“And how, if you are a Christian, can you hate the emperor?” Reading a seventh-century scandal in Carolingian Francia’

A late ninth-century Latin manuscript, Paris BnF Lat. 5095, preserves the unique copy of Anastasius Bibliothecarius’s so-called ‘Collectanea’. This collection of texts documents the tribulations of Pope Martin and Maximus the Confessor, put on trial by the emperor in Constantinople in 655. This chapter considers the connections between the criticisms of (Byzantine) imperial power presented by these texts, translated into Latin by Anastasius, and the treatment of Carolingian rulers that the Paris manuscript also presents. It suggests that the juxtaposition was made by Hincmar, deposed as bishop of Laon in 871, as part of his determined campaign for reinstatement, resulting in a qualified success in 878.