From BaghdāD To <i>Beowulf:</i> Eulogising ‘Imperial’ Capitals East and West in the Mid-Eighth Century

Abstract

At the core of this paper lies a comparison between two 'short epics': that of king Pippin (d. 768) as told c.886 by Notker of St Gall in his Deeds of the Emperor Charles, and that of the Byzantine ruler Constantine V, a contemporary of Pippin's, as relayed in the Chronicle of the Bishops of Naples (late-eighth century or early-ninth century). It is argued, first, that both texts in their original form belong to the mid-eighth century; second, that they celebrate '(re)founder-kings' who assert their throne-worthiness in combat against wild beasts and show themselves equal to the classical ideal of the ktistes or neos ktistes ('founder' or 'refounder') in saving Constantinople/Aachen from the forces of evil/chaos; and finally, that these encomiastic vignettes may have been composed to coincide with the rulers' quinquennalia, marking their five (or ten, or fifteen, and so on) years in office, another legacy of imperial Rome. A new interpretation of Beowulf is then offered, stressing the similarities with the aforementioned 'epics' with Heorot in lieu of Constantinople or Aachen. The Pippin and Constantine texts express rival aspirations to supremacy. They should be seen against the backdrop of a tense, three-way diplomatic shuttle that in the 760s also included Baghdād, founded around that time as the new capital of the caliphate, the third and last 'post-Roman' superpower.