The Changing Fortunes of Early Medieval Bavaria to 907 ad

History Compass 8/4 (2010): 330–344, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00671.x The Changing Fortunes of Early Medieval Bavaria to 907 AD Jonathan Couser* University of New Hampshire Abstract This essay surveys the political historiography of the early medieval principality of Bavaria, particularly in three periods; that of the Bavarians’ emergence in the sixth century, the time of a complex interrelationship between Bavarians and Franks and their Agilolfing and Carolingian ruling houses in the eighth century, and the transitions of power from Charlemagne’s takeover of Bavaria in 788 and the transfer to a new Luitpolding duchy in 907. The Bavarian case serves as a useful counternarrative to those of larger peoples like the Franks or Lombards, and illustrates that the inheritance of Roman tradition, the relationship between rulers and ruled, and the creation and maintenance of ethnic identities could be flexible and complex in the early Middle Ages. Bavaria was early medieval Europe’s ‘almost kingdom’. Never a kingdom in its own right in the way that the Frankish, Lombard, or Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were, it could still act as an independent power base far greater than most comparable ‘peripheral principalities’ of the era like Thuringia or Frisia.1 Consequently, there are also better sources for Bavaria than for these other principalities. Indeed, the very terminology medieval writers used to characterize the region changed constantly, shifting from a ‘duchy’ under the Agilolfing dynasty, to a ‘kingdom’ within the larger Carolingian empire after Charlemagne took it over in 788, and then to a ‘duchy’ again with the end of Carolingian rule in Germany in 907. Thus, Bavaria provides us with an alternative narrative to the better-known stories of its larger neighbors, particularly the Frankish kingdom, and a way to ask how early medieval political and ethnic identities could be formed, exploited, and maintained through changing fortunes. Several themes have driven research on early medieval Bavaria. In the first place, who were the Bavarians? Where did they come from, and what was their relationship to the earlier Roman Empire and to the other ‘barbarian’ peoples of Europe? These questions lead us to our first topic, the question of ‘ethnogenesis’. Second, was Bavaria a ‘core’ or a ‘periphery?’ Was the entire duchy a distant frontier of the Frankish kingdom, or was Bavaria a post-Roman principality in its own right, the crossroads of Europe? The next theme of this essay, thus, will address questions of autonomy and dependence. Third and finally, how much continuity should we see in institutions and identity among the Agilolfing duchy, the Carolingian kingdom, and the Luitpolding duchy of Bavaria? Was Bavaria an ethnic unity through these changes of regime, a ‘people’ conscious and protective of their own distinctiveness in the early medieval world? Or was this identity flexible and shifting, redefined by the circumstances of power in each generation, capable of being adopted, abandoned, or redefined according to the needs and interests of the moment? ª 2010 The Author Journal Compilation ª 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd From Duchy to Kingdom to Duchy Again 331 Bavarian Origins and the Ethnogenesis Controversy The question of the Bavarians’ origin bears on a larger debate over the concept of ‘ethnogenesis’, discussed previously in this journal by Andrew Gillett.2 Larger groups such as the Goths and Lombards have dominated this discussion. The argument runs between so-called ‘Germanists’ (particularly associated with Vienna) on the one hand, and ‘Romanists’ (often connected with Toronto) on the other. The ‘Vienna School’ of ‘Germanists’ argues that ethnic identities in the barbarian world were fluid, but that small ‘cores of tradition’ (traditionskern) could attract followers in order to form the new ethnic groups that appear in fourth and fifth century sources. ‘Romanists’, on the other hand, counter that the sources from which this model derives were composed by Roman authors for Roman audiences and do not give insight into actual barbarian culture, and that the various barbarian groups did not have enough of a shared culture to allow for the social mechanisms described by the Germanists.3 The term ‘ethnogenesis’ itself has been challenged in this debate, with Romanist critics calling for it to be jettisoned altogether, in a fashion similar to the challenge to ‘feudalism’. It should be observed, however, that the term can be used in both a broad and a narrow sense. In the broad sense, ‘ethnogenesis’ may be understood as a field of investigation rather than a particular theory. That is, new groups clearly did appear in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. ‘Ethnogenesis’ is then the question of how these groups were formed and created their identities. In the narrow sense, ‘ethnogenesis’ is sometimes used as a brief label for a specific theory of this group-formation process, the Vienna school traditionskern and its associated model. Nor should that theory be taken as a single monolithic structure; successive generations have modified and developed much of the basic model, taking account of criticisms to an extent that their critics do not always seem prepared to admit. The Bavarians play an odd role in this debate. They produced no narratives of their past that might be taken as a Germanist’s ‘core of tradition’. On the other hand, since modern Austria originated as the Bavarians’ Ostmark, the ‘Germanists’ of the Institute for Austrian Historical Research in Vienna have always taken a strong interest in early Bavarian history.4 The Bavarians illustrate the difficulties of either a Viennese ‘Germanist’ or Toronto ‘Romanist’ position, for in this case we have a new barbarian ethnic group materializing with neither an origin myth nor a clear record of settlement as Roman federates. Wolfram acknowledged this at one point when he called them the ‘foundlings of the barbarian migrations’, like a baby dropped on medieval Europe’s doorstep without a note to identify its parents.5 They seem to have appeared between the composition in 511 of the Life of St. Severinus, set in what would become Bavarian territory, and Jordanes’ Getica, or Gothic History, of 551, possibly drawing on an older history by Cassiodorus.6 In short, the sparse direct evidence suggests that the Bavarian identity must have formed sometime in the generation between 511 and 551. The debate over the Bavarians’ origins has generally taken a philological approach to the name itself. How to render the group’s name into writing seems to have been a medieval orthographer’s nightmare; it appears variously as ‘Baiuvarii’, ‘Baibari’, ‘Bagoarii’, ‘Baioarii’, and other variations. The usual interpretation is that it is a compound of two elements, ‘Baia-‘ and ‘-bari’, the latter simply meaning ‘men of…’ or ‘inhabitants’. The term ‘Baiuvarii’ thus would mean ‘the men of Baia’, but who or what ‘Baia’ is remains unclear. Identifications have ranged from an otherwise unattested tribal goddess to sites as far removed as the mouth of the Elbe or that of the Danube.7 ª 2010 The Author Journal Compilation ª 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd History Compass 8/4 (2010): 330–344, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00671.x 332 From Duchy to Kingdom to Duchy Again The alternative approaches reflect the Germanist ⁄ Romanist division among scholars. One predominant theory suggests that ‘Baia’ is