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A review by beaconatnight
Köln im Frühmittelalter by Unknown
3.0
Köln im Frühmittelalter (400-1100) portrays Cologne's history in the Early Middle Ages. It's part of a twelve-volume series of awe-inspiring folios on the history of the city.
At its lower bound the age is defined by the end of the Roman Empire and by the Franks taking over as the dominant force in Gaul. Over the next centuries, Cologne will be ruled by three dynasties, the Merovingians, the Carolingians, and the Ottonians, and their reigns mark the sections of the book. However, for the book's focus of Cologne as Holy City (one of only four thus recognized), it's the archbishops whose influence in the urban areas often overshadows even that of kings.
Let's address the elephant in the room, the body of contemporary source material is rather tenuous. Often scholars have to rely on documents written decades or even centuries later or extrapolate from archaeological evidence acquired in more modern days. When we do have the writings (mostly of monks), they often take the form of uncritical praise and legend.
Personally, I don't mind the situation too much. The fabricated narratives that make up the vitae written for saints can be amusing to hear and often became historic when later believers put their faith in them. That is, the creation of churches and their perception was based on admiration of shining virtue portrayed in legends. Sadly, though, often we don't even know any details about the oral traditions that kept sainthood alive.
Under more favorable circumstances, the hagiography allows for plausible assumptions on actual events. As with two stories on Severin, most likely the last Colognian archbishop of Roman days. One story recounts how he witnessed Saint Martin's ascension to heaven, while the other is about his God-proclaimed arrival in Bordeaux (essentially telling his predecessor to beat it and make room for someone more competent). Assuming that both talk of the same person (which is surprisingly uncertain), we might infer that the Christian must have fled the city when the barbarians took over.
The book discusses some amazing findings. One again concerns Severin, whose real human remains were discovered under the church that bears his name. Not only that, only half of his body was discovered! And not even the part that includes his head. It's fun to think about where the other half might have ended up. Based on the two stories – incidentally retold by the famous Gregory of Tours – you might think that the other half might have gone to Bordeaux. The archbishop there might have wanted to take (a) part in the sanctity that comes with the possession of relics like this. As so often, though, we don't really know for sure.
Other things we do know with a high degree of certainty. Under today's gothic cathedral archaeologists (led by Otto Doppelfeld, director of the Römisch-Germanisches Museum at the time) were able to find two graves, one of a young woman and the other of a boy. We don't know who the boy was (other than the obvious fact that he must have been some nobleman's son), but the woman was almost certainly Wisigarde, wife of Merowingian King Theudebert I.
It blows my mind to think that we can identify people who died 1,500 years ago. Or how we can identify some of the objects' origins and connect them with the backgrounds of known people. This is something the book often does. For instance, one of the later chapters discusses a famous door in St. Maria im Kapitol that is beautifully decorated with Biblical narratives and that was created on initiative of the church's patroness. The non-narrational prose can be admittedly dull, but in this way the accounts at least gain some personality.
What I loved was how almost every single page is beautifully illustrated. If the objects and artifacts still exists, it's almost certain that there are photos next to the descriptions. There are maps, genealogies, groundplans, 3D models, and drawings to give substance to a time that is more characterized by its ideas and believes than its material remains.
One particularly memorable figure was Archbishop Hildebald who was Charlemagne's arch chaplain. Through his support he was able to build the Old Cathedral (the predecessor of the gothic church),. He also played a role in the Carolingian educational reform and the appreciation for the vernacular. He advocated for prayers in languages other than Latin/Hebrew/Greek and accepted that the uneducated learned the confession of faith and the paternoster only in their own speech.
Under Hildebald the cathedral initiated its first library, which for some reason was my favorite passage in the book. I don't know, I just love the idea of books coming into the world as those highly valuable objects that are only to be written in the exalted languages. As Abt of Mondsee Hildebald is also associated with the creation of what survived as fragments of the oldest known translation of the Bible into Old High German, the Mondseer Fragmente.
