Charles the Bald

Charlemagne's son and successor as emperor, Louis the Pious, had several children. Several of them were with his first wife, Ermengarde of Hesbaye. After her death in 818, Louis married Judith of Bavaria and had one son, Charles, born 13 June 823. Charles was much younger than his brothers, who all had been granted sub-kingdoms of their own by the time of his birth. The presence of another son and possible successor to Louis raised concerns among the older children.

Louis tried to give Charles his own sub-kingdom, but Louis' older sons rebelled against these attempts. You can read more about that here. In 837, Louis called his nobles together in Aachen and asked them to recognize Charles as heir to the entirety of Gaul. When Louis died in 840, Charles' allied himself with his older brother Louis the German to defeat their other brother, Lothair I. The Treaty of Verdun in 843 gave Charles all of the kingdom of the West Franks, an area which essentially encompasses modern day France. Louis the German held the eastern area that corresponds to Germany. Lothair kept the title King of Italy.

Life was relatively peaceful after Verdun. The brothers would meet every few years to discuss matters of mutual concern. In 858, however, Louis was persuaded by his nobles to try to take land from Charles. Charles was not very well-liked by his people, who did not respond to his call to raise an army, so he fled to Burgundy. Louis the German's bid failed, because the bishops refused to crown him king of the West Franks.

He eventually became emperor when Lothair's son died, and traveled to Rome where Pope John VIII. When John asked him for help against the Saracens in Italy, he crossed the Alps to help, but the nobles of Lombardy were not interested in supporting him. Charles, feeling ill, started back home, but died on 6 October 877, in the mountains. The body had to be brought home for proper burial, but carrying a body across the Alps was not easy or swift. The stench from the decaying corpse prompted them to bury him as soon as possible, at an abbey in Burgundy. A few years later the body as disinterred and taken for burial to the Abbey of Saint-Denis

Regarding his nickname: A Genealogy of Frankish Kings that was started during his reign lists him as Karolus Calvus, "Charles the Bald." There are no contemporary records that suggest he had little or no hair. Some scholars suggest that it was an ironic nickname because he was very hairy. Others point out that "bald" could simply be a reference to his lack of land at first. The illustration above is of Charles in the Vivian Bible, made in 845, and shows him with plenty of hair.

The Middle Ages cared about hair and its upkeep, and baldness was not seen as desirable. There were cures for baldness. If you're interested in them, come back tomorrow.

Pope John VIII

John VIII was a Roman who, as a young man, witnessed the 846 CE raid against Rome by Muslims. According to the Liber Pontificalis ("Book of the Popes"), the raiders were Saracens from Africa, although other records offer other origins. These would have been Aghlabids from Ifriqiya, who started with the conquest of Sicily a couple decades earlier. They plundered the suburbs of Rome but were prevented from entering the city thanks to the walls, which were damaged but not breached.

When he became pope on 14 December 872 (after the death of Adrian II), John commenced to push back on the presence of Muslims in and around Italy. He considered the Muslim successes the result of bad Christians. He requested aid from Charles the Bald and others, but aid was not forthcoming, not even from local Christian leaders.

The incoming Muslims had, in some cases, settled in and made arrangements with local Christians to live peaceably near each other. He decided to declare a ban on forming alliances, but no one was buying it. This was seen simply as a ploy to increase the reach and power of the Papal States.

In 876 he himself traveled to the cities of Salerno, Capua, Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi to form an alliance against the Saracens. He reinforced the walls of the city. The 846 raid had plundered the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls (which was its name, not just a description of its location). He fortified the basilica, the connected monastery, and even the nearby houses. He also formed a papal fleet.

John's predecessor, Adrian, had condemned Photios I, the patriarch of Constantinople. John reinstated him, hoping to appease the Byzantines and gain their support.

Unfortunately for John, his attempts to strengthen Rome drained the papal treasury. This is assumed to be the reason that, almost exactly one decade after the start of his pontificate, he was poisoned and then clubbed to death by his own clergy, on 16 December 882.

"Taking out the boss" was not the usual way to end the pontificate of a pope, but it was effectively employed more than once in the history of the Liber Pontificalis, especially in the 10th century starting with John. There were another half-dozen "eliminations" that are certain, and then maybe a further half-dozen papal deaths that were, let's say, a little bit suspicious.

But as tempting a topic that is, I've realized that Charles the Bald keeps getting mentioned, going back 12 years, and hasn't really been given his own entry, despite being the descendant and ancestor of those who have been highlighted. Time to put Charles in the spotlight and find out if he really was bald, or if that was a reference to some other characteristic. See you tomorrow.

"Pope Joan"

Jean de Mailly was a Dominican chronicler working in Metz in northeast France in the middle of the 13th century. He wrote a history of the Diocese of Metz, in which he mentions a female pope reigning for two years about the year 1100. She was a talented woman who dressed as a man and became a notary to the pontifical Curia, then a cardinal, and finally a pope.

One day, while riding her horse, she gave birth to a son, revealing the deception. (Honestly, if she were pope for two years and at the end of that time had a son, then at least one person in her orbit knew that she was actually a woman.) With the deception revealed, she got tied to the tail of the horse, dragged around the city, then stoned to death and buried on the spot with the inscription placed over her Petre pater patrum papissae prodito partum ("Peter, Father of Fathers, betray the childbearing of the woman Pope").

This idea tickled the imagination of others, and so it became repeated and expanded. Along came Martin of Troppau, a Polish Dominican, who also wrote history. His history of the world first appeared during the pontificate of Clement IV (1265-68), but it wasn't until the third edition in 1277 that he added the story of the female pope.

Martin places the event in the 9th century, just after the death of Pope Leo IV (847-55). She was an "Englishman" named John of Mainz. Originally taken to Athens as a young girl in male clothing, she became educated until no one was her intellectual equal. She went to Rome (still disguised as a man), and earned so much respect that she was eventually made pope. During a procession from St. Peter's to the Lateran, she gave birth to a child. She died (and was buried) on the spot. Martin refers to her as Johanna. Martin himself was a papal chaplain at the Vatican, so his accounts were widely read, and the legend spread. In a later version of his history he changed the story, saying that she was deposed, imprisoned, and then lived for many years doing penance. The child grew up to become bishop of Ostia, who had her body interred at Ostia.

Later writers give her the birth name of Agnes; others said she was Gilberta. One version of the story says she was given a vision and offered eternal punishment or temporal disgrace. She chose the latter, and that is why she died on the spot after giving birth.

By the 15th century, scholars were looking at these stories and noting their improbability. Unfortunately, the 20th century enjoys escapism and conspiracy theories, and the legend of "Pope Joan" has been embellished to the point where entire books have been written to recount her "history." There is no gap in the history of popes where Joan was excised (although I wrote here, coincidentally, that one annal thought there was a gap before Leo IV, not after.) A 10th-century pope, John XII (955-64), supposedly had a concubine named Joan who was given much authority at the papal palace during his pontificate, and some have speculated that this gave rise to the idea of a "Pope Joan."

But let's say she did become pope; what was she called? She would not have taken the name "Pope Joan"! A Dominican named Bartolomeo Platina (1421-81) called her Pope John VIII. This is silly, since he should have known that there was a Pope John VIII in the 9th century, and not an inconsequential one, either. Let's talk about him next time.