Annals of St Bertin

Prudentius of Troyes and Hincmar of ReimsAD 830–882

A year-by-year chronicle of the West Frankish kingdom from 830 to 882, named after the abbey where a manuscript was found. Its entries for 864 and 866 are a contemporary Western report of the baptism of the Bulgar ruler and his appeal to Rome.

The annals are a continuation of the Royal Frankish Annals for the western kingdom. The edition divides them by author, and its running heads give the years cited in this wiki, 864 and 866, to Hincmar, archbishop of Reims.

For the Baptism of Boris and the Conversion of Bulgaria the annalist writes within a year or two of the events but far from them. He says that Boris I sent to the East Frankish king Louis for clergy and that Louis asked his brother Charles, the annalist’s own king, for vessels, vestments and books; news of Bulgaria reached the western court at least by that road. His story of the revolt is told as a miracle: seven clerics with candles go before the king, and the rebels see a burning building fall on them. The numbers he gives, forty-eight companions and fifty-two nobles put to death, are found in no other source used here.

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