For the most part, the European system of political units during the medieval period held one source of transcendent credibility: Christianity directed from Rome. In fact, according to Eric Voegelin, one can speak of the medieval period in Europe as a “search for Christendom.”233 This is not to neglect other potential sources of transcendent credibility that existed in Europe, however. The early centuries of the middle ages saw the Church pursuing missionary activities among the Germanic peoples who had moved into the former Roman Empire or who continued to live on its fringes. New sources of transcendent credibility waxed and waned on the edges of Europe as well, including Islam and the successive waves of horsemen from the steppes. Inside Europe there was constant vigilance against the spread of heretical systems of belief. Thus, the idea of Christendom was not maintained without a struggle; however, it was a struggle that Catholic Europe consistently won for over one thousand years.234

On the other hand, in the rare instances when and where these alternate sources of transcendent credibility combined with military capabilities, they could rise to a degree of threat that compelled the Christian political units of Europe to respond. The following section will look at two of the most important anomalies and use these to demonstrate the robustness of the theory. The first exception occurred under Charlemagne. The expansionist policies of Charlemagne and his father Pippin narrowed the frontiers between Christianized Europe and some of the remaining pagan elements of the Germanic tribes, most notably the Saxons and later the Slavs and Avars. This expansion, in effect, enlarged the size of the system under consideration, increasing the number of sources of transcendent credibility from one to two. It will be shown that a relatively distinct border formed along the Frankish-Saxon boundary. Further, because such a strategy was extremely costly, Charlemagne opted to change his policy to actively convert the Saxons to Christianity in order to shift the resources he had invested in the border elsewhere.

The second exception to be considered is found in the places on the continent and in the British Isles the Vikings colonized. The Christianized Angles and Saxons on the British Isles followed the general pattern of the European middle ages with respect to one another. Despite the fact that each kingdom represented a threat to the other, the boundaries between political units were relatively indistinct and frequently overlapped. It was only during the reign of Alfred the Great, the first Angle king to be faced with a permanent Viking presence, that the military was reformed and border fortifications reflected a more distinct boundary. As this Viking territory, the Danelaw, began to convert to Christianity, the boundary grew increasingly more indistinct despite the fact that the Danelaw still represented an enormous military threat.

These cases demonstrate that border distinctiveness was not related to constitutional systems or common practices of particular time periods, but to the number of sources of transcendent credibility in a system and how they were situated geographically with respect one another. Where Christianity existed unchallenged, rulers invested very little in maintaining and controlling boundaries with other political units. However, where political units arose that held an alternative source of transcendent credibility, Christian rulers changed their strategies to create more distinctive borders. Once this was accomplished, in many cases they turned to a policy of Christianization of the neighboring political unit. The strategic advantage of this policy was that, once the neighbor had converted, the boundary required fewer resources and these could be redirected elsewhere. Thus, after successful conversion of neighbors, boundaries between political units became more indistinct and tended to overlap, even when the neighbor still posed a serious military threat.

 

Christendom: A Single Source of Transcendent Credibility in the Middle Ages

Christianity’s ascent in Western Europe plausibly began with the Edict of Milan in 313, when Emperor Constantine permitted people “the free and unrestricted practice of their religions.”235 The Edict, in particular, mentioned Christianity and the official seal of approval implicitly directed the Empire to embrace the teachings of this formerly Jewish sect. Confrontations with Paganism and heresy within the Empire and heathens without marked the history of the Church from the fourth to eighth centuries.236 However, the period now known as Late Antiquity may succinctly be referred to as the success story of a religion. Christianity came to not only dominate the furthest reaches of the former Roman Empire, it also successfully extended into regions the powerful Roman legions were unable to penetrate. With only a few finite exceptions, Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Protestant Reformation was the home of only one source of transcendent credibility: Christianity as directed by the Roman curia.

The decline of Rome in Late Antiquity created an administrative vacuum throughout the Empire into which the Church stepped. The political decline produced subsequent economic and cultural crises.237 The Roman elite located throughout the Empire could no longer play the crucial role of providing local order. In many cases, these elite, finding themselves cut off from or ignored by Rome, turned to the Germanic tribes that continued to migrate into these areas from the North and East. The Germanic rulers adopted many of the institutions and values of the Romans in order to maximize compliance given the changing political situation.238 The Church played a significant role in teaching the new rulers how to use this different source of transcendent credibility, enabling the Roman elite and Germanic elite to fuse into a single class, and convincing the general populace that they were all Christian rather than Roman or German. The Christian liturgy and ceremony possessed the only viable legitimacy across racial and class lines.239 In addition, local bishops used displays of wealth as a symbol to demonstrate to Roman and German alike the validity of placing the Church at the center of the social system.240 This allowed the Bishops to step into the gap between the waning Empire and the waxing tribal kingdoms. As a result, the clergy received political and social status concomitant with their role in this transition.

It was a precarious balancing act for the Church, however. Until roughly the eighth century, although the Church was nominally centrally connected to Bishop of Rome (the Pope), that person’s power to affect the practices and doctrines of distant  parts of Europe was extremely limited. Each Germanic tribe produced a unique blend of Roman and Christian institutions. Acknowledged heresies such as Arianism had taken root among powerful tribes, such as the Visigoths. Local gods and heroes still carried enormous levels of respect and credibility among the people and could not be eradicated by the Church. Thus, local clergy compromised, allowing these objects of worship to be converted into saints – otherworldly beings that were not God, but also something more than human possessing a transcendent credibility of their own.241

This patchwork of Christianity was stabilized by the growing centralization of the ecclesiastical bureaucracy and the practice of pilgrimage. Devout Christians sought the blessings of individual saints and of God by traveling great distances to visit Christian shrines and gaze upon relics.242 The early form of cosmopolitanism allowed Christians from distant parts of Europe to begin to share and coordinate their practices. An extremely important destination of pilgrims was Rome, giving the ecclesia there greater opportunities to influence travelers who would take these ideas back to their home regions.243

Rome remained the symbolic center of Europe, even though its real status had declined greatly. This was especially true among the clergy who were “buoyed up by  immense corporate confidence in the absolute rightness of all things Roman.”244 Church histories and rituals often included the monuments from Ancient Rome’s past in order to connect their current legitimacy with the continued credibility of the Empire.245 The Bishop of Rome took pride of place over all Christian bishops – at least in the doctrines purported by the Church in Rome. Church tradition said that the Apostle Peter was the first Bishop of Rome and, as Christ had made Peter first among the disciples, his bishopric would also be first among the others. At least in Western Europe where no city rivaled that of Rome, bishops and other clergy would often bring disputed rulings to the Pope. The papacy thus became a focal point around which an ecclesiastical bureaucracy formed in the West. This centralization was so successful that “by the eighth century, all the Latin Christians were Trinitarians and were in communion with the bishop of Rome.”246

Expansion of Christianity beyond the traditional edges of the Roman Empire was an early concern for the Church.247 It sent missions to the many Germanic tribes throughout Europe, to all parts of the British Isles, and into the East. In some areas, the local rulers recognized the value of Christianity as a source of transcendent credibility and quickly adopted it along with many pieces of Roman culture. In other areas, the Christian missionaries faced rejection and execution. And yet, when Europe is considered in the longer term, these missions eventually accomplished their goals to the extent that, by the year 1000, there were very few secluded regions in Europe that had not made Christianity their source of transcendent credibility.

Another joint project of the Christian Church were the attempts to reclaim the Holy Land from the forces of Islam. Lords and kings who had been warring with each other only a few years before would be seen heading off together on crusade in the name of Christendom. A common enemy bolstered the common identity Christianity had fostered among the people of Europe. Christians were instructed by no less an authority than St. Bernard of Clairvaux that the Church required an active defense and that heretics and unbelievers should be killed before they are able to lead an innocent Christian astray.248 Crusades could also be called by the Church against persons within Europe, for example, against the Albigensians in Southern France.249 The outcome was a joint effort by both Church and rulers to defend this solitary source of transcendent credibility from threats both within and without.

Commonwealth of Christendom found its expression in the Church, and loyalty to the Church was stronger than loyalty to any lay organization.”251 This did not mean the Pope stood alone at the top of Europe. It was the idea of the Church that dominated Europe and both Pope and ruler claimed dominance over particular parts of that legacy. Networks of authority, albeit hierarchically organized, resulted. Within the Church itself, even at its height under Pope Innocent III, “The Pope was no dictator.

He was more like a chairman of the board, who has to act with the approval of his fellow directors (the Cardinals), and find ways to accommodate or neutralize potential opposition.”252 The relationship between kings and nobles in the Middle Ages functioned very similarly in most cases. And, just as persons may sit on many different corporate boards, nobles and clergy participated in multiple networks of authority throughout Europe.

There is also a close connection between the feudal social structure and Christianity itself. According to the French historian Georges Duby, it was the clerical hierarchical ideas transferred to and imposed on European society in general that culminated in the system that we now recognize as feudalism. Hierarchy was more than natural – it was God-inspired. Everything in Creation was “arrayed ‘in distinct orders’ under the authority of a sovereign, who sits enthroned in the city on high.”253 In short, all was hierarchically organized under Christ. Since Christ was both the source of all spiritual and temporal power, the arrangement of power among his lieutenants on earth should be organized in essentially the same manner. This illustrates two very important facts of the European Middle Ages. First, the organization of political authority should mirror the organization of spiritual authority, which was the Church. Second, secular rulers could not remain neutral in discussions about the proper organization and distribution of power within the Church hierarchy, since any such changes would have profound impacts on the structure of political (and hence his own) authority.254

The lack of distinctive boundaries is extraordinarily clear in the European Middle Ages. The acephalous nature of the system was not accidental. One of the key characteristics of the feudal system was that a vassal could have more than one lord.255 If two of a single vassal’s lords were to fight and summon the vassal to fulfill his military obligations, there were no set criteria that were systematically accepted to make the choice of which obligation dominated. In fact, a vassal may use such an opportunity to play one lord off the other to acquire more rights or he may declare his obligations null and void as a result of the situation. The boundaries between political units did not serve as a barrier preventing the establishment of an obligation between lord and vassal. A count may, for example, hold fiefs on behalf of the duke of Normandy and also hold separate fiefs on behalf of the King of France. Likewise, due to complicated (but highly regulated) rules of inheritance and marriage, the duke of Normandy may hold fiefs on behalf of the King of France and vice versa. Thus, any attempt to clearly demarcate the boundaries between political units in Medieval Europe was a challenging pursuit.

