. Might Fastrada have been overseeing the annals and making sure they included that information?

Another clue of the affection the couple shared comes from Charles himself in a surviving letter to Fastrada, composed before he went to war with the Avars in 791. Charles greets her as “our beloved and most loving wife.” Perhaps that can be dismissed as a flourish by the person who actually put quill to parchment. (Charles and the vast majority of Franks couldn’t write, but the monarch was among the minority who could read.) Yet the letter gives the impression the greeting is not a mere platitude.

Charles describes the litanies to ensure victory and asks Fastrada to make sure the prayers and rituals are carried out at home, adding that she can decide for herself if she’s well enough to abstain from wine and meat. Gotta like a man who says his wife can make up her own mind.

Then Charles says he is surprised he hasn’t heard from his wife lately. “As to which, it is our desire that you should notify us more frequently concerning your health and other matters.” Not the sentiment of an apathetic husband.

Did Charles and Fastrada’s love survive the heartbreak of his son’s plot to overthrow him? In 794, two years after the conspiracy, the annalists are more concerned with an assembly that Charles held with the pope’s envoys in Frankfurt and the heresy of a cleric named Felix. But the entry also mentions that Fastrada died there and was buried with honors at St. Albans in nearby Mainz.

The rites around Fastrada’s death were similar to those of Charlemagne’s third wife, Hildegard, whom he also loved. Fastrada’s remains were interred within a church – the most desirable of hallowed ground, a monument was dedicated to her, land was donated to the Church on her behalf so that she wouldn’t spend time in purgatory, and Charles commissioned an epitaph. The writer, Theodulf, called Charles “the better part of her soul.” 

In this case, “better half” doesn’t mean “superior”; its original meaning is more than half of one’s being such as an intimate friend. So, Theodulf was acknowledging the couple’s close relationship in an age where love was not a requirement for marriage.

Charles and Fastrada’s story shows us love can thrive, even where it seems unlikely.

Sources

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

Charlemagne: Translated Sources, P.D. King

A History of Charles the Great (Charlemagne), Jacob Isidor Mombert

A Dictionary of Slang and Its Analogue

Kim Rendfeld is writing a novel about Fastrada. It will be her third set in eighth-century Francia, joining The Cross and the Dragon (2012, Fireship Press) and The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar (2014, Fireship Press). To read excerpts and the first chapters her published books, visit kimrendfeld.com. You’re also welcome to check out her blog Outtakes of a Historical Novelist at kimrendfeld.wordpress.com, like her on Facebook at facebook.com/authorkimrendfeld, or follow her on Twitter at @kimrendfeld, or contact her at kim [at] kimrendfeld [dot] com.

Human Sacrifice: A Call for Divine Help in a Crisis

By Kim Rendfeld

One of the greatest emotional challenges in writing The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar is that my heroine belongs to a religion that sacrifices humans.

At least, I think the pagan Continental Saxons did such a thing. Today, we know very little of this religion. Its followers didn’t have a written language as we know it, and the Church, with Charlemagne’s assistance, did whatever it could to obliterate what it saw as devil worship. We have clues in poems, folk tales, other religions, and the writings of their enemies.

Take Charlemagne’s 782 capitulary to the Saxons. It makes human sacrifice punishable by death, along with cannibalism, burning the dead, refusing baptism, raping the lord’s daughter, and many other offenses. This is far from an objective account of what really did happen, so it’s difficult to determine what was hysteria and what was reality.

But there is other evidence that human sacrifice was part of the Saxons’ worship. The 778 entry in the Royal Frankish Annuals complains of atrocities, and another source laments indiscriminate killing.

In the 21st century, we find this act heinous. But early medieval pagans were not doing this because of sadism. They needed divine help to win a war or end a famine. Such crises called for a sacrifice more valuable than the typical meat of the best animal slaughtered for a community feast.

One reason was to thank the war god, Wodan, for the victory in battle by giving him the first war captives instead of subjecting them to slavery. Think of it as a macabre first fruits offering.

