Anvil of God

by J. Boyce Gleason

  Pippin did have a relationship with Bertrada, daughter of the Compte de Laon, early in his adulthood. Some historians suspect that relationship was critical in ending the siege of Laon.

  Odilo: Duke Odilo of Bavaria came to power following Charles’s intervention in the “civil unrest” there. He was likely to have had blood ties, as well, in Alemannia. Although some historians have questioned his leadership role in bringing Francia into civil war following Charles’s death, many still describe his role as the ringleader.

  Gripho: Like his mother, Sunnichild, there is no evidence that Gripho (or Grifo) was pagan. Having cast his mother and her uncle (Duke Odilo) in such a light, it was only logical for me to continue the tradition where Gripho was concerned.

  Given the reaction to Charles’s decision to grant Gripho a “middle kingdom,” it is likely that Gripho was not beloved by his stepbrothers from Charles’s first marriage. As to the spoiled nature I have given him, it seems to fit the behavior he demonstrates later in life.

  Theudoald: As described above, Theudoald was named mayor at age six by his grandmother upon the untimely death of his father (Grimoald) by assassination. Theudoald survived to challenge Charles’s sons over the title mayor, only to die suddenly of unknown causes. Although clearly, Theudoald had support among many nobles for his claim, all of those described in Anvil are fictitious.

  Bishops: Bishops during this time period were men of great power. In addition to their religious duties, bishops exerted tremendous influence through the monasteries within their domain. Great tracts of land donated over time to monasteries by nobles seeking to buy a place in heaven led to great religious wealth and military power. Many bishops held standing armies and were on occasion known to command the armies themselves.

  So great was this wealth that Charles Martel often confiscated men and lands from the Church to reward his followers. Legend has it that this “theft” damned Charles to a place in hell. It is said that his corpse was even dragged there by a dragon.15 It was this pillaging that the Church sought to redress through the synods following Charles’s death.

  Two of the bishops described in Anvil correspond to bishops of the time. Wido of St. Wandrille and Aidolf (or Aidulf) of Auxerre were both considered powerful men. As to Wido’s height and Aidolf’s sexual orientation, those were figments of my imagination. The sexual misbehavior of priests, however, was addressed strongly in the Church synods of the day, particularly by St. Boniface.

  Duke Heden: Charles certainly felt the Franks were entitled to sovereignty over Thuringia as he left the region to Carloman in 741. Little, however, is known about Thuringia during this time period because there were no organized churches in the region.16 There is evidence that the political situation there was unstable due to persistent Saxon incursions from the north, but most of the history of the dukes in Thuringia in the later seventh and eighth century is almost impossible to reconstruct.17 There is reference to a Duke Heden early in Charles Martel’s reign who donated lands in Hammelburg for the foundation of a monastery. Heden’s religious credentials, however, come into question in Willibald’s Life of Boniface, which states that Christians of Thuringia were oppressed by Heden and were subjected to pagan rule until he was driven out.18 History does not reference Duke Heden after 717.

  Given the lack of solid information as to Duke Heden’s death and the recognized fragmented political situation in Thuringia, I chose to keep Heden alive, although marginalized, in Anvil. There is no evidence that he ever had a liaison with Sunnichild and none whatsoever that he aided her at Laon. It is likely, however, that Sunnichild had help from someone to withstand the siege of Laon by Carloman. As Gripho was only fourteen and still an adolescent, a noble or contingent of nobles must have been on hand to assist her cause. I merely chose one for the job. No known children are attributed to Duke Heden.

  Fictional characters: Bradius and his friend Tobias are fictional characters. Both were created out of the need for champions to aid Trudi, much as Duke Heden was resurrected to defend the interests of Sunnichild. It is unlikely that Trudi undertook her flight to Bavaria with anyone’s blessing, so she must have had help in getting halfway across the continent to Regensburg.

  As for Bradius, it is true that Pippin was not present at Charles’s death because he had to put down an uprising in Burgundy with his Uncle Childebrand. Connecting Bradius to this uprising as well as to paganism and to Maurontus (in Provence) was my idea.

  Obviously, Carloman could not have witnessed the killing of Bradius’s son, Unum, or taken the life of Heden’s son, Petr, as neither existed.

  Two other figments of my imaginations made their way into being minor characters of note: Father Daniel, the priest in white, personifies the fanatical element of Christianity at that time while Lady Hélène brings to life the art of assassination in kingly politic. Neither character has any direct reference in history, although, as I have noted above, assassination was certainly very much a tool of statecraft at the time.

  Other personages: Where I could, I used the real names of the dukes and warlords of the time. Hunoald and Waifar of Aquitaine existed and were a constant thorn in the side of the Carolingians. King Liutbrand and Aistulf ruled the Lombards on the Roman peninsula and did indeed threaten Pope Gregory. Aistulf was also a renowned swordsman who won prizes at the Spoleto tournaments, much as is described in Anvil.

  Ateni of Provence and Radbod of Frisia were names of lords from those respective regions, but their rule did not coincide exactly with this timeframe. Unfortunately, they were as close as I could find. I did not lose too much sleep over this as it was common during this era for names to be passed along from father to son (as was true with Charles, Carloman, and Pippin).

  There is also no record of the name of Carloman’s wife, so I supplied one. The fact of this, I find odd. As the wife of the mayor and the mother of Drogo, she should have been important enough for her name to be recorded.

  Places

  Little construction exists today that existed in the eighth century. Charles’s palace at Quierzy along the river Oise is gone. Quierzy still exists. It is a very small farming community with little remaining historical reference (although I did find a civic building there named the “Salle de Charlemagne”).

