Be a Perfect Man: Christian Masculinity and the Carolingian Aristocracy 9780812294293

Table of contents :
Contents
Abbreviations
Introduction. Ideology, Gender, and Discourse in the Carolingian World
Chapter 1. The Authority of the Ascetic Male
Chapter 2. Manifestos of Carolingian Power
Chapter 3. Louis the Pious and the Manliness of Forgiving
Chapter 4. Questioning Caritas in the Time of Troubles
Chapter 5. The Emergence of the Secular- Spiritual Hybrid
Conclusion. Manliness and Empathy
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments

Citation preview

Be a Perfect Man

The Middle Ages Series Ruth Mazo Karras, Series Editor Edward Peters, Founding Editor A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

Be a Perfect Man Christian Masculinity and the Carolingian Aristocracy

Andrew J. Romig

universit y of pennsylvania press phil adelphia

Copyright © 2017 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-​­4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-​­free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-​­in-​­Publication Data Names: Romig, Andrew J., author. Title: Be a perfect man : Christian masculinity and the   Carolingian aristocracy / Andrew J. Romig. Other titles: Middle Ages series. Description: 1st edition. | Philadelphia : University of   Pennsylvania Press, [2017] | Series: The Middle Ages   series | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017003575 | ISBN 9780812249248   (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Carolingians—Conduct of life. |   Nobility—Europe—Conduct of life. | Masculinity—  Religious aspects—Christianity—History—To 1500. |   Masculinity—Europe—History—To 1500. |  Emotions—Europe—History—To 1500. | Caritas (the  Latin word) Classification: LCC DC70 .R66 2017 | DDC  155.3/32094409021—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017003575

Contents

List of Abbreviations  vii Introduction. Ideology, Gender, and Discourse in the Carolingian World  1 Chapter 1. The Authority of the Ascetic Male  13 Chapter 2. Manifestos of Carolingian Power  34 Chapter 3. Louis the Pious and the Manliness of Forgiving  67 Chapter 4. Questioning Caritas in the Time of Troubles  98 Chapter 5. The Emergence of the Secular-​­Spiritual Hybrid  132 Conclusion. Manliness and Empathy  155 Notes 165 Bibliography 223 Index 243 Acknowledgments 251

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Abbreviations

CCSL CSEL Lambot

MGH Capit. Epp.

Fontes iuris

Poetae SS SS rer. Germ.

SS rer. Germ. N.S. SS rer. Merov.

Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina. Turnhout: Brepols, 1953–. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1866–. Cyrille Lambot, ed. Oeuvres théologiques et grammaticales de Godescalc d’Orbais. Louvain: “Spicilegium sacrum Lovianiense” Bureaux, 1945. Monumenta Germaniae Historica Capitularia regum Francorum. Ed. Alfred Boretius and Victor Krause. 2 vols. Hanover: Hahn, 1883, 1897. Epistolae Merowingici and Karolini aevi. Ed. Ernst Dümmler et al. 6 vols. Berlin: Weidmann, 1892–1939. Fontes iuris Germanici antiqui in usum scholarum separatim editi. Ed. Mario Krammer. 16 vols. Hanover: Hahn, 1909–. Poetae Latini aevi Carolini. Ed. Ernst Dümmler. 4 vols. Berlin: Weidmann, 1881–1923. Scriptores. Ed. Georg Pertz et al. 39 vols. Hanover: Hahn, 1826–. Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi. Ed. Georg Pertz et al. 80 vols. Hanover: Hahn, 1871–. Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, Nova series. Ed. Harry Bresslau et al. 25 vols. Berlin: Weidmann, 1922–. Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum. Ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison. 7 vols. Hanover: Hahn, 1885–1951.

viii  List of Abbreviations

QQ zur Geistesgesch. Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters. Ed. Alois Wachtel et al. 27 vols. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1955–. Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina. Ed. J.-​­P. PL Migne et al. 221 vols. Paris, 1841–1864. SC Sources Chrétiennes. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1943–.

Introduction

Ideology, Gender, and Discourse in the Carolingian World

I advise you so that you can be a perfect man. The man who wears down his feet in the mud and the dust as he walks the earth is blessed on account of his worthy merits. He already has his name written in the heavenly kingdom. —​­Dhuoda of Septimania to her son, William (ninth century)

Dhuoda of Septimania (d. c. 843/844) penned these solemn words to her absent son, William (d. 849/850), as her world was collapsing all around her. The year was 842 or 843, the most violent apogee of an era of anarchy and civil war that Dhuoda’s contemporaries would come to call their tempus ­perturbationum—​­their “time of troubles.” Dhuoda’s husband, once a powerful lord and trusted advisor to the emperor, now lived in exile. He had been forced to surrender William, a boy in his mid-​­teens, to live as a hostage ward in an enemy court. In his flight, furthermore, he had taken with him his only remaining heir, a baby born to Dhuoda no more than a year or two of age. Thus, Dhuoda wrote her words alone and bereft, left behind, sick in body and roiled in spirit, seeking what comfort she could in a final act of motherly love and protection. Her solace was the hope that her son might one day receive her little book of advice, learn from its wisdom, and live to become a vir ­perfectus—​­a “perfect man.” What it meant to be such a man within the aristocratic culture of Carolingian Europe during the late eighth, ninth, and early tenth centuries CE—​ ­the history of its definitions, its symbolic valuations, and its metaphoric associations—​­is the subject of this book. The typical life of an aristocratic

2  Introduction

Carolingian male such as William would have involved an array of behaviors and duties associated with his gender and rank: an education in arms and letters; training in horsemanship, soldiery, and hunting; betrothal and marriage; the virile production of heirs; the masterful command of a prominent household.1 Dhuoda’s advice to her young son, however, contains almost no mention of these common badges of Carolingian manhood. Perfection in Dhuoda’s world meant more than the sum of such parts—​­not to be without flaw so much as to be fully grown or mature—​­“thoroughly made,” as the word etymologically suggests. To be perfect, in other words, meant to be complete in body and mind. It meant living up to the full potential envisioned by a deity who had shaped humanity in his own image, a deity whose essence was pure wisdom and whose highest command was infinite love. Only a man who was completely made, Dhuoda believed, could survive the troubling times in which her son now lived. Only a “made man” could be strong enough to help end the destructive violence, heal the broken community, and restore the world to prosperity. This sort of man, taught Dhuoda, lived unblemished by fault. He strove for justice. He spoke the truth. He did no harm to those around him, nor did he dissemble in his promises. He used his wealth to build, never seeking to acquire more. He spoke no ill of others. He took no bribes at the expense of the innocent. He endured those who wronged him with patience and not revenge. His conscience was clear. His heart was pure. His passions did not rule him. He knew the extent of his power, yet each day he chose to wield it for the benefit of the common good, helping any and all in need through assiduous compassion and largesse.2 Skill in the arts of war, bounties of wealth and children, heroic and prestigious service to kin and to king—​­these were the rewards of a man’s perfection, its manifestations, not its causes. The perfect man was a spiritual being. His capacity to love marked his manly vigor. His care for others, not his sword-​­arm, was the truest testament to his mettle, for it proved that his power was righteous, that his authority came from God himself, and that he deserved in no uncertain terms to rule the world. As the book will show, the Carolingians constructed their conceptions of manly perfection not upon a revered collection of traits and behaviors but rather upon a profound cultural valuation of love, emotional sensitivity, and care for others. The discussion and representation of this love, sensitivity, and care, I will argue, functioned within their world as a gendered discourse of power, which Carolingian writers actively mobilized to link specific types of men with specific types of moral and political authority. In so doing, these

Introduction 3

writers made claims, both explicit and implicit, about the hierarchies of power that they believed ought to exist within their world. Their discourse revolved around a central Latin term, caritas. The word meant “love” in its simplest denotation. As a discursive construct, however, it always referred connotatively to far more. Carolingian writers employed a rich vocabulary of affective language to describe the array of feelings and conduct that they associated with caritas: amor, affectus, benevolentia, benignitas, clementia, compassio, dilectio, misericordia, patientia, pietas. They drew from a vast body of inherited philosophical tradition, both Judeo-​­Christian and pagan, to contemplate the significance of caritas and the values that its enactment could represent. Alcuin of York (d. 804), arguably the most prominent scholar of the early Carolingian era and the most trusted advisor of the Carolingians’ eponymous emperor, Charlemagne (d. 814), defined caritas as a complete and all-​ i­nclusive love, flowing from the whole heart, mind, and soul, as the New Testament Gospels dictated. It entailed not only the unquestioning observation of God’s commandments but also a parallel duty of affective care for one’s fellow human being.3 Alcuin’s equation of caritas with the twofold “love of God and neighbor” was not at all his invention—​­it was, rather, a common shorthand, used generally and imprecisely throughout the entirety of the Middle Ages to refer to volumes of patristic debate about the affective relationships that were thought to exist between the divine and the human and among humans themselves. The nature of these relationships was often hotly contested within the learned circles of the late antique era and the Early Middle Ages, but the term caritas and the phrase “love of God and neighbor” allowed writers to refer generally to the ideal of other-​­oriented emotion that it entailed while masking the complex theological and social discourses that produced it. It was its imprecision as a term, not its precision, that gave caritas the power to be invoked in the service of numerous and diverse ends. The ends that interest me most are Carolingian arguments about aristocratic male identity and authority. Carolingian culture used caritas discourse to place enormous pressure on its aristocratic men to perform their manliness in the service of their society. When problems arose during the period under investigation in this book—​­and arise they did—​­the Carolingians looked for solutions by trying to ensure that specific groups of aristocratic males were acting correctly as men. This is by no means to say that Carolingian culture placed less pressure on women to perform certain embodiments of womanliness, only that it was the perfection of the male body, far more than the female, that was seen to hold the most significant link to social well-​­being.4 This

4  Introduction

is very different from the European cultures that came after the Carolingian moment, in which the female body increasingly held as much or even more of this connection to social harmony than the male.5 The Carolingians also invoked caritas as a means of defining and delineating the ideal forms that aristocratic masculinity could appropriately take—​ ­forms that have proven notoriously difficult for us to comprehend, especially in comparison to the later Middle Ages. We know that Carolingian aristocratic men self-​­identified under a range of labels and social roles—​­monk, priest, bishop, abbot, count, king, warrior, and so on—​­but also, and in combination, under more global designations such as “Frank” and “Christian.” Historians have worked diligently to parse these identities by mapping the ideal traits that defined them, the methods and media through which these ideal traits were taught, and the contexts within which they were reinforced or undermined. The most recent studies have focused on the lay side. Thomas F. X. Noble, for example, has argued that Frankish aristocratic lay identity revolved around a common ideal of “secular sanctity.” Elite laymen performed their station and their service to God by adhering to “a code of values and conduct” that they guarded closely for themselves: a Carolingian aristocrat’s “sword, wife, and extended family were the chief badges of his rank.”6 Rachel Stone, expounding further upon the nature of this code, has claimed that Carolingian lay masculinity involved a complex array of prescriptive practical ethical traits in the realms of warfare, power, and sexual conduct.7 Other scholars of the Carolingian world have identified additional core traits—​ e­ quity, honor, loyalty—​­as crucial elements of the ideal aristocratic male.8 Describing masculine identity in terms of traits such as these has provided invaluable insight with regard to the historical continuities between Carolingian aristocratic masculinity and the masculine identities of both Late Antiquity and the later medieval cultures that followed. It has certainly given us a far richer and more nuanced understanding of the Carolingian aristocracy than we had before. J. M. Wallace-​­Hadrill’s summation of “cutting throats, but endowing churches” as the quintessence of Frankish aristocratic values no longer conveys the extent of our comprehension.9 Nevertheless, the study of aristocratic masculinity in terms of traits has also revealed just how much Carolingian masculinity stubbornly resists consistently definable patterns beyond only the most general of trends. There seem to be almost as many exceptions, that is, as there are rules.10 Variations abounded. Abbots could be monks, but they could also be nonmonastic laymen. Laymen could be warriors, but professional soldiers could also be called to the pastoral care