To this must be added the relatively autonomous nature of cities and towns in Medieval Europe. The fact that a city lay within the territorial boundaries of a lord’s domain did not imply that it in any way complied with that lord’s authority. Ordinarily, as long as municipalities generated money from trade and commerce and the lord received his share of that income, cities were permitted the freedom to make more money. This was true even to the extent of undermining the feudal system itself. For example, cities and lords permitted a special (unspoken) dispensation for runaway peasants who sought refuge in a city. The refugee would participate in the city’s economy and a blind eye would be turned toward his or her fugitive status. Thus, it is an oversimplification to say that municipalities were truly autonomous, but so long as they kept the political elite happy (and wealthy), they were permitted a large degree of freedom.

The relative lack of hegemonic authority within the territories of Medieval Europe was not the only indication of relatively indistinct boundaries between political units. Compliance generation could be extremely inefficient since a vassal could play the relationship with one of his lords off against the other, in essence forcing the lords to bid for the vassals’ allegiance. For this same reason, there were very few efforts to construct judicial hierarchies.256 Vassals administered justice locally. Though appeal to the king or some other office always theoretically existed, there were few opportunities for appeal for the people in general. On the other hand, a vassal charged with a crime by a lord could frequently appeal to the intervention of one of his other lords. Thus, investments in more hierarchically organized judicial systems would have to wait for the social structure of feudalism to transform in some way.

Authority figures in Medieval Europe made only limited attempts at imposing standardization of coinage. Persons using money in Late Antiquity and the Early Medieval centuries primarily relied on the coins of the former Roman Empire.257 The sixth-century Franks minted some coins that circulated alongside Roman and other coins. However, in the seventh century, as Frankish royal power declined, the right to mint coins was scattered and sold to many different entrepreneurs in the territory, in particular churches. Between the fall of the Roman Empire and the sixteenth century only Charlemagne made a concerted and somewhat successful effort to impose a standardized currency. Venice was the most important monetary center of Medieval Europe, and even it did not force a single standardized currency. Venetian merchants recognized that foreign coins lacked consistent quality and value. In response, Venice minted its own coins, though the city did not compel its internal commerce to only use these. Venetian coins became the standard by the late twelfth century, inside and  outside Venice, but this was largely due to Venice’s reputation, not imposition by the Venetian government.258 Venice refrained from depreciating its coins while many other European minters made short-term profits from reducing the quality of their currency. In short, the market in Medieval Europe determined the standardization of coinage. While strides were made throughout the Middle Ages to standardize money and measurements, these efforts tended to be the result of the self-imposed regulations of merchants rather than the imposition of any governmental authority.259 This lack of imposed standardization of currency provides further evidence that there were relatively indistinct boundaries between political units.

The relatively indistinct boundaries between political units resulted from the uniformity of the source of transcendent credibility in the European system during this period. These cross-cutting networks of relationships were not legal in the modern sense of the term, but their durability and usefulness required some regulation. According to Michael Mann, “The major regulatory agency was Christendom.”260 But then, what exactly was “Christendom” and how could it exert sufficient sanctioning strength to compel persons to comply with their mutual obligations? It was the embodiment of the source of transcendent credibility that was accepted by all of the political units within Medieval Europe. It functioned in two principal manners. First, “It was transcendent, yet it reinforced the immanent morale of an existing social  group, a ruling class of lords.”261 In short, the people, vassals, and lords of Europe recognized it as capable of imposing sanctions both here on earth (through ostracism and excommunication) and in the afterlife (simply put, Hell). A non-Christian would not be motivated by such sanctions and, hence, could not be trusted (except under exceptional circumstances) to fulfill his end of any agreement. It was a social system that was designed by and benefited the elite of society and they used their real power to maintain and perpetuate this ideological power. The second manner in which Christendom functioned was by connecting the various local networks of power to a larger whole. The shared beliefs of Christianity generated a shared identity among the local networks, allowing these networks to interconnect to a degree that would not have been possible or desirable in the absence of a common identity. For persons in Europe, “The most powerful and extensive sense of social identity was Christian.”262

Race, class, occupation, and political divisions produced social divisions within Europe, yet these were all secondary to the dominant identity of Christian.

This common identity also allowed lords to be generally aloof from the governance of the cities and towns in their territories. Like the vassal-lord relationship, municipalities depended on religious values and rituals.263 Similar to an emergence from a “state of nature,” many of these towns and cities were founded, so that their very formation depended on a charter agreed on by the original residents and invariably were supported by religious oaths sworn by the founders. In addition, religious oaths formed the guarantee of economic transactions, the life-blood of the city. Although urban laws differed in many ways from the feudal laws of the countryside, they were both solidly built around the same religious rituals and values.

The autonomy lords permitted municipalities depended on this shared source of transcendent credibility. In general, Western Europe from 400 to 1500 was the site of a single source of transcendent credibility and, as a result, rulers possessed little incentive to invest in controlling boundaries between political units. However, there are exceptions to this general rule. First, on the edges of Europe, where Christendom abutted territories possessing alternate sources of transcendent credibility, far greater care was taken to control the flow of ideas and persons across the border. These regions include the eastern edge of Eastern Europe, Spain, and the Mediterranean Sea itself. The eastern border of Hungary, for example, was known throughout the West as ‘the gateway of Christendom.”264 Other exceptions could occur within Europe itself due to the expansion of Christendom and invasions from outside the system. The rest of this section of this current researchproject will examine two of these exceptions: the Carolingian expansion into pagan Saxony and the invasion of the Vikings in Britain during the reign of Alfred the Great. The value of examining these exceptions to the medieval norm of Christianity only is that they show that increasing the number of sources of transcendent credibility, even for brief periods, resulted in more distinctive borders localized where the alternate source threatened the monopoly held by Christianity.

 

The Carolingian Empire and the Saxons (751-820)

There were a few exceptions to the general state of indistinct boundaries between political units in Medieval Europe. One of these, the era of Charlemagne, is often depicted as a brief moment of continent-wide order in the otherwise chaotic “Dark Ages.” Centuries after the fall of Rome, it appeared that a new Empire, based in part on the same principles that had made Rome great, had arisen. However, the disintegration of the Frankish Empire after Charlemagne’s death and the subsequent invasions from three directions produced the impression that transformation had not really occurred. These perceptions are not surprising. There was a brief transformation in the system during the reign of Charlemagne caused by conditions that disappeared after his death. Before and after Charlemagne, Western Europe as known to the Franks contained one significant source of transcendent credibility – Roman Christianity. However, the expansion of the Franks under Charlemagne and his father, Pippin III, put that Empire into contact with at least one other source of transcendent credibility: that of the Saxons. The following section examines the early years of the Carolingian Empire when there was just one source of transcendent credibility and discusses how the expansionist policies of the Franks brought them into contact with the Saxons and a new source of transcendent credibility. Lacking the resources to conquer Saxony, the Carolingians were forced to adopt a strategy of making their borders with Saxony more distinct to prevent the erosion of political authority. This had the effect of centralizing Imperial institutions to the extent that it seemed order was to be restored to the chaos that befell Europe after Rome fell. Possessing greater military might, Charlemagne was able to conquer the Saxons and convert them to Christianity, thus removing the alternate source of transcendent credibility in the system and return the total number to one. With this reduction, the boundary between the Franks and the Saxons became relatively less distinct, to the point that it was eliminated administratively.

Frankish Gaul as established by Charles Martel (714-41), Pippin III (741-68), and Charlemagne (768-814) was a confederation of many political units of Franks, Germans and several other peoples. They all shared a belief in Christianity, as interpreted by the pope and the Roman curia. These different peoples submitted to the Carolingians’ because of their overwhelming military power and, during the reign of Pippin III and after, because of the nod of the papacy.

In 751 Pippin III was consecrated by the pope. For several generations, the Carolingians had served as mayors to the Merovingian kings. Over time, the mayors came to perform most of the actual functions of government. By the time of Charles Martel, the Merovingian kings were that in name alone. The Carolingians were the strongest military power in central Europe and, thanks to threats from the Lombards, the papacy needed as much military aid as could be mustered. Likewise, the Carolingians based their legitimacy in part on efforts to reform the church.265 Thus, Pippin III received the sanction of the pope, which amounted to a sanction from divine authority. This was an incredibly important support given the fact that the Carolingian right to kingship was dubious under traditional standards. Under the guidance of their bishops, the Franks chose to depose the Merovingian king, Childeric III and place Pippin directly on the throne. The anointing of Pippin as king by the bishops started a new practice that would continue in Europe for centuries.

It is also significant to note that contemporary Carolingian apologists argued that the transition from Merovingian to Carolingian rule was gradual and natural. For example, the noted biographer of Charlemagne, Einhard, stated that, although the pope did “order” the deposition of Childeric, the Merovingians “had long since lost all power” – the Carolingian Mayors of the Palace already possessed the wealth, power, and “entire sovereignty” of the realm.266 Einhard dismissively described Childeric as someone who enjoyed all the pleasures of royal without any of the responsibilities, while Pippin and his father, Charles Martel, are described as active and vigorous in serving the realm. The Royal Annals of the year 749 note that Pope Zacharias said, in response to a question from the bishops about who should be king, “It would be better to call king the one who held the power rather than the one who remained without regal power.”267 The pope then “ordered by virtue of his apostolic authority” that Pippin should be king. Arguably, these apologists suggested that the Carolingians also had a hereditary right to the throne because they had acted kinglike for many generations, even though they did not technically hold the title.

