POST-CAROLINGIAN GEOGRAPHIES OF NORTH AND WEST IN RODULFUS GLABER

Abstract

This article evaluates the geographical consciousness of north and west found in the Five Books of the Histories by the eleventh-century Burgundian monk Rodulfus Glaber. In contrast with dominant approaches to medieval geography that have informed prior commentators, who have focused on ideas of Europe or the opposition of east and west, it argues that we must situate Glaber's spatial consciousness first and foremost in the lineage of Carolingian and post-Carolingian conceptions of the north. Focusing especially on the climactic episode of the first book, a vision of the crucifixion that prophesies the rise of Christianity in the northern and western regions of the world, it seeks to contextualize this around the wider geography within Glaber's text. First, the unusual place of the Riphaean mountains and Raetia Secunda in Glaber's descriptions of Gaul and Germania are compared with early medieval textual geographies and eleventh- to twelfth-century cartography to show the shifting and ambiguous place of the north as an expansive and immediate frontier of the Christian world. Then, with this background in place, Glaber's conception of the west is considered through its use alongside a range of signs and portents, most notably the whale sighting at the beginning of the second book. These considerations reveal a messier and more local, Frankish conception of west that is interconnected with the north as a site of violence and disorder. This not only highlights important tensions in Glaber's text itself, but also a geographical vision that remained influential well into the twelfth century.

But here is a matter worthy of meditation. We have told how it very often happened that the infidels were converted to the faith of Christ in both the northern and western parts of the world, but we do not chance to have heard of the same thing happening in the east and south. This was faithfully foretold in the position of the Lord's cross from which He hung in the place called Calvary.¹

This is the vision of the world we find in the writings of the eleventh-century Burgundian monk Rodulfus Glaber (c. 980–1046). The prophecy of Christ's orientation on Calvary is the capstone to Glaber's account of the post-Carolingian world in the tenth century and it sets the stage for the millennium of the Lord's incarnation. It is not just a striking image, but also represents a stark reinterpretation of the world's geography. For the first time, the west and north are presented as the more divinely favored regions of the world.² But what exactly the west and north mean to Glaber, and how they fit into a broader geographical consciousness, is a more complicated question than it may first appear. Focusing especially on the presentation of the west, most previous scholarship has contextualized these comments around medieval ideas of Europe or as an anticipation of the east-west antipathy that would emerge with the crusading movement. While there is no doubt some truth to both narratives, neither really gets to the heart of Glaber's own geographical consciousness and, as a result, they miss a crucial aspect of the post-Carolingian heritage in eleventh- and indeed twelfth-century conceptions of the world: the role of the north. By unpacking the categories of his conceptual geography, we will not only be able to see the structural significance of the north to Glaber's view of the world, but also how his conception of the west stands not so much as a synonym for Europe or point of contrast against the east, but as a site of Frankish Christianity set against this post-Carolingian north.

Glaber's Histories, which have normally been discussed in the context of the terrors of the year 1000, have typically either been dismissed as a confused and untrustworthy account of contemporary events or hailed as a unique window into the worldview at the turn of the millennium.³ Bolstered by Cluniac connections, he has often been treated as an ideal representative of his time.⁴ This impression is beautifully captured by Carl Erdmann's characterization of Glaber (in contrast with Amatus of Monte Cassino) as a historian “who more accurately mirrors the attitudes of his age, even though he is no more reliable in details.”⁵ Whether ultimately typical or not, Glaber undoubtedly provides a unique vision of the novelty of his own age and he has long been recognized as a crucial witness to a shifting geographical vision in the early eleventh century.⁶ Despite all this, Glaber's work has not received a monograph-length treatment for decades and there is still no focused study of his spatial consciousness.⁷

As a result, Glaber's geographical comments have typically been addressed within research on ideas of Europe, which remains the dominant paradigm for work on geography and identity in the Middle Ages. Still foundational here is the narrative established by Jürgen Fischer and Denys Hay in two monographs from 1957.⁸ Yet this narrative leaves the eleventh century in a somewhat liminal space, as after a temporary efflorescence under Charlemagne both Fischer and Hay find an eclipse of European terminology at precisely this moment, before it ultimately reemerges at the end of the Middle Ages.⁹ While recent research has pushed back on this point, questioning the supposed lapse into “mere geographicality” during the central Middle Ages, the overarching narrative remains largely unchanged.¹⁰ Within this field, the west has usually been sidelined as a mere synonym for Europe.¹¹ Indeed, Fischer's work remains one of the only significant studies of the idea of the west (occidens) as a geographical concept in the Middle Ages.¹² In contrast with most other scholarship on the subject, Fischer attempts to distinguish Europa as the vocabulary of Carolingian identity from occidens, seeking to explain why the former won out over the latter. Across a wide-ranging set of sources, from patristic and Carolingian biblical exegesis and liturgy, through late antique cosmology and the Old Saxon Genesis, to the image of the archangel Michael in the construction of grand Westwerke in Carolingian churches, Fischer builds a rich and persuasive case that in the ninth century the negative allegorical association of occidens rendered it unsuitable as a collective term for the Franks in opposition to Byzantium. Europa, by contrast, provided a blank canvas, free of such allegorical baggage.¹³

Fischer's argument has been widely influential on subsequent scholarship and remains an important touchstone for work on the notion of occidens in the Middle Ages.¹⁴ But it is worth casting a critical eye on the way in which Fischer constructs occidens as an allegorical category. Central to his approach is the notion that east and west form the dominant spatial axis of religious meaning.¹⁵ His account is grounded in the opposition of an active east, in the rising sun, and a passive west, in its setting; the east is Christ and his salvific work, the west its object.¹⁶ While certainly an apt characterization of the allegorical relationship of east and west in isolation, Fischer goes so far as to suggest that, for Rabanus Maurus (d. 856), the north in some sense lacks exegetical content outside its connection with the west.¹⁷ But this is evidently a step too far. In the most systematic study of exegetical and liturgical ideas of the cardinal points to date, Barbara Maurmann concludes that, within the broad scope of Christian exegesis, the west actually has the most ambiguous allegorical significance of all the cardinal points; the north, by contrast, stands as the paradigmatic site of evil in the biblical and patristic tradition, as recent research has continued to underscore.¹⁸ The exegetical import of the north is established especially through its association with Babylon in the major and minor prophets, being exemplified in the words of Jeremiah: “From the north an evil will spread over the inhabitants of the land.”¹⁹ As a result, Fischer's prioritization of an east-west axis presents at best a partial image of the cardinal points and their exegetical import.

