Two Elephants in Early Medieval Europe
The interwoven strands of a permeable Europe
Modern Medieval
by David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele
In The Bright Ages (still makes a great Christmas present!), we talk about the arrival of an African elephant to northern Germany in the early ninth century. We wrote:
In Summer 802 CE, a strange - but not unexpected - visitor arrived at Aachen, home of the Emperor Charlemagne (768-814). That Charlemagne would receive a visitor wasn’t the odd thing; he had been crowned emperor in Rome two years earlier and so held power over peoples stretching across all of Europe, from beyond the Pyrenees in the South to Denmark in the North, and from the shores of the Atlantic in the West to the banks of the Danube River in the East. But this particular visitor had come a rather long way. He began his journey (most likely) somewhere beyond the Sahara, perhaps starting in Cameroon or Congo, ventured northeast to Baghdad, then across nearly the whole of North Africa before embarking to Europe from somewhere in Tunisia, perhaps even from the ancient port of Carthage, a city that once led his ancestors into war. After arriving in the southern part of the Italian peninsula, the visitor made his way north, through the Alps, finally to what-is-now western Germany and Charlemagne’s palace at Aachen. Charlemagne had sent for him about four years previously and the Caliph Harun al-Rashid had assented shortly after that. But this visitor named Abul-Abass was slow and tricky for his chaperones to manage. After all, the visitor Charlemagne had sent for likely weighed more than three tons and was a glorious African elephant.
We know very little about what became of Abul-Abass once he arrived in Germany. He seems to disappear from the sources almost immediately, only resurfacing in a record for 810 CE when it was noted that he died suddenly and was mourned by the Franks as they prepared for a military campaign into modern Denmark. We can only wonder what the journey itself was like, what an elephant would have made of northern Europe, what hardships and abuse he experienced, and also what his handlers must have endured to goad him across more than 3,000 miles from Congo to modern Germany. What we do know is what it meant for this to happen specifically under Charlemagne and Harun al-Rashid, what it meant for an elephant to move those thousands of miles at that time and between those places, and what it meant for visitors to Charlemagne’s court to be confronted by the glinting, ivory whiteness of an elephant’s tusk. As the elephant thundered and his tusk came into sight, it reminded all its viewers of the East and, from the Franks’ perspective, of a connection between equals - between a Christian “Roman” emperor and an Islamic “Persian” caliph…
One author wrote in the 820s, looking back, that “everyone in the kingdom of the Franks saw an elephant during the reign of the emperor Charles.” And what they saw was not simply an elephant, it was a host of ideological associations. They saw a ruler who tamed a great beast, a ruler who stood as a new biblical David, a new Roman emperor Constantine. They saw the Islamic Abbasids, based in their new golden city of Baghdad, the preeminent power in the East, sending gifts in recognition of the Franks’ power, considering them as (at least) equals… The mammoth animal, the whiteness of its tusks as it towered over everything around, was a living breathing representation of the Frankish sense of self. As its trumpet bellowed into the octagonal dome of the resplendent chapel, God did seem to favor his new chosen people.
This Carolingian elephant has fascinated scholars and others alike. We know so very little about it, its experiences, but also what the Franks themselves made of it. But in researching our new book Oathbreakers, maybe we get a better sense.
In the middle of the ninth century, as the Frankish empire was collapsing in on itself, a worried mother sat down to write to her absent son. William was only 14 when he’d been taken from her but was now approaching 17 when this woman - Dhuoda - sent her long letter. As happened so often in the civil war of the 840s, as brother fought brother over the legacy of their father, over the empire itself, powerful nobles switched sides between warring factions when tides turned. Dhuoda’s husband, Bernard of Septimania, was one of those nobles - caught between 2 factions in Aquitaine (in southern France).
In 840, after the death of the emperor most likely, Bernard had returned home and taken William to be with him. Everyone knew war was coming and it seemed safer that the men (the age of majority was 15, so William was very nearly at that age) stay mobile. There would soon be blood.
But then, about 9 months later, Dhuoda had a second child. And by that time a lot had changed. A great battle had been fought in June 841 at Fontenoy (not far from Auxerre in France) and Bernard had deftly (or treacherously, depending on who you asked) emerged unscathed, pledging his support to King Charles the Bald. But Bernard had broken his oaths before, so King Charles demanded surety - and surety was given in the form of his eldest son. William was to be held at Charles’ court, not as a prisoner, but educated and kept close in case Bernard went back on his word again (spoiler: he did).
In late 841, Bernard sent some of his men to collect his new - not even yet baptized! - son from Dhuoda. She says explicitly this is why she sat down to write, in her worry and her grief.
We’ll talk much more about this text and this family in Oathbreakers (out December 2024!) but for now, buried in Dhuoda’s text she mentions that the party that had been sent by her husband to collect her baby was led by the bishop of Uzès (near Avignon in France) - a man named, we kid you not, Elefantus.
To the best of our knowledge, no other source mentions this guy. And no one, not even Dhuoda herself, comments on the oddness of his name.
Is this then a window into the impact of Charlemagne’s elephant on the Franks?
Names were very important in the period (and as we talk about a lot in Oathbreakers…), especially in a world before surnames. People who were intended to inherit, for example, were given specific family names. Elefantus, the bishop of Uzès, would have been an adult in the 840s. Bishops were important, prestigious positions and populated by the nobility. But often these positions were filled by second (or third) sons, allowing the eldest to inherit the family lands. Calling someone “Elefantus” would’ve put them outside of that inheritance pattern but would’ve signaled, on the other hand, an access and an aspiration. It could be a sign that the family saw that glorious creature in person.
So, let us wonder aloud. What if this particular bishop were born (as is entirely likely) sometime in the first decade of the 9th century? What if his parents were courtiers at Aachen - perhaps not among the greatest magnates of the realm - but one of the many, many who passed through the palace school that attracted minds from across Europe to its halls? As the later chronicler said, “everyone in the kingdom of the Franks saw an elephant during the reign of the emperor Charles.” Could Elefantus of Uzès be an echo of that sentiment, a small - and very personal - reminder of the arrival of those ivory tusks?
We can never know. But at the very least we do know that 2 elephants roamed the Frankish countryside in the 9th century, and are forced to wonder how many more there may have been.
UPDATE: My thanks to Rutger Kramer, Cullen Chandler, and Fraser McNair who pointed out that certain people named “Elipandus” were spelled sometimes “Elifantus” (this would make sense due to the lack of standardization of names in the period) and that there were at least a few of these dudes floating around southern France in the later 8th century. It’s possible (probable?) that Elefantus of Uzès was named after them, not the Aachen elephant.
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