Charlemagne’s silver tables:

the ideology of an imperial capital

D  M  D 

Charlemagne’s last will and testament says that a silver table with a
picture of Constantinople was to be sent to St Peter’s at Rome, and a table
with a picture of Rome was to be sent to the bishopric of Ravenna. The
imagery on these tables seems to reflect a late antique tradition of depict-
ing pairs of cities; the pairings Rome–Constantinople and Rome–Ravenna
offer insights into the importance of Ravenna for Charlemagne’s imperial
ideology, and specifically how Ravenna functioned as a model for Charle-
magne’s imperial capital at Aachen.

At the end of his Life of Charlemagne, Einhard includes a transcription

of Charlemagne’s last will and testament, in which it says:

Among the other treasures and money there are three tables of silver
and one of gold, of extraordinary size and weight. Of these he set
down and decreed that one of them, square in shape, which contains
a representation [descriptio] of the city of Constantinople, should be
sent to Rome, to the basilica of blessed Peter the apostle, among the
other gifts that have been set aside for that purpose; and the second,
round in shape, which is fashioned [ figurata ] with the likeness
[effigies] of the city of Rome, should be sent to the bishopric [ epi-
scopium] of the church of Ravenna. He decreed that the third, which
greatly surpasses the others in the beauty of its workmanship and its
weight, and which contains within three concentric circles a rep -
resentation [descriptio] of the whole world in fine and minute form
[figuratio], and the gold one, which is referred to as the fourth, be
used to augment the third part of his wealth that is to be divided
among his heirs and for charity.1
1
Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, c. 33, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH SRG 25 (Hanover, 1911): ‘Inter
ceteros thesauros atque pecuniam tres mensas argenteas et auream unam praecipuae magni-
tudinis et ponderis esse constat. De quibus statuit atque decrevit, ut una ex his, quae forma
quadrangula descriptionem urbis Constantinopolitanae continet, inter cetera donaria, quae ad

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160 Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis

Most of the scholarly work on the tables has concentrated on the one
that shows the universe,2 but in this paper I shall focus on the two that
contain depictions of cities. The fact that these tables are the only
individual items to be mentioned in the will indicates that they were
highly prized, and that their ultimate fate was of some significance. In
this paper I will argue that both the representations of the cities on the
tables and the nature of the bequest indicate the important symbolic
role that capital cities played in Charlemagne’s imperial ideology.
Moreover, the bequest shows that in addition to Rome and Constanti-
nople, Ravenna also had important symbolic value for the Carolingians
as an imperial capital, which made it a suitable model for Charle-
magne’s own capital at Aachen. In order to understand this, we must
begin with the tables – what they may have looked like and why they
contained representations of Rome and Constantinople – and then we
will consider the nature of the bequest and its role in the will.

Carolingian tables
Decorated tables made of silver or other materials are mentioned sur-
prisingly frequently in Carolingian sources. Theodulf of Orleans wrote
two poems describing tables or large circular disks (one is a discus, one
is not identified with a name). Although not specifically said to be
silver, one showed an allegory containing personifications of the liberal
arts, and the other featured a depiction ( figura) of the world.3 Interest-
ingly, in the second poem, Theodulf says that the point of the table is
to inform the mind at the same time as the stomach, implying that a
table with a picture would actually be used for dining. 4 Theodulf ’s
poem is unique; more common are references to tables with vessels
being given as diplomatic gifts. Agnellus of Ravenna, writing a history

hoc deputata sunt, Romam ad basilicam beati Petri apostoli deferatur, et altera, quae forma
rotunda Romanae urbis effigie figurata est, episcopio Ravennalis ecclesiae conferatur. Tertiam,
quae ceteris et operis pulchritudine et ponderis gravitate multum excellit, quae ex tribus
orbibus conexa totius mundi descriptionem subtili ac minuta figuratione conplectitur, et
auream illam, quae quarta esse dicta est, in tertiae illius et inter heredes suos atque in
eleemosynam dividendae partis augmento esse constituit.’
2
See, for example, F. Estey, ‘Charlemagne’s Silver Celestial Table’, Speculum 18 (1943), pp. 112–
17, and M. Kupfer, ‘Medieval World Maps: Embedded Images, Interpretive Frames’, Word
and Image 10 (1994), pp. 262–88.
3
Theodulf of Orleans, Carmina, 46 and 47, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH Poetae Latini aevi Carolini
1 (Hanover, 1881), pp. 544–8; see Kupfer, ‘Medieval World Maps’, p. 266.
4
‘Hoc opus ut fieret Theodulfus episcopus egi,/ et duplici officio rite vigere dedi./ Scilicet
ut dapibus pascantur corpora latis/Inspecta et mentem orbis imago cibet . . .’ On whether
Theodulf ’s poems describe real objects or not, see L. Nees, A Tainted Mantle: Hercules and
the Classical Tradition at the Carolingian Court (Philadelphia, 1991), pp. 22–3.

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 Charlemagne’s silver tables: the ideology of an imperial capital 161

of his city in the 830s, says that in the 810s Bishop Martin of Ravenna
gave to Bishop John of Arles ‘a table, made in the form of a plane-tree,
completely filled with silver vessels’.5 The Life of Leo III in the Roman
Liber pontificalis tells us that at the time of his imperial coronation,
Charlemagne presented the churches of St Peter and St Paul with two
silver tables, each ‘with its legs’ and associated with silver and gold
vessels ‘for the service of this table’.6 The reference to vessels to be used
with the table implies that they had a function related to food, or
possibly as side tables in the service of the eucharist.
The tables in Charlemagne’s will are the most famous of these Caro-
lingian tables, and we know more about them from various other
sources, which further emphasizes their importance to their contem-
poraries. Thegan tells us that Louis the Pious bought the table with the
universe from Charlemagne’s estate for himself, ‘for love of his father’,
and the Annales Bertiniani describes its destruction by looters in 842. 7
Agnellus tells us that the table with the picture of Rome arrived in
Ravenna after Charlemagne’s death:

the Emperor Louis sent to Bishop Martin of this see of Ravenna, as

a bequest from his father Charles, one table of pure silver, without
wood, having depicted on it all of Rome [ totam Roman], together
with square silver feet, and various silver vessels, and one cup of gold,
which cup sits in the holy golden vase, that we use daily . . .8

Here the table is specifically said to be made of solid silver. This quote
parallels the one in the Roman Liber pontificalis in saying that the table
came together with liturgical vessels, and also in describing the legs as
separate from the main part of the table.

