An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks, and Jerusalem before the First Crusade

Now available in paperback!

Winner:
Best First Book Award from the Southeastern Medieval Association

Beginning shortly after Charlemagne's death in 814, the inhabitants of his historical empire looked back upon his reign and saw in it an exemplar of Christian universality - Christendom. They mapped contemporary Christendom onto the past and so, during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the borders of his empire grew with each retelling, almost always including the Christian East. Although the pull of Jerusalem on the West seems to have been strong during the eleventh century, it had a more limited effect on the Charlemagne legend. Instead, the legend grew during this period because of a peculiar fusion of ideas, carried forward from the ninth century but filtered through the social, cultural, and intellectual developments of the intervening years.

Paradoxically, Charlemagne became less important to the Charlemagne legend. The legend became a story about the Frankish people, who believed they had held God's favour under Charlemagne and held out hope that they could one day reclaim their special place in sacred history. Indeed, popular versions of the Last Emperor legend, which spoke of a great ruler who would reunite Christendom in preparation for the last battle between good and evil, promised just this to the Franks. Ideas of empire, identity, and Christian religious violence were potent reagents. The mixture of these ideas could remind men of their Frankishness and move them, for example, to take up arms, march to the East, and reclaim their place as defenders of the faith during the First Crusade.

Matthew Gabriele is an associate professor and Coordinator of Medieval & Early Modern Studies in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech.

See his homepage. 

Reviews

"As with all the best exercises in intellectual archaeology, Gabriele’s book raises as many questions as it claims to answer. It is a monograph in the very best sense of the term, showing how a field that some might presume mined to exhaustion can still yield up a rich, albeit highly speculative seam of ore."

-- Nicholas Vincent, History

"Gabriele has made a powerful and convincing attempt to show that the evolution of Charlemagne myths can reveal a Frankish sense of manifest Christian destiny, and that this self-importance may have spurred at least some of them to follow the crusader road to Jerusalem."

-- The Times Literary Supplement

"I really like this book and learned a lot from it... The argument and research are critical, thorough, and sound."

-- Thomas F.X. Noble, The Medieval Review

"An Empire of Memory is a stimulating book written by a promising young scholar. It is sweeping in scope, consults an impressive range of diverse sources, and asks many provocative questions."

-- David Hay, H-Net

"An Empire of Memory is a book about the power of ideas... Gabriele has a sharp and no-nonsense way of pursuing his subject and, strikingly, runs through his varied and nuanced argument in a mere 159 pages, relying on economy and precision rather than density or aloofness. The net result is most satisfying... [The book] is therefore to be praised for representing an imaginative and instructive contribution to important ongoing debates."

-- James Palmer, Early Medieval Europe

"Gabriele's understanding of Frankishness from c. 800 to c. 1100 results in a thoughtful and thought-provoking monograph... that is intriguing and convincing... [T]he depth of analysis on offer here and its relevance to debates about memory makes this a hugely welcome addition to a growing body of research."

-- Christian Harding, Journal of Ecclesiastical History

"This efficiently argued and interesting book is an informed and thoughtful discussion of the ideas and associations that attached themselves to the memory of Charlemagne between the reign of his successor Louis the Pious and the First Crusade."

-- Marcus Bull, Crusades

"Why did people go on the First Crusade anyway, and what determined who went? Matthew Gabriele offers, among other things, an answer to that question. His slender book argues that it was a concatenation of fortunate events, for this is an argument about ideas and their power across the centuries... [Gabriele's] is a plausible argument, eruditely rooted in a wide range of primary and secondary sources, including liturgical studies, art history, 'literary' and 'historical' texts..., crusade histories, and current arguments about orality, history, and memory.... The writing is clear and accessible, free of obnoxious jargon, and frequently lively."

-- Leah Shopkow, American Historical Review

"L’originalité de l’entreprise consiste à retracer, autant que faire se peut, l’histoire de la mise en cohérence de plusieurs thèmes qui avaient certes déjà été étudiés isolément, mais sans que leur convergence ni a fortiori ses enjeux ne soient reconnus à leur juste mesure... Il faut bien mesurer la force d’innovation que déploie Matthew Gabriele en s’efforçant de reconstituer, de situer historiquement et de définir la portée d’un tel réseau de signification, tout autant que la nécessaire prise de risque que comporte une telle entreprise. Sa démonstration cherche et trouve son équilibre entre une fine analyse des dossiers, qui témoigne d’une aisance technique certaine et lui permet de proposer quelques réévaluations, et une perspective plus générale qui vise avant tout à acquérir une véritable familiarité avec les thèmes et les modes de pensée étudiés, pour en tirer le meilleur parti dans la conduite de l’enquête et au niveau de l’interprétation. L’auteur prend soin d’exposer le degré de plausibilité variable des thèses qu’il développe et invite ainsi le lecteur spécialiste à l’accompagner dans sa réflexion, qui n’est pas restreinte à un partage entre le »vrai« et le »faux«, l’irréfutablement attesté et le complètement inconnu: il ne s’agit pas en effet de reconstituer la pensée des auditeurs d’Urbain II en 1095, objectif évidement illusoire, mais de s’autoriser à sonder en cette matière l’étendue du possible et du probable... Même si tous les éléments d’une telle démonstration n’ont pas la même vocation à être repris, ce livre, globalement convainquant, intelligemment construit et appréciable pour sa concision (159 pages de texte), rendra service et devrait inspirer d’autres recherches. Souhaitons que son auteur, dans ses travaux à venir, trouve la liberté de ne pas céder à la tentation d’un surcroît de théorie ou de spéculation, pour approfondir encore son beau parti d’une écriture historique aussi précise qu’elle est inventive."

-- Philippe Cordez, Francia-Recensio

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