Murder on the Church Floor
A story about vengeance in the midst of a 9th-century civil war
Modern Medieval
by David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele
Sorry for the silence as of late! We've been hard at work on our new book, writing and revising. We'll have much more to share very soon (literally answering some emails from the publisher today!), but as we begin to emerge for air, we thought we'd share just a bit of what we've been working on, an outtake of sorts, as well as an hors d'oeuvre of Oathbreakers: The Civil War that Shattered Charlemagne's Empire and Made Medieval Europe.
Enjoy.
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On a summer Sunday in the year 844, King Charles the Bald and Duke Bernard of Septimania met in the abbey basilica of St-Saturninus in the city of Toulouse. The weather was lovely but the occasion was deadly serious. The men were on campaign to crush a rebellion in Aquitaine, but before that, Bernard and Charles had some unfinished business to resolve.
The two heard mass and took the Eucharist together. Ritually purified, the mass paused as Bernard turned to Charles and knelt before him, performing the ritual of homage and thereby pledging his loyalty to the king. The ritual had been a long time coming, marked with accusations of oathbreaking, treachery, and even sorcery! But now Bernard was at Charles' feet. Peace at last.
Charles smiled.
He extended a hand to help his new vassal up, learning in to complete the ritual with an embrace and kiss of peace.
And Charles did indeed pull Bernard to him, but the king’s free hand was grasping something under his cloak. Bernard’s eyes widened briefly as he realized - too late - what was going on.
The dagger plunged into Bernard's side.
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King Charles the Bald and Bernard of Septimania had been at odds since the late 830s, but our story really starts in 829 CE when Bernard's star started to rise. At the time, Charles was only 6, not yet a king, but rather the youngest son of Emperor Louis the Pious and Louis' second wife, Judith of Bavaria. Louis had appointed Bernard chamberlain - an important position at court, responsible for working with the queen and managing the household. Much of that work was distributing gifts, managing access to the emperor and his family. As such, at the same time, Bernard was appointed guardian of a 6-year-old Charles.
But things went south immediately.
By early 830, the empire was in rebellion and the charges were spectacular in nature. Bernard was accused of sleeping with the empress, cuckolding the emperor, and having used sorcery to bring the devil into the center of the most Christian kingdom of the Franks. The charges were false, but revealed that the elevation of Bernard at court had fundamentally changed the pathways of patronage and access to power in the empire. Those displaced by Bernard made sense of this world now turned upside down, with the newcomer at the top and the old guard cast out into the cold, by claiming that the devil was at work in the world and Bernard was his agent.
Bernard had to flee back to the region around Barcelona in fear for his life. His family wasn't so lucky. Through the early 830s, across two separate insurrections against the empire, the rebels took out their rage not only on the emperor himself but on Bernard's family.
One of his brothers was captured and blinded, while another was executed. Two of his cousins were killed in battle. His sister, Gerberga, was dragged out of her convent (she was a nun), tortured, convicted of witchcraft, sealed into a barrel and thrown into the Saône River to drown. Our sources say that the army cheered as they watched her die.
The emperor finally restored order in 834 but Bernard never recovered his position. After Louis the Pious died in 840, his three living sons and one grandson launched into a civil war that shattered the empire. Bernard tried to play all sides, but eventually pledged his loyalty to Charles the Bald towards the end of 841.
Well, sort of.
Bernard kept delaying the formal ritual of submission, giving excuses, never really engaging his own army to help the king put down the rebellion that surrounded him in Aquitaine.
So, to find the two together in church, surrounded by the royal entourage, was perhaps both surprising and not terribly surprising at the same time. Theirs was a fraught relationship. But this Sunday in Summer 844 seemed, maybe, different, friendly, an end to the struggle and the dawning of a new era for Charles and Bernard.
And then the knife.
As Bernard collapsed, Charles stood over Bernard’s bleeding body. He kicked him and thundered out a last biting screed against his long-standing antagonist. “Damn you! You who defiled my father’s - your lord’s - marriage bed!” The accusations of a decade before had resurfaced with horrifying results.
No one moved. No one dared breathe. With a final glance down, Charles stepped over the body and departed. The army followed. Bernard’s body rotted in the church for three days; only then did the bishop of Toulouse order the body removed and buried.
Although this specific tale of Bernard's death is a good one - if a little brutal - none of it actually happened. Or at least it didn’t happen this way. Often, when a medieval author gives us a story that seems too dramatic to be true, it's because it isn't true. But the way a story is told, is remembered, is received, can be as important as what actually happened.
This tale of a medieval murder in a cathedral (not as rare an event as you might think) came from an 11th-century monastic chronicle, and so for quite a while was accepted as the true, if embellished, story of the death of Bernard of Septimania. This story made its way through the eras until modern scholars untangled its origins and showed it to be a much later forgery, created for unknown purposes.
The drama of the tale does, however, capture the animosity that Charles the Bald must have felt towards his former guardian at that time. And Bernard did actually die, captured and executed on King Charles the Bald's orders in 844 (even if it's unlikely that he plunged the dagger into Bernard's chest himself though).
The Carolingian Civil War at the heart of Oathbreakers begins in 841, but our story perhaps really begins in the late 820s - not because of Bernard but not not because of Bernard either. And the drama of the civil war usually finds its ending in Summer 843, with a treaty and borders that begin to resemble what we today might call "France" and "Germany."
But as we see with the death of Bernard, with the storytelling around his death, treaties can't end grudges, can't solve family feuds. Civil Wars do one thing well: they break things. They break empires yes, but they also break families - leaving wives, mothers, and children nothing but to mourn for lost loved ones.
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Oathbreakers will be out with Harper Books in December 2024.
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