The Silent Succession of Riculf of Mainz ( d. 813 )

1. Introduction

On 16 October 786, archbishop Lull of Mainz passed away at Hersfeld ^[1]. He had occupied the see for over thirty years. He was succeeded by Riculf, an East-Frank with close ties to the Carolingian court, who would preside over the diocese of Mainz until his own death in 813. Riculf’s episcopate witnessed profound changes to the see of Mainz and the Carolingian Church at large: the re-emergence of a metropolitan system ^[2], the conquest and conversion of Saxony ^[3], the liturgical and institutional changes effected by Carolingian correctio ^[4]. Nevertheless, Riculf’s episcopate constitutes a poorly documented phase in Mainz’ history ^[5]. There are hints of a stellar career in Carolingian service. A long-time member of Charlemagne’s court, Riculf’s learned nickname among his fellow courtiers was ‘Damoetas’, after a shepherd from Vergil’s third ‘Eclogue’ ^[6]. Yet there survives little from Riculf’s own hand and there is no vita from which to establish a chronology of his life. Theodor Schieffer, who in 1950 published the only article-length study of Riculf’s episcopate to date, compared the piecemeal evidence at his disposal to the individual stones of a mosaic: only by considering such fragments within the wider frame of Mainz’ development as a bishopric and the ecclesiastical policies of Charlemagne could a meaningful image be discerned ^[7]. More recent scholarship tends to discuss Riculf when he appears in the orbit of better-known contemporaries. Janet Nelson and Franz Staab have explored Riculf’s relationship to Charlemagne’s third wife, Fastrada, who, like Riculf, hailed from the Mainz region, possibly from the same extended family ^[8]. Riculf’s other claim to fame is his friendship with the Anglo-Saxon scholar Alcuin, who is known to have addressed at least five letters to his “dearest son” Damoetas ^[9].

The present article is written in the spirit of Schieffer’s contextualising approach. It focuses on an ostensibly minor detail in Riculf’s life: the date of his archiepiscopal consecration. When considered against the backdrop of Mainz’ development under the Carolingians, however, this detail will turn out to be not so minor at all. The current scholarly consensus is that Riculf succeeded Lull within months of the latter’s passing near the end of 786. This assumption rests for most part on the testimony of Marianus Scotus, an eleventh-century Irish chronicler working in Mainz. Marianus devoted several chronicle entries to Riculf’s episcopate, including one on his episcopal consecration. Riculf, so we read in the MGH edition of the ‘Chronicon’, was consecrated on Sunday, 4 March 787 at Fritzlar, less than five months after his predecessor’s death ^[10]. This date has been cited by modern scholarship ever since ^[11].

This article questions this established take on events. First and foremost, it submits that the consecration date commonly ascribed to Marianus is based on an editorial intervention by Georg Waitz, the MGH editor of the text, and is not in fact supported by the manuscript evidence. Using the two principal manuscript witnesses for the ‘Chronicon’, this article will show that Marianus did not date Riculf’s episcopal consecration to 4 March 787, but to 4 March 798, so eleven years later. This revised testimony in turn invites us to reconsider other facets of Riculf’s episcopacy: its starting date and chronology, the political circumstances surrounding Riculf’s elevation, and the long-standing question whether Riculf was immediately consecrated as archbishop upon his succession or whether he obtained this dignity only later on, as part of Mainz’ elevation to metropolitan status.

The article will proceed in four stages. A first section will lay out the surviving evidence for Riculf’s episcopate and the chronological framework that has traditionally been derived from it. A second section then turns to the ‘Chronicon’ and related texts. It will be shown that, despite using an idiosyncratic dating system, Marianus and his fellow chroniclers at Mainz purposely assigned Riculf’s consecration to the year 798, knowing full well that this implied an eleven-year gap between Lull’s death and the formal installation of his successor. A third section examines this testimony against the norms and practices surrounding episcopal successions in Riculf’s time. A fourth and final section will then consider two scenarios: ( 1 ) that Riculf succeeded Lull in 786 or soon thereafter, but that his consecration was delayed or postponed somehow, and ( 2 ) that the see of Mainz was kept vacant for the eleven years between Lull’s death and Riculf’s consecration, with the weight of the evidence leaning towards the second scenario.

2. Antistes Famosus

When it comes to the chronology of Riculf’s episcopate, scholarship continues to rely on Johann Friedrich Böhmer’s authoritative ‘Regesten zur Geschichte der Mainzer Erzbischöfe’. First published in 1877, fourteen years after Böhmer’s death, it remains to this day an eminently useful work of reference that records, in chronologically ordered entries or ‘Regesten’, the known activities of the medieval archbishops of Mainz ^[12]. Böhmer gives 27 entries for Riculf, significantly less than for his predecessors Boniface ( 130 entries ) and Lull ( 82 entries ), but more than for his immediate successor Haistulf ( 17 entries ). Strikingly, although Riculf’s episcopate is thought to have commenced in 786 or shortly thereafter, 20 of the 27 entries pertain to the period 800–813. These latter entries show Riculf engaged as one would expect of an archbishop: instructing suffragans, building and consecrating churches in his metropolitan province, and settling a monastic conflict ^[13]. They also highlight Riculf’s close connection to the ruling family and his ongoing involvement in affairs of the realm: he accompanied Charlemagne to Rome in 800, where he witnessed the king’s imperial coronation and spoke out in favour of the discredited Pope Leo III ^[14]. He stood witness to Charlemagne’s will in 811, the second magnate to sign the document after the arch-chaplain Hildebald of Cologne ^[15]. In his final year, he co-headed the Mainz reform council of 813, which congregated in the atrium of the newly refurbished church of St Alban, Riculf’s personal building project ^[16]. He died two months after the synod, on 9 August 813, and was buried in St Alban’s ^[17]. Böhmer’s last entry cites Riculf’s epitaph: “I was a famous bishop by the name of Riculf, renowned for his position in the palace of the king.” ^[18]