The next archbishop whose discussed at length is Brun. He was brother of Emperor Otto I and as such he was made him military as well as spiritual leader. To me he is also interesting because he strictly separated the two domains, maybe not unlike Marcus Aurelius. Similar to the latter, he was also interested in philosophy, in Aristotelian logic in particular, a subject-matter not widely appreciated at the time. Don't expect to hear from the most famous medieval philosophers active in Cologne, though. Albertus Magnus, Aquinus, Meister Eckhart, or Duns Scotus lived in the period that followed only soon after.
Brun's influence is still visible in today's townscape and its expansion towards the River Rhine. He supported the creation of Groß St. Martin and what would become Alter Markt and Heumarkt, in a time that saw the (temporary) increase in commerce. He is also associated with St. Pantaleon, a hospital and church named after a Greek saint and healer. This is where he was buried and where his sarcophagus is still present.
In other respect the book revises assumptions of older generations of Cologne scholars. This is especially true for Archbishop Anno, who was priory believed to have been somewhat leading in the recolonization of the area. Archaeological evidence most importantly in the Heumark area now proved that Cologne had never been abandoned. Anno's legacy is more rightfully grounded in his ability to accumulate relics, often by often rather ruthless means.
The book is structured chronologically, with contextualization as to what was going on at the times in question. Admittedly, at times Cologne is only of peripheral importance to the European political developments under discussion, and occasionally I felt that entire subsection might have been crossed out to strengthen the account of the city's history. At other times the discussion of topics remains very unsatisfactory due to our lack of historic sources, as when it talks about the 11.000 Virgins (associated with St. Cäcilia) or the "Kölsche Sproch".
Frankly, I'm not sure how much of it I'll remember in the future. With few exceptions the Early Middle Ages are not the time where we can vividly imagine actual events. We know of the accomplishments of certain powerful men, and other than that there were less than twenty thousand people doing their agriculture within the Roman and medieval city walls and perhaps talking of the saints that justify the holiness of their city. In fact, even the idea of them being part of something like a city, i.e. Cologne as being part of an identity, only gradually developed in those days.
But of course all this is not the book's "fault". If you take into consideration the lack of reliable sources, then Köln im Frühmittelalter (400-1100) will well serve your expectations.
Rating: 3/5
At its lower bound the age is defined by the end of the Roman Empire and by the Franks taking over as the dominant force in Gaul. Over the next centuries, Cologne will be ruled by three dynasties, the Merovingians, the Carolingians, and the Ottonians, and their reigns mark the sections of the book. However, for the book's focus of Cologne as Holy City (one of only four thus recognized), it's the archbishops whose influence in the urban areas often overshadows even that of kings.
Let's address the elephant in the room, the body of contemporary source material is rather tenuous. Often scholars have to rely on documents written decades or even centuries later or extrapolate from archaeological evidence acquired in more modern days. When we do have the writings (mostly of monks), they often take the form of uncritical praise and legend.
Personally, I don't mind the situation too much. The fabricated narratives that make up the vitae written for saints can be amusing to hear and often became historic when later believers put their faith in them. That is, the creation of churches and their perception was based on admiration of shining virtue portrayed in legends. Sadly, though, often we don't even know any details about the oral traditions that kept sainthood alive.
Under more favorable circumstances, the hagiography allows for plausible assumptions on actual events. As with two stories on Severin, most likely the last Colognian archbishop of Roman days. One story recounts how he witnessed Saint Martin's ascension to heaven, while the other is about his God-proclaimed arrival in Bordeaux (essentially telling his predecessor to beat it and make room for someone more competent). Assuming that both talk of the same person (which is surprisingly uncertain), we might infer that the Christian must have fled the city when the barbarians took over.
The book discusses some amazing findings. One again concerns Severin, whose real human remains were discovered under the church that bears his name. Not only that, only half of his body was discovered! And not even the part that includes his head. It's fun to think about where the other half might have ended up. Based on the two stories – incidentally retold by the famous Gregory of Tours – you might think that the other half might have gone to Bordeaux. The archbishop there might have wanted to take (a) part in the sanctity that comes with the possession of relics like this. As so often, though, we don't really know for sure.
