Early Medieval Europe - 2014 - Polanichka - The Very Personal History of Nithard Family and Honour in The Carolingian

The very personal history of Nithard:
family and honour in the

Carolingian world
Dana M. Polanichka
Alex Cilley
Nithard’s Histories of the civil wars fought between Louis the Pious’s sons
reveal much about mid-ninth-century nobility, political values, and the
author’s changing social position. This article considers how Nithard’s imme-
diate familial history affected the text’s composition. We argue that his
incorporation of authorial voice and detail, crafting of the royal lineage, and
emphasis on fraternitas suggest that Nithard employed the text to fight for
legitimacy and honour, both familial and individual. We propose that the
Histories should be read as a social commemoration of Nithard’s familial
memories, thus complicating the assumption that family histories were the
purview of women.
Uncertainty, upheaval, and violence plagued the third and fourth gen-
erations of Carolingian kingship. After Charlemagne’s triumphant rule
(768–814 ce), Louis the Pious (r. 814–40 ce) endured two successful
attempts by his elder sons to oust him from the throne. His eventual
death ignited open hostilities between his three surviving sons: Lothar,
Louis the German, and Charles the Bald. After three years of fraternal
civil war, peace in 843 brought a formally fragmented kingdom: the
* Research for this article was supported by the Wheaton College (Norton, MA) Office of the
Provost and History Department, the Wheaton Research Partnership, and a Mellon Faculty/
Student Research Grant. The authors wish to thank these sponsors as well as the Dartmouth
College Medieval Studies Seminar and its organizers and participants, especially Jane Carroll, M.
Cecilia Gaposchkin and Walter Simons, for their helpful feedback on an early draft. Additionally,
Patrick J. Geary, Michael D.C. Drout, Jolanta Komornicka, Alex Trayford, Martin Fromm and
Elena Malkov provided excellent suggestions on a near-final draft. The final version of this article
benefitted tremendously from careful readings by, and excellent suggestions from, EME’s anony-
mous reviewers.
Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2) 171–200

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172 Dana M. Polanichka and Alex Cilley
Treaty of Verdun divided Charlemagne’s once expansive realm among his

three grandsons.1
These fractious intrigues assume centre stage in Nithard’s contempo-
raneous narrative, the Histories. The author (b. before 800; d. 844)
devotes the initial book to the period preceding the civil wars (namely,
the reigns of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious), before turning, in Books
II through IV, to the unfolding events for which he served as eyewitness.2
More than just fleshing out events referenced in the Annals of Fulda and
Annals of St Bertin, the Histories provide an insider account.3 Nithard, a
member of the Carolingian royal family, penned his text from within
Charles the Bald’s inner circle at the king’s request.4
Faced with Nithard’s position in Charles the Bald’s camp, scholars
long accepted uncritically the author’s bias for his patron.5 That easy
assumption was shattered in 1985, however, by Janet L. Nelson’s essay on
the Histories. After firmly demonstrating the public nature of the first half
of Nithard’s text, due largely to the role of Charles as its commissioner
and audience, Nelson insightfully argued that the text shifted in tone,
objective, and audience over the course of its composition. Nithard’s
fourth book shed its ‘public history’ in favour of a ‘private history’
1
The question of unity is a difficult one. Even as Charlemagne and Louis the Pious ruled, their
kingdoms were divided, with areas managed by their sons. M. Costambeys, M. Innes and S.
MacLean, The Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 382–4. Moreover, concerns about the
unity of the empire tend to be modern impositions, rather than based in the Carolingian world.
M. de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–840
(Cambridge, 2009), pp. 26–7. On the localization of politics, see M. Innes, State and Society in
the Early Middle Ages: The Middle Rhine Valley, 400–1000 (Cambridge, 2000), ch. 6, pp. 195–212,
esp. pp. 195–7.
2
Nithard, Historiarum Libri IV, ed. P. Lauer, Histoire des fils de Louis le Pieux, rev. S. Glandsdorff
(Paris, 2012) (hereafter Nithard, Historiae). On the manuscript tradition, see Lauer, ‘Introduc-
tion’, pp. xxiv–xxviii; J.L. Nelson, ‘History-writing at the Courts of Louis the Pious and Charles
the Bald’, in A. Scharer and G. Scheibelreiter (eds), Historiographie im frühen Mittelalter
(Vienna, 1994), pp. 435–42, at p. 440; C.M. Booker, ‘An Early Humanist Edition of Nithard,
De dissensionibus filiorum Ludovici Pii’, Revue d’histoire des texts, ns 5 (2010), pp. 231–58. Only
two manuscripts (one tenth-century, one incomplete fifteenth-century) were long known to
exist, but Booker’s study of a third, sixteenth-century manuscript points to (at least) two more,
no longer extant manuscripts from the second half of the Middle Ages. Booker, ‘Early Human-
ist Edition’, p. 248.
3
Annales Fuldenses, ed. F. Kurze, MGH SRG 7 (Hanover, 1891) (hereafter AF); Annales de
Saint-Bertin, ed. F. Grat, J. Vielliard and S. Clémencet (Paris, 1964) (hereafter AB).
4
M. Leja argues that Charles the Bald requested the work while at Châlons in order to provide
him with (textual) support in the midst of growing criticism of his recent actions. M. Leja, ‘The
Making of Men, not Masters: Right Order and Lay Masculinity according to Dhuoda and
Nithard’, Comitatus 39 (2008), pp. 1–40, at p. 36.
5
See, for example, G.M. von Knonau, Über Nithards vier Bücher Geschichten: Der Bruderkrieg der
Söhne Ludwigs des Frommen und sein Geschichtschreiber (Leipzig, 1866), pp. 81–2; M. Manitius,
Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, 3 vols (Munich, 1911–31), I, pp. 658–9; J.
Calmette, L’effondrement d’un empire et la naissance d’une Europe (Paris, 1941), p. 264; H. Löwe,
W. Wattenbach and W. Levison, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter 3, rev. edn
(Weimar, 1957), pp. 353–7; all discussed by J.L. Nelson, ‘Public Histories and Private History in
the Work of Nithard’, Speculum 60 (1985), pp. 251–93, at p. 252.
Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Nithard, family and honour in the Carolingian world 173
motivated by the author’s growing disillusionment with his patron/king

on account of the former’s loss of property and position of priority.6
Although Nelson would later distance herself from her initial argument
that Nithard did not – truly, could not – envision Charles the Bald as the
fourth book’s audience, her perceptive unveiling of the complications
and transitions in Nithard’s work still stands.7
This article probes further into the multi-layered Histories to uncover
how Nithard’s rich personal and specifically familial history encoded the
text. What we shall attempt to prove here is that a close reading of
Nithard’s fourth book opens a window from which to view sibling
relationships and the extended royal family beyond the brotherly disputes
6
The text is public history ‘in a triple sense: first, as dealing with public, political events; secondly
as intended not only to be read by posterity, but to be heard and read by a contemporary public,
that is, by a section of society considered as consumers; thirdly, as directed at the public (of the
West Frankish realm) in the specific sense used by some political scientists’: Nelson, ‘Public
Histories’, p. 264. Nelson defines private history by way of contrast: ‘his work ceases to be public
in the sense of no longer being addressed to a relatively wide group of political actors’ (p. 282). See
also J.L. Nelson, ‘The Problematic in the Private’, Social History 15.3 (1990), pp. 355–64; on the
public/private distinction in relation to power and politics, see Innes, State and Society, pp. 141–2,
148, 242–3, 254–9. There is a considerable body of literature on the public/private distinction in
relation to penance: M. de Jong, ‘What Was Public about Public Penance? Paenitentia Publica and
Justice in the Carolingian World’, La giustizia nell’alto Medioevo (secoli IX–XI), Settimane di studio
44 (Spoleto, 1997), pp. 863–904; M. de Jong, ‘Transformations of Penance’, in F. Theuws and J.L.
Nelson (eds), Rituals of Power: From Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2000), pp.
185–224; A. Firey (ed.), A New History of Penance (Leiden, 2008), esp. pp. 5–7, and R. Meens’s
contribution to the volume, ‘The Historiography of Early Medieval Penance’, pp. 73–95, at pp.
86, 89–90; de Jong, Penitential State; and A. Firey, A Contrite Heart: Prosecution and Redemption
in the Carolingian Empire (Leiden, 2009), esp. pp. 11–12, 36, 61, 70.
7
Nelson, ‘History-writing’, p. 439 ff.; Nelson, ‘Public Histories’, pp. 268, 281. Booker, in discuss-
ing Nelson’s revision of her public/private distinction, emphasizes the use of ‘nostalgic lament
as instrumental, as a type of strategic, suggestive criticism of the present’: C.M. Booker, Past
Convictions: The Penance of Louis the Pious and the Decline of the Carolingians (Philadelphia,
2009), p. 6. De Jong disagrees on the fourth book’s audience, Penitential State, p. 97. Scholars
have also focused on other aspects of the Histories. On knighthood and nobility: J.L. Nelson,
‘Ninth-Century Knighthood: The Evidence of Nithard’, in J.L. Nelson, The Frankish World,
750–900 (London, 1996), pp. 75–87; and J.L. Nelson, ‘Nobility in the Ninth Century’, in A.
Duggan (ed.), Nobles and Nobility in Medieval Europe: Concepts, Origins, Transformations
(Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 43–51. On masculinity: Leja, ‘Making of Men’; and R. Stone, Morality
and Masculinity in the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge, 2012). On the public good: K. Leyser,
‘Three Historians: (a) Nithard and his Rulers’, in K. Leyser, Communications and Power in
Medieval Europe: The Carolingian and Ottonian Centuries, ed. T. Reuter, 2 vols (London, 1994),
I, pp. 19–26, at p. 20; and Nelson, ‘History-writing’, at p. 438. On the republic: W. Wehlen,
Geschichtsschreibung, und Staatsauffassung, im Zeitalter Ludwigs des Frommen (Lübeck, 1970),
pp. 61–77, 96–105; Y. Sassier, ‘L’utilisation d’un concept romain aux temps carolingiens: La res
publica aux IXe et Xe siècles’, Médiévales 15 (1998), pp. 17–29; and P. Depreux, ‘Nithard et la Res
Publica: Un regard critique sur le règne de Louis le Pieux’, Médiévales 22–3 (1992), pp. 149–61.
On justice: H. Patze, ‘Iustitia bei Nithard’, in Festschrift für Hermann Heimpel zum 70.
Geburtstag am 19. September 1971, 3 vols (Göttingen, 1972), III, pp. 147–65. On bad rulership:
Leyser, ‘Three Historians’, p. 26. On dissension: J.L. Nelson, ‘The Intellectual in Politics:
Context, Content and Authorship in the Capitulary of Coulaines, November 843’, in L. Smith
and B. Ward (eds), Intellectual Life in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Margaret Gibson
(London, 1992), pp. 1–14, at pp. 2–3. On Lothar: E. Screen, ‘The Importance of the Emperor:
Lothar I and the Frankish Civil War, 840–843’, EME 12 (2003), pp. 25–51.

