Born in the late eighth century and raised at the abbey of Fulda, Frechulf became bishop of Lisieux in the mid-820s. This was a dubious distinction. Lisieux was a old but impoverished settlement in Normandy far from the heartlands of the Carolingians. Morever, as Frechulf complained in a letter to his old friend Hrabanaus Maurus, the bishopric lacked the tools necessary to undertake pastoral care, especially books. Undaunted, the bishop eventually gathered enough textual resources to compile one of the longest histories to survive from the ninth century: the Twelve books of histories. Completed around 830, this work provided an account of rulers, kingdoms and important events from the time of creation until the seventh century. Dedicated to Helisachar, Louis the Pious's chancellor, part i comprised seven books from the creation of Adam to the birth of Christ. Part ii, dedicated to the Empress Judith, proceeded from Christ's nativity to the death of Gregory the Great in five books. Despite the popularity of Frechulf's work in the Middle Ages – it survives in full or in part in forty-one manuscripts – historians have largely dismissed the Histories as an unimaginative patchwork of late antique sources with little bearing on the contemporary world of its author. Building on the foundation of Michael Allen's 2002 Corpus Christianorum edition of Frechulf's Histories, Graeme Ward's monograph examines this work in the context of two Carolingian preoccupations – patristic writings and biblical exegesis – and argues that they have ‘a wealth to offer if they are examined with books and libraries, rather than politics and power, in mind’ (p. 24). The result is a useful companion to scholars interested in Frechulf specifically and early medieval historiography more generally.
History, Scripture and authority in the Carolingian Empire comprises six chapters that walk the reader through Frechulf's sources and methods. The Histories were a compilation of historical material culled from Josephus, Eusebius, Jerome, Augustine, Cassiodorus, Jordanes and Bede, but Frechulf was far from a slavish compiler of excerpts (chapter i). Rather, ‘source extracts were often silently spliced together and paraphrased or reworked as Frechulf saw fit’ (p. 41). The first book of part i of the Histories, which treated pre-Abrahamic history, had many affinities with biblical exegesis, as Frechulf structured this book around questions and answers about passages of Genesis (chapter ii). The template informing the structure and chronology of the remaining books of part i was the Chronicle of Eusebius-Jerome, which Frechulf expanded from laconic notes to a discursive narrative. Coupled with information from Orosius and Josephus/Pseudo-Hegesippus, Frechulf's work wove together two important themes from ancient history – the calamities of the Jewish people and the rise of Rome – and culminated during the reign of King Herod with the birth of Christ. Orosius and Augustine season the first books of part ii of the Histories (chapter iv), which ends enigmatically in the seventh century, some two hundred years before Frechulf's time (chapter v). Ward argues that this was purposeful. Frechulf defined the parametres of his work on several occasions, highlighting the death of Gregory the Great, the last of the Latin Fathers of the Church, as well as the founding of the Frankish and Lombard kingdoms in Gaul and Italy, both of which ‘reflected his awareness of the end of one era and the inception of a new phase of world history’ (p. 144). A final chapter considers the contemporary audience of the Histories through the lens of Frechulf's prologues, which suggest that the author employed his dedications in gratitude for help and as a show of support for the imperial family (chapter vi). This chapter closes with a rumination on the didactic and moral function of the depiction of late antique emperors like Constantine and Theodosius in the Histories.
