Narratives of success and narratives of failure: representations of the career of King Hugh of Italy (c.885–948)

Hugh of Arles, king of Italy between 926 and 947, has come to be regarded as one of the more successful kings of Italy in the tenth century. The evidence of his charters supports this conclusion, showing how effectively he managed to insert members of his own Provençal family into the existing political fabric of northern Italy. Contemporary narrative sources tell the same story, but as one of failure. For Rather of Verona, Liutprand of Cremona and even Flodoard of Reims, Hugh and his family were suspect and their sexual mores questionable. Their texts intervened in contemporary politics not simply as records of Hugh's inadequacies but as real political actors that helped to make that failure happen.

Italian king. During his relatively long life he had three (possibly four) wives, 4 at least five other established relationships with women (his 'concubines'), 5 and nine known children, all but two born outside his official marriages. 6 Lothar, the child of his second wife Alda, was his only legitimate son and was made co-ruler in 931 at a very young age 7 when Hugh was over fifty. By the time he agreed to 'retire' to Provence under pressure from Berengar marquis of Ivrea, formerly his 'beloved retainer' (dilectum fidelis), 8 in the summer of 947, 9 he was over sixty. He stepped aside on the understanding that Lothar, who had come of age not long before, would take his place as king: but this was only in name, for Berengar was in charge. The arrangement ended in 950s when Lothar died, either of disease or through poisoning engineered by Berengar (the sources do not agree). 10 That death effectively marked the end of Hugh's influence in Italy. His dynastic plan had failed. Control of the kingdom was contested throughout the 950s between Berengar II (who died in 966) and the upstart Otto of Saxony (who conclusively established himself in 962 when he was crowned emperor). 11 Although some of Hugh's remaining children may have lived through some of those events none of them challenged for the kingship, not even Hugh's powerful illegitimate son Hubert. 12 4 Willa, Alda, Marozia (disputed), and Bertha.  Lothar and Alda were the legitimate ones. The others, including Hubert, Boso and Bertha, were illegitimate. 7 M. Marrocchi, 'Lotario II, Re d'Italia', Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 9 (2006), pp. 29-31, states that he was born in 930 but the evidence is inconclusive and he may already have been as old as five when he became co-king. This was Hugh's way of signalling his dynastic intentions in Italy. Hugh's reign is relatively well documented for the period, and recently historians have tended to view it more favourably than in the past, voicing the opinion that Hugh was a successful, even creative, king. 13 Patrick Geary has described Hugh as 'vigorous, capable and innovative'. 14 Chris Wickham has characterized him as effective and energetic. 15 Giuseppe Sergi has suggested that his methods of rule were 'radical' especially his deliberate creation of a new political elite to replace the old. 16 Reappraisal of the substantial corpus of Hugh's surviving charters (eighty-three in total) has driven this tendency to see Hugh as more a success than a failure, particularly in his careful and effective management of an extended network of relatives and friends. 17 Issued between 7 August 926 just after he had become king of Italy, 18 and his own death in 948 (10 April), 19 there survive roughly four for each year. 20 13 The nature of tenth-century kingship is evidently a large and now much-studied subject. The literature is too large to survey here. The best way in (at least in English) is perhaps provided by Janet L.  16 Sergi, 'Kingdom of Italy', p. 354. Italian historiography of this period has tended to focus on institutions and their collapse, the best example being the work of Giovanni Tabacco (e.g. Egemonie sociali e strutture del potere nel medioevo italiano, 2nd edn (Turin, 1979), pp. 189-21). He implied (p. 190) that Hugh's use of 'new men', largely Provençal and related by blood, blurred existing distinctions between the institution of the kingdom with its ideas of office and service, and the king's more personal sphere of influence.  Twenty seven diplomas (11 originals; 40.7% of this total) were issued between 926 and October 931, when Hugh began to rule jointly with his young son Lothar. As joint kings, Hugh and Lothar issued between 931 and 947 a further 50 (28 originals; 56% of this total), and Lothar issued 16 alone (11 originals; 68.5% of this total). There are significant clusters in 926, 929 and 945. By comparison, for the thirty-six-year reign of Berengar I (888-924, but with significant interruptions by rival claimants) there are 140 texts (73 originals, 52%), whereas there are only 16 diplomas for Berengar II's ten-year reign (951-61) and 3 for Adalbert's two years (960-1), although the periodic interventions of Otto I in Italian affairs have to be borne in mind during this period.