expected of the ninth-century civil wars.8 We argue that the Histories’

incorporation of authorial voice and detail, crafting of the Carolingian
royal lineage, and emphasis on fraternitas together suggest that Nithard –
the product of a supposedly scandalous court relationship – was also
fighting for legitimacy and honour, both familial and individual. Reading
a personal history in Nithard’s Histories exposes a more detailed and
assuredly more intimate portrait of a man about whom we know so little,
while also revealing the difficulties endured by branches of the Frankish
ruling family. Moreover, the influence that Nithard’s parents’ experiences
had on his historical writing should provoke further elucidation of the
text’s biases, regarding not only Louis the Pious’s sons and their men, but
also the author’s immediate family. For just as ‘Nithard’s history-writing
was driven by the painful rhythm of the politics of 840–3’, so too was it
driven by the painful memory of his mother’s banishment from court in
814.9 Therefore, we ought to consider the Histories as a social commemo-
ration of Nithard’s personal memories that complicates widely held theo-
ries about gendered textual production in the Carolingian world, for
while scholars largely understand the commemoration of family history
as a women’s affair in the early Middle Ages, Nithard, in his fourth book
of the Histories, challenges the gendered textual hierarchy by shifting
from a political history to a family one.10
8
Scholars recognize how the state of the Carolingian family affected the state of the realm, but have
not thoroughly examined Nithard’s own familial situation and its impact on the Histories. S.
Airlie, ‘The World, the Text and the Carolingian: Royal, Aristocratic and Masculine Identities in
Nithard’s Histories’, in P. Wormald and J.L. Nelson (eds), Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian
World (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 51–76, at p. 67. See also J.L. Nelson, ‘The Search for Peace in a
Time of War: The Carolingian Brüderkrieg, 840–843’, in J. Fried (ed.), Träger und
Instrumentarien des Friedens im Hohen und Späten Mittelalter (Sigmaringen, 1996), pp. 87–114,
esp. p. 104.
9
De Jong, Penitential State, p. 8. De Jong writes also (pp. 192–3): ‘As far as one can see, there was
no particular resentment on the son’s [i.e., Nithard’s] part about his mother’s exile from the
palace.’ But we shall argue here that, in fact, a close reading of the text does reveal such
resentment.
10
Literature on women’s roles as family historians and their broader engagement in remembering
and memorializing their kin, living and dead, includes K. Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early
Medieval Society: Ottonian Saxony (London, 1979), pp. 49–73; J.L. Nelson, ‘Women and the
Word in the Earlier Middle Ages’, Studies in Church History 27 (1990), pp. 53–78; J.L. Nelson,
‘Gender and Genre in Women Historians of the Early Middle Ages’, in J.-P. Genet (ed.),
L’historiographie médiévale en Europe (Paris, 1991), pp. 149–63; P.J. Geary, Phantoms of Remem-
brance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, 1994), esp. pp.
48–80; R. Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc (VIIe–Xe siècle): essai d’anthropologie
sociale (Paris, 1995), pp. 31–58; J.L. Nelson, ‘Gender, Memory and Social Power’, Gender and
History 12 (2000), pp. 722–34; E. van Houts, ‘Introduction: Medieval Memories’, in E.
van Houts (ed.), Medieval Memories: Men, Women and the Past, 700–1300 (Harlow, 2001), pp.
1–16, at pp. 6–8; M. Innes, ‘Keeping It in the Family: Women and Aristocratic Memory,
700–1200’, in van Houts, Medieval Memories, pp. 17–35; E. van Houts, Memory and Gender in
Medieval Europe 900–1200 (Toronto, 1999), esp. pp. 65–92; S. MacLean, ‘Queenship, Nunneries
and Royal Widowhood in Carolingian Europe’, Past and Present 178 (2003), pp. 3–38, esp. p. 14;
V.L. Garver, Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World (Ithaca, 2009), pp. 68–121.

Nithard: the author
Nithard was born sometime before 800 to Bertha, Charlemagne’s second-

eldest daughter, and Angilbert, Charlemagne’s close friend and adviser
who later became abbot of Saint-Riquier.11 Nithard’s father alludes to him
and his brother, Hartnid, in a poem honouring Charlemagne in which
Angilbert fondly recalls the pleasant gardens at the palace where he,
Angilbert, lived with his two young boys.12 But the most explicit declara-
tion of the family comes from Nithard himself, who outlines his lineage in
the fourth book of the Histories.13 What he does not mention is the scandal
surrounding his mother.14 For that, we must quarry other sources.
Einhard’s biography of Charlemagne maintains that the king so loved his
daughters that he kept them close and never let them marry, which,
Einhard admits, led to some problems of which Charlemagne pretended
to have no knowledge.15 The Astronomer’s biography of Louis the Pious,
in contrast, accuses Bertha and her sisters of scandalous behaviour that led
11
For a list of Charlemagne’s children, see J.L. Nelson, ‘La Famille de Charlemagne’, Byzantion
61 (1991), pp. 194–212, at p. 204, and de Jong, Penitential State, p. 14. On Bertha and Angilbert,
see S. Konecny, Die Frauen des karolingischen Königshauses: Die politische Bedeutung der Ehe und
die Stellung der Frau in der frankischen Herrscherfamilie vom 7. bis zum 10. Jahrhundert (Vienna
1976), pp. 74–7, esp. p. 76. On Angilbert, see D. Schaller, ‘Angilbert’, in W. Stammler and K.
Langosch (eds), Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters, Verfasserlexikon 1 (Berlin, 1978), pp.
358–63; and S.A. Rabe, Faith, Art, and Politics at Saint-Riquier: The Symbolic Vision of Angilbert
(Philadelphia, 1995), esp. pp. 52–4, 73–5, and her exhaustive bibliography. On Nithard and his
family, see C. Villa, ‘Nithard, from History to Legend’, in F. Lo Monaco and C. Villa (eds), I
Giuramenti di Strasburgo: Testi e Tradizione / The Strasbourg Oaths: Texts and Transmission
(Florence, 2009), pp. 93–110.
12
Very little is known about Nithard’s brother, Hartnid. Historians only remark that his name is
an inverted version of Nithard’s name: e.g., Lauer, Histoire, p. 151, n. 348. For the poem, see
Angilbert, Carmina, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH Poetae 1 (Berlin, 1881), no. 2, pp. 360–3, repro-
duced and translated in Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, ed. and trans. P. Godman
(Norman, OK, 1985), pp. 112–19, at pp. 118–19. Angilbert drafted the poem in 794–5 (Godman,
Poetry, p. 10). Note that Godman (p. 118) interprets the pueri as pupils at the palace school, not
Angilbert’s boys.
13
Nithard, Historiae IV.5, pp. 150–1.
14
On the post-Carolingian memory of Bertha and Angilbert’s ‘scandalous’ relationship (and its
possible reworking as a spirited story about ‘Imma’ and ‘Einhard’), see G. Tournoy, ‘Footsteps
in the Snow: A Latin Tale from Charlemagne to Justus Lipsius and Beyond’, in H. Braet, G.
Latré and W. Verbeke (eds), Risus Mediaevalis: Laughter in Medieval Literature and Art (Leuven,
2003), pp. 207–17, esp. p. 211.
15
Einhard, Vie de Charlemagne, c. 19, ed. L. Halphen (Paris, 1938), p. 62. Charlemagne’s unwill-
ingness to let his daughters marry likely resulted, in part, from his desire to limit possible
claimants to the throne. P. Stafford, ‘Sons and Mothers: Family Politics in the Early Middle
Ages’, in D. Baker (ed.), Medieval Women (Oxford, 1978), pp. 79–100, at p. 96; A. Scharer,
‘Charlemagne’s Daughters’, in S. Baxter, C. Karkov, J.L. Nelson, and D. Pelteret (eds), Early
Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald (Surrey, 2009), pp. 269–82, at p. 280–2. Janet
L. Nelson also posits that Charlemagne kept his daughters at court for political reasons, as they
helped to neutralize rivalries and provide the king with information about court intrigue. J.L.
Nelson, ‘Women at the Court of Charlemagne: A Case of Monstrous Regiment?’, in J.L.
Nelson, The Frankish World, 750–900 (London, 1996), pp. 223–42, at p. 241. On marriage and

him, their own brother, to remove them from court.16 Interestingly, in

Book I of his Histories, Nithard mentions how Louis the Pious executed
his deceased father’s will and then sent his sisters away from court.17 Not
until three books later does Nithard imply that his mother was one of
Louis the Pious’s sisters, and never does he acknowledge his mother’s
banishment.18 Nithard, fourteen years of age at his mother’s exile, was
certainly aware of the accusations of sexual indiscretion levelled at her.19
He likely read both Einhard’s and the Astronomer’s biographies and even
if he did not, Nithard, for all but the last two years of his life, lived at the
court, where such gossip swirled.20
Nithard’s presence at court during his uncle’s reign placed him in a
precarious position, since any blood relative, even an illegitimate one,
could be a contender for the throne.21 The fragile nature of Louis’s own
position must have been apparent to the king himself, who had lived
away from the political centre of his father’s empire since the age of four
and had been named and crowned as his father’s successor less than five
months before the latter’s death.22 Yet, although the new emperor imme-
diately distanced his sisters from court (more likely due to their political
capital rather than any sexual indiscretion), he kept his male relatives
close by to minimize the threat to his power.23 Soon, however, as Nithard
other types of unions in the Middle Ages, see Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir, pp. 263–327, and R.M.
Karras, Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 2012),
esp. pp. 37–8.
16
Astronomer, Vita Hludowici imperatoris, c. 21, ed. and trans. E. Tremp, MGH SRG 64
(Hanover, 1995), p. 348.
17
Nithard, Historiae I.2, pp. 6–9. M. Innes, ‘Charlemagne’s Will: Piety, Politics and the Imperial
Succession’, The English Historical Review 112 (1997), pp. 833–55, at p. 839.
18
Nithard, Historiae IV.5, pp. 150–1; Airlie, ‘The World’, p. 54.
19
A fourteen-year-old was considered a boy, with the pueritia stage of childhood lasting from age
seven to fourteen. V.L. Garver, ‘The Influence of Monastic Ideals upon Carolingian Concep-
tions of Childhood’, in A. Classen (ed.), Childhood in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: The
Results of a Paradigm Shift in the History of Mentality (Berlin, 2005), pp. 67–85, at p. 72. Dhuoda
described her sixteen-year-old son as a boy (ad te, puerum, pueraliter) in her 840s handbook to
him. Dhuoda, Manuel pour mon fils VI.1, ed. P. Riché (Paris, 1991), pp. 286–7.
20
Airlie, ‘The World’, p. 72, and Charlemagne and Louis the Pious: The Lives by Einhard, Notker,
Ermoldus, Thegan, and the Astronomer, ed. and trans. T.F.X. Noble (University Park, PA, 2009),
p. 221. Airlie, in contrast to Noble, argues the Nithard did not read the Astronomer’s biography
but rather used the same sources. De Jong, following Tremp, contends that the Astronomer and
Nithard used the same sources: Penitential State, p. 82. Nithard retired to Saint-Riquier in late
842, where he served as lay abbot. He died less than two years later, on 15 June 845, in the battle
of the Angoumois. On the date of his death and his lay abbacy, see Nelson, ‘Public Histories’,
pp. 291–3, and C. Treffort, ‘Nithard, petit-fils de Charlemagne: Note sur une biographie
controversée’, Bulletin de la Société des antiquaires de Picardie 158e année 632 (1994), pp. 427–34.
21
Stafford, ‘Sons and Mothers’, p. 82; Scharer, ‘Charlemagne’s Daughters’, pp. 281–2.
22
De Jong, Penitential State, pp. 15–19.
23
M. Innes, ‘Charlemagne’s Will’, pp. 845–6; S. Airlie, ‘Bonds of Power and Bonds of Association
in the Court Circle of Louis the Pious’, in P. Godman and R. Collins (eds), Charlemagne’s Heir:
New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814–40) (Oxford, 1990), pp. 191–204, at pp.
201–2.

relates, Louis grew suspicious and fearful of his half-brothers and had
them tonsured to prevent any threat. It is remarkable that Nithard
himself escaped such a fate, particularly since Louis the Pious tonsured
his half-brothers after Bernard, another nephew, attempted to overthrow
his uncle.24
Why Nithard avoided suspicion is unclear. One might note that
Charlemagne had foreseen the vulnerability of rulers’ nephews and
asserted their protection via their uncles in his Divisio regnorum,25 but the
emperor’s response and actions against Bernard, Drogo, Hugh and
Theodoric do not indicate strict adherence to his father’s orders.26 More-
over, aside from outright rebellion, nephews presented difficulties in
other ways, as Pauline Stafford observes: ‘custom allowed the sister’s son
to make many demands on his uncle and kings may not have been
anxious to have too many sisters’ sons importuning them in this way’.27
It is possible that Bertha and Angilbert’s informal relationship, while
pinpointed as cause for Bertha’s exile, benefitted Nithard and his position
at court. That is, illegitimacy made Nithard less of a threat politically to
Louis the Pious. Whatever the reason, Nithard’s presence caused no
incident, and eventually he smoothly transitioned from Louis’s court to
that of Charles the Bald, where he served as a lay soldier and ambassador
and may have drafted the Strasbourg Oaths sworn in February 842.28 It
was during these years, specifically from spring 841 to mid-843, that
Nithard wrote his Histories.
24
After his attempted coup d’état, Bernard of Italy, son of the late Pippin, was arrested, tried,
found guilty, and blinded. He died two days later as the result of injuries caused by the blinding.
See, among others, G. Bührer-Thierry, ‘ “Just Anger” or “Vengeful Anger”? The Punishment of
Blinding in the Early Medieval West’, in B.H. Rosenwein (ed.), Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of
an Emotion in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1998), pp. 75–91, at pp. 81–91; P. Depreux, ‘Das
Königtum Bernhards von Italien und sein Verhältnis zum Kaisertum’, Quellen und Forschungen
aus Italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 72 (1992), pp. 1–25; K.F. Werner, ‘Hludovicus
Augustus: Gouverner l’empire chrétien – Idées et réalités’, in Godman and Collins (eds),
Charlemagne’s Heir, pp. 3–123, at pp. 37–50; J. Jarnut, ‘Kaiser Ludwig der Fromme und König
Bernhard von Italien: Der Versuch einer Rehabilitierung’, Studi Medievali, 3rd ser. 30 (1989), pp.
637–48; T.F.X. Noble, ‘The Revolt of King Bernard of Italy in 817: Its Causes and Conse-
quences’, Studi Medievali, 3rd ser. 15 (1974), pp. 315–26; Booker, Past Convictions, pp. 9, 169–72;
de Jong, Penitential State, pp. 28–9.
25
Capit. 45: Divisio regnorum, c. 18, ed. A. Boretius, MGH Capitularia 1 (Hanover, 1883), pp.
129–30. Discussed by de Jong, Penitential State, pp. 29, 36, and G. Althoff, Family, Friends, and
Followers: Political and Social Bonds in Early Medieval Europe, trans. C. Carroll (Cambridge,
2007), p. 44.
26
Louis, subsequently haunted by Bernard’s death, reconciled with his half-brothers in 821 and
made a public confession of his sins against his family in 822. De Jong, Penitential State, pp. 6,
29.
27
Stafford, ‘Sons and Mothers’, p. 96; Scharer, ‘Charlemagne’s Daughters’, pp. 281–2.
28
Nelson, ‘Intellectual’, p. 5. On Nithard’s lay status and lay perspective, see Leyser, ‘Three
Historians’, p. 23; and Airlie, ‘The World’, pp. 52–4.