Introduction 5

of souls. Bishops could be powerful landholders and military leaders. Monks could serve at court. Priests could be married. The study of Carolingian masculinity in terms of ideal traits has brought us no closer to solving the perplexing questions of how aristocratic men negotiated these seemingly mixed identities, many of which appear (at least to us) to involve conflicting cultural ideals. In turn, this has forced scholars to label these compound identities as peculiarities or anomalies and with binary language—​­devotion and apathy, corruption and orthodoxy, rules followed and rules ignored. Scholars commonly argue, for example, that because the Frankish aristocracy was a warrior culture, Christian ideals of pacific manhood must necessarily have been at odds with secular male values. Because sexuality was crucial for the production of heirs and the promulgation of family lines, the logic goes, there must have been friction with Christian ideals of celibacy and monogamous marriage. Because land and war spoils were chief sources of Carolingian social prestige, Christian warnings against the accumulation of wealth must have been difficult to follow. In related fashion, scholars have commented repeatedly on the “worldly” character of Carolingian-​­era bishops and priests. Ecclesiastics controlled vast territories of private lands, commanded private armies, hunted and fought with secular weapons, and yet still made successful and regular claims to spiritual authority. It has been common to read these men as somehow compromised, even “corrupt,” because of the “secular” traits that they regularly exhibited as “spiritual” men.11 In the aggregate, scholars have argued, all of these apparent conflicts of interest must have caused attempts to “Christianize” (which is most often the verb used to describe the interplay between these phenomena) the Carolingian aristocracy either to fall upon deaf ears or to reduce themselves to banality and diluted religiosity.12 Wallace-​­Hadrill’s condescension draws its humor precisely from the fact that the evidence clearly shows Carolingian aristocratic men negotiating all of these apparent contradictions and only very occasionally with consternation or anxiety.13 The regularity with which they did so presents us with a significant puzzle and begs the question of whether our conclusions of banality, dilution, corruption, or ignorance can truly explain what we see. My book proposes that if we are to understand Carolingian masculinity on its own terms and to find answers for why what appears conflictual and contradictory to us may have been not only acceptable but also even logical to the Carolingians themselves, we need a different theoretical approach.14 Specifically, I propose to study gender not as a collection of ideal traits but as

6  Introduction

what Gail Bederman has called “a historical, ideological process.”15 To study gender as an ideological process is to recognize that gendering involves more than the association of particular anatomies with particular gender labels (male or female, in the case of the Carolingians) or traits (warfare, wealth, sexual conduct, etc.). Gendering involves instead the normative association of particular anatomies with particular configurations of power and authority—​ c­ onfigurations that dictate what individual people can and cannot do, who they can and cannot be, and under which circumstances these allowances and restrictions occur. As with all cultural constructions, such normative associations are never inherently consistent. There is no essential connection between authority and anatomy. It is only gender ideology that makes such connections seem “natural.” And thus we can study not only the ways in which particular individuals become positioned by gender ideologies but also the ways in which individuals actively exploit the constructed nature of ideologies and adapt them to their own purposes.16 Within the Carolingian world, gender ideologies revolved around an axis that extended between poles of male and female. That is to say, Carolingian men imagined themselves to be categorically different from women, and they believed furthermore that social power and authority were “naturally” theirs to hold, to command, and to maintain. Carolingian gender ideologies also revolved, however, around a second axis that stretched between poles of worldliness and nonworldliness—​­ secularity and nonsecularity. As Rachel Stone has demonstrated in convincing and startling fashion, Carolingian sources reveal remarkably little use of feminizing language between male groups.17 Being “less of a man” did not always mean and perhaps did not even usually mean being feminine. As the Carolingians established and reinforced their power through allegiance with Christian authority, the aristocracy increasingly adopted an ideology of Christian masculinity that defined the ascetic male as the paragon of manhood. Lynda Coon has shown, and my book shows further, how deeply and pervasively this Christian gender ideology reached into Carolingian aristocratic culture during the course of the ninth century.18 Distinctions between ascetic masculinity and worldly masculinity became at least as important to male identity as distinctions between male and female. Male and female, nonsecular and secular—​­all of the hierarchical relationships that the Carolingians presumed to exist between these categories were the completely constructed product of gender ideology. There was no logical connection between the Carolingian male and his claim to power, nor was there a logical connection between the ascetic male and his claim to

Introduction 7

divine authority. It was only the associative process of gender ideology that framed masculinity, asceticism, and authority as intimately interconnected and interreliant. Caritas discourse played an integral role within these dynamics of Carolingian gender and power. The same Christian ideologies that made the ascetic male the epitome of manhood also associated the ascetic male with a “natural” capacity for caritas. Thus, the performance of caritas became one of the most important means by which Christian men who lived and worked within secular space—​­bishops and priests and, for a time during the Carolingian era, laymen—​­could perform their world denial and gain access to ascetic authority symbolically. Discourses of caritas were not only an instrument for indoctrinating and situating Carolingian men within Christian hierarchies of male authority but also a means by which these men could adapt and manipulate those ideologies for their own use, making claims to divine authority and wielding that authority in the service of their own diverse ends. My opening chapter sets the stage for these arguments, narrating the long pre-​­Carolingian history of the ideological associations that gave caritas its discursive force. Its account begins with Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) and his deep preoccupation with early Christian challenges to the fundamental assumptions of Stoic and Manichean moral philosophy. Caritas, for Augustine, encapsulated the essence of these challenges: a degree of emotional interconnection between self and other that extended far beyond anything that the ancient world had conceived as a social ideal. The chapter ends with Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) and the ideology of Christian male authority that he articulated in his highly influential Book of Pastoral Rule. As Christianity evolved into the majority religion of the European continent, communities began to associate caritas with their moral elite who sought to escape the bounds of common society: the holy hermits and early cenobitics of the late antique world. Gregory’s ideology allowed Christian communal leaders who lived and worked within the secular world—​­bishops and priests—​­to perform caritas as a means of linking themselves to the divine authority thought to be held by these ascetic men. Central to this history, I demonstrate, is a series of linguistic associations that emerged during the fifth and sixth centuries between caritas and more ancient moral ideals, specifically pietas, clementia, and misericordia. Chapter 1’s discussion of these terms, their interrelationship, and the new connotations that they acquired informs all subsequent chapters of the book. Chapter 2 focuses on two early Carolingian writers, Paulinus of Aquileia

8  Introduction

(d. 802) and Alcuin of York, who adapted the Christian male ideology discussed in Chapter 1 into a universal ideology of power for all Frankish aristocratic men, both priestly and lay. Paulinus and Alcuin were each powerful members of Charlemagne’s royal court and key architects of the social and cultural reforms that Charlemagne set into motion during his reign. Following the long doctrinal tradition in which they were trained, Paulinus and Alcuin together invoked caritas to unite the Frankish aristocratic caste under a common Christian identity and shared sense of purpose. They taught that emotional interconnection and care for the lives of others was more than just an ideal of spiritual enlightenment and personal fulfillment. It was the source of Carolingian authority itself. Chapter 3 moves forward in time to the turbulent political world of Charlemagne’s heir, Louis the Pious, and an anonymous writer whom we call “the Astronomer.” His biography of the emperor Louis, written shortly after Louis’s death in 840, drew upon the discourse of caritas and authority to promote a radical form of secular masculinity as a solution to the violence and discord that plagued and eventually consumed Louis’s reign. For the Astronomer, Louis’s boundless capacity to forgive and to care for his enemies demonstrated his divine authority even in political defeat. As a model of masculine power, Louis represented a means for Carolingian men to make peace in a world where disagreements appeared intractable and equal justice was no longer possible. Chapter 4 turns to a pair of cultural crises that then shook the foundations of Carolingian aristocratic identity in the wake of Louis the Pious’s passing. In the context of the first crisis, a bloody civil war between Louis the Pious’s heirs, I present new readings of a well-​­known series of coeval texts: Dhuoda’s handbook of prose and acrostic verse for William; two lamentation poems that reflect upon the war itself, one by Florus of Lyon (d. c. 860) and another from a man calling himself Angelbert (d. unknown); and finally, the most comprehensive narration of the war that we have, the four-​­part contemporary account composed by an illegitimate grandson of Charlemagne, Nithard of Saint-​­Riquier (d. c. 844). Each in its own way, these works of literary art collectively demonstrate the extent to which the discourse of caritas and authority permeated mid-​­ninth-​­century aristocratic self-​­conception. The core assumptions of this self-​­conception suffered serious challenge, I then show, during a second cultural crisis, a far-​­reaching theological controversy sparked by the predestinarian rebel monk, Gottschalk of Orbais (d. c. 867). Like Paulinus and Alcuin before him, Gottschalk also invoked caritas to

Introduction 9

preach the equality of all men; only all men were equal, for Gottschalk, in their utter powerlessness to control their collective fate. For Gottschalk, caritas derived solely from God’s grace, not human deeds. Gottschalk was imprisoned, his preaching was condemned as heresy, yet his arguments for the primacy of grace and the inefficacy of deeds in the economy of salvation would weaken the ideological links between lay power, caritas, and divine authority forever. Chapter 5 explores the weakening of these links further through examination of the rhetorical tactics employed by the Monk of St. Gall (d. 912, presumed to be Notker Balbulus) and Odo of Cluny (d. 942). Both monastics but each of a very different stripe, these writers invoked caritas to articulate ideologies of masculine authority that would presage the male gender hierarchies of the High Middle Ages and beyond. After a brief exploration of how an early Carolingian monastic, Ardo Smaragdus (d. 843), described a range of ascetic observances that were available to the laymen of his world, the chapter shows how the Monk of St. Gall and Odo redrew stark boundaries between lay and nonlay identities. Caritas and ascetic authority remained intimately connected for these writers, but they exploited that connection to diminish rather than to augment the capacity of the laity to attach themselves directly to the divine. In promoting the principles of bodily renunciation and monastic moral authority that Odo and the Monk of St. Gall themselves held most dear, their pens wielded caritas to subordinate and to segregate laymen from the ranks of elite discipleship and the highest echelons of Christian authority. Finally, a conclusion draws together the long arc of the book’s historical narrative, its interventions, and its contributions. I offer thoughts about how my Carolingian case study can inform us more generally concerning the cultural contingency of gender’s construction. I also suggest some of the modes by which the deep cultural structures that influenced Carolingian thought about caritas may continue to shape our own discourses of fellow-​­feeling, masculinity, and social responsibility today. The lives of the book’s protagonists overlapped only slightly. Paulinus of Aquileia and Alcuin of York are the sole members of the group who knew one another well. It is unlikely that Gottschalk of Orbais would have been much aware of Dhuoda of Septimania, his contemporary. We know that Dhuoda read Alcuin, but we can only guess whether she ever came across the work of Paulinus. The Monk of St. Gall and Odo of Cluny probably never concerned themselves much at all with the works of these earlier writers.