Hugh's friends and associates, both men and women, clearly benefitted from his largesse, often repeatedly. 21 There are thirty-five different petitioners reported, some of whom petitioned on several occasions, including Bishop Sigifred of Parma (eight times), 22 Queen Alda and Marquis Berengar of Ivrea (five times each), 23 and Countess Ermengard and Bishop Ambrose of Lodi (four times each). 24 Alda was Hugh's second wife and designated consors regni. Ermengard was his half-sister, the daughter of his mother Bertha and her final husband Adalbert of Tuscany. They were clearly with Hugh early in his reign, helping him to consolidate the power of the family in this region. Neither woman figured as a petitioner after 932 (once Lothar had joined his father as co-king) or as a beneficiary. However, both acted in favour of the church in Parma where Sigifred was bishop, and he clearly benefitted quickly from the arrival of Hugh and his family. Churches in Parma benefitted on ten separate occasions between 926 and 944. 25 32 Hugh's charters must, like other royal diplomas, therefore be read above all as political narratives, both written and oral. 33 Surveying these charters at a macro level certainly confirms that Hugh relied upon his family connections to enable his rule. Their political language, which deserves much more specialist study than space will allow, occasionally reveals the warlike nature of his kingship. In the words of a grant issued in November 928 from Vienne by his chancellor Gerlan, abbot of Bobbio, to the monastery of Saint Oyen-de-Joux, he was 'the most invincible king' (rex invictissimus). 34 By then, he had indeed subdued the Italian kingdom by force and thereafter all his and his son's charters were issued from within the kingdom, whereas before some were issued from Vienne. 35 But, although some charters repeat the convention that Hugh was a 'most pious king' (rex piissimus), in fact there is very little obviously religious language in the charters issued in his own name between 926 and 931. Few particularly pious sentiments are evidenced and no biblical quotations. They are instead straightforward, rather plain, 28 Church of Aquileia (931); S. Martino, Lucca (932); S. Donato, Arezzo (933). This Boso, given his name, may have been a relative of Hugh's, probably his brother who ruled in the Tuscan march: Antapodosis III.47 and IV.11-12 (one of Liutprand's more distasteful stories aimed at Boso's wife Willa).
Judgements of the king are of course nothing new, for exact and near contemporaries handed down their verdicts on Hugh and these, in marked contrast to those of modern historians, tended more toward failure than success. In the rest of this article I reassess these contemporary judgements by paying closer attention than is normal to the literary aspects of the surviving narratives in which Hugh was a protagonist. While reading these it is useful to bear in mind that 'concrete historical individuals perform rather complex operations with the language/s available to them, while at the same time their thinking is limited by the dominant metaphors and vocabularies'. 36 Silvana Patriarca's linkage of performance, metaphor and vocabulary in an elaborate mélange, while voiced in a study of nineteenth-century discourses of the Italian Risorgimento, is certainly a helpful formulation through which to read what are complex tenth-century political narratives.
