Charlemagne's Questionnaire: A Little-Known Document from the Very Beginnings of Survey Research

By Thomas Petersen

Few people know that the oldest structured questionnaire for which we still have the exact wording stems from the year 811. It is a list of questions that the emperor Charlemagne intended to present to the lords and high-ranking clergy of his realm, and that they were in turn to pass on to their local communities. Why would the King of the Franks and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire take a poll? For some of the same reasons that leaders try to gauge the attitudes of their people today.

The final years of Charlemagne's reign were characterized by insurrection and disarray. This was true of the Franconian Empire, covering what is now France and Germany, the subordinate kingdom of Lombardia, which encompassed what is now northern and central Italy and which was also under Charlemagne's rule, and it was particularly true of the church, which was headed by the emperor. The crisis culminated in 811. For the first time, there were reports of men deserting from the army, and of armed gangs refusing to comply with the emperor's decrees and rebelling against the secular and clerical sovereigns, along with an increasing number of lawsuits and refusals to complete military service.

The aging emperor reacted to this crisis in two ways. First of all, he pondered the question of the duties of a good Christian. We may assume that Charlemagne attributed the current imperial crisis at least in part to the somewhat flippant lifestyle of his youth and his neglect of his responsibilities before God. Heinrich Fichtenau suspects that, in his final years as emperor, Charlemagne consulted increasingly "radical" religious advisors in addition to his usual counselors. Even at the start of the crisis in 807, Charlemagne decreed a three-day imperial fast in order to placate an angry God. Later, at the Synod of 813, which Charlemagne chaired in Chalôn-sur-Saône, the discussions covered topics such as the significance of fasting and giving alms, the concept of being "worthy" to receive the sacrament and the subject of sinful thoughts, which were to become part of confession, alongside actual sin, from that point on. Thus, the spirit of God gradually took up residence in the imperial courts, ultimately causing Charlemagne's son and successor, Louis, to earn his nickname, "Louis the Pious."

Second, the emperor acted to learn more about the circumstances that were leading to such turmoil in his realm. The questionnaire available to us illustrates this characteristic combination of the need for factual information and religious concern.

It is not surprising that Charlemagne's questionnaire is essentially only known to a small group of historians who specialize in this area. It is only available in the original Latin and is far from spectacular for anyone not interested in the history of social research. It is contained in the first volume of Alfred Boretius' collection of so-called "capitularies"—a body of decrees, directives, and announcements which were issued by the Franconian rulers with regard to legislative, administrative, or religious matters, for the most part divided into various articles, or capitula.

Included among these capitularies are three consecutively numbered documents (71 to 73) with related content. All three date from the year 811 and were presumably compiled in preparation for a parliamentary assembly in Aachen—a great gathering of the secular and clerical leaders of the realm—although the documents were most probably not put to use until the councils of Arles, Chalon-sur-Saône, Mainz, Reims, and Tours in 813. Document 73 seems more like a report of survey findings than a schedule of questions. Document 72 resembles a speech manuscript more than a questionnaire and is thus of little interest here. In terms of content, however, document 72 overlaps in many respects with document 71, which is of great interest, since it is clearly a questionnaire.

Although none of the original capitularies is in existence today, there are two existing documents which, according to historian Hubert Mordek, are first-generation copies that were made almost immediately after the originals had been completed. Figure 1 shows one of these documents, which is now stored in the Bavarian state library in Munich. Although this manuscript is not the one of central interest here, it gives us an impression of what Charlemagne's questionnaire might have looked like.

The first articles of document 71 are real questions regarding the causes of the imperial crisis: Why are so many men refusing to do military service or defend the borders of the realm? Why are there so many disputes in which one party is attempting to take the property of another? Why are people refusing to offer refugees shelter? The second half of the list is of a different nature. The various points are no longer questions intended to obtain information. Instead, rhetorical questions are mixed with direct moral counsel, for example, the clergy are exhorted not to meddle in worldly affairs, and the monks are reminded to live by the rules of their order, while all are admonished to remember the vow they made at their christening.