Attigny Royal Palace
Coordinates: 49 ° 27 ′ 42 " N , 4 ° 35 ′ 24" E
In the 8th and 9th centuries, the royal palace of Attigny was, as the Palatium Attiniacum, one of the important residences of the Carolingian emperors and kings. Contrary to its name, it did not stand in Attigny on the banks of the Aisne , but in a neighboring town situated higher up and thus protected from flooding, which is now called Sainte-Vaubourg . The Palatinate was burned down by Emperor Otto II in 978 and was not rebuilt afterwards. The Fiscus Attiniacum , whose center was the Royal Palatinate, was one of the largest domains in western France at that time and in 987, the year the government took officeHugo Capets , next to the fortress of Montreuil-sur-Mer, the only part of the Domaine royal that was north of the Île-de-France .
meaning
Palatinate Attigny was two days' journey northeast of Reims on the Roman road , which was still in use in the Middle Ages , connecting Reims with Trier . Under the Carolingians it was not only a stage on the journeys of the king or emperor between the eastern and western parts of the empire, but a connecting element first between the old core of the empire in the west and the old property of the ruling family around Liège , later the Main residence in Aachen . Meetings were held here that concerned the entire empire. After the death of Louis the Pious , it was Charles the Bald in particular , for whom Attigny was the ideal place to consult within the families. It was not until Lorraine finally belonged to Eastern Franconia from 923 and the emergence of a border as a separating element between West and East that Attigny lost this geographical advantage, so that the Royal Palatinate was abandoned a little later.
history
Attigny was apparently already several centuries old when it first appeared in the documents between 642 and 651. During this time, King Clovis II acquired the domain from the abbot of the Saint-Aignan monastery in Orléans , who received Fleury, which was much closer to home and was renamed Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire shortly afterwards , than the monastery with relics founded here of St. Benedict of Nursia .
In the year 727 the monk Danihel died here, in whom the king Chilperic II is seen from time to time - wrongly, since Chilperic, who lived in the monastery as Daniel before his accession to the throne 715/716, had already died in Noyon in 721 .
It is believed that passed in the following decades Attigny in Carolingian possession, as Pepin the Short , 750 and 751 as house Meier uncertificated and that it was part of the royal estate with the accession of Pippin in the same year 751 again. From 757 Attigny is called the royal palace, which in the following decades could also serve as a location for important events of the king and also the church. In 762 the synod that went down in history as the prayer union of Attigny took place here , in 771 Charlemagne celebrated Christmas in Attigny, in 785 the Saxon Duke Widukind was baptized here and Christmas was also celebrated (not necessarily at the same time, since Widukind's baptism was not can be dated more precisely); Since Easter 786 was also celebrated in Attigny, it can be assumed that Charlemagne spent the winter of 785/786 here.
Another high point in the history of the Palatinate took place in the year 822, when Emperor Ludwig the Pious chose the Palatinate Attigny in order - probably in August - with a symbolic act, the penitential act of Attigny , to restore its damaged reputation, which was caused by the dispute within the family suffered over the past few years.
The Palatinate certainly experienced its heyday during the reign of Charles the Bald , who as king stayed in Attigny 19 times, and who came here almost every year from 859 onwards. The importance of the Palatinate is also expressed in the fact that coins were struck here between 864 and 877. In 865 Charles celebrated Easter (one last time) in the Palatinate Attigny, in 870 a synod on a dispute between Hinkmar von Laon and Abbot Karlmann , a son of the king, took place here.
One last time importance was the Palatinate Attigny, as Charles the Simple after the death of the last East Frankish Carolingian Louis the Child in the year could bring 911 Lorraine and Attigny now back at one of the main roads was between the parts of the empire. In 916, Charles donated a chapel here and furnished it with relics of St. Walburga , which, however , were brought to safety ten years later (926) in view of the approaching Hungarians . Karl himself had been deposed three years earlier, Lothringen had been finally added to the East Franconian Empire the year before, and Attigny was now just a border town and thus hardly a residence in which a king would seek supremacy in times of disputes between West and East Franconia could stay in Europe safely.
In these years, however, the symbolic importance of the Palatinate was still so great that King Otto I received the homage from Heriberts of Vermandois and Hugo the Great , the strong opponents of King Ludwig the Overseas , on his punitive expedition to western France in 940 .
Charles the Simple had received the domain of Attigny in 928 to provide for himself.After his death the following year, his widow Eadgifu followed him as owner , who in 951 married the son of Heribert of Vermandois, of all people, and then passed her widow's property to her son, had to return the king, including Attigny. A generation later it was Otto II and Lothar who continued the argument. Lothar had invaded Lorraine in mid-978 and even attacked and plundered Aachen , but then withdrew. Otto's reaction was another punitive expedition to western France, which culminated in the siege of Paris and during which Attigny, among others, was burned to the ground.
The Palatinate Attigny was destroyed and was not rebuilt, but the domain Attigny remained in the possession of the king and a few years later, when Hugo Capet ascended the throne in 987, it was one of the few domains that remained to the kingship.
About a hundred years after Hugo Capet, King Philip I gave the Attigny domain to his daughter Constance as a dowry on the occasion of her wedding to Count Hugo von Troyes (1093/95). The couple tried in 1102 to leave part of the property to the Molesme Abbey, founded in 1075 , but failed due to the resistance of the Archbishop of Reims , who wanted Attigny himself and in the end got it. The archbishops made the domain into one of their summer residences, the remains of which were apparently still visible at the end of the 18th century.