Other things we do know with a high degree of certainty. Under today's gothic cathedral archaeologists (led by Otto Doppelfeld, director of the Römisch-Germanisches Museum at the time) were able to find two graves, one of a young woman and the other of a boy. We don't know who the boy was (other than the obvious fact that he must have been some nobleman's son), but the woman was almost certainly Wisigarde, wife of Merowingian King Theudebert I.
It blows my mind to think that we can identify people who died 1,500 years ago. Or how we can identify some of the objects' origins and connect them with the backgrounds of known people. This is something the book often does. For instance, one of the later chapters discusses a famous door in St. Maria im Kapitol that is beautifully decorated with Biblical narratives and that was created on initiative of the church's patroness. The non-narrational prose can be admittedly dull, but in this way the accounts at least gain some personality.
What I loved was how almost every single page is beautifully illustrated. If the objects and artifacts still exists, it's almost certain that there are photos next to the descriptions. There are maps, genealogies, groundplans, 3D models, and drawings to give substance to a time that is more characterized by its ideas and believes than its material remains.
One particularly memorable figure was Archbishop Hildebald who was Charlemagne's arch chaplain. Through his support he was able to build the Old Cathedral (the predecessor of the gothic church),. He also played a role in the Carolingian educational reform and the appreciation for the vernacular. He advocated for prayers in languages other than Latin/Hebrew/Greek and accepted that the uneducated learned the confession of faith and the paternoster only in their own speech.
Under Hildebald the cathedral initiated its first library, which for some reason was my favorite passage in the book. I don't know, I just love the idea of books coming into the world as those highly valuable objects that are only to be written in the exalted languages. As Abt of Mondsee Hildebald is also associated with the creation of what survived as fragments of the oldest known translation of the Bible into Old High German, the Mondseer Fragmente.
The next archbishop whose discussed at length is Brun. He was brother of Emperor Otto I and as such he was made him military as well as spiritual leader. To me he is also interesting because he strictly separated the two domains, maybe not unlike Marcus Aurelius. Similar to the latter, he was also interested in philosophy, in Aristotelian logic in particular, a subject-matter not widely appreciated at the time. Don't expect to hear from the most famous medieval philosophers active in Cologne, though. Albertus Magnus, Aquinus, Meister Eckhart, or Duns Scotus lived in the period that followed only soon after.
Brun's influence is still visible in today's townscape and its expansion towards the River Rhine. He supported the creation of Groß St. Martin and what would become Alter Markt and Heumarkt, in a time that saw the (temporary) increase in commerce. He is also associated with St. Pantaleon, a hospital and church named after a Greek saint and healer. This is where he was buried and where his sarcophagus is still present.
In other respect the book revises assumptions of older generations of Cologne scholars. This is especially true for Archbishop Anno, who was priory believed to have been somewhat leading in the recolonization of the area. Archaeological evidence most importantly in the Heumark area now proved that Cologne had never been abandoned. Anno's legacy is more rightfully grounded in his ability to accumulate relics, often by often rather ruthless means.
The book is structured chronologically, with contextualization as to what was going on at the times in question. Admittedly, at times Cologne is only of peripheral importance to the European political developments under discussion, and occasionally I felt that entire subsection might have been crossed out to strengthen the account of the city's history. At other times the discussion of topics remains very unsatisfactory due to our lack of historic sources, as when it talks about the 11.000 Virgins (associated with St. Cäcilia) or the "Kölsche Sproch".
Frankly, I'm not sure how much of it I'll remember in the future. With few exceptions the Early Middle Ages are not the time where we can vividly imagine actual events. We know of the accomplishments of certain powerful men, and other than that there were less than twenty thousand people doing their agriculture within the Roman and medieval city walls and perhaps talking of the saints that justify the holiness of their city. In fact, even the idea of them being part of something like a city, i.e. Cologne as being part of an identity, only gradually developed in those days.
But of course all this is not the book's "fault". If you take into consideration the lack of reliable sources, then Köln im Frühmittelalter (400-1100) will well serve your expectations.
Rating: 3/5