10  Introduction

Together, however, they comprise an interrelated family of main characters for the simple reason that each worked to construct and to manipulate ideologies of masculinity through discourses of emotional fellow-​­feeling. My intention is not to argue that these figures definitively and widely influenced and transformed Carolingian thinking, although some may indeed have. Nor is it to argue that these figures were representative, necessarily, of the aristocratic groups with which they associated themselves, although some may indeed have been. Instead, I seek to hear and to clarify how each voice spoke individually, not necessarily for or even to the collective but rather about the collective. To study their different discursive strategies in this manner is to paint not a still-​­life image of what all Carolingian aristocrats believed but instead a more dynamic landscape of what they could believe—​­a vivid and diverse illustration of Carolingian thought possibility, cast in the unique tonal hues of their world. Three final comments about the parameters of my study may be helpful. The first involves my unabashed focus on “discourse,” which can still be something of a dirty word in early medieval historical scholarship, thought to lead us away from rather than ­­toward the historian’s holy grail of the past “wie es eigentlich gewesen,” to quote Ranke’s famous maxim.19 This book is most certainly about the actual world of the men and women who lived on the European continent more than 1,200 years ago. Where it can, it traces their active and heartfelt expression of their most pressing concerns. Yet it will be important for my reader to recognize that this book is perhaps less about the specific experiences of historical actors than it is, once again, about elucidating the thought-​­worlds that those actors inhabited and the guiding narratives by which they sought both to explain and to shape the world around them.20 It is a book about writers and writing, in other words, just as much as it is about gender and emotion. Of primary interest is the vast array of imaginative ways in which Carolingian writers used conceptions and representations of fellow-​ ­feeling to argue that certain types of authority and power should be the domain of certain types of men. Studying cultural discourse in this way allows us to analyze the agency that men and women have over the ideologies within which they are inextricably bound and thus still very much to tell the stories of the men and women themselves. Second, I encourage my readers to consider my discussion of Carolingian caritas in dialogue with Karl Morrison’s insightful historical studies of medieval empathy.21 Indeed, I sometimes use the term “empathy” to describe the ideal of emotional interconnection to which Carolingian caritas discourse

Introduction 11

often gestured. In so doing, I agree wholeheartedly with Morrison’s recent assertion that although “empathy” is a neologism, coined from Greek linguistic roots at the end of the nineteenth century, there was indeed consciousness of what we label empathetic fellow-​­feeling in the premodern past that we can legitimately identify and study.22 Which is to say, my book proceeds, following Morrison, from the premise that we can and should attempt to study empathetic thought and behavior “before the word,” so to speak.23 At the same time, however, I am fully cognizant of what Michel Foucault famously theorized—​­namely, that language always does more than simply describe phenomena. It also creates them.24 The discourse through which we describe fellow-​­feeling today reflects that discourse’s roots in the discussions and debates of nineteenth-​­and twentieth-​­century aesthetic theory, psychology, and sociology. Discourses of fellow-​­feeling in other cultures must of necessity reflect different concerns. Such discursive dissonances are in fact my quarry, for they provide us with a means for studying cultural variance and contingency across time. Finally, in my thinking about a discourse of emotion within a community of the distant past, I have found Barbara Rosenwein’s path-​­breaking work on the history of early medieval emotions, particularly her concept of “emotional community,” to be helpful.25 Without a doubt, the men and women of the Carolingian aristocracy were such a community. They shared a common emotional language through which they described and explained their experiences of particular behaviors, feelings, and ideals. While I absolutely see this book as a contribution to the history of early medieval emotion, I branch away from Rosenwein in that my purpose is not to identify the boundaries of the emotional communities and subcommunities that existed within Carolingian society. Nor do I attempt to count word frequency or to survey ranges of semantic inflection in search of specific lexical meanings. Rather than trying to pin down caritas within the Carolingian world by charting and assigning taxonomies to the usage of certain terms or phrases throughout the Carolingian literary corpus, I seek instead to show the multifaceted ways in which the Carolingians invoked caritas as an unfixed notion, the product of nebulous and sometimes even contradictory discourse. Its lack of fixity rather than its stability, its essential malleability rather than its referential exactitude, were what gave the word its ideological power. Historically, it has been rare for individuals to create completely new ideologies. We all must deal with the ideological constructs of the cultures in which we live, whether that involves acceptance, denial, or something in

12  Introduction

between. Yet while it might be impossible to escape ideologies completely, men and women have shown remarkable creativity in their capacity to adapt and to modify existing ideologies, taking advantage of their internal inconsistencies and fallacies and making those ideologies do important work on behalf of specific people and groups. This book is about that creativity.

Chapter 1

The Authority of the Ascetic Male

In contemplation he transcends heaven, and yet in his concern he does not forsake the carnal bed, because he is joined simultaneously to the highest and the lowest by the bond of caritas. By the strength of spirit within him he is vigorously snatched into the heights above, and by his pietas for others he is calmly rendered weak. —​­Gregory the Great, Regulae pastoralis liber 2.5.19–27

In a popular tale from the late fourth or early fifth century CE, St. Martin of Tours (d. 397) happens upon a humble beggar alongside the road on a freezing winter’s day in the north of Europe. The weather is so severe that people have been dying in the streets. The poor beggar, barely dressed, entreats passersby to help him, yet all ignore his pleas for assistance. All save Martin, who immediately rushes to the beggar’s aid. At first, the future saint is at a loss for what to do. Martin is a young man, not yet entered into the professional religious life but rather serving as a soldier in the Roman frontier army, a common career path for a male of his birth and status within the Gallo-​­Roman patrician elite. He himself is clad only in a cloak and has very little else to give because, we learn, he had already offered the rest of his clothing earlier that day to others in need. Ever resourceful, Martin draws his sword, reaches around for his cloak, cuts it in two, and gives half to the poor man so that he can be warm. Witnesses have mixed reactions. Some laugh at Martin because he now looks foolish, standing in the cold, wrapped only in a ruined half-​­cloak among proper society. Others, however, feel shame. They chastise themselves because they had more to give than Martin and could have clothed the poor man without reducing themselves to nakedness; it had simply not occurred to them to do so. Later that night, as Martin sleeps in his bed, a vision appears to him in a

14  Chapter 1

dream. It is Christ, wearing the tattered half-​­cloak that Martin had given to the poor man earlier that day. Christ praises Martin and declares to a chorus of angels that in clothing the beggar, Martin has in fact clothed him. Quietly acknowledging the honor that Christ has granted him but not glorying in it, Martin humbly seeks out baptism and continues on to a remarkable career as a holy man and miracle worker.1 The trope of the deity hiding in the disguise of the poor was not a Christian invention, nor was the notion that random acts of care could win divine favor. What makes this story distinctly Christian and thus a useful opening exemplum for the discussion that follows is its specific framing of such behavior as a denial of worldly norms and a special marker of ascetic masculinity. The story comes from the Vita Sancti Martini, written by Sulpicius Severus (d. c. 425), and in the context of the vita as a whole, it is only the most dramatic of an entire litany of early life reversals and extreme behaviors that St. Martin performs in defiance of Roman social tradition. We learn that throughout his adolescence, Martin had persistently sought to turn away from the “natural” privileges of a wealthy Roman male and toward ­­ more spiritual pursuits. When Martin was ten years old, he had begged his parents, wealthy members of the aristocracy, to allow him to become a catechumen. They refused. At age twelve, the precocious youth decided that he would like to take the necessary vows to become a hermit—​­a denial of his birthrights. He was deemed too young. And when Martin finally did reach adulthood and entered the military service that was expected of him, he defied norms there, too. He took with him only one slave rather than an entourage, and it was Martin himself who did most of the serving. Martin polished his slave’s boots and served the meals that they ate together, not separately.2 During his three years of soldier’s service, Martin chose to remain “free from the vices in which men of this kind usually become entangled”—​­namely, violent and rough behavior.3 The vita continues to explain, however, that Martin’s actions require no special praise because his fellows already considered him to be not a soldier but a monk. The text’s term for Martin’s general demeanor is frugalitas—​­a word that in contemporary parlance conveyed not thrift (frugality) so much as self-​­denial: sobriety, simplicity, temperance, restraint. As a monk, Martin demonstrates his frugalitas through qualities such as benignitas (“benignity” or “kindness”), mira caritas (“wondrous love”), patientia (“patience”), and humilitas ultra humanum modum (“humility beyond the human norm”).4 He regularly performs bona opera (“good deeds”) in the service of others: aiding

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the suffering, working for the poor, feeding the needy, clothing the naked, and accepting only the military pay that he requires for his daily sustenance and nothing more.5 Last, he inspires the adoration of his fellow soldiers, with whom he bonded readily and easily, the text says, and who revered him in return miro adfectu (“with wondrous emotion”).6 The vita thus intimates that Martin is the rarest and strangest of birds among the rest of humanity, be they his military brothers or the passersby who relate to the beggar with either ridicule or oblivion. As a monk, however, Martin’s behavior is quite normal. As a monk, he rejects the normative rhythms of worldly society. As a monk, he manifests this rejection through deeds enacted on behalf of and in emotional response to the perceived need and welfare of others. This chapter traces in broad strokes the history of the late antique associations between fellow-​­feeling and Christian ascetic manhood that the story of St. Martin and the Beggar depicts. Early Christian ideologies of ascetic male authority have received extensive study in recent decades, fomented in great part by Peter Brown’s magisterial history of Christian sexuality and sexual renunciation, The Body and Society (1988).7 The interplay between these ideologies and discourses of affect, however, has not. As the chapter will show, cultural connections between ascetic masculinity and other-​­oriented emotion and care developed neither organically nor self-​­evidently but rather through complex and hard-​­fought fifth-​­and sixth-​­century philosophical discussions about the possibilities of New Testament morality in a world of Christian majority. The discourse of these debates would breathe new connotative pietas, clementia, and misericordia—​­and it meaning into ancient terms—​­ would link these terms to a relatively new and distinctly Christian concept: caritas. These terms and the interrelations of meaning that they acquired during these centuries would become essential components of Carolingian ideologies of masculine authority in the centuries that followed. The chapter begins with the highly influential exegesis of Augustine of Hippo (d. 430), who wrote passionately about the radicalism of early Christian ethics and the ways in which the New Testament founded Christian identity upon a bedrock of boundless other-​­oriented emotional care. The chapter then shows how, after the slow conversion of the Roman Empire during the fourth century CE, this extreme form of affective connection became increasingly associated with monks and the monastic cloister. Augustine would again be an authoritative voice, arguing that worldly Christianity had to adopt a more metaphoric understanding of New Testament ethics in order for society to thrive. A final section explores the writing of another towering pre-​­Carolingian

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intellect, Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604). Gregory sought to reconnect monastic and worldly Christianity through the articulation of a universal ideology of Christian power. For Gregory, the ascetic male remained the paragon of Christian manhood and authority. Yet bishops and priests, whose duty it was to live and to work within the secular world—​­the saeculum—​­could gain vital access to this authority through the embodiment of deep emotional connection and care for the souls over whom they governed. Fellow-​­feeling became the bridge by which the secular Christian elite would ideologically traverse an ever-​­widening gap between the countercultural ideals of the first Christian sects and the new hegemonic exigencies of Christianity’s expansion throughout Europe.

Caritas, pietas, clementia, misericordia: Stoic Philosophy and Early Christian Moral Discourse The earliest Christians of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean separated themselves from the dominant Roman and Roman-​­Judean cultures of the region by advancing fierce, public critique of contemporary moral assumptions. Since Jewish law advocated loving one’s neighbor, early Christians asked why one’s neighbor should be the fixed limit. Why not love a stranger? Why not even love an enemy? Since Greco-​­Roman culture advocated a balance between compassion and firmness in the exercise of justice, Christians asked why justice should be the limit. Why not be compassionate and indulgent even ­­toward those who deserved to be punished? Why not, instead of seeking justice against criminals for their wrongdoing, turn the other cheek and accept without retaliation the injuries inflicted by others? New Testament ethics identified the “natural” limits of traditional moral thinking and proposed that such limits might not be natural at all.8 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ ” preaches Jesus of Nazareth in his Sermon on the Mount; “But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.”9 This famous passage from the Gospel of Matthew is nothing less than a direct salvo against the most fundamental moral presumptions of the ancient world. Jesus of Nazareth quotes the Old Testament

