The Greater Annals of St. Gall: Introduction, Translation, and Notes

ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9357-1301
ISSN: Print 2754-4575
ISSN: Online 2754-4583
DOI: 10.57686/256204/30

© 2023 Chris Halsted
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY)

The Greater Annals of St. Gall are the name we give to a set of annals composed in present-day Switzerland in the tenth and eleventh centuries, at the eponymous abbey of St. Gall.¹ The Greater Annals present a fantastically rich repository of local, monastic memory, recorded in exemplary fashion. For the 1003 entry, for instance, the Greater Annals record a short poem describing the miraculous survival of a laborer who fell from St. Gall’s roof during repairs undertaken by the abbot, Burchard. These repairs can be read in light of the slightly earlier 1000 entry, which records that ‘our people were struck by fire’ during a storm. Though both entries are in verse, they are in different hands, and are divided by a laconic 1001 entry — in three more hands — recording the death of abbot Gerhard and the appointment of Burchard. The state of the abbey’s roof thus constitutes one of the many micronarratives present in the Greater Annals, an everyday story recording a decidedly local and even parochial concern — Burchard’s repairs are otherwise unattested — but vividly recounted, in prose and in verse and with attendant miracles, by no less than five interlocutors. In short, the story of the roof’s repairs is emblematic of the Greater Annals as a work of collective monastic remembrance — perhaps unparalleled for its period.

The Greater Annals of St. Gall are based, in their earliest passages, on the St. Gall continuation of the Annales Alamannici, which extends until 926. Substantial emendations have been made to the earlier material in the Greater Annals, however, and they cannot be said to be merely a continuation of the Annales Alamannici.² Despite being a much-relied-upon source for Ottonian and Salian history — for the years 918–1024 they provide an entirely independent account and for 1025–1044 a detailed account which overlaps with several other well-known sources — the Greater Annals have yet to be translated into English (though there is a recent, and superlative, German translation by Roland Zingg). This introductory essay serves to familiarize the reader with the context and production of the Greater Annals, as well as highlight several of the themes of the text most useful or interesting to the medievalist audience. I especially focus on the role of the Greater Annals as an independent witness with often-diverging viewpoints to many of the important events of early medieval European history and its unique status as a repository of institutional memory and identity for the monks of St. Gall.

St. Gall in Context

According to local tradition, the abbey of St. Gall was first founded as a hermitage by the Irish saint Gallus, a companion of Saint Columbanus, who is said to have become a hermit there in 612.³ On his death some decades later he was buried there, and the location became both a destination of pilgrimage and a shelter for the surrounding populace.⁴ Around 720, the site was placed in the custody of the Alemannian priest Otmar, who founded an abbey on the location.⁵ By the ninth century St. Gall had become a favorite recipient of both local and royal patronage, and a series of grants over the course of the 800s gave the monks of St. Gall independence from the bishopric of Constance and the right to freely elect their abbots.⁶ As its lands grew, so too did the political influence of its abbots. Abbot Gozbert (816–37) rebuilt the abbey and secured the canonization of its founder Otmar; Abbot Grimald (841–72) was chancellor and chaplain to Louis the German (r. 843–76) as well as abbot of Weissenburg.⁷ This culminated with the career of Abbot Salomon (890–919), also (as Salomon III) the Bishop of Constance, who acted as an advisor to four kings.⁸ The fortunes of the abbey declined following several disasters — most notably the sack by Hungarian raiders in 926 and a fire in 937 — but by the beginning of the eleventh century St. Gall was again a preeminent center for learning and scholarly production, especially under Abbot Burchard II and his schoolmaster Notker Labeo.⁹

St. Gall acts, for many historians, as the example par excellence of Carolingian monastic culture.¹⁰ This is no doubt a function of the extraordinary wealth of manuscript evidence which survives at the abbey: the Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen today contains some 2,000 manuscripts, of which at least 400 are pre-millennium; hundreds more produced in the St. Gall scriptorium have been distributed to libraries across Europe.¹¹ Of this surviving corpus, a significant portion concerns the history of the Abbey itself. We possess multiple saints’ lives concerning not only the founders of the monastery, Gall and Otmar, but other figures of historical significance like Notker the Stammerer (d. 912) and the anchoress-saint Wiborada (d. 926).¹² The Casus Sancti Galli, a chronicle of the monastery’s history begun by the monk Ratpert in the ninth century, continued c. 1050 by Ekkehard IV up to 972, and then sporadically continued up until the fourteenth century, presents an organized and at times highly stylized account of events at the monastery.¹³ The survival of a rich collection of charters, over 800 of which date from before the millennium, allows for the intricate reconstruction of social and economic history in the region.¹⁴ Finally, and uniquely among monasteries of this era, we have the famous Plan of St. Gall, a schematic drawing from around 820 possibly intended to be used in the rebuilding of the monastery. This plan has engendered much scholarly debate about the nature and function of Carolingian monasticism.¹⁵ The inclusion of an external school on the Plan has also contributed to a lively debate about the nature of lay education in the Carolingian era.¹⁶

At the same time, St. Gall also had a tremendous scholarly and artistic output. Beyond the plentiful saints’ lives, St. Gall was also responsible for Notker Balbulus’ Gesta Karoli magni, the aforementioned Casus Sancti Galli tradition, and numerous biblical commentaries, hymns, and poems.¹⁷ Notker Labeo, the schoolmaster in the early eleventh century, is often regarded as the father of German literature for his sponsorship of a broad vernacular translation program and the composition of many vernacular poems.¹⁸ The abbey is also vitally important to historians of medieval sacred music and book illumination; forms developed at St. Gall can be found across the continent.¹⁹ Historically, the Latin epic Waltharius has also been considered a production of the abbey, although more recent investigations have problematized this identification and raised the possibility of other places of authorship.²⁰

St. Gall’s annalistic tradition is no less important, though it has received less scholarly attention in its own right, perhaps because of the allure of subjects such as the Casus Sancti Galli, the Plan of St. Gall, or Waltharius. No less than eight separate annals are associated with St. Gall; these range from shorter productions of merely a few entries to the much more substantial Annales Alamannici and the Greater Annals of St. Gall. These latter, which are related, number among the most important historical sources for Carolingian and post-Carolingian Europe. Indeed, the Greater Annals especially might be counted among those annals most familiar to a non-medievalist audience, given their somewhat provocative appearance in Hayden White’s work on narrative.²¹ It is thus all the stranger that they have not thus far received an English translation. This lacuna has been made even starker by two recent publications, Roland Zingg’s excellent edition of the St. Gall annalistic tradition in 2019 as well as Emily Albu and Natalia Lozovsky’s translation of the Casus Sancti Galli of Ekkehard IV, which shares material with the Greater Annals, in 2021.²² Both publications highlight the remaining work to be done on the Greater Annals and the continued necessity of bringing the work, and St. Gall’s unique place in history, to the attention of new audiences. The goal of the present translation, then, is to facilitate the accessibility of the annals to researchers, instructors, and students.

Manuscripts, Composition, and Authorship of the Annals

The Annals are extant in three manuscripts. The earliest, St. Gallen Stiftsbibliothek 915, which includes the annals at pp. 196–236, is the autograph.²³ St. Gallen 915 was the book used for the abbey’s officium capituli, the reading from select texts and commemoration of the dead at Prime.²⁴ As such, it included not only the Greater Annals but two martyrologies, the necrology of St. Gall, and the Rule of St. Benedict, as well as other important records like the confraternity agreements between St. Gall and Reichenau and extensive computus tables.²⁵ Readers of the Greater Annals would thus have read them in light of other texts, especially the necrology, which recorded the deaths of many of the figures described in the annals. A second copy of the annals can be found in the twelfth-century St. Gallen Stiftsbibliothek 453, an updated officium book which contained many of the same texts as St. Gallen 915.²⁶ The annals in St. Gallen 453 were copied directly from the autograph in St. Gallen 915.²⁷ The final manuscript, Wien Österreichische Nationabibliothek Cod. Ser. n. 4427, fols. 9v–37r, is a very late copy of the autograph, from the eighteenth century.²⁸

The autograph version of the annals in St. Gallen 915 is a fantastic hodgepodge, written by at least thirty-three hands over the course of more than a century and incorporating a complex variety of form and content. It is written in a single hand down to halfway through the 955 entry.²⁹ This portion of the text is primarily based on the Annales Alamannici (and its St. Gall continuation), itself a composite text first written at Murbach in the eighth century and continued at Reichenau up to 876, after which it finally came to St. Gall.³⁰ The Greater Annals are far from a mere copy in this period, however; numerous additional entries have been inserted, covering especially subjects related to the abbey of St. Gall, and previous entries have been excerpted and truncated, qualifying this portion of the Greater Annals as a work in its own right.³¹ From 919 the Greater Annals are entirely independent, and the portion of the work from this point to 955 seems to comprise the creation of a single author.³²

From the middle of the 955 entry through the 1024 entry the hand changes at minimum every few entries, and sometimes within the same entry.³³ The topics of these entries do not display a consistent narrative and do not appear to follow logically from one another; it seems that entries for this period were recorded on an ad hoc basis by a rapidly-shifting cast of authors. At least four of these entries, and possibly more, were definitely much later insertions rather than contemporary records.³⁴[34] This portion of the text is thus a bricolage, a collaborative effort with little apparent in the way of order or consistent theme. This section also features one of the most distinctive and interesting phenomena of the Greater Annals, their tendency to slip into verse. From 971, the Greater Annals include no fewer than fifteen poems written in dactylic hexameter —in twelve different hands.³⁵ These entries constitute stand-alone poems on a wide variety of subjects, from natural disasters and political events to the death and appointment of abbots and the repair efforts to the monastery roof in 1003. This section also includes a number of erasure marks apparent in the digitized manuscript, which would be a fruitful avenue for future research into the manuscript.³⁶ I have endeavored to note these in the translation.

From the beginning of the 1025 entry through the end of 1044, the Greater Annals are again in a single hand.³⁷ This period of the text, covering the reign of Emperor Conrad II and the first few years of Henry III, has deep structural parallels to Wipo of Burgundy’s Vita Chuonradi imperatoris and especially Hermann of Reichenau’s Chronicon.³⁸ Following the work of Harry Bresslau in the nineteenth century, scholars have conceived of these three texts as deriving from a single original work of annals, traditionally termed the Swabian World-Chronicle.³⁹ The development of this text and its relatives, however, is not well understood, and there are several problems with the assumed direct descent from a lost work of annals to these three works.⁴⁰ For instance, while the Vita Chuonradis has structural parallels to the Greater Annals, it excludes much of the specific information, including personal names and the place-names; at other points, such as a miracle description in 1037, the two match almost exactly.⁴¹ Hermann’s Chronicon, on the other hand, has obvious similarities to the 1025–1044 section of the Greater Annals, but also has similar entries from earlier than 1025, suggesting that Hermann may have drawn directly on the Greater Annals rather than on a hypothetical predecessor.⁴² Despite controversies regarding the origin of the text, this section presents a trove of information regarding imperial history and the personal relationships of the imperial elite with the emperor. Here the sense of St. Gall’s monastic identity which pervades the earlier portions somewhat fades away; at times local history entirely disappears in favor of imperial narrative, though a few entries still note the deaths and appointments of abbots or the visit of imperial figures to the abbey.⁴³ A solitary final entry in 1056, describing the death of Emperor Henry III, concludes the Greater Annals.

It is thus misleading to speak of the authorship of the Greater Annals, or really even consider it a single ‘work’ with a single purpose. These were the product of generations of communal effort, occasionally harnessed toward a particular point but more often disparate, bricolage, and hodgepodge. The Annals as written fade in and out of narrativity, at times driving home particular points or arguments but at others seeming to represent a more diffuse communal memory of the brothers of St. Gall. The famous dictum of Hayden White that the Greater Annals did not constitute a narrative might have been formulated very differently had he looked, say, at the 888–955 section of the annals, which sets out the tale of the invading Hungarians up until their final defeat; conversely, it is absolutely confirmed by the narrativeless chaos of the 955–1024 section.⁴⁴

The Greater Annals have a long tradition of study in the modern era. Melchior Goldast published the editio princeps in 1606, though he was unaware of the autograph and only utilized St. Gallen 453 for this edition.⁴⁵ In 1826 Ildefons von Arx, then the librarian at St. Gall, published an edition for the first volume of the Monumenta Germaniae Historia which for the first time utilized both medieval manuscripts.⁴⁶ The 1826 edition continues to be the most widely used version because of its wide accessibility, though the 1884 edition by Carl Henking added significant annotation and commentary.⁴⁷ The Greater Annals were not edited again until 2019, when Roland Zingg published his study of St. Gall’s annalistic tradition.⁴⁸ The Zingg edition improves on previous editions in several respects, especially in accurately noting the dating system and changes in hand in the original manuscripts, as well as depicting its various idiosyncrasies (of which there are many).⁴⁹ Zingg also provided a translation into German on facing pages; this is the first full translation of the Greater Annals into a modern language.⁵⁰ The Zingg edition and translation mark a new epoch in the study of the annals: without them, the current effort would have been entirely impossible.

Themes and Analysis

From a purely utilitarian perspective, the Greater Annals are useful to medieval historians, as are their source the Annales Alamannici, because they often represent independent or divergent opinions on political events. Alemannia was very rarely the center of the Carolingian or post-Carolingian world; scandals, controversies, or even simple politics were often looked at from a different perspective from the texts to which historians are accustomed.⁵¹ To take an interesting example, the Greater Annals entry for 876 notes that ‘Emperor Charles the Second began to rule’. It is unclear from the text as written whether the entry means Charles ‘the Bald,’ who was crowned emperor in 875, or Charles ‘the Fat,’ for whom 876 marks rather the beginnings of his reign as king of Alemannia after the death of his father Louis the German. While Charles ‘the Fat’ would indeed go on to become emperor, and to reunify the Carolingian empire through a series of surprise inheritances, this would not happen until 881 and 884 respectively.⁵² The Annales Alamannici, upon which the Greater Annals are based in this period, do not mention either Charles in 876, though they do note the elevation of Charles ‘the Fat’ to imperator in 881.⁵³ Depending on which Charles we think this is, the Greater Annals annalist has then shifted the focus and transformed the narrative of his source material in different ways, either crowning Charles ‘the Fat’ emperor from his first appearance or inserting Charles ‘the Bald,’ otherwise unreferenced in the Greater Annals. The resulting product thus becomes either a piece of Alemannian patriotism highlighting the career of Charles ‘the Fat’ or a piece of Carolingian cosmopolitanism situating St. Gall within the greater Carolingian world.