Histories: the text
Nithard’s text contains four books. The first is a history that includes a
short portrait of Charlemagne followed by an account of Louis the
Pious’s reign. Books II through IV cover, largely from a third-person
perspective, the events of the civil wars as they unfold. Beyond the clear
shift from writing history in Book I to recording near-contemporary
events starting in Book II, the Histories undergo a more gradual trans-
formation throughout all four books, becoming darker and more critical
as the text progresses. Nithard displays reluctance in drafting this text
from its opening sentences, but his tone becomes bleaker, and even
resistant, with each succeeding preface. The first two books’ prologues
acknowledge that Nithard, like his lord and patron, Charles, was caught
up in the turmoil of the time and complained of his difficulties as
preventing him from producing his best work – but much of this lan-
guage reads as the self-effacing preface expected of medieval authors (and
their classical predecessors).29 By the introduction to Book III, Nithard
writes of his shame in having to hear negative things about his genus and
then report them.30 The final book opens with a preface even gloomier
than the previous ones. More than simply reluctance, he expresses despair
in a comparatively personal tone:
Not only would it delight me to rest from this work of narration, as it

was stated, but my anxious mind, filled by manifold complaints, tries
constantly to withdraw entirely from all public matters. But since
fortune has tied me, on this side and on that, to these events and
carries me sorrowfully into powerful storms, I truly do not know to
which haven I will be carried.31
29
Nithard, Historiae, preface to I, p. 2; preface to II, p. 44. On ‘devotional formula and humility’
in medieval literature, see E.R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans.
W.R. Trask (Princeton, 1990), pp. 407–13. On classical authors’ rhetorical deployment of
modesty in prefaces, see T. Janson, Latin Prose Prefaces: Studies in Literary Conventions
(Stockholm, 1964), esp. pp. 124–30, 144–8. For contemporary comparisons, see Einhard, Vie de
Charlemagne, prologue, p. 2; Astronomer, Vita Hludowici imperatoris, prologue, p. 280;
Dhuoda, Manuel, prologue, pp. 80–2.
30
Nithard, Historiae, preface to III, p. 88: ‘Quoniam sinistrum me quiddam ex genere nostro ut
audiam pudet, referre praesertim quam maxime piget.’ Genere has been translated in various
ways by modern scholars; see below for more discussion. Unless otherwise noted, all English
translations of Nithard’s text within the article are our own translations, with guidance pro-
vided both by Lauer’s French translation in Nithard, Historiae, and the English translation of
B. Scholz, Carolingian Chronicles (Ann Arbor, 1970), while recognizing the errors in Scholz’s
edition as noted by Nelson and Booker. Nelson, ‘Public Histories’, p. 252, n. 3, and C.M.
Booker, ‘Imitator daemonum dicor: Adalhard the Seneschal, Mistranslations, and Misrepre-
sentations’, Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik 33 (2001), pp. 114–26, at p. 117.
31
Nithard, Historiae, preface to IV, p. 126: ‘Non solum me, uti praefatum est, ab hoc opere
narrationis quiescere delectat, verum etiam, quo ab universa re publica totus secedam mens,

With an introduction like this, it is not entirely surprising that Book IV

and thus the entire work ends with a bleak picture of the Carolingian
world: ‘in addition much snow fell on that same night and, as it was
stated, by the fair judgement of God sadness struck all. Thus, I relate this,
since from then on robbery and evils of all kinds were sown on all sides
everywhere, and intemperate weather snatched away the hope of all good
things.’32
Beyond the increased misery and pessimism expressed by Nithard’s
words, there is also a shift in how he ‘speaks’ to and treats his patron and
primary audience, Charles the Bald. The Histories open with the author
addressing Charles directly as ‘my lord’ and referring to him repeatedly in
the second person both to affirm the latter’s position as the sponsor of the
text and to recognize his historical situation.33 Likewise, in the second
book’s preface, Nithard converses with his lord in the second person,
referencing again Charles’s familial and political troubles while also
requesting his forbearance.34 In comparison to these first two prefaces, the
third and fourth take on a notably impersonal tone: the author no longer
directly addresses Charles. Rather, Nithard refers distantly to his orders to
write the text, without naming Charles as the source of those orders or
discussing Charles’s position within the ongoing conflict as in earlier
prefaces.35
variis qu rimoniis referta, assiduis meditationibus anxia versat. Sed, quoniam me de rebus
universis fortuna hinc inde junxit validisque procellis moerentem vehit, qua portum ferar immo
vero poenitus ignoro.’
32
Nithard, Historiae IV.7, p. 158: ‘Per idem tempus eclypsis lunae XIII kal. aprilis contigit; nix
insuper multa eadem nocte cecidit meroremque omnibus, | uti praefatum est, justo Dei juditio
incussit. Id propterea inquam, quia hinc inde ubique rapin et omnigena mala sese inserebant,
illinc aeris intemperies spem omnium bonorum eripiebat.’ Cf. AB, s.a. 843, p. 44. Such a
description reminds us that weather was ‘a cultural and historical experience, one that was
“peopled” and “lived” . . . [and] touched the lives of particular medieval men and women and
that may have had a critical impact upon . . . their very view of the world’: P.E. Dutton,
‘Observations on Early Medieval Weather in General, Bloody Rain in Particular’, in J.R. Davis
and M. McCormick (eds), The Long Morning of Medieval Europe: New Directions in Early
Medieval Studies (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 167–80, at p. 168.
33
Nithard, Historiae, preface to I, p. 2: ‘Cum, ut optime, mi domine, nosti, jam poene annis
duobus illatam a fratre vestro persecutionem vos vestrique haudquaquam meriti pateremini.’
34
Nithard, Historiae, preface to II, pp. 42–4.
35
Nithard, Historiae, preface to III, p. 88; preface to IV, p. 126. On not addressing Charles directly,
see also Nelson, ‘Public Histories’, p. 265, and Patze, ‘Iustitia’, p. 161. Admittedly, in the third
book’s preface, Nithard connects himself more closely to Charles than previously by referencing
genere nostro – which may connect them as Franks (if translated broadly as ‘our people’) or as
family with a shared lineage (if translated as ‘our family’, ‘our dynasty’, or ‘our lineage’).
Alternate translations are provided by Scholz, Chronicles, p. 155 (‘my people’); Lauer in Nithard,
Historiae, p. 89 (notre famille); and Nelson, ‘Search for Peace’, p. 97 (‘our dynasty’). While the
original Latin term can accurately be translated in these myriad ways, modern translators’ lack
of clear agreement seems to speak to Nithard’s presentation of his relationship to those within
his text, whether family or simply fellow Franks, as ambiguous.

More striking is Nithard’s candid criticism of Charles near the end of

Book IV for marrying Hirmentrude. On the whole, the Histories dem-
onstrate bias in favour of Charles, the patron and hero of the text, not to
mention its author’s lord. If Charles serves as the protagonist, then
Lothar fulfils the role of antagonist, due partially to his prioritizing of
selfish desires over the public good.36 However, after carefully crafting a
history that presents the ideal ruler as caring more for the public good
than self interest, Nithard connects Charles the Bald and his motives to
a man portrayed as the exact opposite, describing how Adalhard, ‘caring
less for the public good’, convinced Charles to marry Adalhard’s niece for
personal benefit.37 The criticism levelled at Charles proves serious:
through association with a selfish man and his adherence to that man’s
bad advice, Charles moves away from protagonist and closer to antago-
nist. That critique gains greater force only a few lines later, with the
opening of the Histories’ final chapter: ‘from this book, everyone may
learn by what senselessness one neglects the public good and is driven by
private and selfish desires’.38 This deeply critical account helped motivate
Janet Nelson’s argument that the trajectory of the Histories reflects
Nithard’s changing position. His frustration with Charles and anger at
Adalhard and Lothar for their roles in his diminished wealth and status
encourage the text’s transformation.39
Further evidence for Nithard’s growing disgruntlement with his
devolving situation presents itself in his varying authorial voice in Books
III and IV. Throughout the opening books of the Histories, Nithard,
unlike comparable authors from the period, largely avoids the first
person, aside from the prefaces that situate him as the text’s author and
address Charles.40 Even when he could allow himself to seep into the
body of the work through phrases such as ‘as I said before’, he writes in
the third person ‘as it was stated’.41 Only once within the first two
36
Thoroughly argued by Depreux, ‘Nithard’, pp. 149–61; reinforced by Leyser, ‘Three Historians’,
p. 26, and Nelson, ‘History-writing’, p. 438. On Lothar as the ‘target’ of Nithard’s work, see
Screen, ‘Importance of the Emperor’, pp. 28 ff.
37
Nithard, Historiae IV.6, p. 154: ‘Qui utilitati publice minus prospiciens placere cuique intendit.’
Airlie, ‘The World’, p. 74; de Jong, Penitential State, p. 101.
38
Nithard, Historiae IV.7, p. 156: ‘Hic quique colligat qua dementia utilitatem publicam neglegat,
privatis ac propriis voluntatibus insaniat . . .’
39
Nelson, ‘Intellectual’, p. 3.
40
Compared to Einhard’s biography of Charlemagne, written two decades earlier and likely read
by Nithard. Although Einhard does not place himself at events in the narrative, the text
contains many uses of the first person within the main body of the biography (not just in the
preface): Einhard, Vie de Charlemagne, c. 4, p. 16; c. 6, p. 20; c. 18, p. 54; c. 20, p. 62. The
near-contemporaneous Astronomer’s biography of Louis the Pious also includes use of the first
person outside of the preface: Astronomer, Vita Hludowici imperatoris, c. 2, p. 288; c. 62, p. 544.
41
Nithard writes sicut praefatum est (II.10, p. 86); uti praefatum est (III.1, p. 90); uti praefatum est
(IV.4, p. 142); uti praefatum est (IV.6, pp. 152 and 154). Scholz translates the phrase into ‘as I said
before’: Carolingian Chronicles, pp. 154, 155, 170, 173.