a contraction of ‘Boiohaemum’, that is, Bohemia, and that the Bavarians arrived south of the Danube in the course of the Germanic migrations of Late Antiquity. This theory has the advantage of support from a seventh-century writer, Jonas of Bobbio; in his Life of Columbanus and his Disciples, he mentions the abbot Eustasius of Luxeil undertaking a mission to ‘the Baioarii, who were once called Boii’.8 However, it is more likely that Jonas was attempting a learned gloss on the baffling Bavarian name, giving them a classical pedigree, than that he had real information about their origins. This would connect the Bavarians to groups associated with Bohemia like the Marcomanni, Lombards, and Thuringians. Versions of the Bohemian thesis continue to appear in modern scholarship, for instance by Kurt Reindel and Herwig Wolfram.9 Another approach has argued instead that the Bavarians emerged out of the population already in place in Roman Rhaetia and Noricum. Karl Bosl pointed to strong Roman elements surviving in the Bavarian duchy in the eighth century.10 It also appears that the Roman road system linking Alpine passes to the Danube continued to be used, if not maintained in its original state.11 A particular version of this idea was advanced by Otto Kronsteiner, suggesting a Latin rather than Germanic origin for the name, suggesting that ‘Baiuvarii’ came from ‘Pagus Ivari’, that is the region around Salzburg, and that they were an indigenous group rather than Germanic migrants.12 This theory, however, leaves unexplained how these Roman provincials came to speak a Germanic language, and why the known descendants of the Romans around Salzburg were considered the dependants of Germanic-named Bavarian dukes in the eighth century (rather than the other way around).13 In short, the Bavarian case gives us many of the elements one might have expected from Vienna ethnogenesis theory; a multi-ethnic coalition, settlement on Roman soil and inheritance of its governing structure, and a possible name-giving elite in the form of ‘Bohemian’ barbarians. What we lack are the ‘Germanic’ cultural elements; there is no claim to divine descent, in fact no genealogy at all that we know of, and no migration myth. It is possible, of course, that these once existed, perhaps only orally, and have since been lost. But in their absence, we are not authorized to invent them. On the other hand, there is not much here to satisfy a ‘Romanist’ approach either. There is no sign that the Bavarians were settled on their land at Rome’s behest (apart from a single, apparently rather modest, unit of federates, who seem rather to have been abandoned to their own devices by a government that could no longer maintain them) or that they somehow ‘internalized Roman agendas’ (to use a phrase recently asserted of barbarian settlers by Walter Goffart).14 None of the capable Roman historians and poets who mentioned them – Venantius, Jordanes, Procopius – saw fit to explain their existence through classical ethnographic references. There existence and location were simply a fact to be mentioned incidentally when dealing with larger matters. Frankish Frontier or Independent Principality? THE ORIGINS OF THE AGILOLFINGS AND THE POLITICS OF ODILO AND TASSILO One of the distinctive features of Vienna-school ethnogenesis theory is the concept of the Traditionskern, the small group carrying a ‘core of traditions’ that would define the groups that crystallized around it. Did the Bavarians coalesce around a definite ruling dynasty? This question leads us to a problem related to that of ethnogenesis, the problem ª 2010 The Author Journal Compilation ª 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd History Compass 8/4 (2010): 330–344, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00671.x From Duchy to Kingdom to Duchy Again 333 of the Agilolfing family and its relationship to the Frankish world. The specific question of the duke’s origins leads into the larger question of whether the duchy is best understood as a frontier of the Frankish world, more or less under royal control at different phases, or whether it should be conceived as an autonomous principality with its own intrinsic authority structure, which at different times was dominated, or not, by its larger neighbor. The Bavarian dukes appear in three clusters down to Charlemagne’s takeover of the region in 788. There is a group of three dukes, Garibald I, Tassilo I, and Garibald II, from the mid-sixth to early seventh century, mainly known from the Lombard historian Paul the Deacon. After a lapse – whether in the office itself or only in our sources, we do not know – a second group appears, composed of Duke Theodo (d. 717 ⁄ 8) and his immediate descendants Theodebert, Theodoald, Grimoald, and Hucbert (d. 736 ⁄ 7). The final set of dukes are Odilo (d. 748) and his son Tassilo III (748–788, d. after 794) whom Charlemagne deposed.15 The Law of the Bavarians, in a clause unparalleled anywhere else in early medieval law, declares that the ducal office ‘has and always should belong’ to a genealogia – better conceived as a ‘kin group’ than an actual family tree – called the ‘Agilolfings’.16 This clause has usually been interpreted at face value, to take any Bavarian ruler down to the fall of Tassilo III in 788 as a member of this Agilolfing genealogia.17 However, it turns out not to be so simple. The Bavarian Law actually appears to have been issued quite late, under Tassilo’s father Odilo (r. 736–748).18 The assertion of the Agilolfings’ perpetual occupation of the ducal office, in this case, looks less like a reliable statement of ducal history as an attempt to buttress Odilo’s own fragile authority – though it would mean, of course, that Odilo’s immediate predecessors had also been members of the kin-group. Nor is it clear who exactly the ‘Agilolfings’ are. The –ing ending in Germanic names means ‘people of’, usually following the personal name of an ancestor or group leader, so the ‘Agilolfings’ would be ‘Agilolf’s people’ or ‘Agilolf’s descendants’. However, scholarship has failed to identify the ‘Agilolf’ who gave his name to the group. In 1986, Jörg Jarnut suggested that the key figure might be an Agilolf who held the bishopric of Metz around 600. For earlier bearers of the name, he found a fifth century Suebian king. Thus, if the individuals were somehow connected, the Bavarian dukes might have come from a Suebian royal family that was absorbed into the Visigothic kingdom and thence entered the Frankish kingdoms, whence some of their members were sent to Bavaria as representatives of the Franks. If so, the Agilolfings were the first ‘European’ family with connections all across the continent rather than members of a single ethnic group.19 However, the very tendency for the name ‘Agilolf’ and its variants to appear in contexts so scattered in geography and chronology undercuts Jarnut’s argument; it is far simpler, and more likely, that ‘Agilolf’ was a commonly used name among many Germanic peoples than that these scattered individuals were really related. Much more closely connected to the duchy than any of Jarnut’s candidates is the Lombard King Agilulf (590–616), the second husband of Garibald I’s daughter Theodelinde. Descendents of Theudelinde’s brother Gundoald eventually ruled Lombard Italy in the second half of the seventh century, the so-called ‘Bavarian dynasty’. It is possible that the later Bavarian dukes were descended from this Italian lineage and brought Agilulf’s name with them, but the sparse evidence of the seventh century gives us no way to prove this. Outside of Bavaria, only