Perhaps the classic example of Alemannian perspective in the Annals is its treatment of the ascent of Henry the Fowler, king of East Francia from 919 to 936. The Greater Annals in the early tenth century, like their source the St. Gall continuation of the Annales Alemannici, are generally careful to note the comings and goings of East Frankish kings.⁵⁴ They describe the death of Arnulf and the succession of his son Louis in 900, the death of the king of Lotharingia, Arnulf’s natural son Zwentibold, in 901, the death of Louis and Conrad I’s election in 911, and the death of Conrad in 918. This makes it all the stranger that the annals ignore the election of the Saxon king Henry the Fowler, traditionally dated to 919. The 919 entry, which does not rely on any information from the Annales Alamannici, instead describes a war between Burchard, dux of Alemannia, and Rudolf, king of Burgundy. Henry does not appear until 925, when he is recorded granting the abbacy of St. Gall to Engilbert — itself an odd entry, given that Engilbert was already ‘made abbot’ in the 924 entry.

One could take this tendency to deviate from ‘mainstream’ sources of history as evidence of a massaged and propagandistic account. But taking the Greater Annals as a distortion of truth is too simplistic — it must be considered instead that they represented an alternative viewpoint. Especially for cases like Henry the Fowler, the Greater Annals provide valuable evidence that the political narratives we have come to accept might be underlaid by a more complicated reality. Johannes Fried famously used the absence of notation regarding Henry’s election — and the corresponding absence in the continued Annales Alamannici — to argue that Henry’s authority may have been only gradually recognized outside of Saxony.⁵⁵ Another possibility is that the spotty updating of the annals at this time led to an oversight in the inclusion of relevant information; the 955 annalist may not have had access to the details about exactly when Henry had come to the throne. Whatever the case, it is interesting that the founding moment of the nascent Saxon dynasty — by 955 well-ensconced as not only Germany’s power du jour but Europe’s as well — was not included in this text.

By 936, firmly in the period of the annals composed solely by the 955 annalist, the focus on East Frankish kingship had returned — the annals record that ‘King Henry died’ and ‘his son Otto succeeded him in royal power’. Even in the reign of Otto, however, the Alemannic perspective of the 955 annalist shines through. A good example is the 953 rebellion of Liudolf, Otto I’s eldest son and dux of Alemannia since 949. Liudolf had married Ida, the daughter of the previous dux of Alemannia, making him in some sense a hereditary successor.⁵⁶ The best-known version of this story, described by Widukind of Corvey, depicts Liudolf as a jealous plotter, working against his father out of fear of being pushed out by Otto’s new wife Adelaide.⁵⁷ In the Greater Annals, however, the analysis is much more neutral; the annalist merely writes that ‘discord arose’ between Otto and Liudolf, papering over the act of rebellion entirely.⁵⁸ A previous entry, in 948, had described the royal heir as ‘dear to God and all the Saints’ on the occasion of his visit to St. Gall. This favoritism may have been motivated by loyalty to Liudolf as the dux of Alemannia, although it is also possible that the different opinions are down to different time frames — the Greater Annals annalist likely wrote in 955, when Liudolf was still alive, while Widukind wrote ten years after his death in 957.

By comparison, the rebellion of the Alemannian dux Ernest against his stepfather Emperor Conrad, from 1025–30, is told with much less sympathy to Ernest. Ernest and his co-conspirators are depicted in no uncertain terms as rebels, authors of an attempt ‘prohibited by God’ who would eventually be removed from office.⁵⁹ This is, however, a fairer account than the (related) description given by Wipo of Burgundy, which twice describes Ernest as rebelling diabolo suadente, ‘at the instigation of the devil’, and depicts Ernest’s mother Empress Gisela taking the side of the emperor against Ernest in 1032.⁶⁰ Ernest was even more of an Aleman than Liudolf; his like-named father was dux of Alemannia from 1012 to 1015, and through his maternal line he was a descendent of the Conradines who had intermittently held the office since 926. It is possible to take the unfavorable account of his actions as representing the further unity of the empire at the beginning of the eleventh century: as imperial power increased, local loyalties proved less durable than they once had been. Given the possible derivation of this account from a lost annal, however, we must also consider that the biases of this unknown author are equally unknown — and in any case, by the time of the lost annals’ composition, Ernest had been dead for more than a decade.

Indeed, another historical subtheme detectible in the longue durée of the annals is the changing nature of political power in Alemannia. This undercurrent is in fact present from the very first entry in 709, which describes the death of one dux Godfrid. Godfrid was one of the last semi-independent Aleman rulers; his death came in the middle of a protracted fight against Carolingian influence.⁶¹ Unlike its source material the Annales Alemmanici, which begin with the death of Pippin II’s son Drogo and therefore center ‘national‘ concerns from the beginning, the Greater Annals therefore consciously focus on local matters from their very start.⁶² For the next two centuries, local Alemannian political power takes a backseat, though the Aleman Gerold, Prefect of Bavaria, is at least mentioned.⁶³ The true story of the Alemannian duces begins in the tenth century, with the struggle for dominance of Alemannia among several competing groups, most especially the Conradine and Hunfriding families. The depiction of these leaders changes over the course of the text; early duces like Ercharger and Burchard I are depicted as quasi-royal warrior-dukes, while later figures, especially Hermann III and Ernest I who both died tragically early, are depicted as models of elite, youthful manhood.⁶⁴

The place where we can get the closest to sustained authorial intent in the Greater Annals is in the sections composed or altered by the 955 annalist. That the later pieces of this section, especially from 888 onwards, were intended to act as a unified whole can be seen by the annalist’s treatment of the Hungarians. From their introduction in the 888 entry, the Hungarians are consistently referred to as Agareni, ‘Hagarenes’— that is, descendants of the biblical Hagar, often identified in the period with Arabs or Muslims.⁶⁵ That this was a conscious stylistic choice can be seen from the fact that the annalist altered the entries from 892 to 919, which he had copied from the Alemannic Annals, from Ungri to Agareni.⁶⁶ The appellation cannot be said to have been especially accurate — no other source from the period connects the Hungarians to Islam, and they do not seem to have been historically Muslim or to have incorporated Islamicate cultural elements.⁶⁷ The misascribed identity was even noticed by Ekkehard IV, who noted in a gloss on Orosius that ‘some of our idiots now call [the Hungarians] Hagarenes’.⁶⁸

Rather than an identification aiming for accuracy, however, the depiction of the Hungarians as Agareni can be taken as an argument for the eschatological significance of the fight against the Hungarians. The 955 annalist wrote in the aftermath of the sacking of St. Gall by the Hungarians in 926; he might well have been at the monastery when this occurred.⁶⁹ With the communal memory of this traumatic event in mind, it seems that the annalist rewrote the conflict with the Hungarians in the key of apocalypse, building up to the climactic defeat of the Hungarians by Otto in 955 itself.⁷⁰ Given that the defeat of the Hungarians was the final entry in the 955 annalist’s hand, this probably functioned as the instigating event for the copying and updating of the annals. At the annalist’s crafting, the history of the early tenth century became a world-historical struggle between Christianity and Islam. So too does the Hungarian threat connect to the order of government in the Christian world — the 955 annalist dates the first coming of the Hungarians to 888, implicitly connecting it to the deposition of the Alemannian Charles ‘the Fat’ by Arnulf of Carinthia.⁷¹ In 892 he again blames Arnulf, writing that he ‘unleashed the Hagarenes from where they were enclosed.’ Interestingly, the annalist appears not to have noticed the first reference to the Hungarians in the copied 863 entry, where they are described as Huns. He thus introduces the Hungarians twice, once in 863 and once in 888.

The Greater Annals are also an excellent source for the understanding of local, monastic history in the Middle Ages. Notes regarding the community of St. Gall continue throughout the course of the text, beginning with simple entries regarding the deaths and appointments of abbots, but growing over the course of the annals to include such fascinating tidbits as the enclosure of anchorites and the visits of kings and members of the royal family to the monastery. Many of these entries, especially in the bricolage 955–1024 section, revolve around a well investigated theme of monastic communal identity — anxiety surrounding the boundary between the sacred space of the cloister and the secular world outside. To monks of this period, the cloister, a square of specialized buildings surrounding a central courtyard which was inaccessible to laymen in nearly every circumstance, represented a retreat from the world.⁷² A pair of entries in 965 and 966, for example, written at the same time sometime after 1050, recapitulate the well-known story from Ekkehard IV’s Casus Sancti Galli of the reformist abbot Ruodman sneaking into St. Gall’s cloister to search for evidence that the monks were breaking the rule of St. Benedict. Belle Tuten has suggested that the final moment of this episode, in which Ruodman hides in the St. Gall latrine, can be interpreted as showing Ruodman’s suspicion of illicit sexual behavior.⁷³ Whether this is the case or not, the episode certainly belongs within the context of tenth-century struggles over monastic reform; Ruodman sought to prove that the St. Gall monks were insufficiently strict in their keeping of the rule — though he violated it himself by entering the cloister in secret. The importance of the privacy and secrecy of the cloister is reemphasized by a long verse entry in 1004 which describes the monks sleeping after a meal on the Saturday before Easter, noting that ‘by divine law, no one from the laity sneaks in there’.

A final theme which appears as a notable undercurrent throughout the whole course of the annals is the experience of natural phenomena as marvels, miracles, and portents within the monastic community.⁷⁴ Every section of the Annals, including the earliest pieces adapted from the Annales Alemannici, is full of earthquakes, thunderstorms, floods, and comets. These are often implied to have a causal relationship with events on earth. Thus the deaths of Eberhard of Franconia and Giselbert of Lotharingia in 939, for instance, are presaged by an eclipse of the sun. In another entry, the decision of Kerhilt to became an anchoress in 952 is set against two of the ‘greatest thunderstorms’ hitting the monastery, but doing no damage. The implication is that the holy enclosure of Kerhilt protected the monastic community from the ravages of the storm. The death of Louis the Pious in 840 comes with an eclipse that also presages the civil war and division of the empire by his sons; a comet seen in 975 was immediately followed by the deaths of three St. Gall monks. In 995 civil war in Bavaria and Burgundy as well as war with the Slavs in the northeast are paired with drought and a cattle plague.

Principles of Translation

The language of the annals is not difficult, but it is decidedly uneven; especially the intermittent poetic entries can present a level of linguistic ambiguity that makes grasping their meaning challenging. Where this is the case, I have generally relied on Zingg’s translation; places where my reading differs substantially from Zingg’s are marked in the notes. While I have endeavored to supply a literal translation of the Latin, in places where this would make the English impenetrable, I have opted instead for an idiomatic translation that preserves the sense, rather than the literal meaning, of the original. I have generally translated the present perfect tense, which sits awkwardly in English historical prose, as simple past. With the goal of conveying the sense of brevity which pervades many of the more abbreviated entries, I have followed previous translators in excluding indefinite articles from these entries; the first two words of the annals, hiemps dura, are thus translated ‘hard winter’ rather than ‘a hard winter.’⁷⁵ I have left terms for which the translation into English tends to be unhelpful or misleading untranslated. The primary example of this is the term dux; a translation of ‘duke’ implies to the modern reader a rigidity and structure to the system of titulature and landholding which was absolutely not the case for the majority of the period, while the more literal ‘leader’ obscures the ways in which the term had begun to be used as a proper title. Ducatus is likewise left untranslated; the term in the period did not yet have the sense of full-fledged ‘duchy’ or ‘dukedom’ but had become more institutionalized than simply ‘authority,’ ‘status’ or ‘position’. Miles is always translated as ‘warrior’, to avoid the anachronistic implications of ‘soldier’ or ‘knight’. Regulus is translated as ‘kinglet’ to preserve its pejorative implications; princeps as ‘ruler’ or ‘leader’ based on context. I have translated comes, which connected with the administrative unit of the pagus had a more regular meaning than dux over the period covered by the annals, as ‘count’. Names of people have been standardized in cases where this is usual practice (e.g. Charles for Carolus, Louis for Hludowicus); names of places have been standardized across the board. I have supplied explanatory notes for matters which might be ambiguous from the text alone, while also attempting not to overburden the text with annotation.

This translation is based on the text of the autograph manuscript, St. Gallen Stiftsbibliothek 915, and excludes entries which only occur in the later manuscripts. Because we possess the autograph, and because of the importance the compositional process of the text holds to its interpretation, I have inserted notes on the nature of the manuscript, such as erasures or corrections, where possible. I have noted brief impositions by a different hand in <angle brackets> and places where the hand changes permanently with ||. Line breaks in verse are noted by /.

Translation

709 Hard winter. Dux Godfrid died.⁷⁶

710 A hard year, deficient in produce.

711

712 Vigorous flooding.

713

714 Pippin, mayor of the palace, died.⁷⁷

715

716/p>

717

718 Charles ravaged Saxony.⁷⁸ Great plague.

719

720 Charles fought against the Saxons.

721 Theudo expelled the Saracens from Aquitaine.⁷⁹

722 Great abundance.

723

724

725 The Saracens first came.

726

727

728

729

730

731 The blessed priest Bede died.⁸⁰

732 Charles fought against the Saracens at Poitiers on a Saturday.⁸¹

733

734

735

736

737 Charles fought against the Saracens in Gothia⁸² on a Sunday.

738: Charles in Saxony.⁸³

739

740

741 Charles dead.

742

743

744

745 Carlomann and Pippin in Saxony.⁸⁴

746

747 Carlomann went to Rome and because of the love of God, having abandoned the worldly delights of status, resigned the hair of his head⁸⁵ and left the governance of his kingdom to his brother Pippin.