The Church fully supported the legitimacy of the Carolingian rulers over the Frankish kingdom and over Western Christendom. Except for one brief period in the 770s when the papacy was held by persons who deferred to the Lombards, the popes perpetuated an overt arrangement with the Carolingians in which they traded the blessings of God for the protection of Frankish warriors. Charlemagne put it this way: Our part is by the help of our divine faith everywhere to defend with arms Christ’s holy church from the attacks of the heathen and the devastation of the infidel without, and within to fortify her with the knowledge of faith. Your part, most holy Father, is, like Moses, to raise your hands to God to aid our militant service to the end that with your intercession, under the guidance and grace of God, Christian people may at all times and in all places be victorious over the enemies of His holy name and the name of our Lord Jesus Christ be made glorious throughout the world.268

Charlemagne also took the additional step of making his palace the center of learning, shifting it out from direct control of the Church.269 This was a purposeful step. Medieval historian Rosamund McKitterick argues that there was “a concentrated effort on the part of a group of associated members of an elite to deploy history in the service of politics.”270 The major historiographical sources between 780 and 880 were connected to the Carolingian court and “articulate a clear ideology of political power and a very particular presentation of the past.”271 For such a venture, the historians had to be close at hand, not in distant Rome. Thus, not only did the Carolingians  obtain access to the most potent source of transcendent credibility in Western Europe, they held the upper hand in the relationship, allowing them to determine, in large part, the outcomes of theological debates that had the potential to destabilize their rule. The papacy lacked the leverage to resist this shift and, to a certain extent, welcomed it so long as the Franks fulfilled their end of the bargain. In short, the link between the Frankish government and the Roman Church effectively served the political needs of the Carolingian rulers.

The political structure of the Frankish kingdom also mirrored that of the Roman Church. On day-to-day matters in particular territories, the duke was the authority figure. Like local bishops and priests, the dukes and their lords managed the affairs of everyday life and were the front-line against the disintegration of order. Similarly, as the Pope held a final appeal (if one could successfully claim a valuable moment of time), so the Carolingian king held final appeal. While the Pope was responsible for the larger picture of orthodox belief and the eradication of heresy on a large scale, the Carolingian king took the lead in maintaining order and security for the Frankish kingdom. Under such an arrangement the boundaries between different political units within the overall kingdom were necessarily relatively indistinct.

Not all Christian territories in Europe were automatically willing to be a part of the Frankish kingdom. Aquitaine, for example, in southwestern France maintained its independence from the ever-expanding sphere of influence of the Franks.272 However, by 716, the Muslims had conquered the Iberian Peninsula and Aquitaine recognized that only the Pyrenees separated them from a new and powerful source of transcendent credibility. The duke of Aquitaine perceived that his ability to hold his title was firmly linked to the continuation of Christianity in his territory and he turned to the Franks in an alliance that eventually subsumed Aquitaine in the larger kingdom. The point here is that although Aquitaine heavily fortified and protected its border with Islam, it left its boundary with the Franks indistinct, even merging with the larger Empire, despite the fact that both the Franks and Muslims presented a serious threat to the existence of Aquitaine and its ruling house. Subordination to the Muslims presented a greater threat to the duke than assimilation into the Christian Frankish empire.

The boundaries within the Frankish confederation and between the Franks and other Christian political units were indistinct. Authority of nobles could easily cross nominal borders. Fortifications and permanent military garrisons stationed along the boundaries between political units were almost completely non-existent, despite the fact that the threats of rebellion or invasion remained high in several areas. The underlying reason for this is that all of these political units shared the same source of transcendent credibility. Once the Church anointed Pippin III as the king of the Franks, the Carolingians could trade on this legitimacy to extend their dominance over other Christian political units in Europe (whose rulers had not received the same attentions from the papacy).

 

Contact with Saxony Increases the Number of Sources of Transcendent Credibility

As the Carolingian Empire grew in strength and territory, the Franks increased the number and frequency of contacts with peoples who did not adhere to as their source of transcendent credibility. Of these, it is the relationship between the Franks and the pagan Saxons on which we have the most sources today. Raids from Saxony (modern-day Germany) into the Carolingian Empire became more frequent in the later years of Pippin III’s reign. Charlemagne spent twenty-seven years of his reign dealing with the Saxons. Because these people took so much of the ruler’s attention, they similarly captured the attention of contemporary biographers and chroniclers. The Carolingians’ concern stemmed from the combination of military might the Saxons could muster and the fact that they were pagans (non-Christian), an alternate source of transcendent credibility that potentially held some sway among persons in the eastern parts of the Empire.273

The expanding reach of power of the Carolingian Empire combined with a strengthening of the Saxon tribes produced an increase in the frequency of contacts between the two political units. As a result, in the eastern portion of the Empire, the number of sources of transcendent credibility increased from one to two. This is not to say that the Saxons were new to the area nor that they had abstained from conducting raids in Frankish territory prior to the reign of Pippin III. However, before Pippin’s advances there was a relatively large and open frontier located between the two units separated in part by the Rhine River. This meant that raids were few and far between. But once the Carolingians were firmly in power, internal concerns were for Christianity the most part eliminated and Pippin and Charlemagne possessed both the time and resources to focus on the fringes of their domain.

That the Franks considered the source of transcendent credibility to be different from their own is without question. The Saxons, like many of the pagan Germanic tribes, were polytheistic, worshipping a panoply of gods that were primarily attached to nature. The political structure of the Saxons reflected this theistic structure. There was no single overlord of the Saxons, just as there was no single god that dominated the others. The obedience of a warrior to a chief did not appear to be the result of any agreement or oath, but a matter of choice that largely depended on the glory and wealth that could be gained through the association. These political implications of the Saxon religion could not be tolerated inside the Carolingian Empire. The Carolingians demanded an overlord and binding agreements of service, all of which Roman Christianity amply provided.

 

Increase in the Distinctiveness of Boundaries between the Franks and Saxony

The Carolingians faced a choice about how to react to this new ideological threat. Doing nothing was a poor strategy given the increasing frequency of crossboundary raids and the somewhat tenuous hold they had over the duchies on the eastern edge of the Empire. This left two possibilities: conquest and conversion or invest resources in the boundary to control the flow of people and ideas into the Empire. Pippin III lacked the strength to conquer Saxony. He spent much of his reign trying to consolidate his authority after the Church-endorsed coup d’etat. On top of this, Saxony was not an easy place to conquer. Politically, as we have seen, it lacked a centralized leadership structure, making it difficult to conquer the whole territory.

Geographically, the region was mountainous, criss-crossed by well-fortified rivers, swampy, and without Roman roads on which to move easily about. Rationally, Pippin would also have reasoned that, once conquest had occurred, the occupation would be incredibly difficult without a concentrated and costly effort to eradicate the wellrooted religious practices. Thus, during the final years of Pippin’s reign and the earlyyears of Charlemagne’s, the Carolingian Empire increased the investment of resources in the border with Saxony in an effort to keep the pagans out in the most cost-effective manner possible.

Much evidence exists that the border between the Carolingian Empire and Saxony grew more distinct during this period (roughly 760-780). Most importantly, Pippin and Charlemagne demonstrated a credible commitment to defend this border that was a great distant from their center of power in Gaul. Perhaps the best example of this was the reorganization of the military in the early years of Charlemagne. Ideally, we would look for the permanent garrisoning of troops along the border, but such a strategy is designed for a defensive military arrangement. Pippin and Charlemagne pursued aggressive expansionist policies, which required a military designed for offense. Thus, the army was made more mobile and roads and canal projects made it possible for the army to get from one side of the Empire to the other in very little time. In 778, Charlemagne was fighting in Spain when news came of a Saxon invasion. He was able to take the main force of his army across his entire realm and stop the invasion before it had penetrated very far. A fast communications system and a highly mobile army enabled Charlemagne to develop more distinctive borders (relative to other boundaries) without permanent garrisoning of troops.

It should be pointed out that Saxony was not the only external ideological threat the Carolingian Empire faced during this period. Along the farthest most boundary of Bavaria dwelt the Avars and Slavs, both of which were non-Christian and were perceived by contemporaries as even more backward than the Saxons. Some churchmen in this period suggested that there was no point in proselytizing among these people because they could not possibility grasp Christianity. In the southwest, Aquitaine had been absorbed into the Empire, bringing the Carolingian Empire into direct contact with Islam along the Pyrenees Mountains and the Mediterranean. Henri Pirenne famously argued that without Mohammed there would have been no Charlemagne, suggesting that the threat of Islam gave Charles the leverage he needed to consolidate his Empire and become “the Great.”274 While there are problems with the simplicity of this argument, it is essentially correct: Charlemagne’s centralization of government and the support the nobles and people gave him for this project was a rational response to the ideological threats increasingly surrounding them. Thus, some of the other indications of more distinctive borders may not be wholly attributed to the Saxon threat, but they remain the result of external ideological threats from which the Carolingians sought to protect their realm.

Pippin III and Charlemagne effectively centralized political and military power, transforming the looser confederation of Frank territories into what amounted to a single political unit. Following the death of Charles Martel in 741, almost every duchy rebelled against the government of the Merovingian king. It took Pippin and his brother Carloman ten years to quell the rebellions and turn the focus of Frank energies outward. However, in 768, when Pippin III died, only one rebellion occurred that was quickly ended. Power was firmly in the hands of the Carolingians and supported by the Church at the highest and lowest levels. Much of the ordinary political affairs were left in the hands of local lords and bishops, but there is a remarkable increase in the number of charters, legislative texts, and government orders emanating from the center.275 Even ecclesiastical authority passed through prominent clergy attached to the king, most significantly Boniface under Pippin III and Alcuin under Charlemagne. The Carolingians’ increasingly efficient generation of compliance provided an increase in resources at their disposal, which were subsequently reinvested in expanding the Empire and consolidating their authority.

The novel administrative tool the Carolingians used to link the central government with local areas was the missi dominici. The entire realm was divided into missatica and each year two or three centrally-appointed missi were sent to each with “the powers to inspect, redress, and reform.”276 The missi had permission to make adjustments in almost every area of administration, including ecclesiastical and monastic. The missi tended to be nobles or high clergy who held power by social position already and, backed with royal power, could achieve significant results. Less formally, Charlemagne also had a group of men known as vassi (vassels), who could function as agents of the king in his absence.277 Together, the missi and vassi represent a larger and more potent central secular bureaucracy than Europe had seen since the fall of Rome.