one individual is named as an Agilolfing, a Frankish nobleman named Chrodoald who was killed in a dispute with the ancestors of Charlemagne in 624 ⁄ 5. Even here, if one wishes to take a skeptical approach, there is no way to prove that the ‘Agilolf’s people’ to whom Chrodoald belonged were the same ‘Agilolf’s people’ ª 2010 The Author Journal Compilation ª 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd History Compass 8/4 (2010): 330–344, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00671.x 334 From Duchy to Kingdom to Duchy Again that the Bavarian Law invoked over a century later (though this is widely assumed). The problem was expressed very neatly by Carl Hammer in a closely-argued study published in 2008: ’[W]here we have evidence for the early Bavarian dukes there are no Agilolfings, and where we have evidence for Agilolfings, there are no Bavarian dukes’.20 Nevertheless, Hammer argued that Garibald was indeed Frankish and that his exile from Bavaria was the consequence of his involvement in the plotted coup of a duke named Rauching in 587, which also brought down the Duke of Alemannia at the same time. The source for Rauching’s conspiracy, Gregory of Tours again, does not mention Garibald by name, but does allude darkly to ‘many leaving their duchies’ around this time.21 Whatever the Agilolfing dukes’ origins, how dependent were they on outside powers, particularly the Franks? The historian whose work has set the framework for all current work on Agilolfing Bavaria is Joachim Jahn, whose magisterial Ducatus Baiuvariorum was published in 1991, shortly before his premature death.22 A complete overview of Jahn’s work is not possible here; it should be noted that the book has proven quite durable so far since its publication, with only slight criticisms of detail. Two major thrusts of Jahn’s work have affected subsequent work on the region. First, Jahn reassessed the relationship between Bavarians and Franks in the eighth century. Earlier scholars, including Jahn’s own mentor Herwig Wolfram, had often treated the duchy’s history as a pendulum swinging between Frankish control and local independence. The Agilolfing dukes often stood as the most trenchant opponents of the Carolingians’ rise to power until the latter’s final victory when Charlemagne deposed Tassilo III in 788. A sidebar to this paradigm was an influential interpretation of the region’s internal politics advocated by Friedrich Prinz. Prinz argued that Bavaria was divided internally between a western zone, centered on Freising, and an eastern zone centered on Salzburg. The western Bavarian aristocracy, led by the Huosi, were oriented toward the Franks and thus disposed to undermine Agilolfing independence. The east, on the other hand, Prinz thought was much more thoroughly under ducal control and formed the Agilolfings’ main support base.23 Jahn’s monograph, and a series of articles leading up to its publication, undermined both parts of this paradigm. The anti-Frankish and indeed anti-Carolingian bent of the Agilolfings evaporated under closer examination. When Odilo fought against Pippin and Carlomann in 743, for instance, he was not asserting independence, but intervening in a Frankish succession dispute. Tassilo reached the height of his power as a member of a triple alliance brokered by Charlemagne’s mother with the Frankish and Lombard kingdoms. Both he and Charles took daughters of the Lombard King Desiderius to wife as part of this alliance. Studies by Matthias Becher and Stuart Airlie have emphasized how Carolingian writers, needing to legitimize Charlemagne’s actions against Tassilo, constructed a master narrative of Bavarian treachery and resistance that earlier sources do not bear out.24 Jahn also challenged Prinz’s thesis of a sharp east-west division in the duchy. Prinz had tended to see the many monastic foundations of Tassilo’s reign as largely aristocratic projects which created potential centers of opposition to the duke. For Jahn, however, following the work of Ludwig Holzfurtner, these monasteries emerge as products of cooperation among duke, nobles, and the Church to build a stronger administrative infrastructure for the duchy.25 The long series of charters preserved from the see of Freising, important to Prinz’ argument of a Frankish-oriented west, is unmatched by records from any other area, and this accident of preservation inevitably tempts scholars to see the southwest as distinctive. While there are certainly indications of loyalty to the Frankish kings in Freising’s charters, there are also signs of ducal cooperation in aristocrats’ donations to the see. For instance, a well-known charter of 790, two years after Tassilo’s ª 2010 The Author Journal Compilation ª 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd History Compass 8/4 (2010): 330–344, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00671.x From Duchy to Kingdom to Duchy Again 335 deposition, which stubbornly continues to use dating by his regnal years, comes from this supposed center of pro-Carolingian sentiment. Another Carolingian-era charter that claims that Bishop Arbeo of Freising was more loyal to the Franks than to Duke Tassilo also proves to be of dubious reliability.26 In fact, Jahn argues that Arbeo may have been a key supporter of the duke. His death in 783, together with those of other figures with Frankish connections like Bishop Virgil of Salzburg and Count Machelm, would then have been a factor in Tassilo’s fall. Jahn’s other major contribution was to locate Bavaria among the polities which occupied Roman territory as the Empire’s ‘successor states’. It has long been clear that the Frankish and Ostrogothic Kingdoms had deep Roman roots, but whether this was the case with smaller principalities like Bavaria was unclear. Jahn’s conclusions suggested that, in fact, Bavaria was such a successor state. It appears to have been unusually rich in fiscal properties, and most of these properties appear to have been situated in close association with Roman fortifications or other public facilities.27 This insight of Jahn’s dovetails with Patrick Wormald’s studies of early medieval legal culture, in which Wormald suggests that south German law – that is, the Law of the Alemanni and Law of the Bavarians – belongs to a ‘southern’ sphere of legal cultures, along with the Lombard, Burgundian, and Visigothic law, more closely tied to Roman precedents and sensibilities, rather than to the ‘northern’ sphere of Frankish law epitomized by the various versions of the Salic Law which stands at a greater distance from ancient models.28 In 788, this ‘successor state’ lost whatever semblance of independence it might have had; Charlemagne deposed Tassilo and absorbed the duchy into his growing empire. Charlemagne’s pressure on his cousin Tassilo had begun to mount in the 780s. Charles deposed Tassilo in 788 and then, perhaps in response to a conspiracy in 792 headed by his own son, Pippin the Hunchback, brought the former duke out at the Synod of Frankfurt one last time to confess his alleged treason and renounce all his lands and titles in 794. Carl Hammer has recently proposed a model of Tassilo’s reign as an era of ‘virtual rule’.29 The fundamental observation that underlies Hammer’s interpretation is that evidence for Tassilo’s ideological enterprises – his diplomacy with the papacy and Franks, foundation of monasteries, and a certain amount of rhetoric and artwork preserved from his court – far outweighs evidence for his practical activities waging war or executing the law in his principality. He is only known to have fought one