5
Agnellus, Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis (LPR ), c. 169, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH
Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum, pp. 265–391 (Hanover, 1878), p. 388: ‘uascula
argentea totam expletam mensam, factam in modum platani’.
6
Liber pontificalis (LP ), Vita Leonis III, 24, ed. L. Duchesne, 3 vols (Paris, 1886 – 92), II, 7–8:
‘obtulit ipse serenissimus domnus imperator mensa argentea cum pedibus suis, pens. lib. ___.
Sed et in confessione eiusdem Dei apostoli obtulit una cum praecellentissimos filios suos reges et
filiabus diversa vasa ex auro purissimo, in ministerio ipsius mensae, pens. lib. ___ . . . Immo
et in basilica beati Pauli apostoli mensa argentea subminore, cum pedibus suis, pens. lib.
____, cum diversis vasis argenteis mire magnitudinis, quae ad usum ipsius mensae pertineunt.’
7
Thegan, Gesta Hludovici imperatoris, c. 8, ed. G.H. Pertz, MGH SS 2 (Hanover, 1829),
pp. 590– 604, at p. 592; Annales Bertiniani, a. 842, ed. G. Waitz, MGH SRG 5 (Hanover,
1883), pp. 4, 27; see Estey, ‘Charlemagne’s Silver Celestial Table’, p. 113.
8
Agnellus, LPR, c. 170, ed. Holder-Egger, p. 388: ‘Igitur istius Martini temporibus misit
Lodovicus imperator ex dimissione sui genitoris Karoli ad Martinum pontificem huius Raven-
natis sedis mensam argenteam unam absque ligno, habentem infra se anaglifte totam Romam,
una cum tetragonis argenteis pedibus, et cum diversa vascula argentea, seu et cuppam aurea
unam, quae cuppa haesit in cratere aureo sancto, quo cotidie utimur . . .’

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162 Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis

Fig. 1 Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Antikensammlung, silver tripod dish from

the Hildesheim treasure, no. 10, first century AD, 0.71 m high.

Given all of this, what can we say about what Charlemagne’s tables
might have actually looked like? Our knowledge of furniture, func-
tional or decorative, from late antiquity and the early Middle Ages is
almost non-existent. The furniture itself no longer survives; silver fur-
niture, in particular, was a prime object of plundering, as we have seen
in the case of Charlemagne’s table with the universe. 9 Only two Roman
silver tables have survived, in a first-century AD Roman treasure found
at Hildesheim. Each table consists of a silver dish with separate tripod
legs; one is about 0.71 metres high (Fig. 1), while the other was a serving
dish, only 0.15 metres high; the latter’s legs are shaped like mythical
animals with clawed feet.10 From the Carolingian period no tables have
survived in any material.

9
There is some evidence of silver revetment for a table from sixth- or seventh-century Syria;
see M. Mundell Mango, ‘Continuity of Fourth / Fifth Century Silver Plate in the Sixth/
Seventh Centuries in the Eastern Empire’, Antiquité Tardive 5 (1997), pp. 83–92, at p. 89.
10
See U. Gehrig, Hildesheimer Silberfund in der Antikenabteilung Berlin (Berlin, 1967), Plates 10 and 33.

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 Charlemagne’s silver tables: the ideology of an imperial capital 163

Although no actual furniture exists, tables are depicted in various

different images of dining or feasting from late antiquity through the
Carolingian period. In many cases, these tables are relatively small, and
round, with three or perhaps four feet. Late antique examples include
the table on folio 100v of the Codex Romanus, and the remarkable
illustration on the Hunting Plate of the Sevso Treasure, which shows
five people feasting around a small round table. 11 Very similar tables,
sometimes covered with tablecloths, are shown in the depictions of
‘Luxuria feasting’ found in illustrated manuscripts of Prudentius, one
group of which is thought to be derived from a Carolingian exemplar. 12
Finally, many tables are depicted in the early ninth-century Utrecht
Psalter.13 Here there are three or four different kinds, but the most
common is a round table with curved legs shaped like animals with feet,
like the smaller table from the Hildesheim treasure. 14 In most cases
three legs are shown, but one table (folio 10v) shows the fourth foot
behind the other three (Fig. 2), and four or more feet can be presumed
for several of the larger tables. There is also one square table with four
square feet, along with a few larger rectangular tables. 15 Almost all the
tables have food or vessels on them.
Agnellus’s account provides us with yet more information about
the appearance of the tables. The word that is used for ‘depicted’ is
anaglifte, for anaglyptus, which refers to low relief carving, repoussé,
or engraving done on metal.16 Examples of relief carving and repoussé
work on metal, especially silver, survive in northern European contexts
from the late antique period forward. 17 Several objects have imagery
that is of particular relevance to our tables. For example, the missorium
of the consul Ardabur Aspar, made in 434, depicts Aspar flanked by
personifications of Rome and either Constantinople or Carthage. 18
11
Codex Romanus, Vatican Library lat. 3867; for the Sevso Hunting Plate, see M. Mundell
Mango and A. Bennett, The Sevso Treasure: Art Historical Description and Inscriptions, and
Methods of Manufacture and Scientific Analyses, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary
Series 12 (Ann Arbor, MI, 1994), pp. 55–97.
12
See H. Woodruff, Illustrated Manuscripts of Prudentius (Harvard, 1930), esp. Figs 66 and 67.
13
See S. Dufrenne, Les illustrations du Psautier d’Utrecht: sources et apport Carolingien (Paris,
1978), Plates 30 and 31.
14
Utrecht Psalter (Utrecht University Library, 32(484)), fols 10v, 12r, 13r, 18v, 24r, 24v, 31r, 33r,
37v, 41v, 58r, 73v, 80v, 81v, 84v, and 89r.
15
Square table fol. 65r; rectangular tables fols 8v, 24r, and 59v.
16
See Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (TLL ), s.v. anaglyptus and anaglyphus; both these words are
defined as caelatus, which means engraved or embossed.
17
See the articles in Antiquité Tardive 5 (1997), on the subject of ‘L’argenterie Romaine de
L‘Antiquité Tardive’. Mention could be made of the Mildenhall great dish, from the fourth
century, 60.5 cm in diameter, or the Anastasius dish from Sutton Hoo, dating to c.491–518.
18
Published in Ori e argenti nelle collezioni del Museo Archeologico di Firenze (Florence, 1990),
no. 235, p. 17. About the debate over the identity of the second personification, see F. Baratte,
‘La vaisselle d’argent dans l‘Afrique Romaine et Byzantine’, Antiquité Tardive 5 (1997),
pp. 111–32, at pp. 125–7.

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164 Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis

Fig. 2 University Library, Utrecht, Ms. 32, fol. 10v, detail.