Regardless of any exegetical concerns about a positively conceived east and a negative west that may have existed in the ninth century, it is clear that by the turn of the twelfth century these concepts faced stark new political realities. Fischer already highlights the eleventh century as a moment of return to the east-west vocabulary, which he contextualizes around the so-called Schism of 1054.²⁰ Setting aside the dominant skepticism that 1054 represents a key moment of schism in contemporary scholarship, which has increasingly sought to situate it within a broader narrative of mutual ambivalence across the eleventh century, there can be little doubt that by the time of the First Crusade the groundwork was in place for a new valuation of east and west by Latin authors, as Elizabeth Lapina has recently shown with great clarity.²¹ Far from the mere claims of equality between west and east that we find with Avitus of Vienne or Aeneas of Paris in the early Middle Ages, the chroniclers of the First Crusade invert the entire paradigm. By the turn of the twelfth century, the west could serve unambiguously as a locus of Christianity and an active force in salvation history, now illuminating an east that had fallen from Christian orthodoxy.²²

This vision is expressed most forcefully in the work of the Northern French Benedictine redactors of the Gesta Francorum: Baudri of Bourgueil, Guibert of Nogent, and Robert the Monk. Likely written in wake of the great Norman crusading hero Bohemond of Taranto's 1106 recruiting tour through northern France, the latter two especially present a striking vision of the west as the most Christian region of the world, contrasted with an east that is all but lost to the faith.²³ For both Guibert and Robert, Isaiah's statement: “from the west I will gather you” (Isa. 43:5) serves to prophesy the role of the westerners (occidentales) in recovering Jerusalem and restoring Christianity to the east.²⁴ This re-evaluation of the west likewise serves to emphasize the Roman and Christian identity of the venture and the diversity of the crusaders divinely united by it.²⁵ But the vocabulary of occidens is not restricted to the crusading chronicles themselves. Used especially to emphasize the scope of response to the First Crusade, the language of occidens appears in a range of contemporary historical and chronicle sources. It finds particular prominence in three major areas: the diocese of Liège, the chronicle and continuers of Frutolf of Michelsberg, and among Anglo-Norman historians.²⁶ While some of these can be explained individually through their use of earlier crusading chronicles, the breadth and rapidity in the uptake of this vocabulary across different regions of western Europe suggests that the foundations of such a conception were already in place.

This appears to be what we find in the histories of Rodulfus Glaber, who represents the earliest clear example of such a reorientation and thereby provides a useful case study into the shifting perception of world geography in the eleventh century. The aim here is not to reopen the thorny issue of Glaber's potential proximity to proto-crusading ideologies, but to consider the conceptual space that lay open to an author of the mid-eleventh century.²⁷ Evaluating the role of space in Glaber's writing, and drawing out some thematic connections between him and other authors from the second half of the eleventh century, will provide greater insight into the ideas that underlay the use of the west by the time of the First Crusade. This article argues that too much emphasis has been placed on east-west opposition and suggests that the interaction of ideas of north and west played a more significant role in structuring the idea of west through the eleventh century. More tentatively, insofar as Glaber anticipates these latter developments, it may be through the west's connection with the Franks and their opposition to a pagan north. To this end, this study begins with an overview of the spatial role of empire in Glaber's history and its relationship with the proliferation of gentes. It then evaluates the spatial structures that underlie Glaber's historical consciousness and examines how north and west serve as interrelated categories in processes of identity formation that are connected with, but do not fully overlap, his notions of empire and Roman Christianity.

Post-Carolingian Mentalities and Post-Carolingian Geographies

Sometime in the first third of the eleventh century, Rodulfus Glaber set out to write a history of the events surrounding the millennium of Christ's incarnation (1000) and passion (1033).²⁸ An admittedly vexatious character, Glaber carried out this work across a series of monasteries, noting how as he was expelled from one monastery, he could expect to be welcomed into another due to his literary competencies.²⁹ It began at Saint-Bénigne in Dijon, where we find Glaber associated with the then abbot St. William of Volpiano in the mid-1020s. Glaber tells us that it was William who had commanded him to record “the events and prodigies which happened around and after the millennial year of Incarnation of the Saviour.”³⁰ Whether or not Glaber started as a mere mouthpiece for William's ecclesiastical project, this purpose pervades the structure of the histories.³¹ It is at Saint-Bénigne that Glaber drafted the first two books, which deal with the many signs that precede the millennium, chronicling the decline of empire and invasions through the tenth century, as well as the prelude to the year 1000.³² Around 1031 Glaber moved to Cluny, where he put the third book on hold to write a Vita of the now deceased William. This move was, however, short lived and by 1036 we find him at Saint-Germain in Auxerre, where he would revise and finish the Histories. Now dedicated to Odilo and sporting a new theological gloss on the divine quaternity, Books 3 and 4 present a more optimistic vision of the success of religious reform and the world made new with the millennium of the incarnation and passion respectively.³³ Finally, Glaber added a fifth book, but it does not seem to cohere with the prior structure and quickly devolves into miscellaneous anecdotes before cutting off abruptly, one assumes with his death.

Though the signs of the millennium are a central, guiding topic of the Histories, as the opening pages make clear, Glaber seeks to situate them within a wider array of themes.³⁴ After his dedication to Odilo, he immediately contextualizes his interest in recording the events of the millennium around the lack of contemporary history-writing since the time of Bede in Britain and Paul the Deacon in Italy.³⁵ But these two addressed only the histories of their own people and country, leaving out “many things which happened as much in the Roman world as in overseas or barbarian provinces” that are likewise worthy of record.³⁶ These events are established right away within the series temporum according to the reign of Henry, king of Saxons, and Robert, king of the Franks, “the greatest and most Christian kings in our cismarine world,” the first of whom we are told would take up the Romanum imperium.³⁷ This chronological frame sets the stage for Glaber's explicit declaration of his subject a few paragraphs later: “we will tell of the famous men who, from the year 900 . . . down to us, have shone forth in the Roman world as supporters of the catholic faith and justice.”³⁸ Between these we find his famous exposition on the divine quaternity, which he thinks a fitting introduction to a work whose subject encompasses “the four parts of the terrestrial world.”³⁹ This prefatory section of the first book introduces a range of issues relating to Glaber's conception of space, which will need to be unpacked in turn.