chapters does Nithard ever offer his own reaction in the first person. In
the first chapter of the first book, as Nithard crafts his short biography of
Charlemagne, he writes, ‘I confess that [Charlemagne] will be admirable
above all . . . for [his] controlled terror.’42
Despite the intimacy of Nithard’s experience with the civil wars and
those involved, his text conveys a surprising sense of distance.43 He
notably refers to himself in the third person when Charles ‘selected as
emissaries Nithard and Adalgar’.44 Perhaps more telling is his decision not
to associate himself with specific individuals in the text, except when
prefacing his books with the declaration to Charles, ‘you ordered me’ to
write the history, or with the address of ‘you, my lord’.45 Nithard does not
seize on opportunities, such as when discussing Charlemagne, to connect
himself to his patron through their shared blood. Rather, Charles the
Great is ‘your’ (i.e., Charles’s) grandfather – not ‘our’ grandfather.46 In
fact, until he reveals that Charlemagne is his grandfather toward the end
of the text, Nithard never describes any individual Carolingian as a
relative.47 At most, Nithard occasionally includes himself as part of the
larger group, describing, for example, in the first book’s preface, how ‘we’
entered Châlons.48 A sentence later, when Nithard asks his patron for
patience with his account and its shortcomings, he asks that ‘you and
yours’ grant him forbearance – distancing himself from Charles’s men.49
42
Nithard, Historiae I.1, p. 4: ‘Nam super omne quod ammirabile fateor fore, Francorum
barbarorumque ferocia ac ferrea corda, que˛ nec Romana potentia domare valuit, hic solus
moderato terrore ita repressit ut nihil in imperio moliri praeter quod publice˛ utilitati
congruebat manifeste auderent.’ A second instance in which Nithard presents first-person
commentary is in Book IV (IV.3, p. 140) when he expresses his disbelief at the outcome of
negotiations with Lothar (discussed below).
43
De Jong, Penitential State, p. 96.
44
Nithard, Historiae II.2, p. 48: ‘Dudum quidem ex omnibus nuntio recepto, missos, videlicet
Nithardum et Adelgarium, delegit et, uti ocius valuit, ad Lodharium direxit . . .’ The Astrono-
mer, in comparison, uses the first person repeatedly when he is pulled into the narrative life of
Louis the Pious, who requests his astronomical expertise: Vita Hludowici imperatoris, c. 58, pp.
520–2.
45
duobus illatam a fratre vestro persecutionem vos vestrique haudquaquam meriti pateremini,
antequam Cadhellonicam introissemus civitatem, precepistis ut res vestris temporibus gestas
stili officio memorie˛ traderem.’ In comparison, Einhard’s prologue to his biography of
Charlemagne emphasizes the author’s friendship with his subject and his deep gratitude and
positive feelings toward Charlemagne: Einhard, Vie de Charlemagne, prologue, pp. 2–6.
46
Nithard, Historiae, preface to I, pp. 2–4: ‘Avi quoque insuper vestri venerandam memoriam per
omnia obmittere ratum minime videtur.’
47
Nithard, Historiae IV.5, p. 150; Airlie, ‘The World’, pp. 61, 65. Nithard’s reluctance to do so may
be an attempt to underline the fact that he was not a threat to any ruling Carolingian, despite
sharing a royal lineage.
48
Nithard, Historiae, preface to I, p. 2: ‘antequam Cadhellonicam introissemus civitatem’.
49
Nithard, Historiae, preface to I, p. 2: ‘nunc autem, si quid minus vel incultius quam oportuerit
pro rerum magnitudine huic operi inveneritis insertum, tanto facilior venia a vobis vestrisque
mihi debetur’. If Charles the Bald ordered Nithard to undertake this history in the context of,
and in order to combat, the fomenting discontent of Charles’s men on account of their lord’s

Admittedly, the initial preface creates some familiarity: Nithard refer-

ences how Charles the Bald knows that he, Nithard, ‘was tossed around
by the same disturbance as you [i.e., Charles]’.50 However, Nithard does
not flirt with such intimacy again until the transition from Book II to
Book III. In the final lines to Book II, he writes of the battles of June 841
to which ‘I gave vigorous assistance’ – a rare employment of the first-
person singular in the narrative.51 Shortly after, in the preface to Book III,
Nithard tells his readers that he will be recording ‘the events in which I
participated’.52 Then, in Book IV, Nithard reveals his second of two
explicit reactions to events in the narrative. When Charles and Louis sent
envoys to Lothar in order to divvy up some land and Lothar gained more
territory, Nithard interprets the outcome as the result of deceit: ‘I do not
know by what manoeuvre they were deceived.’53 Drawing together these
many pieces of evidence, Nelson has argued that Nithard firmly placed
himself at the Battle of Fontenoy to bring himself and his services to the
attention of Charles. His concerns were his lost lands and the sense that
he had been cheated out of his due despite his support of Charles – hence
the textual reminder of Nithard’s own key role in the wars.54
Yet what has not been explained fully is the intensity of Nithard’s
insertion of himself into Book IV. Five chapters into the final book, after
minimally acknowledging his role in the events or in the Carolingian
royal family, Nithard launches into a brief autobiography:
recent movements (namely a visit to his mother), as Leja suggests, then it is possible that
Nithard chose, in this passage, to separate himself from the king and his men out of his own
ambivalence regarding Charles’s decisions. Leja, ‘Making of Men’, pp. 35–6. While not ignoring
this possibility, we interpret Nithard’s use of ‘yours’ in this passage as part of a broader
ambivalence about his place within a family that had ejected his mother and later separated him
from his properties. On the choice to include or exclude family members, see Innes, ‘Keeping
It’, p. 21.
50
Nithard, Historiae, preface to I, p. 2: ‘quanto me nostis eodem turbine quo et vos, dum hoc opus
peregerim, esse agitatum’. Yet even this first preface does not come close to conveying the extent
to which Nithard was entangled in the events about which he reports; his fourth book’s preface,
however, vividly connects him to the political main stage (p. 126): ‘Sed, quoniam me de rebus
universis fortuna hinc inde junxit validisque procellis moerentem vehit.’
51
Nithard, Historiae II.10, p. 88: ‘pars vero que˛ in Solemnat Adhelardum, ceterosque, quibus haud
modicum supplementum Domino auxiliante praebui, appetiit strenue conflixit’. Translation
from P.E. Dutton (ed.), Carolingian Civilization: A Reader, 2nd edn (Toronto, 2004), p. 315,
correcting the original trans. by Scholz, Carolingian Chronicles, p. 154. On this mistranslation,
see Booker, ‘Imitator daemonum dicor’, p. 117. On the context of Nithard’s placement of
himself in the battle, see Nelson, ‘Public Histories’, pp. 273–5.
52
Nithard, Historiae, preface to III, p. 90: ‘Sed ne forte quilibet, quocumque modo deceptus, res
nostro in tempore gestas praeterquam exacte˛ sunt narrare praesumat, ex his quibus interfui
tertium libellum ut adderem acquievi.’
53
Nithard, Historiae IV.3, p. 140: ‘Quamobrem, ignoro qua fraude decepti, hi qui missi fuerant
augent illi supra definitam partem usque in Carbonarias.’
54
Nelson, ‘Public Histories’, pp. 273–9.

On this day a great earthquake struck nearly all of Gaul. On the same
day the worthy man Angilbert was translated to Centulum, and
twenty-nine years after his death, his body, without spices, was found
to be intact. This man came from a family by no means unknown at
the time. Madhelgaud, Richard, and he came from a single lineage,
and they were rightly held in high esteem by Charles the Great. With
a daughter of the same great king named Bertha, Angilbert begot my
brother Hartnid and me, Nithard. At Centulum Angilbert con-
structed a magnificent work [a building] in honour of Almighty God
and St Richard, and he ruled magnificently the [monastic] household
committed to him. From here, his life having ended with all happi-
ness, he reposed in peace at Centulum. With these few things about
my origins said, it is pleasing to return to the course of my history.55
There is little-to-no connection between this overview of his family and

the broader narrative, which tends to stay true to its ‘course’ of recounting
the civil wars. Although the occasion of an earthquake in October 842
provides Nithard with a chronological anchor for his autobiographical
sketch, its placement interrupts the narrative: immediately before his
family portrait, Nithard recounts the meeting of the brothers’ ambassa-
dors at Koblenz; immediately after, he describes the envoys returning to
their kings. Moreover, as demonstrated above, Nithard repeatedly avoids
multiple occasions to insert himself into the text – whether to acknowl-
edge Charlemagne as his grandfather or include his mother as one of
Louis the Pious’s sisters who received their inheritance from their father
and were then exiled from court. He passes over a prime chance to write
in the first person about his role as an ambassador, but here, he leaves the
narrative aside in order to present his lineage. Combined with this drastic
alteration in voice is an abrupt change in rhythm – a conspicuous shift
from a dynamic description of contemporary events to a static portrait of
individuals from the past.
Scholars have largely ignored this passage or provided insufficient
reason for its inclusion. Nelson has suggested that, in the wake of his
‘betrayal’ by Charles the Bald, Nithard elected to focus on his close
55
Nithard, Historiae IV.5, p. 150: ‘Qua quidem die terrae motus magnus per omnem poene hanc
Galliam factus est eademque die Angilbertus vir memorabilis Centulo translatus et anno post
decessum ejus XXVIIII corpore absque aromatibus indissoluto repertus est. Fuit hic vir ortus eo
in tempore haud ignotae familiae. Madhelgaudus autem, Richardus et hic una progenie fuere
et apud Magnum Karolum merito magni habebantur. Qui ex ejusdem magni regis filia nomine
Berehta Hartnidum fratrem meum et me Nithardum genuit, Centulo opus mirificum in
honore omnipotentis Dei sanctique Richarii construxit, familiam sibi commissam mirifice
rexit, hinc vitam cum omni felicitate defunctam Centulo in pace quievit. His paucis de origine
mea delibatis, ad historiae seriem redire libet.’

paternal kin, thus the fourth book’s ‘new emphasis on his father’s kin’.56
While such focus on the author’s father is novel, there is considerable
simultaneous emphasis on his maternal descent as well – more so, in fact,
than in early books of the Histories.57 After never explicitly or even
implicitly linking himself to Charlemagne, Nithard does so here, naming
his mother as the daughter of the great king. A more compelling expla-
nation proves necessary, and if read alongside the rest of the text as
reflective of the circumstances of Nithard and his immediate family,
Nithard’s short autobiography and its inclusion become clear.
Family in Nithard’s Histories
Interpreting Nithard’s Histories through the lens of family, a few obser-

vations are obvious. To start, in all four books Nithard concentrates on
fraternal relationships, and specifically on how a brother ought to treat
his brother. The Histories elevate fraternitas as one of the most esteemed
values in the text and in Frankish society.58 Yet, brotherly love proves itself
to be repeatedly disregarded throughout Nithard’s work, as brother turns
against brother, igniting civil wars. For example, the preface to Book I
opens with acknowledgement of the persecutions that Charles’s brother
inflicted upon Charles.59 Throughout the recounted events, the men
repeatedly appeal to brotherhood and the expectation of Christian love
between siblings.60 Thus, Charles the Bald appeals to his brothers by
calling attention to their fraternal ties, reminding Lothar repeatedly of
their brotherhood.61 Charles proposes an alliance with Lothar if the latter
henceforth would be ‘a loyal friend as, on account of justice, a brother
should be to a brother’.62 When Charles and Louis together remind
Lothar that they are brothers, Lothar responds that he was seeking ‘the
common good for themselves and for the people, as it is proper among
56
Nelson, ‘Public Histories’, pp. 280, 288–9, and Stone, Morality, p. 129.
57
Airlie, ‘The World’, p. 64. Although the Histories focuses as a whole on Nithard’s mother’s
family (his line of maternal descent), he does not claim the Carolingians as his own family until
here in Book IV when he also asserts his paternal heritage.
58
Nithard, Historiae II.1, p. 46 and III.5, p. 112: ‘fraterno amore’. See also Althoff, Family, Friends,
and Followers, pp. 2–3. On fraternitas in Nithard’s text, see D.M. Polanichka, ‘ “As a Brother
Should Be”: Siblings, Kinship, and Community in Carolingian Europe’, in J. Coy, B.
Marschke, J. Poley and C. Verhoeven (eds), Kinship and Community: Social and Cultural History
(Brooklyn, expected 2014), and Nelson, ‘Search for Peace’.
59
duobus illatam a fratre vestro persecutionem vos vestrique haudquaquam meriti patermini . . .’
60
Nithard, Historiae III.5, p. 112, and citations in footnotes immediately below.
61
Nithard, Historiae II.2, p. 48 and III.3, p. 102.
62
Nithard, Historiae II.4, p. 56: ‘consentiunt, ut deinceps Lodharius Karolo ita fidus amicus sit,
sicut frater per justiciam fratri esse debet’.