Palatinate
The only information currently available on the Palatinate Attigny itself comes from the documents relating to the Walburga Foundation from 916 and the attempted donation from 1102, i.e. points in time that clearly lie after the great Attigny period. There is also a supplemented (" interpolated ") copy of the Walburga deed from the 11th century. Archaeological excavations have not yet been carried out at the Palatinate site.
In view of the events surrounding the Palatinate, it is assumed that the central building complex in the 8th century had at least one king's hall, living rooms and a church. It is certain that there was a game reserve at the beginning of the 9th century. On the occasion of the Walburga Foundation in 916, a monastery was built, but no delimitation of the Palatinate area is mentioned, these are only found as gates and ramparts in the copy, so a real defense of the complex can be excluded in view of the evacuation of the relics in 926.
Only the additions in the transcript, which apparently explain a current situation compared to an earlier one, provide more precise information. Now there was an "upper gate" ("portam superiorem") - the terrain rises north to south, so that this gate is assumed to be the main entrance on the southern edge of the Palatinate, where the Palatinate area is south-east of Sainte-Vaubourg from southwest to northeast Roman road is closest), as well as a parceled area immediately next to it, which was intended for the settlement of residents who did not belong to the monastery, and from which today's place developed. The document from 1102 finally provides information about the palace buildings themselves. Seen from the “southern gate”, the porta meridiana , the palace was on the left, behind on the right the monastery and finally the chapel itself. The monastery is also localized by the still existing Ferme de Prieuré in the east of the village. A chapel that stood within this courtyard was demolished in 1816.
A castle on the northern edge of the village, which was mentioned in 1657 as a “house with ditches” and of which only a few remains have survived today, dates from the 15th century and has nothing to do with the Palatinate. The situation is different with the Sainte-Reine spring on the northern edge of the town, which apparently secured the water supply for the facility a thousand years ago. Based on this information, an area of around 15 hectares is calculated for the Palatinate Attigny, which can be compared with the 12 hectares that can be compared for the enclosed Aachen Imperial Palace and the likewise enclosed Saint-Denis Abbey , which also served as a royal residence .
The last information about the Palatinate Attigny comes from the modern era. Abel Hugo wrote in 1835 that the Archbishops of Reims made the “Palais d'Attigny” one of their country houses, the remains of which were destroyed in the 17th century. Henri-Louis Hulot, pastor in Attigny from 1803 to 1819 and later Grand Vicar of the Archbishop of Reims, also reports that “before the revolution” there were still remnants of the “Palais d'Attigny” in the vicinity of the parish church and the cemetery - today one agriculturally used open space - were visible.
domain
The two documents from the years 916 and 1102 contain such detailed statements about the villae , i.e. the manors that belong to the Attigny domain, that today one can get an idea of their size from them. These are all places that are within a radius of about 5 kilometers from Sainte-Vaubourg, namely mainly Sainte-Vaubourg itself, which was then called villa Dionna , today's Attigny in the north, Coëgny ( villa Corniaco ) and Méry ( Madriaco ), both districts of Chuffilly-Roche in the east, Coulommes-et-Marqueny in the south, then called villa Calunnia and Marinania , as well as a number of other farms that cannot yet be identified. The identified areas alone make up almost 4,000 hectares; research assumes that, with the communities of Saulces-Champenoises and Vaux-Champagne further to the west, up to 10,000 hectares belonged to the domain.
literature
- Abbé Henri-Louis Hulot: Attigny avec ses dépendances, son palais, ses conciles . 1822.
- Abel Hugo: France pittoresque ou Description pittoresque, topographique et statistique des départements et colonies de la France. 3 volumes. Delloye, Paris 1835.
- Josiane Barbier: Palais et fish à l'époque Carolingienne: Attigny. Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes, 1982, volume 140.
- Eckhard Freise : Widukind in Attigny. In: Gerhard Kaldewei (ed.): 1200 years of Widukind's baptism. 1985, ISBN 3-87088-463-0 , pp. 12-45
- Josiane Barbier, Elisabeth Robert: Attigny. In: Annie Renoux (ed.): Palais médiévaux (France-Belgique), 25 ans d'archéologie. Publications de l'université du Maine, 1994, ISBN 2-904037-19-5 , pp. 25-27.
- Ingrid Heidrich : The documents of the Arnulfinger. 2001, ISBN 3-00-007891-6 .
- Annie Renoux: Remarks on the development of the Palatinate system in northern France in the Carolingian period (751–987). In: Lutz Fenske, Jörg Jarnut , Matthias Wemhoff : Deutsche Königspfalzen. Volume 5, 2001, ISBN 3-525-35311-1 (publications of the Max Planck Institute for History).
- Bernd Remmler: Searching for Traces: The Carolingians - The Disappeared Palaces of Charlemagne. 2010, ISBN 978-3-86805-798-0 .
Remarks
- ↑ Since the southern parts of the village were abandoned during the Huguenot Wars , the built-up area no longer corresponds to that of that time, which can also be seen from the location of the parish church (which is not the former Palatinate Chapel) a bit to the southwest and outside the present-day village
- ↑ Hugo writes about Attigny, but means Sainte-Vaubourg, since he mentions both the Roman road and the Walburga Foundation