A Prayer for the Holy Roman Emperor, this Witness Written in the 9th Century, the Text Likely Used for Charlemagne and his Descendants and Referencing the Holy Roman Empire and Emperor Themselves

It is fascinating to think that the men and women who said this prayer lived early enough to have perhaps lived concurrently with Charlemagne himself, who died in 814, but certainly with his son Louis, who lived into the 840s.

 

Documents of any import or interest from this early era are very uncommon

The Rise of Charlemagne

The late eighth century saw a new power rising in Europe in the form of the empire of Charlemagne (747-814). Originally from the region of north-eastern France and the adjacent territories of the Low Countries, within a few decades most of Europe from the Channel to the Pyrenees, eastwards into much of Germany, and downwards into Italy had fallen under his sway. It is clear that he saw the correct fostering of religion, writing, reading and learning in general as a vehicle to give this unit a collective identity, remaking the Roman Empire as he saw it out of the fragmented and disparate communities left behind when that power structure fell in the fifth century.

In 800, Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III, reviving the ancient imperial title in the West.

Charlemagne’s only surviving legitimate son, Louis the Pious, inherited the entire empire. Louis was deeply religious and capable but lacked his father’s political and military authority. He ruled as Emperor (814–840) and sought to maintain unity, but his own reforms and family disputes soon undermined that goal.

These conflicts ended with the Treaty of Verdun (843), which permanently divided Charlemagne’s empire into three main kingdoms: West Francia, ruled by Charles the Bald, became the foundation of modern France; East Francia, ruled by Louis the German, evolved into Germany; Middle Francia, ruled by Lothair I, included northern Italy, Burgundy, and the Low Countries; this area later fractured further.

Louis the German ruled East Francia from 843-876, followed by Carloman of Bavaria, Louis the Younger, and Charles the Fat.

Although politically divided, Charlemagne’s empire left a lasting legacy. The idea of a Christian emperor ruling Europe persisted, inspiring the later Holy Roman Empire (begun in 962 under Otto I). His reforms in education, administration, and law profoundly shaped medieval Europe.

The Sacramentary was one of the oldest tools of the Western clergy. It combined the various readings needed for Masses and the liturgy in a single convenient volume for use by a bishop or a priest. The earliest examples to survive are the Leonine and Gelasian Sacramentaries, both with origins in the seventh century, but as with the Bible and other key Christian books the careful reform and correction of such texts was at the forefront of the earliest waves of the Carolingian renaissance. Between 781 and 791, Charlemagne wrote to Pope Hadrian I asking him for an approved copy of the service-book of the Roman Church. That was examined, added to on numerous occasions and disseminated, and became the Gregorian Sacramentary. It is likely to have been further added to in the provinces of Europe, and the text dominated liturgical practice for the next three centuries.

As a sign of loyalty to and affiliation with the new Roman Emperor, the service officiant would lead the congregation in a prayer to the Empire and Emperor.

Manuscript leaf from an early Sacramentary, in Latin, manuscript on vellum, Votive Masses for the emperor (‘Deus qui ad praedicandum aeterni regis euangelium romanum imperium preparasti; pretende famulo tuo .N. regi nostro arma celestia …’), for rain, and in time of war (one column only).

[most probably Germany, second half of the ninth century]

Leaf, measuring 234 by 125 mm, blind-ruled for two columns of 33 lines, written in two sizes of a large and rounded Carolingian minuscule, rubrics in orange-red, initials in red or brown, spaces left for some initials, some punctuation marks for public reading (some perhaps added later), recovered from reuse in a later binding with consequent damage

This leaf gives great insight into the life, political and cultural, that the congregation led, containing not only the rare early reference to the Holy Roman Emperor (“God, who prepared the [Holy] Roman Empire for the preaching of the Gospel of the eternal King, stretch forth the heavenly weapons to your servant N., our king.”) but also a preparation for rain during dry spells and another to keep them safe during times of war. The N. above refers to “nomen” or the name of the current Emperor.

It is fascinating to think that the men and women who said this prayer lived early enough to have perhaps lived concurrently with Charlemagne who died in 814 but certainly with his son Louis. These changes would have been uttered at a time when the consolidation of their empire was a recent and not distant event and Charlemagne’s grandchild was on the throne. These were events of real import to them and had daily consequences.

Our gratitude to manuscript expert Dr. Timothy Bolton, who aided in the research of this document.

Provenance

1. The inclusion of the unusual mass for a Holy Roman Emperor (“Deus qui ad praedicandum aeterni regis euangelium romanum imperium preparasti …”, corresponding to H.A. Wilson, The Gregorian Sacramentary under Charles the Great, 1915, p. 187) suggests production within a scriptorium fully under Carolingian control in the second half of the ninth century. The script was taken by another earlier cataloguer to be Italian, but Italy remained only partially under Carolingian rule throughout the ninth and tenth centuries, and so the mass for an emperor as well as the likely origin of the sixteenth-century scrawls from the period of the fragments reuse in a later binding (see below), consolidate the impression that the paleography here is Germanic instead.

2. Reused in a later binding, apparently an account book, with a sixteenth-century hand on a related leaf adding an inscription to one leaf: “… Arnelofo … blanksbergi comitis” (indicating the name Arnulf, and perhaps the place Blankenburg at the foot of the Harz mountains in Saxony-Anholt in middle Germany).

3. Maggs Bros, Catalogue 1002 Western Text Hands from the Late 9th to Early 14th Century (1980), no. 8, and illustrated there.

4. Mark Lansburgh (1925-2013), teacher, printer and book collector (on him, see C. Dutschke, ‘Mark Lansburgh: Collector and Seller of Medieval Manuscripts’, in Medieval Manuscripts and Their Provenance: Essays in Honour of Barbara A. Shailor, ed. by A.S.G. Edwards (2024), pp. 116-31).

5. Neil F. Phillips (1924–1997), QC, of Montreal, New York, and Virginia: his MS 698; sold in Sotheby’s, 2 December 1997, lot 42.

6. Ernst Boehlen (1935-2022) of Bern, Switzerland; his MS. 804.