What little survives of Riculf’s writings also dates from the period after 800 ^[19]. This includes two letters to suffragan bishops, one to Bernhard of Worms dated c. 803–813, the other to Egino of Konstanz in 810 ^[20]. A third letter, addressed to Charlemagne c. 811–12 in response to an enquiry about baptism, has also been ascribed to Riculf, though the attribution must remain conjectural ^[21]. Besides these letters, we have the text of three church inscriptions, now lost, which were composed by, or for, Riculf. One was at the church of St Ferrutius in Bleidenstadt, which Riculf dedicated in 812 ^[22]. The other two were at the church of St Alban in Mainz, commemorating, respectively, the completion of the new church in 805, and Riculf’s death in 813 ^[23]. Riculf was active also as a church legislator. He helped draw up the acts of the 813-reform council at Mainz, alongside Hildebald of Cologne and Arn of Salzburg ^[24]. Furthermore, Rudolf Pokorny has linked Riculf to a brief set of episcopal instructions to the priests of an episcopal diocese, which appears to have been drawn up at Mainz somewhere in the 800s or 810s ^[25]. Then there is Riculf’s supposed connection to the ninth-century corpus of ( partly forged ) church legislation known collectively as the ‘False Decretals’ of Pseudo-Isidore. In the preface to a sub-corpus within the ‘Decretals’ – the ‘False Capitularies’ of Benedictus Levita – the compiler claims he found a collection of neglected capitularies at the archives of the see of Mainz, which the former metropolitan Riculf had stored there ^[26]. This claim is generally held to be a retrospective invention: a smoke-screen put up by the mid-ninth-century compilers who were in reality working from Corbie ^[27]. Even so, it suggests that Riculf enjoyed a reputation as an episcopal legislator and collector of church law among later generations.

If our understanding of Riculf’s post-800 episcopal career is relatively solid, his pre-800 life presents a greater challenge, as is evinced by the seven entries Böhmer was able to compile for this earlier period in his ‘Regesten’. Riculf’s date of birth is uncertain. His East-Frankish roots must be deduced from an undated reference in a donor list from Fulda: together with his brother Rutekar, “bishop Riculf” is said to have donated property in the Wetterau, in the Main region, so east of the Rhine ^[28]. Böhmer hypothesised that Riculf already served as a deacon at Mainz at some point prior to his episcopate ^[29]. If so, this must have been before 780, when Riculf can be located with some certainty at Charlemagne’s court, as one of the regulars of the aula regis ^[30]. It is assumed, though not quite proven, that Riculf came to serve as one of the palace chaplains ^[31]. In this capacity, he would have looked after the king’s liturgical needs and taken care of the royal archive, relic collection and treasury ^[32]. Riculf also seems to have done his fair share of travelling for the Carolingian cause. In 781, “the deacon Riculf” was one of two royal missi dispatched to Bavaria to remind duke Tassilo of his loyalties ^[33]. The event is described in the ‘Annales regni Francorum’, making Riculf one of the few magnates under Charlemagne to be mentioned by name in this court-oriented history ^[34]. In 796, Riculf joined Charlemagne and his sons on a punitive campaign into Saxony ^[35]. Travel and absence are themes also in Theodulf of Orléans’ celebrated poem ‘On the court’, composed early in 796 ^[36]. Introducing Riculf directly after Alcuin, the poem starts by portraying him as a man of “powerful voice, alert intelligence and polished speech, noble in his accomplishments and in his faith”, only to follow up with a rather more enigmatic, and possibly caustic, characterisation: “even if [ Riculf ] dallies long in a distant region, he does not return from there with empty hands.” ^[37]

Beyond Alcuin and Theodulf, recent scholarship has come to associate Riculf with another influential figure at court: Fastrada, Charlemagne’s third wife, who was queen from 783 until her death in 794. Franz Staab assumed the two shared a family connection ^[38]. Janet Nelson conjectured that Riculf at some point became part of Fastrada’s inner circle or retinue ( comitatus ) ^[39]. It should be underlined that Riculf’s association with Fastrada is nowhere explicitly attested in the sources. Their connection is inferred by putting together certain details surrounding her life. At the roots stands their shared East-Frankish background: like Riculf, Fastrada hailed from Germania, as learned contemporaries were wont to call the lands beyond the Rhine ^[40]. Charter evidence ties her to Massenheim, in the Main area, close to where Riculf and his brother Rutekar held property ^[41]. Another hint is offered by Notker the Stammer in his biography of Charlemagne: when the king went on campaign against the Avars, presumably in 791, he is said to have left the queen in the custody of a bishop “who held the principal see of Germania”, meaning either Mainz or Cologne ^[42]. The story is late and misnames the queen as Hildegard, Charlemagne’s second wife who died in 783. It was intended, at any rate, as a humorous reflection on episcopal arrogance, probably targeted at Notker’s contemporary Liuthard of Mainz ( d. 889 ) ^[43]. Still, it fits the royal itinerary of 790–791: the royal family spent the summer months of 790 in and around Mainz, and when Charlemagne departed for Avar territory in the Spring of 791, Fastrada did not join him on campaign ^[44]. The final and most oft-cited piece of evidence for a connection between Riculf and Fastrada are the events surrounding her death. When she died in Frankfurt on 10 August 794, the queen was buried not at St Denis or some other royal monastery, but at the church of St Alban in Mainz ^[45]. While practical considerations must have played a role – Mainz was just downriver from Frankfurt, no small advantage when one is trying to transport a body in the middle of August – the choice of burial site is striking, nonetheless. As mentioned above, Riculf came to rebuild the church of St Alban during his episcopate, a project he finished in 805 ^[46]. It is unclear whether the building programme had already started when the queen was interred in the church, or whether Riculf decided to rebuild the church because it now housed Fastrada’s royal remains ^[47]. Either way, it shows Riculf laying claim to a special connection with the queen and her legacy.

The picture emerging of Riculf’s pre-800 career is that of an influential courtier who travelled widely and whose family roots lay in the Main region. He was ordained as a deacon by 781 and possibly served as a palace chaplain. It is not difficult to see how someone with such credentials eventually ended up bishop of Mainz, especially since the Carolingians were actively involved in episcopal successions in their realm and were not above appointing their own candidates ^[48]. Nor should Riculf’s travels in the 790s be considered incongruous with an episcopal dignity. Bishops frequently travelled under Charlemagne as ambassadors and missi and were even known to join him on campaign when the occasion called for it ^[49]. It should be noted, all the same, that despite Riculf’s colourful appearances in court poetry from the 780s and 790s, none of this material refers to him as bishop of Mainz or shows him acting in such a capacity. The charter evidence – both royal and from Mainz – is similarly silent on this point ^[50]. In fact, the first securely datable reference to Riculf as ( arch )bishop of Mainz stems from June 800, in a letter from Alcuin to Arn of Salzburg. In this letter, Alcuin informs his correspondent about a royal plan, abandoned soon afterwards, to hand the disgraced bishop Felix of Urgell over to “archbishop Riculf” for safe-guarding and correction ^[51].

