Prayer of Ruler: the role of King in the Battle of Birten by Liutprand of Cremona

The article is devoted to the problem of description of medieval political rituals in the narrative sources of the Ottonian Age. At the time of establishment of the Ottonian Dynasty, German rulers were in need of new symbols and political rituals for legitimation and representation of their royal and imperial power. Among those who elaborated such a “symbolic language” were Ottonian court historiographers and chroniclers; in some cases in their works they depicted the scenes of symbolic representation of power that were “constructed” by themselves and never occurred in reality. An eminent Ottonian writer Liutprand of Cremona was one of the most inventive authors who depicted such “constructed” symbolic scenes. The description of the Battle of Birten (939) in his work “Antapodosis” gives a representative example of this approach. The Battle of Birten was an episode of the confrontation between Otto I and the rebellious German dukes. In the course of the battle a small part of Otto’s army faced with the overwhelming enemy forces on one of the banks of the Rhine, while the king himself and the main part of his troops had not crossed the river in time. So, Otto from the other bank could not help his warriors otherwise than by prayer. Nevertheless, in spite of unfavorable circumstances, Otto’s army unexpectedly defeated the enemy. Liutprand and another Ottonian writer, Widukind of Corvey, described these events in different ways. If Widukind explained the victory of Otto’s adherents by ruses of war and by characteristics of the locality, Liutprand saw the reason in the symbolic actions of Otto during the combat. Liutprand depicted an impressive symbolic scene: getting off the horse and kneeling, the king was praying before the relic of Holy Lance in presence of “all his people”. According to Liutprand, it is the royal prayer that caused the Divine intervention in the events and the miraculous victory. Particularly significant for the writer in the context of this symbolic scene was the Holy Lance containing the nails from the Holy Cross. In “Antapodosis” that sacred object was represented as an insignia, as a symbol of the Ottonian power and authority and as a center of the whole scene. The symbolic action described by the writer may be regarded as a version of the ritual of the ruler kneeling down before the Holy Cross in the battlefield. The prayer of the king-warrior before the Holy Cross was a ritual, known since late Antiquity and widespread in the Byzantine Empire in the 10th century. Liutprand, apparently, used the Byzantine example in his narrative and transformed it to create a new symbolic context of the Ottonian power representation. In real, the Battle of Birten was not a crucial episode of the Dukes’ rebellion of 938-939, but in Liutprand’s description it was represented as a decisive victory of Otto I. So, the “construction” of a ritual helped the writer to create a peculiar ceremonial context and to emphasize an episode of secondary importance.

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