The main evidence addressed here is a well-known series of highly politicized works written by an 'Ottonian' group of ecclesiastics, including Rather of Verona (d. 974), Liutprand of Cremona (d. c.972) and Hrotswitha of Gandersheim (d. c.1002). Above all we will consider the salacious stories of the polemical 'Book of Revenge' (Antapodosis) that Liutprand wrote while a deacon at the end of the 950s as part of his campaign to become a bishop, and which succeeded when Otto had him consecrated as bishop of Cremona in November or December 961. 37 Rather and Liutprand strongly condemned Hugh and other members of his extended family for 'immorality', especially sexual immorality, 38 hardly surprising given the power of contemporary clerical discourse about the necessity of legitimate marriage overseen by the church. 39 But these clerical writings were much more than that: they were self-consciously 'political' texts that, to appropriate the language used by Jason Glenn in the case of Richer of Reims, were written for a community of readers (or listeners) who had 'a stake in the events described'. In being addressed to this  audience the works themselves 'entered the political arena'. 40 These works can be termed 'contemporary history' deliberately intended to shape contemporary politics, even though a variety of different genres with their own rules was employed in which to deliver the message. 41 Genre and the specific conventions of a particular form are certainly important considerations but the compulsion to narrate and especially to narrate 'the' version of a story could always break its bounds. 42 The collective picture of Hugh and his family in these narratives ('collective narratives' perhaps?) was firmly negative and it is often suggested that such hostility was consciously adopted for careerist reasons, 43 especially a need to get on the right side of Otto the Great and to stay there in order to weather the political crisis that engulfed the Italian kingdom in the 950s. Rather desperately wanted to remain bishop of Verona and Liutprand to become bishop of Cremona. Although this motive is understandable they did not always know the outcome of the events they wrote about or indeed wrote to bring about. We do. Nor were they as well informed as we are about political events while they were writing. Therefore we must be careful not to read their works in a teleological way and, although such career-oriented explanations have some merit, it will be argued here that there are other ways of looking at these famous works.
One reason for challenging a careerist perspective is the simple fact that once work produced outside the charmed Ottonian circle is taken into consideration, 'career' no longer works as an explanation. For example, the representation of Hugh as Italian king by Flodoard of Reims (d. 966), largely ignored within existing assessments of his reign, was also negative, even though he was writing in Reims and seems to have had little to gain in career terms from criticizing Hugh in order to gain favour with Otto. Added to this is the fact that other contemporaries thought that Hugh was a success rather than a failure, so pedalling a negative view of the king might not actually have been considered likely to be successful as a career move. The anonymous 'Miracles of Saint Columbanus', probably authored between 950 and 963/7 by a monk of the famous monastery of Bobbio, shows that it was at that date possible for a monk to approve of Hugh's political actions during an early stage in his Italian adventures when he was untried as king. 44 The text narrates the journey of the body of Columbanus from Bobbio to Pavia, significantly the capital of the kingdom, to help persuade Hugh to quash attempts by local bishops to appropriate monastic property. The miracles that resulted had the desired effect and that is why the text was written; yet the same narrative clearly demonstrated God's approval of Hugh as much as of Columbanus and Bobbio. Although obviously in a different genre from any of those employed by Rather, Liutprand or Hrotswitha, it is nevertheless significant that such a 'narrative of success' was possible after Hugh had died, and indeed it is possible to see it, like other later narratives, as an active participant in events that it helped to bring about as well as to document. 45 Reconsideration of these narratives inevitably touches upon other themes that have concerned historians of the tenth century, especially the value or otherwise of biography, 46 the supposed significance of descent from the Carolingians in this period, 47 and the performative nature of charters as an essential part of political culture. 48 For us biography is a common if contentious form of historical writing but whether tenth-century writers thought that 'biography' was such a category remains uncertain, especially in light of debates about the 'discovery of the individual' in the twelfth century. 