Caliph, King, or Grandfather: Strategies of Legitimization on the Spanish March in the Reign of Lothar III

Abstract

The end of the Carolingian dynasty shortly after the death of King Lothar III (954–86) has tended to overwrite that king’s considerable activity in his reign. This is especially evident in the counties of the old Spanish March, now mostly parts of Catalonia, as they came under renewed pressure from the caliphate of Córdoba. This article examines three counts of this area circa 981, when one of them received a letter from Lothar, and finds each of them using a different strategy to justify their possession of what had once been regalian rights. By examining changes in their representations, it goes on to show that the rulers here relied on royalist ideological arguments sufficiently to enable a king to make his voice heard at their courts even in the very last years of the Carolingian era