While there are no securely datable references to Riculf as bishop prior to 800, there is a body of less securely datable evidence that might be called upon to fill the gaps: the five surviving letters addressed to Riculf by his fellow courtier Alcuin, edited for the MGH by Ernst Dümmler in 1895. Two of these letters do in fact mention an episcopal dignity. In the first of these, letter no. 4 in Dümmler’s edition, Alcuin can be seen to congratulate Riculf on obtaining the see of Mainz. He addressed it to “the great fisherman Damoetas”, a play on Riculf’s courtly nickname and his new apostolic duties as a ‘fisher of men’. Among other things, Alcuin exhorted the new bishop “to take care not to fall short of your predecessors, so that you may be deemed worthy of equal merit in heaven to those whose chair you now occupy.” ^[52] While this letter survives without a date, it was clearly written soon after Riculf’s elevation. For that reason, Dümmler assigned it to 787, in accordance with the chronology established by Böhmer and others, rendering it the earliest of the five letters in his edition.

The other letter mentioning an episcopal dignity is no. 212, which Alcuin wrote to Riculf while the latter was in Rome, so in 801. Not only does it address Riculf as “the venerable father and archbishop Damoetas” ( venerando patri et [ … ] damoete archisacerdoti ), it also refers to his archepiscopal pallium ^[53]. In Dümmler’s reckoning, no. 212 was the latest of the five letters that Alcuin sent to Riculf. The three remaining letters Dümmler assigned to the period c. 793–795, as no. 25, 26 and 35. None of these mention an episcopal dignity. Letter no. 26 does contain advice on how Riculf should conduct himself amidst “the occupations of the world.” Alcuin admonishes his addressee to be just when hearing legal cases, to aid those who seek refuge with him, and to look out for the poor ^[54]. Such responsibilities befitted a Carolingian bishop, though they also aligned well with the duties of a secular official like a judge, count or missus. Indeed, when set alongside letter no. 4, written upon Riculf’s consecration as archbishop, letter no. 26 seems comparatively worldly in its phrasing and concerns, with letter 4 putting a far stronger focus on episcopal duties such as preaching, reading the Gospels, and following the examples of the saints ^[55].

Alcuin’s letters, then, do not provide independent evidence that Riculf was already ( arch )bishop of Mainz by 787 or even the mid-790s. The one securely datable letter referring to Riculf as archbishop, no. 212, postdates 800, while Alcuin’s letter of congratulations, no. 4, is dated to 787 by modern scholarship only because that is considered the accepted consecration date. The three remaining letters do not mention an episcopal dignity. If anything, they are somewhat incongruent with a consecration date in the late 780s. Whereas the two letters that refer to Riculf as archbishop lean towards the dignified end of the spectrum – Alcuin uses Riculf’s full titulature in the salutation and couches his advice in biblical allusions – the other three are less formal, ranging from friendly and playful to paternal and even patronising. Letter 25, in particular, stands out, as here Alcuin uniquely places himself first in the salutatio, a signal that he considered himself to be the higher-ranking party ^[56]. For Philipp Jaffé, who edited the letters for his ‘Monumenta Alcuiniana’ in 1873, this was enough to assign the letter to the mid-780s, concluding that “it is clear from the tone of this whole letter that it was sent when Riculf had not yet been elevated to the episcopate.” ^[57] Dümmler, too, took note of the tone in his MGH edition, but dated the letter to “c. 794 ( ? )” all the same, because this date better aligned with the letter’s contents ^[58]. More recently, Donald Bullough has securely dated the letter to 796, as it refers to both a Saxon campaign that Riculf joined, and a Roman embassy undertaken by Angilbert of Saint-Riquier ^[59]. This leaves us with a conundrum. Alcuin was often playful in his communications with other members of Charlemagne’s court: he retained the nickname Damoetas in all five letters to Riculf. Yet he was also conscious of social hierarchy and its impact on epistolary conventions ^[60]. For him to have addressed Riculf in such a patronising fashion in 796 is thus incongruous – at least if one assumes that Riculf had already been archbishop of Mainz for nine years by that point.

For the moment, let us try to sum up the results of this overview. The earliest datable contemporary references to Riculf as archbishop of Mainz start in 800, after which there is ample evidence for his episcopal activities, both by outsiders and Riculf’s own hand. For the period prior to 800, conversely, there survives no contemporary reference to Riculf as bishop of Mainz: not in the charters, not in court poetry, and not in Alcuin’s letters. On the whole, the strongest indication that Riculf was already bishop by the 790s is Notker’s late ninth-century story about a bishop holding “the principal see of Germania”, who stayed behind with the queen when Charlemagne went off to fight the Avars. This is not a lot to go on. Considering this dearth of evidence, on what grounds did Böhmer date Riculf’s elevation to the see of Mainz to 787? The answer to this question points to a series of annalistic references to the death of archbishop Lull of Mainz and his succession by Riculf that start in the mid-ninth century, but mostly date from the second half of the eleventh century. It is to this annalistic corpus that we will now turn.

3. Riculf’s Succession – The Sources

4. Intermezzo – Carolingian Episcopal Successions

An episcopal succession in the Carolingian period involved several steps. These could occur in close chronological proximity, even at one and the same occasion, but might also take place separately, over a somewhat longer period of time. After the previous occupant of the see had passed away, the first important step in the succession procedure was the election of a successor. The ancient church councils had assigned this task to three groups: the see’s clergy, its citizens, and the bishops of the ecclesiastical province to which the see belonged ^[117]. These were to convene at an assembly headed by the province’s metropolitan, where a candidate was to be selected, then questioned about his orthodoxy, moral character, and overall suitability for office. If this proved satisfying, he was to be elected by shared ‘consensus’ ^[118]. The Merovingian synods continued to uphold this line, while at the same time extending a prerogative of ‘confirmation’ to the Frankish rulers: an elected candidate should now be approved by the king before any further steps could be taken, a prerogative that some Merovingians treated more like a right of appointment ^[119]. This ambivalent situation persisted under the Carolingians. The canonical rights of clergy, citizens and bishops in episcopal elections were widely cited, but so was the royal prerogative to intervene ^[120]. Rudolf Schieffer’s recent exploration of episcopal successions under Charlemagne lists ten documented cases of royal involvement, some of them straight-up appointments, but he assumed the actual figure must have been considerably higher ^[121].