49 There can be no doubt though that both Rather and Liutprand were self-reflexive writers, Liutprand musing on his 'inner self' at the outset of Antapodosis Book VI and Rather referring almost constantly to his feelings. They thought autobiographically and that surely informed their writing about contemporary politics, including the activities of Hugh. If Hugh and his relatives are far too poorly documented to make anything approaching true psychological biography possible for them, something closer is possible for Rather and Liutprand who seemed to foreground both autobiographical and biographical life-stories in their narratives. 50 Chastity was a crucial part of these narratives. Unmarried ecclesiastics took chastity seriously, unlike many of their contemporaries including kings like Hugh. Crucially, this prevented them from engaging with and benefitting from 'family politics' of the sort practised by Hugh, based as it was upon the fruits of his apparently numerous sexual encounters. But their narrative interventions circumvented that handicap by destroying Hugh's reputation for justice, causing him to lose the support of the 'Italian' aristocracy by portraying him as a 'Provençal', highlighting the illegitimacy of most of his children, and ruining his posthumous reputation into the bargain as eleventh-century memories of Hugh show. 51 Their collective narrative power as authors, which in this respect went beyond the 'self-justificatory' nature of history-writing as a genre, 52 more than matched the more formal, ritual narratives of royal charters, and it was they, not Hugh's chancellors, who immortalized Hugh as a 'bad king'. Once written and sent out into the world, works such as the 'Prefaces' and 'Book of Revenge'very much like Hugh's biological childrenwent their own ways, actively participating in politics as well as commenting upon the political, as is the more conventional way of reading them. 53 Rather, Flodoard and Liutprand were hardly alone in having clear ideas about the qualities that a good king needed to possess. 54 But because some of them had lived more closely in contact with the violent events through which Otto had ended Bosonid power in Italy it is on the surface unsurprising that they would blacken Hugh's reputation when they looked back retrospectively on his history. 55 While most of these authors wrote at some point to obtain Otto's patronage that had not always been so: in particular, Rather wrote before as well as after Otto was on the scene, and Flodoard wrote with other audiences in mind. 'History' could be both contemporary comment and written memory. 56 Rather devoted Books III and IV of his extended 'Prefaces' (Praeloquia) to the subject of kingship. 57 Four virtues were essential to  (Stroud, 1999), pp. 213-26 argues that Rather's view of friendship had more emotional warmth than is usually thought. a worthy king: justice (iustitia), wisdom (prudentia), temperance (sobrietas) and fortitude (virtus). 58 This work was aimed at Hugh because he had removed Rather for 'treason' from the see of Verona (to which he had appointed Rather in 931) and imprisoned him in Pavia and Como between 935 and 937. Rather did not pull his punches when he suggested that 'your majesty not . . . distain to receive what must now be said in such a way that points which have perhaps long been unknown or overlooked may be made clear and corrected'. Born in the late 880s he held to the established Carolingian view of the necessity of correctio (and admonitio) for all in society, including the king. Indeed some Carolingian rulers, notably Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, were at the forefront of developing these ideas, and each had been corrected by contemporary clerics in respect of errant sexual behaviour. 59 Rather went on to advise Hugh to fear God and to 'governor rather nourishthe people committed to you, respect the pious, honour bishops'. 60 He was adamant that bishops ranked more highly than kings in the eyes of God but, unsurprisingly given his circumstances, he was sometimes cautious in attacking Hugh directly: for example he referred to the fact of his punishment 'by a certain person' (namely Hugh) as general knowledge without actually directly naming the king. 61 But he did not pull back from accusing Hugh of abusing his position by his cavalier treatment of the priesthood, which he regarded as a far superior state to that of a king. 62 These remarks (and many others like them) seemingly about kingship in general but actually about a specific king in particular (Hugh) were written during his confinement ordered by that king. They are hardly likely to reveal much of the 'real' Hugh but they do, like all of Rather's writing, reveal much of the priest's personality. 63 Later as a free man, although without a position and itinerant, he pondered his loss of Verona in a letter to Pope Agapetus II in the autumn of 951. 