As we see already in the reference to Bede and Paul, Glaber's histories, and especially the first two books, are marked by the tension between Empire and the plurality of political power in the post-Roman world.⁴⁰ This tension explicitly structures the narrative of the first book, which begins by highlighting the decline of the once great Roman Empire (quondam . . . imperium principale) along with the terror Cesarum that governed it. In contrast, as Christ's empire spread among the princes of the earth, little by little the Roman people (stirps) were scattered as the gentes formerly subdued by Rome rose up against her and their kings “usurped even the empire's name.”⁴¹ The greatest Christian kings were those of the Franks, among whom Glaber singles out Charlemagne (d. 814) and Louis the Pious (d. 840) with their dynasty in Italy and Gaul lasting until Charles the Simple. But, Glaber insists, it is not his intention to tell the story of this family; his theme is rather the world after their downfall. This potted history of the fall of Rome and the Carolingian empire sets up the history of the tenth century, with the Ottonians and post-Carolingian kings of France, that occupies the first book. It also highlights a restricted geographical vision of empire. As imperatores, Charlemagne and Louis bring the orbis Romanus under their rule, as if a servant in their household, yet their dynasty is still expressly restricted to Italy and Gaul.⁴² So while Glaber sees his subject, the orbis Romanus, as encompassing the four parts of the world — in contrast to Bede and Paul, who wrote histories of particular peoples — and suitably introduced by a cosmological preface, the Romanum imperium itself is nevertheless constantly qualified by individual lands, peoples, and kings, almost as just another name on the list.

Glaber is building here upon a complex backdrop of shifting Carolingian and post-Carolingian ideas of empire, and the tensions and contradictions that brought with it.⁴³ The central tension here is brought out in recent historiographical debates over the conceptual scope of Romanum imperium in Carolingian and post-Carolingian thought. With the empire's downfall, Rome and the Romans were increasingly understood as one among the plurality of gentes and regna that now ruled different bits of the old western empire.⁴⁴ By the ninth century, the notion of Romanum imperium had shrunk, at least in some significant sense, to rulership over Rome and the Papal territories. Indeed, the argument has been made forcefully in recent years by Eckhard Müller-Mertens that regions north of the Alps were fundamentally excluded from the medieval conception of the Roman Empire until the writing of Wipo in the 1040s — although, relevantly for Glaber, both Burgundy and Cluny are highlighted as early exceptions to this rule.⁴⁵ Contemporary scholarship, however, has rightly criticized this construal of Romanum imperium as overly narrow, highlighting both the greater complexity of Carolingian attitudes towards Rome and the plurality of ideas of “empire” at work in the early Middle Ages.⁴⁶ As Laury Sarti argues, this represents just one of “two diametrically opposed evolutions.”⁴⁷ Simultaneous to this secular and geographical contraction of “Romanness” was a progressive expansion and intensification of its application to ecclesiastical institutions and the Christian world. It is here that universality, both geographical and political, is brought back into this Carolingian conception of Romanum imperium.⁴⁸ Both of these evolutions can be observed in Glaber's text. His geography of empire is indeed centrally focused on Italy, as we see in the consistent conjunction of Italy and Gaul, or Italy and Germany from Book 4, as the focal point of church and empire.⁴⁹ Yet simultaneously, as we find so clearly in William of Volpiano's letter in Book 4, the vision of empire at work in Glaber's text is intimately entangled with the Roman church's claim to universality and supremacy.⁵⁰ Thus, central to Glaber's geographical vision is this tension inherent to a notion of empire that was caught between the ideal of Christian universality and the reality of political fragmentation, a tension that is fundamentally linked with the empire's relationship to a plurality of gentes.⁵¹

The structure of the first book in particular provides a nice encapsulation of this outlook. The kingdoms of the Franks and Saxons are the core of the orbis Romanus.⁵² Thus, after the introduction, there is a pair of short chapters on the (west) Frankish Carolingians: Rudolf, duke of Burgundy, and Lothar. This then gives way to a longer fourth chapter on later Roman emperors, covering the assumption of the imperium Romanorum by Saxon kings.⁵³ Finally, the fifth chapter of the book, De paganorum plagis, addresses the pagan opposition to this imperial core. Despite the sometimes-jarring insertions of Cluniac material on Islam, beginning with the story of Maiolus's abduction by Muslims, the original and most explicit focus here is on the northern gentes: the Normans and Hungarians.⁵⁴ The majority of the chapter deals with the history of the Normans, which is followed by a shorter account of the Hungarians up to the conversion of both groups. The relationship between empire and the gentes is made explicit with the introduction of the Hungarians, whose invasion is predicated on the discord between the Franks and Saxons. It is only after the “the kings of the Franks and Saxons were brought together by the bonds of blood relationship and a common faith” that the kingdom of Christ was once again able to overthrow the tyrants and allow a new peace to flower.⁵⁵ The same geographical logic of opposing the Roman and barbarian world is further underscored in the introduction to the third book, where Glaber contrasts the internal strife that wore down the two most Christian kings of the Franks and Saxons against the peace they enjoyed with external nations.

