Royal Palatinate Samoussy

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The royal palace Samoussy was in the 8th and 9th centuries as a palatium and villa , quae dicitur Salmonciacus one of the residences of the Carolingian emperors and kings. It was in the Samoussy community east of Laon . It is certain that Karlmann , the brother of Charlemagne, died here, some historians even see the Palatinate as his (Charles) birthplace.

history

The first mention of Samousy belongs to Christmas 766, which Pippin the Younger spent here. With the division of the empire after Pippin's death in 768, Samoussy fell to Karlmann, who frequently visited the Palatinate. He spent the last months of his life here and died in Samoussy on December 4th, 771. Research has noticed that Samoussy is functionally referred to as a palatium in documents at this time , but more real as a villa in narrative chronicles . Later the name Palatinate caught on.

As far as can be proven, Charlemagne came here in 774, Louis the Pious in 816 and 830, Charles the Bald in 841 and 867. In the same year, the tithe of Fiscus Samoussy was given to the Abbey of Saint-Denis , which was the last mention of Samousy as a palace is. Messages from the 12th century no longer mention the palace buildings or the remains. It is believed that the Palatinate - similar to the Royal Palace Quierzy - was destroyed by the Normans at the end of the 9th century.

The Palatinate

The historian Jean Mabillon (1632–1707) had no doubts that the Palatinate Salmontiagum or Salmunciagum had been in Samoussy, especially since Hinkmar von Reims noted in 841 that the Palatinate was in the parish of Laon, and also in later research there has never been any disagreement on this. However, there were no excavations on site until the beginning of the 20th century.

It was not until the Tübingen art historian Georg Weise began - taking advantage of the German occupation of northern France during the First World War - to investigate the site after he had to abandon his work in Quierzy at the beginning of 1917 , whereby the project was hampered by the fact that Samoussy was occupied by the German army as a field camp was, and he could only dig in the places that the military did not claim to be.

At the entrance to the town there was an “ancient gate building” (Weise), which Weise identified as partly Carolingian and as an entrance to the Palatinate. Excavations that he began a few meters behind the gate quickly revealed results, the foundations of a large building complex that consisted of three parts:

  • a 50 meter long and 22 meter wide two-aisled hall with two towers on the eastern narrow side, which flanked the 4.5 meter wide entrance;
  • to the south adjoining this was a walled square courtyard, which was accessible from two sides, in the west and in the east;
  • on the east side of the courtyard was a semicircular wall, on the inside of which floor slabs were laid three meters wide - Weise saw here the handling of an outdoor area with a pond in the middle, the remains of which he found in 1917.

Weise discovered further remains near the parish church, where he thought of the residential buildings in the Palatinate, but due to the general conditions he could hardly work systematically here, so that his results are only fragmentary here.

In the Palatinate Samoussy, too, no facilities were found that served the defense of the complex, apart from a moat that surrounded the entire clearing and thus the Palatinate. There was also no trace of farm buildings or a church from this period. Overall, Weise cautiously assumed that the excavated remains belong to a palatium from the 9th century, i.e. the time of Charles the Bald, and not to the Karlmanns villa . In contrast to Quierzy, the assignment of the foundations to the Carolingian Palatinate is not controversial.

The partly Carolingian gatehouse, which was the starting point for Wise's Work, was blown up by the Wehrmacht during World War II to give better access to the village and the field camp. The area with the hall, the courtyard and the pond is still undeveloped today, but the pond itself has been filled in.

literature

  • Georg Weise: Two Franconian royal palaces, report on the excavations carried out on the Palaces of Quierzy and Samoussy. Fischer, Tübingen 1923.
  • Bernd Remmler: Searching for Traces: The Carolingians - The Disappeared Palaces of Charlemagne (2010), ISBN 978-3-86805-798-0 .