64 By this time both 58 Praeloquia III.5 (ed. Reid, pp. 80-1; trans. Reid, p. 97), in a passage quoting Matthew XXII.12 ('Render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's) and Wisdom VIII.7 ('For he teaches temperance and wisdom and justice and virtue, than which nothing on earth is more useful to men'). Hugh and Lothar were deceased, succeeded by Berengar II but with the looming presence of Otto of Saxony on the horizon. 65 This was obviously a crucial moment in the transfer of power from Hugh's family to Otto's, and Rather, now in his seventies, took the chance to claim justice for himself by writing to the pope who was certainly in this situation a potential powerbroker. Rather gave a very clear summary of his case, which included a dissection of his own relationship with Hugh. When Hugh had made his cousin Hilduin bishop of Verona (in 928), the king was 'at that time, as was believed, very fond of me'. 66 Rather was encouraged to think that he would succeed Hilduin when the latter moved to higher things, but when this came to pass in June 931 with Hilduin's promotion to the archbishopric of Milan the king decided far otherwise than he had promised (such is often the instability and fickleness of the world), desiring instead, as the story has it (ut fama erat), one of three: either one Aquitanus or one Garafridus or Manasses, archbishop of Arles, against the canons though it would be. 67 Rather claimed that he had had a letter from Pope John XI supporting his candidacy which, supported in turn by Hilduin, ensured that he did indeed become bishop of Verona. 'This was very displeasing to the king, who was working towards something quite different', he commented. 68 Hugh agreed, having been persuaded that Rather was near death. He lived, was ordained and a furious Hugh (iratissimus) 69 vowed that he would not enjoy his time as bishop (although Rather probably didn't have enjoyment in mind anyway). Hugh then found a pretext to expel Rather, who, although he admitted some responsibility, stated that Hugh had acted 'against the law and without giving me 65 Otto had married Lothar's widow Adelheid at this time. They had to contend with the rebellion of Otto's son Liudolf and his brother-in-law Conrad, who were trying to unseat Berengar, who was in turn supported by Otto, Adelheid (Conrad's sister) and Henry of Bavaria (Otto's brother): Karl Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society (London, 1979)  a hearing'. 70 Rather, somewhat predictably, expressed his grief at the memory of Hugh, having wished him 'the felicity of the emperor Theodosius', who famously had to do penance having been excommunicated by Ambrose of Milan in response to a massacre at Thessalonica and was thus an example of a ruler literally floored by a bishop. Rather had earlier held up the example of Theodosius as a merciful ruler to Hugh himself in the Praeloquia. 71 The saga continued. Rather was released and Hugh 'by God's justice had been stripped of the honour of ruling' (by Berengar in 945). Rather had the idea of a rapprochement with Hugh, who according to rumour was regretful of his treatment of Rather. Perhaps Hugh was merciful like Theodosius after all? But this scheme failed and Rather was arrested by Berengar instead, at the suggestion of Manasses, Hugh's nephew and by now archbishop of Milan ('a most holy archbishop' as Rather put it with heavy irony). 72 Count Milo, who 'so the story goes' (ut fertur) had 'greatly damaged Hugh', also turned against him. 73 Rather was eventually restored to Verona, whereupon King Lothar threatened him with violence unless he gave up the see in favour of an appointee of Manasses. He then turned to the pope and to Otto, who wanted the kingdom of Italy for no other pressing purpose than by imperial power to force the kingdom that had been wracked by many instances of wrongdoing of this kind and other injustices (inrectitudinum) into the justice (rectitudinum) of Christian law. 74

Rather eventually regained Verona in 961.
Throughout this account Rather implies that word of mouth was a vital transmitter of political knowledge. Historians agree that fama ('reputation') was indeed a profound part of early medieval literary culture, as essential to that form of expression as to oral discourse ('gossip'). 75  by clerics, who were trying both to record the events of their own times (in the sense of reporting factual happenings) but equally to shape the memory of those events for all time, and to reveal in that process how the hand of God operated upon all aspects of human existence. 76 It is essential that the language these men (and the occasional woman) used is decoded, their vocabulary interrogated, their stock phraseology identified, the topoi they reiterated revealed, and much else besides. 77 Close textual reading demonstrates that clerical authors were nothing if not perennial gossips, and shows that they often helpfully, transparently and deliberately signalled this to readers in the simple but telling phrase 'it is said'. 78 Rather did exactly this when narrating the shared history he had with King Hugh, with the result that Hugh's point of view is (deliberately) lost.