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maxim “an eye for an eye” not as a call to vengeance, which is how we commonly misunderstand the phrase in today’s discourse. Rather, he invokes the phrase as a reference to the ancient social ideal of balanced justice.10 The Sermon preaches that true justice only exists in the heavenly realm and can never be achieved on earth. Worldly society should therefore build itself upon a different principle: agape. In Christian writing, the Koine Greek word agape (α̉γάπη) signified more than its simple denotation of “love.” It represented a particular kind of ­lovingness—​­an unmitigated, boundless form of emotional identification with the other that was designed directly, in its expression, to break free from traditional moral limits and expectations.11 Early Christian writers seem to have chosen the word precisely because of its rarity in ancient usage. And in the Vulgate, St. Jerome (d. 420) translated agape into Latin with a similarly rare term in Western Roman usage: caritas.12 Augustine of Hippo, whose exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount would be authoritative for the duration of the European Middle Ages, took great interest in the underlying structures and mechanisms by which New Testament ethics worked. For Augustine, pre-​­Christian moral philosophy was not wrong; it was simply incomplete. As he explained, the ancient limit to violence that “an eye for an eye” represented was “a great step” (magnus gradus), for it kept revenge from exceeding injury. This was only the beginning of peace, however. “Perfect peace,” he continued, “is to have no desire at all for such revenge.”13 He described the dynamic between victim and attacker as a series of progressive increments that ultimately link the two together. The person who inflicts injury upon another without cause occupies the lowest step. On the next step is the person who refrains from inflicting unprovoked injury but who, when provoked, returns injury greater than what was inflicted. This is what “eye for an eye” is meant to correct, says Augustine. And it is an enlightened advance, he argues, because it requires restraint not to retaliate beyond due measure. The next two steps logically involve returning less than the injury inflicted and, finally, exacting no retribution at all.14 This act of exercising no retribution at all approaches what Jesus of Nazareth teaches, Augustine wrote, but even it does not suffice: For it still appears a small matter to the Lord if you do not pay back the evil that you have received with no evil in return, unless you are prepared to receive more. For this reason he does not say, “But I say to you

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not to repay evil for evil,” even though this is a great command. Instead he says, “Do not resist evil in such a way that you not only do not repay the injury done to you but even so that you do not resist for fear that something else may be inflicted on you.” This is what he goes on to explain: But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, offer him the other as well. He does not say, “If anyone strikes you, do not strike back,” but, “Present yourself again to the one who strikes you.”15 The call here, Augustine explains, is for a “perfected” morality in the same sense of the Latin that Dhuoda invoked for her son: a morality carried out to its fullest possible extreme, moving beyond the limits of “common” ethics ­­toward ultimate completion.16 Humans were not only supposed to exact less vengeance or punishment than equal justice demanded; they were also not to exact any vengeance or punishment at all. Instead, they were to give further. If struck on the cheek by an offender, they were not to strike back, as balanced justice would sanction. They were to turn their other cheek ­­toward their attacker and face a potential second attack. If an offender wished to take something by force, the victim was not supposed to take something from the offender in retaliation; the victim was to offer the offender even more in addition. This state of perfection involved the achievement of deep emotional connection between the self and all others. “You have heard that it was said,” continues the Sermon on the Mount, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-​­collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.17 Many learn how to offer the other cheek to an attacker, Augustine wrote in reference to this passage, but few understand how to exhibit lovingness ­­toward the one who wrongs them. For Augustine, the solution involved collapsing the boundaries between self and other entirely, allowing all human beings to

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recognize themselves as fellow creatures, regardless of station, regardless of friendship or enmity. To do so, one had to recognize, like a physician, an enemy’s ill will as a symptom of the soul’s sickness, finding connection through this recognition as one would with a rebellious child or stricken friend.18 “For indeed a human being, who is commanded by the lord of all even to love his enemies, ought to love another as much as he loves himself,” Augustine explained.19 In his De civitate Dei (“On the City of God”), a book so important to the Carolingian world that Einhard could claim it as Charlemagne’s favorite, Augustine connected caritas to two other ancient terms.20 The first was pietas.21 The Latin word pietas and the parallel Greek word eusebeia (εủσέβεια), Augustine wrote, are commonly understood to mean worship of God or duty ­­toward one’s parents. In the everyday vernacular, however, he continued, pietas refers to works of misericordia.22 These notions of interconnectedness between caritas, pietas, and misericordia would govern discourses of other-​­oriented emotion and fellow-​­feeling for the rest of the Middle Ages. Augustine’s emphasis on the association between caritas, pietas, and misericordia in De civitate Dei was composed in direct reference to a debate within Stoic philosophy about the proper balances to which a society should adhere in its regulation of justice. Seneca the Younger (d. 65) had taught that true justice could only be reached through a proper balance of severity and leniency. His term for ideal leniency in the service of justice was clementia, the root of the modern English word “clemency.” For Seneca, clementia entailed “restraint of the mind when it is able to take revenge, or the leniency of the more powerful party ­­towards the weaker in the matter of settling penalties,” a definition readily quoted throughout the Middle Ages.23 Articulating a common Stoic position, he believed that the essential nature of all humans was to be emotionally peaceful and nonviolent. Humans in the right state of mind are the gentlest creatures in existence, he wrote in his treatise, De ira (“On Anger”), embodying the opposite of anger: What is more inclined to love others than a human? What is more hostile than anger? The human is born to give and receive assistance—​ ­anger, to destroy. The one wants to form associations, the other, to secede; the one wants to be of benefit, the other, to do harm; the one wants to aid even strangers, the other, to assault even the nearest and dearest. Human beings are prepared even to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others’ advantage; anger is prepared to plunge into danger,

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provided it drags the other down. Does anyone, then, show greater ignorance of the nature of things than the person who ascribes this bestial, destructive vice to nature’s best and most polished creation?24 Only negative emotions had the power to lead humans astray from their essential nature and to cause them to commit harm against others. Control of such emotions offered the path to true wisdom; too much anger or even too much joy could disrupt the soul and limit its capacity to do good.25 Clementia was therefore the quality that humans were to cultivate most fervently, for it created peace and calm out of potential strife and conflict.26 It was the primary attribute that separated a low human spirit from an exalted one.27 Importantly, however, while the Stoics strongly encouraged the affects that tempered overly harsh justice, they still recognized firm limits for the application of those affects in human affairs. Compassion and indulgence, although vitally important to society, remained subordinate to the ideal of balance. One had to acknowledge, in other words, the existence of faults that blatantly undermined social cohesion and that therefore deserved proper punishment. Those who committed such faults were the enemies of society and the common good. Compassion and indulgence did not apply to them and in fact posed danger when exercised in relation to them. This was an ancient sensibility, inherited from Platonic and Aristotelian traditions that had both warned repeatedly against the abuses of compassion and indulgence, as well as the potential problems that such abuses posed to social well-​­being.28 Infractions of the law constituted an attack against the very forces that bound society together; too much compassion and indulgence could lead to complete social collapse. Thus, such ideals applied most to human interactions within limited boundaries—​­mainly the family or the immediate community. One had to be compassionate and indulgent with friends but severe with potential enemies. In the power politics between city-​­states, for example, indulgence held little place at all.29 And so even in advocating clementia, Stoic philosophy still acknowledged the existence of enemies who were real threats to communal peace and the common good and argued that the compassionate indulgence of clementia could not and did not apply to them. Again, Seneca serves as an authoritative voice. “It is not proper to grant pardon indiscriminately,” he wrote; “the reason is that when the distinction between the bad and the good is removed, the result is confusion and an outbreak of bad behavior.”30 To ward against this danger, Seneca outlined a semantic distinction between clementia and a

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second related term, misericordia, which he defined as compassion for and indulgence of human suffering without regard to its causes. Misericordia in Seneca’s usage was a negative quality, associated with “elderly women and silly females who are so affected by the tears of the nastiest criminals that they would break open the prison if they could. Misericordia focuses on the situation, not its cause, whereas clementia sides with reason.”31 Unchecked emotional connection with hardened criminals was not clementia, for it worked against the common good. Nor was it manly, as his misogynistic gendering of the behavior makes clear to his reader. Clementia only made sense when it was controlled, placed within limits, and combined with the firm maintenance of order. Public welfare depended on this delicate balance of compassion and firmness. When it descended (in Seneca’s view) into misericordia, it threatened the very fabric that held society together. It was precisely this definition of misericordia to which Augustine referred when discussing the new Christian vernacular usage of pietas as a term for works of misericordia. Augustine wrote in De civitate Dei that he was deeply uncomfortable with the Stoic conception of misericordia as a vice, preferring instead to follow Cicero, who lauded Caesar’s misericordia as a virtue.32 Like the Stoics, Augustine was careful to note the necessity of enacting misericordia according to reason and without violating social well-​­being, signaling his awareness of the potential danger that misericordia could pose.33 Yet he had considerable trouble bringing himself to think of it as a negative quality. “What is misericordia,” he queried rhetorically, “but a kind of fellow feeling in our hearts for the misery of another which compels us to help him if we can?”34 For “fellow-​­feeling,” he uses the Latin term compassio—​­literally the “fellow suffering.” The Sermon on the Mount’s call for love of one’s enemy, coupled with the Gospels’ emphasis on simple penitence as the only requirement for God’s ultimate absolution of sins, made difficult the notion that a human society could identify specific crimes that were entirely unworthy of forgiveness. Indeed, unlimited emotional interconnection among humans could never be a sin for Augustine because it was part of the very nature of God. “From this manner of speaking,” he wrote, in further discussion of misericordia and the common meaning of pietas, “it has also come about that God himself is called pius. The Greeks, however, never call him eusebes in their own discourse, although they also commonly use eusebeia to mean misericordia.”35 Pietas in the Christian idiom was thus similar to the more ancient notion of philanthropia in that it referred to an innate disposition, but where philanthropia most often

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referred generally to a disposition of calm and nonviolence, Christian pietas referred to a disposition of caritas—​­the embodiment, that is, of unlimited love and fellow-​­feeling ­­toward all others, friend and enemy alike.36 No longer hemmed in by practical sensibilities or classical ideals of the public interest, Christian ethical philosophy in the Augustinian tradition was the completion and perfection of what he considered to be the flawed moral and social paradigms that had dominated the ancient world.

“Not in the body but in the heart” In the earliest centuries of Christianity, the public performance of this radical form of emotional interconnection became a key marker of elite Christian discipleship.37 Incredulous Romans described Christians acting out New Testament moral extremity in very literal ways in defiance and protest of imperial authority.38 These Christians were, of course, the holy martyrs—​­witnesses to God’s love who willingly suffered, even sought out persecution through their strict adherence to pacifism, nonviolence, and nonresistance toward ­­ their oppressors and executioners. They were quite literal incarnations of caritas to the absolute letter of the Gospel. As the Western Roman imperial elite slowly converted to Christianity over the course of the fourth century CE, however, Christianity had to adapt to its new majority status. Martyrdom could no longer signify discipleship in the same manner that it once did. This sea change in circumstance rendered the performance of unlimited love to the letter of the Gospel far more theologically complex.39 Sulpicius Severus wrote his story of St. Martin and the Beggar during precisely this transitional moment in the history of Christian social thought. At the turn of the fifth century CE, he and a remarkable concentration of talented contemporaries—​­not just Augustine and Jerome but also Ausonius of Bordeaux (d. c. 395), Ambrose of Milan (d. 397), and Paulinus of Nola (d. 431), among others—​­ contemplated what Christian society and practice should become. Christianity was now the “official” spiritual affiliation of the Empire, and as the fifth century continued, political, social, and economic distress made redefinition of its worldly identity imperative. Wealth poured into churches like never before, and the Christian elite needed to reconcile their new political and social power with the countercultural energy of early Christian moral philosophy.40 The story of St. Martin and the Beggar depicts one of the most

