The Erfurt Latrine Disaster

In central Germany is the town of Erfurt, the capital of the state of Thuringia. Its first mention is in 742 CE when St. Boniface wrote to Pope Zachary to inform him that Boniface had created three dioceses, one of them "in a place called Erphesfurt." The area had been inhabited at least since neolithic times, according to archaeological evidence.

In 1184, King Henry VI of Germany held an informal assembly in the Petersberg Citadel. Petersberg is one of the largest and best-preserved fortresses in Germany. This particular citadel included St. Peter's Church (colored green in the illustration), which had been rebuilt between 1103 and 1147 after a fire burned it down in 1080.

During the rebuilding, they updated the plumbing for dealing with toilets. Rather than divert human waste to the streets or a river (the River Gera was on the outskirts, not near the citadel), they dug a sufficiently large cesspit below the foundation, suitable for holding all the waste necessary.

Nobles across all of Thuringia were invited to the meeting with Henry, held on the second floor of the deanery on 26 July. Just as the meeting began, the wooden floor collapsed from the weight, plummeting the participants not only to the ground floor but through it into the cesspit beneath. King Henry at the end of the room sat in an alcove with a stone support, so was safe. (Some reports say he clung to the iron railing of a window until he could be rescued.)

The cesspit was deep and full. Ladders were brought to help people out; however, at least 60 German nobles drowned in urine and excrement, although there are estimates that say it was closer to 100 participants. German sources refer to this as the Erfurter Latrinensturz ("Erfurt latrine fall" but usually called the "Erfurt latrine disaster").

From poop to politics: what was the reason Henry gathered them all together? It was a dispute between secular and religious authorities, which I'll explain tomorrow.

Long Hair and Kingship

Gregory of Tours mentions, regarding an event in which the body of King Clovis I was exhumed, "Though I did not know who he was, I recognised from the length of the hair that it was Clovis." Elsewhere he refers to theFranks as reges criniti, the "long-haired kings." The post just prior to this tells of a choice offered to a queen to have princes shorn or killed; she chooses killed rather than the shame of princes who are shorn of their locks and therefore denied the chance to some day rule. Gregory tells another anecdote of King Clovis defeating a rival king who betrayed him, Chararic, cutting short the hair of him and his son and confining them in a monastery. When it was later reported to Clovis that the son had remarked to his father that they should grow their hair long again, Clovis had them killed.

Human cultures have developed many ways to indicate social cues, and hair length and style has certainly been one way to distinguish the upper from the lower echelons, but the Merovingians took it to an entirely new level.

We have every reason to believe that the Franks, like the Romans, kept their hair short, so the Merovingian line of royalty would have stood out from the common folk. It was not necessary that the hair had never been cut, just that it was long. Why this was so, we cannot say for certain. Some suggest it is simply a distinction between the Germanic military culture and the Roman religious culture of the various peoples that the Merovingians conquered, but that is too simplistic to be accurate.

When the Merovingian kings began to become lazy, their "Mayors of the Palace" managed their affairs, effectively running the kingdom. The last Merovingian king was Childeric III, whose Mayor of the Palace was Charles Martel, the "Hammer." According to Charlemagne's biographer Einhard, Charles allowed Childeric "to sit on his throne, content with the name of king only, with his long hair and flowing beard, and give the appearance of sovereignty." Eventually, Martel's son, Pepin the Short, took the throne with the backing of Pope Zachary. He had Childeric tonsured and sent with his also-shorn son Theuderic to separate monasteries.

You may recall in the post on Childebert how his brother Chlodomer was killed in battle against Burgundy. A Byzantine historian, Agathias, writes a contemporary account of the battle, giving us a little more on the attitude toward hairstyles in different cultures:

And when he fell, the Burgundians, seeing his hair flowing and abundant, loose down to his back, at once realised that they had killed the enemy leader. For it is the rule for Frankish kings never to be shorn; instead, their hair is never cut from childhood on, and hangs down in abundance on their shoulders. Their front hair, is parted on the forehead and falls down on either side. Their hair is not uncombed and dry and dirty and braided up in a messy knot like that of the Turks and Avars; instead, they anoint it with unguents of different sorts, and carefully comb it. Now this it is their custom to set apart as a distinguishing mark and special prerogative for the royal house. For their subjects have their hair cut all round, and are not permitted to grow it further.

The few seals of Merovingian kings that we have show the long hair, parted in the middle. Hair styles among the common folk might have been varied, but notably long hair was reserved for, and crucial to, the Merovingian royalty.

Now for another of those names I feel I have neglected: Einhard is significant because of his life of Charlemagne, and I'll tell you more next time.

After the Hammer Fell

Nicknames: so easy to get, so hard to get rid of. When Mayor of the Palace and military genius  Charles Martel presented his 12-year-old son to the nobles of the Frankish court, he (jokingly) referred to him as "Pepin the Short." (Really, dad? You get to be called "the Hammer" and I have to be known as "the Short" in all the chronicles? How fair is that?)

Pepin (714-768) was not the only son of Charles Martel to take a leadership role; he's just the one we remember because of his son, Charlemagne. But the Carolingian Age started with Martel, and Pepin was an important part of it before Charlemagne stepped onto the scene. Pepin had two brothers. After the death of their father, Carloman (the eldest) was Mayor of the Palace for Austrasia (including Tournai, Aachen, Cologne and Metz) while Pepin was Mayor of the Palace for Neustria (the territory from Nantes and Tours on the south along the Loire to Soissons in the north). They picked Childeric III to be a puppet king starting in 743, not being willing to take over in their own right.* A third brother, Grifo (son of Charles' second wife), wanted to have some authority, but Pepin and Carloman locked him away in a monastery.

In 747, Carloman decided to retire to a monastery, leaving the running of Austrasia to Pepin. Pepin decided it was time to make a radical change, so he wrote to Pope Zachary with a question: who should be king, the one with the family title or the one who actually exercised the power? By this time, the pope had come to rely on Frankish military support, so he was certainly willing to take the necessary steps. He dethroned Childeric and tonsured him. (The cutting of his hair was a powerful symbol: the Merovingian line believed in not ever cutting their hair as a sign of the royal authority.) Childeric and his son, Theuderic, went to a monastery.

So Pepin the Short (infrequently called Pepin III because his grandfather and great-great-grandfather were both Pepins) became the new King of the Franks, being anointed by the archbishop of Mainz in 752, and then in 754 at St.-Denis in Paris by Pope Stephen II. In order to ensure a succession, the pope anointed Pepin's sons at the same time, establishing that the two boys, Charles and Carloman.

Pepin's first act was to attack the Lombards in Italy, returning control of Ravenna and more to the pope, establishing the Papal States and the pope's temporal authority. He also worked hard to assume control over as much the the Aquitaine as possible. He continued to expand the army and cavalry as his father had done. He fought more battles with Muslims encroaching from Spain and drove them out of Gaul. He was, in fact, never defeated in battle.

Which is not to say that he never died in battle. He died at the age of 54 in a military campaign. He was interred in the church of St.-Denis. Just as the kingdom was divided among Clovis' four sons, so was it divided again between Pepin's sons Charles and Carloman. The Carolingians had the potential to be just as divisive as the Merovingians who came before. Sibling rivalry can be even more bitter, however, when mother plays favorites.

*Childeric was truly plucked from obscurity; modern historians are not sure of his parentage.