The North in Geographies of Center and Periphery

Glaber's presentation of northern peoples reflects a broader Carolingian shift in geographical outlook. The emergence of the transalpine world as a cultural, literary, and imperial center brought with it an important change in perception. Late Roman geography ended fundamentally with the Rhine and Danube, beyond which one finds the largely undifferentiated barbaricum: Alania, Dacia, Gothia, and Germania.⁵⁶ By the ninth century, however, things had changed. The Franks, among others, considered themselves one such northern people, who traced their origins in particular to Pannonia.⁵⁷ Likewise, since Pope Paschal I's 822 bull, the north as a region was conceptualized as a missionary space by the Frankish church, a perception that hangs heavily over the post-Carolingian world.⁵⁸ This changing perspective also had specific geographical ramifications, as Patrick Gautier Dalché has recently shown.⁵⁹ From the eighth century, we see an emerging interest in the geography of the north, even if as in the Cosmographia of Aethicus Ister, it is not one grounded in bona fide knowledge of that geography. By the ninth and tenth centuries, awareness and knowledge of the north within geographical writings associated with the Carolingian schools had begun to expand rapidly with the inflow of insular scholars. This conception of the north as an expansive and ever-present frontier of Christendom is the evident backdrop to Glaber's presentation of the Normans and Hungarians and, especially in connection with the role of empire, it is an idea that can be found among a range of eleventh-century historians.⁶⁰

We can find more precise imprints of this new awareness of the north in Glaber's geographical excursus on Gaul and Raetia.⁶¹ Early in Book 2, in prelude to a discussion of the civil strife between Duke Conan of Brittany (d. 992) and Count Fulk of Anjou (d. 1040), Glaber provides a brief description of Gaul's geography. He explains that it is said to be laid out like a square, running from the Riphaean mountains to Spain, with the Ocean on the left and the Alps on the right, with the Cornu Gallie (Brittany) at the bottom.⁶² Although this description falls broadly in line with the standard textual geography of Isidore of Seville, Arnoux suggests that the use of relative directions implies a cartographical basis for Glaber's description.⁶³ The suggestion is entirely plausible, since maps had been used in geographical education since late antiquity and their influence on textual geographies is clearly evident by the twelfth century.⁶⁴ Given that most eleventh- and twelfth-century world maps depict the Alps as a chain of mountains running more or less parallel to the ocean, it is not hard to envisage the outlines of a generally square-shaped Gaul, whose slight misalignment from the east-west axis of the map places its north-western corner at the bottom.⁶⁵

What is really striking about Glaber's description, however, is the presentation of the Riphaean mountains as a boundary of Gaul.⁶⁶ Traditionally situated on the border of Europe and Asia, the mountain range is one of a set of classical sites, alongside the Tanais and Meotide swamps, that formed the core of a semi-mythical geography of the far north.⁶⁷ Its specific location is not especially clear in late Roman geography, but it could encroach as far as the outer boundary of Germania.⁶⁸ This is a point that Arnoux's suggestion of a cartographic backdrop could help explain. While most maps follow the textual sources, dividing Gaul and Germania with the Rhine, there is some resemblance to the Saint-Sever Beatus, which unusually depicts a range of mountains on the eastern border of Gaul.⁶⁹ This unlabelled mountain range is not the Riphaean mountains, but serves rather as the source of the Danube, a site that both Isidore and Orosius likewise associate with the boundary of Gaul and Germania.⁷⁰ Regardless of where Glaber got this notion, the placement of the Riphaean mountains in Gaul highlights a significant foreshortening of the north. By bringing the mythical spaces of classical geography to the boundaries of the contemporary Christian world, Glaber highlights the immediacy of the north and potentially points to a certain conceptual elision of Gaul and Germania in line with their function as the political core of his narrative.

The ambiguity of the north's boundaries can be seen more clearly still in the other major geographical excursus. Near the end of Book 4, Glaber describes a battle between the Liutici, a loose confederation of pagan groups between the Elbe and Oder rivers in modern Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and the Christians in the north that ends with the intervention of Emperor Conrad II (d. 1039).⁷¹ He introduces this chapter with a brief description of Germania. It begins normally enough by explaining that Germania runs from the Rhine to the northern part of the world and that it is home to many gentes both fierce and intermixed.⁷² The discussion quickly turns, however, to the obscure Roman province of Raetia, whose second division, we are told, is home to the cruelest of these peoples, the Liutici. Covering the broadly transalpine regions of modern Switzerland, Austria, and Germany, the Roman province was originally divided in the fourth century into Raetia Prima and Secunda, centered respectively on Chur and Augsburg.⁷³ But this is evidently not the division that Glaber has in mind. He explains, rather, that Raetia Prima is so called because it lies on the Rhine and is known colloquially, albeit erroneously, as the “kingdom of Lothar.”⁷⁴ This corresponds generally with the unified Raetia that remained a fixture of the standard late Roman geographical tradition, normally as part of the trio of provinces along the Danube (Pannonia, Noricum, and Raetia), and which Isidore likewise describes as lying alongside the Rhine.⁷⁵

It is with Raetia Secunda that Glaber's geography diverges considerably from the old Roman province. We can identify its location primarily through his description of the Liutici. Glaber explains that their name (Leutici) is derived from the word lutum (“mud”) and that they live in the “squalid marshes” near the northern ocean.⁷⁶ Indeed, when put to flight by the emperor's army, they later seek refuge in “their inaccessible haunts among the marshes.”⁷⁷ Though he does not describe it in these terms, Glaber evidently imagines the homeland of the Liutici as a province on the north-eastern edge of Europe near the Meotide swamps of Scythia Inferior that border on Asia.⁷⁸ The idea that Scythia lay just beyond the familiar northern hinterlands of Europe is not unusual for the eleventh century.⁷⁹ Already in the late tenth century, Regino of Prüm described the Hungarians as emerging from Scythian kingdoms and marshes.⁸⁰ Likewise, in the second decade of the eleventh century, Thietmar of Merseburg finds Scythians living north of the Danes near the homeland of Swein ‘Forkbeard.’⁸¹ Finally, a few decades after Glaber's death, Adam of Bremen firmly identifies the Baltic Sea region as Scythia and explicitly describes the Oder estuary beyond the land of the Liutici as the Scythian swamps.⁸²

The identification of Raetia as the homeland of the Liutici, however, is entirely unique to Glaber's text.⁸³ To explain this association, France suggests that Glaber may have been confused by the region's proper name “Redaria,” but this explanation does not go far enough in explaining Glaber's underlying geography.⁸⁴ The use of Raetia Prima earlier in the Histories suggests that Glaber has a consistent notion of two Raetiae throughout, rather than simply numbering them in this passage to address confusion around two regions bearing the same name.⁸⁵ Furthermore, the distinction between the two Raetiae is found in one of the few books that we can be reasonably certain that Glaber knew: Paul the Deacon's Historia Langobardorum.⁸⁶ During a brief interlude on Italian geography, Paul notes that the two provinces of Raetia are situated among the Alps between Liguria and Swabia (Suavia). Given the sparsity of information about Raetia in the geographical sources available to an eleventh-century monk, it would be no great surprise that Glaber might (wittingly or not) alter this picture. So while France's suggestion may help to explain why the Liutici specifically have been associated with the second Raetia, this must be situated within the broader context of the adaptation of classical northern geography, which as we have seen is by no means unique to the Burgundian monk.