After a candidate was elected and royal approval had been obtained, the see’s metropolitan would proceed to consecrate the candidate ^[122]. Depending on the circumstances, this could occur directly after the election, at one and the same gathering, or at another time and place. The canonical norm, however, was for the new bishop to be consecrated within three months of the see falling vacant ^[123]. Several consecration rites were in use in late eighth-century Francia, so the precise actions involved could vary somewhat ^[124]. Typically, two bishops would hold a closed gospel book over the candidate, while the metropolitan laid a hand on the candidate’s head, followed by the other bishops present. The metropolitan would then lead the congregation through a series of prayers and responses, culminating in an ordination prayer. The rite would be concluded with the anointing of the candidate’s hands ^[125]. If the consecration was an archiepiscopal one, the presiding bishop would either be one of his suffragans or the metropolitan of a neighbouring province ^[126]. In that case, moreover, the consecration was followed by yet another step: the obtainment of the pallium or superhumerale, a white woolen band that was to be worn around the shoulders as a token of the archepiscopal dignity. The new archbishop would either send a written profession of faith to Rome and, upon papal acceptance, be rewarded the pallium by papal legates in a ceremony in the local cathedral church, or the archbishop would cross the Alps himself to give his profession of faith in front of the pope and receive the pallium directly from the latter’s hands ^[127]. In some cases, the entire consecration ceremony took place at Rome with the pope acting as consecrator ^[128].

The above constitutes a normative outline of Carolingian episcopal successions. Many of the steps could turn out differently in practice, out of opportunism or ignorance, or because circumstances on the ground simply did not allow for certain steps or measures. Two caveats are particularly relevant for our case. One concerns the Carolingian approach to episcopal vacancies, which was distinctly two-edged ^[129]. On the one hand, the Carolingians were keen to present themselves as reformers who sought to remedy the state of decrepitude and lawlessness in which their Merovingian predecessors had supposedly left the Frankish Church. This included dealing promptly with episcopal vacancies. At the Council of Ver of 755, Pippin III and the assembled Frankish bishops thought it prudent to repeat the patristic regulation that vacant sees should be filled within three months ^[130]. The start of the reign of Charlemagne ( and that of his brother Carloman ) in 768/769 was characterised by a flurry of episcopal appointments, suggesting a royal eagerness to fill the vacancies that remained still ^[131]. In 779 at Herstal, Charlemagne once again urged vacant sees to be occupied “without delay” ( sine tardidate ) ^[132]. On the other hand, Charlemagne also seems to have considered it in his own interest to keep certain sees unoccupied for a time ^[133]. Such vacancies could last for years or even decades and involve prominent dioceses ^[134]. When Angilram of Metz died in 791, the see remained unoccupied for the rest of Charlemagne’s reign, to be filled only in 816 ^[135]. The death of Tilpin of Rheims in 793 or 794 ushered in a nine-year vacancy ^[136]. Shortage of evidence makes it difficult to generalise about the motives at work here ^[137]. Economic concerns could certainly have played a role: during a vacancy, the ruler was in a position to draw income from the see’s landed possessions and bestow these as benefices on supporters ^[138]. Political control may have been another motive, as a see that remained vacant for a longer time would usually be put under the administrative care of a royally appointed overseer ( an abbot or even a lay magnate ), while the city’s liturgical needs were taken care of by the local clergy or by a chorbishop ^[139]. In the case of Metz – a bishopric with close ties to the Carolingian family – Charlemagne may have hoped to use the vacancy to improve the see’s standing within the church province of Trier, whose metropolitan status he came to suspend around this same time ^[140].

This brings us to a second caveat. The above model of episcopal succession presupposes the existence of a fully developed system of church provinces with a stable metropolitan hierarchy. The existence of such a system cannot be taken for granted for late eighth-century Francia. The ancient metropolitan system had largely disappeared in the Frankish kingdoms by the time the Carolingians rose to power. It was gradually re-introduced under Charlemagne and his successors with support of the bishops of Rome, but this was a complex process that has proven difficult to reconstruct in detail ^[141]. The diocese of Mainz is a case in point. At the beginning of the eighth century, Mainz was just one of several bishoprics in the Rhineland, without any special authority over its neighbouring sees ^[142]. Boniface ( d. 754 ) was granted the pallium in 732 by Pope Gregory III, making him the only archbishop in Francia at the time, but this was prior to his appointment to the see of Mainz in 747. That is to say, Boniface was an archbishop by papal dispensation, not because he ruled over a metropolitan diocese ^[143]. His successor Lull ( d. 786 ) famously failed to become an archbishop when he rose to the see of Mainz in 754 – Boniface’s pallium was transferred to Chrodegang of Metz – yet Lull behaved like an archbishop nonetheless, intervening in neighbouring sees and going so far as to forge a papal diploma that placed Mainz at the head of an extensive church province ^[144]. When between 780 and 782 he finally obtained the pallium with royal backing, this must have been an important step towards Mainz’ elevation to metropolitan status, but not necessarily the final one ^[145]. The organisation of the metropolitan province of Mainz was still ongoing in the ninth century, when the newly established Saxon sees were divided between Mainz and Cologne ^[146].

Where does all of this leave us with regard to Riculf’s succession? The picture sketched by Marianus and other annalists in Mainz was that Riculf ‘succeeded’ ( successit ) Lull in 786 or shortly thereafter, initiating a 27-year-long episcopal reign, but that he was ‘consecrated’ ( ordinatur, consecratur ) bishop or archbishop only in 798. Evidently, this does not fit the canonical procedure set out above, which emphasised the importance of a quick succession, ideally within three months of the see falling vacant. But beyond norms and ideals: does it fit Carolingian practice? This is a more complex question, and the answer depends on how we interpret the annalistic evidence.