successful military campaign in his own right, against the neighboring Carantanians in 772.30 When Charlemagne marched into Bavaria in 787, Tassilo yielded immediately rather than attempt to fight, exposing the hollowness of his power. However, while Hammer’s interpretation is suggestive, it still needs to be asked whether our lack of information about Tassilo’s pragmatic activity is due to a lack of such action or a lack of evidence to survive the Carolingian takeover. Tassilo was, after all, able to rule for forty years without suffering any foreign invasion or internal conspiracies that we know of, and, as we indicated above, Jahn has shown that he disposed of a duchy remarkably dense in fiscal property which must have been a rich prize for the Carolingians.31 When Charlemagne invaded in 787, it was with three armies, one from Austrasia, one from Italy, and a third apparently from Neustria, Burgundy, and Alemannia.32 Tassilo was isolated by then, while Charlemagne had become master of several kingdoms; we might imagine the Bavarians fighting on equal terms with one of these forces, but hardly with all three. His failure to fight in 787 would not then have been evidence of merely ‘virtual’ rule, but recognition of an impossible military situation and willingness to use diplomacy rather than force.33 ª 2010 The Author Journal Compilation ª 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd History Compass 8/4 (2010): 330–344, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00671.x 336 From Duchy to Kingdom to Duchy Again The events surrounding Tassilo’s fall have also elicited scholarly debate for all those interested in Carolingian modes of rule and in the possible roots of ‘feudalism’. An oath Tassilo took in 757 has been seen as one of the first examples of feudal-style homage and one of the first examples of an aristocrat swearing to serve his lord as a ‘vassal’. If so, then Tassilo’s case shows that later medieval conceptions of vassalage had early Carolingian roots.34 Recent interpretations, however, have turned against this reading. Current scholars, such as Matthias Becher, have tended instead to stress the exceptional character of the oath attributed to Tassilo, and the creativity of the use of ‘vassaticum’ to describe his relationship with the Carolingians.35 The term (literally ‘servitude’) so stressed his dependency and subjection as to make his subsequent ‘treason’ seem all the more despicable. The annals which report it are thus suspected of having amplified or exaggerated the wording of the oath, if not inventing the oath altogether, to retrospectively justify Tassilo’s fate. The plot of Pippin the Hunchback in 792 and the need to bring Tassilo to Frankfurt in 794 suggest that such justifications were badly needed. For Becher, the oath’s significance has less to do with the origins of feudalism and more to do with a new policy of Charlemagne’s in the later eighth century to cement his authority with oaths of loyalty.36 Tassilo’s fall sets the stage for another area in which Bavaria is important to understanding the larger world of the early Middle Ages. It becomes an excellent example of a people making their way through incorporation into the larger Carolingian Empire. This also means that developments following 788 can help us understand Carolingian concepts of authority and modes of governance as they sought to impose their authority in a new region. Friedrich Prinz’s model of a duchy with a significant split between its western and eastern regions has colored interpretations of this transition both consciously and unconsciously. For Prinz, the western aristocrats like the powerful Huosi genealogia were already strongly Frankish in outlook. Their incorporation into Charlemagne’s empire can thus be presumed to have been straightforward and unproblematic. Meanwhile, most of the studies of early Carolingian Bavaria have focused, not on the core territories between the Lech and Enns, but on the eastern frontier, which faced the Avars and various Slavic groups.37 The recent work by Stephan Freund has completed a reassessment of the transition to Carolingian rule in Bavaria.38 Friedrich Prinz’s thesis of a pro-Frankish western aristocracy around Freising, dissenting from Agilolfing dukes based in the east around Salzburg, has long been challenged. Nevertheless, few scholars have seriously questioned the claims of Frankish chronicles that the Bavarian nobility, or at least a strong element thereof, broke from Tassilo to support Charlemagne, and therefore that it was a fairly straightforward affair for the Franks to step in to the ducal fisc and incorporate Bavaria into the empire. Freund, however, closely analyzed the narrative and diplomatic sources of the years immediately following Tassilo’s deposition in 788 and found a different story. In his view, Charlemagne underestimated the difficulty of integrating Bavaria into his rule. The most prominent of the duchy’s bishops, Arn of Salzburg, son of a powerful Bavarian family, though he had Carolingian connections, was still representing Tassilo’s interests in the 780s and earned a hostile depiction in the Royal Frankish Annals for it.39 Charles showed remarkably little interest in the Bavarian bishops, representatives of local aristocratic kin-groups, between 788 and 791. Only after a pause, between 791 and 793, did Charles seek to gain the bishops’ support. Only from 792 did he launch offensive campaigns against the Avars.40 These wars offered both material and spiritual prizes to the Bavarians who participated in them; plunder and land for the secular nobility, and an open mission ª 2010 The Author Journal Compilation ª 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd History Compass 8/4 (2010): 330–344, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00671.x From Duchy to Kingdom to Duchy Again 337 field for the churches. After 798 (and not before), now-Archbishop Arn became an active representative of royal authority and reform agendas in regional courts and churches. After Arn’s death in 821, this role shifted to Bishop Baturich of Regensburg, another member of the local aristocracy who had cultivated connections with the Carolingian court and intellectual and religious leaders like Alcuin and Hrabanus Maurus. Another area in which the Carolingian impact can be studied is in the management of conflict. Warren Brown examined the development of conflict resolution from the Agilolfing to Carolingian periods in his monograph of 1999, Unjust Seizure.41 Working principally from the Freising charters, but also using the Law of the Bavarians, the lives of Sts. Emmeram and Corbinian, and documents from Salzburg, Brown showed that over time the Carolingians did indeed make deep-reaching changes in Bavarian society, particularly in their methods of conflict management. When Charlemagne took on the task of reviewing and confirming the rights of the Bavarian churches (and presumably secular magnates as well), he made it clear that the grants made by Odilo and Tassilo would not be rubber-stamped automatically. Brown doubts that this stimulated more conflicts than had existed under the Agilolfings, still less that the region became any more placid under Carolingian rule. The difference, rather, was in how disputes were handled. Charlemagne’s promotion of a literate clergy, and his commitment to written law and legal procedure, meant that claims and challenges to property were more likely to be committed to writing, rather than (or in addition to) feud and community pressure, and could be pursued at greater length through appeal to royal