brothers’.63 In praising Charles and Louis after their Strasbourg Oaths,

Nithard asserts that their greatest virtue was the ‘sacred and venerable
peace’ they shared.64
That fraternitas garners a prominent role in Nithard’s Histories is not
unexpected: after all, the civil wars were fraternal wars, and brotherly love
and concord were one of the bases of Frankish peace.65 Although the
contemporaneous Annals of Fulda contain very little brotherly rhetoric,
the Annals of St Bertin mention multiple times the bonds of brotherly
love.66 Another mid-ninth-century text, Dhuoda’s handbook for her son,
emphasizes proper fraternal behaviour and also uses the language of
fraternitas repeatedly, reflecting broader Frankish and Christian notions
about the ideal community as fraternal.67
The theme of fraternitas finds its greatest emphasis, though, in
Nithard’s Histories, particularly in the author’s expression of the impor-
tance of sibling relationships and the gravity of fraternal discord. For
example, Nithard describes Lothar’s worst action as attacking his brother
as an enemy.68 Then, in his account of the Battle of Fontenoy, Nithard
notes how Lothar’s decision to take up arms against his own brothers
resulted in other men killing their brothers in the broader Frankish
population. Following the fratricide, the men took care to provide the
fallen – described as brothers – with proper burials and then to observe
a three-day fast for the remission of their brothers’ sins.69 (In contrast, the
Annals of Fulda describe the battle but without reference to fraternal ties
among the soldiers.70) The earthly ramifications for mistreating one’s
63
Nithard, Historiae II.10, p. 82; quote at II.10, p. 84: ‘praeter quod commune profectum tam
illorum quam et universe˛ plebis, sicut justiciam inter fratres et populum Christi oportebat,
que˛rere volebat’.
64
Nithard, Historiae III.6, p. 120: ‘omnemque praemissam nobilitatem excedebat fratrum sancta
ac veneranda concordia’. On these oaths and fraternal peace, placed within the broader context
of early medieval kingship, see P.J.E. Kershaw, Peaceful Kings: Peace, Power, and the Early
Medieval Political Imagination (Oxford, 2011), esp. pp. 206–12, and R. Schneider, Brüdergemeine
und Schwurfreundschaft: Der Auflösungprozeß des Karolingerreiches im Spiegel der caritas-
Terminologie in den Vertägen der karlingischen Teilkönige des 9. Jahrhunderts (Lübeck, 1964), pp.
178–84.
65
Airlie, ‘The World’, p. 67; Nelson, ‘Search for Peace’, p. 104; H.H. Anton, ‘Zum politischen
Konzept karolingischer Synoden und zur karolingischen Brüdergemeinschaft’, Historisches
Jahrbuch 99 (1979), pp. 55–132; Kershaw, Peaceful Kings, pp. 206–12; and K. van Eickels, ‘Der
Bruder als Freund und Gefährte: Fraternitas als Konzept personaler Bindung im Mittelalter’, in
K.-H. Spiess (ed.), Die Familie in der Gesellschaft des Mitelalters (Ostfildern, 2009), pp. 195–222.
66
AB, s.a. 840, p. 36 (discussed by Nelson, ‘Search for Peace’, p. 95); AB, s.a. 841, pp. 37–8; AB,
s.a. 842, pp. 40–1.
67
Dhuoda, Manuel I.7, p. 116; III.10, p. 178; IV.4, p. 216.
68
Nithard, Historiae II.8, pp. 72–4: ‘et, quod maximum est, in fratrem hostiliter irruit nec non et
suffragium a paganis illum que˛rere compulit’. On fraternal war as sin, see Nelson, ‘Search for
Peace’, p. 99, and Angelbert, ‘Lament’, in Poetry, ed. Godman, no. 39, pp. 262–4.
69
Nithard, Historiae III.1, p. 92. On Franks’ duties to the dead, Althoff, Family, Friends and
Followers, p. 20, and Innes, ‘Charlemagne’s Will’, p. 841.
70
AF, s.a. 841, p. 32.

brother was a loss of honour: Nithard relates, at another point in the text,
how the Franks, ‘fearing they might have left a disgraceful memory to
their descendents, if a brother failed to help a brother . . . chose to endure
all injuries and even, if necessary, death, rather than lose their renowned
invincibility’.71
Fraternal discord presented itself to Nithard as the core of the civil
wars, and the root of that discord can be found in the reign of Louis the
Pious. What we shall argue here is that for Nithard, the source of such
violence and discord was not primarily the coup d’états of Louis the
Pious’s eldest sons or perhaps even the birth of his youngest son.72 Rather,
Nithard – for very personal reasons, we shall see – pinpoints Louis the
Pious’s disregard for proper sibling relations as key to the violence and
instability of the past two decades.
At the beginning of the Histories, Nithard sketches brief portraits of
Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. He states in the preface that he will
discuss Charles’s grandfather, Charlemagne, because it would be a bad
idea to omit ‘the revered memory of your grandfather’.73 Nithard then
presents a glowing encomium of Charlemagne, who ‘left the whole of
Europe flourishing’.74 Nithard’s Charlemagne is the ideal king, against
whom all other rulers in the text (and into the future) will be compared.75
The portrait of Louis the Pious is one of great contrast. First, the term
‘portrait’ hardly applies: while Nithard provides a positive characteriza-
tion of Charlemagne, he covers the events of Louis the Pious’s life rather
than the qualities of the king. Only briefly does Nithard describe Louis as
‘the heir of all [Charlemagne’s] excellence’ and as ‘pious’.76 At greater
71
Nithard, Historiae II.10, p. 80: ‘verumtamen, quanquam se haec ita haberent, timentes ne forte,
si ab auxilio fratris frater deficeret, posteris suis indignam memoriam reliquissent, quod quidem
ne facerent, elegerunt omni penuriae, etiam, si oporteret, morti potius subire quam nomen
invictum amittere’.
72
Leja proposes that the source of the threats to Louis the Pious’s power and thus the civil wars
was the inversion of the parental–filial hierarchy: ‘Making of Men’, pp. 7, 10. While Leja makes
a number of interesting observations about Nithard’s text, her argument that an inversion of
familial hierarchy was the source of all problems rests almost wholly upon a single passage
(Nithard, Historiae I.3), without consideration of either its possible rhetorical motivations or
alternative, positive readings of the passage. This is not to ignore, however, the importance, at
the time, of maintaining a hierarchical father–son relationship. De Jong, Penitential State, pp.
15–16, 134.
73
Nithard, Historiae, preface to I, pp. 2–4: ‘Avi quoque insuper vestri venerandam memoriam per
omnia obmittere ratum minime videtur.’ Visual and written texts often compared Charles the
Bald to Charlemagne. William Diebold, ‘Nos quoque morem illius imitari cupientes: Charles
the Bald’s Evocation and Imitation of Charlemagne’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 75 (1993), pp.
271–300.
74
Nithard, Historiae I.1, p. 4: ‘in senectute bona decedens omnem Europem omni bonitate
repletam reliquit’.
75
Booker, Past Convictions, pp. 41–2.
76
Nithard, Historiae I.2, p. 4: ‘Heres autem tante sublimitatis, Lodhuwicus filiorum ejus justo
matrimonio susceptorum novissimus, ceteris decedentibus, successit.’ Nithard, Historiae,
preface to I, p. 2: ‘pii patris vestri’.

length does the text present Louis’s reign as one of crisis, violence, coup
d’état, uncertainty. Ultimately, Louis does not fare well at all in
comparison to the immediately preceding portrait of his father.77
Charlemagne surely provided a model kingship difficult to imitate, and
yet Nithard could have drawn on the sources employed by the Astrono-
mer to strengthen his portrayal of Louis. More significantly, such an
unfavourable depiction, accurate or not, is curious when Nithard’s
patron is Charles the Bald, the faithful son of Louis the Pious.
It is necessary to determine why Nithard includes such an unflattering
illustration of Louis the Pious. Stuart Airlie has underlined the impor-
tance of ‘Carolingian-ness’ and the need to present Charles the Bald’s
lineage in this ‘house history’.78 That is to say, linking Charles the Bald to
Charlemagne (through, sensibly, Louis the Pious) aligns with a more
general Carolingian legitimization strategy based on hereditary custom.79
If Louis the Pious is the link between grandfather and grandson, however,
so too does his ‘unhappy reign’ serve as contrast to Charlemagne’s.80
In the preface of the Histories, Nithard does offer a reason why he
discusses Louis the Pious, stating that he wants to make clear to the reader
‘the real cause of your [i.e., Charles’s] conflicts’.81 Certainly one cause is
Lothar’s anger and resentment toward his youngest, half-brother Charles,
which is initially ignited during Louis’s reign.82 However, there is also a
theme of improper sibling relationships in Nithard’s description of Louis.
First, after dividing the inheritance between his sisters born in lawful
wedlock, Louis ‘ordered his sisters to depart urgently from the palace [and
go] to their monasteries’.83 The account is harsh and abrupt in its tone.
The next sentence describes how Louis’s half-brothers were made his
table companions – until, soon after, the emperor’s distrust and fear
drove him to publicly humiliate his younger half-brothers.84 They were
called before a general assembly, tonsured, and sent into monasteries. It
is important to note that Nithard’s Histories may be the only text telling
77
Airlie, ‘The World’, p. 62. See, too, Leyser, ‘Three Historians’, p. 22; Booker, Past Convictions,
pp. 41–2.
78
Airlie, ‘The World’, p. 61.
79
Airlie, ‘The World’, pp. 61–3.
80
Airlie, ‘The World’, p. 62. Also, Nelson, ‘Public Histories’, p. 268.
81
Nithard, Historiae, preface to I, p. 2: ‘sed facilius cuilibet legenti altercationum vestrarum veritas
patebit, si que˛dam que suo in tempore contigisse novimus summotenus praelibavero’. De Jong,
Penitential State, p. 98.
82
For the brothers’ resentment of Lothar upon his being named co-emperor, see Thegan, Gesta
Hludowici imperatoris, c. 21, ed. E. Tremp, MGH SRG 64 (Hanover, 1995), pp. 210–11.
83
Nithard, Historiae I.2, p. 6: ‘Initio quidem imperii suscepti pecuniam ingenti numero a patre
relictam trifariam dividere jussit et unam partem causa funeris expendit, duas vero inter se et
sorores suas a patre justo matrimonio susceptas divisit, quas et instanter a palatio ad sua
monasteria abire praecepit.’
84
Nithard, Historiae I.2, pp. 6–8.

us of the brothers’ ritual humiliation (though Nithard does not reference

Louis’s later reconciliation with Drogo and Hugh).85 This humiliation,
which comes just chapters before Louis tries to reconcile his own sons and
bring them together as brothers in fraternitas, seems to forecast Louis’s
own humiliation and tonsuring before an assembly during his reign.
Nithard hints that Louis’s transgressions against his own siblings were
the original cause of the fraternal violence of the 840s. When Louis the
Pious mistreated his siblings, both his exiled sisters and then his tonsured
half-brothers, he set the example of fraternal discord for his sons, even as
he begged his own sons to be loving toward one another. Even more,
while Louis the Pious demanded concord among his sons and propagated
fraternitas, he was not above sowing discord among his sons to keep a grip
on the imperial throne.86
More personally immediate to Nithard was the memory that Louis the
Pious had disgraced Nithard’s own mother. He had removed her from
court and sent her to a monastery immediately after his ascension and the
execution of their father’s will. Her crime seems to have been her rela-
tionship with Angilbert, which had not been officially blessed as a mar-
riage by the church but had garnered the tacit approval of Charlemagne.
Louis’s actions made clear his negative judgement of her behaviour – not
only exiling her, but also working during his reign to reduce sexual
impropriety and reinforce the institution of marriage.87 Meanwhile,
writers at court would either harshly judge Charlemagne’s daughters
(including Bertha) or, in the case of Einhard, find it necessary to explain
or brush aside both the women’s behaviour and Charlemagne’s accep-
tance of it. It is with this history in mind that Nithard approached his
own text.
85
Airle, ‘The World’, p. 63. De Jong interprets the Latin signum sanctae religionis of Chapter 1 of
the Relatio of 833 (‘The report of Compìegne by the bishops of the realm concerning the
penance of Emperor Louis’) as referring to Louis’s forced tonsure and monastic exile of his
brothers – suggesting a second textual reference to the events: Penitential State, p. 275, n. 13. Her
translation of the text appears in the appendix of ibid. at pp. 271–9. Booker, in contrast to de
Jong, interprets this first chapter of the Relatio as referring to the ‘ordeal of the cross’: Past
Convictions, p. 169.
86
De Jong, Penitential State, p. 2.
87
Konecny, Die Frauen, pp. 86–102; P. Riché, The Carolingians: A Family Who Forged Europe,
trans. M.I. Allen (Philadelphia, 1993), pp. 145–6; Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir, pp. 272, 280–1; K.
Heene, The Legacy of Paradise: Marriage, Motherhood and Women in Carolingian Edifying
Literature (Frankfurt am Main, 1997), pp. 79–89; Leja, ‘Making of Men’, p. 25; Garver, Women
and Aristocratic Culture, p. 163; de Jong, Penitential State, p. 193; Booker, Past Convictions, p. 223;
K. Heidecker, The Divorce of Lothar II: Christian Marriage and Political Power in the Carolingian
World, trans. T.M. Guest (Ithaca, 2010), pp. 21–5, 127; and Costambeys, Innes and MacLean,
Carolingian World, pp. 199–203.