Another reason was atonement. A great disaster such as a drought or famine was a sign of divine anger, and the only acceptable appeasement was human blood. Instead of the enemy, the faithful turned on the family in power. Either the ruler’s children or the leader himself had to give up their lives for the good of the people.

So my heroine accepts the need for this ultimate sacrifice, believing the death of a few people could save an entire community.

Sources

Teutonic Mythology, Volume 1, Jacob Grimm

Carolingian Chronicles, which includes the Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, translated by

Bernard Walter Scholz with Barbara Rogers

Charlemagne: Translated Sources, P.D. King

Kim Rendfeld did her best to re-create the Continental Saxons’ religion for her latest release, The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar (2014, Fireship Press), a tale of the lengths a mother will go to protect her children after she has lost everything else. To read an excerpt and the first chapter, visit kimrendfeld.com. You’re also welcome to check out her blog Outtakes of a Historical Novelist at kimrendfeld.wordpress.com, like her on Facebook at facebook.com/authorkimrendfeld, or follow her on Twitter at @kimrendfeld, or contact her at kim [at] kimrendfeld [dot] com.

The Battlefield and Beyond: The Destruction of the Irminsul

By Kim Rendfeld

The Franks and Continental Saxons had been battling each other for a long, long time, but the war of 772 was different. It was a fight both for territory and for souls.

It was also Charlemagne’s first war in Saxony. He was merely King Charles then and relatively new to the throne. He and his brother, Carloman, each inherited half the kingdom four years earlier, when his dying father split the realm. After Carloman’s death in December 771, Charles seized his late brother’s lands, assuming sole rule of Francia.

When he decided to invade Saxony, Charles was no stranger to war. He was age 24 and had ruled some Frankish territory for less than a year.

The reason for the attack on Eresburg is open to speculation. Perhaps, the Saxons had stopped paying yearly tribute won from the previous war 14 years ago, while Pepin and then Charles were distracted with the wars in Aquitaine. Charles might have thought to let such insolence go unanswered would weaken him. Perhaps, Charles was trying to protect Church interests in pagan lands, or he saw the Saxons as a threat with the fortress of Eresburg so close to the Frankish border.

The Frankish annals don’t give us a play by play of the battles, and the Continental Saxons didn’t have a written language as we know it. However, Charles’s army marched to Eresburg after an assembly at Worms and captured a hilltop fortress in a strategic location. Then the Frankish king ordered the destruction of the Irminsul, a pillar sacred to the Saxon peoples.

We don’t know the Irminsul’s location, what it was made of, and even if there was only one. But one thing is certain: Charles was trying to prove something, just as Saints Boniface and Willibrord did decades ago when they violated pagan sites. The message to the pagans: Our God is stronger than those devils you worship.

The Royal Frankish Annals report that the Christians got divine assistance in demolishing the pillar. Because of a drought, the army did not have enough water to stay an extra day or two and complete their work. Suddenly around noon, a stream appeared and the men could finish the destruction and take the shrine’s gold and silver.

With that part of the mission accomplished, Charles’s army advanced to the Weser River, where they parleyed with the Saxons and got 12 hostages, sons from important families and a medieval form of insurance. If the vanquished behaved themselves, the hostages were guests. If they reneged on their promises, the hostages could be killed or sold into slavery.

But maybe Charles wanted another type of insurance, one with higher stakes than the hostages’ lives. When two parties made an agreement, they swore oaths and invoked the divine, but to Charles, only one deity was valid. So it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that a Saxon leader was baptized and then made his vow, putting his soul on the line.

Threats to body and soul did not keep the peace. The 772 war was only the beginning of what would be a decades-long, bitter struggle with burned churches, forced conversions, mass murder, mass executions, deportation, and other brutality on both sides.

Sources

Carolingian Chronicles, which includes the Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, translated by

Bernard Walter Scholz with Barbara Rogers

Charlemagne: Translated Sources, P.D. King

Charlemagne, Roger Collins

Kim Rendfeld learned about the destruction of the Irminsul while researching her first novel, The Cross and the Dragon (2012, Fireship Press). That historic event so intrigued her, she had to write a second book from the Saxon perspective, The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar (2014, Fireship Press), in which a mother will go to great lengths to protect her children. To read the first chapters of either novel or learn more about Kim, visit kimrendfeld.com. You’re also welcome to visit her blog Outtakes of a Historical Novelist at kimrendfeld.wordpress.com, like her on Facebook at facebook.com/authorkimrendfeld, or follow her on Twitter at @kimrendfeld, or contact her at kim [at] kimrendfeld [dot] com.