missi over the heads of local judges and counts. The most signal development of the ninth century was the re-formation of Bavaria as a kingdom within the larger Frankish empire. It is often called a ‘sub-kingdom’ or ‘part-kingdom’ (Teilreich) because the presence of a king in Bavaria (or other provinces with similar arrangements) did not make it independent of the Carolingian empire. The expression is a modern one, not used by the sources, so it is a somewhat pedantic debate to argue the relative merits of the terms employed. The sources move somewhat indiscriminately among ‘regnum’, ‘provincia’ or ‘regio’. The Agilolfing duchy had also been called a ‘regnum’ at times, so one should be cautious about speaking too confidently about the region’s promotion into a ‘kingdom’. Nevertheless, it was the seat of a king. Early in his reign, Louis the Pious, Charlemagne’s son (r. 814–840) designated Bavaria as a principality to be ruled by one of his sons. At first he gave it to his oldest son Lothar, between 814 and 817, but soon reshuffled the empire in the Ordinatio Imperii, transferring Lothar to Italy and giving Bavaria to his second son Louis, or Ludwig, known to posterity as ‘the German’.42 Louis the German was only about seven years old in 817 and did not even enter Bavaria until 825. Then about 15, he would have been considered an adult under Bavarian law (Tassilo had also begun his military service in 755 at about the same age). This raises the question of how far Bavaria was ‘home base’ for Louis the German and therefore to what extent it was the foundation on which the east Frankish kingdom – the ancestor of the Holy Roman Empire and ultimately of modern Germany – was built. Older scholarship tended to assume this was indeed the case. The narratives of the civil wars of the 830s and 840s encourage such a view; Bavaria was where Louis retreated to when he suffered military setbacks.43 On the other hand, as Roman Deutinger pointed out in 2004, the king’s itinerary after the treaty of Verdun in 843 shows no preference for Bavaria; indeed, he seems to have preferred the more traditional Carolingian palaces in Franconia.44 This insight has been carried to a fuller extent in the recent biography of Louis the German by Eric Goldberg, that Louis saw himself in a much broader framework as an imperial heir to ª 2010 The Author Journal Compilation ª 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd History Compass 8/4 (2010): 330–344, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00671.x 338 From Duchy to Kingdom to Duchy Again Charlemagne than as ruler of a kingdom based on Bavaria.45 Although warfare broke out on his eastern frontiers, including the Ostmark, Louis was more interested in a Drang nach Westen, trying to establish control over Frankish core territories along the Rhine and in the Low Countries, than in a Drang nach Osten. This impression is also borne out by the composition of his court. Bishop Baturich of Regensburg served as Louis’ archchaplain in the 830s and his successor Erchanfrid also served in the chapel; but on the whole Louis assembled a court built more around Franks and Saxons than Bavarians. For a time it seems that the Bavarians themselves hoped for a more intimate relationship with Louis the German than this, as Carl Hammer has shown. After initially designating Louis as king ‘in’ (rather than ‘of’) Bavaria in 826, in 828 scribes at Freising began to date charters by ‘the year Louis returned to Bavaria with his wife’, alluding to the monarch’s marriage to Hemma, a daughter of the powerful Welf family and younger sister of Louis’ own mother-in-law, Louis the Pious’ second wife Judith. From 828 down to 837, the charters claim Louis as ‘our king’, sometimes adding ‘our king in Bavaria’ (though still only rarely calling him ‘King of the Bavarians’). With the outbreak of civil war between Carolingians in 838, and Louis’ efforts to build a larger east Frankish kingdom, however, the charters move to naming him ‘King in Eastern Francia’ and no longer claim any unique connection between Louis and Bavaria.46 Rather than treating it as the core of his kingdom after the partitions of the Treaty of Verdun in 843, Louis seems to have used Bavaria, and particularly the Ostmark, in the same way that his father and grandfather had used the teilreiche; a suitable place for a young prince to learn the ropes of warfare and governance. Thus, Louis’ son Carloman became ‘King of the Bavarians’ (rex baiuvariorum) at his father’s death in 876, but this title should be seen alongside Louis’ plans of 865, which envisioned dividing the eastern kingdom into further subkingdoms, with his other sons receiving Saxony and Swabia.47 Carloman in turn appointed his own illegitimate son Arnulf to oversee the eastern March (though without the title of king). This role lasted beyond Arnulf’s death and the passage of the imperial title to a different branch of the dynasty; Simon MacLean’s study of Charles the Fat, who temporarily reunited the divided Carolingian kingdoms from 880–887, shows that Charles did not neglect Bavaria in the royal itinerary but gave it no special treatment either.48 Rudolf Hiestand has argued on the basis of diplomatic evidence that Bavarians continued to play a central role at the German court until the disruption caused by massive casualties at the battle of Pressburg in 907 opened up a larger space for players from other parts of the empire.49 Charlemagne’s ‘acquisition’ of Bavaria also opened up a vast frontier zone into central Europe for his expanding empire. Carolingian armies destroyed the Avar Khanate between 792 and 796 and German-speaking immigrants, missionaries and armies pushed east and southeast along the Danube, Drava and Sava rivers. The enormous plunder that came to Charlemagne’s court from the Avar ‘Hring’ was one of the chief pieces of evidence in an influential article by Timothy Reuter, arguing that Carolingian warfare was primarily aimed at plunder and tribute, not territory.50 The argument is somewhat ironic, however, for this area, perhaps more than any field of Carolingian warfare, saw the erection from scratch of new governing structures – the ‘Ostmark’ and its several component counties – and large-scale colonization by westerners.51 Bavarians were the chief beneficiaries of this expansion, but also the hardest-hit by the raids of the Magyars after 900.52 With the death of Charles the Fat in 887 the Carolingians were no longer the clear claimants to the east Frankish kingdom, and Bavaria’s distinctive role as the Teilreich of Carolingian princes lost its meaning. Arnulf, an illegitimate grandson of Louis the German, had been placed in charge of the eastern frontier by his father Carloman. He ª 2010 The Author Journal Compilation ª 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd History Compass 8/4 (2010): 330–344, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00671.x From Duchy to Kingdom to Duchy Again 339 took the lead to depose Charles the Fat during the latter’s final illness and seized the throne for himself, ruling from 888 to 899, but there was no longer a clear consensus that he or his children had the right to legitimate rule; new dynasties like the Conradines from Franconia and the Ottonians from Saxony would emerge as the main contestants for the imperial crown in the tenth century. The key figure to emerge in the southeast during this tempestuous period was Luitpold, not himself from Bavaria but holding authority over a collection of southeastern counties for King Arnulf. Devastating Magyar raids shook Germany beginning in 900, coordinated