Plates such as this one, made to commemorate some notable imperial

event (like the better-known missorium of Theodosius from 388), were
part of a series of objects made with imperial iconography. Most silver
plates, though, contained not imperial imagery, but decoration derived
from the mythological or decorative repertoires of Roman art; another
example that might relate to our tables comes from a treasure found at
Kaiseraugst, and is a large silver platter, from the early fourth century,
gilded in parts, with a depiction of a city or villa by the sea in the
central tondo.19 The Sevso Hunting Plate has been mentioned above.
Finally, we might consider the Corbridge Lanx, which is rectangular,
like one of Charlemagne’s tables.20 The largest of these plates are over
0.7 metres in diameter.
None of the above-mentioned platters was specifically a piece of
furniture, but any might easily have been turned into small tables by
the addition of feet. In fact, Marlia Mundell Mango notes that the table

19
See H.A. Cahn and A. Kaufmann-Heinimann (eds), Der Spätrömische Silberschatz von Kais-
eraugst, with contributions by E. Alföldi-Rosenbaum (Derendingen, 1984); see also N. Duval,
‘L’architecture sur le plat en argent dit “à la ville maritime” de Kaiseraugst (première moitié
du IVe siècle): un essai d‘interprétation’, Bulletin Monumental 146 (1988), pp. 341–53.
20
The Corbridge Lanx depicts Apollo, Artemis, and other divine figures; it is 50.6 cm wide.

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 Charlemagne’s silver tables: the ideology of an imperial capital 165

depicted on the Sevso Hunting Plate appears to be ‘composed of a large

missorium with beaded rim (a line of punched dots) that rests on 3 short
straight legs (a tripod stand?)’.21 We have already seen several textual
references to tables with separate sets of legs; we might finally note an
exegetical passage in Agnellus, a metaphorical description of the euchar-
ist, which begins: ‘Let four legs be brought, and place a table above
them. The four stable feet are the four evangelists, who uphold the whole
square world by their preachings; the table above is the holy altar, that
is the cross, where Christ lay down and was offered as the sacrifice for
the Father for the salvation of the world. Just as there are four feet, thus
there are four corners of the table.’22 This table is presumably square; it
also has legs that are separate from the mensa, which is the table top.
The evidence suggests that silver tables such as the ones mentioned
in Charlemagne’s will were large silver platters with separate sets of legs.
Late antique platters such as the ones mentioned above survived into
the Carolingian period. For example, a list of the silver treasure donated
by Bishop Desiderius to the church of Auxerre in the early seventh
century, described in detail in the ninth-century Gesta pontificum
Autissiodorensium, included four very large missoria.23 One possibility
for Charlemagne’s tables, therefore, is that they were surviving late
antique platters, converted into tables by the addition of legs. On the
other hand, according to the Roman Liber pontificalis, in ninth-century
Rome there was a huge industry devoted to producing liturgical vessels,
icons, statues, columns, ciboria, screens, etc. out of silver; the amounts
are staggering.24 And, as we shall see, Carolingian artists were actively
imitating Roman works of art with imperial imagery. It is equally pos-
sible, therefore, that Charlemagne’s tables were made for him. In either
case, the imagery on the tables, to which we will now turn, reflected
late antique imperial icongraphy.

Representation of Rome and Constantinople

The personification of Rome as ‘dea Roma’, a symbol of the empire,
can be traced back to the first century AD. When, in the early fourth
21
Mango, The Sevso Treasure, p. 87.
22
Agnellus, LPR, c. 64, ed. Holder-Egger, p. 323: ‘Deferantur quatuor pedes, et ponite mensam desuper.
Quatuor stabiles pedes quatuor euangelistae sunt, qui totum quadratum suis praedicationibus
continent mundum; mensa uero desuper est sancta ara, id est crux, ubi occubuit Christus et
oblatus est hostia patri pro salute mundi. Sicut quatuor pedes, ita quatuor cornua mensae.’
23
Les Gestes des Évêques d’Auxerre, ed. and trans. Michel Sot (Paris, 2002), I, 89 –101. J. Adhé-
mar, ‘Un trésor d’argenterie donné par l’évêque Didier aux églises d’Auxerre’, Revue
archéologique 6th ser., 2 (1934), pp. 44–54, at p. 45 notes that at least some of the treasure
survived into the thirteenth century.
24
See V.H. Elbern, ‘Rom und die karolingische Goldschmiedekunst’, in J. Hubert et al. (eds),
Roma e l’età Carolingia (Rome, 1976), pp. 345–56.

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166 Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis

century Constantine founded Constantinople, he immediately created

a parallel figure, Constantinopolis, which began to appear on coins,
sometimes paired with Roma to emphasize that Constantinople was a
‘new Rome’; and both were used to represent the empire as well as the
individual cities.25 Despite the fact that there was no time when Con-
stantinople and Rome were co-capitals of the empire (Rome having
been replaced by Milan, then Ravenna), the pairing of the cities Rome
and Constantinople reflected imperial propaganda through until at least
the sixth century.26 Images of Roma and Constantinopolis as female
personifications, or tyches, with distinct attributes appeared on coins,
plates (such as the missorium of Aspar mentioned above), furniture
finials, combs, and ivory consular diptyches in both east and west. 27
Through the use of these images, the emperors laid claim to rule over
a united Roman empire.
Some of these objects were still around in Charlemagne’s day, and
the significance of the Rome–Constantinople pair and its association
with Constantine were well known. One ivory diptych in Vienna, con-
taining images of Rome and Constantinople, used to be thought to be
late antique, but Anthony Cutler has now shown that it was made in
the early ninth century, copying an antique model (Fig. 3). Cutler notes
that the use of this imagery reflects the Carolingian renaissance of late
antique art;28 it shows that someone at the Carolingian court wanted
to duplicate Roman imperial iconography. Moreover, in his poem on
the paintings found in the palace at Ingelheim, Ermoldus Nigellus says,
‘Constantine abandoned Rome with love, he built Constantinople for
himself.’29 It is not clear whether the painting showed depictions (as
buildings or personifications) of Rome and Constantinople, or whether
this was simply the item about Constantine that Ermoldus thought he
should record in his poem; nevertheless, it is significant that it was the
25
G. Bühl, Constantinopolis und Roma: Stadtpersonifikationen der Spätantike (Zurich, 1995),
pp. 10 –20, 35–40.
26
In addition to Bühl, see J.M.C. Toynbee, ‘Roma and Constantinopolis in Late Antique Art
to 365’, Journal of Roman Studies 37 (1947), pp. 135–44 and idem, ‘Roma and Constantinopolis
in Late Antique Art from 365–Justin II’, in G.E. Mylonas (ed.), Studies Presented to D.M.
Robinson, 2 vols (St Louis, MO, 1953), II, 261–77.
27
See Toynbee, ‘Roma and Constantinoplis . . . 365–Justin II’. Note that Roma by itself was
used primarily in the west, whereas Constantinopolis by itself was found in both east and
west, as was the pairing of the two. Most of these are published in R. Delbrueck, Die
Consulardiptychen und verwandte Denkmäler (Berlin, 1929).
28
Delbrueck, Consulardiptychen, no. 38; A. Cutler, ‘“Roma” and “Constantinopolis” in Vienna’,
in I. Hutter (ed.), Byzanz und der Westen: Studien zur Kunst des europäischen Mittelalters
( Vienna, 1984), pp. 43–64. Cutler notes that the copy was so successful that even scholars
from Delbrueck forward were deceived. He also notes that the inscription on the back,
identifying the figures as Temperance and Chastity, dates to the twelfth century.
29
Ermoldus Nigellus, Carmen elegiacum in honorem Hludowici, iv.271–2, ed. E. Dümmler,
MGH Poetae Latinae Aevi Carolini 2 (Hanover, 1884), pp. 4–79, at p. 66: ‘Constantinus uti
Romam dimittit amore,/ Constantinopolim construit ipse sibi.’