5. Riculf’s Succession – Context

Let us start with the most concrete claim: that Riculf received consecration at the Church of St Peter in Fritzlar, on Sunday, 4 March 798. That Riculf received consecration at Fritzlar has long been accepted ^[147]. The site would have been a fitting location for a number of reasons, not least its connection to Mainz’ most illustrious bishop: St Boniface. Fritzlar had already been an established settlement when the Anglo-Saxon missionary had arrived there in the early 720s ^[148]. Protected by the Frankish hill-top fort of Büraburg on the other side of the river Eder, Fritzlar and the nearby settlement of Geismar had been the scene of one of Boniface’s more notorious missionary acts: the cutting down of the Geismar Oak, in 723–724 ^[149]. By 732/733, Boniface had founded a church in Fritzlar, dedicated to St Peter, and home to a budding monastic community ^[150]. When Boniface accepted the see of Mainz in 747, Fritzlar became part of its diocese ^[151]. There were other reasons why Fritzlar made a fitting stage for Riculf’s episcopal consecration. Fritzlar was an important military site during the Saxon Wars ( 772–804 ), which were still ongoing in 798. In 774, Saxon forces had attacked the settlement, specifically targeting the church of St Peter. The church had been saved, as the ‘Annales regni Francorum’ would commemorate some decades later, by the miraculous appearance of two angelic youths clad in white, who scared off the attackers while Fritzlar’s residents looked on from the walls of the nearby Büraburg ^[152]. That a court-related history would draw attention to a divine intervention in support of the Franks is not of itself surprising but gains further significance when we consider that by the time the ‘Annales regni Francorum’ were set down in 788–793, the monastery of St Peter at Fritzlar had become a royal abbey. Bishop Lull had donated the church to Charlemagne somewhere between 775 and 782, following a wider pattern of prominent Rhineland monasteries being placed under royal protection ^[153]. In terms of location, in short, Marianus’ report on Riculf’s consecration makes a lot of sense: St Peter’s at Fritzlar was a royal monastery under the ecclesiastical authority of Mainz, founded by St Boniface, and of ongoing strategic and symbolic importance during the Saxon Wars.

This brings us to the date: Sunday, 4 March 798. Leaving aside, for the moment, the fact that it implies an eleven-year delay between Lull’s death and Riculf’s official succession, the date fits remarkably well with Carolingian royal activities around this time. According to contemporary annals, Charlemagne departed for Saxony in November 797, setting up camp near the Weser at a place called Herstelle, where he would remain until April 798. Significantly, Herstelle was located only 70 kilometres to the north of Fritzlar. The two places were directly connected by waterways, through the Weser, Fulda, and Eder. This placed Charlemagne within a two-days’ journey from Fritzlar right at the time of Riculf’s consecration. The annals suggest, moreover, that Charlemagne was not merely on campaign in Saxony, but was holding court there. The ‘Annales Laureshamenses’ report he intended to develop the encampment along the Weser into a permanent royal residence: he had houses ( mansiones ) built at the camp, dubbing the newly emerging site Herstelle – ‘resting-station for the army’– after the already extant royal palace of Herstal in modern-day Belgium ^[154]. Charlemagne spent the winter and spring at his newly emerging residence: he celebrated Christmas ( 25 December ) and Easter ( 8 April ) there, received foreign embassies, and dispatched legates to Spain and Italy ^[155]. He even found time to engage in a lively epistolary exchange with his former court scholar Alcuin, presently at Tours, whom he invited to come to Saxony to join the Spring proceedings ^[156].

There is no evidence that these proceedings included a royal trip to Fritzlar during the first days of March. Nor did Riculf’s consecration necessarily require the king to be present. That said, we have seen that Charlemagne had a tendency to insinuate himself in episcopal successions, putting forward his own favourites for key dioceses, and even keeping sees vacant if it suited his purposes. Riculf was a long-standing member of the royal court and had been closely involved in Charlemagne’s recent campaigns across the Rhine. We know he joined the king in Saxony in 796 and we can assume he was present in Herstelle the next winter as well. The decision for Riculf to be consecrated bishop of Mainz in March 798, when the court was still residing in Herstelle, would have been made, if not on Charlemagne’s direct initiative, then certainly with his support and consent. That Riculf went on to be consecrated at Fritzlar, a renowned royal abbey which happened to be close to the court’s current whereabouts, further suggests Charlemagne had a hand in the proceedings, and that he would probably have taken the opportunity to visit the monastery of St Peter to oversee the consecration of his loyal courtier.

Beyond Charlemagne’s proximity, the consecration date of 4 March 798 is felicitous for other reasons. For one, it solves a logistic problem associated with the traditional consecration date of 4 March 787, namely, that the king was travelling through Italy in that year. Indeed, annalistic evidence suggests he already spent Christmas 786 in Firenze, meaning Charlemagne may not even have been informed of Lull’s passing on 16 October until he had already crossed the Alps ^[157]. The traditional chronology thus allows little room for royal involvement in Riculf’s elevation and consecration ^[158]. Another argument in favour of the new consecration date is that it creates more clarity on the nature of Riculf’s episcopal dignity. As said above, Mainz only gradually developed into a metropolitan diocese during the second half of the eighth century. It has remained an open question, in this light, whether Riculf was immediately consecrated archbishop when he succeeded Lull to the see of Mainz, or whether he was promoted to the archepiscopal dignity some years after his consecration as regular bishop. Examples of such a promotion include Riculf’s contemporaries Hildebald of Cologne, who had already been bishop for some years when he was raised to the archiepiscopate in 795, and Arn of Salzburg, who had served as bishop of his Bavarian diocese since 785 before it was transformed into a metropolitan see in 798 ^[159]. Such promotions from bishop to archbishop while the see was occupied did not involve a second consecration ritual ^[160]. It was enough for the new archbishop to obtain papal consent through a profession of faith, which was confirmed through the granting of the pallium just as with regular archepiscopal successions. Scholars have so far approached the question of Riculf’s episcopal dignity with the traditional consecration date of 787 in mind ^[161]. The case for a gradual promotion for Riculf does not seem overly far-fetched under such circumstances: his colleagues Hildebald and Arn went through a similar trajectory and were elevated to the archepiscopal dignity only in the second half of the 790s. But the picture changes when we take the new consecration date of March 798 as our vantage point. Riculf is explicitly referred to as archbishop by June 800. Alcuin alludes to him wearing the pallium by the early months of 801. That leaves a two-year window for Riculf to have been promoted from bishop to archbishop: not impossible, for sure, but the more feasible scenario, considering the short time span and the flurry of archepiscopal appointments in the 790s, is that Riculf was straightaway consecrated archbishop in 798. He could then have obtained the pallium in the two years thereafter, e. g., in the summer of 799 when Pope Leo III came to Paderborn to ask for Charlemagne’s support, or in the winter of 800/801, when Riculf accompanied the king to Rome ^[162].