The centralization of government was coupled with the establishment of hierarchical judicial system throughout the Empire. While it had always been the case that Imperial laws were superior to local laws, the Empire lacked accessible means of enforcing this. Charlemagne changed this situation, making one of the key roles of the missi to be available to those who claimed the King’s care and support.278 In other words, they represented a court of appeals. This allowed them, in special cases, to supercede local laws with empire-wide laws. Most importantly, a petitioner need not travel to the palace nor attempt to gain audience with a king that was more than likely elsewhere on military campaign. The King’s justice could be appealed to with more frequency because it was far more accessible. The missis’ effectiveness in this role grew gradually stronger throughout the reign of Charlemagne. The scabini was a second institution Charlemagne created to further increase the hierarchy of the judiciary.279 These were experts in law the central government appointed to work with the “amateurs” in the local courts.

On several occasions, Charlemagne called and presided over Church Councils, a role that had not been assumed by a secular leader in Western Europe since the end of the Roman Empire. He was able to play a central role in the condemnation of Adoptionism as heresy. Adoptionism was a doctrine of increasing importance among Christian bishops and believers in Spain.280 It argued that Christ was not the real Son of God, but was a human being whom God adopted as His Son. While there is no indication that Charlemagne recognized the political implications of such a doctrine, it is likely that Alcuin, who wrote numerous books against it and had the ear of the king, made it clear that one consequence would be the belief that the Church could exercise its divine sanction to anoint (“adopt”) anyone as king.281 Adoptionism died out soon after the death and recantations of its main proponents, thanks in large part to the efforts of Charlemagne. In short, not only did the Carolingians centralize economic, administrative, and judicial power, they also centralized (and arguably secularized) ecclesiastical power.

Pippin and Charlemagne also successfully imposed standardization of coinage in the realm’s mints.282 The Merovingians had produced coins, but the decentralization of the confederation allowed individual territories to deviate from a standard coin type and weight. The opportunities presented for devaluing coins drove down the value of Merovingian currency. As a result, the use of Frank coins throughout Europe declined in favor of Anglo-Saxon and northern Italian coins. A few years after being crowned king, Pippin III reformed the coinage of the realm, setting a standard weight for each coin. He also created a new coin, the halfpenny, whose smaller value made it a very popular unit of exchange among the peasants.

Each coin minted in the Carolingian Empire had to identify both the name of the king and the mint where it was issued. Under Charlemagne, one side of the coin was standardized across the Empire, though the reverse side could be just about anything. In the 790s, Charlemagne again reformed the coinage system, reducing the number of mints. This enabled the central bureaucracy to more closely monitor the weight of the coins. The royal efforts were so successful that five thousand denarii coins issued by various mints and buried before 794 have all been determined to be of the same weight.283

Taken together, this provides evidence of a political unit that was increasingly concerned with and capable of making its borders more distinctive in order to control the flow of ideas and persons entering the territory. Not only did the Carolingian rulers act toward that end, the nobles and general population of the realm supported these actions significantly. Missi, vassi, scabrini, and other agents of the central government were generally treated with deference and, most importantly, acquiesced to. Pippin and Charlemagne did not have trouble fielding large armies or supplying them. Despite harsh measures imposed on conquered peoples, there is little evidence that coercion was a significant motivation within the core parts of the Empire. It was the Carolingians whom God had directly appointed and it was they who received the support of the people.

 

Conversion of Saxony Reduces the Number of Sources of Transcendent Credibility

The decision to change strategies in Saxony from maintaining a distinctive border to conquering and converting it probably was made due to the increasing costs. In 772, Charlemagne sacked the Saxons’ most important religious center, Irminsul, which provoked a retaliatory invasion while Charlemagne’s army was in Italy. Although Charlemagne managed to quickly march his army back to Saxony and stop the invasion before it made any real progress, the Saxons had begun to adapt to Charlemagne’s policy. They would wait until Charlemagne’s army was in some distant area and then invade. While the Saxons were rarely successful to any significant degree, the costs to Charlemagne in terms of resources and stalled campaigns elsewhere revealed the flaws in his current strategy.

Conquering the Saxons was not Charlemagne’s only option; however, the circumstances of Frankish society made his other options less desirable. For example, he could have invested in fortifications and permanent garrisons along the Rhine River. The problem with this was that military service was rewarded with land and soldiers stationed along an immovable border could not win new lands with which to be rewarded. Such a strategy would have required a large and very costly military reorganization. Another possibility was to divide the army into two or three different groups, so that there was always at least one army near the Saxons to throw back an invasion without disrupting other campaigns. The problem was the threat that whoever commanded those other armies would likely receive personal loyalty that rightly belonged to the king. Both Pippin III and Charlemagne led the entire army –there was no room for other commanders. Certainly other options existed as well, but Charlemagne had far greater resources at his disposal than his father did. The conquest that seemed hopeless in the 750s now appeared possible.

There were other benefits of conquest and conversion. The capture of the lands of Saxony could be immediately converted into rewards for loyal followers and exceptional soldiers. Given the strength of the Islamic polities in Spain to the West, further expansion had to come in the East. It would have been strategically unwise to take on the Avars or Slavs without first eliminating the threat from the Saxons who dwelt in between. Another benefit was the spread of Christianity among the Saxons, a project that Boniface had called for since the 740s. As a close spiritual advisor of Pippin III, Boniface, an Anglo-Saxon priest, felt specially compelled to bring Christianity by whatever means to his pagan kindred.284 The Church in Rome and in Gaul supported such an effort in the decades that followed. Charlemagne had already demonstrated many times that the only way to convert the Saxons was by force. Each time Charlemagne would defeat the Saxons, they would agree to terms that permitted the entry of Christian missionaries into their lands and, at times, would accept conversion themselves. However, once Charlemagne’s army was far away again, all of the Franks in Saxony, including the missionaries, would be massacred. This occurred several times, convincing Charlemagne and others that conversion was only possible after thorough conquest.

To all of these reasons for choosing conquest and conversion should be added the fact that Charlemagne would rid himself of a competing source of transcendent credibility by eradicating the pagan practices of the Saxons. This benefit must be taken with a grain of salt, however, because Charlemagne would have realized that he would be trading one alternative source of transcendent credibility for another as his Empire would now abut that of the Avars. Still, the Franks held racist ideas about the Avars and would likely have seen Avar ideas as less of a threat of catching on in the Empire than those of the Saxons, particularly since there were more descendents of the Saxons in the Empire than Avars.285

The conquest was not an easy one, but it was successful. In 785, the Saxon leader Widukind surrendered and was baptized, effectively ending outright war between the Franks and Saxons. The Saxons were forced to accept the Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae, which detailed the conversion process. Traditional pagan practices were punished with death or with a fine, depending on the seriousness of the offense.

It did not order persons to convert in so many words, but everyone had to observe the practices of the Christian Church, including baptism and infant baptism. In addition, “all shall give a tithe of their property and labor to the churches and priests,” which would be set up in newly-established parishes throughout the territory.286 Conversion is a process that often begins with outward behavior changes that eventually leads to  an internalization of a moral code.287 The Capitulatio was intended as a first step in this process.

The souls of the pagan Saxons were only one of Charlemagne’s concerns, however. The religious practices and rituals of the Saxons were integral to the construction of their group identity. It has been argued, for example, that one of the reasons why the Capitulatio focuses so intensely on eradicating Saxon burial rites such as cremation was because this practice clearly differentiated the Saxons as a distinct group.288 The dead were now to be buried in Christian fashion. There exist few details today regarding the ritual significance of cremation; however, there is ample evidence that the Frankish Empire would not tolerate the practice of cremation – under penalty of death. Among the other punishments visited on the Saxons were mass deportations into Frankish territory and forcing the sons of Saxon nobles to attend monastic schools near Charlemagne’s capital.289 The Capitulatio sought the conversion of pagans, but also the blurring of distinctions between the Saxons and other peoples.

Charlemagne’s spiritual advisor, Alcuin, among others, criticized the harshness of the measures of the Capitulatio. The purpose of the conversion, he argued, was that the Saxons be saved by faith. “Little benefit will accrue to the body by the ablutions of sacred baptism unless the soul has first accepted the truth of the Catholic faith on rational grounds.”290 Alcuin and others warned that rather than win converts, these measures could instigate reprisals against the Franks. When these reprisals materialized, Charlemagne responded with even harsher measures, including mass executions and mass deportations. The Church eventually stepped in and convinced Charlemagne that they could convert the Saxons using more peaceful means. When Charlemagne backed off and turned the Saxon conversion over to the Archbishop of Cologne, the Saxons gradually accepted the new faith.291 This was a lengthy process, however. The Capitulatio was signed in 785, but it was not until 804 that fighting between the Saxons and Franks was over and Saxony was absorbed into the Frank political and ecclesiastical order. Sources of transcendent credibility are not easily or quickly traded out.

One thing the forced conversion of Saxony demonstrates is “how deeply the church had been drawn into government.”292 The conquest of Saxony occurred only after the Synod of Frankfurt, where the Carolingian regime “reaffirmed its orthodoxy and in effect restated its commitment to Christian government.”293 This was a true partnership of church and state.

After the Franks conquered and established effective control over Saxony, the Rhine no longer served as a significant boundary for the Empire. For example, the Archbishop of Cologne, who assumed control of the ecclesiastical order in Saxony, held his see in the eastern duchy of the Empire called Austrasia. His see straddled the Rhine, combining portions of the older Empire with the new Saxon territory.

The distinction between these two regions gradually blurred. Saxon lands were granted to loyal Carolingians who, in return for the fief provided internal order for the territory. Although the Saxons periodically rebelled, Charlemagne now had loyal persons in the area that could quell most rebellions and slow the rest, enabling Charlemagne to continue unabated in military campaigns in the east against the Slavs and Avars. As the new Frank landlords established themselves and consolidated their holdings, rebellions became far scarcer. In addition, the Church did its part by converting the population slowly but surely. A monotheistic religion tends to have the advantage over polytheistic systems since conversion can occur in a three-step process: first, Christ is but one of the many gods; second, Christ is superior to all of the other gods; and finally, Christ is the only god. This process takes time, but the Franks were willing to treat Saxony as a “long-term investment.” From 785 on, Saxon warriors were fighting as part of Charlemagne’s army.