with the political uncertainty following Arnulf’s death. Luitpold himself fell to them in the battle of Pressburg (the traditional, but possibly mistaken, location of ‘Brezalauspurg’) in 907. His own son – significantly named ‘Arnulf’ as well – then stepped into the leadership of Bavaria. This Arnulf took the title of ‘Duke’, marking the re-creation of Bavaria as a ‘duchy’. In some ways, however, the transition back to ducal governance was not so straightforward. Much like Louis the German’s royal title, Arnulf was called ‘Duke in Bavaria’ (rather than ‘of’ it). The Luitpolding family saw itself as Frankish rather than Bavarian to begin with, and the revival of the ducal title has been taken as a compromise to appease Arnulf’s royal aspirations. He began to use the ducal title only in 921; before then, Arnulf fought a losing battle against both the Magyars and the Conradines, and took refuge with his former Magyar enemies in 914. After a triumphant return to Regensburg in 917, Arnulf began to claim the royal title, until a compromise allowed him autonomous governance in Bavaria in exchange for yielding the throne to Conrad I.53 From the perspective of high politics, then, the Luitpolding dukes only became ‘Bavarian’ over time; their original perspective was Frankish, imperial rather than regional, and the ducal title did not express their leadership of an ethnicity but the delegation of high authority to them from the crown. On the other hand, the Luitpoldings seem to have been able to operate as successfully as they did because they were able to mobilize a strong sense of regional identity and loyalty. Bavarian bishops continued to be drawn from regional aristocrats, and the Luitpoldings cooperated closely with them. Particularly remarkable is the survival of Bavarian law in the Luitpolding duchy, whereas most of the other ‘barbarian’ laws of the early Middle Ages ceased to be copied in the tenth and eleventh centuries in favor of Roman law and local customaries, the eighth-century Law of the Bavarians continued to be copied, studied, and used in regional courts down to the twelfth century and later.54 Conclusions This survey has focused on the political dimensions of Bavaria’s history in the early Middle Ages, and the development of interpretations and debates arising from that history. A wider view could multiply the dimensions of discussion and insight to arise from this region, into religious, intellectual, social, or economic history. Bavarian historiography is important not only for regional history, but also for its contribution to our understanding of larger issues, and the directions in which research seems to be moving: First of all, the debate over Bavarian origins, whatever direction future consensus may move, has brought to light how diverse the effects of Roman disintegration on emergent barbarian groups could be. While the stories of larger groups like the Goths, Franks, and Lombards are well known, smaller groups also forged their own identities in these circumstances, and not necessarily all in the same ways. Here, we have addressed the Bavarians, but one might equally have spoken of Suebi, Gepids, Herulians or Thuringians. ª 2010 The Author Journal Compilation ª 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd History Compass 8/4 (2010): 330–344, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00671.x 340 From Duchy to Kingdom to Duchy Again Second, the relationship between ethnic identities and ruling dynasties proves to be equally complex. The relationship between the emergence of ‘Bavarians’ and the installation of Agilolfing dukes at their head is ambiguous; it is well possible that the earliest dukes were not themselves Bavarian, and the only dukes to clearly identify themselves as Agilolfing, Odilo and Tassilo, actually came from neighboring Alemannia. Finally, the ethnic label itself – ‘Bavarian’ – proves to be a highly malleable construct, taking on different meanings in different contexts, and yet also proving to be very enduring, sustaining a sense of group identity over several centuries (and for that matter, down to the present). This identity did not commit its members to defining themselves antithetically to alternative identities – ninth century Bavarians were also, in some sense, ‘Frankish’. It seems that being ‘Bavarian’ may have carried different associations in 600 than in 788 or 907. Geography, law, kinship, and religious institutions supplied some sort of cohesion, which political elites were able, or perhaps forced, to deal with in each distinct era. Short Biography Jonathan Couser’s scholarship explores the Christianization of early medieval Europe and the relationship among religion, political culture, and ethnic identity in the Middle Ages. Prof. Couser received his Ph.D. in Medieval History from the University of Notre Dame in 2006 and currently teaches western civilization, world history, and medieval history at the University of New Hampshire. His articles have appeared in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History and Early Medieval Europe (in press). His current research projects include a monograph on the Christianization of early medieval Bavaria and a study of the ‘emotional community’ associated with St. Boniface of Mainz. Notes * Correspondence: University of New Hampshire, 20 Academic Way, Durham, New Hampshire, United States, 03824. Email: jonathan.couser@unh.edu. 1 The common label ‘peripheral principalities’, of course, assumes that the Frankish kingdoms should be seen as a ‘core’ region. The term was employed by Karl Ferdinand Werner in ‘Les principautés périphériques dans le monde franc du VIIIe siècle’, Settimane di Studio, 20 (1973): 483–515. 2 A. Gillett, ‘Ethnogenesis: A Contested Model of Early Medieval Europe’, History Compass, 4 ⁄ 2 (2006): 241–260. Vienna-school ethnogenesis is rooted in the work of Reinhard Wenskus and Herwig Wolfram, the latter’s views stated perhaps most succinctly and accessibly in The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1997). A nuanced defense of criticisms of the Vienna school may be found in W. Pohl, ‘Ethnicity, Theory, and Tradition: A Response’, in A. Gillett (ed.), On Barbarian Identity (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), 221–239. 3 For a particularly strong statement of the Romanist position, see W. Goffart, ‘Rome’s Final Conquest: the Barbarians’, History Compass, 6 ⁄ 3 (2008): 855–883. Goffart puts his case so strongly here that the barbarians who entered the empire appear nearly to lose all agency or identity of their own and to become the passive objects of Roman policy. 4 The territory of modern Austria formed early medieval Bavaria’s eastern frontier, an zone of conquest and colonization (the Ostmark) whose dukes eventually became rulers in their own right (of an ‘eastern realm’, Osterreich). Hence, Austrian scholars‘ intense interest in Bavarian roots. Studies on this and related issues appeared in H. Wolfram, A. Schwarz, and F. Daim (eds.), Die Bayern und ihre Nachbarn, 2 vols. (Vienna: Verlag der österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1985); H. Wolfram and A. Schwarz (eds.), Anerkennung und Integration: Zu den wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen der Völkerwanderungzeit, 400–600 (Vienna: Verlag der österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1988); and H. Wolfram und H. Pohl (eds.), Typen der Ethnogenese (Vienna: Verlag der österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1990). 