Author Interview & Ebook Giveaway: Kim Rendfeld on THE ASHES OF HEAVEN’S PILLAR

This week, we're pleased to welcome author and Unusual Historicals contributor Kim Rendfeld with her newest release THE ASHES OF HEAVEN’S PILLAR. One lucky blog visitor will receive an ebook. Be sure to leave your email address in the comments of today's author interview for a chance to win. Winner(s) are contacted privately by email. Here's the blurb.

Can love triumph over war?

772 AD: Charlemagne’s battles in Saxony have left Leova with nothing but her two children, Deorlaf and Sunwynn. Her beloved husband died in combat. Her faith lies shattered in the ashes of the Irminsul, the Pillar of Heaven. The relatives obligated to defend her and her family instead sell them into slavery.

In Francia, Leova is resolved to protect her son and daughter, even if it means sacrificing her own honor. Her determination only grows stronger as Sunwynn blossoms into a beautiful young woman attracting the lust of a cruel master and Deorlaf becomes a headstrong man willing to brave starvation and demons to free his family. Yet Leova’s most difficult dilemma comes in the form of a Frankish friend, Hugh. He saves Deorlaf from a fanatical Saxon and is Sunwynn’s champion - but he is the warrior who slew Leova’s husband.

Set against a backdrop of historic events, including the destruction of the Irminsul, The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar explores faith, friendship, and justice. This companion to Kim Rendfeld’s acclaimed The Cross and the Dragon tells the story of an ordinary family in extraordinary circumstances.

**Q&A with Kim Rendfeld, author of The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar**

Your first book, The Cross and the Dragon, was also set in eighth century Europe. Why write in this time period again?

After I finished writing The Cross and the Dragon (2012, Fireship Press), a tale of love amid wars and blood feuds, I went through an odd form of grief. I missed my characters, and the only way to deal with that feeling of loss was to write another book. I chose this era again because it fascinates me. It’s a society where the king’s decision on whom to wed can mean the difference between peace and war, where medicine, magic, and religion intersect, and where real-life gutsy women tried to shape the events around them. I simply couldn’t fit them all in one book.

In particular, two pieces of information rattled in my mind:

·         In 772, Frankish King Charles destroyed the Irminsul, a pillar holy to the pagan Saxon peoples.

·         Slavery was alive and well in this era, and war captives often ended up in servitude.

I wondered what it would be like to have your faith literally go up in smoke and what it would be like to be a freewoman one moment and a slave the next.

Why did you make a pagan, peasant woman your heroine?

At first, I was going to feature a couple of nuns I met in The Cross and the Dragon, but I couldn’t quite get a plot together, and the Saxon family with their back story of loss and betrayal captivated me. I surrendered to them and made that back story the main story.

My interest in featuring a common woman also stems from spending almost two decades in Indiana newsrooms. When I was a journalist, I believed one of my duties was to give a voice to people who did not have a lot of influence otherwise, and that instinct has followed me as I write historical fiction.

Early medieval sources, written when few people could read and even fewer could write, mainly concern themselves with the wars (of which there were many), affairs of royalty, and the lives of saints. They are not objective accounts – there simply was no such thing. To them, pagans are oath-breakers and brutes, and captives, if mentioned at all, are spoils of war. So medieval peasants and slaves rarely have a voice in history. With the pagan Continental Saxons, it gets even more complicated. They had no written language as we know it.

Fiction is one avenue to show what their lives might have been like.

What was the most surprising or fun fact you found in your research for this book?

Cabbage was not the same 1,200 years ago - it did not form heads. When I started writing fiction, I knew not to include New World foods such as potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers, but I took for granted that vegetables stayed the same over the centuries. Was I wrong on that! I was surprised to learn that heading cabbages are not mentioned until the 13th century. If you are researching food history, check out foodtimeline.org.