Evidence of Nithard’s preoccupation with Louis the Pious’s mistreat-

ment of his own sister (Nithard’s mother) surfaces in Book III.88 Here, in
the midst of a text thoroughly dominated by male characters and mas-
culine activity, Nithard assigns substantial narrative treatment to a
woman.89 Breaking away from his central storyline, he relates at consid-
erable length a story about Charles the Bald’s half-sister Hildegard – a
story relayed in no other text from the period.90 According to Nithard,
Hildegard, for undisclosed reasons, imprisoned one of Charles the Bald’s
men.91 Charles’s other men attempted to react with violence, but Charles
prevented that. Instead, he responded compassionately and Hildegard
submitted, reasserting her allegiance through oaths.92 Charles quickly
forgave Hildegard, ‘gently’ speaking to her and assuring her ‘all the
kindness a brother owes a sister’.93 Airlie has de-emphasized the specific
details of this incident and its significance, highlighting instead the
sister’s identity as Carolingian and the correlation between ‘harmony in
the royal family . . . [and] in the public sphere’.94 But while Hildegard’s
story certainly plays into the broader presentation of Carolingian iden-
tity, this conflict and its resolution bear particular importance for
Nithard.
The passage is pregnant with significance, particularly when Nithard
explains that after the reconciliation, Charles allowed his sister to go
wherever she wished.95 This, for Nithard, is exactly how a brother should
act towards his sister. Even if she goes so far as to present a military
challenge to her brother, she should be forgiven, even given her freedom.
The contrast with how Louis the Pious treated his own sister cannot be
ignored. Just as Nithard esteems Charles the Bald as the hero of his text
88
Booker suggests that Louis’s ‘forced enclaustration of his siblings during the palace “cleansing”
in 814’ might be part of the charges, in 833, that the emperor had ‘rendered violence to his
kinsmen’: Past Convictions, p. 169.
89
The story is, as far as scholars can determine, placed chronologically within the text. The event
is recounted at the beginning of Book III, Chapter 4. The previous chapter deals with the events
of September and October 841, and the second half of Chapter 4 relates the events of November
841 to early February 842. Nithard’s details suggest that Hildegard’s rebellion occurred in
October 841. He opens Chapter 4 with the word interea (Historiae III.4, p. 106), and locates
Charles near Paris after the rebellion, which matches records that place the king at Saint-Denis
on 6 November 841. Scholz, Carolingian Chronicles, p. 208, n. 19.
90
91
Nithard, Historiae III.4, pp. 106–11.
92
Airlie, ‘The World’, p. 52; Nelson, ‘Public Histories’, p. 270; Alcuin suggests that Charlemagne’s
daughters took sides in the fraternal jostling of the 790s. Nelson, ‘Monstrous Regiment’, p. 57.
93
Nithard, Historiae III.4, p. 108: ‘multisque verbis blande illam allocutus omnem benignitatem
quam frater sorori debet, si deinde benivola erga illum esse vellet, ei perhumane promisit ac quo
voluit illam abire concessit’. On the broader significance of forgiveness in the Carolingian world
and Nithard’s text, see Polanichka, ‘As a Brother Should’.
94
Airlie, ‘The World’, p. 66. One implication of emphasizing identity over the particulars of this
conflict is the conclusion that the essence of being Carolingian was discord.
95
Nithard, Historiae III.4, p. 108.

and the loving brother, so too does he criticize Louis the Pious as quite
the opposite. Nithard’s feelings about Louis, though somewhat veiled,
thus emerge as decidedly negative.96 His less-than-positive appraisal of
Louis may also explain why Nithard never declares any familial tie to
Louis as his uncle.97
Just as Nithard’s portrayal of Louis the Pious and fraternal relation-
ships sheds light on his underlying personal interests, so too does his
relative silence regarding the empress Judith reflect his own immediate
circumstances.98 By 830, rumours spread that the queen ‘had been rav-
ished by a certain Duke Bernard [of Septimania], who was of the royal
family and the godson of the emperor’.99 While Thegan asserted, in his
biography of Louis the Pious, that the accusers were ‘lying in all respects’,
others believed the gossip.100 Upon Louis’s removal from the throne,
Judith was sent to a monastery and only reinstated to her imperial
position later, after purging herself by oath of all accusations.101 Consid-
ering the role that Judith (and especially rumours of her infidelity) played
in the removal of Louis the Pious from office, the Histories remain
curiously silent on the matter – neither affirming nor denying the alle-
gations of adultery.102 The sole indication of the scandal comes when
96
Nithard’s negative depiction of Louis is discussed by Depreux, ‘Nithard et la res publica’; Airlie,
‘The World’, pp. 63, 75; and Booker, Past Convictions, pp. 41–2, 78, 253. De Jong describes Louis
as ‘passive’ in the text and finds Nithard’s feelings about Louis ‘difficult to make out’ and not
quite as negative, particularly in comparison to the author’s hostile treatment of Lothar:
Penitential State, pp. 98–100.
97
Of course, any reader of the Histories would reach the obvious conclusion that Nithard must be
Louis’s nephew (since Nithard is Charlemagne’s grandson and Louis is Charlemagne’s son), but
Nithard does not emphasize their uncle–nephew relationship. Nelson (‘Public Histories’, p. 288)
writes that ‘Nithard mentions his connection with a series of powerful persons’ and she includes
Louis the Pious among those ‘powerful persons’, but we are not convinced that evidence
supports Nithard making this connection to Louis the Pious.
98
On Judith, see G. Bührer-Thierry, ‘La reine adultère’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, Xe–XIIe
siècles 35 (1992), pp. 299–312; E. Ward, ‘Caesar’s Wife: The Career of the Empress Judith,
819–829’, in Godman and Collins (eds), Charlemagne’s Heir, pp. 205–27; A. Koch, Kaiserin
Judith: Eine politische Biographie (Husum, 2005).
99
Thegan, Gesta Hludowici, c. 36, ed. and trans. E. Tremp, MGH SRG 64 (Hanover, 1995), p. 222:
‘dixerunt Iudith reginam violatam esse a quodam duce Bernhardo, qui erat de stirpe regali et
domni imperatoris ex sacro fonte baptismatis filius, mentientes omnia’. Translation:
Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, ed. Noble, p. 209.
100
Thegan, Gesta Hludowici, c. 36, p. 222. Translation: Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, ed. Noble,
p. 209.
101
Bührer-Thierry, ‘La reine adultère’; M. de Jong, ‘Exegesis for an Empress’, in E. Cohen and M.
de Jong (eds), Medieval Transformations: Texts, Power, and Gifts in Context (Leiden, 2001), pp.
69–100, at pp. 79–85, 94–6; Koch, Kaiserin Judith, pp. 118–20; G. Bührer-Thierry, ‘Reines
adultères et empoisonneuses, reines injustement accusées: La confrontation de deux modèles
aux VIIIe–Xe siècles’, in C. La Rocca (ed.), Agire da donna: Modelli e pratiche di rappresentazione
(secoli VI–X) (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 151–70; de Jong, Penitential State, p. 211; and Firey, Contrite
Heart, p. 64.
102
Leyser notes Nithard’s ambiguous view of Judith in ‘Three Historians’, p. 22. Scholz writes that
Nithard believed Judith had cheated but without presenting evidence to support the assertion:
Carolingian Chronicles, p. 26. In Leja’s reading of the Histories, Nithard takes a critical view of

Nithard notes that she was ‘in no way accepted into the royal bed until
she had established herself innocent of the criminal charges’.103 The clear
lack of engagement with Judith’s supposed infidelity has prompted the
argument that, unlike many of his contemporaries, Nithard did not
connect the state of the realm with the purity of its ruling couple;
improper sexuality, in the Histories, has no correlation to rebellion and
instability.104 Whether or not Nithard believed that prosperity of the res
publica rested upon the rulers’ sexual morality, he may have realized that
to entertain the topic of impropriety would have been problematic for
him in light of his mother’s reputation.105
More broadly, the Histories level little, if any, criticism at Judith, sexual
or otherwise. Her presence is reoccurring, but not significant: Nithard
notes that Judith’s safety is at risk during the civil wars; that she, along-
side Charles, leads his followers; and that she travels through the
kingdom.106 Meg Leja contends that Nithard evinces ‘a trace of discom-
fort at her actions’ whenever she ‘demonstrated the ability to command
or influence men’, but that discomfort is difficult to detect; in contrast, he
reserves the greatest and most explicit criticism for male actors within the
unfolding drama.107 Judith largely plays the role of the ever-present, yet
peripheral, mother.108
Through his text, Nithard responded to his mother’s mistreatment and
disgrace with a statement on proper sibling relations and carefully crafted
portraits of Louis and Judith. However, simply conveying proper sibling
behaviour would not have been enough to right Nithard’s personal or
familial predicament, as one can imagine that Nithard experienced much
more than shame as a result of his mother’s banishment from court. In
the ninth century, as nascent knighthood emerged in western Europe,
Judith, whom he believes wields too much influence over her husband and son: ‘Making of
Men’, pp. 35–6. One is hard-pressed, however, to find the ‘trace of discomfort’ that Leja sees
when Nithard writes of Judith.
103
Nithard, Historiae I.5, p. 22: ‘Verumtamen haud est thoro regio recepta, donec se criminibus
objectis innoxiam, quia criminator deerat, sacramento una cum propinquis coram plebe effecit.’
Nithard’s reference to Judith establishing her innocence is chronologically incorrect: Judith had
to answer such charges in February 831, not in 834.
104
Leja, ‘Making of Men’, pp. 26–7.
105
On the res publica in Nithard’s Histories, see Wehlen, Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 61–77, 96–105;
Sassier, ‘L’utilisation’, pp. 17–29; and Depreux, ‘Nithard et la Res Publica’, pp. 149–61.
106
Nithard, Historiae II.3, pp. 50–1; II.6, pp. 64–5; and II.9, pp. 74–5.
107
Leja, ‘Making of Men’, p. 35.
108
Nelson argues that Nithard’s frequent omission of queenly titles when referring to Judith may
signal ‘personal hostility to her’: J.L. Nelson, ‘Early Medieval Rites of Queen-Making and the
Shaping of Medieval Queenship’, in A. Duggan (ed.), Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe
(Suffolk, 1997), pp. 301–15, at pp. 304–5, n. 17. But considering Nithard’s preoccupation with
his mother in the text, his preference for ‘mother’ as the term most often used to refer to Judith
(the mother of Nithard’s patron) seems indicative, not of hostility, but rather of his own
concern for mother–son relationships.

honour and legitimacy were extremely important to Frankish notions of

masculinity and aristocracy.109 Honour could be obtained through the
acquisition of a title, office, additional material worth, or lands.110 Legiti-
macy came largely through family bonds. Accordingly, the disgrace of
one’s immediate family and in particular one’s parents could undermine
one’s legitimacy – straining and even staining one’s honour. Nithard
initially experienced more shame than outright loss of legitimacy or
honour, for even after his mother’s exile, he, then aged fourteen,
remained at court, and his key role in Charles the Bald’s camp suggests
that his position experienced no real diminishment. Admittedly, as a
supposedly illegitimate child with his mother exiled to a monastery, there
was no security of inheritance for Nithard. His acute awareness of this
fact may underlie the detail he provides in his first book, when he notes
how Louis the Pious divided Charlemagne’s possessions only among the
children born in lawful wedlock.111 Yet, Nithard, who now depended on
the mercy of his uncle, may have been saved from being dishonoured
during Louis the Pious’s reign due to his illegitimacy. Ultimately,
throughout his uncle’s reign and briefly after his death, Nithard fared well
in both status and wealth. However, as the civil wars continued, Nithard
saw his honour slip away as he lost his grip on two of its key indicators
– property and status. In 842, his promised land was revoked, and
suddenly, his illegitimacy became an obstacle to him securing property or
honores.112
Perhaps it is at this point that Nithard found his honour as related to
his immediate family especially significant. As Nithard watched Charles
turn his back on him and not reward him with property, he was likely
reminded of how Charles’s father had turned his back on his own sister,
Nithard’s mother. As a result, the underlying theme of proper sibling
relationships became increasingly personal and vital as time moved
forward and the Histories expanded in length. By Book IV, Nithard found
it absolutely essential to re-establish his legitimacy. It is also possible that
Nithard, though we know little about his relationship to Bertha, felt it his
109
Nelson argues that Nithard and his men in the 840s were ‘familiar with the ideals and realities
of medieval knighthood’: ‘Ninth-Century Knighthood’, here p. 87. See also D. Barthélemy, The
Serf, the Knight, and the Historian, trans. G.R. Edwards (Ithaca, 2009), esp. ch. 6, pp. 154–75.
110
Nelson, ‘Ninth-Century Knighthood’, pp. 81–2; Nelson, ‘Public Histories’, pp. 277–80.
111
Nithard, Historiae I.2, p. 6. Einhard only tells us that Charlemagne’s goods were to be
distributed among his sons and daughters, without reference to the marital status of their
mothers: Vie de Charlemagne, c. 33, p. 96. For comparable attention to lawful marriage, note
how Nithard emphasizes that Louis did not divide the empire among his sons until they were
legally married: Historiae I.2, pp. 6–8. Also, Dhuoda clearly identifies herself as Bernard’s
legitimate wife: Manuel, prologue, pp. 80–2.
112
Nelson, ‘Public Histories’, pp. 274–81. Nelson (p. 278) places Nithard’s ‘lost honors’ within ‘this
disputed region between the Meuse and the Scheldt’. Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir, pp. 408 and
(more generally on honores) 249–62.

