Steffen Patzold's latest monograph is a refreshingly humble 72-page essay coming right on the heels of his more substantial „Presbyter“.1 In it, he tackles the question how Charlemagne ruled. He manages to answer this question – in a characteristic lively writing style – in such a small space because he, in fact, focuses on a single aspect of this issue which he characterises as paradigmatic for Carolingian rule. The end result is a book that could easily be seen as being somewhat reductive for its emphasis on a single phenomenon, but which would on the other hand definitely appeal to a rather broad audience because of this choice. In the end, everyone from scholars to students will find things to enjoy in Patzold's train of thought.

„Did Charlemagne know that he lived in a state?“ (p. 7-8). With this question, Patzold kicks off an interesting thought experiment to figure out the means a premodern ruler would have had to control large swathes of territory. Patzold's answer: lists. Lots and lots of lists. In order to make this point, the first part of the book is devoted to some necessary context, which the author admits is "too short and superficial" (p. 10), but it serves its purpose in that it shows the importance of war as a cornerstone of medieval politics – and consequently, the importance of keeping track of taxes and other sources of income as a way of financing these wars. In addition to external wars, Patzold continues, Carolingian rule also rested on the struggle to keep their subjects on the straight and narrow within the realm: making sure they all adhered to the correct religion and the correct morals, and that they had the correct tools to achieve this. Both these endeavours required a very well-organized communication network, which, so concludes the author, was built upon a combination of trust and lists.

Following this observation, the main part of the book kicks off in earnest. Patzold first explains how the Frankish realm at the turn of the ninth century could be seen as a „list culture“, and how this observation all but forces us to recontextualise some of the texts taken for granted – if they are lists, after all, the intention behind their composition changes accordingly. Lists were used to manage land holdings, determine the meaning of words, order time, and so on. Patzold then zooms in on the requirements of Charlemagne and discusses the role of lists for the maintainance of the state: what does a ruler want, who does he need, how should people go about their business – and also, especially, who makes these lists in the first place. Patzold argues that there is a kind of performativity inherent in both the making and the reading of lists, that this created the illusion of uniformity, and thereby aided in the creation of the „imagined community“ that was the Carolingian Empire (although he never explicitly engages with this concept, a strand of Andersonian thinking appears to underlie his analysis). Patzold then zooms in even further, and wonders what happens if we regard the familiar capitularia also as lists first and foremost – not as a collection of chapters, in other words, but as a collection of chapters. This, combined with the normative intention behind their contents, would show a ruler not as the one making the rules, but as putting them in a correct order. In turn, this observation shows the ruler to be the one ultimately ordering the realm and its people as well.

There are two ways of engaging with this book. The first is the modern scholarly way of diving deep into the sources, contexts and definitions used, and thereby gaining new insights into the questions asked. The second is to accept that the author tackles this question from an explicitly modern perspective, and simply enjoy the ride. Strangely enough, this latter reading method, more superficial though it may seem, leads to the same result: we end up gaining new ideas about the way Charlemagne ruled his realm, new questions to ask the sources, and new ways to read the manuscripts at our disposal. However, it does require us to gloss over a few shortcomings in the overall argument. For instance, if we accept Patzold's idea of the list as paradigmatic for Charlemagne's mode of government, it very quickly becomes clear that almost everything in which the order of information is important could thus become a list in this interpretation (including, interestingly, this very book, which in many ways forms a list of lists in itself). This clearly is not the author's intention, but a bit more explicit definition of the concept would have helped. Another question that remains unanswered is the extent to which Charlemagne or even his court could serve as a stand-in for the Frankish state or indeed the Franks as a whole. The case for the intention behind the drafting of lists is emphatically made – but reflections on their acceptance are somewhat lacking. How would people have responded to living in a state ruled by lists? This, finally, leads to a question that is touched upon but could also be fleshed out: why are some of these lists copied or indeed re-copied and in some cases even re-ordered? The focus on manuscripts makes it clear that at least some people at the time cared enough about these lists to keep them around, even if that idea seems to run counter to the main argument made by Patzold, which requires lists to be re-made and re-issued whenever needed.

It should be noted that these criticisms actually take the shape of a list of questions – questions which reflect how the combination of the „scholarly“ and „superficial“ readings actually turn this book into an invitation to rethink some of the things historians take for granted. This makes the limited length of this book a blessing in disguise as far as this reviewer is concerned: ever more detailed lists of arguments could inadvertently lead to fewer opportunities for further study. The way it is framed now, the case for lists becomes a case for looking at our sources with fresh eyes – taking not just the narratives for granted, but also the ordering principles behind them.

Note:
1 Steffen Patzold, Presybter. Moral, Mobilität und die Kirchenorganisation im Karolingerreich, Stuttgart 2020.