Basel roll
The purpose of the documents was to assess the financial needs of the patriarchate of Jerusalem in preparation for the sending of funds for its personnel and the repair of its buildings.
To the historian, it provides information on the state of the church in the Holy Land on the eve of the Abbasid civil war, especially of its personnel and buildings.
It was discovered in the binding of an unidentified book by Franz Dorotheus Gerlach [de] or perhaps Wilhelm Wackernagel in the middle decades of the nineteenth century.
[4] Its history prior to this is uncertain, but it was probably deposited in a monastery in the late ninth or tenth century after it had served its administrative purpose.
[8] Michael McCormick favours the second, led by Agamus and Roculf, which corresponds to the period 807–808, during which the abbot of the Frankish monastery on the Mount of Olives—unmentioned in the roll—was away in Europe.
This and certain linguistic clues indicate that the document was created through interviews with persons who spoke Greek and Arabic and did not rely on written sources from the patriarchate, which would have preserved precedence.
It also shows that the copyist corrected its orthography to bring it more in line with classical norms as understood in the Carolingian era.
Greek words preserved in the Breve include fragelites (for phragellitai, "whip men", originally crowd control officers) and synkellos.
The dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is called an alcuba (from al-qubba, whence "alcove") and Georgians are referred to as Iorzani (from Jūrzān, as opposed to Greek Iberoi).
[31] The Breve, Memoria and Dispensa are administrative documents that offer valuable information about the practicalities of Carolingian government.
They were compiled on the ground by means of oral testimony and physical measuring to ascertain the financial needs of a foreign church, both for paying and feeding its personnel and repairing its buildings.
[33] Einhard's Vita Karoli Magni, a biography of Charlemagne, explains the emperor's thinking and the connection between his charity and his diplomacy: "he had learned that Christians were living in poverty and he took pity on their indigence, and was accustomed to send money to Jerusalem, Alexandria and Carthage.
This was the main reason he sought the friendship of overseas kings, so that a certain amount of relief and mitigation might reach the Christians living under their dominion.
"[34] This mission was probably a response to a request from the Christians of the Holy Land, perhaps the Patriarch Thomas I, who sent envoys in 807 and a letter to Pope Leo III that arrived at the same time as the embassy of Agamus and Roculf returned.
Writing in the tenth century, the Patriarch Eutychius of Alexandria records that Thomas repaired the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 813.
Also writing in the tenth century, the Emperor Constantine VII records that Charlemagne, "sending much money and abundant wealth to Palestine, [re]built a very large number of monasteries.
The ruler's portrait in Roman style, combined with the legend "Christian religion" and a depiction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, asserted Charlemagne's power and imperial protection.
In this way, Charlemagne offered what protection and support he could to Christians caught in the Abbasid civil war that broke out following the death of the Caliph Harūn al-Rashīd in 809 and to his own faction in the filioque controversy.
[42] Study of the Basel roll reveals that the church of Jerusalem had declined both in size and wealth in the first century and a half under Islam.
[43] The roll also offers evidence against the long accepted notion that Charlemagne's imperial rule after 800 was a period of decline and decomposition.