  Reims, too, still exists, as does the arch at its entrance and the labyrinth of tunnels beneath its city. Much of the world’s champagne continues to be cooled in these underground tunnels. Reims, as was noted above, was home to the baptism of Clovis. It continues to hold the elements of his baptism in the “Palais du Tau” museum next to the Cathedral of Reims. (One can also find there a talisman that Charlemagne is often pictured with, which he wore to his grave.)

  The walled city of Laon still stands atop a ridge northeast of Soissons. Although the city has grown and protects far newer buildings than were present in the mid-eighth century, it is still possible to stand on the southern wall and imagine Carloman’s army approaching across the vast plain below the city. Dozens of tunnels beneath the city have recently been excavated. Many were created to protect the wealth of its residents.

  The basilica of St. Denis was built in 451 above a Gallo-Roman cemetery. The monastic community there was founded in the seventh century. The church that stands there today was built after the turn of the millennium and post-dates the story in Anvil. The tombs that housed the remains of French kings, sadly, were sacked during the French Revolution. St. Germain des Prés, the church Carloman visits in the novel during his stay at Isle de la Cité, still stands and was frequented by the Carolingians, although the portion of the church that existed during that time is closed to the public. There is no evidence that Carloman was married or received his first communion at St. Germain des Prés.

  Donauwörth and Regensburg still stand along the southern banks of the Danube. Little is left of the Roman fort I described that was built in Regensburg during the first century after Christ. Part of one tower and one half of a double-arched entryway still exist, as does a porti
on of the southeastern wall. I was greatly helped in visualizing this by a schematic drawing of what the fort should have looked like, provided by Dr. Boors, chief archeologist of the Regensburg museum. Dr. Boors gave me a guided tour of the museum and what was left of the fort walls. He was also kind enough to show me those artifacts from the region attributed to the eighth century. The value of this tour was extremely helpful in that it resolved several open questions in my mind. These included the use of Roman coin during this time period (Dr. Boors showed me a treasure trove of solidi and denarii), the existence of spurs, and more importantly, the Christian artifacts (or rather the lack thereof) among grave sites in the region.

  Sources

  As can be deduced from the footnotes, I have relied heavily on Paul Fourcare’s account of the period, which is detailed in The Age of Charles Martel, published by Pearson Education Limited in 2000. Much of the summary I’ve recounted above, I pulled from his text, specifically the pages that dealt with Church influence and the death of Charles Martel (160–176). It is one of the clearest texts on this period that I have read and magically appeared on the bookstore shelf just in time for the research phase of Anvil. For that, I am eternally grateful. I did not always take his lead, however, and have tried to cite some of the other choices I made throughout this note.

  I also drew heavily on the writings of Ian Wood’s The Merovingian Kingdoms 450–751 and Bernard Bachrach’s Early Carolingian Warfare, Prelude to Empire, the latter of which was extremely helpful in characterizing battle armor and tactics of the time.

  Other important texts upon which I relied include: Carolingian Chronicles, the Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, translated by Scholz and Rogers (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1992); Two Lives of Charlemagne by Einhard and Notker the Stammerer, (New York: Penguin Classics, 1979); Frankish Institutions Under Charlemagne by Francois Louis Ganshof (New York: Norton Library, 1970); Sieges of the Middle Ages by Philip Warner (Barnsley, S. Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Military Classics, 2004); Witchcraft in Europe 400–1700, edited by Alan Charles Kors and Edward Peters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); Charlemagne by Matthias Becher (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2003); Charlemagne by Roger Collins (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998); Charlemagne, Father of a Continent by Alessandro Barbero and translated by Allan Cameron (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004); Complete Illustrated Guide to Runes by Nigel Pennick (London: HarperCollins, 2002); and Tantra, Cult of the Feminine, Andre Van Lysebeth (Boston: Weiser Books, 1995).

  Footnotes

  Paul Fouracre, The Age of Charles Martel (Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 2000), 6: “Modern scholarship has picked away at this picture of unqualified Carolingian success by taking on board the fact that the sources reveal only one point of view, and that late-eighth century and early ninth century writers were, in the main, working under the patronage of the Carolingian family itself.”

  Ian Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms 450–751 (Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 1994), 287.

  Ibid., 270–275.

  Fouracre, The Age of Charles Martel, 2.

  Ian Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms 450–751, 289–290.

  Bernard S. Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare, Prelude to Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 37.

  Annales Laureshamenses 741, ed. Georg Pertz, MGH SS, 2, p. 24, quoted in Roger Collins, Charlemagne (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 31.

  Fouracre, The Age of Charles Martel, 167–168.

  Interview with Dr. Andreas Boors, MA Archeologist, Historisches Museum der Stadt Regensburg, May 2005.

  Alan Charles Kors and Edward Peters, eds., Witchcraft in Europe 400–1700 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 55–57; John T. McNeill and Helena M. Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Pennance (New York:1990), 305–306.

  Fouracre, Age of Charles Martel, 108–109.

  Nigel Pennick, Complete Illustrated Guide to Runes (London: HarperCollins, 2002).

  Andre Van Lysebeth, Tantra, Cult of the Feminine (Boston: Weiser Books, 1995).

  Fouracre, The Age of Charles Martel, 163–166.

  Ibid., 2: “This view developed in the ninth century and found expression in a vision in which the great warrior’s tomb in the monastery of St. Denis was opened and found to be empty. What could be seen, however, were scorch marks which indicated that Charles had been dragged off to hell by a dragon. The reason for his grisly fate was that he had plundered the lands of the church.”

  Ibid., 110.

  Ibid., 112.

  Ibid., 113.