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 Charlemagne’s silver tables: the ideology of an imperial capital 167

Fig. 3 Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum, ivory diptych with female

personifications of Roma (left) and Constantinopolis (right), early ninth century.

founding of a new imperial capital that was mentioned as Constantine’s

main achievement.
The pairing of cities even other than Rome and Constantinople was
quite common in late antiquity, and took a variety of forms. Some-
times they were shown as female personifications as on consular dip-
tyches and coins. For example, Agnellus tells us that in the palace of
Theodoric at Ravenna, there was a mosaic image of Theodoric standing
between two personifications of Rome and Ravenna. 30 More common
30
Agnellus, LPR, c. 94, ed. Holder-Egger, pp. 337–8. In Theodoric’s case the replacement of
Constantinople by Ravenna was appropriate, since it was Ravenna and Rome that were the
two imperial capitals in his realm. Although the mosaic had been destroyed by Agnellus’s day,
it is possible that it still survived when Charlemagne visited the city. (Agnellus uses the perfect
tense to refer to the mosaic, as he does about other works of art that had been destroyed.
However, he gives such a precise description of it that he must have either seen it before it
was destroyed, or heard about it from someone who had.) Cf. N. Duval, ‘Que savons-nous
du Palais de Théodoric à Ravenna?’, Mélanges d’Archéologie et d’Histoire 72 (1960), pp. 337–
71, at pp. 358–9. See also Bühl, Roma und Constantinopolis, pp. 226–30.

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168 Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis

in other contexts, though, was the depiction of cities as walled com-

pounds containing a few buildings. The best-known pair was Bethlehem
and Jerusalem, as seen on many apse mosaics, as, for example, in Santa
Maria Maggiore. Or there is the pair Ravenna and Classe, found in
the church of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna. Here the cities are
walled, with a few buildings that are shown in somewhat more detail,
although no one has ever been able to identify them precisely. There
are many other examples of cities depicted as walled compounds, even
on silver platters, as the example from Kaiseraugst with the depiction
of the maritime villa, mentioned above. In Carolingian art, too, we find
such cities, for example in the Utrecht Psalter’s illustration of Psalm
44, or the frontispiece to the Epistles in the Vivian Bible.
Finally, there may have been maps or city plans. Almost none of
these survive from the early Middle Ages, although the sixth-century
floor mosaic at Madaba in Jordan represents what was probably a much
more widespread tradition of mapping. 31 A ninth-century pilgrim’s
itinerary of the city of Rome from the monastery at Einsiedeln, listing
pagan and Christian monuments in the city, is thought to have been
based on a map rather than on the author’s own knowledge of the city,
and the details in the itinerary are so numerous and specific that this
must have been quite a precise and elaborately labelled map. 32 We know
that, in the Carolingian period, draftsmen could make precise and
detailed drawings of a site (real or imaginary), as we see on the St Gall
Plan.
How, then, were the cities depicted on the tables? Einhard’s text says
that one table contained a descriptio of Constantinople, and the other
an effigies of Rome. The word effigies was commonly used in both
classical and medieval Latin to refer to any type of representation, from
a picture or sculpture to a reflection in a mirror. 33 Descriptio, however,
most commonly means a verbal description, and is used much more
rarely for referring to pictures. Indeed, it has this sense only in math-
ematical texts such as Boethius’s De Mathematica, where it means a
drawn diagram. There are very few cases in which descriptio refers to a
building or city, and in some cases it is difficult to tell whether a drawn
image or a verbal description is intended, for example in I Paralipomenon
XXVIII.11, in which ‘Dedit autem David Salomoni filio suo descrip-
tionem porticus, et templi, et cellariorum et coenaculi, et cubiculorum

31
M. Avi-Yonah, The Madaba Mosaic Map ( Jerusalem, 1954).
32
G. Walser, Die Einsiedler Inschriftensammlung und der Pilgerführer durch Rom: Codex Einsid-
lensis 326 (Stuttgart, 1987), p. 159, who suggests that the map may have been like the one on
Charlemagne’s table.
33
See TLL, s.v. effigies.

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in adytis, et domus propitiationis . . .’.34 Another reference, perhaps

partly based on this biblical passage, is found in Isidore of Seville’s
Etymologiae ( XIX.9): ‘Aedificiorum partes sunt tres: dispositio, con-
structio, venustas. Dispositio est areae vel solii et fundamentorum
discriptio.’35 Here descriptio seems to refer to a ground layout; but it is
not clear that it specifically means a drawing. In the Roman Liber
pontificalis, an image of the world (orbis terrarum descriptio), presumably
a map of some kind, is depicted in a triclinium built by Pope Zacharias
in the mid-ninth century.36 Einhard also uses descriptio to describe the
image of the world map on Charlemagne’s third table. Thus it is pos-
sible that descriptio had for Einhard some more technical meaning than
effigies, and referred specifically to a ground plan or diagram or map,
but it is equally possible that the use of the two terms was simply
rhetorical embellishment.
Scholars have attempted to identify what the cities on Charlemagne’s
tables looked like by referring to all of the examples mentioned above.
George Henderson has suggested that the descriptio of Constantinople
was a city plan and the effigies of Rome was a personification.37 It is true
that the tables were different shapes (Constantinople a square, Rome
round), and thus may not originally have been a matching pair. How-
ever, it should be noted that there are no examples in late antique art
of the pair Rome and Constantinople being depicted as walled com-
pounds rather than personifications. Given the significance of the visual
pairing of these particular cities, it seems more likely that the images,
at least, took the traditional late antique form. Together with the table
containing the map of the world, they created a sort of monumental
triptych, in which Charlemagne, seated among them, appeared as a
consul or emperor in the late Roman tradition, claiming universal rule.