748 <He died.>⁸⁶

749

750

751 Pippin elevated to king.⁸⁷

752 Pippin in Saxony.

753 Pope Stephen came to Francia.⁸⁸ The lord bishop Boniface aroused Frisia in preaching; he ended his temporal life in martyrdom.⁸⁹

754 Saint Boniface the bishop was crowned a martyr. And with king Childeric, who by baptism was called by another name, Daniel,⁹⁰ deposed and tonsured, lord Pippin was made king from prefect of the palace through the authority of Stephen the Roman pontiff, and entered Italy with an army of Franks, and having received the possessions of Saint Peter returned to his seat.⁹¹

755 The Franks again in Lombardy with an army.

756 Pope Stephen dead.

757 An organ came to Francia.⁹²

758 King Pippin entered Saxony.

759

760 King Pippin with an army in Aquitaine. Warin and Ruthard afflicted the blessed and sanctified man Otmar with many injuries.⁹³ The same man, full of days and full of merit by his sanctity, escaped from the anguish of his life and was buried on an island in the Rhine river called Stein.⁹⁴

761 Pippin again in Gascony up to the city of Limoges.

<762 King Pippin again in Aquitaine; he conquered Bourges.

763

764 Long and hard winter.

765

766 Pippin conquered Limoges.

767 Pippin continued to Toulouse.

768 Pippin died on September 24.

769

770 Translation of Saint Otmar from the isle of the Rhine to the monastery of St. Gall.⁹⁵

771 King Carlomann died on December 4.⁹⁶

772 The Franks in Saxony with King Charles.⁹⁷

773 Charles in Lombardy.

774 With the city of Pavia conquered, king Desiderius and his wife Ansa were exiled together to Corbie, and there Desiderius devoted his life to vigils and preaching and fasting and many good works up till the day of his death.⁹⁸ Charles came to Rome.

775 Charles in Saxony.

776 King Charles in Italy, and from there to Saxony without war.

777

778 King Charles in Hispania and the Saxons in Francia.

779 The Franks in Saxony without war. Great hunger and mortality in Francia.

780 Charles in Saxony, and then to Rome.

781 Charles returned from Rome, with Pippin having been baptized.⁹⁹

782¹⁰⁰ King Charles with the Franks to Lippe without war, and afterwards the Saxons broke their word and killed certain of the Franks, and again the Franks against the Saxons.

783 King Charles again in Saxony; after a slaughter, he ravaged the land.

784 The king crossed the Rhine to Lippe and ravaged the Saxons.

785 King Charles remained at Merseburg and conquered the Saxons peacefully [i.e., they surrendered].

786 Charles came to Rome, then to the monastery of St. Benedict and to Capua, and crosses appeared on clothing.

787 Charles, coming from Rome and to Pavia, led the Lombards away from there and exiled them to Francia, and he remained at Worms. And from there he continued through Alemannia across the borders of the Bavarians, and there dux Tassilo returned that country to him and gave him his son Theodo as a hostage.¹⁰¹

788

789

790

791 King Charles ravages the kingdom of the Huns.¹⁰²

792 King Charles remained at Regensburg and Pippin resigned the hair of his head.¹⁰³ And certain men of the Franks were hanged and killed because of a conspiracy that they had engaged in against Charles.¹⁰⁴

793 Wilhelm fought with the Saracens at Narbonne, and there cut down many men, and killed one of their kings along with a multitude of Saracens.¹⁰⁵

794 Charles again in Saxony, and those Saxons came against him and promised fidelity, and afterwards broke their word.¹⁰⁶

795 Again King Charles with a great army of Franks in Saxony; he ravaged the land and conquered those [Saxons] and from there led 7,070 captives and returned with a peace agreement. The Vandals were conquered and Zotanus, dux of Pannonia, came to King Charles at Aachen and gave over himself and the country which he held, and he himself and all who came with him were baptized, and he returned with peace and honor to his country.¹⁰⁷

796 King Charles in Saxony with a great army. He ravaged the land and with great booty returned to his own [country].

797 Again Charles came into Saxony; he ravaged the land and returned with a peace agreement to Francia at Aachen. And again with an army in Saxony with all his household, and he remained there the whole winter.

798 King Charles in Saxony and conquered those [Saxons] and from there led innumerable captives and returned with a peace agreement.

799 Gerold died.¹⁰⁸

800

801 <In the name of our lord Jesus Christ.>¹⁰⁹

802

803

804

805

806

807

808

809

810

811 Bishop Haito traveled across the sea.¹¹⁰

812 Abbot Werdo died.¹¹¹

813

814 Emperor Charles died. Year one of Emperor Louis.¹¹²

815

816 Gozbert was made abbot.¹¹³

817

818

819

820

821

822

823

824 The monk Wetti from Reichenau died.¹¹⁴

825

826

827

828

829

830 The foundation of the basilica of Saint Gall and the translation of Saint Otmar from the same church into the basilica of the apostle Saint Peter.¹¹⁵

831

832

833

834

835

836

837 Bernwig was made abbot.¹¹⁶

838

839

840 Emperor Louis died, and an eclipse of the sun occurred on May 5 between the eighth and ninth hour.

841 War of the three brothers.¹¹⁷ Grimald was made abbot.¹¹⁸

842 Division of the kingdom begun.

843 Peace made among those [brothers].¹¹⁹

844

845

846

847

848

849 Earthquake. Abbot Walafrid died.¹²⁰

850

851

852

853

854

855

856

857

858

859

860 Great winter and mortality of animals.¹²¹

861 Fiercest hunger. Meinrad the hermit was martyred.¹²²

862

863 The gens of the Huns attacked the name of Christianity.¹²³

864 Translation of Saint Otmar from the church of Saint Peter to the church of Saint Gall.¹²⁴

865

866

867 Earthquake and excessive overflow of rain.

868 Comet. Strongest hunger and the mortality of men and animals.¹²⁵

869

870

871 Master Yso died on April 30.¹²⁶

872 Abbot Grimald died and Harmut succeeded him.¹²⁷

873

874

875

876 Louis, the pious king of Germany, died.¹²⁸ Volo died.¹²⁹ Emperor Charles the Second began to rule.¹³⁰

877

878 Pope John came to Francia.¹³¹

879

880

881 Emperor Charles consecrated by Pope John.¹³²

882¹³³ Emperor Charles received the governance of the kingdom of the Franks.¹³⁴

883 At the request of Abbot Hartmut, Bernhard was established in his place.¹³⁵

884

885

886

887

888 Emperor Charles deposed from royal power and died on the eighth day after Epiphany the same year. And Arnulf, in whose time the Hagarenes first came to those regions, was elevated to royal power.¹³⁶

889

890 Salomon was made abbot.¹³⁷

891 The same man was crowned with the episcopal honor. Regensburg was burned in fire.

892 Arnulf hastened against the Moravians and unleashed the Hagarenes from where they were enclosed.¹³⁸

893

894

895

896 Arnulf was made emperor.

897

898

899 The Hagarenes entered Italy and vanquished the Lombards in war.

900 Emperor Arnulf died. Louis, his son, was raised to royal power while still a young boy.¹³⁹ The Norici¹⁴⁰ fought with the Hagarenes and part of them perished.

901 King Zwentibald was killed by his own men.¹⁴¹

902 The Hagarenes summoned by the Bavarians to a feast, where their king Chussol was killed and very many others with him.¹⁴² Earthquakes everywhere.

903

904

905

906 Adalbert, the glory of the Franks, was killed.¹⁴³

907

908 The whole army of the Bavarians was killed by the Hagarenes.¹⁴⁴ Bishop Adalbero came to the monastery of St. Gall with great pomp and many gifts.¹⁴⁵

909 Hagarenes in Alemannia.

910 Bishop Adalbero died. The Hagarenes fought with the Alemannians and the Franks and defeated them, and they killed the Norician part of the army.¹⁴⁶

911 A comet appeared. King Louis, the son of King Arnulf, died, and Lord Conrad accepted royal power.¹⁴⁷

912 King Conrad came to the monastery of St. Gall on the feast day of St. Stephen at Vespers. That same year master Notker died.¹⁴⁸

913 On the purification of Saint Mary, after the feast, a great miracle happened at Vespers: the stars flew about among themselves, in a marvelous manner, until the middle of the night. The same year immense snow falling on April 13 lasted a week after easter. Archbishop Hatto died and Bishop Otbert died.¹⁴⁹ The Hagarenes entered Alamannia. Erchanger and his brother Berhtold and Count Odalric with the help of their nephew Arnulf the best dux of the Bavarians completely cut down their whole army next to the Ine river, <with the exception of thirty men.>¹⁵⁰

914 Bishop Salomon was captured.¹⁵¹

915

916 Erchanger and his brother Berhtold and Luitfrid were captured and killed.¹⁵² Wiborada was confined [i.e., became an anchoress].¹⁵³

917

918 King Conrad died before Christmas.

919 Bishop Solomon died on the night before Epiphany. King Rudolf and Burchard dux of the Alemans fought at Winterthur, and the king was victorious.¹⁵⁴

920 Rachildis was confined [i.e., became an anchoress] on the nativity of St. Mary.¹⁵⁵

921 Hartmann was made abbot.¹⁵⁶

922 King Rudolf accepted the daughter of dux Burchard [in marriage].

923

924 Engilbert was made abbot.¹⁵⁷

925 Dux Burchard was killed in Italy by trickery. The Hagarenes invaded the monastery of St Gall. Wiborada was martyred.¹⁵⁸ Abbot Engilbert received his abbacy from King Henry.¹⁵⁹

926

927

928

929

930

931

932

933 Thieto was made abbot on Monday, October 28.¹⁶⁰

934 Bishop Noting and Abbot Engilbert and Deacon Moses died.¹⁶¹ <Alawic was made abbot of Reichenau.>¹⁶²

935 Conrad was made bishop.¹⁶³

936 That youth died.¹⁶⁴ King Henry died. Otto, his son, succeeded him in royal power.¹⁶⁵

937 The monastery of St. Gall was burned on Wednesday, April, 26, and Arnolf, dux of the Bavarians, died.¹⁶⁶

938

939 An eclipse of the sun occurred around the third hour¹⁶⁷ of the day on Friday, July 19, in the fourth year of king Otto, on the 29th day of the moon. The same day in the region of the Gauls an innumerable army of Saracens was completely destroyed by a certain queen named Tota, except their king and 49 men with him.¹⁶⁸ The same year Eberhard, dux of the Fanks, was killed, and Giselbert, dux of the Lotharingians, ended his life in the Rhine.¹⁶⁹

940 A hard year, deficient in produce.¹⁷⁰

941 A miraculous sign appeared in the heavens, and there was a mortality of cattle.

942 Thieto abandoned his abbacy and Cralo, his uterine brother, succeeded him on Tuesday, May 30.¹⁷¹

943 The whole army of the Hagarenes was killed by the Bavarians.¹⁷²

944 An earthquake occurred on the Tuesday after Easter, around cockcrow on May 16. The same year the whole summer passed in rain.

945 Huge snowfall on March 15.

946 Rachildis the anchoress died.

947

948 Lindau was burned on June 5.¹⁷³ The same year Liudolf, dear to God and all the saints, son of king Otto, first came with dux Hermann to the monastery of Saint Gall on the feast day of the same saint.¹⁷⁴

949 Waldo bishop of Chur and Hermann dux of the Alemannians died.¹⁷⁵

950

951 King Otto took Italy.¹⁷⁶

952 Kerhilt was clothed in a veil on May 27, on the sacred day of the ascension of the Lord, and was confined [i.e., became an anchoress] on the nativity of Saint Mary.¹⁷⁷ The same year two of the greatest thunderstorms occurred at the monastery without harm.

953 Discord arose between Otto and his son Liudolf, dux of the Alemannians.¹⁷⁸ The same year Abbot Anno received the management of the monastery of St. Gall and governed it for one year, two months, and one week.¹⁷⁹

954Adalbert, son of Berchtold, and Arnulf, son of dux Arnulf, were killed.¹⁸⁰ And Frederick archbishop of Mainz and, alas, Abbot ANNO died.¹⁸¹

955 King Otto fought with the Hagarenes <on the feast day of Saint Lawrence>¹⁸² and conquered them with God’s help, and their number was 100,000, and many of them were caught with their king named Pulszi and hanged from gibbets.¹⁸³ || And another war with them was waged by the Bohemians, where their king named Lele was caught after his army was destroyed.¹⁸⁴ The same year, on the feast of St. Gall, King Otto and his son Liudolf fought with the Abodrites and Wilzi and Zcerezcpani and Tollensani¹⁸⁵ and achieved victory in this, with the death of their dux named Stoigniew, and made them tributaries.¹⁸⁶ In that same year Henry dux of the Bavarians died.¹⁸⁷

956 || Liudolf, son of king Otto, entered Italy.¹⁸⁸ <That year crosses appeared on white clothing.>¹⁸⁹

957 Liudolf, having caught a fever in Italy, alas, finished his present life. Alawic of Reichenau, abbot of blessed memory, began to suffer a paralyzing disease.

958 The venerable Abbot Cralo departed his life. Burchard succeeded him, a noble man born from a lineage of ancient kings, wise and beautiful and fine in appearance.¹⁹⁰ The same year Alawic, abbot of Reichenau, died and in his place Ekkhard was placed over that same monastery, a place of delights.¹⁹¹

959 A hard year, and in many regions a disappointing harvest, and many died from hunger. Bertrata¹⁹² || was confined in a cell [i.e., became an anchoress] at Saint George.¹⁹³

960

961 || King Otto made a second campaign into Italy with a great army in the month of August.

