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The Rod of God's Wrath or the People of God' Wrath ? The Carolingian Theology of the Viking Invasions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

Extract

The Viking invasions of the ninth and early tenth centuries were referred to in a large number of contemporary Frankish texts, including not only annals and chronicles, but also saints’ lives, miracle texts, capitularies, royal and private charters, letters, sermons, biblical commentaries, hymns, poems and prayers. The great majority of these texts were written by clerics, either religious or secular, and as a result the raids are frequently described in religious terms and set within a religious framework. For example, the Vikings are often denoted as ‘pagani’ and the Franks as’ christiani’; towns are burned ‘divino iuditio’ and battles won ‘adiuvante Domino’,1 and the invasions are represented as a punishment for the Franks’ sins in fulfilment of biblical prophecy.

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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

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57 AB 842, 42–3.Google Scholar

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73 ‘Just as it is shameful and wicked for a layman to celebrate masses, so it is ridiculous and unsuitable for a cleric to take up arms and go to war, as the apostle Paul says: "No one soldiering for God gets mixed up in worldly affairs" (2 Tim. ii. 4), and so plainly also says the reverse: No one soldiering for the world gets mixed up in spiritual affairs’: Nicolai Ipapae Epistolae variae, no. 104, MGH Epp. vi. 613.Google Scholar

74 De regis persona, c. 2, PL cxxv. 835.Google Scholar

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78 Annales Fuldenses 882, 99. It should none the less be borne in mind that both Hildegarius and the Fulda annalist bore particular grudges against the kings in question, and that their views were by no means shared by all their contemporaries.Google Scholar

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80 ‘From the fierce people of the Northmen who lay waste our lands, O God, deliver us’: Analecta hymnica ix (1890), 54–5, no. 67.Google Scholar

81 ‘For the serene Emperor Charles, that God will submit the barbarian nations to him, and that he in his bounty will preserve the Frankish army’: Sancti Comelii Compendiensis Translationes ii, MGH Poetae iv. 1, 240. For other examples see Tellenbach, Reichsgedanke, esp. at pp. 4371.Google Scholar

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92 Miracula sancti Bertini c. 8, MGH SS xv. 1, 513; Adelerii Miracula sancti Benedicti c. 41, MGH SS xv. 1. 499–500.Google Scholar

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94 Altfridi Vita sancti Liudgeri iii. 6, MGH SS ii. 414.Google Scholar

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100 ‘Even though he had been baptised, ended his dog's life with a fitting death’: Annales Xantenses 873, 33.Google Scholar

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102 AB 873, 876, 194–5, 206.Google Scholar

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