East Francia
Kingdom of the East Franks Francia orientalis ( King of the Franks | |||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
• 843–876 | Louis the German (first) | ||||||||||||
• 936–962 (title held until his death in 973) | Otto the Great | ||||||||||||
Historical era | Middle Ages | ||||||||||||
843 | |||||||||||||
870 | |||||||||||||
• Disestablished | 962 | ||||||||||||
Currency | Pfennig | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Today part of |
History of Germany |
---|
East Francia (Latin: Francia orientalis) or the Kingdom of the East Franks (Regnum Francorum orientalium) was a successor state of Charlemagne's empire ruled by the Carolingian dynasty until 911. It was created through the Treaty of Verdun (843) which divided the former empire into three kingdoms.[a]
The east–west division with the Treaty of Verdun in 843, enforced by the Germanic-Latin language split, "gradually hardened into the establishment of separate kingdoms",[1] with East Francia becoming (or being) the Kingdom of Germany[b] and West Francia becoming the Kingdom of France.[2][3]
Terminology
The term orientalis Francia originally referred to Franconia and orientales Franci to its inhabitants, the ethnic Franks living east of the Rhine. The use of the term in a broader sense, to refer to the eastern kingdom, was an innovation of Louis the German's court. Since eastern Francia could be identified with old Austrasia, the Frankish heartland, Louis's choice of terminology hints at his ambitions.[4] Under his grandson, Arnulf of Carinthia, the terminology was largely dropped and the kingdom, when it was referred to by name, was simply Francia.[5]
When it was necessary, as in the
History
In August 843, after three years of civil war following the death of emperor
The contemporary East Frankish
While Eastern Francia contained about a third of the traditional Frankish heartland of Austrasia, the rest consisted mostly of lands annexed to the Frankish empire between the fifth and the eighth century.[10] These included the duchies of Alamannia, Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia, as well as the northern and eastern marches with the Danes and Slavs. The contemporary chronicler Regino of Prüm wrote that the "different people" (diversae nationes populorum) of East Francia, mostly Germanic- and Slavic-speaking, could be "distinguished from each other by race, customs, language and laws" (genere moribus lingua legibus).[10][11]
In 869,
In 911 Saxon, Franconian, Bavarian and Swabian nobles no longer followed the tradition of electing someone from the Carolingian dynasty as a king to rule over them and on 10 November, 911 elected one of their own (
Kingship
The regalia of the Carolingian empire had been divided by Louis the Pious on his deathbed between his two faithful sons, Charles the Bald and Lothair. Louis the German, then in rebellion, received nothing of the crown jewels or liturgical books associated with Carolingian kingship. Thus the symbols and rituals of East Frankish kingship were created from scratch.[12]
From an early date, the East Frankish kingdom had a more formalised notion of royal election than West Francia. Around 900, a liturgy for the coronation of a king, called the early German ordo, was written for a private audience. It required the coronator to ask the "designated prince" (princeps designatus) whether he was willing to defend the church and the people and then to turn and ask the people whether they were willing to be subject to the prince and obey his laws. The latter then shouted, "Fiat, fiat!" (Let it be done!), an act that later became known as "Recognition". This is the earliest known coronation ordo with a Recognition in it, and it was subsequently incorporated in the influential Pontificale Romano-Germanicum.[13]
In June 888, King Arnulf of Carinthia convened a council at
Church
The three basic services monasteries could owe to the sovereign in the Frankish realms were military service, an annual donation of money or work, and prayers for the royal family and the kingdom. Collectively, these were known by the technical term servitium regis ("king's service").[15] According to the evidence of the Notitia de servitio monasteriorum, a list of monasteries and the services they owed drawn up around 817, the burden of military and monetary service was more severe in west Francia than in east Francia. Only four monasteries listed as "beyond the Rhine" (ultra Rhenum) owed these services: Lorsch, Schuttern, Mondsee and Tegernsee.[16]
List of kings
- Louis the German (843–876)
- Divided
- Carloman in Bavaria (876–879)
- Louis the Younger in Saxony (876–882) and Bavaria (879–882)
- Charles the Fat in Alemannia (876–882)
- Charles the Fat (882–887)
- Arnulf of Carinthia (887–899)
- Louis the Child (900–911)
- Conrad I of Germany (911–918)
- Henry the Fowler (919–936)
- Otto the Great(936–973)
See also
Notes
- ^ The term "Francia", land of the Franks, was commonly used to refer to the empire. The ruling dynasty was Frankish, although its inhabitants were mostly other non-Frankish Germanic tribes.