Many of the historical events in The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar are the same as The Cross and the Dragon. Did that make it easier to write?

Surprisingly, no. The basic facts remain, but the characters’ perceptions yield a very different story.

King Charles is a hero to Alda, the protagonist of The Cross and the Dragon, but a monster to Leova and her children.

Another example comes from three emirs’ visiting the Frankish assembly in Paderborn in 777 to secure an alliance with Charles to conquer territories in Hispania. Alda has a premonition of disaster. But Leova’s son, Deorlaf, sees an opportunity for his people to retake Saxony, and he ponders that if he had even a fraction of the emirs’ riches he could buy his family’s freedom.

Same historical event, but vastly different reactions.

Kim Rendfeld is the author of The Cross and the Dragon (2012, Fireship Press) and The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar (August 28, 2014, Fireship Press). To read the first chapters of either novel or learn more about Kim, visit kimrendfeld.com. You’re also welcome to visit her blog Outtakes of a Historical Novelist at kimrendfeld.wordpress.com, like her on Facebook at facebook.com/authorkimrendfeld, follow her on Twitter at @kimrendfeld, connect with her on Goodreads at www.goodreads.com/Kim_Rendfeld, check out her Amazon page at www.amazon.com/author/kimrendfeld, or contact her at kim [at] kimrendfeld [dot] com.

HEA or Not x 5: Charlemagne’s Marriages

By Kim Rendfeld

One thing I did not make up in my historical novels is Charlemagne’s complicated family life and how his personal decisions had consequences for his kingdom in the eighth and ninth centuries. Charles was married five times, and politics influenced his choices.

Wife No. 1, Himiltrude: Some scholars believe the contemporary sources that say Himiltrude, mother of Charles’s eldest son Pepin, was a concubine. But I’m going to believe Pope Stephen, who cited the fact that Charles and his younger brother, Carloman, were already married on their father’s order as a reason not to wed a Lombard princess, the daughter of the pope’s enemy.

For one thing, Charles’s son was named after his paternal grandfather. Parents chose names with a purpose in mind, not out of sentiment or a whim. Besides, it would make no sense for King Pepin to order the younger son to be married and not the other. No one disputed that Gerberga was Carloman’s widow.

Charlemagne coin (Karl-i-money) A coin with
Charles’s image, minted around 812.

When King Pepin died in 768, Charles was 20 and likely was a teenager when he married Himiltrude. We don’t know much about her, other than that she was a Frank. Charles set her aside to marry the Lombard princess. Himiltrude might have wound up in the royal abbey of Nivelles after the divorce, and one academic paper has presented the tantalizing possibility that the scorned ex-wife might have played a role in her son’s attempt to overthrow his father years later.

Wife No. 2, the Lombard princess: Even her name is lost to us. Because of a misreading of a medieval book, she has been called Desiderata, but her name might have been Gerperga. She was a daughter of Lombard King Desiderius and Queen Ansa, and her marriage to Charles was part of a complicated plan to build an alliance and Queen Mother Bertrada’s efforts to keep peace between Charles and Carloman, who each inherited a kingdom when their father died. For the most part, the peace and the alliance held, but it fell apart when Carloman died of an illness and Charles seized his late brother’s lands. Charles set Gerperga aside to marry a girl from an important family in Carloman’s former kingdom.

Wife No. 3, Hildegard: The Swabian might have been 12 or 13, an age the Franks considered marriageable, when she became queen. She was marrying a robust young man in 20s rather than someone much older, but did she have any trepidation about how he had treated his first two wives? The Frankish sources are silent.

Hildegard image – 16th century
drawing of Hildegard

During their approximately 11-year marriage, Charles was a steadfast husband. Hildegard bore nine children, six of whom survived infancy. Two of her sons, Louis and Pepin (the latter originally named Carloman and yes, Charles had two sons named Pepin), became subkings of Aquitaine and Italy, and her eldest son, Charles (called Karl in my novels), stood to inherit the rest. We don’t know what caused her death in 783, but it happened shortly after the birth of her ninth child, a girl who lived only 40 days. In addition to commissioning an epitaph for his queen, Charles gave land to the Church and financed daily Masses on behalf of her soul. She is entombed at St. Arnulf in Metz, and candles were burned on the anniversary of her death.