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prominent developments: the association of caritas with new Christian figures who lived beyond the borders of society and chose to escape the normative structures of worldly life. These new types of Christians actively defined themselves in separation from the general population and elected to live their lives within artificial societies that were designed to resemble more closely the Kingdom of Heaven in their laws and structures. These were the hermitages and cells of the first cenobitics. Ascetics withdrew from society not only because they wished to live beyond the structures that governed it but also because they believed that these structures themselves created sin. Monastic spaces became testing grounds for new social rules, spaces constructed specifically to allow “true” and literal New Testament ethics to be performed freely.41 The rule that the Carolingians would adopt and propose as the standard for all monastic life was the Rule of St. Benedict (d. 547), compiled originally for his abbey at Monte Cassino.42 According to this rule, a true monk is humble in all action. He “turns the other cheek” and patiently endures all injuries without retaliation.43 Benedict’s Rule orders monks to follow the commandments of the Lord: to refrain from murder, adultery, and theft.44 A brother ought to live by the Golden Rule.45 Furthermore, he ought not indulge his anger or seek revenge; he ought not return evil for evil and instead love his enemies.46 He ought to hate no one nor be contentious; he ought to pray for his enemies, treat them with misericordia, and make peace with them without delay.47 This rule makes clear that true Christianity is rooted in caritas but, importantly, that this Christianity can only exist within the “workshop” of the monastery.48 Caritas guides the abbot in the fair and just discipline of his fellow monks.49 It affords him the capacity to care for wayward brothers with compassion and without despair.50 Caritas is the final destination of the monk’s twelve steps of humility.51 Caritas is the product of the brothers’ mutual service within the community.52 It is the foundation of a brother’s obedi­­ each ence.53 And it is the binding affect that all brothers are to show toward 54 other, ­­toward their abbot, and even ­­toward visitors. The notion that true Christian discipleship might require escape from the world became an issue of fervent debate. For Christians who wished to command the authority of God and yet still serve society itself as its leaders, New Testament moral extremes posed real and significant difficulties. An act of misericordia could indeed turn into an act of harm ­­toward innocent Christians; forgiving a murderer his crimes could place a society of men and women who now self-​­identified as Christian in danger of discord. And in what were

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increasingly unstable political times, Christian soldiers had to reconcile their devotion with their duty to fight and to kill; Christian leaders had to reconcile their commitment to misericordia with their duty to protect. Martin’s solution of pacifism could not serve as a practical solution for all.55 Augustine is yet again a key theological source. In his letter against Faustus the Manichean, which likely dates from around the year 410 CE, Augustine refutes a heterodoxy with which he himself had identified as a young man.56 It is a document best known to the modern world for its articulation of Christian “just war” theory, which sanctioned certain kinds of violence in the service of God and the protection of Christian society.57 The letter is important for the purposes of this discussion, however, because Augustine founded his arguments for just war upon a principle of interiorized and thus metaphoric New Testament morality. This would endure as a central component of Christian secular male ideology for the remainder of the Middle Ages. We only know Faustus’s arguments, which had likely been written some decades earlier, from their rearticulation by Augustine in the letter itself. Part of Faustus’s challenge seems clearly to have involved exposing the inconsistencies between the moral precepts of God as described in the Old Testament and the ethical demands of Jesus in the New Testament. Why, Faustus had asked, does the Old Testament praise the patriarchs as righteous men when they marry multiple wives, a clear ingression against the New Testament? Why do Moses and the Israelites wage war and kill when the New Testament calls for unmitigated love of neighbor, stranger, and even enemy? How can a Christian Rome wage war against its enemies and protect its citizens when the New Testament advocates nonviolence and nonresistance? Augustine’s response had profound implications for the later Christian cultures that drew directly from his teachings. He proposed, revealing the Platonic influences within his theology, that the morality described in the New Testament refers in fact to ideal forms that can only exist completely in the Kingdom of Heaven. Here on earth, form must vary in accordance with need. Sometimes moral righteousness requires a passivity and attitude of nonresistance that closely resembles the letter of the New Testament ideal; at other times, it requires ferocity and force. The reason that these forms can seem opposite and confusing to humans is because the nature of earthly life renders the human mind imperfectly able to discern between the moral “rightness” and “wrongness” of specific actions. Moral action on earth is always subordinate to its required end, according to Augustine, and humans simply cannot always see that end.

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Augustine grounded his arguments against Faustus in repeated assertions that God is and can only be a purely benevolent power. Thus, while the Old Testament might describe, for example, God’s jealousy when the Israelites worship the Golden Calf, God’s anger when humans transgress his command, or God’s vengeance when he wreaks havoc upon the enemies of Israel, Augustine claimed that these are not emotionally negative responses. They are evidence of God’s “quiet goodness” (tranquilla bonitas) in desiring to protect souls from corruption and exploitation through the service of false gods. God does not kill in retribution for offenses inflicted upon him, Augustine wrote. God kills so that the world may benefit from fear of him and act rightly because of it. He punishes both sinners and the righteous for the purpose of perfecting both, based upon what he deems necessary for a given soul to achieve the Kingdom of Heaven in the end.58 This is, Augustine admits freely in making his argument, difficult at best for humans to comprehend. Humans live, according to Augustine’s philosophy, in a continual state of confusion about morality and moral behavior. God’s reality (true reality) and human comprehension of that reality are fundamentally disconnected. The virtues of great minds, Augustine explains, can resemble quite closely the vices of lesser ones “in appearance, but not in reality” (nonnulla specie, sed nulla aequitatis comparatione). Those who condemn the Old Testament prophets as adulterers, he wrote, or who deem Christ a simpleton when, for example, he looks to a tree for fruit out of season, simply fail to comprehend these actions from the proper perspective. For Augustine, this sort of logic was akin to the criticism of schoolchildren who correct their classmates according to the letter, rather than the spirit, of the teacher’s rules.59 Human confusion over the actual form of right moral behavior on earth is a function of sin itself. Yet importantly, sins are not a fixed set of actions deemed “wrong” by God, says Augustine, nor are virtues a fixed set of actions deemed “right.” Sins are rather those acts, words, or even desires that fail to preserve the natural order of things as divinely set forth. In humans, Augustine continues, this is a natural order by which reason controls the soul, which in turn controls the body. Reason, furthermore, is divided into contemplation and action, of which contemplation is the superior element. The object of contemplation, says Augustine, is God himself.60 And there is a further complication: on earth, humans are unable to see God. They must rely on their faith for the image of God to appear to them in contemplation; only in the afterlife can humans once again see God as he truly is. The natural order according to Augustine’s argument against Faustus, therefore, was rational

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action controlled by contemplation of God, which on earth was exercised through faith. And faith, in the end, for Augustine, was a function of love. Humans live righteously when they live, he wrote, “by the genuine faith that works through love” (ex fide non ficta, quae per dilectionem operatur).61 For Augustine, therefore, a man whose faith in God drove his actions was able to restrain all mortal desires within their natural limit—​­that is to say, he was able to prioritize higher order before the lower. To sin was to indulge in a lower part of the human order at the expense of the higher—​­to indulge the body at the expense of the soul, for example, or to indulge the soul at the expense of reason. Augustine was careful not to suggest that humans should completely ignore their bodies, for he was uncomfortable with any notion other than that God had created humans to be living, breathing creatures with flesh and desires.62 To indulge the body could never be sinful in and of itself. It was only sinful when this indulgence was directed ­­toward ends beyond the invigoration of the individual or species. Sin occurred only when the desires of the body controlled reason and pushed behavior past the norms of temperance.63 Because Augustine defined sin in terms of preservation of order and not in terms of specific acts, in his philosophy, some actions were sanctioned in some instances while condemned in others: “That eternal law, which commands that the natural order be preserved and forbids that it be disturbed, has located certain deeds in a middle position for human beings so that it deservedly reprehends a boldness in undertaking them and rightly praises an obedience in carrying them out. It makes a great difference in the natural order who does what and under whose authority one acts.”64 That the value of an act depended solely on the actor and the situation and not the act itself was as remarkable to say in the fifth century as it is today because of what it suggests and the potential freedom that it allows in the interpretation of moral rules. For Augustine, New Testament commands could not and should not be understood literally—​­not just because of the nature of language and interpretation but also because of the very “science” of moral activity on earth. Sins and virtues could never be reduced to a list of good and bad acts. Augustine developed his point in his argument against Faustus by focusing on the duties of the Roman emperor to conduct war and the apparent clash of such duties with New Testament moral ideals. The evil in war, Augustine wrote, is not in the killing and the use of arms but rather in the love of violence and the hatred that sometimes accompanies it. Humans confuse killing in and of itself with evil when, in fact, it is only the ends of that killing that determine whether the action is right or wrong. Necessities of the general

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welfare sometimes require behavior that seems contradictory to the ideal of caritas, he explained, but only when this ideal is understood literally and not metaphorically. While it was always necessary for Christians to embody the tenets of New Testament morality in spirit, it was not always practical or even morally correct to act upon them in body. “If, however,” he wrote, “they think that God could not have commanded the waging of war because the Lord Jesus Christ later said, ‘I tell you not to resist evil, but if anyone strikes you on your right cheek, offer him your left as well,’ let them understand that this disposition lies not in the body but in the heart.”65

Toward a Universal Ideology of Christian Authority Following this more metaphoric understanding of New Testament morality, late Roman and Merovingian writers debated and developed a far more complicated understanding of the nature of worldly Christian identity than had ever before existed. We see as a result, in contemporary descriptions of the fifth-​­and sixth-​­century world, a sense of general uncertainty over the proper moral authority that was to govern human interaction. In his Historiarum libri decem, for example, Gregory of Tours (d. 594) wrote about the holy recluse, Eparchius of Angoulême, who was particularly interested in the needs of the poor and in freeing the imprisoned from incarceration.66 In one episode, a secular count presides over the execution of a thief who was considered by the local inhabitants to be guilty of numerous crimes, not just robberies but murders as well. Eparchius sends a messenger to petition the count to remand the sentence of death and to release the thief, “although guilty,” as he clearly states (scilicet culpabilis), into his custody.67 A mob gathers in opposition to the holy man, however, and demonstrates for the cause of justice: they shout and threaten the judge with insulting language, arguing that to free the man would be prudent for neither the district nor the judge. The count declares it impossible to free the condemned criminal, who is promptly tortured and brought to the gallows. Gregory writes that the messenger returns and recounts the scene to Eparchius, who then declares that “the Lord will grant us of his own gift what man has refused” (quem homo reddere noluit, Dominus suo munere redonabit).68 Eparchius then prays for God’s assistance, and the gallows breaks miraculously. In the ensuing confusion, the holy man is able to gather the thief into his care. It is an account assumed to express conflict between the Gallo-​­Roman

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clergy and new Frankish structures of social power.69 Certainly it does. The source of conflict, however, is not power over coercive force; it is power over the correct arbitration of benevolent force. That is, in Gregory’s story, what is most at issue is the proper form that a good deed should take in the world. Ostensibly, both Eparchius and the count are trying to perform the “right” deed for love of the community. But, demonstrated by God’s miraculous intervention, only one of these men acts correctly in God’s eyes. A hardened, repeat offender stands accused of crimes that he did in fact commit. The holy man, not the count, takes the unpopular political position. Protection of the community and justice for the criminal’s victims seem to demand that the criminal be punished for his unjust actions—​­and because of the grievous nature of his crimes, that punishment is death. The mob reminds us that clementia does not apply in this case, for it would not serve the common welfare. It is seemingly the count’s duty to protect the integrity of the social order and to secure justice for his people. He has the support not only of his subjects but also of the law. However, this support is precisely what Eparchius seeks to challenge. He is not championing a man unjustly accused; he is championing a higher understanding of God’s love. In this case, Eparchius simply has clearer knowledge—​­he knows better than the rest that the correct application of pietas in this case is to set the criminal free and not to condemn him to torture and death. Eparchius’s superior knowledge and the reality of the mob’s (and our) inability to discern right morality, which he alone can see, are confirmed only by the miraculous breaking of the gallows and the freeing of the prisoner. It was another Gregory, Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604), who would ultimately articulate these principles of moral discernment and define them as the foundation of elite secular Christianity. For this Gregory, the confusion about God’s love on earth seems to have been something of a personal obsession. His masterpiece, Moralia in Job, is an extended meditation on the human incapacity to comprehend the wisdom of God. Job is a good man, yet God afflicts him with misfortune after horrible misfortune before ultimately rewarding him with happiness, riches, and extended life. Building upon Augustinian thought, Gregory’s Moralia explains in minute detail how and why humans have such terrible difficulty understanding that both acts of God—​ ­the misfortune and the reward—​­are equal manifestations of his benevolent love.70 Gregory would codify the cultivation of superior knowledge as the primary function and role of the elite Christian male. Among Gregory’s many contributions to Western thought was the clear relationship that he described between God’s capacity to know caritas in all of