If Riculf rose to the archepiscopal dignity in 798, who would have acted as his consecrator? In line with the norms set out above, Riculf could either have been consecrated by one of his suffragans, or by the metropolitan of a neighbouring province. We do not know for certain which bishoprics fell under the authority of Mainz by 798 ^[163]. It is possible, in fact, that Riculf’s consecration as archbishop was intended to mark Mainz’ definitive elevation to metropolitan status. In that case, his new suffragans would have included Egino of Konstanz ( 782–811 ) ^[164], Gerhoh of Eichstätt ( 787/788–ca. 806 ) ^[165], Berowelf of Würzburg ( 768/769–800 ) ^[166], and Bernhard of Worms ( d. 826 ) ^[167]. Among neighbouring metropolitans, Hildebald of Cologne stands out as a potential consecrator. Hildebald not only held the archepiscopal dignity, but also continued to serve as arch-chaplain at the royal court. Charlemagne had even arranged a special synodal dispensation for his chaplain to be absent from Cologne to fulfil his duties in the palace chapel ^[168]. We can thus assume Hildebald was present at Herstelle as well in the winter of 797/798. Naturally, having the archbishop of Cologne act as consecrator for the new archbishop of Mainz might have signalled that the former held precedence over the latter, or at least, that Hildebald was the senior party among the two prelates. But then again, this is exactly how things are portrayed the few times the two men feature alongside each other in official documentation. Hildebald was the first witness to sign Charlemagne’s will in 811, preceding Riculf ^[169]. He once again took priority in the acts of the reform council of 813, even though the council was held at Mainz, in the church of St Alban ^[170]. As arch-chaplain of the royal court, who had been archbishop since 795, Hildebald was considered the more senior figure by contemporaries. Acting as Riculf’s consecrator in 798 would not have been incongruent with this status.

All in all, Marianus’ testimony that Riculf was consecrated archbishop of Mainz on 4 March 798 in the church of St Peter in Fritzlar fits neatly in a contemporary context. Not only does it make sense logistically and ideologically – Fritzlar was a royal abbey and Charlemagne’s court was within a two days’ journey in March 798 – it also solves the problem of the king’s absence from Francia in 787, the traditional consecration date. It does leave us with a final predicament: how to connect this new consecration date to the testimony that Riculf succeeded Lull in 786 or 787 and that he reigned for 27 years? Considering what was said above about the Carolingian norms and practices surrounding episcopal successions, there seem to me two feasible scenarios. Either Riculf was appointed bishop shortly after Lull’s death, so in 786 or 787, but his formal consecration was postponed or delayed for eleven years. Or Charlemagne consciously kept the see of Mainz vacant for a decade, and Riculf’s succession to the see of Mainz was put in motion only in the late 790s. By way of conclusion, let us take a closer look at both scenarios, starting with the delayed consecration.

Naturally, episcopal successions could take took longer than the three months stipulated by canon law. The 755 Council of Ver itself already allowed that extension was possible in case of ‘a great emergency’ ^[171]. In practical terms, completing Riculf’s succession in three months would always have presented a challenge, as by the time Lull died in October 786, Charlemagne and his court were already on their way towards Italy, making it difficult to make all the practical arrangements. That said, a decade-long delay was unheard off and would have reflected poorly both on the appointed successor and the king supporting him ^[172].

Usually, a delayed consecration was a sign the succession was contested somehow. Assuming Riculf had royal backing, this means his appointment would either have been contested locally, by Mainz’ clergy or citizens, or on an episcopal level, by the suffragans of the see or by other ecclesiastical authorities involved in the succession. Local events could well have played a role in Riculf’s succession. The years 785/786 had witnessed intense social unrest in the Frankish territories beyond the Rhine. Disaffected by Charlemagne’s heavy-handed intrusions in their affairs, East-Frankish and Thuringian nobles had risen up against the king, going so far as to plan his assassination ^[173]. This “extravagant conspiracy”, as it was dubbed by court-related annals, was put down by royal agents, but it forced the Carolingian regime to reconsider its ruling practices in the peripheries ^[174]. We can appreciate how, in such a context, Charlemagne would have preferred to entrust a prominent Rhineland see like Mainz to someone of proven loyalty who understood local sensibilities. Unlike his predecessors Boniface and Lull, Riculf was a local man. His appointment to Mainz set off a pattern of local appointees in the region ^[175]. As an explanation for a delayed consecration, however, the social unrest in the Rhineland is less convincing. Local citizens and secular magnates did not consecrate bishops; other bishops did. And if Riculf’s appointment was intended as a sign of Carolingian strength on the ground, the king would have made every effort to provide his appointee with ample legitimacy. Allowing him to remain un-consecrated for eleven years would certainly have beaten the purpose.

Might there have been episcopal pushback to Riculf’s installation? There are a few documented cases from the Carolingian period of royally appointed bishops who failed to get consecrated because the bishops tasked with the consecration withheld their cooperation. A possible example from Charlemagne’s reign is his appointment of Waldo, a royal agent in Italy, to the see of Pavia in the 780s ^[176]. There survives a royal letter to Pope Hadrian I – Pavia’s metropolitan – requesting Waldo’s consecration, but for reasons unspecified, the request was never granted ^[177]. Two generations later, Emperor Lothar I appointed his chaplain Hilduin of Saint-Denis to the see of Cologne ^[178]. While Hilduin held the see between 842 and 850, he was never consecrated, probably because the majority of Cologne’s suffragans belonged to the regnum of Lothar’s brother, Louis the German, who favoured another candidate and thus forbade his bishops to participate in Hilduin’s consecration ceremony ^[179]. Lothar acknowledged this lack of consecration in his official diplomas by referring to Hilduin as “archbishop elect” ( archiepiscopus vocatus ) ^[180]. Beyond the fact that such an epithet was never used for Riculf, his case differs in other significant ways. Unlike his grandsons, Charlemagne did not share authority over Mainz with a rival sibling. Furthermore, there is no hint in the sources that Riculf’s appointment was ever contested by his suffragans or by neighbouring prelates.

