Insinuation, censorship and the struggle for late Carolingian Lotharingia in Regino of Prum's Chronicle

Abstract

Regino of Prüm's Chronicle, completed in the year 908, is one of the most important narrative sources for the history of the later Carolingian Empire, and contains the best contemporary account of its collapse in 888. Regino was not a detached observer of events, but a political actor whose career was profoundly affected by the turbulence of post-imperial politics. This article seeks to demonstrate how the text and its author's own career cannot be understood independently of one another. Through an analysis of Regino's rhetorical strategies (particularly insinuation, juxtaposition and self-censorship) I attempt to cast new light on the construction of the later sections of this important chronicle. At the same time, by interrogating the work as a source for its author's own life (and in particular his forcible ejection from Prüm in 899) I use it to draw out broader conclusions about the conduct of politics during the scramble for the Carolingian heartland of Lotharingia at the end of the ninth century.