duty to serve his mother in this way. Our fullest insight into mother–son
relations in the mid-ninth century comes from a contemporary text, the
handbook written by Dhuoda for her son William (a man at Charles the
Bald’s court). In the text, she indicates that sons are obliged to attend to
their mothers in gratitude for the maternal love shown to a son.113
Knowing also all that Louis’s wife Judith did for the sake of her son
Charles, it remains likely that Bertha left Nithard a debt of gratitude, the
payment of which now appeared timely.114
With all this in his mind, Nithard, in writing that final book of the
Histories, diverged from his steady course to indulge in autobiographical
writing, and here he comes into focus as an individual with a particular
history, an extraordinary lineage, and strong connections to the royal
family. In examining Nithard’s brief self-history, his painstaking detail
about who his parents were proves surprising in the context of the
Histories as a whole. Nithard was writing for his immediate peer group
and accordingly, in his text, often left out individuals’ titles, assuming his
audience was aware of them.115 Likely, his readers would have known or at
least known of Nithard’s immediate family members. Even so, Nithard
gives voice to his family tree, because ‘remembering was an act of legiti-
mation’ itself.116 Nithard then further legitimizes himself and his parents
by delineating their connection to Charles the Great. When he opens the
Histories with a portrait of Charlemagne, Nithard leaves no hint of their
shared blood, but here in Book IV he fully links himself with
Charlemagne.117 This direct connection through his mother Bertha also
allowed Nithard to benefit from the legacy of Charlemagne while avoid-
ing the obvious taint of Louis the Pious’s line, which produced fraternal
warfare. Nithard eschews clear connections to this uncle, who within his
work emerges as the pivotal figure in Carolingian history – though
negatively so.
Moreover, Nithard asserts Charlemagne’s approval of his father,
Angilbert, whom Charles the Great ‘rightly held in high esteem’.118 The
respect of Charlemagne for Angilbert forcefully rebuts any claims that the
latter behaved inappropriately with his master’s daughter. Angilbert’s
113
Leja, ‘Making of Men’, p. 17.
114
On Judith and Charles, see Ward, ‘Caesar’s Wife’; Koch, Kaiserin Judith, esp. pp. 65–72,
99–102. More generally see Stafford, ‘Sons and Mothers’.
115
Nelson, ‘Public Histories’, p. 260.
116
Innes, ‘Keeping It’, p. 31.
117
Nithard’s epitaph, written by Micon, emphasized the deceased’s pride for his descent from
Charlemagne: ‘Cuius de Karoli genio processit origo/Nobilis ac celsa Caesaris egregi.’ Micon,
Carmina centulensia, ed. L Traube, MGH Poetae 3 (Berlin, 1896), no. 33, pp. 310–11, and
Nithard, Nithardi Historiarum libri III, ed. G.H. Pertz and E. Müller, MGH SRG 44 (Hanover,
1907), p. vii. On individuals composing their own epitaphs, see Dhuoda, Manuel X.6, pp.
356–7, and p. 356, n. 1.
118
Nithard, Historiae IV.5, p. 150: ‘et apud Magnum Karolum merito magni habebantur’.

relations with Bertha, Nithard implies, had been unproblematic. Nor

does Nithard stop with Charlemagne’s approval of Angilbert, but more
fully vindicates his parents’ relationship by revealing the devout religios-
ity of his father. Nithard describes Angilbert’s manifest piety when he
erected a building, ‘a magnificent work in honour of God’.119 Addition-
ally, Angilbert is described as a great father, since he ‘ruled magnificently
the [monastic] household committed to him’.120 Our author, Nithard,
does not simply list his parents, but rather presents the ultimate lineage,
combining earthly royalty and the religious elite.
Nithard’s most concrete vindication of his parents’ relationship comes
at the opening of this brief autobiography: ‘the worthy man Angilbert
was translated to Centulum, and twenty-nine years after his death, his
body, without spices, was found to be intact’.121 In reporting his father’s
translation, the author implicitly elevates Angilbert to the status of saint,
whose bodily transfer highlights a key ritual and devotional moment in a
saint’s cult, allowing for public veneration. More notable is the descrip-
tion of his father’s flesh as whole: the translation confirms not only
Angilbert’s spirituality but also – and primarily, for Nithard’s purpose –
his carnal purity. Carolingian concerns with fornication could manifest
in vivid descriptions of post-mortem torn flesh, particularly sexual
organs, since physical sins provoked physical punishment. One is
reminded of the 824 dream of Wetti, a monk of Reichenau, in which
priests and the women with whom they fornicated stood in ‘raging fires
up to their genitals’ and every three days endured lashes to those organs.122
Commenting on the supposedly rampant immorality of the previous
reign, Wetti further recounts a vision of animals gnawing at the genitalia
119
Nithard, Historiae IV.5, p. 150: ‘Centulo opus mirificum in honore omnipotentis Dei sanctique
Richarii construxit.’ It is also possible that Nithard had broader criticisms of Louis the Pious.
It has been argued that monastic architecture became more austere and smaller under the reign
of Louis on account of Benedict of Aniane’s guidance – in contrast to the monumental and
grandiose monastic architecture of Charlemagne’s reign. Since Angilbert’s grand monastic
architecture at Saint-Riquier is often selected for comparison, it is possible that Nithard’s
reference to Angilbert’s building programme was a subtle jab at Louis the Pious. W. Jacobsen,
‘Benedikt von Aniane und die Architektur unter Ludwig dem Frommen zwischen 814 und 830’,
in Atti del XXIV Congresso Internazionale di Storia dell’Arte (Bologna, 1979), pp. 15–22. Jacob-
sen’s thesis has, however, received criticism, particularly from D. Geuenich, ‘Kritische
Anmerkungen zur sogenannten “anianischen Reform” ’, in D.R. Bauer, R. Hiestand, B. Kasten
and S. Lorenz (eds), Mönchtum – Kirche – Herrschaft, 750–1000 (Sigmaringen, 1998), pp. 99–112.
120
Nithard, Historiae IV.5, p. 150: ‘familiam sibi commissam mirifice rexit’.
121
Nithard, Historiae IV.5, p. 150: ‘eademque die Angilbertus vir memorabilis Centulo translatus et
anno post decessum ejus XXVIIII corpore absque aromatibus indissoluto repertus est’. Konecny
sees this miracle as a rehabilitation of Angilbert: Die Frauen, p. 76. That Nithard’s ‘God is
somewhat distant from everyday affairs’ (Leja, ‘Making of Men’, p. 13) throughout the text only
makes his references to God here more notable.
122
Heito, Visio Wettini VI, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH Poetae 2 (Berlin, 1884), pp. 269–70, discussed
by P.E. Dutton, The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire (London, 1994), pp. 63–6,
and de Jong, Penitential State, p. 141.

of Charlemagne as punishment for his lust.123 In response to such ‘dream

critics’ who pointed blame at the great king for the court’s sexual excesses,
and to writers such as the Astronomer who implicitly labelled Bertha’s
relationship with Angilbert as fornication, Nithard provided visible, tan-
gible, and public ‘proof ’ of his father’s purity through his intact body.
Even if the bodily integrity of Angilbert did not convince the most ardent
naysayers that his earlier relationship with Bertha did not involve forni-
cation, it provided the final and lasting image of Nithard’s father as a
carnally pure man. The translation of Angilbert’s body granted Nithard
material evidence to help persuade readers that an honourable relation-
ship had legitimately produced him and his brother. It allowed him to
shift the social memory of his parents from one of scandal and sensuality
to one of spirituality. Ultimately, his father’s body could serve as a
corporeal monument, a physical aide-mémoire guiding the mid-ninth-
century Frankish world to recall a new memory and thus to take on a
revised history of Nithard’s immediate family as constructed by the
author himself.124
Conclusion
The Histories are more than a narrative of the Carolingian civil wars, and
also more than the private history of Nithard alone. The text discloses a
very intimate, family history that bears the mark of a man whose mother
was disgraced, whose parents’ relationship was deemed scandalous, and
who fought in the text to re-establish his and his parents’ honour.125
Although Nithard may have begun his text focused on writing the proper
history of Charles the Bald, the work shifted as he sought to construct a
corrective history of himself and his family. As his goals changed, so too
was the author able to reshape the work as a whole, employing elements
of early chapters in service of new aims.126 Suddenly, the praise of
Charlemagne in the first chapter of the first book could frame the entire
text. The emperor had become a perfect device to remind readers of the
peace and prosperity of the past in contradistinction to the war and
decline of the present day. Although Nithard initially presented
Charlemagne to serve as a contrast to Louis the Pious, now ‘his opening
123
Heito, Visio Wettini XI, p. 271, discussed by Dutton, Politics, pp. 63–4.
124
The use of Angilbert’s body in this way is reminiscent of E. van Houts’s study of the role of
material culture in commemoration as ‘pegs for memory’: Memory and Gender, pp. 15, 93–120.
125
The slim manuscript tradition of Nithard’s Histories raises the question of whether the author’s
connection to such scandal or his use of the text to fight for his honour may be, in part, the
cause of its limited transmission. Without more concrete evidence, however, we are hesitant to
speculate on this point.
126

hymn of praise to Charlemagne provided a bitter counterpoint to his

final book’s gloomy picture of the era of another Charles, Charles the
Bald himself ’.127 In fact, Nithard’s portrait of his own father in the
Histories’ final chapters connects the end of the great age of Charlemagne
with the end of Angilbert’s life as well. After all, Charlemagne and
Angilbert had died within two weeks of one another. Thus, Nithard’s
history had come full circle, ending with the same hero with whom he
began, but having connected himself firmly to that hero, by drawing his
lineage to Charlemagne as his grandfather, by broadcasting
Charlemagne’s esteem for his father, and through the emphatic use of the
first person.128
By the end of his Histories, that personal imprint had further become
part of the text’s framework in other, subtler – and yet more supernatural
– ways. Through the Histories, as we have seen, Nithard, in line with
medieval historiographical and annalistic traditions, selected for inclu-
sion natural events when they were found to be ‘symbolically signifi-
cant’.129 In particular, he employed weather at key moments in the
narrative to signal turning points. For example, a violent tide brings
merchant ships to Charles for his use, and later the impossible rise of the
Seine keeps Lothar at bay – both events granting Charles an advantage
and thus demonstrating whose side God favours.130 As the second book
ends, an eclipse marks the breakdown of negotiations, which ushers in
further turmoil.131 Meanwhile, according to Nithard, a great snow, a cold
spell, and the disappearance of a comet that had lingered in the sky for
three months highlight the Strasbourg Oaths.132 Finally, as the Histories
end, an eclipse and great snow indicate the terrible despair that Nithard
feels and sees around him.133
127
128
Nithard, Historiae IV.7, p. 156: ‘Quodque hujuscemodi exemplis pene adhuc omnibus notis
praefacile probaturus accedam.’
129
Dutton, ‘Observations’, p. 173.
130
Nithard, Historiae II.6, pp. 64–6; III.3, p. 104. On ‘the theophanic capacity of natural history’,
see Dutton, ‘Observations’, p. 174.
131
This is one of the few moments Nithard employs the first person, situating himself as the
reporter of the events at the events themselves: Historiae II.10, p. 86.
132
Nithard, Historiae III.5, p. 118. Cf. brief mention of comet in AF, s.a. 841, p. 33. Nithard’s
description here is an excellent example of ‘bundl[ing] together reports of strange natural events
. . . because [he] believed that these isolated physical happenings might constitute a single string
of evidence revealing the workings of the divine mind and what it intended for the world at
large’: Dutton, ‘Observations’, p. 174.
133
In the Carolingian worldview, ‘individual sins could upset the whole cosmos. The withdrawal
of divine favour could have disastrous meteorological, agricultural, biological and social, as well
as political, consequences’: R. Meens, ‘Politics, Mirrors of Princes and the Bible: Sins, Kings and
the Well-being of the Realm’, EME 7 (1998), pp. 345–57, at p. 345. Nithard, in his final chapter,
links the failed leadership with the desperate weather conditions, making clear how ‘an act of
injustice by the person who should be the supreme guardian of justice sets the whole cosmos in
disorder’ (ibid., p. 351).