5 H. Wolfram, Salzburg, Bayern, Österreich: Die Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum und die Quellen ihrer Zeit (Vienna and Munich: Oldenbourg, 1995), 22. ª 2010 The Author Journal Compilation ª 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd History Compass 8/4 (2010): 330–344, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00671.x From Duchy to Kingdom to Duchy Again 341 6 H. Sauppe (ed.), Eugippii Vita sancti Severini, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores auctores antiquissimi I.2 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877). T. Mommsen (ed.), Iordanis Getica, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Auctores Antiquissimi 5 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1882). See W. Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History [AD 550–800] (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 20–111, for the most skeptical view of Jordanes’ reliance on Cassiodorus. 7 B. Krusch, ‘Der Bayernname’ Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für Deutsche Geschichte, 47 (1928): 31–76, associated the name with the Greek ’baias’, or rivermouth. Ignaz Zibermayr, used this identification to place the original Bavarians at the mouth of the Danube, supposedly migrating steadily upstream. I. Zibermayr, Noricum, Bayern und Österreich: Lorch als Hauptstadt und die Einführung des Christentums (Munich and Berlin: Oldenbourg, 1944), 65–78. The idea has gained little traction, however, since the claim for a Greek basis of ‘baia’ itself is unlikely. 8 B. Krusch (ed.), Ionae Vitae sanctorum Columbani, Vedastis, Iohannis, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum 37 (Hannover and Leipzig: Hahn, 1905). 9 K. Reindel, ’Herkunft und Stammesbildung der Bajuwaren nach den schriftlichen Quellen’, in H. Dannheimer and H. Dopsch (eds.), Die Bajuwaren: Von Severin bis Tassilo 488–788. Gemeinsame Landesausstellung des Freistaates Bayern und des Landes Salzburg (Munich: Prähistorische Staatssammlung, 1988), 56–60. Wolfram, Salzburg, Bayern, Österreich, 22–27, supports the identification of ‘Baia’ with ‘Boiohaemum’ but suggests the name-giving core group may have been a Langobard group rather than Marcomanni. 10 K. Bosl, Die Grundlagen der modernen Gesellschaft im Mittelalter (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1972), 43–44, cited in C. Bowlus, ’Ethnogenesis: The Tyranny of a Concept’, in A. Gillett (ed.), On Barbarian Identity (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), 251–252. 11 W. Störmer, ’Fernstrasse und Kloster: Zur Verkehrs- und Herrschaftsstruktur des westlichen Altbayern im frühen Mittelalter’, Zeitschrift zur Bayerische Landesgeshichte, 29 (1966): 299–343. 12 Kronsteiner advanced this idea in a conference paper, ‘Linguistische Bemerkungen zur ‘‘Ethnogenese‘‘ der Baiern’, at the 1982 Zwettl symposium. It did not appear in the published papers of the symposium, apparently because Herwig Wolfram, the symposium organizer and editor of its proceedings, regarded it as a beer-hall joke (‘Bierulk’). I owe my awareness of this paper to Bowlus, ‘Ethnogenesis’, 250. 13 For an introduction to the Romani, see H. Wolfram, Die Geburt Mitteleuropas (Vienna: Kremayr and Scheriau, 1987), 333–341. 14 E.g.: ‘Romans drew foreigners into the Empire to share its burdens and, by ceaselessly upholding the preeminence of its power, culture, state, and religion, shaped them, in the West, into espousing and forwarding the imperial cause’. Goffart, ‘Rome’s Final Conquest’, 870. 15 A second Tassilo is known only from a listing in the Salzburg Memorial book among the descendants of Theodo; it is unknown if he ever ruled, but the entry leads to the convention of numbering the later, better-known Tassilo as ‘the Third’. S. Herzberg-Frankel (ed.), Liber Confraternitatum Vetustior, in Monumenta Necrologia Monasterii S. Petri Salisbergensis, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Necrologia Germaniae 2 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1904), 12. 16 E. von Schwind (ed.), Lex Baiwariorum, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Leges nationum Germanicarum 5.2 (Hannover: Hahn, 1926), III.1, 313. 17 See for example, the classic study by K.-F. Werner, ‘Bedeutende Adelsfamilien im Reich Karls des Grossen’, in H. Beumann (ed.), Karl der Grosse: Lebenswerk und Nachleben, vol. I: Persönlichkeit und Geschichte (Düsseldorf: Verlag L. Schwann, 1965), 83–142. 18 The traditional dating is 744–748. A date prior to 743 has already been argued by P. Landau, Die Lex Baiuvariorum: Entstehungszeit, Entstehungsort und Charakter von Bayerns ältester Rechts- und Geschichtsquelle. Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften: Philosophische-Historische Klasse: Sitzungsberichte, Jahrgang 2004, Heft 3 (Munich: Verlag der bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2004). I suspect that Odilo promulgated the law in the first year or two of his reign. 19 J. Jarnut, Agilolfingerstudien: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte einer adligen Familie im 6. und 7. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1986). 20 C. Hammer, From Ducatus to Regnum: Ruling Bavaria under the Merovingians and Early Carolingians (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 49. 21 Hammer, Ducatus to Regnum, 29–40. 22 J. Jahn, Ducatus Baiuvariorum (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1991). 23 F. Prinz, ‘Herzog und Adel im agilulfingischen Bayern’, in K. Bosl (ed.), Zur Geschichte der Bayern (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliches Buchgesellschaft, 1965), 225–263. The basic thesis also dominates the section on Bavaria in Prinz‘ Frühes Mönchtum im Frankenreich: Kultur und Gesellschaft in Gallien, den Rheinlanden und Bayern am Beispiel der monastischen Entwicklung (4. bis 8. Jahrhundert), 2nd edn. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliches Buchgesellschaft, 1988), 317–448, and other works. A variation on Prinz’s views appeared in the dissertation and following monograph by Kathy Lynne Roper Pearson, who allowed Prinz’s east ⁄ west division but de-emphasized it in favor of loyalties divided between ‘territoriality’ and alternative forms of affiliation based on kinship or religion. K. L. Roper Pearson, Conflicting Loyalties in Early Medieval Bavaria: A View of Socio-Political Interaction, 680–900 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999). 24 M. Becher, Eid und Herrschaft: Untersuchungen zum Herrscherethos Karls des Grossen (Sigmaringen: Thorbeke, 1993); S. Airlie, ‘Narratives of Triumph and Rituals of Submission: Charlemagne’s Mastering of Bavaria’, in ª 2010 The Author Journal Compilation ª 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd History Compass 8/4 (2010): 330–344, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00671.x 342 From Duchy to Kingdom to Duchy Again Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series, IX (1999): 93–119. That Carolingian sources on Tassilo’s career are a classic case of the winners writing the history books is also a theme in a recent collection of studies on Tassilo: L. Kolmer (ed.), Tassilo III. von Bayern (Regensburg: Pustet, 2005). 25 L. Holzfurtner, Gründung und Gründungsüberlieferung. Quellenkritische Studien zur Gründungsgeschichte der bayerischen Klöster der Agilolfingerzeit und ihrer hochmittelalterlichen Überlieferung, Münchner Hist. Studien. Bayer. Gesch. 11, (Kallmünz, 1984). 26 T. Bitterauf (ed.), Die Traditionen des Hochstifts Freising, 2 vols. Quellen und Erörterungen zur bayerischen und deutschen Geschichte. Neue Folge Band 4 (Munich: Riger, 1967), #193b. See J. Jahn, ‘Virgil, Arbeo und Cozroh: Verfassungsgeschichtliche Beobachtungen an bairischen Quellen des 8. und 9. Jahrhunderts’, Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Salzburger Landeskunde, 130 (1990): 202–291, here at 230–234. 