Wife No. 4, Fastrada (the heroine of my work in progress): A few months after Hildegard’s death, Charles made another political marriage, this one to a noblewoman whose family was east of the Rhine. He needed that alliance as the war with Saxony to the east and north continued. Charles might have fathered a child between his marriages to Hildegard and Fastrada, but he was a steadfast husband to his fourth wife. Despite a possible 20-year age difference, they seemed fond of each other.

When authors of the Royal Frankish Annals usually did not trouble themselves with how a couple felt about their reunion after months apart, the 787 entry says that Charles and Fastrada “rejoiced over each other and were happy together and praised God’s mercy.”

In a letter from Charles to Fastrada, composed before he went to war with the Avars in 791, he greets her as “our beloved and most loving wife.” After filling her in on the litanies to ensure God’s favor and asking her to make sure the ritual is carried out at home, Charles says he is surprised he hasn’t heard from her lately. “As to which, it is our desire that you should notify us more frequently concerning your health and other matters.”

A crisis arose in their family and the kingdom in 792 when Charles’s eldest son, Pepin (also known as Pepin the Hunchback), was involved in a plot to overthrow his father. When caught, the conspirators blame the cruelty of Queen Fastrada. Written years after her and Charles’s deaths, neither author who cited her supposed cruelty specified what she did, which leads me to believe she was a scapegoat.

When she died in 794, Charles had her buried with the honors due a queen. At Mainz, she was interred in a crypt in front of the altar of the apostles. Charles commissioned an epitaph, gave land to St. Alban, and paid for Masses on behalf of her soul.

Charles and Pepin – 10th century
copy of a ninth century illustration

Wife No. 5, Liutgard: When Fastrada died, Charles’s heirs, the three sons he had with Hildegard, were young men, and each expected to inherit a kingdom. (His son with Himiltrude was imprisoned in a monastery.) With a family history of civil wars over who would get to rule, it’s possible Charles did not want any more claimants to the throne. He might have been ecstatic that Fastrada bore only two girls. He adored his daughters and relied on them.

Charles might have dated Liutgard for two years before marrying her, which makes me suspect he wanted a woman who couldn’t have kids. If that’s the case, he got his wish. Their six-year marriage did not produce any children. The poet Theodulf praised her for her beauty and grace: “Open-handed, gentle spirited, sweet in words, she is ready to help all and obstruct none. She labors hard and well at her study and learning, and retains the noble disciplines in her memory.” 

Liutgard died of an illness in Tours in 800 and is buried there. Charles was 52.

Perhaps intent on limiting his successors to three, Charles did not marry again, and in 806, divided his kingdom among Young Charles, Pepin, and Louis. At age 58 – old by medieval standards – Charles introduced stability into his kingdom.

However, Charles was not celibate. Between 800 and his death in 814, he fathered five more children by four concubines. I can see you all rolling your eyes - an aging man trying to prove he’s still got it. Well, yes, but the reason is not only male vanity. Even here, politics plays a role. Virility was proof of Charles’s physical perfection and his fitness to rule.

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

Charlemagne: Translated Sources, P.D. King

“Making a Difference in Eighth-Century Politics: The Daughters of Desiderius,” Janet L. Nelson, After Rome's Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History

Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, edited by Peter Godman

Courts, Elites, and Gendered Power in the Early Middle Ages: Charlemagne and Others, Janet L. Nelson

Hildegard is Charles’s queen and a minor character in Kim Rendfeld’s two published novels, The Cross and the Dragon (2012, Fireship Press) and The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar (August 28, 2014, Fireship Press). Kim is working on her third novel, which features Queen Fastrada. For more about Kim, visit kimrendfeld.com, her blog Outtakes of a Historical Novelist at kimrendfeld.wordpress.com, like her on Facebook at facebook.com/authorkimrendfeld, follow her on Twitter at @kimrendfeld, or contact her at kim [at] kimrendfeld [dot] com.