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its forms and the power that the Christian secular elite held within society as God’s representatives on earth. Gregory’s most pragmatic discussion of these matters came in the form of the small but highly influential treatise that he wrote on the subject of good earthly Christian leadership, the Regulae pastoralis liber.71 Gregory theorized in this book what kind of man could and should be a leader of Christian society.72 Following Christian ascetic ideology, he fully recognized the corrosive effect of the secular world on the soul, addressing the need to ward off this corrosion at all costs. But he was also deeply unsatisfied with the habit of the most devout Christians to flee to the cloister in fear. The world needed, he argued, its holiest of men to live among the people as moral guides—​­arbiters who could determine right moral action under God and aid souls in the achievement of salvation. This ability to arbitrate right moral behavior, Gregory suggested, could be nurtured and developed through the proper positioning of body and mind—​ ­through, in effect, a toeing of the thin line that separated earthly and heavenly space. As the Eparchius story shows, there was still a tendency within contemporary Christian intellectual culture to associate true love of God with the special elite outsiders of the Christian community who withdrew from society. Gregory effectively merged this association with Augustinian notions of metaphoric New Testament interpretation. A Christian pastor, says Regulae pastoralis liber, is a “neighbor” (proximus) to all in sympathy but exalted above all in contemplation. Through the “bowels” (viscera) of pietas, he transfers the sickness of others onto himself, and through “lofty speculation” (speculationis altitudinem), he aspires to see the invisible. He must neither despise the weakness of his neighbors nor forget his aspiration for higher pursuits. Like Paul in the New Testament, says Gregory, he is borne high through his contemplation of heaven, which is not visible to human eyes.73 “Behold,” he writes, he is rooted in heavenly haunts, yet through the bowels of condescension he carefully studies the den of the carnal; and with compassion for that which, having himself been lifted up, he raises ­­toward the spiritual, he turns the eye of his heart ­­toward the haunts of the infirm. In contemplation he transcends heaven, and yet in his concern he does not forsake the carnal bed, because he is joined simultaneously to the highest and the lowest by the bond of caritas. By the strength of spirit within him he is vigorously snatched into the heights above, and by his pietas for others he is calmly rendered weak.74

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The passage exquisitely encapsulates the ideology of worldly Christian authority that the Carolingians would adopt and transform for their own use. For Gregory, caritas is not simply “love” or “charity”; it is the very connective tissue that joins the human to both the spiritual and the material realms. Pietas is not “piety” or “pity”; it is the happy burden that anchors a human being to the earth and reminds him of his essential frailties. Caritas and pietas become metaphoric tethers in Gregory’s world—​­bonds that moor the elite Christian within a liminal space between worlds, rendering him simultaneously high and low, betwixt and between, and able to converse with both. The Christian pastor had to dwell, to use another modern metaphor, on both sides of the fence that separated humanity from the Kingdom of Heaven. He had to occupy both the extreme and the center in order to do his work. Since worldly life could corrupt the soul, he needed to avoid excessive contact with it. To govern souls properly, he had to return periodically to cloistered space in order to cleanse himself of the poisons inescapably acquired through worldly leadership. He had to meditate daily on the precepts of scripture “so that the words of divine admonition might restore in him the power of solicitude and of provident circumspection ­­toward celestial life, which the frequent enjoyment of a human way of life ceaselessly destroys.”75 Gregory states that a good pastor must take great care because in hearing the temptations and trials of others, he also opens his own mind to attack by these same temptations. “The same bathwater,” he says, “in which a multitude of people are washed is without doubt polluted itself, for while it takes on the filth of those bathing in it, it loses, as it were, the serenity of its cleanliness.”76 But this ought not deter a good pastor, for under God, “who nicely balances all things” (subtiliter cuncta pensante), the pastor is rescued from temptation by his misericordia (again, used in the Augustinian sense) for the temptation of others.77 It was a positioning of body and mind that mirrored precisely the higher knowledge that the pastor had to employ as part of his duties in saving souls. Gregory devotes the entire third book of the four that compose the Regulae pastoralis liber to pragmatic guidelines for the exhortation of the flock. As teacher (doctor), the pastor “ought to touch the hearts of his hearers out of one doctrine, but not one and the same exhortation, so that he might edify all in the one virtue of caritas”—​­that is, he must act with the inward disposition of New Testament love that Augustine discussed, but the form of his action must vary according to need.78 “One and the same exhortation is not good for all,” says Gregory; “for often what benefits some impedes others, because the herbs that might nourish one animal will kill another, and the gentle whistling that

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quiets horses can excite small dogs, and the medicine which cures one disease gives strength to another, and the bread that nourishes the fully-​­grown will kill infants.”79 This third book of the Regulae pastoralis liber works as a self-​­contained tutorial for helping the pastor understand the correct application of caritas for the benefit of the souls within his care. There is a difference between the love that he should show to the poor and the love that he should show to the rich; there is a difference between the love that he should show ­­toward the joyful and ­­toward the sad, toward ­­ subjects and prelates, servants and masters, the wise and the unlearned, the impudent and the bashful, those who are patient and those who are impatient, those who are whole in body and those who are infirm, even between the married and the unmarried.80 A pastor must study these differences carefully and learn them by heart so that he may best apply his art to the minds of his listeners. He is, suggests Gregory, a bit like the masterful musician who, through skill and practice, learns to pluck the different strings of the lyre with the proper force and technique and in the proper rhythm and order, so that they might create a harmonious tune.81 Indeed, the Liber demonstrates quite clearly that a pastor’s capacity as an arbiter of caritas derives not from special innate capacity but from assiduous study. It is his knowledge and higher comprehension of worldly physics, not mystical power, that separates him from his flock. Gregory was suggesting far more than the traditional compromise between the ancient ideals of the vita contemplativa and vita activa.82 He was articulating a new ideology of worldly Christian power and authority that linked ascetic principles with the capacity to bond and to connect on an emotional level with other human beings. His guiding metaphors were spatial: the elite Christian male danced a blurry line between worlds. He transcended the life of average folk in the same manner that the life of the shepherd transcends that of the sheep. And yet, he still had to remember his essential sameness with the rest of humanity. He lived in orbit around the world at the thin atmospheric edge of society—​­bound within its gravity but able to see and sometimes even to touch the heavenly stars above.

Conclusion Gregory’s ideal of Christian discipleship developed from two key but somewhat paradoxical aspects of caritas: its association with ascetic world denial and its conceptualization as the very source of worldly authority. In trying to

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determine a compromise between its centripetal and centrifugal forces, the middle ground that Gregory proposed—​­a state of earthly power combined with partial, interiorized asceticism—​­would become the standard ideal of worldly Christian masculinity. It was an ideal that Christian writers of the sev­­ the episcopal and priestly enth and eighth centuries directed especially toward leaders of Christian spiritual communities. And the Christian professional elite closely guarded their power to arbitrate caritas’s proper form as their primary role and function in society. Importantly, however, Gregory’s ideology of Christian power and authority could theoretically be applicable to anyone who wished to follow its tenets. At its heart was the notion that caritas was the essential “glue” that cohered all of Christian society together into a singular, unified whole. Through caritas, all men could potentially perform asceticism inwardly as part of their worldly life. Gregory was adamant that, even though the world greatly reduced the ability of those within its bounds to comprehend love’s many forms, caritas was never beyond the grasp of the average Christian. Writers of the seventh and eighth centuries would carry on this tradition. An eighth-​­century commentator on the Gospel of Matthew, for example, wrote that those who thought that the command to love one’s enemy was impossible to achieve were wrong. Old Testament precedent proved it, for David was able to love Saul even after their friendship had deteriorated into bitter enmity, and Saint Stephen prayed for his persecutors even as he martyred himself at their hands.83 It was simply that the forms that caritas could take in worldly space were myriad and unfixed. What might be the right act in one situation was wrong in the next. And without an education in the “science” of caritas, there was simply no way to tell. Cultivating caritas became a matter of nurturing a correct alignment of the inner will through outward forms of bodily world denial—​­forms that were not ends unto themselves but rather catalysts that helped the human mind to break free from the obfuscation that the world imposed upon it. Penitential discipline became based on the idea that certain ascetic acts could cleanse the soul of wrongdoing—​­acts that quieted the carnal urges of the human body and allowed the spiritual will to take better control.84 The related custom in Merovingian and Carolingian culture of imprisoning aristocratic criminals in monastic spaces did not derive simply from the fact that monasteries had walls.85 Walls could be breached. It was rather an act that placed the body of the criminal, whose sins were the result of a carnal will too strong, into a specialized space where, it must have been hoped, even the most recalcitrant

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wrongdoer might have a chance for rehabilitation—​­where the criminal might see God’s will more clearly and learn to follow right behavior.86 Fundamentally, therefore, while the bishops and priests in the sixth and seventh centuries imagined the arbitration and teaching of caritas’s proper form to be their primary role and function in human society, Gregorian ideology left open a door: all Christians could achieve an inward disposition of caritas if they chose to pursue it. This fundamental potential for each and every Christian to comprehend and to act with caritas would become central to Carolingian ideologies of secular power in the centuries to come. Powerful laymen would increasingly ask their spiritual advisors for more sophisticated knowledge about how to serve their God while also serving their earthly king. And in return, those advisors would teach them the universal model of worldly Christian leadership that they themselves aspired to follow.

Chapter 2

Manifestos of Carolingian Power

Among the precepts of God, caritas obtains the first place . . . ​neither martyrdom nor contempt of the secular world, nor generosity of alms, could accomplish anything without the duty of caritas. —​­Alcuin of York to Count Wido of Brittany, De virtutibus et vitiis 3

In March of the year 789, King Charlemagne of the Franks (not yet emperor of the Romans) convened a select group of counselors from throughout his realm to discuss matters of concern. No contemporary annalist ever recorded the event, and it may not have been considered an “official” assembly at all, yet scholars of the Carolingian era typically rank this royal conference among the more important moments in the early developmental history of European society and culture. It produced a capitulary document known as Admonitio generalis (the “Common Reminder” or, as it is often more woodenly translated, the “General Admonition”)—​­a listing of eighty-​­two social and moral decrees for the Frankish aristocracy to follow, pronounced from on high in the voice of Charlemagne himself.1 This was perhaps the most complete articulation of the program of renovatio and correctio that would transform Frankish culture over the course of the next century.2 After Admonitio generalis, Christianity became ­conversatio—​ a­ “way of life,” to quote an early summation by Rosamond McKitterick—​­for the Frankish people as a whole.3 Christian rituals and ideologies would gradually bind the diverse regions of Charlemagne’s empire together. Frankish and Christian identity would effectively merge into one. And the deep structural foundations for the pan-​­European Latin Christendom of the High Middle Ages and beyond would begin to appear. This chapter examines the ideology of Frankish aristocratic power that

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undergirded and naturalized this broad social and cultural transformation. Adapted directly from the ideological associations discussed in Chapter 1, it framed caritas not simply as an ideal that Frankish men were encouraged to enact but quite literally as the foundation of Frankish authority. After an initial section that explores in further detail the contents and expressed purposes of Admonitio generalis, two Carolingian writers take center stage: Paulinus of Aquileia and Alcuin of York. Both men served Charlemagne as trusted courtiers and likely played guiding roles at the council of 789.4 Both men ended their careers in prestigious positions of spiritual leadership—​­Paulinus as patriarch of Aquileia and Alcuin as Abbot of Marmoutier at Tours, the ancient monastic house founded by none other than St. Martin, whose cloak had now become a sacred relic kept in the possession of the Frankish royal line.5 Finally, both men composed, at the direct request of powerful Carolingian lay magnates, treatises in which they articulated and defined the ideal life of the Christian layman. In separate but complementary ways, the treatises written by Paulinus and Alcuin each drew upon the traditional ideological links between caritas and ascetic male power to grant nonroyal laymen direct and explicit access to divine authority. They defined lay and “professional” religious men as separate but fundamentally equal parts of the same collective whole, their power deriving from the same source, their duties of heavenly and earthly service the same, their separate identities purely a worldly distinction, completely irrelevant in the eyes of God. Far more than simple manuals of pragmatic moral advice, which until now has been the primary lens through which these texts have been read, Paulinus and Alcuin wrote nothing less than ideological manifestos for the Frankish aristocracy. Their meditations on the ideal lay Christian life explained and made normative the notion that earthly society was “naturally” the domain of the Frankish aristocracy to command and to protect as a unified family of souls.