27 Jahn, Ducatus, 551–564. 28 P. Wormald, ‘Lex Scripta and Verbum Regis: Legislation and Germanic Kingship, from Euric to Cnut’, in idem, Legal Culture in the Early Medieval West: Law as Text, Image and Experience (London and Rio Grande: Hambledon, 1999), 1–44. 29 Hammer, Ducatus to Regnum, 137–200. 30 Jahn, Ducatus, 471–473. 31 See n. 25. 32 Annales Regni Francorum for 787: F. Kurze (ed.), Annales Regni Francorum, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum 6 (Hannover: Hahn, 1895), 78. 33 This is also suggested by the analysis of S. Airlie, ‘Narratives of Triumph and Rituals of Submission: Charlemagne’s Mastering of Bavaria’, in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series, IX (1999): 93–119. Airlie points out that the highly propagandistic line taken on the matter by Frankish chronicles ‘is a sign of Carolingian anxiety, not of Carolingian strength’, and that the accusations which led to Tassilo’s condemnation seem to have taken him by surprise. He had reason to think himself on a secure legal footing; Patrick Wormald has pointed out that the crime of harisliz, for which Tassilo was condemned, first appears in written law over 20 years later. P. Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century. Volume I: Legislation and its Limits (Oxford and Malden, MA, 1999), 83. 34 For instance, Ganshof pointed to Tassilo’s oath as the first time that fealty is connected to the act of commendation, in his view an essential step in the formation of feudalism. F. L. Ganshof, Feudalism, trans. P. Grierson, 3rd edn. (London: Longman, 1964), 29. 35 M. Becher, Eid und Herrschaft. The particularity of Tassilo’s case is also noted by S. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: the Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 84–87 and 98, though with some confusion of the political narrative. 36 Jahn took a more moderate position than Becher on the question of the Compiegne oath. He doubts that the version preserved in the Royal Frankish Annals is reliable, accepting that it projects anachronistic notions of ‘vassalage’ in order to justify the deposition of 788. However, he points to the dedication of the monastic church at Schäftlarn between 760 and 764 to Saints Dionysius, Eleutherius and Rusticus as confirmation that Tassilo had sworn some sort of loyalty oath, since Tassilo is said to have sworn his oath on these saints’ relics. Jahn, Ducatus, 335–344 and 358–370. 37 For instance, C. Bowlus, Franks, Moravians and Magyars: The Struggle for the Middle Danube, 788–907 (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). Kurt Reindel’s chapter in the Handbuch für bayerische Geschichte on Carolingian-period politics deals overwhelmingly with Louis the German’s struggles with his brothers over the larger Carolingian empire, and with the eastern frontier. by K. Reindel, ‘Die politische entwicklung’, in M. Spindler (ed.), Handbuch der Bayerischen Geschichte, 1. Band: Das Alte Bayern: das Stammesherzogtum bis zum Ausgang des 12. Jahrhunderts, 2nd edn. (Munich: Beck, 1981), 249–349. 38 S. Freund, Von den Agilolfingern zu den Karolingern: Bayerns Bischöfe zwischen Kirchenorganisation, Reichsintegration und Karolingischer Reform (700–847) (Munich: Beck, 2004). 39 Annales Regni Francorum for 787, p. 74 ⁄ 6. Freund, Agilolfingern zu den Karolingern, 120–131 and 211–218. A recent festschrift was devoted to Arn, his context and career: M. Niederkorn-Bruck and A. Scharer (eds.), Erzbischof Arn von Salzburg (Vienna: Oldenbourg, 2004). 40 Carroll Gillmor has suggested a fundamentally military reason for Charles’ unusually long stay in Regensburg, from 790 to 792; that a massive loss of warhorses to an epidemic in 791 hobbled his mobility. The argument is provocative, but leaves important questions unanswered, such as whether the loss of horses to a local insect-borne disease in Pannonia would have prevented Charles making up the loss from other parts of the kingdom, and whether the mobility of the king and court was so dependent on a large supply of warhorses. For our purposes, after all, the issue is not merely his ability to launch campaigns, but the decision to keep the court itself sedentary for two years. While the equine epidemic may have been a factor in Charles’ stay, it still seems that political factors must also be taken into account. C. Gillmor, ‘The 791 Equine Epidemic and its Impact on Charlemagne’s Army’, Journal of Medieval Military History, 3 (2005): 23–45. 41 W. Brown, Unjust Seizure: Conflict, Interest, and Authority in an Early Medieval Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001). 42 A. Boretius (ed.), Ordinatio Imperii, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Capitula I (Hannover: Hahn, 1883), 270–273. ª 2010 The Author Journal Compilation ª 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd History Compass 8/4 (2010): 330–344, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00671.x From Duchy to Kingdom to Duchy Again 343 43 For instance, this is how the sub-kingdom is treated by Reindel, ‘Die politische entwicklung’, 258–271. R. Deutinger, ‘Hludovicus rex Baioariae : zur Rolle Bayerns in der Politik Ludwigs des Deutschen’, in Wilfried Hartmann (ed.), Ludwig der Deutsche und seine Zeit (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2004), 47–66. 45 E. Goldberg, Struggle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict under Louis the German, 817–876 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006). 46 Hammer, Ducatus to Regnum, 201–236. 47 Reindel, ‘politische entwicklung’, 271–2. 48 S. MacLean, Kingship and Politics in the Late Ninth Century: Charles the Fat and the End of the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 98–99. 49 R. Hiestand, ‘Pressburg 907: Eine Wende in der Geschichte des ostfränkischen Reiches?’, Zeitschrift der Geselleschaft für bayerische Geschichte, 57 (1994): 1–20. 50 T. Reuter, ‘Plunder and Tribute in the Carolingian Empire’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5th series, 35 (1985): 75–94. 51 H. Wolfram, Die Geburt Mitteleuropas: Geschichte Österreichs vor seiner Entstehung, 378–907 (Vienna and Berlin: Siedler, 1987), 249–308. 52 Much of the debate over this region, which relates to Bavarian history tangentially, is the fierce argument over the location of ‘Great Moravia’, the Carolingians’ nemesis in the ninth century. For the ‘southern Moravia’ argument, see Bowlus, Franks, Moravians and Magyars; opposing views based largely on archeology appear in a group of articles in Early Medieval Europe, 17 ⁄ 3 (August 2009). 53 H.-W. Goetz, ‘Dux’ und ‘Ducatus’. Begriffs- und verfassungsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur Entstehung des sogenannten ‘jüngeren’ Stammesherzogtums an der Wende vom neunten zum zehnten Jahrhundert (Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1977). 54 R. Kottje, ‘Die Lex Baiuvariorum – das Recht der Baiern’, in H. Mordek (ed.), Überlieferung und Geltung normativer Texte des frühen und hohen Mittelalters: Vier Vorträge, gehalten auf dem 35. Deutschen Historikertag 1984 in Berlin (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1986), 9–23. 44 Bibliography PRIMARY SOURCES Bitterauf, T. (ed.), Die Traditionen des Hochstifts Freising, 2 vols. Quellen und Erörterungen zur bayerischen und deutschen Geschichte. Neue Folge Band 4. (1905: repr) (Munich: Riger, 1967). Boretius, A. 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