- ^ Kingdom of Germany was mostly Germanic-speaking East Francia, which was formed by the Treaty of Verdun in 843, especially after the kingship passed from Frankish kings to the Saxon Ottonian dynasty in 919.
- ^ Bradbury 2007, 21: "... division which gradually hardened into the establishment of separate kingdoms, notably East and West Francia, or what we can begin to call Germany and France."
- ^ Goldberg 2006, 6: "Louis [the German's] kingship laid the foundations for an east Frankish kingdom that, in the eleventh century, was transformed into the medieval Kingdom of Germany".
- ^ Reuter 2006, 270.
- ^ Goldberg 2006, 73.
- ^ Müller-Mertens 1999, 237.
- ^ Müller-Mertens 1999, 241.
- ^ Scales 2012, 158.
- ^ AF a. 843: in tres partes diviso ... Hludowicus quidem orientalem partem accepti.
- Worms and Mainz.
- ^ a b Goldberg 1999, 41.
- ^ Reynolds 1997, 257.
- ^ Goldberg 1999, 43.
- ^ Ullmann 1969, 108–09.
- ^ a b Ullmann 1969, 124–27.
- ^ Bernhardt 1993, 77.
- ^ Bernhardt 1993, 112 and n. 116.
References
- Bernard Bachrach and David Bachrach. "Early Saxon Frontier Warfare: Henry I, Otto I, and Carolingian Military Institutions". Journal of Medieval Military History 10 (2012), 17–60.
- David Bachrach. "Exercise of Royal Power in Early Medieval Europe: The Case of Otto the Great, 936–973". Early Medieval Europe 17 (2009), 389–419.
- David Bachrach. "The Written Word in Carolingian-Style Fiscal Administration under King Henry I, 919–936". German History 28:4 (2010), 399–423.
- John W. Bernhardt. Itinerant Kingship and Royal Monasteries in Early Medieval Germany, c. 936–1075. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 21. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
- Jim Bradbury. The Capetians: Kings of France, 987–1328. London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007.
- Eric J. Goldberg. "'More Devoted to the Equipment of Battle Than the Splendor of Banquets': Frontier Kingship, Military Ritual, and Early Knighthood at the Court of Louis the German". Viator 30 (1999), 41–78.
- Eric J. Goldberg. Struggle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict Under Louis the German, 817–876. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2006.
- Eckhard Müller-Mertens. "The Ottonians as Kings and Emperors". Timothy Reuter, ed. The New Cambridge Medieval History. Volume II: c.900–c.1024. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
- Timothy Reuter. "The Medieval German Sonderweg? The Empire and its Rulers in the Highe Middle Ages". In Kings nd Kingship in Medieval Europe, ed. Anne J. Duggan (London: 1993), 179–211.
- Timothy Reuter. "The Ottonian and Carolingian Tradition". In Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities, ed. Janet L. Nelson(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 268–83.
- Susan Reynolds. Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.
- Len Scales. The Shaping of German Identity: Authority and Crisis, 1245–1414. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
- Walter Ullmann. The Carolingian Renaissance and the Idea of Kingship. London: Methuen, 1969.
- Karl Ferdinand Werner. "Les nations et le sentiment national dans l'Europe médiévale". Revue Historique, 244:2 (1970), 285–304.