Glaber's displacement of Raetia itself to the outer boundary of Germania is actually somewhat less idiosyncratic than it might first appear. We can already find some textual precedent from the early Middle Ages in the aforementioned Cosmographia of Aethicus Ister. The Cosmographia contains an alternative version of the Franks’ origo gentis story with a few subtle changes. Most notably for us, the Franks no longer invade Pannonia to found their city of Sicambria, but Raetia.⁸⁷ This change involves some relevant alterations to northern geography, since just like Pannonia in the eighth-century Liber historiae Francorum, Raetia must now be situated on the shore of the Meotide swamps. Indeed, Aethicus Ister explicitly places Raetia on the outer boundary of Germania, just as Glaber does. Finally, in the list of Danubian provinces from the preceding paragraph, Raetia is no longer included alongside Pannonia and Noricum.⁸⁸ It is unfortunately not possible to say whether Glaber was directly familiar with the Cosmographia and this is certainly too vague of a parallel to draw such a conclusion.⁸⁹ What it does highlight, though, is the sort of ambiguities an expanding northern geography created. Indeed, as with Scythia, this sort of creative reinterpretation of classical toponyms was increasingly common from the eleventh century, especially for the north. Dudo of Saint-Quentin, for example, famously adopts Dacia as a classically attested homeland for the Danes, thereby shifting it to Germania.⁹⁰ We find similar adaptions in the geography of Scandinavia, both in textual sources like Adam of Bremen and creeping into cartography from the eleventh century, where we also find a stricter demarcation of the northern boundary of Europe and Asia appearing around this same moment.⁹¹ Therefore, regardless of its ultimate source, Glaber's alteration fits well into an established trend.

It is here that we can once again return to Arnoux's suggestion of a cartographic influence. In particular, we find a similar displacement of Raetia and the Danubian provinces to the far north of Europe on a contemporary group of maps associated with Beatus of Lièbana's Apocalypse commentary. On the basis of certain shared cartographical elements, these maps are conventionally divided into three major branches: I, IIa, and IIb.⁹² The IIb group in particular depicts a collection of rivers to the north of Europe that converge on the labeled Danube and flow into the Tanais.⁹³ They are clustered around a mountain that stands on the coast of the northern ocean and out of which one of these rivers flows. Although it is impossible to know for certain what this unlabeled mountain represents, it lies in roughly the same place as the labeled Riphaean mountains on the closely related IIa branch.⁹⁴ This is therefore a natural interpretation and, along with the placement of these rivers to the north of the Danube, it creates some interesting alterations to the geography of the north on the IIb maps.⁹⁵ Most importantly, the Danubian provinces of Raetia, Noricum, and Moesia are labeled in the IIb branch and set among these rivers. While they still retain their typical order with respect to the Danube, rather than following its eastward course they now follow the northward flow of these other rivers. As a result, Raetia has ended up situated practically on the coast of the northern ocean, right beside our unlabeled mountain and directly to the north of the labeled Germania. What is more, if we accept the identification of this mountain, it is relevant to note that Gaul now lies directly to its south, precisely as Glaber describes. So, while the IIb Beatus maps do not agree entirely with Glaber's geography, we see a number of similar patterns in the reorientation of European geography to the north.

An even more interesting comparison is found in the Europe map of Lambert of Saint-Omer (Figure 1). Produced in the first quarter of the twelfth century and preserved only in the autograph copy of the Liber floridus, Lambert's map represents the earliest surviving stand-alone map of Europe.⁹⁶ As its title Europa mundi pars quarta suggests, it depicts a literal quarter of a normal circular world map, bearing a clear resemblance to the representation of Europe in the closest surviving copy of Lambert's conventional world map.⁹⁷ Here we find similar alterations to northern geography. The map includes Scanza as a peninsula containing Norvuega and sets it adjacent to Dacia on its continental side, likely following the tradition of Dudo.⁹⁸ More significantly for our purposes, Raetia and Noricum now lie to the north of Pannonia on the peninsula terminating with Moesia and the Meotian Sea (mare meotis). Their relative ordering has also changed, since Raetia is now situated beyond Noricum to the east.⁹⁹ It remains, of course, unclear whether Glaber had indeed worked from a map in one of these traditions. But as both Lambert and the Beatus maps show, it would be no stretch of the imagination to suppose that Glaber had seen a map that set Raetia in the northern reaches of Europe. Moreover, these maps reveal a similar reorientation and expansion of northern geography, with new regions appearing and classical toponyms reappearing to populate this increasingly familiar frontier.

Figure 1: Ghent, University Library, MS 92, fol. 241r (reproduced with permission under CC-BY-SA 4.0).