It is often difficult to locate evidence regarding the culture and beliefs of peoples who are absorbed into larger empires. Some examples of the artwork of the Saxons have reached modern scholars, who have examined it for clues regarding the success of Charlemagne’s conversion program. The analysis of Karen Heilund Neilsen reveals that before conversion, the Saxons effectively “develop[ed] their own identity through material culture,” largely by borrowing techniques and styles of their neighbors and adapting them for their own.294 However, in the ninth century, after conversion, the influence of Christianity dominated and overwhelmed the traditional Saxon forms of art. Thus, the adoption of Christianity blurred the cultural boundaries between the Frankish Empire and the conquered Saxons.

Perhaps the best evidence that the boundary between the Franks and Saxons was now indistinct was that a new distinctive border emerged farther to the east along the Elbe River. As was mentioned earlier, the Franks believed the Avars and Slavs to be too ignorant to be capable of accepting Christianity. Charlemagne’s efforts east of the Elbe involved raiding. In 796 he captured the Avar “ring,” a group of fortifications that held most of the Avars’ treasures. However, permanent settlement and conversion were not included in Charlemagne’s plans. Instead, he constructed fortifications along the western bank of the Elbe and created a relatively distinct border between his Empire and the pagan Avars and Slavs.295

Toward the end of his reign, Charlemagne’s realm covered all of Western Europe with only a few exceptions. To call it a Frankish Empire is to mask the fact that a wide variety of races, customs, languages, and institutions paid taxes to the same king and served in the same army. There was only one commonality within the Empire: “All its inhabitants professed a common creed, and the all-embracing Church was also potentially, and under Charlemagne, actually, the common teacher of all.”296

Charlemagne recognized that maintenance of the Empire required a common source of transcendent credibility even if every other societal structure remained varied. Thus as we have seen so far, relatively distinctive boundaries did exist in some circumstances in the middle ages. Increased contact with the pagan Saxons meant that the number of sources of transcendent credibility in the eastern portion of the Carolingian Empire increased from one to two. The initial strategy the Carolingian rulers pursued was to invest in more distinctive borders to control the flow of people and ideas out of Saxony. Over time, this policy became too costly, and Charlemagne adopted a new strategy of conquest and conversion, thereby returning the number of sources of transcendent credibility in the area to one. As a result, the distinctive border between the Empire and Saxony was transformed into an indistinct one, overlapping with the eastern duchy of Austrasia.

 

The Vikings (840-1000)

Viking raids in Northern France had been perennial events. These consisted mostly of quick hit-and-run attacks on coastal communities, never penetrating very far inland at any point. The swiftness of these attacks made them virtually impossible to defend against or repel. This situation changed dramatically in 839, however. Lothar I, the grandson of Charlemagne, wanted to challenge the rule of his father, Louis the Pious, so Lothar invited some Viking leaders to raid in the northeast of the empire to weaken his father. This strategy proved very successful and Lothar rewarded these Vikings with grants of land after his ascension in 840. As one historian puts it, they transformed themselves “from poachers to gamekeepers.”297 This backfired on Lothar, first because it encouraged other Vikings to raid the Frankish Empire and second because these land grants became a base of operations for Viking raiding on the continent. Lothar soon recognized that the Vikings had no intention of honoring their sworn allegiances to the Emperor. From 841 to 875 there was a significant increase in the number and size of Viking raids.298 In addition, from their newly settled lands, the Vikings were able to raid further inland.

The permanent settlement of the Vikings in the northeastern regions of the Frankish empire increased the number of sources of transcendent credibility in Western Europe to two: Christianity and Norse polytheism. For the Vikings, there were many gods. Odin dominated the other gods, but this is not the same as saying he ruled over them like a king rules over nobles. Odin was the primus inter pares (first among equals) because he was the strongest of all the gods. The same was true politically among the Viking leaders. One Viking leader may rise to command the respect of all others, but only because he was the strongest. When he ceased to be the strongest, he ceased to command the respect of the other leaders. Within particular bands, the leader was the strongest. Another in the band could challenge the leader to a test of strength and, if successful, become the new leader. This presented obvious challenges to Christianity and European political thought. A monotheistic God had no  challengers. Likewise, a king was naturally the king, not because of strength, but because of God’s will.

The Franks definitely saw Norse polytheism as an alternative source of transcendent credibility that could undermine their own. It has been suggested that a motivation for the increasing Viking raids from 790 on was a militant paganism.299 Historian Simon Coupland argues on the other hand that this militant paganism was not real, but only imagined by Frank writers who were themselves motivated by a militant Christianity. Both positions highlight the importance the religious differences played in the overall confrontation between the Franks and the Vikings. Although they operated in several separate raiding groups, the Franks labeled them the “Great Heathen Army,” as if it were a single unified force waging war on Christian beliefs. The Annales Vedastini put it succinctly: “All were filled with grief and torment as they saw the Christian populace being destroyed to the point of extinction.”300

The introduction of an alternative source of transcendent credibility in northeastern France prompted the Franks to invest in a more distinctive border with the newly settled Vikings. Viking raids at this time were still mainly conducted from boats. The major difference after settlement was that the Vikings had access to rivers much further inland. Thus, fortified bridges were a major aspect of the Franks’ strategy of controlling their border with the Vikings.301 This strategy was pursued heavily during the 860s and 870s during the reign of Charles the Bald.302

Significantly, it is also during this period that Vikings begin to actively colonize portions of France and England. The ideological threat was present and had begun to take root in certain areas on the continent. The rational response of Charles the Bald was dramatic increases in the fortification of borders along the most likely entry points: the rivers. What is most significant is that the fortifications were constructed along the boundaries between Christian kingdoms and the Vikings. The significance of the military threat was important. If the Vikings did not pose a military threat to the Franks, it would be difficult to believe that the Empire would have invested so heavily in boundary fortifications. However, military threat alone is an insufficient explanation. The Vikings were most definitely a military threat, but they weren’t the only one. The Franks did not respond to the military threats to the south and west with more distinctive borders and fortifications as they did against the Vikings. Further, the investments in fortifications along the rivers occurred during a period of intense internal political upheaval in the Empire. The fight to succeed Charles the Bald began long before he died. Thus, even as Charles dealt with the inevitable succession crisis, he still invested enormous resources in guarding against the inflow of Vikings and their gods.

The other indicators of a relatively distinct border also begin to appear during the reign of Charles the Bald, despite the continued brewing of internal conflicts. Charles the Bald made the first significant attempt to standardize the currency since the death of Charlemagne in 814. At the Council of Pistes in 864, Charles reduced the number of mints in France from nine to three, the central mint being located within the palace itself.303 The denarius was to be stamped on one side with Charles’ name and on the other, the name of the state and an image of the cross were to be imprinted.

Perhaps the most ironic evidence of more distinct borders is that Charles effectively and efficiently issued a royal tax on all parts of the Empire in order to pay an annual tribute to the Vikings.304 This tenuous standoff between Vikings and Franks was to continue for the next forty years. Internal conflicts within the Frankish Empire meant that resources were not available to go on the offense against the Vikings. The only viable strategy was maintaining the fortifications that kept the enemy out. A resolution to this situation occurred in 911, when after being baptized, Charles the Simple recognized Rollo as ruler in Normandy. These Christianized Vikings thus became the Normans, “and thereby, in the eyes of contemporaries, the barbarians joined civilization.”305 Thus, at least between the core of the Frankish Empire and Normandy, the number of sources of transcendent credibility was reduced from two to one and there was a concomitant reduction in the distinctiveness of the boundary between these two units. Rollo recognized Charles as his suzerain. Their relationship was clearly different from the normal king and noble interaction, but it was also not open war. The raids stopped in this portion of the Empire. Commerce between the regions accelerated rapidly. Border lords often owed fealty to both the Frankish king and the Norman ruler. Once Christianity returned to its status as the sole source of transcendent credibility in France, the boundaries between Norman and Frank relaxed as well.

Similar events were to transpire in England. Through the eighth and early ninth centuries, the island was the home to several separate Germanic groups. These groups, especially the Angles, Saxons, and Mercians saw themselves as politically and culturally distinct from one another, yet they shared a single source of transcendent credibility. By roughly 630, the Roman Catholic Church had converted the rulers of England south of the Humber. For two hundred years, these political units continued to war against one another, with one occasionally rising to dominate the others, only to recede a generation or two later.

Despite the continuous wars, the boundaries between these units were relatively indistinct, especially when compared with the borders between these Southern units and other political units on Britain that did not share an allegiance to the Roman Church. For example, during the reign of Offa of Mercia (757-796), Mercia greatly enhanced its ability to threaten its neighbors militarily. To the south and the east were Anglia, Kent, Wessex, and Sussex, all units that shared the Roman Catholic source of transcendent credibility. Offa kept these boundaries very indistinct, encouraging commerce and traffic between these areas, even though they represented a significant military threat, both separately and working together. On the other hand, along the western boundary lay the Welsh, who had refused to convert from Celtic Christian practices to the Roman Catholic doctrines.306 Along this boundary, off a built and manned an earthen wall known as Offa’s Dyke that can still be seen today in many places. It is no coincidence that the most significant coinage reforms between the Romans and Alfred the Great occurred under Offa. Most importantly, during Offa’s reign, all foreign currency had to be exchanged for the Mercian coins before it could be used.307 Thus, as Mercian power expanded, Offa chose to invest resources in a more distinct boundary with the Celtic Christians and actively encouraged a less distinct boundary with his fellow Roman Catholics.308

Further, we may ask why Wessex did not invest in a more distinctive border with Mercia as it grew increasingly threatening militarily. The answer is that such a strategy would have been very inefficient and ineffective. Distinct borders serve a military role, yet their primary purpose is to control the flow of ideas and persons across a boundary. Where there is a shared source of transcendent credibility, as there was between Mercia and Wessex, resources are more effectively spent on military units than linear fortifications. Wessex only needed to repel an invading army, not an invading ideology. Thus, fewer sources of transcendent credibility does not produce peace, only a different manner in which war and peace are practiced.

