Oaths of Strasbourg
At Strasbourg Louis the German and Charles the Bald sealed their alliance against their elder brother Lothair with oaths sworn in the vernacular, so that each other’s armies could understand them. Recorded by the historian Nithard, the Romance oath is regarded as the oldest surviving text in an early form of French, and the German one as an early monument of Old High German.
- Date
- 14 February 842exact dateDate in the Julian calendar
- Place
- Strasbourg (Argentoratum)today: Strasbourg, Alsace, France · Western and Central Europe
- Participants
- Louis the German, Charles the Bald, Lothair I, Carolingian Empire
- Threads
- Early medieval Europe (500–1000)
- Also known as
- Serments de Strasbourg; Straßburger Eide; Sacramenta Argentariae; Страсбургская клятва; Страсбургская присяга; Nithard; Нитхард
After Louis the Pious died in 840, his eldest son Lothair claimed authority over the whole empire. His younger brothers Louis the German and Charles the Bald defeated him at Fontenoy on 25 June 841, and on 14 February 842 they met with their armies at Strasbourg. According to Nithard, the two kings first addressed the assembled troops, one in German and the other in Romance, explaining why they had joined forces against Lothair. Then Louis, as the elder, swore first, in the lingua romana, so that Charles’s men could understand him, and Charles repeated the oath in the lingua teudisca for Louis’s men. Finally each army swore in its own language that if its king broke his word, it would give him no help against his brother.
Nithard, a grandson of Charlemagne through his daughter Bertha and a partisan of Charles, copied the oaths into his Latin history of the quarrels of the sons of Louis the Pious, written in the early 840s; the text survives in a manuscript of about the year 1000 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Some scholars think the Romance oath was translated from a lost Latin draft, and its dialect is disputed — it has been placed in regions from Picardy and Lorraine to Poitou and Lyon. The philologist Philippe Walter sees in the Romance oath the written debut of the vernacular. A year and a half later the three brothers agreed on the partition of the empire at Verdun.
Connections
Consequences
- Treaty of VerdunAugust 843 · Western and Central EuropeA year and a half later the three brothers agreed on the partition of the empire at Verdun
Same participants
- Harun al-Rashid’s elephant Abul-Abbas reaches Aachen20 July 802 · Western and Central Europevia Carolingian Empire
Adjacent events in the thread
- Sack of Amorium1 August – between 12 August and 24 September 838 · Balkans and Anatolia
Meanwhile in the world
Other regions, within a year of this event
Eastern Europe
- Saltovo-Mayaki culturec. 750 – between 900 and 950
- Construction of Sarkelbetween 833 and 841
- The Khazar rulers adopt Judaismbetween 740 and 861
Balkans and Anatolia
- Leo the Mathematician heads the school of the Magnaurabetween 843 and 866
- Byzantine Iconoclasmbetween 726 and 730 – 11 March 843
Middle East and Egypt
- The mihna: the Abbasid inquisition over the createdness of the Qur’an833 – between 848 and 852
- The House of Wisdom and the translation movement in Baghdadc. 800 – c. 900
Africa
- Ifriqiya under the Aghlabids800 – March 909
- Igbo-Ukwu: bronze casting in the West African forest800–899 – 1100–1199
Central and Northern Asia
South Asia
- The tripartite struggle for Kannaujbetween 783 and 790 – between 915 and 918
- Mihira Bhoja and the Pratihara empire of Kannaujc. 836 – c. 885
East Asia
- Ennin’s pilgrimage to Tang China12 July 838 – 30 October 847
- Jang Bogo’s Cheonghae garrison and the trade of the Yellow Seabetween 18 May and 15 June 828 – between December 841 and April 846
North America
- Plum Bayou Mounds: a planned ceremonial centre in the Arkansas valleyc. 650 – c. 1050
- Pueblo I: villages of surface rooms on the Colorado Plateauc. 750 – c. 900
- The Late Woodland period in eastern North Americac. 500 – c. 1000
Latin America
- Classic Maya collapse in the southern lowlandsc. 800 – c. 950
- Rise of Chichén Itzá in northern Yucatánc. 800 – between 900 and 1000
- Wari culture and the Middle Horizon state in the Central Andesc. 600 – c. 1000
- Tiwanaku culture at its height by Lake Titicacac. 600 – c. 1000
- Cacaxtla and Xochicalco: the Epiclassic cities of central Mexicoc. 650 – c. 900
The same period
Sources
- Wikipedia (English): Oaths of Strasbourg
- Wikipedia (English): Nithard
- Wikipedia (Russian): Страсбургская клятва
- Wikipedia (Russian): Нитард
- Nithardi Historiarum libri IIII / ed. E. Müller. — Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn, 1907. — (MGH SS rer. Germ.; 44). — III, 5.
- Scholz B. W. (tr.) Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories. — Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970.
- Cerquiglini B. La naissance du français. — Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1991.
- Wikidata: Q157082