If we are willing to look beyond the extant source-material, we could conjecture opposition from Pope Hadrian I. Charlemagne met the pope in Rome in March 787, five months after Lull’s death. It is possible that the vacant see of Mainz was object of discussion during their meeting ^[181]. And while Hadrian was not Mainz’ metropolitan, the pope might have felt there was a precedent for his involvement in the see’s affairs. When Boniface had started to make arrangements for his succession in the 740s, he had done so in close consultation with Pope Zacharias I ^[182]. In the late 770s, Hadrian himself had approved Lull’s promotion to the archepiscopal dignity, but not before ordering a belated investigation into Lull’s suitability for office ^[183]. Still, that Hadrian could have intervened in the succession in 787 does not mean that he did. Moreover, if he had expressed reservations about Riculf to Charlemagne during their meeting in Rome, why would the latter have gone ahead and appointed his courtier anyway? Would it not have been more prudent in such a case to refrain from appointing a successor until he was sure his candidate would receive full ecclesiastical support and consecration?

This brings us to the second scenario: that Charlemagne kept the see of Mainz vacant on purpose until 798. Such a scenario, while against the canonical rules laid down in the king’s own capitularies, was not unheard off. Charlemagne kept several prominent sees vacant during his reign: to increase political control, to effect organisational change, or to extract revenue from the see’s landed properties. These are all feasible motives in the case of Mainz. In particular, contemporary evidence points to a royal desire to put the bishoprics of the Rhineland, Hesse and Thuringia more firmly under royal control, establishing an ecclesiastical hierarchy of bishops and archbishops with strict loyalty to the Carolingian ruling family ^[184]. Among other things, this involved replacing what remained of Boniface’s Anglo-Saxon episcopal circle with Frankish or local candidates, ideally with direct ties to the court. Mainz had been under Anglo-Saxon episcopal rule for two generations. While Boniface had been a leading agent of ecclesiastical reform in the Frankish realm with close ties to the Carolingian mayors of the palace, he had also been an outsider, whose forceful intrusions had made him plenty of enemies among the Frankish elite ^[185]. The same could be said for his protégé Lull. To be sure, Lull’s relationship with the Carolingian court was better under Charlemagne than it had been under his father Pippin III ^[186]. Lull also made some successful efforts to find allies among the local Rhineland aristocracy ^[187]. Yet there were rocky patches. Sometime after his elevation to the archiepiscopate in 782, Lull received a letter from the king, in which Charlemagne admonished his bishop in the strongest of terms not to focus exclusively on missionary work and to take greater care to instruct and guide his own diocesan clergy ^[188]. It seems the king was not entirely happy with how the diocese of Mainz was being administered by its bishop in the early 780s. It is noteworthy as well that Charlemagne visited Mainz only once during Lull’s episcopate, whereas he would visit the city five times in the two decades thereafter ^[189]. It would go too far to claim that Charlemagne was in open conflict with Lull or that a vacancy was inevitable following the latter’s death in 786. But the surviving evidence does hint at a royal desire to re-organise the diocese. And such re-organisation would take time.

There was another issue that could have prolonged Charlemagne’s decision to appoint a successor to the see of Mainz: the ongoing Saxon Wars, and the underlying Carolingian ambition to integrate the Saxons politically and religiously into the Frankish realm. In 785, the war had been drawn to a provisional close with the surrender and baptism of the Saxon leader Widukind. By 792, however, Saxon groups had risen up against Frankish overlordship once more, prompting Charlemagne to embark on a string of punitive campaigns in Saxony, which would continue almost annually from 794 until 804 ^[190]. Riculf himself had participated in at least one of these campaigns, that of 796, when the king and two of his sons had crossed Saxony in search of rebels, all the while plundering Saxon lands and collecting captives and loot ^[191]. In October 797, representatives of the three principal Saxon subgroups west of the Elbe – the Westphalians, the Angarii, and the Eastphalians – had met Charlemagne at an assembly at the royal palace of Aachen. A royal capitulary was drafted in the presence of the realm’s “bishops, abbots and counts”, laying down new rules for the legal and ecclesiastical organisation of Carolingian Saxony ^[192]. Taking place less than five months before Riculf’s consecration, this assembly would have been an opportune moment to make new arrangements for the diocese of Mainz, i. e. to decide about a successor to the vacant see and think about the archbishop’s responsibilities towards the newly converted Saxons. It is clear, at any rate, that Mainz featured prominently in Charlemagne’s plans during these years ^[193]. In 794 and 795, Mainz served as a point of departure for the royal army in the Spring ^[194]. In 800 and 803, the city hosted a general assembly ^[195]. A unique hostage list dated to ca. 805 designates Mainz as the assembly point for thirty-seven Saxon hostages, which were to be transported to Alemannia ^[196]. Beyond its infrastructural importance, Mainz also became insinuated in Saxony’s ecclesiastical organisation. Four of the new Saxon bishoprics that emerged in the wake of Saxony’s incorporation – Verden, Paderborn, Hildesheim and Halberstadt – became part of Mainz’ metropolitan diocese ( the other four being assigned to Cologne ) ^[197]. Throughout the ninth century, the archbishops of Mainz would have far-reaching responsibilities towards the Saxons.

There were plenty of reasons, then, why Charlemagne could have kept Mainz vacant between 786 and 798: his initial absence from Francia at the time of Lull’s death; a desire to tread carefully in the Rhineland after the destabilising events of 785/786; possible pushback from Pope Hadrian I, who remained bishop of Rome until his death in 795, after which he was succeeded by the more malleable Leo III; the need to reorganise the diocese of Mainz after two generations of idiosyncratic Anglo-Saxon rule; and the ongoing process of Saxony’s political and ecclesiastical integration into the Carolingian realm, in which Mainz was to play a crucial part.