There is more going on in Lambert's map, however, that is illustrative of Glaber's overarching geographical outlook and that will allow us to take stock of how this geographical material underscores Glaber's vision of the world. Most relevantly here, Lambert's map of Europe strictly demarcates this expanding northern frontier of Europe from a Romano-Frankish core. On Lambert's maps, Francia, Germania, and Italy are all divided and encircled by a red line, whose purpose is noted in the accompanying text: “The kingdoms which are circled in red pertain to the empire of the Romans and Franks.”¹⁰⁰ On the most basic level, both Glaber's and Lambert's Europe is built upon the breakdown of Charlemagne's empire. Indeed, the line specifically depicts the bipartition of Francia in the late 870s and the map has typically been interpreted as a companion piece to the genealogy of the Frankish dynasty, prefaced with a Frankish origin story, a few folios back.¹⁰¹ Between this genealogy and the map, Lambert inserted a second history of the Carolingians prefaced by another Frankish origin story, drawn from Freculf of Lisieux and based ultimately on Jordanes.¹⁰² This second origin story begins by explaining that some think the Franks emerged from Scanzia, the homeland of the Goths, which is interpreted as Northwega.¹⁰³ This section also contains a history of the Normans, which is again inserted into this new geography of the north, with the Normans likewise emerging from Northwega.¹⁰⁴ While this is not Lambert's central focus in these chapters, its inclusion before and relationship with the Europe map highlights the interconnection of the north and the geography of the post-Carolingian world in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Here we see the central elements of Glaber's overarching geographical vision brought together in cartographic form. It not only presents an expanded vision of the north and a coordinate reorientation of European geography, but this increasingly present and expansive north is also set specifically against a geographically demarcated Franco-Roman core.¹⁰⁵

Quadripartite Geographies and the Cross

With this geographical foundation in place, we can now return to Glaber's re-evaluation of world geography and consider the cosmological context of crucifixion imagery that underlies this vision. As a capstone to his discussion of the conversion of the Normans and Hungarians in Book 1, Glaber offers his prophetic vision of Christ's crucifixion that serves to situate them within a providential geography. Marveling at the conversion of faithless peoples (perfidarum . . . gentium) in the north and west, Glaber goes on to explain how Christ's orientation on Calvary predicted this state of affairs:

When He was hung from the cross the immature people of the east were hidden behind His head, but the west was before His eyes, ready to be filled with the light of the faith. So too His almighty right arm, extended for the work of mercy, pointed to the north, which was to be mellowed by the holy word of the faith, while His left was the lot of the south, which swarmed with barbaric peoples.¹⁰⁶

Despite the geographical resonance of north and west with notions of Europe, it is important to note that this continental terminology does not play a role in Glaber's writing. Neither Asia nor Europe is mentioned and Africa appears to be understood largely as the place where the Muslims live, since Glaber seems to include both southern Italy and Spain within it.¹⁰⁷

The use of the crucifixion in this context is hardly surprising. Although the rise of crucifixion imagery in western Europe goes back to the ninth century, it gained steam especially in monumental form from the later tenth century.¹⁰⁸ This dovetails with the growth of pilgrimage to the Holy Land, noted by Glaber himself among others, and the spread of relics of the passion, especially of the true cross.¹⁰⁹ This imagery is particularly fitting in the context of Glaber's work, which ties it both to the missionary context of the Normans and Hungarians as well as to the eschatological significance of their conversion.¹¹⁰ Glaber's presentation is based in the first instance on the cross's extensive patristic and medieval heritage as an image of the world or cosmos, closely linked to the acrostic interpretation of “Adam” through the Greek cardinal directions: Anathole (east), Disis (west), Arcton (north) and Mesembria (south).¹¹¹ Christ's orientation, with his right to the north and left to the south, was influentially established in the Latin tradition by Sedulius's Carmen paschale, which presents the cross as embracing the four cardinal regions of the world under Christ's rule.¹¹² An explicit link between Sedulius's use of the cross as a cosmological image and the Adam acrostic is also made in the influential commentary of Remigius of Auxerre (d. 908).¹¹³ The resonance of this connection can be clearly seen in at least one contemporary example of this schema depicted visually in an eleventh-century monastic miscellany from Mouzon in north-western France.¹¹⁴ It depicts the crucifixion, with north, south, and east marked on three ends of the cross in Greek and Latin, and includes seven lines of mostly Leonine hexameter extolling the redemption of “the four-cornered world,” in echo of Sedulius.¹¹⁵ A similar motif, without reference to the Greek, also appears in a pair of Ottonian Evangeliaries produced in Echternach around the 1030s, associated with the so-called Gregormeister.¹¹⁶ These same threads are likewise brought together in Glaber's immediate context at Cluny. The cross was of central importance to the eleventh-century liturgy, standing as a cosmological signifier of Christ's sovereignty. The underlying universal geography and explicit imperial resonance are brought together in Odilo's own Sermo de sancta cruce.¹¹⁷ He links Mary's anticipation of the world's salvation before the cross with the story of Helena and Constantine's conversion, after which “the faith and victory of the crucified Lord began to be preached openly through every region of the world,” even beyond the bounds of empire.¹¹⁸ In this way, the image of the crucifixion links the geographical and eschatological universality of Christ's kingdom.

The cosmological context of Glaber's use of crucifixion imagery is further underscored in the post-Cluniac revision to the first book. A paragraph on the imperial regalia of Emperor Henry II (d. 1024) has been inserted between the conversion of the Hungarians and the Calvary prophecy. Given its awkward placement and evident relevance to Cluny, it has typically been interpreted as part of this later revision.¹¹⁹ Glaber returns here to the theme of the imperial ascension, discussing the pope's role as its arbiter. This turns to an account of Henry's imperial orb (later given to Cluny) that Pope Benedict VIII commissioned “to be made in an entirely allegorical form . . . like a golden apple surrounded on four sides (per quadrum) with all the most precious jewels and surmounted by a golden cross.”¹²⁰ This harkens back, of course, to the divine quaternity, itself framed both around the four regions of the world and allegorical ascent.¹²¹ But the coordination of quadrum and cross also echoes once again the Sedulian image of the crucifix as microcosm, embracing the four-quartered world (quadrati . . . orbis).¹²² Finally, the use of “square” (quadrum) intensifies the cosmological metaphor by reference to a representation of the universe (mundum) as a nested square and circle.¹²³ Indeed, if this reading of quadrum is correct, it may be no coincidence that we find a likewise cosmologically and eschatologically charged evocation of the four cardinal points in Leo of Vercelli's panegyric on the death of Otto III and coronation of Henry II.¹²⁴ In any case, the addition of this episode makes sense within the broader thematic development of the first book after Glaber's time at Cluny. It establishes the analogy of the crucifix within this cosmological frame and, through the introduction of Islam into the first book, the opposition of northwest against southeast is set in sharper focus.

