The Age of Charles Martel by Fouracre Paul

Author:Fouracre, Paul. [Paul Fouracre]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781317898481
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Central and northern Germany

Central and northern Germany are the areas we know least about in the age of Charles Martel, and again the reason for our ignorance is that there was no organised church in these regions. Central Germany, that is, Hesse and Thuringia, is hardly mentioned at all in the Merovingian period, and with regard to the lands of the Saxons and Frisians in the north, our only references are to warfare with the Franks. We last looked at Thuringia when we discussed the revolt of Duke Radulf in 639—40.104 Fredegar's narrative of this affair also provides one of the two references to the region of Hesse in the pre-Boniface period, in as much as he says that the forces sent to tackle Radulf marched across 'Buchonia' on their way to Thuringia.105 The forest of Buchonia covered much of Hesse. The Radulf story shows Frankish power stretching far to the east beyond the forest of Buchonia and towards the River Saale, which formed the border between the Franks and the Slavs in Carolingian times. Radulf, we know, had a stronghold on the River Unstrut, but this is about all we can glean about the situation in the area, apart from the fact that Radulf was a military leader and involved in frequent conflict with the Slavonic Wends. We know too that there were strongholds in Hesse, at least at Würzburg and at the site which later became the monastery of Fulda. The whole region was nominally Christian. There are the remains of a seventh-century church at Fulda, and as we have seen, Duke Heden of Thuringia was a supporter of Willibrord who in 717 donated lands at Hammelburg in the Saale area for the foundation of a monastery. There were, however, no bishops in these regions, nor were there any mints, nor, apparently, counts. Throughout the Merovingian period, writers spoke of the population of the region as the 'peoples' beyond the Rhine. A letter from Pope Gregory II to the Anglo-Saxon missionary Boniface names eight of them.106 One, the Borthari, we have probably already met, if they are the Boructuarii, whom Bede tells us were conquered by the Saxons in the early eighth century. Five of the others were the inhabitants of the different Gaue (districts) of central Germany, to some of which they gave their names. The other two 'peoples' were the Hessians and the Thuringians, who were probably larger groups.

In several ways central Germany resembles Saxony as we see it in the later eighth century. That is, the land seems to have been under the control of different 'peoples' whose leaders are rarely named. There were, apparently, no paramount leaders, and no reference to any leader having an 'office', apart from the dukes of Thuringia. We cannot tell whether the region had always been like this, or whether its apparent decentralisation was a later Merovingian development. There are, however, some hints that the situation was unstable in this period, and a likely cause of destabilisation was the advance of Saxons from the north and of Slavs from the east.

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