Beyond possible motives, a vacancy also suits our knowledge of Riculf’s activities in the years following Lull’s death. The details have already been laid out in earlier sections of this contribution. To rehearse them in brief: contemporary commentators repeatedly mention Riculf’s presence at Charlemagne’s court in the 780s and 790s. They also allude to several diplomatic and military journeys during those years. But they never refer to Riculf as bishop prior to 800. As late as 796, his fellow courtier Alcuin addressed Riculf in a distinctly paternal and patronising manner, a marked contrast to the formal and almost obsequious tone he came to adopt in his letter of 801. Contemporary annalists were equally silent on the matter. The eighth-century ‘Annales Laureshamenses’ and ‘Annales Fuldenses antiquissimi’ recorded Lull’s passing in 786, but failed to mention a successor. It was not until several decades into the ninth century that the ‘Annales Fuldenses’ would explicitly present Riculf as Lull’s successor. In short, we are not merely confronted by a lack of positive evidence when we assume Riculf was already bishop by 787. Some of our principal sources for Riculf’s pre-800 career are at odds with such a dignity. A scenario in which Charlemagne kept the see of Mainz vacant from 786 until 798 would go a long way towards explaining such incongruence: contemporaries in the 780s and 790s failed to heed Riculf’s episcopal rank because he only obtained it in 798.

We have explored two ways of fitting Marianus’ testimony on Riculf’s succession into an eighth-century context: a delayed consecration and an episcopal vacancy. Neither is entirely satisfactory. The former stays true to that part of Marianus’ account which mentions a 27-year episcopal reign but is without precedent in the Carolingian period. Nor is there any allusion among contemporary commentators to Riculf’s status as bishop-elect or archiepiscopus vocatus. Above all, it leaves open the question why Riculf’s consecration would have been delayed for eleven years, as this turn of events would have gone against Carolingian interests. The latter option contradicts Marianus’ reference to a 27-year episcopal reign – if he rose to the see in 798, his reign in Mainz would have lasted for fifteen or sixteen years only – but is more easily explained in terms of Carolingian policy at the time: Charlemagne had the means as well as the motive, or indeed, several motives, for keeping Mainz vacant until 798. Moreover, it would also explain why there is no contemporary evidence for Riculf as bishop prior to AD 800.

All things considered, the vacancy scenario thus seems to me the more feasible of the two. It means Marianus was technically wrong about the duration of Riculf’s episcopal reign. But this need not invalidate the rest of his testimony. Nor does it necessarily imply ill intent on his part. The ‘Annales Fuldenses’ had suggested a smooth succession when they recorded that Lull died in 786 and was succeeded by Riculf, even if they had uncharacteristically left out a reference to the length of the ensuing episcopate ^[198]. Either the details surrounding Riculf’s succession had already been forgotten by the mid-ninth century, or the annalist working at Fulda or Mainz had thought it prudent not to ask too many questions when a renowned Carolingian ruler had arranged a succession in Mainz that had gone against the canonical rules rehearsed in his own capitularies. For Marianus, who was working more than two centuries later, the stakes would have been different still: he was eager to write down whatever he could find about Riculf’s activities in and around Mainz, and he was scrupulous in his calculations, if not always correct. It is not clear whether he arrived at the notion of a 27-year episcopal reign on his own or whether he adopted it from some other source unfamiliar to us. But knowing that Lull had died in 786 and that his successor Riculf had died in 813, it would have been easy and logical for him to arrive at such a number, even with the consecration date of 4 March 798 in mind.

6. Postscript

In this contribution, I used an ostensibly minor chronological revision to put forward a radical re-interpretation of the career of the late eighth-century bishop Riculf of Mainz. The linchpin of my argument is a new reading of the evidence provided by the eleventh-century chronicler Marianus Scotus regarding the date on which Riculf received episcopal consecration. Taking a close look at manuscript witnesses for the ‘Chronicon’, I concluded that Marianus dated this event to Sunday, 4 March 798. This is eleven years later than scholarship on Riculf has so far assumed on the basis of the scholarly editions of Marianus’ text. I proposed, in turn, that the most likely interpretation of Marianus’ testimony is that Riculf did not immediately succeed his predecessor Lull upon the latter’s death, but that the see of Mainz was kept vacant for more than a decade, before Charlemagne finally put forward his courtier Riculf to become the see’s new archbishop.

I put forward these claims not without a sense of reservation. For can we really reconstruct what went on in late eighth-century Mainz on the basis of an eleventh-century chronicle, composed by a recluse who worked with his own personal dating system in which he pushed the birth of Christ twenty-two years into the past? Methodologically, this is thin ice to tread on. For some, I imagine, it might even be too thin. Then again, past scholarship on Riculf and early medieval Mainz has not been held back by such reservations. Over the past two centuries, Marianus’ reference to Riculf’s consecration date has been used confidently, at times ingeniously, in a variety of scholarly arguments, from the date of Alcuin’s letters to the chronology of Mainz’ elevation to metropolitan status. This contribution merely corrected the nature of Marianus’ testimony. Or rather, it brought his testimony in line with the surviving manuscript evidence.

It might be said that this correction, while valid of itself, now disqualifies Marianus’ ‘Chronicon’ as a reliable source for Riculf’s episcopate. This would not make our understanding of the chronology of Riculf’s episcopate any clearer. We would then be left to assume that he quickly succeeded Lull without having any evidence for episcopal activities prior to 800. At any rate, I do not think we need to go this far. The specificity of the date provided by Marianus, and his close connection to Mainz, lend his testimony enough credibility that we should at least try to see whether it fits into a contemporary context. In this article, I have made a first attempt at such a fitting. I concluded that taking Riculf’s consecration date as 4 March 798 is not just feasible within a Carolingian context, but in crucial ways makes more sense than the previous date of 787. Inevitably, I arrived at this conclusion by relying on circumstantial evidence and engaging in a fair bit of conjecture. The surviving mosaic of Riculf’s career – to invoke once more Theodor Schieffer’s analogy – is too lacunose to do without such auxiliary pieces. I do not doubt that some readers would have placed some stones differently, and perhaps, more convincingly. This is not a finished undertaking. As it stands, however, this is the image I was able to reconstruct.