The West with and against the North

The cosmological context of Glaber's crucifixion image, however, leaves the particular spatiality somewhat ambiguous. Its narrower framing around the conversion of the Normans and Hungarians suggests that it should be read in line with a Romano-ecclesiastical conception of west as the sphere of the Roman church and empire. We may compare this with the presentation of the west we find in Bonizo of Sutri's Liber ad amicum, written forty years after Glaber's death in 1046. Near the end of the second book, Bonizo employs some impressive historical foreshortening to contrast those emperors after Constantine who ruled in fear of God and in harmony with the bishops, and especially the pope, with those who brought catastrophes on the empire by their disobedience. Under the latter, we are told:

a Persian army invaded Mesopotamia and the most evil race of the Saracens withdrew the whole of Africa, Marmarica, Libya, Egypt, Arabia, Judea and Phoenicia from Roman control. From the north the savagery of the Huns, the storm of the Goths and the hurricane of the Vandals devastated the whole of the west, while the tenth horn of the beast, that is, the fury of the Lombards, drawn from the sheath of the Lord's wrath, invaded the Italian regions.¹²⁵

Bonizo does not provide an explicit geographical framework here and in all likelihood the references to north and west are drawn directly from Paul the Deacon. The passage nevertheless presents a quadripartite world geography. Bonizo begins in the east with the Persians and Mesopotamia and then moves to Islam, which like Glaber he associates in the first instance with Africa, moving eastward through the provinces of Africa and then western Asia. Bonizo then introduces the northern peoples, drawing on the traditional picture of their invasion of the western empire.¹²⁶ The west remains therefore the region directly associated with the Christian-Roman synthesis that suffers the results of disordered rulership.

This sort of opposition between north and west can be found in Glaber's own account of the Normans in Book 1. Their introduction is strikingly similar to the traditional account of the northern Huns invading the west: “At this time also the people of Gaul suffered equally terrible afflictions through the attacks of the Normans. These people were called Normans because, originally, out of love of plunder, they left the north to make a bold assault on the west.”¹²⁷ As Glaber goes on to explain, their name itself is a combination of words “north” and “man” in their own language.¹²⁸ The narrative continues with Hasting and the history of the early Norman dukes, who successively ravage the peoples of Gaul for almost a hundred years. This sorry state of affairs is directly related to the post-Carolingian theme of the first half of the book, since Glaber makes sure to note that these events took place during “the interval between the collapse of the emperors and kings of Italy and Gaul and their restoration.”¹²⁹ Thus, straining somewhat against the facts, this narrative arc is brought to a rather abrupt conclusion when Duke Richard of Burgundy (d. 921), father of the previously hailed King Rudolf, defeats the Normans in battle, bringing their incursions to an end and leading to a swift conversion to Christianity.¹³⁰

This opposition of north and west is a consistent feature throughout the Histories. Although the remainder of references to the west in the text pertain to natural signs, in all but one case we find a strikingly similar pattern of spatial association between north and west.¹³¹ The next most prominent example is the whale portent that opens Book 2. After a brief introduction on the succession of Hugh Capet, Glaber explains the fortuity of such a king at a time when “foretold by signs amongst the elements” the church faced grave disasters.¹³² Without delay the book turns to the first such sign: a whale is seen off the coast of Normandy, so large it seemed like an island, and we are told that many witnessed its passing, which lasted until the third hour of the day. This leads into a long digression on the story of St. Brendan. More interestingly for our purposes, when introducing the whale's sighting, Glaber specifies that “it passed from the north to the west.”¹³³ In isolation one might read this as a mere description of leaving the North Sea via the English Channel, but there is a much clearer reason for this specification: it determines the signification of the sign. The whale serves explicitly as a harbinger of war: “After this portent of the ocean, war broke out in all the West, not just in Gaul but also in the islands across the sea.”¹³⁴ The image of the whale is nothing new to Christianity. As the reference to St. Brendan already highlights, it was an established feature of northern French and insular literary culture since at least the tenth century.¹³⁵ In this context, Jan Ziolkowski emphasizes the whale's longstanding negative associations with hell and treachery, in connection with the story of Jonah and the Physiologus tradition, in his analysis of the tenth-century monk Letaldus's De quodam piscatore quem ballena absorbuit. Ziolkowski likewise suggests that Glaber's own use of the whale as a portent of war draws upon these same associations.¹³⁶ While this is certainly a plausible backdrop here, we find no suggestion of it in the text itself. Indeed, in Glaber's rendition of St. Brendan's voyage, it is the whale itself that carries them east to the island “more favoured and more beautiful than any other.”¹³⁷ This is hardly what we would expect from an inherent sign of evil.

The invocation of the north, by contrast, is very clearly connected with themes of violence and warfare. We have already seen this in Glaber's warlike characterization of northern peoples like the Normans, Hungarians, and Liutici, but it pervades the use of the north as a theme throughout the text. While the portents of the natural world rarely, if ever, presage good fortune for the medieval chronicler, signs that Glaber associates with the north are consistently connected with warfare. A few chapters after the whale story in Book 2, for example, before King Robert allied with Richard II of Normandy and marched on Burgundy, Glaber reports the shape of a great dragon in the sky, flying from north to south.¹³⁸ Likewise, before Glaber's somewhat confused account of the French king's invasion during the Burgundian civil war, Bruno of Langres has a dream of horsemen assembled for battle, marching from the north to the west.¹³⁹ Glaber is not alone among eleventh-century authors in drawing this sort of connection. Sigebert of Gembloux, for example, editorializes the signs preceding the invasion of Attila the Hun, chief among them being a burning red sky to the north, explaining that these were no idle occurrences, but portents of coming events.¹⁴⁰ So also with Glaber's whale, the association with north and west is no idle comment, but speaks directly to the interpretation of the sign. Indeed, while Glaber does not specifically describe either Cnut or Conan, who instigate the respective wars in Britain and Gaul, as northern, they are portrayed within a similar framework of barbarity. After Cnut goes to war with the eminently Christian king of the Scots, Malcolm (d. 1034), Glaber explains that Cnut prolonged this strife, only ending “his barbarous behavior” due to the persuasion of Richard of Rouen, framing the incident as an example of God's expulsion of discord.¹⁴¹ Likewise, Glaber provides a prolonged description of the barbarity (omni prorsus urbanitate uacui) of the Bretons by way of prelude to Conan's strife with Fulk of Anjou, associating them with the consumption of milk, inane chatter, and their traditional vice, anger.¹⁴² By contrast, the one other reference to the west and the only one not associated with the north, is likewise the only one unrelated to warfare. During the reign of King Robert, Glaber notes that “a star of the sort called a comet appeared in the western sky” for three months from September.¹⁴³ Shortly after there was a great fire on Mont-Saint-Michel and Abbo of Fleury (d. 1004) was martyred at the hands of quarreling monks. Finally, the comet may also relate to the synods in Italy and Gaul that close this chapter. The significance of the north, therefore, is not merely geographical, but characteristic of the violent discord produced by barbarous peoples which is held in check by Christian rulership. It is against this discord that the west stands as a site of Christian order.