34
‘And David gave to Solomon his son a description of the porch, and of the temple, and of
the treasures, and of the upper floor, and of the inner chambers, and of the house for the
mercy seat . . .’ (I Chronicles XXVIII.11; Douay-Rheims translation). See also Origen/
Jerome, Homilia 21 (PL 26): ‘Viam quam ingressi sumus, in memoriae pictura ac descriptione
retinemus.’ (‘We retain in memory a road on which we have travelled by picture and
description.’)
35
Isidore of Seville, Liber Etymologiarum XIX.9, ed. W. Lindsay, 2 vols (Oxford, 1911): ‘There
are three parts to buildings: layout, construction, decoration. Layout is the description of the
area or the ground and the foundations.’ [No page nos.]
36
Liber pontificalis, Vita Zacharii, ed. Duchesne, I, 432; see Kupfer, ‘Medieval World Maps’, p. 267.
37
G. Henderson, ‘Emulation and Innovation in Carolingian Art’, in R. McKitterick (ed.),
Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 248–73, at p. 262,
notes that on a fifteenth-century copy of a ninth-century copy of the Notitia Dignitatum,
Constantinople is shown as a bird’s-eye view while Rome is a personfication. However, J.J.G.
Alexander, ‘The Illustrated Manuscripts of the Notitia Dignitatum’, in Aspects of the Notitia
Dignitatum, ed. R. Goodburn and P. Bartholemew, BAR Suppl. Series 15 (Oxford, 1976),
pp. 11–25, at p. 15, suggests that the view of Constantinople is a fifteenth-century invention
replacing a lost personification.

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Yet even if the appearance of the tables remains uncertain, the

significance of the pair of cities, and their use in this unusual bequest,
is easier to understand in the context of ninth-century ideas of renovatio.

The bequest
Very few Continental wills from the early Middle Ages have survived;
not surprisingly, they were usually written by high status individuals. 38
In the surviving wills, the main focus is usually on landed property;
however, many wills also include mention of some specific items of
treasure that are bequeathed to particular individuals. These items range
from books to weapons to jewellery, and in many cases they are
bequeathed to the same individuals or institutions that receive landed
bequests.39 Christina La Rocca and Luigi Provero have suggested that
one purpose of writing a will was to define the status of the family, and
‘the willing of these objects, whether accurately listed or only men-
tioned in general terms, together with land, constitutes a definition and
transmission of status symbols’.40 The objects play a role in memorializ-
ing the dead person, but the will itself also exists for posterity as a
record of the individual’s wealth and status. Thus, objects mentioned
in a will were expected to have symbolic meaning for the reader.
Charlemagne’s will is exceptional in many respects; not only is it the
will of an emperor, but it is also the earliest surviving royal will from
western Europe. It survives only in Einhard’s text, and forms part of
Einhard’s laudatory account of the emperor; it clearly demonstrates the
memorial role that a will might be expected to play. As well as a
practical document, Charlemagne himself no doubt intended the will
to be symbolic of his aspirations as a pious ruler. 41 As Matthew Innes
has noted, with a stated intent to distribute the emperor’s wealth for
38
See G. Spreckelmeyer, ‘Zur rechtlichen Funktion frühmittelalterlicher Testamente’, in
P. Classen (ed.), Recht und Schrift im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen, 1977), pp. 91–114, and C. La
Rocca and L. Provero, ‘The Dead and their Gifts’, in J. Nelson and F. Theuws (eds), Rituals
of Power, from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2000), pp. 225–80.
39
See P. Riché, ‘ Trésors et collections d’aristocrates laïcs carolingiens’, Cahiers Archéologiques 22
(1972), pp. 39–46. The best-known is the will of Count Eberhard and his wife Gisela of
Friuli, in which the children receive land and itemized objects of value; published in I. de
Coussemaker (ed.), Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Cysoing (Lille, 1885), pp. 1–5, with the section on
the treasure reprinted in P.E. Schramm and F. Mütherich, Denkmale der deutschen Könige
und Kaiser. Ein Beitrag zur Herrschergeschicte von Karl dem Grossen bis Friedrich II. 768–1250
(Munich, 1962), pp. 93–5, and discussed particularly by Riché and by La Rocca and Provero.
A similar list, also discussed by Riché, is found in the will of Count Eccard of 876, in
M. Prou and A. Vidier (eds), Recueil des chartes de l’abbaye de Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, 2 vols,
Documents publiés par la Société historique et archéologique du Gâinais V (Paris, 1900 – 07),
I, 59– 67.
40
La Rocca and Provero, ‘The Dead and their Gifts’, pp. 232– 3.
41
Matthew Innes, ‘Charlemagne’s Will: Piety, Politics, and the Imperial Succession’, English
Historical Review 112 (1997) pp. 833–55, at p. 855.

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 Charlemagne’s silver tables: the ideology of an imperial capital 171

the good of his soul, it follows Merovingian and Carolingian testamen-

tary practice. Because his landed wealth was part of the empire that he
left to his sons, the will is only concerned with Charlemagne’s material
wealth, a ‘divisio de thesauris suis atque pecunia’ (‘division of his treas-
ures and money’).42 The main part of the will deals with the undiffer-
entiated mass of treasure of gold, silver, gems, and royal vestments,
which was to be divided into three parts and then distributed to various
people and groups; other objects belonging to the chapel, and also the
books in the library, are also treated as groups. At the end of the will
is the bequest of the tables, followed by the conclusion and signatures.
The tables are the only specific objects mentioned in the will, and
the churches of Rome and Ravenna are the only individual legatees
(even Charlemagne’s children are referred to only as ‘sons and daugh-
ters’, not by name). Thus, the bequest of these tables must have had a
particular symbolic purpose, both as they related to the disposition of
prized objects and in the textual context of the will itself. Since the fifth
century the archbishops of Ravenna had been at odds with the popes
of Rome over the question of ecclesiastical authority, and it was an act
of deliberate irony to give a picture of Rome to Ravenna and of Con-
stantinople to Rome.43 But Charlemagne was surely not simply making
ironic political statements about ecclesiastical politics. The bequest is
also a key to understanding the nature of political symbolism employed
by Charlemagne to support his imperial pretensions, particularly in the
context of the construction of his palace at Aachen. 44

