Project Abstract
The Political Career of Carloman, King of the Franks (768-771)
King Carloman is traditionally considered to be a minor figure in the early stage of Charlemagne’s career; the information we have about him, transmitted by the Carolingian narrative texts or documents, has rarely been investigated before now. Once the focus shifts from Charlemagne to Carloman as a king, new evidence emerges: Carloman had an independent policy, a chancery that he inherited from his father Pippin and, while he lived, he played a central political role in the Frankish kingdom. Accused of having planned a new marriage with a Lombard princess, he was opposed by Pope Stephen III in Italy and possibly by Charlemagne and part of the aristocracy in Francia.
The book I am aiming to write is primarily focused on a reassessment of a neglected ruler such as Carloman, who has always been considered as part of the early stage of Charlemagne’s career, rather than as king of the Franks. He has, instead, independently ruled for the period of three years and he has been politically responsible for the Southern territories of the Frankish Kingdom and for areas under strong Frankish influence such as Alemannia and Bavaria. The book will try to answer to some key issues related to his kingdom that up to now have been disregarded. Regional and peripheral phenomena will be focused during my stay in Tübingen. These themes have to be brought back to the general topic of the Frankish Kingdom immediately after the disappearance of King Pippin III, when the mobility of alliances and of individuals helped a shift from the fidelity to Carloman to a new fidelity to Charlemagne. This will be my primary focus during my research stay in Tübingen and I will profit from the discussion with the other scholars in the Centre that are studying the mobility in the Early Medieval period. These themes are central to the understanding of the concept of transition and of the complexity of multicultural society, since in a very short span of time this shift shaped in a different way the Frankish and the European history. As direct consequences of these developments (the disappearance from the political scenario of Carloman, of his two sons and heirs, and her widow) a large mobility of aristocracy, both lay and ecclesiastic, was provoked by the new possibilities given by the conquest of the Lombard Kingdom, where Frankish and Alemannian learned men were asked to play an active role in new contexts. Here they gave hints for a cultural change that I will deeply and broadly research since it affected both sides of the Alps, and that we can still appreciate through the exchange of manuscripts, knowledge, people, and experiences.
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