In all these examples, we can see a clear geographical focal point for Glaber's west: Gaul. This toponym not only serves Glaber as the main overarching term for broadly modern France, but also represents a geography with which Glaber personally identifies.¹⁴⁴ Except for the analogy of the cross, all references to the west more or less centrally involve Gaul. This is most evident in the emergence of the Normans, whose harrying of Gaul is immediately paraphrased as an attack on the west.¹⁴⁵ The wars in the west likewise include Britain, whose close proximity to Gaul at least in Glaber's mind can be seen also in the spread of famine in Book 4 out of the east, from Greece to Italy, then from Gaul to England.¹⁴⁶ More important, however, is what the west often seems to leave out for Glaber. There is at best a tenuous connection with Italy through its potential association with the western location of Halley's comet, and no connection whatsoever with the Saxons or Germans. Indeed, the latter are specifically presented as northern Christians in proximity to Raetia Secunda.¹⁴⁷ We should nevertheless be cautious not to overdetermine the scope of the west in Glaber's imagination, as the geographical signification of the cardinal points is typically determined by context in the first instance and often defies straightforward or consistent spatial classification.

Glaber's persistent association of occidens with Gaul nevertheless has some implications for Glaber's geography of the orbis Romanus, which can be cast in high relief by another poignant omission. It was Fischer's argument that from the eleventh century the language of east and west took on an exclusively Roman sense, citing Glaber's comments about the former division of the Roman world as the paradigm example: “It is certain that in former times the dominant empire of the whole world was divided, so that as Rome bore the primacy over all the Latin lands, so Constantinople was the separate capital of the Greeks and other peoples who live in the eastern lands beyond the sea.”¹⁴⁸ While Glaber does, at least by association, situate Constantinople and the Greeks in the east, the omission of a spatial designation for the Latins as in the west is telling. Neither here, nor elsewhere in the text, does Glaber use this terminology to refer to the Roman Empire or its western division in any clear or unambiguous manner. Rather, especially given the exclusion of Italy and Germania, regions central to Glaber's geography of the Romanum imperium, it seems that the core geographical and political association of occidens for Glaber is not Roman, but Frankish. The west's association, therefore, with imperial dignity and Christian order comes not from a Romano-ecclesiastical use of the terminology, but by way of its connection with the sphere of influence of the regnum Francorum.¹⁴⁹ In this way, just like the north, the west connotes a particular sort of space in the world, one that is for Glaber associated with the rulership of Frankish kings and Christianity, more than a clearly defined geographical region.

It is precisely in this capacity that the west is best understood through its persistent opposition with the north. In contrast with the dominant paradigm of oppositional pairs, through which the west has been understood to be constituted in opposition to the east, the post-Carolingian conception of European geography constructs the west as a space of Christian activity through the much more tangible opposition to the north. This brings us back one final time to Glaber's analogy of the cross. Unlike the other examples in the text, the north and west are here presented as coordinate regions, linked by providential favor. Given its likely inclusion in the first redaction, we may well ask whether this reflects more upon William of Volpiano's vision of the world, since it brings together both William's activity in Normandy and opposition to the pretensions of the eastern church, as seen in his letter from Book 4.¹⁵⁰ In a broader sense, however, we need not view this alternation between opposition and alignment as inconsistent. Within the original three-book structure, the opposition of north and west becomes pointedly metaphorical after the prophecy of the Cross. Although the north continues to connote the function of discord in the world, it is not used to describe an actual region, but to characterize the activity of different groups in the context of a rightly ordered Christian society or perhaps more often in its failure. It is only with the addition of the fourth book that a literal north returns in Conrad II's battle against the Liutici.

On a broader level, though, Glaber's geography remains enigmatic and difficult to pin down. It is clear that the four cardinal regions of the world are fundamental to his mental geography and provided a foundation for both historical and theological reflection on the state of the world. Yet, the particular scope and significance of these regions often appears idiosyncratic or even inconsistent. This is perhaps unsurprising for a work that developed over decades, across a variety of monasteries, over at least two redactions, and with some evident shifts in authorial perception (even bracketing the issue of William's influence). The quantity of material Glaber provides, however, is unfortunately insufficient to draw strong conclusions about how these different factors interact in his own geography. Nevertheless, if my argument here holds, a clear conclusion can be drawn. Despite his intermittent interest in the eastern empire and Church, Glaber's perception of the west is not based in an opposition between east and west. These terms are not used for discussion of the Church, nor does their use indicate such a context. Rather, however idiosyncratic we judge Glaber's perception of Africa or the location of Raetia, his overarching geographical vision sits comfortably within a set of reasonably well-charted trends in the post-Carolingian world. In keeping with such a context, Glaber's political geography is based solidly in a Germano-Frankish core and its relationship with a plurality of gentes, both the peoples of Christendom and the mostly northern peoples against which it is situated. But while the west builds upon this picture, representing a site of Christian activity, for Glaber it is not simply synonymous with either empire or Christianity. Rather, it evokes these notions through the geographical context of Gaul and Frankish rulership. Thus, while Glaber's prophecy of the Cross anticipates some ideas of western unity and election that would find forceful presentation in the wake of the First Crusade, as well as potentially hinting at a nascent notion of European identity, in the context of his work it represents a more closely Carolingian conception of world geography, standing not against Islam or the east, but against a still threatening north.