Rather, of course, although complex linguistically was very transparent in his intentions. Other, more apparently sober and sensible authors who employed more direct language are more difficult to read (in both senses), and historians have to keep careful lookout for linguistic signs in such apparently 'simple' writers. One such was Flodoard of Reims (894-966), one of the best historians of the period. 79 His views on Hugh and his family are valuable precisely because he was an outsider to the political world that Hugh had constructed in Italy, and indeed to the one he left behind in Provence. 80 Flodoard was also a close contemporary of the king's, roughly ten years younger than Hugh. He dealt with Hugh in his 'Annals', recording the latter's antics in a reasonable number of  Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, pp. 285-6. This was, for some, a practice they had adopted after reading Roman historians. Although the use of the phrase implied doubt as to the truthfulness of the thing or event described, the record of something documented by gossip still functioned as a record legitimized by writing. entries. 81 These laconic records help to plot the king's contemporary reputation outside of Italy, but at the time they also constructed that reputation, at least among Flodoard's readers and, in this world of talk, perhaps beyond. Given Flodoard's geographical focus upon north-east France, Hugh was inevitably a distant figure in his narrative, even though his information about the king seems to have come from knowledgeable sources, including Rather and possibly also pilgrims from Reims returning from trips to Italy. 82 Most of his entries on Hugh set the king's contemporary reputation in a context rather different from the more obviously partisan agendas of Italian authors, or those largely based in or writing about Italy. Flodoard's terse report of how Hugh became king of Italy in the summer of 926his first reference to himis striking: In Rome Hugh, son of Bertha, was constituted king over Italy after King Rudolf of Cisalpine Gaul had been expelled. Hugh travelled to that kingdom and married a woman even though his wife was still alive. 83 This was after Burchard, the princeps of the Alamanni and father-in-law of this Rudolf, was killed by Bertha's sons. Burchard had crossed the Alps with Rudolf in order to regain the kingdom for his son-in-law. 84 Flodoard was wrong on the location of Hugh's coronation, which took place at Pavia rather than Rome, on 9 July 926, but the rest is accurate except for the comment that Hugh was a bigamist. This statement was hardly necessary to telling the accession story and suggests that, like his Italian contemporary Liutprand, Flodoard intended his readers to understand that Hugh's questionable marital status was an essential part of his political persona, even the essential part of it. Quite who this 'woman' was is uncertain as Flodoard does not name her, but he may have intended Marozia. The woman left behind was either his first wife Willa, or Alda his second. The named woman is not a wife but Hugh's mother 81 Les annales de Flodoard publiées d'après les manuscrites, ed. Philippe Lauer (Paris, 1905) Bertha, a reference that signalled Hugh's Carolingian lineage rather than his father's unmentioned ancestry. Perhaps her textual presence suggested to readers with some subtlety that Hugh was dominated by his mother, calling into question the king's independence, his masculinity, and the very fact of his kingship at what was a (perhaps the) crucial moment in his life. 85 By this time Hugh's father Count Theobald of Arles was dead and Bertha had married again, to Adalbert II of Tuscany, a powerful local magnate who had the potential to become king of Italy himself. Their son Guy was thus Hugh's half-brother. Flodoard noted this latter relationship later under the year 928, but in this earlier entry chose for some reason not to name Guy. 86 Flodoard dealt briefly with Hugh on four other occasions in his narrative. 87 The king's death was not noted, a sure sign that Hugh's memory was not so important to Flodoard, 88 particularly because he did record that Berengar was made king of Italy in 950 'when, as they say, King Lothar died of poisoning'. 89 A scandalous royal death was perhaps too good to pass over.