Charlemagne’s imperial capital

The tables mentioned in the bequest contained representations of im-
perial cities, and were bequeathed to imperial cities. The bequest and the
42
Innes, ‘Charlemagne’s Will’, pp. 836 –7.
43
P.E. Schramm, Kaiser, Könige, und Päpste: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Geschichte des Mittelalters,
5 vols (Stuttgart, 1968), I, 316 –17, n. 36, suggests that the image of Constantinople might have
been given to Rome so that the latter might not be too self-confident. Kupfer, ‘Medieval
World Maps’, p. 268, notes, ‘The bishoprics of Rome and Ravenna . . . were thereby to be
reminded of a greater Christendom over which Charlemagne ruled and in which they each
occupied a defined place. Might the bestowal of images of Constantinople and Rome have
been meant to counter the impression, irritating to Charlemagne, that the imperial dignity
had been conferred by the papacy? Or to symbolize Charlemagne’s exalted exercise of im-
perium, the legitimacy of which was then being successfully negotiated with the Byzantines?’
Innes, ‘Charlemagne’s Will’, pp. 849 – 50, suggests that Charlemagne left one table to
Ravenna because he owed the city a cultural debt because of the spolia he had taken. T.S.
Brown, ‘Louis the Pious and the Papacy: A Ravenna Perspective’, in P. Godman and R.
Collins (eds), Charlemagne’s Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814– 840)
(Oxford, 1990), pp. 297–308, at pp. 301–2, called the bequest ‘an ironic reflection of Charles’s
exasperation at being called upon to decide between the claims of squabbling ecclesiastics’.
44
Note that earlier in the will, when Charlemagne lists the cities which are to receive shares of
his estate, they begin with, in order, ‘Rome, Ravenna, Milan, Friuli, Grado, Cologne . . .’.

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172 Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis

tables form part of the series of references to imperial capital cities that
can be found in both Carolingian texts and works of art and architec-
ture, as we have already seen. As the Carolingian ideology of renovatio
developed in the 780s, Charlemagne seems to have decided that his
empire needed a ‘new Rome’ to serve as its political and cultural focus.
Charlemagne and his court were undoubtedly influenced by visits to
Italy, where they saw several former imperial capitals, and by the
imagery of the cities of Rome and Constantinople in late antique art.
Official ideology compared Charlemagne to Constantine, the founder
of Constantinople; as mentioned above, this particular role of the great
emperor was to be underscored in the paintings at Ingelheim and in
Ermoldus Nigellus’s poem. Although Ingelheim, which was built in the
780s, received its share of imperial and Roman imagery, it was Aachen,
begun some time after Charlemagne’s third trip to Italy in 787, that
became the home of his court and the capital of his empire. The palace
chapel still survives, as do fragments of the great hall; the rest of the
palace has been reconstructed from archaeological excavation and from
descriptions of it by contemporary authors. 45 From this information, it
is clear that many aspects of the design of Aachen were intended to
reflect what was found in other Roman imperial centres.
In the late Roman empire, when imperial capital cities began to
proliferate, there had been a conscious attempt to create features in a
new capital city that imitated features found in earlier capitals. Con-
stantine, for example, when founding Constantinople in 324, deliber-
ately copied many features found in Rome, from the layout of the
palace and hippodrome (found also in other capitals such as Milan and
Trier), to the identification of seven hills, to the establishment of a
second senate and a second set of consuls; the new city was called the
‘New Rome’.46 The topography of Ravenna also reflected and deliber-
ately imitated that of Rome and Constantinople, both in the layout of
the palace and in the names of various locations within the city. 47
Charlemagne had visited many of the various models for capitals that
lay within his empire. In Rome the imperial palace on the Palatine Hill had
fallen into disrepair and Charlemagne was never housed there during

45
L. Falkenstein, ‘Charlemagne et Aix-la-Chapelle’, Byzantion 61 (1991), pp. 230 – 89, notes that
at Aachen there must have been far more buildings than the few known for the palace.
Aachen was also a local centre of administration, and remained so even after the palace was
no longer regularly used.
46
See especially R. Krautheimer, Three Christian Capitals: Topography and Politics (Berkeley,
CA, 1983), pp. 41–67. See Verzone, ‘La distruzione’, pp. 40 –47, for a detailed analysis of the
archaeological and textual evidence for the Constantinopolitan palace.
47
Farioli Campanati, ‘La Topografia Imperiale di Ravenna dal V al VI secolo’, Corso di cultura
sull’arte Ravennate e Bizantina 36 (1989), pp. 139–47.

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his visits to Rome,48 but the Lateran palace of the popes, greatly
expanded and rebuilt in the eighth and ninth centuries, had become the
focus of civic administration and was believed to have been built by
Constantine.49 Charlemagne visited Milan in 781,50 and probably visited
Trier, although there is no direct evidence for this; by his day both were
seats of important ecclesiastics, but neither had retained its status as an
imperial or royal capital after the fourth century. Finally Charlemagne
visited Ravenna first in 787, just before he started constructing the
palace at Aachen; he was there again in 801, following his imperial
coronation. We know from Agnellus that to visitors such as Charle-
magne, Ravenna would have given the visual impression of a great deal
of regal and imperial splendour.
There has been a great deal of scholarly discussion about what
Charlemagne was trying to represent with his palace at Aachen. Later
references to Aachen as the ‘new Rome’, to the palace as the ‘Lateran’,
and to Charlemagne as the ‘new Constantine’, 51 imply that Aachen was
modelled conceptually on the imperial centres of Rome and Constantin-
ople. Indeed, scholars have suggested different palaces and churches in
these cities as containing the ultimate model for the Aachen chapel and
palace complex; imitating Rome and/or Constantinople is seen as part
of Charlemagne’s desire to imitate, renovate, or revive the Roman
empire in the west. What is peculiar about discussions of Aachen is the
fact that Ravenna is almost completely overlooked as a model; the city’s
many known connections with Charlemagne and with Aachen are
acknowledged, but interpreted as being representative of something in
one of the other capitals. Let us briefly review what those connections are.
It has long been recognized that the Aachen chapel relied for its most
basic structural form and for some of its decorative elements on the
church of San Vitale in Ravenna.52 Both are centralized buildings with
octagonal cores surmounted by a dome. Both have an apse to the east

48
P. Verzone, ‘La distruzione dei palazzi imperiali di Roma e Ravenna e la ristrutturazione del
Palazzo Lateranese nel 9 secolo nei rapporti con quello di Constantinople’, in J. Hubert et al.
(eds), Roma e l’età Carolingia (Rome, 1976), pp. 39 –54, at pp. 39 –40, notes that the palace on
the Palatine is last mentioned in use in 686, and by 774 had apparently been partly demolished.
49
R. Krautheimer, ‘ The Carolingian Revival of Early Christian Architecture’, Art Bulletin 24
(1942), pp. 1–38, at p. 35, notes that according to tradition, the Lateran palace was built and
then given to the popes by Constantine in his apocryphal Donation.
50
F. Savio (ed.), Gli Antichi Vescovi d’Italia dalle Origini al 1300, part 1, Milano (Florence, 1913),
p. 301, citing Annales Bertiniani, a. 781.
51
R. Krautheimer, ‘Sancta Maria Rotunda’, in Studies in Early Christian, Medieval and Renais-
sance Art (New York, 1969), pp. 107–14; see also M. Cagiano de Azevedo, ‘Note archeologiche
riguardo al Sacramentario inviato da Adriano I a Carlo Magno’, in Studi Storici in honore di
O. Bertolini (Pisa, 1972), pp. 73–9.
52
Differences between the two churches have been summarized by G. Bandmann, ‘Die
Vorbilder der Aachener Pfalzkapelle’, in W. Braunfels (ed.), Karl der Grosse: Lebenswerk und
Nachleben, 4 vols (Düsseldorf, 1965 – 67), III, 424 – 62, esp. pp. 433 and 457–9.

