"Pipinus Rex": Pippin's Plot of 792 and Bavaria

"PIPINUS REX": PIPPIN'S PLOT OF 792 AND BAVARIA By CARL I. HAMMER 1. "A Plot Most Foul" Two serious internal challenges to Carolingian royal authority disturbed the middle years of Charlemagne's reign. Neither is mentioned in the officially approved recensions of the Frankish Royal Annals, but Einhard tells us about both of them in the twentieth chapter of that ruler's "Life," and various information was included in other annalistic traditions (Exhibit I).1 In 785/86 a group of magnates in Eastern Francia and Thuringia opposed royal policies and denied or renounced their loyalty to the king; their opposition was aggravated, no doubt, by the demands of Charlemagne's campaigns against the Saxons, which placed heavy burdens on their adjacent territories.2 The second, in 792, was centered around the royal palace at 1 The editions of the sources cited in Exhibit 1 and the text are in order: Annates Regni Francorum [= A RF] et Annates qui dicuntur Einhardi [= Recension E: Reviser], ed. F. Kurze, MGH, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in Usum Scholarum (Hanover, 1895); Annates Laureshamenses, ed. G. Pertz, MGH, Scriptores 1 (Hanover, 1826), 22-39; Annates Mosellani: a. 704-797, ed. I. Lappenberg, MGH, Scriptores 16 (Hanover, 1859), 491-99; Annates Petaviani, ed. G. Pertz. MGH, Scriptores 1 (Hanover, 1826), 7-18; Murbach Annals in W. Lendi, Untersuchungen zur frühalemannischen Annalistik: Die Murbacher Annalen mit Edition, Scrinium Friburgense 1 (Freiburg [Switzerland], 1971); Einhardi Vita Karoli magni, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in Usum Scholarum (Hanover, 1911); Anon., "Vita Hludowici" in Thegan, "Die Taten Kaiser Luduiigs "; Astronomus, "Das Leben Kaiser Ludwigs," ed. and trans. E. Tremp, MGH, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in Usum Scholarum Separatim Editi 64 (Hanover, 1995). Recension D of the Frankish Royal Annals with an abbreviated entry seems to have East Frankish provenance. The short notice of Pippin's revolt is also included in one B recension manuscript (B3), now in the Vatican, perhaps from Rheims; it is absent from the other A-C recensions. 2 This rebellion is usually identified by one of the leaders, Count Hardrad; it is not entirely clear from the varied sources besides Einhard whether the East F'rankish and the Thuringian opposition were united or two separate groups with different agendas. See most recently R. McKitterick, Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, The Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies 2004 (Notre Dame, 2006), 68-80 with texts and references. There is surprisingly little secondary literature on either of these events, which are, of course, mentioned in all general accounts of the period: e.g., R. Collins, Charlemagne (London , Toronto, and Ruffalo, 1998), 56, 125-26; and R. Schieffer, Die Karolinger, Urban Taschenbücher 411, 3rd ed. (Stuttgart, 2000), 80-90. The best specialized discussion is probably still that of K. Brunner, Oppositionelle Gruppen im Karolingerreich, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung 25 (Vienna, Cologne, and Graz, 1979), 47-53, 60-65. 236TRADITIO Regensburg on the Danube where Charlemagne had been since the spring of 791 in order to direct operations against the Avars and to suppress any lingering opposition in Bavaria, which he had annexed barely three years earlier in 788. The most noteworthy aspect of this second domestic insurrection was participation by a senior member of the Carolingian family itself: Charlemagne 's oldest son, Pippin, who was born in the mid-to-late 760s and, thus, certainly of major age and a responsible adult capable of independent rule. It was this "familiar" aspect that Einhard seems to have found particularly disturbing, for he attaches his account of 792 directly to his sympathetic discussion of Charlemagne's family in chapters 18 and 19, and he gives it priority over his account of the evidently more widespread and possibly more dangerous rebellion of 785/86. Nevertheless, Einhard saw a common thread between both events: they had been provoked by the crudelitas, the extraordinary harshness, of Charlemagne's wife, Fastrada, which had subverted the normal clemency of the king's rule.3 Indeed, in Einhard's version Pippin himself was only the hapless pawn of the real conspirators, "certain Frankish leaders," who "had won him over (inlexerant) by pretending to offer him the...