Flodoard, writing in Reims, maintained both physical and narrative distance from Hugh. He knew something about the king but not much, and most of his entries were quite anodyne apart from that initial charge of bigamy. The latter is however crucial evidence because so incidental and matter-of-fact that Hugh's image (his fama) was tainted for some contemporaries with marital and sexual irregularity.   employed but also a carefully chosen accusation, selected perhaps even unconsciously because it confirmed what Flodoard knew of Hugh's ancestry. As has been shown, he definitely knew that Bertha was Hugh's mother, and thereforegiven the extent of the gossip circulating around that case in the latter decades of the ninth century at Reims itself -he is likely to have known that her mother was Waldrada, that infamous 'seducer' of Lothar II, Carolingian ruler of Lotharingia. 96 This single reference in Flodoard therefore raises the possibility that Hugh's ancestry may well have been the fundamental ground upon which his contemporary reputation was built (by Rather, Flodoard, Liutprand and others) because both sides of his family were, in the eyes of Carolingian clerical writers, tainted with sexual immorality.
About Hugh's family background quite a bit is known. 97 He was born around 885 towards the end of the Carolingian period, as were some of those writing about him. 98 His maternal grandfather was Lothar II (d. 869), the Carolingian king who unsuccessfully tried to divorce his legitimate wife Theutberga in favour of Waldrada his first love. Hugh's mother Bertha (d. 925), daughter of Lothar and Waldrada, 99 was a politically influential figure in Italy in her own right. 100 Her brother Hugh (the king's uncle, after whom he was perhaps named) fought against Louis the Younger, 101 and was blinded by Charles the Fat for having 'acted unwisely in the emperor's kingdom'. 102 Bertha was first married to Theobald, count of Arles (Hugh's father), who is much less well-documented than his (Carolingian) wife. 103 Theobald rebelled against Carolingian 96 his own father. 114 Third, Liutprand tells us that his stepfather also subsequently acted as emissary for Hugh (V.24) in 941-4, which implies that Liutprand's mother had remarried (also traumatic?) and that the family continued to be trusted by the king. 115 In Liutprand's version of his relationship with Hugh, his autobiographical framing means that the rapid sketch of the king in Antapodosis III.19, although in literary terms a conventional portrait of a wise ruler as Roman and Carolingian authors writing biographically were accustomed to provide (cf. Livy, Suetonius, Einhard), might also have been taken from life, especially as this passage was carefully corrected in the Freising manuscript: 'About the many virtues of King Hugh that lust undermined'. King Hugh was of no lesser wisdom than boldness, nor of smaller strength than craftiness, also a worshipper of God and a lover of those who love holy religion, solicitous for the needs of the poor, very caring towards churches; he not only loved but also deeply honoured religious and philosophical men. Hugh was a man, though, who even if he shone with virtues, besmirched them through his passion for women. 116 This retrospective portrait is deliberately satirical in its contrast of virtus with luxuria, especially given what Liutprand as a man writing in his late thirties may have recalled of Hugh's imprisonment of Bishop Rather for treachery at Pavia between 935 and 937, when he himself had been around sixteen years old and was probably also in Pavia. Liutprand argued here that Hugh's interventionist approach to the appointment of his non-Italian cronies to the major north Italian sees was very far from honouring 'religious and philosophical men', whereas Liutprand the deacon from Pavia writing as a prospective Ottonian bishop who saw himself as defender of correct canonical procedure in this regard, certainly honoured them in his text especially the traitorous for women however well connected but one that surely Bertha herself aimed at. 125 Once Hugh had been formally constituted as king (III.21) Liutprand reported that he sent out embassies to obtain the amicitia of other rulers, especially the Saxon king Henry (III.22-4). He followed this (as was customary) with an embassy to Byzantium, the one apparently headed by Liutprand's unnamed father. It reached Emperor Romanos I in 927. After a successful visit, Liutprand's father died on his return. 