962 The same king was consecrated by Pope Octavian on the purification of St Mary, a Sunday.¹⁹⁴

963

964

965¹⁹⁵ || Ruodman abbot of Reichenau entered the cloister at night and in secret, so that, if he was able to uncover something approximating an accusation, he might make it public; thus he entered as a wolf into a sheepfold. But having been caught, discovered by the shrewdness of the monk Ekkehard, who bore a lantern before him. He [Ruodman] was expelled, seeking many forgivenesses, by no means without shame. And this is what he was plotting:¹⁹⁶

966 Arrival and entrance of eight of the bishops and just as many of the abbots to the monastery of St. Gall to examine our life and our observation of the rule [of St. Benedict]. By the gift of God, when they depart they will charitably give the best testimony, as they promised the brothers.¹⁹⁷

967 Thietbert the priest died.¹⁹⁸

968 || This year an eclipse of the sun occurred on December 22, on the 28th day of the moon, on the third hour of the day.

969 A furious whirlwind appeared with great ruin to the buildings and the trees on the third of August.¹⁹⁹

970

971 || This year the benign Notker was made abbot./The monthly moon, which changed fifteen day before the kalends/of the month of Theseus, marked when he was about to come.²⁰⁰

972²⁰¹

973 || The august Emperor Otto and dux Burchard and Bishop Odalric and his nephew Adalbero and Count Odalric and the monk Ekkehard in that year retired from this world.²⁰²

|| What portion you will have given has been what you wished to give/seven or even eight times over, oh holy God.²⁰³

974²⁰⁴

975 || A comet was seen in the time of autumn. Soon followed the death of Abbot Notker, and of his predecessor Burchard and Notker the doctor.²⁰⁵

976 Ymmo was ordained abbot.²⁰⁶ In this year serious contention arose regarding the kingdom between emperor Otto and his nephew Henry dux of Bavaria, son of Henry.²⁰⁷

977

978 || Lothar king of the Franks, acting contentiously against emperor Otto regarding the borders of his kingdom, invaded Aachen, as if it was the seat of the kingdom of his fathers, and also seized the land between the Moselle and the Rhine which was taken hold of in the reign of Otto [the Great].²⁰⁸ Otto [II] immediately led 30,000 horsemen into Francia against him, and wasting it hostilely, made a most famous expedition.²⁰⁹

979 || Gebhard was made bishop.²¹⁰

980 || Bertrata, having died in her enclosure, sought the heavenly place./Hartker soon after bound himself to his cave.²¹¹

981²¹²

982 || Emperor Otto, not satisfied with the borders of his father, while he was at Rome, departed to occupy Campania, Lucania, Calabria, Apulia, and all the further parts of Italy up to the sea of the Sicilians and Trapani. Because of this the Constantinopolitan emperor, under whose rule lay this whole land, first tried fruitlessly to urge him from what he had begun through envoys.²¹³ Then he led the Saracens from Sicily and other islands of the sea and the borders of Africa and Egypt against him [Otto] in battle. With these [Otto] fought unsuccessfully. For determining, when he noticed a few men on the shore of the sea like bandits, that they came for plundering, he attacked with a small group to take them by surprise. Then surrounded by a boundless multitude, which had concealed itself by night in the mountains, with everyone in his army having fled or been killed or captured, [Otto] scarcely escaped by ship to a certain castle of his. We have seen, however, many of the captives who returned after, just as many laity as churchmen, one of whom was the bishop of Vercelli, weakened by long imprisonment in Alexandria.²¹⁴

983 In this year the emperor, thinking to avenge himself on those Saracens who live in Sicily, wished to invade Sicily by the ruse of Darius, a certain king of the Persians, with a bridge made of linked ships just as he [Darius] invaded Greece, but he was prevented by his premature death and burial in Rome. His son Otto ruled in his place, the third of this name, at four years of age, with whom at the same time ruled his mother Theophanu, whom his father received from the nobles of the Greeks as a wife.²¹⁵

984 || Here at a mature age that father passed from life/to the peace of the fatherland; YMMO²¹⁶ passed away today./Our people should vigilantly remember this one with good reason:/many memorials to him remain in the place of Gall.²¹⁷

985²¹⁸

986²¹⁹

987

988

989 || A bright comet appeared on the day of Saint Lawrence.²²⁰

990 || Abbot Odalric left his life, and Gerhard was put in his place.²²¹ And the monk Ekkehard died.²²²

991 || Faillanus Scottus of blessed memory departed from this world.²²³ || And empress Theophanu died in the ninth year of her widowhood with many nobles of her kingdom.

992

993

994

995 || Henry dux of the Bavarians, son of Henry, died. Civil war preceded his death, with the ruin of many of the nobles of the Bavarians. This year Rudolf in Burgundy, who succeeded his father Conrad in the kingdom, having attempted to deprive certain of his own [family] of their paternal inheritance, was attacked by them.²²⁴ Then this kinglet, although he had an extensive army, was nevertheless easily defeated and driven to flight. Also a noteworthy year for the excessive dryness of the air, with many cattle in this region killed, and many men also.²²⁵ For to such a degree were all the rivers of Europe drained that almost none were not full of shallows. Between those Saxons and those Slavs who are called Weletabi, slaughtering with mutual carnage and fire; they disturbed the whole of Germania between the Danube and the place of the ocean to the greatest degree.²²⁶

996

997²²⁷

998 || In the month of February a comet was seen, and, receding not far from the sun, for a few days it appeared around daybreak.

999²²⁸

1000²²⁹ || It thundered from the height of the heavens, our people were struck by fire/but no one was harmed. Praise to you, Christ God! ||Amen!

1001 ||Abbot Gerhard ||died this day.

|| The Lord has entrusted our management to Burchard/A man who has already prepared himself for everything.²³⁰

1002 || Emperor Otto died in Rome without an heir. Henry, of the royal lineage and also dux of the Bavarians, third by this name, succeeded him. Hermann, dux of Alemannia and Alsace, was trying to divide the kingdom with him by force, and to gain a part of it.²³¹ But with the matter unfinished, having attempted revenge on those who agreed with the king against him in Strasbourg, [Hermann] invaded the city and ordered it plundered, and setting the worst example violated the sacred places. Soon subjugated by the king, he did not complete a year from that day. His son, a small boy, the cousin of the king, was ordained dux by the people.²³²

1003 || A new matter: while Burchard restored to Gallus his roofs,/a peasant fell headfirst from the highest point./He offered our people a much too pitiable spectacle./But after he fell, he lifted up his head and sat up./Marvelously, he rose whole through Gallus and praised him.

1004 With the final preparations for Easter made solemnly in the spirit on Holy Saturday/the brothers received accustomed sleep after the meal./A silence led by faith sought our innermost spaces/into which, by divine law, no layman enters unknown./By the exertions of the fathers, an altar devoted in these [spaces] is potent:/it is said that there Gallus has his everlasting rest/He himself taught by his appearances that one should seek him there:/the father appeared, as he had taught, and loosened their tongues.²³³

1005 Behold, hunger — never was any through the ages more ferocious.

1006 || A new star appeared of unaccustomed brightness, glittering in form and lashing the eyes, not without terror. In what a wonderful manner it was at times more contracted, at times more expanded, and occasionally extinguished. It was seen however for three months near the eastern horizon, beyond all signs which are visible in the heavens.

1007 A serious plague, which suddenly ravaged the populace with widespread death.²³⁴

1008 || Kerhilt, raw and green before God, but an elder by age/died in the cloister, unlocking the prison of her flesh.

1009

1010

1011 || The anchorite Hartker is changed for the better, as I hope./Let him be at your right hand on the eighth day, good Christ!

1012 || This boy dux Hermann is placed among his fathers;/then the man, his brother-in-law Ernest, takes up the emblems of office.²³⁵

1013 Henry in Italy, with chosen soldiers, at Rome/scarcely having considered it, was made and created Caesar.²³⁶/These matters accomplished just as he determines, he returned from there/and part of the people of that land soon defected from him/after Hartwin was already defiling the Scepter for a while.²³⁷/Sorrowful comets burned in an uncommon way/for a long time, indeed, through different places:/now in the middle of the earth, now the interior below the east/now it concealed itself beyond the arctic pole./And a plague without name followed, wasting bodies/seething the intestines, then flowing with blood.

1014

1015 || Old Kotelint, her finished days worth lamenting/went up to the heavenly groom, for whom she interred herself in life./²³⁸

It causes repentance and sorrow, it grieves and pains, it stupefies, it trembles:/a solitary death without precedent happened by unfortunate chance./I would never want to know the tormented beast of the forest/I would prefer quivers and arrows broken entirely/than the youth of dux Ernest, wrongly cut down in its bloom./O, stop the hand guiding the wavering spear/from piercing our peaceable [dux] rather than the deer!/Although you would by no means commit any crime by free will,/the blood of the dux, companion, was borne out by a faithful friend./Peace to the dux, and Father, who is a lover of gentle peace,/may you number him among your peacemakers.²³⁹

1016

1017

1018

1019

1020

1021 || The whole globe was shaken by an earthquake from every direction;/horrid portents sounded, like a split in the abyss.

1022 || Emperor Henry, having invaded Apulia with mighty force, was received honorably and splendidly by the rejoicing Beneventines; and forced Troia, Capua, Salerno, and Naples, cities of his empire defecting to the Greeks, to surrender. Troia, well-defended with her strong men and with every military preparation, became a longer delay and a sticking point for victory. Nevertheless, although, damaged, she damaged and wounded many in her defense and killed very many, in the third month after she was besieged, she gave her hand as a supplicant to the emperor [i.e. surrendered], and he promised her safety and grace in victory, having given an oath of guarantee. And having accomplished these things he returned, leading away the ruler of Capua with him into custody. But around the departure from Italy, a plague afflicted his army and consumed the majority, so that it is not possible to remember how the body of the Roman Empire was so destitute of its limbs without misery and sadness. A horrible summer, with more thunderstorms and terrifying lighting than mortals are accustomed to, and a movement of wind thundering from the east shook buildings and tore trees up by their roots. Lord Abbot Burchard, most elegant mirror of the holy church, and Ymmo and Burchard, youths of good nature, died on this campaign. Notker, the most learned and benevolent man in our memory, Heribert and the two Rudperts, men of the highest innocence, Dietrich, and Liudolt || died with the disease raging widely.²⁴⁰ Also Rudhard, bishop of Constance died and Heimo succeeded him, and Thietbald was made abbot.²⁴¹

1023

1024 Pope Benedict died.²⁴² Emperor Henry died. And Conrad was consecrated in the kingdom at Mainz on the birth of saint Mary.²⁴³

1025 || The savage kindling of contention arose on the sacrosanct day of Easter at Augsburg between king Conrad and his cousin Conrad.²⁴⁴ Also Ernest, his cousin, dux of Alemannia, and Count Welfhard, after having united with him [the second Conrad], dared to rebel against the king at the same time.²⁴⁵ But this rash enterprise, having been prohibited by God, had no effect.²⁴⁶

1026 King Conrad celebrated Christmas in Aachen, and having entered Italy around springtime, subjugated nearly the whole of it on this side of Rome to himself, with Luca alone resisting him with margrave Reginhero.²⁴⁷ Heimo bishop of Constance died, and Warman was appointed to the same church.²⁴⁸

1027 The aforementioned king, coming to Rome, was ordained emperor of the Romans by the blessed Pope John on the holy day of Easter.²⁴⁹ Returning from there through Alemannia, he held a public assembly at Ulm. And there he received dux Ernest (that is, his stepson) and Count Welfhard and the others accused of treason, who surrendered to him, and he decided to transfer them to various places for safekeeping. Also, the castle which is called Kyburg, besieged for three months as Count Werinhero resisted at length and in vain, was captured by the same king.²⁵⁰ At the same time Empress Gisela, having entered the monastery of St. Gall with her son Henry and given presents most kindly, obtained fraternity there.²⁵¹

1028 The same Henry, the son of the emperor, with his father present, was crowned at Aachen on the most sacred day of Easter, anointed with oil by Pilgrim, Archbishop of Cologne.²⁵²

1029

1030 Ernest dux of the Alemannians, having effected a rebellion against his stepfather the emperor again, lost favor along with his ducatus, and Hermann, his brother, acquired the same ducatus, with his mother the empress having obtained it by entreaties.²⁵³ The emperor invaded Hungary and ravaged the same region from the nearest part up to the Fisca river. Meanwhile, Ernest the former dux took hold of a certain castle which is called Falchenstein with the aforementioned Werinhero, his soldier, and afflicted neighboring regions with no minor slaughter of their inhabitants. But a certain count called Manegold entered battle with him, suffering this in place of the emperor. In this [battle] both of them died and very many others on both sides were killed on the octave of Saint Lawrence.²⁵⁴

1031

1032 With King Rudolf having died, Odo, the son of his sister, pursued the kingdom of the Burgundians with a strong company, as if it was his paternal inheritance.²⁵⁵ And he fortified any captured townships with his protection, while at the same time the emperor pursued war against the Polish Slavs.²⁵⁶

1033 The same emperor led many soldiers with him, nearly in the middle of winter, into Burgundy, and besieged the castles Murten and Neuenburg. Hindered by the excessive force of cold, however, he returned with the matter unfinished. Then in the next summer he took the war to Odo. He [Conrad] utterly destroyed his [Odo’s] cities with plunder and fire, and by that necessity he forced that same man to come to him as a supplicant, following the promise, although feigned, of restitution.²⁵⁷

1034 Bishop Warmann and the venerable Abbot Dietbald died. They were succeeded by Bishop Eberhard and Abbot Notpert.²⁵⁸ Emperor Conrad again entered Burgundy with an army, and subjugated all those townships with fortifications to his dominion as far as the Rodan river, and came to Geneva. There, having truly been received honorably by Heribert Archbishop of Milan and the other leaders of Italy and Burgundy, he was led forth crowned on the feast of St. Peter in Chains,²⁵⁹ and elected king in the kingdom of the Burgundians.²⁶⁰

