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GRIPLA16
celebration, entertainment and display at court occasions.61 Praise-poems
about imperial victories, for example, were evidently performed at tribute-
giving ceremonies and other great assemblies, probably not long after the
events they recount.62 theodulf’s panegyric on Charlemagne’s victory over
the Avars, composed in exile, describes such an occasion, albeit imaginary,
with mention of the arrival of envoys, the holding of a council and the
recital of prayers in the aula.63 Among the poems testifying to this aspect
of court culture, the extant instance of greatest relevance to this paper is In
honorem Hludowici imperatoris by ermoldus nigellus, a monk who flour-
ished in the 820s but about whom little is otherwise known. ermoldus
describes in luxuriant detail how the emperor, the empress judith and
Lothar, wearing ornate vestments embroidered in gold and gems, stand
as godparents to the danish royal family at the 826 ceremony64 and how,
after the baptism, the imperial couple bestow upon their new godchildren
gifts of golden clothing.65 Clearly registered is the amazement of the
danes at the splendour that surrounds them.66 the poem itself may origi-
nate in various topical recitations at assemblies. datable to between 826
and 82867 and covering the life and exploits of Louis the Pious from 781
to 826,68 it appears to be the product of revising and suturing together a
series of originally discrete poems. Peter Godman observes that ‘the inter-
est of this declamatory poetry lies in the rapid succession of encomia and
descriptions with which it attempts to dazzle its audience … episodic and
digressive, they jolt from one purple passage to the next.’69
Conspicuous among the genres cultivated by the Carolingian literati
61 Garrison, ‘the emergence’, 114.
62 Godman, Poetry, 174–7; Garrison, ‘the emergence’, 135–6.
63 Anton scharer, ‘Charlemagne’s daughters’, in Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Pat rick
Wormald, ed. stephen Baxter et al., studies in early Medieval Britain (farnham: Ash-
gate, 2009), 272–3. for the text, see Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini Cardini, vol. 1, ed. ernst
dümmler, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Poetae, vol. 1 (Berlin, 1881), 1:483–9.
64 Godman, Poets and Emperors, 123.
65 elizabeth Ward, ‘Caesar’s Wife: the Career of the empress judith’, in Charlemagne’s Heir,
216–17.
66 Godman, Poets and Emperors, 124.
67 Godman, Poets and Emperors, 108.
68 Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini Cardini, vol. 2, ed. ernst dümmler, Monumenta Germaniae
Historica: Poetae, vol. 2 (Berlin, 1884), 2:5–79.
69 Godman, Poetry, 74.