126 In addition to any psychological distress this caused Liutprand it also meant that Liutprand's family were very well connected at Hugh's court and had benefitted directly from Hugh's generosity, just like those people documented in the king's charters. At this point Liutprand and his parents could be regarded as part of Hugh's extended familia, as Rather was also; 'new men' whom Hugh so 'radically' employed to rule. By the time Hugh had decided to send his daughter Bertha ('Eudochia', d. 949) to Constantinople to try to marry her to the emperor, she was accompanied not by Liutprand, who was probably still too young for such an important mission, but by Bishop Sigifred of Parma, whom the charters reveal to have been one of Hugh's most trusted advisers. 127 Liutprand's scrupulous narration of the events of Hugh's reign therefore pinpoints the importance of family and alliance to the king, just as often and in similar ways as Hrotswitha does for the Ottonians in her Gesta Ottonis. Like Flodoard, the deacon of Pavia tells a story of networks and associations similar to those evidenced by the king's charters and obviously involving many of the same people, but his interpretation of this story was more negative, an opinion based on personal malice at having failed to be promoted at court by the king as he had expected. Liutprand was not saying that using family as the basis of one's rule was bad, although given his beliefs he could not approve of non-marital sexual liaisons, for he was probably trying to follow in his father's footsteps with the king's patronage. But he could not cope with his dashed dreams of advancement: Liutprand's disappointment was Hugh's unforgiveable sin.
The sophisticated narratives of Rather, Flodoard and Liutprand establish that Hugh and his family were both written and talked about, and that such routine activities helped to form and perpetuate the social memory of the king in the immediate aftermath of his 125 Lazzari, 'La rappresentazione del legami di parentela', pp. 135-43 and Gandino, 'Aspirare al regno', which show that Bertha's world-view encompassed both Constantinople and Baghdad. 126 Sutherland, Liudprand of Cremona, pp. 4-5. 127 Antapodosis V.20. death. 128 If none of the three was exactly an advocate for Hugh that is not so surprising given their personal circumstances. That no one else was eithernot the king himself, members of his close family, or petitioners in chartersis more difficult to explain if, as is the current view, Hugh really was successful. Why didn't they commission rival narratives that fostered and propagated a positive image of Hugh to ensure that his memory would be positive? That they did not is surely significant for it means that Hugh was abandoned by his friends as well as his enemies and consequently Hugh's enemies were at liberty to make the connection between his supposed moral failings (a dangerous combination of injustice and incontinence) and the ultimate failure of his rule in Italy.
Much like the king's political networks on the ground the surviving documentation can be divided into 'insiders' (the charters) and 'outsiders' (the rest). The 'outsiders' quite consciously chose either to present him as a failure or to forget him altogether. 129 The forgetters included Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, who touched on Hugh's family in her Gesta Ottonis written in the 960s some fifteen years after Hugh had died. Her Ottonian narrative is well known for having prioritized family politics over military campaigns, which were more typical of the stories that male chroniclers largely favoured. 130 Her images of kingship were nonetheless the very ones Rather had employed to castigate Hugh: Otto displayed wisdom, piety, justice, clemency and fortitude. 131 Hugh and his family were introduced to her narrative only at the very end of their dynastic history at the moment of Lothar's demise in 950 when, as Hrotswitha put it, Adelaide, future Ottonian, 'rightly' succeeded him. She juxtaposed Otto's legitimacy with a single reference to Hugh's illegitimacy: his forced expropriation of the Italian throne from Berengar. Although Hrotswitha, unlike her male contemporaries, did not deal with Hugh's irregular sexual relationships directly in her Otto-obsessed narrative, she did present Hugh's acquisition of the Italian kingship in ambiguous 128 James Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford, 1992), pp. 41-86. 129 For the anthropologically influenced methodology of 'outsiders and insiders', see Peter Burke, The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 15-24. Although the genres of that period are certainly different from those of the tenth century, the overall point about being 'in' or being 'out' is relevant to other periods.