7 - Political ideology in Carolingian historiography

Summary

At the monastery of St Amand in the second half of the ninth century, a compilation of historical texts was prepared with a very particular agenda. The manuscript was in the cathedral library of Worms by the thirteenth century and survives in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna (lat. 473). It contains the following texts. First of all (fols. 1v–85v) there is the Liber Pontificalis. This is followed by the Liber Historiae Francorum (fols. 90r–107v), the Continuations to the Chronicle of Fredegar (fols. 108r–114) and the Annales Regni Francorum, in the ‘D’, that is, unrevised version (fols. 116–143v and 152v–169r). There is a portion of Einhard's Vita Karoli Magni (fols. 144r–151) and the manuscript concludes with a truncated version of the Genealogia Domus Carolingicae, divided into two sections: Genealogia Sancti Arnulfi and Historia Francorum Epitomata et Origine Gentis ad Ludovicum Pium (fols. 169v–172r).

This codex is among many such compilations of Frankish history produced in the ninth century all over the Frankish empire. The most common combinations of text include the Annales Regni Francorum and the Vita Karoli of Einhard, but we also find them juxtaposed with Continuations of Fredegar, the Liber Historiae Francorum, or the Lives of Louis the Pious by Thegan or the Astronomer. For any one of these compilations the pertinent questions relate to who compiled this volume, why the selection it contains was made, for whom, and for what purpose.