1035 A league of strong conspirators appeared in Italy. For inferior warriors, oppressed more than necessary by the unjust domination of their superiors, all having united at the same time, resisted those ones.²⁶¹ Not less did certain from among the enslaved, having conspired against their lords with a violent faction, establish judges, courts, and laws for themselves from their own number; they mixed up right and wrong. The bishop of Milan and the other senators of Italy, rising up against them to stop them, attempted to draw them back from such insolence, if they were able. But by no means did they wish to acquiesce to them, unless it was granted to those ones [the rebels] in writing by the king that they held the inviolable right of their fathers.²⁶²

1036 Emperor Conrad joined his son Henry in matrimony with the daughter of Cnut, king of the English.²⁶³ And Conrad committed to his cousin [Conrad] the ducatus of Adelbero in Carinthia, having deprived him [Adalbero] of it.²⁶⁴ Having gathered an army, he [Conrad] departed for Italy at the beginning of winter.²⁶⁵

1037 The same emperor, having celebrated Christmas at Verona, went from there to Milan. There, he was received honorably by the archbishop and the citizens. However, as he [the archbishop] bore feigned loyalty, proceeding from there, he[Conrad] led the same [arch]bishop with him to Pavia and, having imprisoned him suddenly as if he was guilty of treachery, he gave him to the patriarch of Aquila for safekeeping.²⁶⁶ Having craftily escaped him [the patriarch] by flight, for this reason the archbishop was received gratefully in the city by the triumphant Milanese. But the emperor, desiring to take revenge on them, besieged the city with a strong company and left the property of the bishopric to the army to be ravaged. But a marvelous and previously unfamiliar prodigy happened there at that time. For on the sacrosanct day of Pentecost, at sunrise, lighting was seen to move above the army, thunder to bellow, with the citizens within those walls not perceiving any of this. It is also said that not a few horses and men there were transfixed by lightning, and certain of them truly were seized by a demon. A war between Gozelin and Odo was carried on, in which Odo, defeated, died, and his army was scattered here and there.²⁶⁷

1038 The wife of king Henry and his brother Hermann, dux of the Alemans, died. The same king received his ducatus, with the kingdom of Burgundy, from his father the same year, with those leaders of the same kingdom having sworn him loyalty with an oath.²⁶⁸

1039 Emperor Conrad passed away and his son Henry took up the governance of the kingdom.²⁶⁹

1040 The same king enters the monastery of St Gall, and in that same year, having attempted to tame Bretislav dux of Bohemia, who was refusing to endure the bridle of his command, alas, he lost many of his men — and not the lowliest of them — in the forest through which he ordered his men to journey.²⁷⁰ For Count Werner, made the leader of this venture by the others, while ignorant of the ambush before him along with the others, recklessly entered a forest between the narrow gorge of the path, simultaneously arriving in a place excessively unfavorable to him and also favorable enough to the ill intent of the enemy.²⁷¹ Overwhelmed there by spears of every kind thrown from afar, they died unavenged, since, when those [enemies] had entangled them in the density of the forest, there was no opportunity to strike back or to join battle.²⁷²

1041 The aforementioned king, holding deep pain in his heart, added a new [army] to the old army, and then entered Bohemia, more cautious than before. He destroyed fortresses, consumed towns with fire, and finally compelled the same dux to give his son to him as a captive, and made him follow him to Regensburg. The same year Peter king of the Hungarians, having been foully expelled from his own kingdom by a certain count, came to the same King Henry asking for help.²⁷³ Pitying this unfortunate one, the most pious king, although harmed by him in the past, wept for the lot of human weakness. That same king [Henry] supplied him with paternal comfort through both words and material things.²⁷⁴

1042 King Henry, having brought many warriors with him, attacked Hungary and ravaged the greatest part of it.

1043 A most notable year, with the excessive overflow of rain and paucity of the fruits of the earth. The aforementioned king [Henry], desiring to restore Peter to his ancestral throne, equipped a huge ship with greatest force, and about to tempt the fortune of war, again entered Pannonia by the Danube. Having entered, he did many things bravely and many things successfully, and he compelled that counterfeit and false kinglet to give up his unjustly-possessed wealth. Furthermore, he bound him with an oath, that he would not exceed the borders of his kingdom; but the matter for which he came he has not yet achieved, hindered, I believe, by the will of God. For the same Peter, as long as he reigned, stood out as a sinner in many ways. From there returning to Ulm the same king [Henry] held a general assembly, then came to Constance in time for the synod, where he remained, entering a covenant with just as many bishops as other of the best men of the kingdom, as a diligent <public> advocate for all that was to be conducted there. But on the fourth day, which is commonly called indulgence, he himself with the bishop ascended the stage as an eloquent orator, and began to encourage the populace to peace with a splendid sermon. At the end, moreover, he concluded his speech thus: that he pardoned everyone who was guilty towards him, and compelled all those who were present, at times with entreaties and at times through his authority, to do that as well. What was profitably begun there, he ordered to be taught throughout the whole of his kingdom. And not long afterwards, with all matters having been completed in peace, he married the daughter of William, dux of Poitiers.²⁷⁵ Empress Gisela died.²⁷⁶

1044 Great hunger. After the same often-mentioned king [Henry] had gathered aid from everywhere, he departed for Pannonia a third time. That kinglet met him with an infinite multitude, with an approach that seemed undaunted, and when he was able to prevent his [Henry’s] crossing of a certain river, he permitted him to cross deliberately, having considered it an easier battle for himself within the borders of his own kingdom, and retreating more difficult for an enemy pressed against a river. But something very different from what he hoped occurred: in the end, our leader decided to engage the other as soon as possible, and to bring courage to his words, saying that it is better to lay down one’s life bravely in battle than to lie beneath the mockeries of the enemy as if a worthless slave. Indeed he himself [Henry], armed so that his bravery was greater than others’, drew up the battle line to suit the place and his forces, and with the signal having been given attacked the enemy and laid low those resisting him as if he was a tempest. Without delay he became the victor with the favoring mercy of Christ, and immediately he conquered the city, where he apprehended the wife and sons of the king, along with a huge amount of money. Peter he restored to his own kingdom, and with things done well he returned to Saxony.²⁷⁷

1045

1046

1047

1048

1049

1050

1051

1052

1053

1054

1055

1056 || Emperor Henry died, and his son Henry succeeded to the kingdom.²⁷⁸

1057

1058

1059

1060

1061

1062

1063

1064

1065

1066

1068

1069

1 For discussions of the text see especially Wilhelm Wattenbach and Robert Holtzmann, Deustschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittlelater: Die Zeit der Sachsen und Salier 1. Das Zeitalter des Ottonischen Staates (900–1050) (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967), pp. 226–39; Rudolf Pokorny, ‘Das Chronicon Wirziburgense, seine neuaufgefunde Vorlage und die Textstufen der Reichenauer Chronistik des 11. Jahrhunderts’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 57 (2001), 63–93, 451–99 (468–87); Roland Zingg, Die St. Galler Annalistik (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2019), pp. 134–42.

2 Zingg, Annalistik, pp. 134–36.

3 Johannes Duft, Anton Gössi and Werner Vogler, Die Abtei St. Gallen (St. Gallen: Verlag am Klosterhof, 1986), pp. 16–17; Werner Vogler, ‘Historical Sketch of the Abbey of St. Gall’, in The Culture of the Abbey of St. Gall: An Overview, ed. by James King and Werner Vogler (Stuttgart: Belser Verlag 1991), pp. 9–24 (p. 9); Anna Grotans, ‘The Abbey of St. Gall’, in The Oxford Handbook of Latin Paleography, ed. by Frank Coulson and Robert Babcock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 805–12 (p. 806). For the discussion of Gallus’ Irish identity see Ian Wood, ‘The Irish on the Continent in the Seventh Century’, in Gallus und Seine Zeit: Leben, Wirken, Nachleben, ed. by Franziska Schnoor and others (St. Gallen: Verlag am Klosterhof, 2015), pp. 39–53, and Sven Meeder, The Irish Scholarly Presence at St. Gall: Networks of Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), pp. 15–38; for the wider context of Columbanus’ career on the Continent see Ernst Tremp, ‘Columbans Vermächtnis im Widerstreit: Die Rechtfertigungsrede des Gallus vor der Gesandtschaft aus Luxeil im Jahr 629’, in Gallus und Seine Zeit, ed. by Schnoor and others, pp. 243–65. J. M. Clark, The Abbey of St. Gall as a Centre of Literature and Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926) is a useful overview in English, though outdated.

4 Duft, Gössi, and Vogler, p. 17; Grotans, ‘Abbey of St. Gall’, p. 806. For the development of the early settlement at St. Gall, see Max Schär, ‘Gallus’ Eremitensiedlung im Steinachwald’, in Gallus und Seine Zeit, ed. by Schnoor and others, pp. 183–203.

5 Duft, Gössi, and Vogler, pp. 17–19, 96–98; Vogler, ‘Historical Sketch’, p. 9.

6 Duft, Gössi, and Vogler, pp. 20–22, 102–07; Vogler, ‘Historical Sketch’, pp. 10–13.

7 Duft, Gössi, and Vogler, pp. 22–23.

8 Duft, Gössi, and Vogler, pp. 110–12; Vogler, ‘Historical Sketch’, pp. 14–15; Grotans, ‘Abbey of St. Gall’, p. 806.

9 Duft, Gössi, and Vogler, pp. 28–34; Vogler, ‘Historical Sketch’, pp. 16–18.

10 E.g. Rosamond McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 77–134. Walter Berschin, ‘Latin Literature from St. Gall’, in The Culture, ed. by King and Vogler, pp. 145–56, has called St. Gall a ‘mythos for modern scholarship’.

11 Grotans, ‘Abbey of St. Gall’, pp. 807–08; Karl Schmuki, ‘The Collection of Manuscripts’, in The Abbey Library of Saint Gall, ed. by Ernst Tremp, Johannes Huber, and Karl Schmuki (St. Gall: Verlag am Klosterhof, 2007), pp. 69–118.

12 See especially Albrecht Diem, ‘Die Regula Columbani und die Regula Sancti Galli: Überlegungne zu den Gallusviten in ihrem karolingischen Kontext’, in Gallus und Seine Zeit, ed. by Schnoor and others, pp. 65–97; Schmuki, ‘Collection’, pp. 87–88.

13 For the most famous section of this record, the account written by Ekkehard IV covering the years 883–972, see Mayke de Jong, ‘Internal Cloisters: The Case of Ekkehard’s Casus Sancti Galli’, in Grenze und Differenz im frühen Mittelalter, ed. by Walter Pohl and Helmut Reimitz (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000), pp. 209–221; Emily Albu and Natalia Lozovsky, Fortune and Misfortune at Saint Gall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp. vii–xxviii. For the Casus tradition in toto see recently Wojtek Jezierski, ‘Speculum monasterii: Ekkehart IV and the Making of St Gall’s Identity in the Casus Sancti Galli-Tradition (9th–13th centuries)’, in Ekkehart IV. von St. Gallen, ed. by Norbert Kössinger, Elke Krotz and Stephan Müller (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), pp. 267–302.

14 See recently Bernhard Zeller, ‘Language, Formulae, and Carolingian Reforms: The Case of the Alemannic Charters from St Gall’, in The Languages of Early Medieval Charters: Latin, Germanic Vernaculars, and the Written Word, ed. by Robert Gallagher, Edward Roberts, and Francesca Tinti (Leiden: Brill, 2021), pp. 154–87.

15 See especially Walter Horn and Ernest Born, The Plan of St. Gall: A Study of the Architecture and Economy of, and Life in, a Paradigmatic Carolingian Monastery (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979); Warren Sanderson, ‘The Plan of St. Gall Reconsidered’, Speculum, 60 (1985), 615–32; Lawrence Nees, ‘The Plan of St. Gall and the Theory of the Program of Carolingian Art’, Gesta, 25 (1986), 1–8; Richard Sullivan, ‘What Was Carolingian Monasticism? The Plan of St Gall and the History of Monasticism’, in After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History, ed. by Alexander Murray (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), pp. 251–87.

16 E.g. M. M. Hildebrand, The External School in Carolingian Society (Leiden: Brill, 1992); Anna Grotans, Reading in Medieval St. Gall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 53–66.

17 Schmuki, ‘Collection’, pp. 81–88.

18 Schmuki, ‘Collection’, pp. 88–92; Grotans, Reading, pp. 111–54; Stefan Sonderegger, ‘German Language and Literature in St. Gall’, in The Culture, ed. by King and Vogler, pp. 161–84.

19 Johannes Duft, ‘The Contribution of the Abbey of St. Gall to Sacred Music’, in The Culture, ed. by King and Vogler, pp. 57–67; Christoph Eggenberger, ‘The Art of the Book in St. Gall’, in the same volume, pp. 93–118.

20 Rachel Stone, ‘Waltharius and Carolingian Morality: Satire and Lay Values’, Early Medieval Europe, 21 (2013), 50–70; Alice Rio, ‘Waltharius at Fontenoy? Epic Heroism and Carolingian Political Thought’, Viator, 46 (2015), 41–64; Simon MacLean, ‘Waltharius: Treasure, Revenge and Kingship in the Ottonian Wild West’, in Emotion, Violence, Vengeance and Law in the Middle Age: Essays in Honour of William Ian Miller, ed. by Kate Gilbert and Stephen White (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 225–51.

21 Hayden White, ‘The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality’, Critical Inquiry, 7 (1980), 5–27, and The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), pp. 5–19; for responses see Marilyn Robinson Waldman, ‘“The Otherwise Unnoteworthy Year 711”: A Reply to Hayden White’, Critical Inquiry, 7 (1981), 784–92; Nancy Partner, ‘Hayden White: The Form of the Content’, History and Theory, 37 (1998), 162–72; Susan Crane, Nothing Happened: A History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020), pp. 153–60.

22 Zingg, Annalistik, pp. 134–213; Albu and Lozovsky, Fortune and Misfortune.

23 Zingg, Annalistik, p. 140. St. Gallen 915 is available online at http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/list/one/csg/0915.