Social Prophylaxis and the Aristocratic Male Charlemagne had just entered his third decade as king when he called upon his counselors in that early European spring of 789. He had thus far achieved more worldly success than anyone else he knew or about whom he had ever heard. His armies had swept across virtually the whole of the continent, fighting victorious campaigns in Aquitania, Gascony, Brittany, Bavaria, and

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Lombardy and effectively restoring centralized control to the territories once governed by his Merovingian predecessors. He had assembled a royal court that was beginning to rival not only the material splendor but also the intellectual and artistic floridity of the Byzantines at Constantinople, the Abbasids at Baghdad, and the Umayyads at Cordoba. Despite these considerable accomplishments, Charlemagne still had significant reason for concern. At the age of forty-​­seven, he had far outlived the average life expectancy of a Frankish warlord.6 He was old enough to have been easily among the eldest of his entourage and could never have realistically guessed that he would rule for another twenty-​­five years and die quietly, surrounded by loved ones, in his own luxurious bed.7 His reign had also not been exclusively a success. A decade earlier, a band of recalcitrant Basques had ambushed and decimated the Frankish rear guard in the infamous Pyrenees mountain pass at Roncesvalles.8 And a particularly violent revolt had taken place only months before, when Duke Tassilo of Bavaria had led an armed rebellion against his king. The chronicles tell us that all ended well for Charlemagne—​­Tassilo was captured and the insurrection extinguished—​­but it could just as easily have gone badly.9 These military and political challenges would certainly have lingered at the forefront of Charlemagne’s mind, for during the same time in which he and his court were composing Admonitio generalis, they were also in the process of planning a campaign against the Slavic lands to the east and south for that very summer.10 Worldly stresses would have been compounded further by spiritual uncertainties. In calling for correctio, Charlemagne followed an ancient tradition of Roman emperors and Frankish kings, who saw it as their duty to eradicate scelus—​­sin and crime—​­in order to ensure the continued health and prosperity of society. In Admonitio generalis, he famously compares himself to the Old Testament King Josiah, who had been responsible for restoring his people to the correct faith and for decreeing the commandments of Moses as law for his people.11 The moral reforms of Admonitio generalis cast this traditional duty in a distinctly millenarian hue, however. As leader of the Franks who dreamed of his people as the new Israel, it was Charlemagne’s solemn responsibility not simply to root out sin but also to ready the world for the end of days. Admonitio generalis suggests a degree of urgency on this issue, describing how a certain “letter from heaven” with an apocalyptic message had apparently circulated throughout the land but was not to be believed; “in the last days” (presumably very much at hand), Admonitio generalis warns, “there will appear false teachers, as the Lord himself foretold in the gospel.”12

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The broad social and cultural ramifications that we now attribute to Admonitio generalis were thus most certainly beyond even Charlemagne’s considerable ambitions. To be sure, he and his court were interested in social renewal and correction, but their aim would have been to address far more immediate concerns. We must recognize Admonitio generalis and the entire program of Carolingian correctio itself as a prophylactic, designed to shield Charlemagne and, by extension, the Frankish people under his dominion against an unknown future.13 The document is a pledge from the Franks to redouble their efforts to enact righteous behavior in exchange for the continued favor and protection of the divine. This was indeed its expressed purpose. Its preface declares that God had shown more favor to the Franks than to any other civilization in history. Simple thanks would not suffice. Bishops and parish priests needed to work harder in their efforts to lead souls to salvation while also corralling “the erring sheep”—​­men who did not wish to devote themselves to the protection and health of Frankish society—​­back into the fold. All Frankish men, laity and churchmen alike, had to follow the precepts of God with more devout energy and passion. The consequence of failure was nothing less than the unchecked rampage of the devil on earth.14 Admonitio generalis thus placed the burden of responsibility for the continuation of Frankish prosperity squarely on the shoulders of Frankish aristocratic men. It reminded them of this burden by laying forth the cooperative duties and jurisdictions that they were required to observe in order to please their God. The first three quarters of the document consist of regulatory dicta from the most important ecumenical councils of centuries past.15 Rules address different groups of aristocratic men (“to bishops,” “to priests,” “to clerics and monks,” “to all,” etc.—​­the last including laymen) and outline the correct hierarchies of power that are to exist among them.16 Priests are to be subordinate to bishops, monks subordinate to abbots; “professional” religious—​­that is to say, men who had professed either priestly or monastic vows—​­are not to be subject to most secular legal jurisdiction; monks in particular are to avoid secular engagement as much as they are able. Lay and professional religious men are defined, in this section, as separate but equally important cogs of a well-​­oiled social machine. If maintained in good order, the capitula imply, this machine will lead the Franks ­­toward further divine favor. The last twenty-​­two capitula continue to define the ideal workings of society but break free from conciliar tradition and bear the distinctive stamp of Charlemagne’s court itself. Historians frequently emphasize capitulum 72, which asks for the correction of liturgical books and scripture, along with the

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creation of schools for educating young men not only in grammar but also in music and computation.17 The majority of this last section, however, actually advances far more abstract social ideals—​­ideals that intensify bonds of collective identity and diminish local and professional affiliations. There is to be peace and concord “between bishops, abbots, counts, judges, and all persons everywhere, of greater or lesser status.”18 Judges are to judge justly, petitioners and oathtakers are to swear honestly, hatred is to be outlawed, unlawful killings are to be anathema, and all children henceforth are to honor their parents.19 Here Admonitio generalis decrees not specific behaviors so much as ideal states of mind that all Franks are to cultivate, regardless of station, regardless of person. It is an updated Ten Commandments, a collection of universal rules for membership among God’s chosen people, newly augmented with New Testament moral principles. It is no surprise, therefore, that in the final summary capitulum of Admonitio generalis, we find the shorthand phrase “love of God and neighbor,” which would be invoked throughout the ninth century and the rest of the Middle Ages in reference to caritas. Capitulum 82 commands bishops and priests to remind their flocks, “with all urgency,” “about love of God and neighbor (dilectione Dei et proximi), about faith and hope in God, about humility and patience, about chastity and continence, about kindness and mercy (misericordia), about giving alms and the confession of their sins, and that they forgive their debtors their debts according to the Lord’s prayer, knowing most certainly that because they do such things they will possess the kingdom of God.”20 This call for love of God and neighbor reveals nothing of the deep philosophical concerns that so worried men such as Augustine and Gregory the Great. It simply recalls the affective interconnection between self, deity, and other that the Gospels demanded and upon which the Book of Pastoral Rule had founded its ideology of worldly masculine authority. It might be tempting, especially in light of Charlemagne’s campaigns against the pagan Saxons and Avars that he launched at exactly this same moment of his reign, to read the absence of “love of enemy” in this formulation as a cynical misrepresentation of the doctrine that caritas represents—​­an intentional omission of the more difficult-​­to-​­follow aspects of New Testament ethics by priestly members of the Church who were interested less in directing Christian fellow-​­feeling inward than in directing Christian aggression outward. Jonathan Riley-​­Smith made precisely this argument for the discursive invocation of “love of God and neighbor” three hundred years later, during Urban II’s preaching campaign for the first crusade.21 Such a reading,

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especially for the Carolingian world, would be the wrong inflection. Not only would it overestimate the power that spiritual leaders held within the governing structures of Carolingian society, but it would also fail to recognize the discursive power that caritas had come to hold within Christian culture. In Admonitio generalis (and the call to crusade, for that matter), the phrase “love of God and neighbor” serves rhetorically, first and foremost, as a common denominator of collective identity. It passes unassumingly and unproblematically as the first among a summary list of behaviors and qualities that the document promises will lead any Frank to salvation. In so doing, it diminishes allegiances to professional or local affiliation. It furthermore renders the document’s constructed associations between cooperative aristocratic behavior and divine favor not only logical but also perfectly natural. Since all Franks learn the same core values—​­values that will lead to salvation, the very essence of divine sanction—​­it is only natural, the document’s underlying logic suggests, that they would be called as one collective body to the same duty of service and fidelity to their heavenly and earthly lords. Admonitio generalis as a whole, therefore, and this final section in particular both articulate an ideology of shared and universal aristocratic identity and rely on that ideology for their provisions to be persuasive and logical. Without doubt, this ideology was already a driving force behind the convocation of the council of 789 and the drafting of Admonitio generalis in the first place—​­the boldness and scope of the document imply nothing less. The success of the document’s program of correctio over the course of the next century, furthermore, suggests that this ideology exerted a significant degree of influence upon the aristocratic receivers of Admonitio generalis as well. Regardless of whether the document reflected established thinking or created it anew, however, it can be no coincidence that within a few years of 789 and the dissemination of Admonitio generalis throughout the realm, we also find the first extended explications of the ideology that supported it. This ideology made caritas—​­“love of God and neighbor”—​­the core aristocratic value from which all other values derived. Caritas was the aristocrat’s key to both salvation and his worldly power, for it linked him directly to the authority of God.

Reading the “Lay Mirrors” In 795 or 796, Paulinus of Aquileia wrote a treatise on the ideal lay life that we now call Liber Exhortationis (the “Book of Exhortation”).22 Just a short time

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later, in 799 or 800, Alcuin of York wrote a similar work, known today as De virtutibus et vitiis (“On the Virtues and Vices”).23 Both authors wrote at the direct request of powerful Carolingian frontier warlords: Paulinus for Eric of Friuli (d. 799), lord of the southeastern march, and Alcuin for Wido (Guy) of Brittany (d. 818), lord of the northwestern march. These texts were the earliest of a small group of didactic books written specifically for lay, nonroyal aristocrats during roughly the first half of the ninth century.24 Scholars once referred to them as “ascetic florilegia”—​ ­“florilegia” because they excerpt and collect late antique patristic texts and “ascetic” because a majority of these patristic texts were written originally for monastic audiences and accordingly espouse quite traditional Christian ideologies of ascetic masculinity.25 We now label these books as a subcategory of the ancient “mirror for princes” genre: Laienspiegel, or “mirrors for the laity.”26 This new classification has been helpful in encouraging scholars to recognize at least a shade of art where previous readers found little. We now acknowledge that the mirrors do not simply collect patristic wisdom; they arrange, narrate, and adapt it to new purposes. Still, historians generally tend to regard these texts as rather dull and derivative. And even their closest apologists wonder about their ultimate significance as historical artifacts: how widely they were actually read and followed and whether they truly had an impact upon the majority of the Carolingian world.27 The question of what, exactly, these texts represent, not only as objects unto themselves but also in relation to their actual function within Carolingian aristocratic culture as a whole, deserves further consideration here. J. M. Wallace-​­Hadrill once described the advice in these little books as “all very practical”—​­a line often quoted in discussion of the mirrors but with which very few scholars have agreed.28 Most interpreters have in fact assumed, with rather astonishing uniformity, that the mirrors could only have been received as problematic. At best, these scholars argue, the mirrors espoused a form of Christianity that would have been completely incongruent with the general character of Frankish secular values—​­values that included glory in war, hunting, conspicuous wealth, and sexual virility.29 Heinrich Fichtenau summed up this view with the dramatic claim that throughout the ninth century and until the mid-​­tenth century at the earliest, anyone who wished to lead a particularly devout Christian existence had to embrace an ideal of living that stood in “stark contrast” to the traditional Frankish way of life. Most, he suggested, were forced to choose a path of “lesser evils,” of marriage and almsgiving, of endowing churches and monasteries, and of doing private penance

