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This book presents a translation of the Annals of St-Bertin (AB). The AB give a detailed record of events in the Carolingian world, covering the years 830-882. They constitute the most substantial piece of contemporary historical writing of their time, a time that was a critical one in western European history. The AB contain uniquely extensive information about Viking activities, constructive as well as destructive, and also about the variety of responses to those activities. Produced in the 830s in the imperial palace of Louis the Pious, the AB were continued away from the Court, first by Bishop Prudentius of Troyes, then by the great scholar-politician Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims. The AB have little information for the year 840 after the death of Louis the Pious, and something like the earlier density of reporting is resumed only with the battle of Fontenoy. From 841 on, the AB were based in the western part of the old empire, in what became, with the Treaty of Verdun in 843, the kingdom of Charles the Bald. Thus the division of Verdun is, again, faithfully reflected in the AB's record. From time to time, information was received from Lothar's Middle Kingdom, and from Louis the German's East Frankish kingdom; but the AB's main focus after 843 was on events in the West and on the doings of Charles the Bald.
, which were extra-territorial, and the territorially circumscribed power held by each bishop in his see. In particular, the De ecclesiis was a polemic against Bishop Prudentius of Troyes who had challenged Hincmar’s rights in Rheims’ churches in the diocese of Troyes. These included rights over priests, analogous to the rights of lay domini , whether men or women (!), over their priests. 18 Hincmar thought that Prudentius, and other bishops on Prudentius’s side, interpreted the law inconvenienter , inappropriately. 19 Hincmar v
’s report and his spiritual interpretation of hell were rather unorthodox, to put it mildly. He made excerpts of the work and sent them to his suffragan bishop Prudentius of Troyes (d. 861) to test the validity of John’s statements. Prudentius was one of the expert theologians who had been invited to assess Gottschalk’s teaching. Now he was asked to review the assessment of a fellow expert in a third round of
the process lead others into error. 68 Yet Hincmar quickly found his theological arguments in Ad reclusos et simplices challenged. Ratramnus immediately criticised the treatise, and when the archbishop contacted other scholars for support, he found little forthcoming. Lupus of Ferrières avoided siding with either Gottschalk or Hincmar, emphasising the importance of grace for salvation and the sinner’s evil will for damnation. Bishop Prudentius of Troyes argued that God did not wish to save the wicked and seemed closer to Gottschalk
sources; Bishop Prudentius of Troyes in 860 talked of Lothar’s ‘irreconcilable loathing’ for Theutberga, Hincmar described Lothar as ‘ensnared in a blind passion by the wiles of his concubine Waldrada’, Pope Nicholas warned Lothar about excessive passion for a woman, and the questions about love magic sent to Hincmar make clear that others saw emotional factors as key. 46 Such