24 Johan Autenrieth, ‘Der Codex Sangallensis 915: Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der Kapiteloffiziumsbücher’, in Landesgeschichte und Geistesgeschichte: Festschrift für Otto Herding zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Kaspar Elm, Eberhard Gönner and Eugen Hillenbrand (Stuttgart, 1977), pp. 42–55; Dieter Geuenich, ‘The St. Gall Confraternity of Prayer’, in The Culture, ed. by King and Vogler, pp. 29–38. For the officium capituli, see C. Morgand, ‘La discipline pénitentielle et l’Officium capituli d’après le Memoriale qualiter’, Revue Bénédictine, 72 (1962), 22–60; recently Alain Rauwel, ‘Note sur les usages liturgiques du chapitre’, Bulletin du centre d’études médiévales d’Auxerre, 6 (2013), 1–4.

25 Autenrieth, ‘Der Codex’, pp. 43–44; Geuenich, ‘Confraternity of Prayer’, pp. 29–30.

26 Zingg, Annalistik, pp. 140–41; Geuenich, ‘Confraternity of Prayer’, pp. 30–32. St. Gallen 453 is available online at http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/list/one/csg/0453.

27 Zingg, Annalistik, pp. 140–41.

28 Zingg, Annalistik, p. 141.

29 Carl Henking, ‘Die annalistischen Aufzeichnungen des Klosters St. Gallen’, Mitteilungen zur vaterländischen Geschichte: Historischer Verein des Kantons St. Gallen, 19 (1884), 195–368 (pp. 358–68); Zingg, Annalistik, pp. 134–35.

30 Wattenbach and Holtzmann, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen, pp. 226–27; Zingg, Annalistik, pp. 134–35. For the Annales Alamannici, see Henking, ‘Aufzeichnungen’, pp. 347–58; Wilhelm Wattenbach, Wilhelm Levison, and Heinz Löwe, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter 2: Die Karolinger vom Anfang des 8. Jahrhunderts bis zum Tode Karls des Grossen (Weimar: H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1953), pp. 188–89; Rudolf Pokorny, ‘Freisinger Annalen von der Reichenau’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 74 (2018), 525–83 (pp. 536–53); Zingg, Annalistik, pp. 42–49. For the Murbach annals see recently Ildar Garipzanov, ‘Annales Guelferbytani: Changing Perspectives of a Local Narrative’, in Zwischen Niederschrift und Wiederschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Hagiographie und Historiographie im Spannungsfeld von Kompendienüberlieferung und Editionstechnik, ed. by Richard Corradini, Max Diesenberger, and Meta Niederkorn-Bruck (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), pp. 105–20.

31 E.g. 760, 770, 774, 812, 816, 830.

32 Henking, ‘Aufzeichnungen’, p. 361; Wattenbach and Holtzmann, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen, p. 227; Zingg, Annalistik, pp. 134–36.

33 Henking, ‘Aufzeichnungen’, pp. 362–63; Zingg, Annalistik, p. 137. See e.g. 956, 973, 991, 1001, 1022.

34 Definitely the entries 965–68, possibly also 956–59 and the second half of 955.

35 Entries 971, 973, 980, 984, 1000, 1001, 1003, 1004, 1008, 1011, 1012, 1013, 1015, 1021.

36 E.g. 956, 958, 962, 972, 990, 1007. Some (though not all) of these erasures have been noted by editors, including Zingg, but to my knowledge there is no comprehensive study on the subject.

37 Henking, ‘Aufzeichhnung’, pp. 363–65; Wattenbach and Holtzmann, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen, pp. 226–39; Zingg, Annalistik, pp. 137–39.

38 See Wipo of Burgundy, Gesta Chuonradi II imperatoris, ed. by Harry Bresslau, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 61 (Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1915), 1–62 (pp. 32–62); Hermann of Reichenau, Chronicon, ed. Georg Pertz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, 5 (Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1844), 74–133 (pp. 120–24).

39 Harry Bresslau, ‘Beiträge zur Kritik deutscher Geschichtsquellen des 11. Jahrhunderts’, Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde, 2 (1877), 539–96 (pp. 566–96); Bresslau, ‘Beiträge zur Kritik deutscher Geschichtsquellen des 11. Jahrhunderts, Neue Folge I.’, Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde, 27 (1902), 127–75 (pp. 162–69). See also Wattenbach and Holtzmann, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen, pp. 226–39; more recently see the reanalysis of these sources’ relationship to the Chronicon Suevicum universale in Pokorny, ‘Wirziburgense’, pp. 470–75, 482–88.

40 Pokorny, ‘Wirziburgense’, pp. 482–48; Zingg, Annalistik, pp. 138–39.

41 Compare Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi, chapters 10, 15–22, 36, ed. by Bresslau, pp. 32, 35–42, 56 with Greater Annals 1025, 1027, 1037.

42 E.g. Hermann von Reichenau, Chronicon, s.aa. 948, 952, 968, 976, 982, 990, 1005, 1012, 1022, ed. by Pertz, pp. 114, 116–20.

43 E.g. 1027, 1034, 1040.

44 White, Content of the Form, pp. 6–7.

45 Zingg, Annalistik, pp. 141–42.

46 Annales Sangallenses Maiores, ed. by Ildefons von Arx, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, 1 (Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1826), pp. 73–85.

47 Henking, ‘Aufzeichnungen’, 265–323.

48 Zingg, Annalistik, pp. 144–213.

49 E.g. the use of majuscule for the deaths of the abbots Anno and Ymmo in 954 and 984, the changed dating for the year 801, and the frequent erasures throughout.

50 A previous translation into German only covered the years 1024–1044 — see W. Pflüger and Wilhelm Wattenbach, Wipo, das Leben Kaiser Konrad II: Nebst Auszügen aus den Jahrbüchern von Sanct Gallen und der Schwäbischen Weltchronik (Leipzig: Dyksche Buchhandlung, 1892), pp. 85–92. The first edition of Pflüger’s translation, published in 1877, did not include the Greater Annals, but terminated after the translation of Wipo’s Gesta Chuonradi.

51 For the status of Alemannia within Carolingian politics see especially Simon MacLean, Kingship and Politics in the Late Ninth Century: Charles the Fat and the End of the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 81–122.

52 MacLean, Kingship and Politics in the Late Ninth Century, pp. 120–29.

53 Annales Alamannici, s.a. 876, ed. by Zingg, Annalistik, p. 84.

54 For the position of East Francia, which had gradually become a separate entity from West and Middle Francia following the reign of Louis the German (843–76), see Timothy Reuter, Germany in the Early Middle Ages 800–1056 (London: Routledge, 1991), especially pp. 70–112; Benjamin Arnold, Medieval Germany 500–1300: A Political Interpretation (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1997), especially pp. 21–52.

55 Johannes Fried, ‘Die Königserhebung Heinrichs I: Erinnerung Mündlichkeit und Traditionsbildung im 10. Jahrhundert’, in Mittelalterforschung nach der Wende 1989, ed. by Michael Borgolte (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1995), pp. 267–318, (pp. 286–91, 300–02).

56 Reuter, Germany, p. 154.

57 Widukind of Corvey, Res gestae Saxonicae, book 3, chapters 9–15, ed. by. Paul Hirsch, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 60 (Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1935), pp. 109–12. For analysis of the revolt and its context see Karl Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society: Ottonian Saxony (London: Arnold, 1979), pp. 9–22; recently Gerd Althoff, Rules and Rituals in Medieval Power Games (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 234–46.

58 Entry 953, below.

59 Below, entries 1025–30.

60 Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi, chapters 10, 19, 25, ed. by Bresslau, pp. 32, 38–39, 43–44. Liudolf and Ernest are conflated into one character in the later romance Herzog Ernst — see Althoff, Rules and Rituals, pp. 237–39.

61 Paul Fouracre, The Age of Charles Martel (London, 2000), pp. 51–52.

62 Roger Collins, ‘Frankish Past and Carolingian Present in the Age of Charlemagne’, in Am Vorabend der Kaiser Krönung: Das Epos ‘Karolus Magnus et Leo Papa’ und der Papstbesuch in Paderborn 799, ed. by Peter Godman, Jörg Jarnut, and Peter Johanek (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2002), pp. 301–22 (p. 315).

63 Entry 799.

64 Entries 1012 and 1015.

65 For the evolution of the term, see Anthony Hilhorst, ‘Ishmaelites, Hagarenes, Saracens’, in Abraham, the Nations, and the Hagarites: Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Perspectives on Kinship with Abraham, ed. by Martin Goodman, George H. van Kooten and Jacques T.A.G.M. van Ruiten (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 421–34; also Norman Bade, ‘Muslims in the Christian World Order: Comprehension and Knowledge of the Saracens in Two Universal Histories of the Carolingian Empire’, Millennium, 10 (2013), 293–310. It is worth noting the competing Pauline interpretation, from Galatians 4:22–31, which many medieval Christians took to indicate that Hagar represented synagoga, i.e. the Jewish community — see e.g. Deeana Klepper, ‘Historicizing Allegory: The Jew as Hagar in Medieval Christian Text and Image’, Church History, 84 (2015), 308–44 (pp. 315–18).

66 Entries 899, 900, 902, 908, 909, 910, 913.

67 For the early Hungarians see especially Pál Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–1526, trans. by Tamás Pálosfalvi (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001), pp. 8–24.

68 ‘idiotae nostri quidam nunc Agarenos vocant’, a sentiment repeated in his Casus sancti Galli as well. Noted by Natalia Lozovsky, ‘The Uses of Classical History and Geography in Medieval St Gall’, in Mapping Medieval Geographies: Geographical Encounters in the Latin West and Beyond, 300–1600, ed. by Keith D. Lilley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 65–82 (pp. 71–72); Meyer von Knonau, Ekkeharti (IV) Casus sancti Galli (St. Gallen: Verlag von Huber & Comp., 1877), p. 298, note 998.

69 For the importance of the sack, see Vogler, ‘Historical Sketch’, p. 16.

70 For the function of apocalypse in tenth-century literature and politics, see especially Levi Roach, ‘Emperor Otto III and the End of Time’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 23 (2013), 75–102; Daniel Verhelst, ‘Adso of Montier-en-Der and the Fear of the Year 1000’, in The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious Expectation and Social Change, 950–1050, ed. by Richard Landes, Andrew Gow, and David van Meter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 81–92 (pp. 84–85).

71 Other sources also blame Arnulf for the entry of the Hungarians; Regino of Prüm implicitly connects the Hungarian migration to the dissolution of the Carolingian empire by placing his ethnography of the Hungarians in 889, the year after the death of Charles the Fat.

72 See the analysis in Mayke de Jong, ‘Carolingian Monasticism: The Power of Prayer’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History II: c. 700–c. 900, ed. by Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 622–53 (pp. 636–40); De Jong, ‘Internal Cloisters’, pp. 209–21; Rachel Stone, ‘“In What Way Can Those Who Have Left The World Be Distinguished?”: Masculinity and the Difference Between Carolingian Men’, in Intersections of Gender, Religion and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages, ed. by Cordelia Beattie and Kirsten A. Fenton (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 12–33.

73 Belle S. Tuten, ‘The Necessitas Naturae and Monastic Hygiene’, in Bodily and Spiritual Hygiene in Medieval and Early Modern Literature: Explorations of Textual Presentations of Filth and Water, ed. by Albrecht Classen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), pp. 129–47.

74 For the function of portents within the medieval mentality, see especially Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record, and Event, 1000–1215 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), pp. 3–19; see also the analysis of the contemporary Annals of Flodoard of Rheims in Edward Roberts, Flodoard of Rheims and the Writing of History in the Tenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019) pp. 188–217, and especially pp. 193–94.

75 E.g. Zingg, Annalistik, p. 145; White, Content of the Form, p. 6.

76 Godfrid, dux of Alemannia from the late seventh century. The decision to being the Annals with the death of Godfrid, rather than the death of the Pippinid Drogo recorded in the Annales Alemannici, frames the entire work’s more local perspective.

77 Pippin II (r. 680–714), father of Charles Martel.

78 Charles Martel, Mayor of the Palace 718–41.

79 Eudo ‘the Great’, dux of the Aquitainians c. 700–35/740, and the Muslims of what became al-Andalus. ´Saracen’, of uncertain origin, was a common ethnoreligious slur in the Middle Ages.

80 ‘The Venerable’ Bede, who actually died in 735. Bede’s manuscripts were an important presence at St. Gall — see Joshua A. Westgard, ‘Bede and the Continent in the Carolingian Age and Beyond’, in The Cambridge Companion to Bede, ed. by Scott DeGregorio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 201–15.

81 Likely somewhere between Tours and Poitiers. While there has been some controversy as regards the date, 732 seems likely — see William Watson, ‘The Battle of Tours-Poitiers Revisited’, Providence: Studies in Western Civilization, 2:1 (1993), repr. at https://deremilitari.org/2013/09/the-battle-of-tours-poitiers-revisited/.

82 That is, Septimania, the region of southern France abutting the Mediterranean.

83 Laconic language like this refers to Charles campaigning in Saxony, rather than merely being present there.

84 Carloman, mayor of the palace 741–47, and Pippin, mayor of the palace until 751; thereafter Frankish king until 768.

85 That is, became a monk.

86 In a later hand. It is unclear to whom this is meant to refer; if Carlomann, who died in 754, it is incorrect.

87 This entry is erased, though legible, in the autograph; it is not present in the twelfth-century copy. For this event and the potential involvement of Pope Zacharias, see Rosamond McKitterick, ‘The Illusion of Royal Power in the Carolingian Annals’, The English Historical Review, 115 (2000), 1–20.

88 Pope Stephen II, 752–757.

89 Saint Boniface, famed ‘Apostle to the Germans’.

90 A confusion of Childeric III with Chilperic II (r. 715–21), who had indeed been raised as a monk and known as Daniel before his elevation to the kingship.

91 Probably referring to the so-called ‘donation of Pippin’, in which Pippin confirmed papal territorial control of much of Italy.

