Carolingian noblewoman

FRANKISH noblewoman from the CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE, 9th century AD. Mostly based on the miniatures from the Stuttgart Psalter, a Carolingian manuscript from Germany dating to the first half of the 9th century.

During the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, the Germanic tribe of the Franks, ruled by the Merovingian dynasty, migrated to the Roman province of Gaul and created their own kingdom there. In the 8th century, after conquering Visigothic Hispania, the armies of the Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus crossed the Pyrenees and marched into Gaul. In 732 AD, the Frankish military leader Charles Martel, considered the founder of the Carolingian dynasty, led the Merovingian army that defeated the invading Muslim army at the battle of Poitiers (also known as the battle of Tours), in what is now western France. Because of Charles Martel’s victory against the gigantic Umayyad Caliphate, his son Pepin the Short became the first Carolingian king of the Franks. In 768 AD, Pepin was succeeded by his son, Charlemagne. As king of the Franks, Charlemagne conquered north-eastern Hispania from the Arabs (where he created the buffer zone known as the Hispanic March, establishing what we know today as the “Catalan Counties”). He conquered northern Italy as far south as Rome from the Lombards and fought the pagan Saxons in northern Germany and the semi-nomadic Avars in Central Europe. But in 800 AD, after years ruling as a king, Charlemagne was crowned emperor, with the intention of symbolically restoring the Western Roman Empire. The Carolingian Empire was born. Charlemagne’s reign coincided with the beginning of the Viking Age, and his expansion into Saxony made Charlemagne’s territories an easy target for Danish raids. Subsequent rulers of the Carolingian dynasty, whether they ruled only as kings while the empire was divided, or as emperors, would have to face not only the constant threat of Viking raids on the coast and along the rivers, including multiple Viking sieges of Paris, but also the incursions of the Magyars by land, while the counts of Barcelona defended the southern border of the Carolingian Empire against incursions from Al-Andalus.

References:
- Brooch based on a Carolingian find from Zálavar, Hungary (replica by Piplavá Robota).
- Cup based on a Carolingian piece from the Halton Moor treasure, a Viking hoard found in England (replica by Storrvara).
- Embroidery on the dress based on a hypothetical reconstruction by Recreating the Past.