Nithard

Nithard (ca. 795–844), a Frankish historian, was the son of Bertha, daughter of Charlemagne. His father was Angilbert.

Life

Nithard was born sometime before Charlemagne was crowned Imperator Augustus in December 800. He was probably raised either at the imperial palace, where his mother continued to live until the death of the emperor, or at the monastery of St. Riquier, where his father was lay abbot. He would have been educated most likely at the imperial schola, which offered the kind of high-quality instruction in both military and literary training he is known to have received.[1]

Nithard himself later became lay abbot of St Riquier in commendam. He served his cousin Charles the Bald in both war and peace, carrying out two missions to Lothar during the Carolingian civil war and fighting at Fontenoy in June 841. It is probable that he died as the result of wounds received whilst fighting for him against the Northmen near Angoulême. The date of his death is disputed among scholars, but consensus is now for June 14, 844.[2] In the 11th century his body, with the fatal wound still visible, was found in the grave of his father, Angilbert.

Works

Nithard's historical work consists of four books on the history of the Carolingian empire under the turbulent sons of the emperor Louis I, especially during the turbulent period between 838 and 843. The Historiae or De dissensionibus filiorum Ludovici pii (On the Dissensions of the Sons of Louis the Pious) is valuable for the light which it throws upon the causes which led to the disintegration of the Carolingian empire. The first three of these books were written before Nithard's appointment as lay-abbey of St-Riquier in the winter of 842, the fourth and final in spring of 843 after taking up office there. Although rough in style, partisan in character and sometimes incorrect in detail, the books are the work of a man who had an intimate knowledge of the events which he relates, who possessed a clear and virile mind, and who above all was not a recluse but a man of action. They are dedicated to Charles the Bald, at whose request they were written.

His work as a military intellectual places him in the tradition of Xenophon, Julius Caesar, Ammianus Marcellinus, and Flavius Merobaudes. For the military historian, Nithard's description of the complex exercises of cavalry in Gaul is particularly valuable as a supplement to the account in the Tactical Handbook of Arrian as well as for its insight into Carolingian techniques.[3]

Only two manuscripts of the Historiae survived, one roughly contemporary and an incomplete Renaissance-era text useless in the reconstruction of the text.

  • The standard critical edition of Nithard (with French translation) is that of Philippe Lauer, Histoire des fils de Louis le Pieux, Paris: Champion, 1926.
  • The 1907 Latin edition of Ernst Müller was republished in 1965 as part of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica series.
  • An English translation by Bernhard Walter Scholz and Barbara Rogers is available in Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1972).

Notes

Public Domain This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "article name needed". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

  1. ↑ Bernard S. Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare: Prelude to Empire (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), p. 125 online.
  2. ↑ Cawley, Charles, NITHARD, son of Angilbert Medieval Lands Project, Medieval Lands database, Foundation for Medieval Genealogy,
  3. ↑ Bernard S. Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare: Prelude to Empire (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), pp. 125–130.

Further reading

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