92 A significant gift from the Byzantine emperor — see Judith Herrin, ‘Constantinople, Rome and the Franks in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries’, in Byzantine Diplomacy, ed. by Jonathan Shepard and Simon Franklin (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 1992), pp. 91–108 (pp. 100–01).

93 Warin and Ruthard were Frankish counts in the region of Alemannia.

94 Present-day Stein am Rhein, near where the Rhine drains from Lake Constance. Otmar, an Alemanic priest charged with the custody of St. Gall’s relics, is considered to have founded the abbey of St. Gall, though the date of that foundation is disputed.

95 An entry not in the Annales Alemannici.

96 Carloman I, r. 768–71.

97 That is, Charlemagne; r. 768–814: King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, Emperor from 800.

98 Desiderius, King of the Lombards 756–74. The latter half of the sentence, describing Desiderius at Corbie, is new to the Greater Annals.

99 This was Charlemagne’s son, formerly Carloman, who was renamed in association with the disinheritance of Charlemagne’s eldest son Pippin ‘the Hunchback’.

100 The dates 782–89 were erroneously labeled ΨCXII–ΨCXVIIII, i.e. 812–19, and corrected in a later hand.

101 Tassilo III, dux of the Bavarians 748–88, d. 796. For the context of this event, which constituted the final Carolingian takeover of Bavaria, see Stuart Airlie, ‘Narratives of Triumph and Rituals of Submission: Charlemagne’s Mastering of Bavaria’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, sixth series, 9 (1999), 93–119.

102 I.e., Avars.

103 That is, became a monk.

104 Pippin ‘the Hunchback’. The two events are connected; the conspiracy’s goal had been to place Pippin on the throne. See Carl I. Hammer, ‘“Pipinus Rex”: Pippin’s Plot of 792 and Bavaria’, Traditio, 63 (2008), 235–76.

105 Wilhelm of Gellone, Count of Toulouse 790–811.

106 For the trope of the perfidious Saxons, see Robert Flierman, ‘Gens perfida or populus Christianus? Saxon (in)fidelity in Frankish historical writing’, in The Resources of the Past in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Clemens Gantner, Rosamond McKitterick, and Sven Meeder (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 188–205.

107 By Vandals, the annalist means Avars; Zotanus is not a personal name but a mistake for the Avar title Tudun, a type of regional military leader. See Walter Pohl, The Avars: A Steppe Empire in Central Europe, 567–822 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018), pp. 361–63.

108 Gerold, Prefect of Bavaria 788–99. According to other sources, he died in battle with the Avars.

109 In a later hand, and of unclear meaning. The date here has the 800 written out in full, octingentesimus i; it is thus possible that the entry refers to the anno domini dating.

110 Bishop Haito of Basel (c. 806–23), on a mission to Constantinople.

111 Werdo, Abbot of St. Gall since 784.

112 Emperor Louis the Pious, 814–40.

113 Gozbert, abbot of St. Gall 816–37.

114 The schoolmaster at Reichenau for over twenty years and an important figure in the history of Carolingian monastic education. From the perspective of St. Gall, he is particularly vital because of his authorship of the second Life of St. Gall. Wetti is also the subject of the Vision of Wetti, a much-studied example of Carolingian dream literature.

115 This was the ‘refoundation’ of St. Gall under Gozbert, who entirely rebuilt the church.

116 Bernwig, abbot of St. Gall 837–41.

117 That is, the sons of Louis the Pious: Lothar, Louis ‘the German’, and Charles ‘the Bald’.

118 Grimald, abbot of St. Gall 841–72.

119 The treaty of Verdun, which divided the Carolingian empire into three sections. West Francia, corresponding to much of modern-day France, went to Charles ‘the Bald’; Middle Francia, a span of wealthy territories stretching from the Low Country down through Burgundy to Italy, went to the eldest son Lothar; and East Francia, corresponding to the western and southern portions of modern Germany, went to Louis ‘the German’.

120 For earthquakes in the St. Gall record see especially Monika Gisler, Donat Fäh, and Virgilio Masciadri, ‘“Terrae motus factus est”: Earthquakes in Switzerland before A. D. 1000. A Critical Approach’, Natural Hazards, 43 (2007), 63–79. Walafrid Strabo, abbot of Reichenau since 838, one of the most important authors of the so-called ‘Carolingian Renaissance’ and writer of a metrical life of St. Gall.

121 For animal pestilences in the early Middle Ages see Timothy P. Newfield, ‘Early Medieval Epizootics and Landscapes of Disease: The Origins and Triggers of European Livestock Pestilences, 400–1000 CE’, in Landscapes and Societies in Medieval Europe East of the Elbe: Interactions Between Environmental Settings and Cultural Transformations, ed. by Sunhild Kleingärtner, Timothy P. Newfield, Sébastien Rossignol and Donat Wehner (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 73–113.

122 Saint Meinrad of Einsiedeln.

123 Seemingly the Hungarians/Magyars.

124 Erasure mark around text.

125 Possibly Rinderpest/measles — see Timothy P. Newfield, ‘Human-Bovine Plagues in the Early Middle Ages’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 45 (2015), 1–38.

126 Iso, schoolmaster of St. Gall. According to Ekkehard IV, he taught notable figures like Notker the Stammerer, Salomo III of Constance, and the monks Tuotilo and Ratpert.

127 Hartmut, abbot of St. Gall 872–83. Erasure mark around text.

128 Louis the German, king of East Francia 843–76.

129 Seemingly by suicide — see Ekkehard IV, Casus, chapters 43–44, trans. by Albu and Lozovsky, pp. 125–29. The Latin, cecidit, has the meaning not only of ‘died‘ but also of ‘fell.‘ A marginal note in the manuscript in a later hand points the reader towards the Vita Notgerii for more information.

130 Although the text is unclear, it seems likely to me that this is Charles ‘the Fat’, king of Alemannia from 876, Frankish emperor 881–87, d. 888 after his ouster by his nephew Arnulf of Carinthia. Usually counted as Charles III, after Charlemagne and Charles the Bald, not Charles II. See the discussion in the introduction above.

131 John VIII, Pope 872–82.

132 That is, made emperor.

133 The dates from 882–89 were erroneously labeled ΩCXII–ΩCXIX, i.e. 912–19, and corrected in a later hand.

134 That is, East Francia, after the heirless death of his brother Louis ‘the Younger.‘

135 Bernhard, abbot of St. Gall 883–90.

136 Arnulf of Carinthia, king of East Francia from 887, emperor 896–99. Hagarenes here meaning the Hungarians, a connection which continues in the annals until the year 955 (see the discussion in the introduction above). A similar apposition, implicitly linking the death of Charles and the elevation of Arnulf to the entry of the Hungarians, is made by Regino of Prüm in the 888–89 section of his Chronicon.

137 Salamon III, Bishop of Constance, abbot of St. Gall 890–919.

138 Possibly drawing on imagery from the Alexander legends, in which the ‘unclean peoples’ of Gog and Magog — often equated to invaders from the Eurasian steppe — were locked behind the Caspian gates.

139 Louis ‘the Child’, king of East Francia 900–11.

140 Referring to the old Roman province of Noricum in southern Bavaria. For the relationship of the Norici to the Bavarians, see especially Matthias Hardt, ‘The Bavarians’, in ‘Regna’ and ‘Gentes’: The Relationship between Late Antique and Early Medieval Peoples and Kingdoms in the Transformation of the Roman World, ed. by H.-W. Goetz, J. Jarnut, W. Pohl, and Sören Kaschke (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 429–62.

141 Zwentibald, natural son of Arnulf, king of Lotharingia 895–901.

142 The word for feast is brandium, i.e. prandium, referring usually to breakfast or animal fodder. The implication may have been to compare the Hungarians to animals. Chussol is Kurszán, a leader of the Hungarians whose exact position is disputed.

143 Adalbert of Babenberg; a casualty of an ongoing feud with the rival Conradine family. See Regino of Prüm, Chronicon, s.a. 906, ed. by Friedrich Kurze, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 50 (Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1890), pp. 150–53.

144 The Battle of Pressburg (usually dated to 907). For the other sources on the battle see Kurt Reindel, Die Bayerischen Luitpoldinger 893–989: Sammlung und Erläuterung der Quellen (Munich: Beck, 1953), pp. 62–67.

145 Adalbero, Bishop of Augsburg 887–909.

146 It is unclear if the use of Norici here is a classicizing reference to the Bavarians or implies a specifically southern Bavarian section of the army.

147 Conrad I, king of East Francia 911–18.

148 Notker ‘the Stammerer’, best known for his Gesta Karoli Magni and his Liber Hymnorum, an important early collection of sequences.

149 Hatto, Archbishop of Mainz 891–913; Otbert, Bishop of Strasbourg 906–13.

150 Erchanger, dux of Swabia 915–17; Udalrich, Count of Thurgau c. 912–17; Arnulf, dux of Bavaria 907–37.

151 By Erchanger. The story is recounted, in highly stylized form, by Ekkehard IV, Casus, chapters 17–19, trans. Albu and Lozovsky, pp. 47–55.

152 Luitfrid appears as a nephew of Erchanger and Berhtold in the Casus telling.

153 The Vita Wiboradae describes her enclosure in a cell abutting the church of St. Magnus, 500 meters north of the monastery of St. Gall.

154 Rudolf II of Burgundy, 912–37, and Burchard II of Alemannia, 917–26.

155 According to the Vita Wiboradae, Rachildis became an anchoress after seeking out Wiborada.

156 Hartmann, Abbot of St. Gall 922–25.

157 Engilbert, Abbot of St. Gall 925–33.

158 Discussed in much more detail in the Vita Wiboradae.

159 Henry I, King of East Francia 919–36.

160 Thieto, Abbot of St. Gall 933–42. A later hand has supplied the II in II feria (Monday).

161 Noting, Bishop of Constance 920–34. Erasure mark around text.

162 Alawic, Abbot of Reichenau 934–58.

163 Conrad I, Bishop of Constance, 934–75.

164 It is unknown to whom this is referring.

165 Otto I, King of East Francia 936–73.

166 According to Ekkehard IV, Casus, chapters 67–70, trans. by Albu and Lozovsky (n. 14 above), 193–201, a fire set by students trying to avoid a disciplinary flogging. See the discussion in De Jong, ‘Internal Cloisters’, pp. 219–20.

167 The first part of this line is covered by an erasure mark, with a rip in the manuscript at the end of the word eclypsis.

168 Toda Aznárez, Queen of Pamplona 905–25, regent for her young son García Sánchez I afterwards. Toda remained deeply involved in the governance of the kingdom until her death in 958. See Roger Collins, ‘Queens-Dowager and Queens-Regent in Tenth-Century León and Navarre’, in Medieval Queenship, ed. by John Carmi Parsons (Stroud: Sutton, 1993), pp. 79–92 (pp. 87–89).

169 Eberhard, Duke of Franconia 918–39; Giselbert, Duke of Lotharingian from at least 925. See Widukind (n. 57 above), book 2, chapter 26, ed. by Hirsch, pp. 88–89.

170 Erasure mark around text; this entry is identical to the 710 entry.

171 Cralo, Abbot of St. Gall 942–58.

172 Compare Adalbert of Magdeburg, Chronicon, s.a. 944, ed. by Friedrich Kürze, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 50 (Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1890), pp. 162–63.

173 An island on the eastern side of Lake Constance.

174 Liudolf, eldest son of Otto I, Duke of Swabia 950–54, d. 957.

175 Waldo, Bishop of Chur 920–54, a nephew of Salomon III; Hermann, Duke of Alemannia 926–49, Liudolf’s father-in-law.

176 In fact an assertion of his seniority over Italy’s king, Berengar II — see Reuter, Germany, pp. 168–70.

177 At St. Magnus until 1008.

178 The 953–54 rebellion headed by Liudolf and Conrad the Red — see Reuter, Germany, pp. 155–60.

179 Anno, Abbot of St. Gall 953–54.

180 Adalbert, son of the Berchtold d. 917 and nephew of Erchanger dux of Alemannia; Arnulf son of dux Arnulf d. 937. Both failed to rise to the heights of achievement of the previous generation, motivating their dissatisfaction with and rebellion against the Ottonian regime.

181 Frederick, Archbishop of Mainz 927–54. Anno is written in entirely majuscule letters in the autograph manuscript, probably as a form of emphasis (see the 984 entry below as well).

182 A marginal notation, in the hand that writes the second half of the entry.

183 Bulcsú; according to Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio, chapter 40, ed. by Gyula Moravcsik and trans. by Romilly Jenkins (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzatine Studies, 1967), pp. 174–79, Bulcsú was karchas (harka), the third-ranking prince of the Hungarians. For the battle itself see Karl Leyser, ‘The Battle at the Lech, 955: A Study in Tenth-Century Warfare’, History, 50 (1965), 1–25.

184 Lehel or Lél, referenced in the Gesta Hungarorum (c. 1200). The only other source attesting this leader before the Gesta is the eleventh-century Chronicon Eberspergense, ed. by Wilhelm Arndt, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, 20 (Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1868), pp. 10–15 (p. 12).

185 The Zcerezcpani and Tollensani are both marginal notations in the same hand.

186 Stoigniew, d. 955, is known to us from Widukind (n. 57 above), book 3, chapters 53–55, ed. by Hirsch pp. 132–35.

187 Henry, dux of Bavaria 948–55, Otto I’s younger brother. In my own estimation, the second half of this entry, including the details of the second battle with the Bohemians, derives from much later, at least from the eleventh century — see Chris Halsted, ‘Einhardian Geography and the Tenth-Century Abodrites’, Early Medieval Europe, 30 (2022), 236–65 (pp. 261–63).

188 The first half of this entry, which Zingg estimates at eight words, has been scraped off the page — see Zingg, Annalistik, p. 174, note a.

189 Possibly a later hand. The marvel is reported in Widukind, book 3, chapter 61, ed. by Hirsch, pp. 136–37. At the end of the line, around three words have been erased — see Zingg, Annalistik, p. 174, note d.