England in the eighth and early ninth centuries, excluding the lands of the Welsh, Scots, and Picts, was entirely Roman Catholic and possessed relatively indistinct boundaries, despite the competition between the various political units in the area. This situation began to change in 865. The Vikings raided the British Isles for most of the century and the scope and size of these raids progressively worsened each year. However, in 865, a Viking army arrived that did not leave. It did not settle in any particular place, but rather than sailing back to Scandinavia or the continent, it set up fortified winter camps in Britain itself. By the early 870s, the Vikings had established a base of operations in East Anglia and Northumbria from which to raid the rest of the island during the warmer seasons. As long as the “Great Heathen Army” remained untethered to any particular land, there was no political unit with which the Roman Catholic units could invest in distinctive borders. Once settled, however, in a territory that became known as the Danelaw, Wessex, the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon units, almost immediately created a relatively distinct border with this new political unit.

It was Alfred the Great who found himself the King of Wessex when the Viking army settled more permanently in East Anglia and Northumbria. Several indicators demonstrate that the boundary established with the Danelaw was very distinct. Standardization of currency coincided with the newly settled Danes in eastern Britain. Alfred extended his mint network, improved the quality of his coins, and established a new standard for the penny.309 This increased people’s access to money and gave them more confidence in it as a form of exchange, which in turn improved the economy in his realm. He invested the enhanced revenue in fortifications along the Danelaw boundary.310 These actions – standardization of coinage and border fortification – worked in tandem increasing the distinctiveness of the border with the Danelaw.

Alfred transformed his military with the express purpose of creating a distinctive border against the Danelaw.311 First, he built thirty strong fortifications along the boundary at regular intervals (about a day’s march).312 These strong points along the border, known as burhs, were designed to be centers of defense, commerce, and royal power. Alfred invested much money and energy in rebuilding old Roman fortifications and hill-forts that had fallen into disrepair, though new burhs also rose out of seemingly nowhere at the proper interval.313 Many of the burhs were located along old Roman roads, most importantly the northwest-to-southeast Watling Street, allowing the Saxons to better facilitate communication and defense between the separate burhs. When Alfred and the Danelaw king Guthrum agreed on a border separating their realms in 886, Watling Street and Alfred’s burghal system naturally offered itself as the line.314 For this fortification system to work, Alfred also reformed the West Saxon fyrd, changing it from a levy called in time of need to a mounted standing army. The emphasis of the new fyrd was on mobilization and mobility.

When the Vikings threatened to breach a point in the burghal line, the Saxons could quickly mobilize and get to the point of contention. Alfred built roads (herepaths or “army paths”) from the center to the peripheries to facilitate this movement. Third, Alfred designed and constructed a new type of ship that could compete with the Vikings in the shallower waters surrounding England. They were faster and stronger, designed specifically to meet water-borne Viking parties before they could raid the coastlines and rivers. According to Anglo-Saxon sources (which are understandably one-sided), these boats gradually allowed the Anglo-Saxons to remove one of the Viking’s greatest military strengths, prompting at the very least a stalemate. Finally, taking a page from Charles the Bald on the continent, Alfred had fortified bridges built along key waterways to protect inland areas from Viking ships. In short, these four reforms together produced a very credible commitment on the part of Alfred to defend parts of his realm that were distant from the center.

As the border with the Danelaw became more distinct, the boundaries with other Anglo-Saxon political units grew increasingly less distinct. The ruler of the Mercians, battered by Viking raids but unable to finance an enormous project like Alfred’s burghal wall without assistance, submitted to the overarching authority of Alfred. The king of the Mercians thus became Alfred’s ealdorman of the Mercians.

The Anglo-Saxons saw the Vikings as a common enemy sent by God “as an instrument of divine punishment for the people’s sins, raising awareness of a collective Christian identity.”315 By 866, “all the English people that were not under subjection to the Danes submitted to” Alfred, not because they were conquered, but to combine their resources against the powerful paganism to the East.316 From this point on, Alfred was no longer merely king of Wessex, but was recorded in documents as “King of the Anglo-Saxons.”317

This British exception to the normal state of affairs in Medieval Europe can be explained in the following manner: a new source of transcendent credibility within close proximity increased the potential ideological threat to the stability of Alfred’s rule, so he invested resources to make the border between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danelaw more distinctive, thereby better controlling the flow of ideas and people into Anglo-Saxon territory. Alfred and his apologists described the Vikings as the “Great Heathen Army,” a moniker that connoted both physical and ideological threats.318 He stated that his inspiration for military reform came the Bible, especially from the military strategies of King Solomon.319 Alfred’s response to the threat was only partly military. In the words of historian Christopher Dawson, Alfred “realized the vital importance of the spiritual issue and devoted no less energy to the recovery of the tradition of Christian culture than to the defense of national existence.”320 The reason for this was that Alfred did not distinguish between the two – the defense of the source of transcendent credibility was the defense of the realm in both form and content. His policy was to strengthen Christian culture in his realm through translations and education, a strategy previously adopted by Charlemagne.321

The strength of the connection between spiritual legitimacy and political legitimacy is clear in Alfred’s translations. For example, one of the first translations that Alfred personally undertook was that of Pope Gregory’s Pastoral Care.322 As the title suggests, Gregory addressed this treatise to clergy to teach them how they should govern those that the Church has given them to shepherd. The parallels between ecclesiastical authority and secular authority are frequently made in Gregory’s original version and had been discussed by secular and spiritual leaders alike for decades. Yet, the fact that Alfred began his vast translation project for the Anglo-Saxons with this particular text is significant, demonstrating that Alfred recognized the important connection between the strength of the religion and the authority of the state. Further, it is clear from Pastoral Care that even small modifications in the doctrines of the Church could have tremendous impacts on theories of spiritual and political authority. Christianity needed protection from both paganism and heresy. Given the strength and proximity of the Vikings’ polytheism, Alfred invested heavily in a heavily controlled and distinct border.

 

The Conversion of the Vikings in Britain (925-1025

It is impossible to say when the Vikings in the Danelaw converted to Christianity. The historical record often shows a ruler converting to Christianity as his people acquiesce to this change, perhaps slowly, but surely. This turns out to be inaccurate among the Vikings, however.323 In Denmark, Norway, and the Danelaw, there are several examples of rulers converting to Christianity, only to find themselves abandoned by other powerful warlords and the people. The process of conversion among the Vikings proved to be a long process, rather than a sudden epiphany.

Vikings, wherever they were found, fully “converted” to Roman Catholicism only through a series of steps over generations. First, the Vikings placed Christ and the Christian God within their larger pantheon of Norse gods. Intermarriage, the slave trade, and other commerce placed the Vikings in sufficient contact with Christians to see the business benefits of learning and practicing Christianity alongside their traditional beliefs. This can hardly be considered conversion: it was primarily located among the upper classes of the Vikings and remained polytheistic. Second, Christian beliefs filtered through Viking society to take root among the general populace, although still practiced alongside polytheism. Finally, whether for pragmatic reasons or for spiritual motives, the rest of the gods in the pantheon were evicted, leaving Christian monotheism. As long as polytheism still dominated, Viking rulers could not easily adopt Christianity. Polytheism implied political authority based on strength, not divine right. Thus, Viking kings who attempted to mass convert their people to Christianity, such as Guthrum in the Danelaw and Harold Bluetooth in Denmark, ended up losing whatever political authority they had previously held. Perhaps the best that can be said is that sometime between the death of Alfred in 899 and the Norman invasion in 1066, Roman Catholicism regained its monopoly in England, excluding the Scots and the Welsh.

Likewise, it is not so simple to say that the boundary between the Anglo-Saxon units and the Viking political units were either distinct or indistinct. In truth, the boundary vacillated between distinctiveness on the level of Alfred’s burghal wall and very indistinct boundaries, almost to the point of unification. Toward the end of Alfred’s reign, the general belief among the Anglo-Saxons was that when Guthrum, king of the Danelaw, converted to Christianity following a military defeat the problem was solved. He would ensure that his people converted as well and the Heathen threat would be averted. Toward the middle of the reign of Alfred’s son, Edward the Elder, it was increasingly clear that conversion had not occurred. Edward returned to his father’s policy of investing in a distinct border. In some places he repaired his father’s burhs and in other places, where the boundary had shifted, he built new fortified sites across central England from the Thames to the Wirral. Edward also encouraged a kind of economic missionary work: persons were to purchase land from the pagans in order to return English influence into Viking held lands.324 These two strategies were effective for Edward, “precipitating the submission of one region after another.”325

In fact, these strategies were so successful that, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Edward’s son and successor, Aethelstan (924-39), “brought under his rule all the kings that were in this island.”326 Whether by military conquest or by consent, there was a general meeting in Eamont in 927 of all the kings on the island, including the Welsh and Scots, where the kings “renounced all idolatry and afterwards departed in peace.”327 From this point on, Aethelstan is titled either rex Anglorum (king of the English) or rex totius Britanniae (king of the whole of Britain). In this role, he appoints mostly nobles from the southern part of the island to posts in the distant, less Anglicized, portions of the realm, such as the Danelaw regions of Northumbria, York, and East Anglia.328 In this way, Aethelstan sought to break down the isolation of the North and enhance his rule by further propagating English and Roman Catholic ideas.

