Analysis
The origins of the story were a mystery for a long time, but it now seems clear that it can be associated with the reign of Louis the German and with the city and church of Mainz. The Frankfurt manuscript was probably copied at Mainz, and the anonymous author of the text may have been a cleric at the local church. The Paris manuscript may be from the church of Saint Afra in Augsburg. Witgar was the bishop of Augsburg from 858 to 875 and Charles, brother of the aforementioned Pepin, was the archbishop of Mainz from 856 until 866. Since the Visio attacks the policies of Lothair and Pepin and extols the virtue of Louis the German, it was probably written during the episcopate of Pepin's brother and sometime after the letter of Witgar, probably around 865.
The vision itself is probably to be connected to Charlemagne's palace at Nieder-Ingelheim in the Maingau, which in the fourteenth century was his purported birthplace and which the Emperor Charles IV (1354) referred to as the place where his predecessor received from an angel a sword. All this might suggest the survival of the legend of the vision in the region around Mainz even as its popularity as literature was low everywhere else.
Dieter Geuenich has argued that the presentation of a story revolving around the interpretation of Germanic words would have been well received at the court of Louis the German, who sought to "cultivate" the theodisca lingua (German language). The Visio can be seen as a piece of the propaganda of a consciously developed East Frankish (aristocratic) culture that patronised the Germanic language. Louis the German is presented as the superior of the his relatives from elsewhere in Christendom; East Francia is the last refuge of the Church.
Read more about this topic: Visio Karoli Magni
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