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174 Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis

and a gallery over the ambulatory; stair towers and subsidiary chambers
also have parallels. In the interior elevation, the motif of two super-
imposed triple arcades on columns, within the tall arches between each
pair of piers, has been reproduced at Aachen.
According to Agnellus, Charlemagne saw a bronze equestrian statue
of the Ostrogothic king, Theodoric, in Ravenna; he liked it so much
that he had had it taken to Aachen in 801 and placed in his palace. 53
The presence of the statue at Aachen seems to be confirmed by a poem
written in 829 by Walahfrid Strabo, entitled De imagine Tetricis.54
According to Strabo it stood on a pedestal, in a location within the
palace that overlooked the buildings and the park. This has generally
been interpreted as meaning that the statue stood in the central court
between church and hall.55
Finally, it is documented in three places that Charlemagne took
spolia, that is, used building materials, from Ravenna. In his Life of
Charlemagne, as part of the description of the Aachen Palatine Chapel,
Einhard notes that ‘since it was not possible to have columns and
marbles from elsewhere, he [Charlemagne] took care to have them
brought from Rome and Ravenna’.56 This is confirmed by a letter from
Pope Hadrian I to Charlemagne, dating to 787, authorizing the latter
to take ‘mosaic and marbles and other pieces both on the floor and the
walls’ from a palace in Ravenna.57 We do not know from exactly which
palace in Ravenna these spolia were to be taken. Since Ravenna was
53
LPR, c. 94, ed. Holder-Egger, p. 338: ‘Quis enim talem videre potuit, qualis ille? Qui non
credit, sumat Franciae iter, eum aspiciat. . . Et nunc pene annis 38, cum Karolus rex Franco-
rum omnia subiugasset regna et Romanorum percepisset a Leone III papa imperium, post-
quam ad corpus beati Petri sacramentum praebuit, revertens Franciam, Ravenna ingressus,
videns pulcerrimam imaginem, quam numquam similem, ut ipse testatus est, vidit, Franciam
deportare fecit atque in suo eam firmare palatio qui Aquisgranis vocatur.’
54
Walahfrid Strabo, ‘Versus in Aquisgrani Palatio editi anno Hludowici Imperatoris XVI.
De imagine tetrici’, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH Poetae Latinae Aevi Carolini II (Hanover, 1884),
pp. 370– 8. Strabo interprets the statue of what he identifies as a heretical king allegorically as
a symbol of pride and greed. Although H. Grimm, Das Reiterstandbild des Theoderich zu Aachen
und das Gedicht des Walafried Strabus darauf (Berlin, 1869) and others suggested that the
statue had never really been taken to Aachen, and that Strabo’s poem was based on a statue
somewhere else, these ideas are not generally accepted; see especially W. Schmidt, ‘Das
Reiterstandbild des ostgothischen Königs Theoderich in Ravenna und Aachen’, Jahrbücher für
Kunstwissenschaft 6 (1873), pp. 1–51, for a clear summary of the various arguments.
55
See H. Hoffmann, ‘Die aachener Theodorichstatue’, in V.H. Elbern (ed.), Das Erste Jahr-
tausend (Dusseldorf, 1962), pp. 318–35.
56
Einhard, Vita Karoli, c. 26, ed. Holder-Egger, p. 31: ‘cum columnas et marmora aliunde
habere non posset, Roma atque Ravenna devehenda curavit’.
57
MGH Epistolae Mer. et Kar. Aevi, no. 81, vol. 1, ed. W. Gundlach et al. (Hanover, 1892),
p. 614: ‘In quibus referebatur, quod palatii Ravennate civitatis mosivo atque marmores ceterisque
exemplis tam in strato quamque in parietibus sitis vobis tribuissemus. Nos quippe libenti
animo et puro corde cum nimio amore vestro excellentiae tribuimus effectum et tam mar-
mores quamque mosivo ceterisque exemplis de eodem palatio vobis concedimus abstollen-
dum, quioper vestra laboriosa regalia certamina multa bona fautoris vestri, beati Petri clavigeri
regni caelorum, ecclesia cotidiae fruitur, quatenus merces vestra copiosa adscribatur in celis.’

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no longer the residence of a high-level ruler, it is often assumed that