The English did not fully trust the loyalty of the Danes in these territories and a relatively crucial role of the southern appointees was to prevent the populace from rebelling. In 937, the Vikings in Ireland allied with the Scots and invaded, attempting to reestablish a Danish kingdom of York. It is a measure of how successful Aethelstan’s unification polices in that he was able to mobilize an army to defeat the invaders. Still, the English nobility expected (and were correct in that expectation) that the Danes living in York would assert their independence and support the invaders. This only increased the English policy of appointing non-native lords and clergy from the southern regions to offices in the former Danelaw. Watling Street, Alfred’s border, continued to hold symbolic value well into the eleventh century as a dividing line between Christians and Viking converts to Christianity, who tended to combine their new beliefs with traditional Viking religious practices.329 Even the Vikings recognized this boundary marker. In 1013, when the Danish king Swegn invaded England, he refrained from plundering until he crossed south of Watling Street, showing “how strong the distinction between the English and Danish areas was still felt to be.”330

Thus we can say that the Vikings, represent a second exception to the monopolization of Christianity as the source of transcendent credibility in Medieval Europe. The Vikings practiced Norse polytheism, which presented significant challenges to both the monotheism of Christianity and the theories of political authority derived from it. At first, the Vikings were raiders who resided in distant Scandinavia. As such they presented a military threat, but not an ideological one. However, once they permanently settled, first on the continent in Frisia, and next in Britain in what became the Danelaw, the Christian kingdoms in these areas were faced with an alternate source of transcendent credibility within close proximity and supported with ample military capability. In response, the Frankish Empire and the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms both invested heavily in creating more distinct borders with the Vikings, even as they maintained relatively indistinct boundaries with their other Roman Catholic neighbors, some of which were equally threatening militarily. These borders remained distinct as long as the inhabitants in the Viking territories continued to embrace polytheism. The process of conversion on the continent and in Britain was a long one. However, halfsteps toward conversion were responded to by allowing the borders to become much less distinct, although there remained a certain wariness that the Christianity in these formerly Viking lands was an unstable neighbor. Even in Britain, where the English managed to gain control of the Danelaw, the incomplete conversion resulted in an incomplete elimination of the boundary between the English and Danes.

 

Conclusion of P.4

Christianity as the sole source of transcendent credibility dominated the status quo in Medieval Europe. As the theory of this research predicted, this resulted in relatively indistinct boundaries between political units during this time frame. Thus, feudalism as a political system is an understandable result of the dominance of the idea of a single Christendom that dominated the minds of Medieval Europeans. However, even the exceptions to Christianity’s monopoly demonstrate the validity of this World Journal research project following our investigation in "From Belgium to Kosovo." In the two anomalies analyzed above, the interaction with “pagan” Saxony in the eighth century and the emergence of the polytheistic Vikings in the ninth century, where an alternate source of transcendent credibility supported by sufficient military capabilities arrived in close proximity to a Christian political unit, the Christian ruler invested heavily in making that border more distinct, fortified, and controlled. In further support of the thesis, these same rulers did not invest in more distinct boundaries with their Christian neighbors who shared their source of transcendent credibility, even when these neighbors posed a military threat. In some cases, the Christian neighbors who were formerly rivals formed a united front against the common enemy that threatened their very foundations of political authority. Finally, as the Saxons and Vikings began to convert to Christianity, albeit slowly, the boundaries with their Christian neighbors began to grow increasingly indistinct, even where the military threat on both sides remained strong and imminent. Thus, Medieval Europe provides several admirable examples that support that thesis of this research project.

The stability and longevity of the status quo in Europe did not happen by accident. It required the concerted efforts of ecclesiastical and secular authorities to keep alternative sources of transcendent credibility out of Europe. Islam was barely held off with the military might of the secular authorities and the Crusades called by the Church. Even more than this, however, Muslims and Jews and others were heavily marginalized in all Medieval European societies. So long as they remained relatively powerless within society, these individuals were allowed to live among the Christians – after all, they fulfilled important functions in society that Christians could or would not perform. However, the Church and the State both perpetuated ideologies that did not give these groups any opportunity to do more than live at the edge of accepted society. Despite the recent spate of books arguing that tolerance was more prevalent than traditional scholarship has expressed,331 marginalization of non-Christians (perhaps to different degrees) still dominated.

Likewise, the Church and State actively pursued and suppressed heresy wherever it was found in Medieval society. These reactions to other religions and heresies were rational responses in a system that is dominated by only one source of transcendent credibility. Investment in distinct borders is a costly enterprise, but one that necessarily must be undertaken by a ruler who possesses sufficient resources and is faced with an alternate source of transcendent credibility. Thus, there are enormous incentives to prevent the emergence of any alternative source. Although each political unit in a single-source system has almost no incentives to invest in border control in their territory, the system as a whole possesses tremendous incentives to work together to keep the entire territory “pure,” if a collective action solution can be successfully arrived at. The unified hierarchy of the Church and the family connections of the rulers in part provided the conditions in Medieval Europe that facilitated such collective action. However, no collective action solution is indestructible. This relatively stable situation in Medieval Europe began to break down when a new source of transcendent credibility took hold in Europe that could not be successfully converted away: the Protestant Reformation.

 

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234 RI Moore (1994, [1986]), The Origins of European Dissent (Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching 30) (University of Toronto Press).

235 “Edict of Milan” quoted in Henry Bettenson, ed. (1963), Documents of the Christian Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 22.

236 Ramsay MacMullen (1997), Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).

237 Chris Wickham (1984), “The Other Transition: From the Ancient World to Feudalism,” Past and Present 103: 3-36.

238 See Walter Pohl, ed. (1998), Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300-800 (Transformation of the Roman World 2) (Leiden: Brill).

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240 Dominic James (1998), God and Gold in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

241 It was crucial, however, that even these otherworldly persons be subject to, and often marginalized by the authority of the Church, Peter Brown (1982), The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press); Isabel Moreira (2000), Dreams, Visions, and Spiritual Authority in Merovingian Gaul (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press): 225-28; on other examples of compromises between Anglo-Saxon culture and Christianity, see Karen Louise Jolly (1996), Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press).

242 Patrick Geary (1991 [1978]), Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

243 RW Southern (1953), The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press): 134-39.

244 Peter Brown (1996), The Rise of Western Christendom (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers): 68.

245 Andrea Sommerlechner (2004), “Mirabilia, Munitiones, Fragmenta – Rome’s Ancient Monuments in Medieval Historiography,” in Frances Andrews, Christoph Egger, and Constance M Rousseau, eds., Pope, Church and City: Essays in Honour of Brenda M Bolton (Leiden: Brill).

246 Feredrick B Artz (1980 [1953]), The Mind of the Middle Ages: An Historical Survey, AD 200-1500 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press): 190.

247 See RA Markus (1997), Gregory the Great and His World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 163-88; Justo L Gonzalez (1984), The Story of Christianity, Volume I: The Early Church to the Reformation (San Francisco: Harper): 231-50

248 GR Evans (2000), Bernard of Clairvaux (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 168-69.

249 See, for example, WA Sibly and MD Sibly, eds. (2002), The History of the Albigensian Crusade: Peter of Les Vaux-de-Cernay’s ‘Historia Albigensis’ (Boydell Press).

250 Michael Mann (1986), Sources of Social Power, Volume I: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 376.

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253 Georges Duby (1980), The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined (Chicago: University of Chicago Press): 33.

254 Even the “divine order” was subject to interpretations. The divisions between the “three orders” of European Medieval society were very changeable, thus giving political rulers ample incentive to always be involved in discussions about the Church structure, Giles Constable (1995), Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 249-359.

255 Gianfranco Poggi (1978), The Development of the Modern State: A Sociological Introduction (Stanford: Stanford University Press): 27-28; see also Carl Stephenson (1956), Medieval Feudalism (Cornell University Press); Marc Bloch (1961), Feudal Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press); Kathleen Thompson (2002), Power and Border Lordship in Medieval France: The County of Perche, 1000-1226 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer).

256 See Harold J Berman (1984), Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Harvard: Harvard University Press): 307-10; there was variation in the degree of royal centralization of courts in Europe, but even in England, arguably the country with the highest degree of centralization, lord’s courts dominated until at least the fourteenth century, John Hudson (1996), The Formation of the English Common Law: Law and Society in England from the Norman Conquest to Magna Carta (New York: Longman).

257 Duby (1974): 64-65.

258 Alan M Stahl (2000), Zecca: The Mint of Venice in the Middle Ages (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press).

259 Paul Milgrom, Douglass North, and Barry Weingast (1990), “The Role of Institutions in the Revival of Trade: The Law Merchant, Private Judges, and the Champagne Fairs,” Economics and Politics 2: 1-23; Roger B Myerson (2004), “Justice, Institutions, and Multiple Equilibria,” Chicago Journal of International Law 5(1): 91-108.

260 Mann (1986), Sources of Social Power: 377.

261 Ibid.

262 Ibid., 381.

263 Harold J Berman (1983), Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Harvard: Harvard University Press): 361-63.

264 Nora Berend (2001), At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and ‘Pagans’ in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000 – c. 1300 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 4th Series) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

265 Paul Fouracre (1995), “Frankish Gaul to 814,” The New Cambridge Medieval History II: c. 700 - c. 900, Rosamond McKitterick, ed. (Cambridge University Press): 96 [CMH II hereafter].

266 Einhard (830 [1960]), The Life of Charlemagne (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press).

267 “Royal Annals,” quoted in Stewart C Easton and Helene Wieruszowski, eds. (1961), The Era of Charlemagne (Princeton: D Van Nostrand Company): 110. In her recent analysis of the Annals, historian Rosamund McKitterick persuasively argues that this story is fictional, invented by Frankish historians after the fact to legitimate the Carolingian dynasty. She goes on to conclude that, whether truth or fiction, the story was “a crucial element in the collective memory of the newly formed realm under Frankish and Carolingian rule.” In short, the elites and the people believed it was true and thus the story was able to provide legitimacy where perhaps none was due. Rosamund McKitterick (2004), History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 154.

268 Quoted in MLW Laistner (1931), Thought and Letters in Western Europe, AD 500 to 900 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press): 190-191.

269 Ibid., 191.

270 McKitterick (2004), History and Memory in the Carolingian World: 130.

271 Ibid., 131.

272 Fouracre (1995), CMH II: 98-101.

273 The vague term “pagan” is used here because of the lack of written sources from preconquest Saxony. The essential fact for Christian chroniclers of the period is that all pagans were non-Christian, and as such they were frequently portrayed as members of a single religion. While this perspective cannot be supported today, it has also been demonstrated that the Saxons shared many religious beliefs and rituals in common. In addition, the Franks treated Saxony as if there were a single religion. Thus, we can talk about a single source of transcendent credibility among the Saxons. If there were multiple sources of transcendent credibility in Saxony, this would not effect the prediction that the Franks would invest heavily in making their borders with Saxony more distinct.