It is therefore remarkable that Nithard mentions in Book IV that ‘a

great earthquake struck nearly all of Gaul’.134 Although this natural event
occurs on the day that a confirmed truce ends, Nithard connects the
earthquake more closely to the translation of his saintly father’s remains.
Angilbert’s holy status earns recognition as a key moment in the text and
thus in Carolingian history – and in marked contrast to the ‘ill-omens’
regarding his genus about which Nithard is at pains to write when his
third book opens.135
As the end of the text draws near, the author’s attention has shifted
from the course of the civil wars to his own history and the redemption
of himself and his family. He ties the far-reaching political events to
the very intimate, personal relations between siblings, especially those
between brother and sister. Nithard prunes and shapes both his family
memory and his text to meet his current needs.136 Thus, just as Angilbert
had built an architectural monument to God at Saint-Riquier, so too did
Nithard build a textual monument on behalf of his parents and, ulti-
mately, himself. His Carolingian history redeemed his immediate family,
creating a revised social memory that was simultaneously forgetful of
his mother’s banishment and redemptive of her relationship with
Angilbert.137 Accordingly, we ought to read Nithard’s Histories as encoded
with the memories of his parents – as a familial memoria not only for the
ruling members of the Carolingian house, but also for those marginalized
by its central political figures.
Although Nithard’s aims by the Histories’ conclusion narrowed to
focus on himself and his immediate family, the implications of his his-
torical revision may be much more far-reaching and important to studies
of marriage and gender in the Carolingian world than heretofore recog-
nized. For what Nithard ultimately presents in the second half of his work
suggests a critique of marriage, a broadening of the primarily masculine
value of fraternitas, and a re-gendering of historical genres. On the first
134
Nithard, Historiae IV.5, p. 150: ‘Qua quidem die terrae motus magnus per omnem poene hanc
Galliam factus est eademque die Angilbertus vir memorabilis Centulo translatus.’ Cf. AB, s.a.
842, p. 43.
135
Nithard, Historiae, preface to III, p. 88: ‘Quoniam sinistrum me quiddam ex genere nostro ut
audiam pudet, referre praesertim quam maxime piget.’
136
We borrow here the phrase of M. Innes, ‘Keeping It’, p. 20: ‘Family memory was not something
that [Dhuoda] merely tended; it was pruned and shaped to meet current needs.’
137
On the role of historical narratives in the formation of group identities, as well as the skilfulness
shown by Carolingian authors who sought to mould memories and identities with their
historical writings, see R. McKitterick, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cam-
bridge, 2004). Considering McKitterick’s argument for the importance to Frankish identities of
collective social memories and their inscription into historical texts, Nithard’s Histories ought
to be understood in its fullness as the work of a clever, historically conscious individual who
sought to mould not just contemporary, but also future memories of his immediate family, by
drafting a new history and identity for himself and his parents.

account, Nithard, in Chapters 5 and 6 of Book IV, hints at a broader

commentary on marriage. The author, in establishing Charlemagne’s
esteem for Angilbert and God’s blessing of Angilbert as a saintly figure,
disputes the presence of sin or sexual immorality in Angilbert’s life and
thus in his relationship with Bertha. In addition to (re)establishing his
parents’ and his own honour, this passage also broaches the topic of
male–female relationships. Nithard continues this discussion in the fol-
lowing chapter, when he then criticizes Charles’s reasons for marrying
Hildegard. His discussion of these two couples, read in progression and
also in the context of his entire work, suggests a subtle critique of the
institution of marriage. Throughout the Histories, Nithard, when refer-
encing women, demonstrates preference for consanguinal (mother–son,
brother–sister) ties over affinal (husband–wife) ones. Nithard’s unease
about marriage may have resulted not only from his parents’ experience,
but also from the trend, beginning especially in Louis the Pious’s reign,
to define marriage and establish monogamous, church-blessed relation-
ships as the ideal and norm.138 Nithard’s exact views of marital relation-
ships remains speculative without further evidence, but implicitly
undermining marriage could have aided Nithard in his quest to legitimize
his parents and their quasi-marital relationship.
Moreover, as Nithard endeavoured to revise his family history, he
blurred gender distinctions. While the decision to recount Hildegard’s
rebellion and her brother Charles’s forgiveness allowed Nithard to
respond to his own mother’s maltreatment, it also agitates notions of
fraternitas as a masculine value. Brotherly love in spiritual terms applied
to the whole community of the church, but specific discussions of
fraternitas pertained mostly to male relationships, whether (blood) broth-
ers, fellow nobles, or political actors. Nithard’s inclusion of Hildegard in
his Histories and emphasis on how a brother ought to treat his sister and
vice versa drew women into Carolingian fraternitas.139 As a whole, the
entire incident, as presented by Nithard, reveals the extent to which
sisters could become involved in fraternal discord in a way not dissimilar
to that of their male counterparts.
Finally and more significantly, Nithard’s transformation of the Histo-
ries into a personal and family history complicates our view of the
138
On marriage, the sharpening distinction between wife and concubine, and the concretization
of the notion of legitimacy, among others: Konecny, Die Frauen, pp. 86–91; de Jong, Penitential
State, p. 16; Leja, ‘Making of Men’, p. 25.
139
Leja distinguishes between male-only and mixed-gender sibling relationships, arguing that
brothers owe brothers aid and loyalty, while brothers owe sisters kindness: ‘Making of Men’, p.
35. But the story of Hildegard’s rebellion implies that sisters owe brothers aid and loyalty.
Additionally all siblings owe one another forgiveness, as argued by Polanichka, ‘As a Brother
Should’.

gendered nature of various historical genres. Although both men and

women in the early Middle Ages engaged in commemorative activities
and wrote texts that included originally oral, family histories, growing
scholarship ‘suggests that the transmission of family memory was a
gendered role’.140 A prime example comes from the same period as
Nithard’s Histories – Dhuoda’s aforementioned Handbook for Her Son
William. This manual, Matthew Innes argues, reveals the role that aris-
tocratic women played in the transmission of family memory, the com-
memoration of the dead, and the legitimization of one’s present power
based upon that familial history. Such a reading of Dhuoda’s text draws
clear comparison with Nithard, who not only wrote a family history, but
even more so, constructed a text that would re-establish his parents’
honour and support his quest for a (material) reward for his efforts.
Moreover, Nithard, like Dhuoda, focused primarily on family – in con-
trast to comparable male authors. While Notker of Saint-Gallen and
Thietmar of Merseberg included oral, family histories in their written
histories, ‘their primary goal’, Innes contends, ‘was not the production of
a written record of the family past’.141 Refocusing on the Histories, we
would argue that this – the production of a written record of his family’s
past – became Nithard’s primary goal by his third and fourth books.
Accordingly, it is in these last two books of the Histories that Nithard
inserts his text most firmly into the female genre of family histories, as the
text assumes the three criteria laid out by Nelson as indicative of ‘female’
authorship.142 First, the entire text gives significant attention to power
dynamics within the royal family, both in expected ways (the disputes
between Louis the Pious and his sons, and then among the sons) and in
unexpected ones (as with the rebellion of Charles the Bald’s half-sister,
Hildegard). Second, Nithard’s inclusion of his father’s translation and a
brief portrait of his immediate family breaks the narrative form that his
text had heretofore assumed and briefly flirts with a relatively freer style.
Third, Nithard’s Histories, a text dominated by male characters, in its
final books demonstrates greater interest in the political roles of royal
women, narrating the Hildegard episode, highlighting the marriage of
Charles the Bald, and revealing the identity of Nithard’s mother. While
the Histories in no way fulfil these criteria to the extent that, for example,
140
Innes, ‘Keeping It’, p. 17, surveying the field and citing Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance, pp.
48–80; Nelson, ‘Gender and Genre’ and ‘Women and the Word’, and van Houts, Memory and
Gender, pp. 65–92. See additional citations in n. 10, above.
141
142
Nelson, ‘Gender and Genre’, p. 196.

the Annals of Metz do, this notable transformation in Nithard’s work

reiterates the importance of taking on a gendered approach to the text.143
Thus reading the text in the light of family histories further compli-
cates the palimpsest that is Nithard’s Histories. The very example of
Dhuoda reminds us as well of the familial obligation of remembering
one’s dead ancestors and ‘the connections between commemoration and
inheritance’.144 Considering the situation in which Nithard found himself
by 842 – without his promised land – his decision to write a family
history and especially a portrait of his father, from whom he more or less
inherited the abbacy of Saint-Riquier, might be considered a type of
commemoration akin to a prayer. Just as Dhuoda, in commemorating
certain ancestors, was ‘making a claim about the injustice of their fate’, so
too did Nithard make his own claim about the injustice of his and his
family’s fate.145 It is time, then, to recognize the heavy parallels between
Dhuoda’s Handbook and Nithard’s Histories, which go beyond their
presentations of masculinity or their pessimistic and pressing moods, as
other scholars have noted. Nithard’s Histories and Dhuoda’s Handbook
strikingly convey the histories of families both central and peripheral to
Carolingian power, families both initially fortunate and ultimately
ill-fated.
Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts
143
J.L. Nelson, ‘Perceptions du pouvoir chez les historiennes du Haut Moyen Âge’, in M. Rouche
and J. Heuclir (eds.), Les femmes au Moyen Âge (Paris, 1990), pp. 77–85, and Nelson, ‘Gender
and Genre’.
144
Innes, ‘Keeping It’, pp. 19–20. Dhuoda emphasizes the importance of praying for one’s
ancestors who had left property to the living: Manuel VIII.14, pp. 318–20. Also, Nelson, ‘Gender
and Genre’, p. 185; Geary, Phantoms, pp. 52–4, 63.
145


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The very personal history of Nithard:

family and honour in the

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2) 171–200

Treaty of Verdun divided Charlemagne’s once expansive realm among his

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

motivated by the author’s growing disillusionment with his patron/king

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

expected of the ninth-century civil wars.8 We argue that the Histories’

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

Nithard: the author

Nithard was born sometime before 800 to Bertha, Charlemagne’s second-

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

him, their own brother, to remove them from court.16 Interestingly, in

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

Histories: the text

Not only would it delight me to rest from this work of narration, as it

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

With an introduction like this, it is not entirely surprising that Book IV

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

More striking is Nithard’s candid criticism of Charles near the end of

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

Admittedly, the initial preface creates some familiarity: Nithard refer-

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

There is little-to-no connection between this overview of his family and

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

Family in Nithard’s Histories

Interpreting Nithard’s Histories through the lens of family, a few obser-

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

brothers’.63 In praising Charles and Louis after their Strasbourg Oaths,

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

us of the brothers’ ritual humiliation (though Nithard does not reference

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

Evidence of Nithard’s preoccupation with Louis the Pious’s mistreat-

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

honour and legitimacy were extremely important to Frankish notions of

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

relations with Bertha, Nithard implies, had been unproblematic. Nor

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

of Charlemagne as punishment for his lust.123 In response to such ‘dream

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

hymn of praise to Charlemagne provided a bitter counterpoint to his

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

It is therefore remarkable that Nithard mentions in Book IV that ‘a

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

account, Nithard, in Chapters 5 and 6 of Book IV, hints at a broader

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

gendered nature of various historical genres. Although both men and

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

the Annals of Metz do, this notable transformation in Nithard’s work

Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts

Early Medieval Europe 2014 22 (2)

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