Charlemagne dismantled the main Ostrogothic/exarchal palace, but
we know from Agnellus that there were several other palaces inside and
near Ravenna that were in ruins, and one of them may have been
meant.58 The fact that Einhard specifically noted that columns came
from Ravenna, and that this fact was repeated by Saxo Poeta in his
eulogy of Charlemagne,59 indicates that identifying Ravenna as an ori-
gin for building materials was seen as significant. 60
There are, therefore, both symbolic and material connections
between Aachen and Ravenna; indeed this evidence, thin though it may
be, is more substantial than any evidence for imitation of Rome or
Constantinople. Nonetheless, numerous scholars have explained how
the use of both the form of San Vitale and the statue of Theodoric in-
dicates an imitation of something outside Ravenna. The Aachen palace
chapel copies neither the dedication nor the function of San Vitale,
which was not a palace-chapel but a martyrial church, 61 and thus San
Vitale has been generally regarded only as an intermediary, copied
because its central plan represented some other symbolic type. 62 The
Aachen chapel has been compared to a number of centrally planned
structures: the Pantheon rededicated to the Virgin, 63 Sts Sergius and
Bacchos,64 Hagia Sophia, and the Chrysotriklinos in the Great Palace
58
In the Aachen chapel, the so-called ‘throne of Charlemagne’ is made of antique spolia, as are
most of the columns, including some of green porphyry and red Egyptian granite. None of
these pieces can be definitely linked to Ravenna, but the rarity and high quality of the stones
would justify bringing them all the way from Italy. See W. Jacobsen, ‘Spolien in der karo-
lingischen Architektur’, in J. Poeschke (ed.), Antike Spolien in der Architektur des Mittelalters
und der Renaissance (Munich, 1996), pp. 155 – 68.
59
Saxo Poeta, Annalium de gestis Caroli Magni, v. 439 –40, ed. P. von Winterfeld, MGH Poetae
Latini aevi Carolini IV (Hanover, 1899), p. 65, referring to the palace at Ingelheim: ‘Ad quae
marmoreas praestabat Roma columnas / quasdam praecipuas pulcra Rauenna dedit.’
60
Unfortunately Agnellus does not describe Charlemagne’s removal of building materials,
although he does complain extensively of such theft by the Emperor Lothar, by a bishop of
Bologna, and by several other foreign rulers (LPR, chs 1, 36, 87, and 113).
61
F.W. Deichmann, Ravenna, Hauptstadt des spätantiken Abendlandes, vol. 2, pt. 3, Geschichte,
Topographie, Kunst und Kultur; Indices zum Gesamtwerk (Wiesbaden, 1989), pp. 49 – 50,
explains that the idea that there was a palace in the sector of Ravenna around Santa Croce
and San Vitale is erroneously derived from a fourteenth-century text; archaeological evidence
is provied by G. Cortesi, ‘La chiesa di Santa Croce di Ravenna alla luce degli ultimi scavi e
ricerche’, Corso di cultura sull’arte Ravennate e Bizantina 25 (1978), pp. 47–76.
62
Krautheimer, ‘Carolingian Revival’, pp. 35–7, who specifically states that he thinks it is
connected with structures other than San Vitale.
63
Krautheimer, ‘Carolingian Revival’, pp. 35–7.
64
Bandmann, ‘Die Vorbilder’, concludes, esp. pp. 442–8, that for Charlemagne, San Vitale was
itself the accessible imitation of the church of Sts Sergius and Bacchos in Constantinople, built
by Justinian and attached to a palace (although not to the Great Palace). While he states that
Frankish visitors to Constantinople may well have attended church services at Sts Sergios and
Bacchos and thus would have been familiar with it (p. 444), the links he draws between the
type of Lombard central-plan palace chapels found in Benevento and perhaps Pavia (where,
however, S. Maria ad Pertica was built outside the walls of the city), the central-plan churches
of Rome and the Great Palace in Constantinople, and Sts Sergius and Bacchos, are rather weak.

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176 Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis

in Constantinople.65 Mention is also made of the Lombard churches

of Santa Maria ad Perticas at Pavia, and Santa Sophia at Benevento. 66
But San Vitale in Ravenna contains prominent images of the emperor
Justinian and his empress Theodora, and, then as now, must have
appeared to be a church with special imperial connections, and this
might well have been the feature that recommended it to Charlemagne.
The statue of Theodoric, and Charlemagne’s appropriation of it,
have also attracted a good deal of scholarly attention. It has been sug-
gested that Charlemagne admired Theodoric as a Germanic ruler of the
empire, and took his statue so that he could consciously imitate the
Ostrogoth.67 However, others have suggested that Charlemagne didn’t
know, or didn’t care, that the statue was of Theodoric, but simply
wanted an equestrian piece because he knew that the Lateran palace in
Rome had such a statue, thought to be of Constantine, and the palace
in Constantinople had a similar representation of Justinian. 68 Both in
Rome and Constantinople the statues stood in central plazas between
palace and church, the same location where Charlemagne placed his
statue at Aachen. However, at Ravenna, too, the main palace, built by
Theodoric and used by the Byzantine exarchs, included a complex of
palace (B–E), church (A), and courtyard (F) (Fig. 4). The location of
the statue of Theodoric is not entirely clear from Agnellus’s account,
but may well have stood in the courtyard formed by the palace and the
churches, in the same location as the equestrian statues in Rome and
Constantinople.69 Thus Charlemagne saw the statue of Theodoric in
the context of the imperial palace at Ravenna, and his placement of it
at Aachen may simply reflect its original location in Ravenna.
Ravenna had been the last imperial city in the west, after Rome and
Milan, and thus provided a model for someone seeking to revive a
Western, Christian, empire. The city was filled with churches built by
emperors and containing their portraits. At the same time, with
churches such as San Vitale, Ravenna was a noticably Byzantinized city;
visually and symbolically it would have been obvious to Charlemagne
65
H. Fichtenau, ‘Byzanz and die Pfalz zu Aachen’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische
Geschichtsforschungen 59 (1951), pp. 1–54.
66
Bandmann, ‘Die Vorbilder’, pp. 436 –7.
67
H. Löwe, ‘Von Theoderich dem Großen zu Karl dem Großen’, in Von Cassiodor zu Dante;
ausgewahlte Aufsatze zur Geschichtschreibung und politischen Ideenwelt des Mittelalters (Berlin,
1973), pp. 33–74.
68
Hoffmann, ‘Die aachener Theodorichstatue’, p. 319; Bandmann, ‘Die Vorbilder’, p. 451; and
C. Beutler, Statua. Die Entstehung der nachantiken Statue und der europäische Individualismus
(Munich, 1982), pp. 96 –7. F. Thürlemann, ‘Die Bedeutung der Aachener Theoderich-Statue
für Karl den Großen (801): Materialien zu einer Semiotik visueller Objekte im frühen Mittel-
alter’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 59 (1977), pp. 25–65, notes that the two ideas have been
seen as mutually exclusive, but that this need not have been the case.
69
See the introduction to Agnellus, The Book of Pontiffs of the Church of Ravenna, trans. D.M.
Deliyannis (Washington, DC, forthcoming).

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 Charlemagne’s silver tables: the ideology of an imperial capital 177

C D

Fig. 4 The excavated ‘palace of Theodoric’, with a hypothetical reconstruction

of the western area (drawing by D.M. Deliyannis).

that Ravenna was an imperial city in the style of Constantinople.

Finally, Ravenna had been the capital of Theodoric, a Germanic ruler
who had attempted to replace the empire in Italy. In the context of
Charlemagne’s renovatio romanorum imperii, Ravenna provided him with
an ideal model, one that could function on many levels; as Byzantine,
imperial, Christian, Germanic, and western capital.
Rather than seeing Ravenna only as an intermediary for something
else, we should state that in constructing Aachen, Charlemagne was
attempting to imitate Ravenna, to appropriate, materially and symbolic-
ally, the city’s claims to imperial status. This would not deny Aachen’s
claims to be the new Rome, or the new Constantinople; it simply
means that it was also the new Ravenna. In Charlemagne’s will, the two
linked pairings Rome–Constantinople and Rome–Ravenna embody
in different ways Charlemagne’s concept of the imperium romanorum,
and indicate the pivotal role played by Ravenna in Charlemagne’s
conception of imperial capitals. By modelling Aachen on Ravenna,
Charlemagne made his own capital part of this network of imperial
cities, a ‘new-new Rome’, transferring the imperium of the west from
its most recent capital.

Departments of Art History and History, Indiana University

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