274 Henri Pirenne (2001 [1939]), Mohammed and Charlemagne (Dover Publications).

275 Fouracre (1995), CMH II: 101.

276 “General Capitulary for the Missi, 802,” quoted in Stewart C Easton and Helene Wieruszowski, eds. (1961), The Era of Charlemagne (Princeton: D Van Nostrand Company): 142-148.

277 Janet L Nelson (1995), “Kingship and Royal Government,” CMH II: 413.

278 “Let the missi themselves make a diligent investigation whenever any man claims that an injustice has been done to him by anyone.... They shall administer the law fully and justly in the case of the holy churches of God and of the poor, of wards and widows and of the whole people.” “General Capitulary for the Missi,” 143.

279 Fouracre (1995), CMH II: 106.

280 John C Cavadini (1993), The Last Christology of the West: Adoptionism in Spain and Gaul, 785-820 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press).

281 Edward Peters, ed. (1980), “Alcuin: Against the Adoptionist Heresy of Felix,” Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press): 50-56.

282 Mark Blackburn (1995), “Money and Coinage,” CMH II: 545-551.

283 Georges Duby (1974), The Early Growth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh to the Twelfth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press): 98.

284 Ephraim Emerton, ed. (2000), The Letters of St. Boniface (New York: Columbia University Press): 52-53.

285 Falko Daim (1998), “Archeaology, Ethnicity and the Structures of Identification: The Example of the Avars, Carantanians, and Moravians in the Eighth Century,” in Walter Pohl and Helmut Reimutz, eds., Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300-800 (Leiden: Brill): 71-94.

286 “Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae,” quoted in Stewart C Easton and Helene Wieruszowski, eds. (1961), The Era of Charlemagne (Princeton: D Van Nostrand Company): 118-121.

287 Wolfert van Egmond (2000), “Converting Monks: Missionary Activity in Early Medieval Frisia and Saxony,” in Guyda Armstrong and Ian N Wood, eds., Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals (International Medieval Research 7) (Turnhout: Brepols): 37-45.

288 Bonnie Effros (1997), “De partibus Saxoniae and the Regulation of Mortuary Custom: A Carolingian Campaign of Christianization or the Suppression of Saxon Identity?” Revue belge de philology et d’histoire 75: 267-86.

289 Heinrich Fichtenau (1957), The Carolingian Empire: The Age of Charlemagne (New York: Harper and Row Publishers): 22.

290 “Alcuin’s Letter to King Charles, 796,” quoted in Stewart C Easton and Helene Wieruszowski, eds. (1961), The Era of Charlemagne (Princeton: D Van Nostrand Company): 122.

291 Easton and Wieruszowski (1961), The Era of Charlemagne: 36.

292 Fouracre (1995), CMH II: 103-104.

293 Ibid., 103.

294 Neilsen (2003), “Saxon Art between Interpretation and Imitation: The Influence of Roman, Scandinavian, Frankish, and Christian Art on the Material Culture of the Continental Saxons AD 400-1000,” in DH Green and F Siegmund, eds., The Continental Saxons from the Migration Period to the Tenth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective (Studies in Archaeoethnology 6) (Woodbridge: Boydell): 193-246, quote from p. 228.

295 Julia MH Smith (1995), “Fines imperii: The Marches,” CMH II: 172-173.

296 Laistner (1931): 191.

297 Simon Coupland (1998), “From Poachers to Gamekeepers: Scandinavian Warlords and Carolingian Kings,” Early Medieval Europe 7: 85-114.

298 Simon Coupland (1995), “The Vikings in Francia and Anglo-Saxon England to 911,” in CHC II: 190-91.

299 Roberta Frank (1984), “Viking Atrocity and Skaldic Verse: The Rite of the Blood Eagle,” English Historical Review 99: 332-43; Hilda Ellis Davidson (1990 [1964]), Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (New York: Penguin Books): 54-56; Peter Sawyer (2001), The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 31.

300 Coupland (1995), 200.

301 Ibid., 198.

302 Brian Dearden (1989), “Charles the Bald’s Fortified Bridge at Pitres (Seine): Recent Archaeological Investigations,” Anglo-Norman Studies 11: 107-12; Carol Gillmor (1989), “The Logistics of Fortified Building on the Seine Under Charles the Bald,” Anglo-Norman Studies 11: 87-106; Simon Coupland (1991), “The Fortified Bridges of Charles the Bald,” Journal of Medieval History 17: 1-12; EJ Schoenfeld (1995), “Anglo-Saxon Burhs and Continental Burgen: Early Medieval Fortifications in Constitutional Perspective,” The Haskins Society Journal 6: 49-66.

303 Charles the Bald, “The Edict of Pistes, 864,” in Roy C Cave and Herbert H Coulson, eds., A Source Book for Medieval Economic History (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1936; reprint ed., New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1965): 133-134.

304 Janet L Nelson (1995), “The Frankish Kingdoms, 814-898: The West,” CHC II: 129-30.

305 Coupland (1995): 201.

306 The Celtic Christianity practiced by the Welsh and the Roman Catholic brand imported from the continent and practiced in the Angle and Saxon portions of Britain should be seen as different sources of transcendent credibility because they saw the essential relationship between a believer and God (and hence between a subject and a ruler) in very different ways. For the Welsh, “the way to forgiveness did not pass, by means of public penance, through their fellow-believers in their local church. It passed through an intense relationship with a single person. In that crucial sense, the Christianity of the Celtic World was closer to that of the east than to the strong collective piety of Continental Europe.” Brown (1996), 158. The Saxons of Britain also saw the Welsh Christian practices as distinct from their own. They accepted Roman Christianity from the Continental Saxons as part of their larger practice of “gift-exchange,” but “no glory was attached to receiving gifts from the ‘Welsh,’ the wealh, the despised and hostile ‘foreigners’ par excellence.” Ibid., 207.

307 Blackburn (1995), CMH II: 550.

308 Simon Keynes (1995), “The British Isles: England, 700-900,” CMH II: 31.

309 Mark Blackburn (1996), “Mints, Burhs, and the Grately Code ch. 14.2,” in D Hill and AR Rumble, eds., The Defense of Wessex: The Burghal Hidage and Anglo-Saxon Fortifications (Manchester): 160-75.

310 Mark Blackburn (2003), “Alfred’s Coinage Reforms in Context,” in Alfred the Great, Timothy Reuter, ed. (Burlington: Ashgate): 199-217.

311 On the burghal system and the “Burghal Hidage,” a early tenth-century document that sought to capture the intent of Alfred and enable his program to be further developed, see: D Hill and AR Rumble, eds. (1996), The Defense of Wessex: The Burghal Hidage and Anglo-Saxon Fortifications (Manchester); Richard Abels (1998), Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (London: Longman): 194-218; Ryan Lavelle (2003), Fortifications in Wessex, c. 800-1016: The Defenses of Alfred the Great Against the Vikings (Fortress 14) (London: Osprey Publishing).

312 Abels (1998): 203.

313 HR Loyn (1967), Alfred the Great (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 32-33.

314 Eleanor Shipley Duckett (1956), Alfred the Great (Chicago: University of Chicago Press): 84-86; RHC Davis (1982), “Alfred the Great and Guthrum’s Frontier,” English Historical Review 97: 803-10.

315 Keynes (1995), CMH II: 41.

316 Ibid., 42.

317 Simon Keynes (1999), “England, 900-1016,” in Timothy Reuter, ed., The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume III: c. 900-1024 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 459.

318 Richard Abels (2003), “Alfred the Great, the micel haepen here and the Viking Threat,” in Alfred the Great, Timothy Reuter, ed. (Burlington: Ashgate): 265-79.

319 Abels (1998): 197.

320 Christopher Dawson (1950), Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company): 89.

321 Alfred envied the success of the Carolingian dynasty and its’ ability to project the image of ruling on behalf of God. Alfred consciously imitated the strategies of Charlemagne who had faced threats similar to those Alfred was experiencing, Janet L Nelson (2003), “Alfred’s Carolingian Contemporaries,” in Timothy Reuter, ed., Alfred the Great (Burlington: Ashgate): 293-303.

322 “From the Translation of Gregory’s Pastoral Care,” in Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge, eds. (1983), Alfred the Great (New York: Penguin Books): 124-30.

323 Birgit Sawyer and Peter H Sawyer (1993), Medieval Scandinavia: From Conversion to Reformation, Circa 800-1500 (The Nordic 17) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press): 100-128.

324 The Danelaw had a polytheistic source of transcendent credibility. This research does not put forward a theory about the different effects on monotheism and polytheism on the distinctiveness of borders. However, polytheistic source would not be threatened to the same degree as a monotheistic source by the entrance of an alternate source of transcendent credibility. The polytheistic source could absorb any rival with few effects religiously or politically, as was the case with the Vikings and Christianity. Thus, the Vikings saw no threat and large cash incentives in selling their lands to the English. However, we would expect that the English would not reciprocate, allowing Vikings to buy lands from Christians.

325 Keynes (1999), CMH III: 465.

326 Quoted in Keynes (1999), CMH III: 469.

327 Quoted in Keynes (1999), CMH III: 469.

328 Dorothy Whitelock (1959), “The Dealings of the Kings of England with Northumbria in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,” in Peter Clemoes, ed., The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of Their History and Culture Presented to Bruce Dickins (London: Bowes and Bowes): 70-88.

329 Ibid., 87.

330 Ibid.

331 John Christian Laursen and Cary J Nederman, eds. (1997), Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration Before the Enlightenment (University of Pennsylvania Press); Cary J Nederman (2000), Worlds of Difference: European Discourses of Toleration, c. 1100 – c. 1500 (Pennsylvania State University Press); Maria Rosa Menocal (2003), The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (Back Bay Books).

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