190 Burchard, Abbott of St. Gall 958–71. This sentence appears to have been written over a large erasure mark, including the erasure of a previously-written date, though it is not noted by Zingg and I have not inspected the manuscript in person.

191 Ekkehard, Abbot of Reichenau 958–72.

192 This word, marking the end of the hand that had updated the entries from 956 onwards, was written over an erasure.

193 A church approximately a kilometer southeast of St. Gall. According to Zingg, the last phrase is in an earlier hand than the 956–59 entries. As a whole, the 956–60 entries are quite muddled; the original 959 date appears to have been erased and the 960 date changed to read 959, with another 960 added beneath, though this date has no added entry.

194 That is, crowned emperor, according to most contemporary sources. Octavian is John XII, Pope 955–64. The use of his birth name likely follows from his falling out with Otto soon after the coronation.

195 A modern hand has added a note in the margin here reading in Latin ‘the writing below, different in style from that above’.

196 This entry is in the same hand as the following, and seems to have been written at the same time. The implication is that both entries are meant to form a complete narrative, and thus that the delegation to examine St. Gall’s adherence to the rule of St. Benedict constituted the “plot” of Ruodman. The context of this bizarre episode was the tenth-century conflict over monastic reform, in which St. Gall came down decidedly on the anti-reform side. More detail about this episode is given in Ekkehard IV’s Casus Sancti Galli, 91–93, trans. Albu and Lozovsky, pp. 259–69; this begins a series of related events which continue throughout the rest of the narrative. The Casus explains that Ruodmann, the reformist abbott of the neighboring Reichenau, had snuck into the cloister trying to find some violation of the Rule of St. Benedict, but was cornered while hiding in the latrine. This intrusion is only the first in a series of maneuvers between Ruodmann and the monks of St. Gall. However, the 965–66 entries date from the eleventh century and are based on the Casus telling, even echoing the same phrasing in the wolf-in-a-sheepfold simile. As Zingg argues, this was probably an attempt by the author to provide a historical basis for Ekkehard’s tale in the main monastic annal; see Zingg, Annalistik, p. 176, note 234; also Henking, ‘Aufzeichnungen’, p. 292, note 228. For the context of Ruodmann’s latrine invasion see Tuten, ‘Necessitas Naturae’, pp. 129–47.

197 See Ekkehard IV, Casus, chapters 99–113, trans. By Albu and Lozovsky, pp. 279–315.

198 A green mark around the text seems to indicate that a previous entry was erased.

199 Several lines of erasure follow this entry.

200 Notker, Abbot of St. Gall 971–75. The Latin of this entry is essentially a very tangled way of dating the arrival of Notker, on 18 May 971. See Henking, Aufzeichnungen, p. 294, note 229.

201 An erased entry of a single line.

202 Burchard III of Alemannia, 954–73; St. Ulrich, Bishop of Augsburg 923–73, who had been educated at St. Gall; Ekkehard I, Deacon of St. Gall. Adalbero had been appointed to assist Ulrich in his duties due to illness, to some controversy. It is unclear where Count Odalric’s power lay — see Zingg, Annalistik, p. 178, note 244.

203 Written in a second hand, seemingly as a meditation on the great amount of death the previous entry had described.

204 An erased entry of several lines.

205 The latter Notker is known as Notker II ‘Peppercorn’. An erased word, possibly ‘Notker’, is visible before the beginning of this entry. See Zingg, Annalistik, p. 178, note g.

206 Ymmo, Abbott of St. Gall 976–84.

207 Otto II, emperor 973–83; Henry ‘the Quarrelsome’, dux of Bavaria 955–76 and again 985–95, dux of Carinthia 989–95. Henry was Otto’s cousin — the son of Otto I’s brother Henry — not his nephew.

208 Lothar, King of the West Franks 954–86.

209 Compare the depiction in Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, book 3, chapter 8, ed. by Robert Holtzmann, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, nova series, 9 (Berlin: Apud Weidmannos, 1935), p. 106.

210 Gebhard II, Bishop of Constance 979–95.

211 Hartker was enclosed at St. George until he died in 1011. Below this couplet in the manuscript, faint writing, seemingly in a much later hand, can be seen.

212 An erased entry of a single line.

213 This was Basil II, emperor 976–1025. ‘Constantinopolitan’ is likely an elegant way of declining to call the Byzantine emperor ‘Roman.’

214 Compare the depiction in Thietmar, Chronicon,book 3, chapter 20–23, ed. Holtzmann, pp. 122–129.

215 Otto III, king 983–1002, emperor from 996. Theophanu, a relation of Byzantine emperor John Tzimiskes who had married Otto II in 972, acted as her son’s regent from her husband’s death in 983 until her own death in 991.

216 Majuscule in the manuscript, probably for emphasis.

217 This passage appears as part of the 983 entry in the MGH edition. This is probably an attempt to combine the depictions in the autograph and the twelfth-century copy, in which each line of verse is placed beside a year from 990–93 (by this point in the text, the twelfth-century manuscript is off by several years).

218 An erased entry of less than a line; possibly ‘abba’ faintly visible.

219 An erased entry of less than a line; possibly ‘obit’ faintly visible.

220 Likely Halley’s Comet. St. Lawrence was especially associated with Ottonian rule after being associated with the victory over the Hungarians in 955, which also occurred on his feast day, August 10.

221 Odalric, Abbot of St. Gall 984–90; Gerhard, Abbot of St. Gall 990–1001. A word has been erased in this sentence between ei and subrogatur.

222 Ekkehard II ‘Palatinus.‘

223 Possibly a teacher at the monastic school — see Zingg, Annalistik, p. 182, note 275.

224 Rudolf III of Burgundy, 993–1032; Conrad I of Burgundy, 937–93.

225 The first letter of the opening word of this line, notabilis, is in a stylized majuscule, unusual for this text.

226 Erasure marks throughout. For the Weletabi/Wilzi, by which the annalist means the Liutizi, see Wolfgang Fritze, ‘Beobachtungen zur Entstehung und Wesen des Lutizenbundes’, Jahrbuch für die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands, 7 (1958), 1–38; compare Annales Quedlinburgenses s.aa. 995, 997, ed. By Martina Giese, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum eparatism editi, 72 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2004), pp. 485–89, 492–97.

227 A four-line entry erased. The year is written rather sloppily, in an ink that, unlike the other dates on the page, has bled through to the next.

228 The half-erased remnant of a previous entry is visible in the manuscript; ad ei ex atque is faintly visible.

229 For the entries 1000, 1001, and 1002, the Greek sign for 900 is written before the Roman M, likely indicating that the scribe went through making 900 signs before he returned to complete the date.

230 Burchard II, Abbot of St. Gall 1001–22.

231 Henry II, king 1002–24, emperor from 1014; Hermann II, dux of Alemannia 997–1003.

232 Hermann III, dux of Alemannia 1003–12. Compare the narrative of Thietmar, Chronicon, book 5, chapters 2–27 and book 6, chapter 9, ed. by Holtzmann, 222–53, 284.

233 The Latin of these two entries is exceedingly opaque; I have relied extensively on the translation in Zingg, Annalistik, 187 and the suggestions in von Arx, p. 11, notes 4–6. The final line refers to the healing of muteness, a miracle recorded often in association with St. Gall.

234 An erased note of a line and a half, of which the last word appears to be Gallo, follows this entry.

235 Ernest I, younger son of the Babenberger marchio Leopold of Austria, dux of Alemannia 1012–15. Ernest was married to Hermann’s older sister Gisela, later wife of Conrad II. This entry covers an erased line.

236 That is, made emperor.

237 That is, Arduin, king of Italy in opposition to Henry since 1002.

238 Kotelint is referenced in Ekkehard IV, Casus, chapter 93, trans. Albu and Lozovsky, pp. 265–69, in an anecdote which takes place in the 960s. This short couplet appears to be an entirely separate poem from what follows; it is separated in the autograph manuscript by a stylized capital at the beginning of the next line.

239 This short poem refers to the premature death of Ernest I by a hunting accident. Compare the depiction in Thietmar, Chronicon, book 7, chapter 14, ed. by Holtzmann, 414–17; Hermann, Chronicon, s.a. 1015, ed. Pertz, p. 119. See the discussion in Herwig Wolfram, Conrad II, 990–1039: Emperor of Three Kingdoms, trans. by Denise A. Kaiser (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), pp. 34–36, for the political context of Ernest’s death and his widow Gisela’s marriage to soon-to-be-emperor Conrad II.

240 Notker III ‘Labeo’ or Notker ‘the German’, St. Gall’s schoolmaster; the others mentioned cannot be identified with specificity, though Ymmo, Burchard, Dietrich, and Liudolt appear in St. Gall’s necrology.

241 Rudhard, Bishop of Constance 1018–22; Heimo, Bishop of Constance 1022–26; Thietbald, Abbot of St. Gall 1022–34.

242 Benedict VIII, Pope 1012–24.

243 Conrad II, king 1024–39, emperor from 1027.

244 Conrad ‘the Younger’, whom Wipo describes as the opposition candidate in the 1024 election.

245 Ernest II of Alemannia, son of Ernest I and Gisela, dux of Alemannia 1015–30; Welf II, count in Alemannia, d. 1030.

246 Compare the treatment in Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi, chapter 10, ed. by Bresslau, p. 31; Hermann, Chronicon, s.a. 1025, ed. by Pertz, p. 120.

247 Rainier, margrave of Tuscany 1014–27, a supporter of Henry II’s.

248 Warman, Bishop of Constance 1026–1034. Compare Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi, chapters 11–14, ed. by Bresslau, pp. 32–35; Hermann, Chronicon, s.a. 1026, ed. by Pertz, p. 120.

249 John XIX, Pope 1024–32.

250 Werner of Kyburg, son of Liutfried of Winterthur, d. 1030.

251 Gisela, wife of Conrad II, whose first husband had been Ernest I of Alemannia; the future Henry III, emperor king 1039–56, emperor from 1046. Compare Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi, chapters 15–22, ed. by Bresslau, pp. 35–42, Hermann, Chronicon, s.a. 1027, ed. by Pertz, pp. 120–21.

252 Pilgrim, Archbishop of Cologne 1021–36. Compare Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi, chapter 23, ed. by Bresslau, pp. 42–43; Hermann, Chronicon, s.a. 1028, ed. by Pertz, p. 121.

253 Hermann IV, dux of Alemannia 1030–38.

254 Manegold II of Nellenburg. Compare Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi, chapters 25–28, ed. by Bresslau, pp. 43–47; Hermann, Chronicon, s.a. 1030, ed. by Pertz, p. 121.

255 The kingdom the Burgundians was a successor of the Middle Frankish kingdom which consisted of parts of southeastern France and eastern Switzerland. The criticism here appears to be that Odo tried to make a claim through the maternal line. The annalist here rather obscures the fact that the claim of Conrad II, the German emperor who would eventually become king of Burgundy, was essentially baseless (Conrad’s predecessor Henry II, to whom he was not closely related, was named heir to King Rudolf of Burgundy but predeceased him in 1024).

256 Odo II, Count of Blois 1004–37. Compare Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi, chapter 29, ed. by Bresslau, pp. 47–49; Hermann, s.a. 1032, ed. by Pertz, p. 121. The Slavic campaign is also mentioned in the Annales Hildesheimenses, s.a. 1032, ed. by Georg Waitz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 8 (Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1878), p. 37.

257 Compare Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi, chapter 30–31, ed. by Bresslau, pp. 49–50; Hermann, Chronicon, s.a. 1033, ed. by Pertz, p. 121.

258 Eberhard, Bishop of Constance 1034–1046; Nortpert, Abbot of St. Gall 1034–72.

259 Celebrated on August 1.

260 Heribert, Archbishop of Milan 1018–45. Compare Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi, chapter 32, ed. by Bresslau, p. 51; Hermann, Chronicon, s.a. 1034, ed. by Pertz, pp. 121–22.

261 I.e., their superiors.

262 Compare Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi, chapter 34, ed. by Bresslau, p. 51; Hermann, Chronicon, s.a. 1035, ed. by Pertz, p. 122.

263 Gunhilda of Denmark, d. 1038, daughter of Cnut the Great, king of England since 1016, Denmark since 1018, and Norway since 1028, d. 1035.

264 Adalebero, dux of Carinthia c. 1011–35. The cousin is the same Conrad who was a candidate for the kingship in the 1020s.

265 Compare Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi, chapter 35, ed. by Bresslau, pp. 54–56; Hermann, Chronicon, s.a. 1036, ed. by Pertz, p. 122.

266 That is, Poppo or Wolfgang, Patriarch of Aquileia 1019–45.

267 Gozelo, dux of Lower Lorraine 1023–44, also Upper Lorraine from 1033. Compare Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi, chapters 35–36, ed. by Bresslau, pp. 54–56; Hermann, Chronicon, s.a. 1037, ed. by Pertz, p. 122.

268 Compare Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi, chapters 37–38, ed. by Bresslau, pp. 57–58; Hermann, Chronicon, s.a. 1038, ed. by Pertz, pp. 122–23.

269 Compare Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi, chapter 39, ed. by Bresslau, pp. 58–60; Hermann, Chronicon, s.a. 1039, ed. by Pertz, p. 123.

270 Bretislav, dux of Bohemia 1034–55.

271 Werner, count of Winterthur 1030–40.

272 Compare Hermann, Chronicon, s.a. 1040, ed. by Pertz, p. 123.

273 Peter Orseolo, king of Hungary 1038–41 and 1044–46, death-date unclear.

274 Compare Hermann, Chronicon, s.a. 1041, ed. by Pertz, p. 123.

275 William, dux of Aquitaine 995–1030.

276 Compare Hermann, Chronicon, s.a. 1043, ed. by Pertz, p. 124.

277 Compare Hermann, Chronicon, s.a. 1044, ed. by Pertz, pp. 124–25.

278 Henry IV, king 1054–1105, emperor from 1084.