I’ve been spoiled by the German editors, I admit.

That’s not a real charter, it’s a cartulary copy! You don’t have real charters over your side of the Empire… But given that the cartulary is itself well Carolingian in period, it’s kind of OK…

As to that paper with the weird charter usages, well, you know, that guy’s a little weird himself… but even then, it’s not places or identity that varies, it’s expressed allegiance. When geographical terms do turn up, they are clear about Francia (which is over there) and Spania (which is over in the other direction) but they get very confused when they have to define their own area, and so does everyone else. Gothia, Hispania citerior, Septimania, Tarraconense, all turn up, all are very rare, and all are kind of wrong. “Apud nos” is a lot more usual and accurate, but doesn’t tell you much. But it’s only really the union with Aragón in 1138 that forces them to see themselves as a unit in themselves which can be ranked equal with the new realm, I think.

Aquitaine, I know less well but my sense is that it’s just a mess, especially at the edges where it’s political whether you’re in Aquitaine, or Provence or Gascony or whatever your alternative might be that doesn’t involve some kind of acknowlegement of Toulouse. So many of the sources are from outside…

In terms of the other stuff (and oh, thanks mucho — do you know how long it has been since I had to try to read actual!charters and not the nice edited ones?) — I don’t know that I’ve ever translated vassi dominici before. I’m one of those, ‘eh, just leave it in Latin, because it just makes more sense that way,’ people :-)

Given that this is a copy, it’s hard to say whether the two readings were once the same and Cosroh `fixed’ only one, or if they were just variant in the original, but my Catalan documents would give me to suspect the latter. Weird though it seems, scribes of this era don’t seem to look back at what they’d written as much as we might expect. And of course, even the scribe of the document Cosroh was copying was probably working from notes on a tablet in the first place, so there’s one more layer of mistakes in hearing or writing to take into account. Cosroh’s hand is very clear indeed, but the original(s) may not have been quite so gorgeously Caroline…

As to Franconia, yes, the sources Hartmann’s using all call that area Francia Orientalis or similar, which doesn’t help because historians tend to use `East Francia’ or `the kingdom of the Eastern Franks’ to cover the whole area that Louis the German ruled, including Saxony, Bavaria, Thuringia etc. More on this in a subsequent post, in fact. Meanwhile, I’ll just say that Thomas Bisson at least confuses matters further by using `Frankland’ as an English translation of Francia…

In the late 70s, all over the area the Ottonians called Franconia, there were beer ads referring to “Frankland.”

Clemens, thankyou very much for those links: I hadn’t realised how far the BSB’s initiative had got beyond the MGH! (Dude they totally have two early Heliand manuscripts digitised there! and the Old Aleman Psalter with the OHG glosses! etc.) I could have had this post drafted much more easily had I known this :-) Also, you’re right about the map, and consequently I have changed the version above and in that post to a link to that site rather than borrow it direct, though I’m sure they have better things to chase down.

As to your initial question, ADM, I think it’s entirely circumstantial, and so you may be right and there could be other reasons. But the fact that he does seem to be getting rid of everything he has in Bavaria at the same time as the divisio regni is being finally (ha!) settled is pretty suggestive, I think.

Also, what’s the Latin for demesne vassal? Seriously, I’m asking because I have a nasty feeling that I’ll be running into it as I deal with the post-Carolingian records I’m playing around with. So far, I’ve only got one reference to a fidelis, and one vassus, I think. And that’s up to 911.