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for the sins of the flesh that they could not or would not conquer.30 Pierre Riché believed that the incongruence between Christian and secular Frankish values was in fact so great that it created a lay “anxiety complex”—​­widespread fear throughout the lay world about whether they could possibly achieve salvation as the lowest members of a society “dominated” by the clergy.31 Other scholars, taking perhaps an even more skeptical position, have regarded the mirrors as largely toothless, featuring little in the way of focused advice or specific liturgical teaching. Janet Nelson has described the mirrors’ advice to the laity as “at once too specific and too vague” and “often banal.”32 Rachel Stone, who has conducted the most careful and extensive readings of the mirrors to date, recently quipped that Alcuin’s De virtutibus et vitiis is so bland that it “seems . . . ​to assume an audience less of ‘spiritual athletes’ than ‘spiritual couch-​­potatoes.’  ”33 Rafaele Savigni, merging the major themes of these scholarly positions into one all-​­encompassing theory, has argued that the corpus of lay mirrors therefore suggests two different and quite contradictory orientations with regard to laypersons in ninth-​­century ecclesiology: one “ascetic-​­monastic” (and therefore too strict and out of touch), the other focusing more on almsgiving and the channeling of violence (and therefore too banal and a conciliation to the “warrior” values of secular society).34 Reading the mirrors for their explicit and implicit ideological function frees us from this interpretative quagmire. It allows us namely to see how these texts would have served writers and readers within their historical moment and why they would have made perfectly logical sense to them. Focusing on the ideological messages of these texts suggests that actually there was no contradiction between the Christianity that the mirrors espouse and Carolingian secular life, as scholars have presumed. Nor do they represent a concession of “true” Christian values in favor of “lesser” forms. They do not call for monastic withdrawal from the world, nor do they “impose” a foreign set of “clerical” values upon a refractory or anxious warrior culture. Instead, they articulate exactly the ideology of worldly Christian masculinity that Gregory the Great explained in his Regulae pastoralis liber—​­an ideal of masculinity within which caritas allowed men to perform their allegiance to the Kingdom of God symbolically, providing them access to correct knowledge of right and wrong and, with it, divine authority. The crucial innovation of these texts is that they explicitly extended this authority to laymen as well as men “in religion.” In other words, we must change the way in which we read the lay mirrors and understand what they can reveal about the cultural forces that produced

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them. Paulinus and Alcuin did not simply write books of practical (or impractical) advice. They wrote ideological narratives of their world. These narratives explained, both directly and by implication, the correct order of God’s creation and the role that Carolingian aristocratic men were destined to play within it. They articulated and framed connections between lay aristocratic masculinity, secular prosperity, and divine sanction as completely natural, rendering normative the aristocratic cooperation and moral rectitude for which Admonitio generalis called. In the end, it ultimately matters little, therefore, how widely these texts may or may not have been read and digested in their moment. They are significant because they codify the completely constructed logic that authorized Carolingian aristocratic power at the turn of the ninth century. This logic enabled Carolingian men to wield that power whether they were consciously aware of its ideological foundations or not.

Paulinus and Eric Paulinus was Aquileia’s Patriarch, a title granted to that episcopal see during the sixth century as a means of demarcating its autonomy and primacy among the other powerful sees of the region, including the strongholds of Ravenna and Rome.35 It was a position, in other words, of highest spiritual authority. Yet in writing his Liber exhortationis for the most powerful secular lord in that region, Paulinus was still writing as a subordinate. We must always remember that Carolingian society was not the society of the European High Middle Ages. Charlemagne allied with the papacy and the episcopacy, but the arms of Carolingian spiritual power worked for the laity, not the other way around. Lay magnates enlisted their learned priestly and monastic brothers because they were their trusted advisors. Part of the solemn duty of “professional” religious leadership was to teach worldly lords how Christianity pertained to their lives and, of equal importance, how better to make their religion do work for them, both personally and in their contributions to the empire. If Liber exhortationis ever had an opening epistle, we no longer have rec­ ord of it. The text itself is extant in some thirty manuscripts that collectively date from the ninth through the fifteenth centuries. Only one, from the mid-​ n ­ inth century, attributes authorship to Paulinus.36 Furthermore, it states only that Paulinus wrote for a friend in saeculo militans (“serving as a warrior in the secular world”). We know that Eric of Friuli was by far the most likely original recipient of the text from other evidence of the close relationship between the

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two men.37 We also have a corroborating document that reveals not only something of the power dynamic between them but that Eric very likely requested the little book completely of his own volition. There is little in the document to suggest that he was driven by feelings of inferiority, as Riché believed. Instead, his diction implies straightforward and pragmatic interest. The clarifying document is a letter addressed to Eric of Friuli, not from Paulinus but from Alcuin. This letter responds to a request from Eric for spiritual advice and suggests that Eric may have asked Alcuin about these matters first before eventually turning to Paulinus.38 In the letter, Alcuin obsequiously thanks the duke for deigning to visit him in his humble home, praying for God’s protection of the duke against all enemies, worldly and otherworldly. He entreats Eric to observe God’s precepts so that he may rule in prosperity and be deemed worthy of this divine protection. Finally, Alcuin closes by saying that he would write more “about the observation of Christian pietas” if Paulinus (to whom Alcuin humbly refers as his own teacher) were not already at hand to do so.39 Alcuin’s fawning diction is no doubt epistolary convention, and thus we need not read into its abject deference too strongly. Yet the fact that he chose this language in the first place demonstrates something of the hierarchy of power between the two men. Eric is the superior in the exchange. Furthermore, Eric is actively seeking knowledge not out of submission to spiritual authority but rather via its enlistment. Eric was a warrior, yet he was also clearly educated in letters and Christian doctrine. Liber exhortationis teems with quotations from a wide array of patristic authorities: Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job, the De vita contemplativa of Julianus Pomerius (d. c. 500), and the Admonitio ad filium spiritualium of Basil the Great (d. 379), along with significant references to the Old Testament Book of Psalms, several books of the prophets (particularly Isaiah), the New Testament Gospels (particularly Matthew and John), and the letters of St. Paul.40 Paulinus not only used these texts but also counted on his reader to understand them. Liber exhortationis is an erudite, philosophical tract for, we must presume, an erudite, philosophical man. It is only to be expected that, as such a man, Eric would seek out all the resources at his disposal in order to ensure his continued power and authority.41 Because this mirror (and the mirror of Alcuin, which I discuss in the following section) is frequently quoted without a great deal of regard to structural context, it will be important to pay special attention here to both structure and composition. Liber exhortationis seems to have been originally

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composed in the sixty-​­six small chapter sections that are preserved in its most recent published version, a scholarly edition from the early eighteenth century.42 Paulinus uses the word caritas and the phrase “love of God and neighbor” interchangeably throughout his text, and the phrase provides a loose structural frame for the book itself. Early chapters dwell on “love of God,” the theme introduced by the first capitulum. Lessons involve human nature and its relationship to divinity, followed by a long section excerpted directly from Julianus Pomerius concerning the secular world and its corrosive influences.43 Paulinus then expands upon the general themes of the Pomerius section, shifting the book t­oward “love of neighbor,” the theme introduced explicitly in capitulum 22. In this section of the book, he encourages Eric to cultivate virtutes animae, a phrase that we should certainly read in the modern sense of “the soul’s ‘virtues’ ” but also in its more explicitly gendered etymological sense, which would have been clear to any Latin speaker: “manly vigor of the soul.” Lessons about virtus cover a range of worldly behaviors, from confession, to prayer, to care of household, but they also address the states of mind and being that are conducive to salvation, such as humility and patience. Subsequent lessons expand more directly upon the meanings of salvation and redemption, describing both the reward to come for all who create good in this life and the sadness that all men must feel for the inevitable destruction of those souls who seek only evil. The work ends with a series of meditations on mala carnis—​­“evils of the flesh”—​­presented not as a condemnation of the secular world or of the body but rather as a warning for Eric always to be aware of the secular distractions that might keep him from maintaining focus on salvation and the heavenly otherworld. Reading with greater attention to structure allows us to see how effectively the text creates an image of secular Christian life that not only encourages Eric ­toward salvation but, more importantly, explains and naturalizes his power as an aristocratic male—​­a power that he and Paulinus equally share. In the service of this image, the book advances at least four interwoven ideological arguments. Paulinus argues that a man’s true power comes from his cultivation of correct knowledge—​­knowledge about who he truly is and about God’s loving nature. Paulinus argues that laymen and clergy are at essence the same; they have the same complementary duty, which is to protect and to care for souls through the cultivation of emotional bonds with others. He argues that the deeds that flow from “love of God and neighbor” are what earn a man access to his authority from God, expressing the relationship between the aristocracy and God as precisely the same type of relationship that earthly

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vassals have with their lords. And finally, he argues explicitly that worldly pleasures are empty and corrosive, but caritas and the emotional interconnection that it entails can keep worldly Christian men safely linked to the heavenly realm. This last argument does not advocate monastic withdrawal from the world. Quite the opposite, it renders normative and perfectly natural the ideological connections between worldly and divine authority upon which the Carolingian aristocracy relied in the exercise of their power.

An Ideology of Mind: “To Your Head, God Has Added the Grace of Spiritual Knowledge” The treatise begins with an exhortation that to love God and to cling to him with one’s entire will is the highest good and the greatest beatitude.44 Paulinus writes in the rhetorical style of the learned pastor, making clear the duty of laypeople to obey the clergy in matters of the Christian faith.45 Yet to think of Liber exhortationis as little more than a preacher’s sermonizing is to misread the text entirely. In the opening section and throughout the book, Paulinus addresses Eric as charissime frater (“dearest brother”)—​­a monastic address that levels authority and establishes an egalitarian tone.46 The exchange between author and reader evokes not hierarchy, in other words, but brotherhood. Paulinus acts as the doctor of souls that Gregory the Great described. He responds to a direct request for knowledge about the physics of moral behavior itself, and from his learned vantage, suspended between worlds, he passes on what he can more clearly see. None of what he teaches is new doctrine; all is quite standard theology. Paulinus simply explains to Eric how he, too, can achieve the traditional vantage of Gregory the Great’s pastoral leader and properly judge right and wrong behavior for himself.47 For Paulinus, understanding the love of God begins with a lesson in human biology. Eric’s interior homo (“interior man”) bears the image of its Builder, God; for inside the body the intellect, will, and memory all imitate the Holy Trinity.48 Still, wrote Paulinus, now alluding to the second half of caritas upon which he would expand later in the book, love of God is insufficient unless there is also work—​­action. “Understanding God alone is insufficient,” the Liber explains, “if our will is not made in his love; nay, even this does not suffice unless work is added along with memory and will.”49 Right action, just as Gregory the Great explained, depends on the cultivation of right knowledge. “To your person” (capiti—​­literally “to your head”), Paulinus’s biology lesson continues, God has added “the grace of spiritual knowledge, that it may

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illuminate your judgment and lead you t­oward eternal life.”50 Following the long exegetical tradition of original sin, Paulinus wrote later in his book that the “human race” (genus humanum) is damned because of the actions of its first parents. Adam and Eve’s sins were lust and pride, but importantly, their pride stemmed from their “damnable” neglect of the likeness of God in which they were made.51 Eric must always remember that he is not simply a count with secular duties of office and family; he is a “work of divine majesty,” formed in divine likeness. The metaphor of construction is invoked again and again throughout the text; the more Eric loves his Builder, says Paulinus, the more he will understand himself to be built by God.52

An Ideology of Equality: “Persona Has No Meaning in the House of God” After explaining to Eric his true nature, the remainder of the book expands on the emotional bonds that a man must strive to create in order to earn salvation. Paulinus taught that, because the inner self is far more important than the outer in the eyes of God, all persons, regardless of their rank or way of life, must follow the same rules and guidelines for living, which center on emotional interconnection with and care for other souls. Eric must develop feeling for all others, whether they are of his station or below. “I beg you,” Paulinus entreats him, “although a layman, be prompted to all work of God, kind to the poor and sick, consoler to the dying, compassionate to the miseries of all people, generous in alms, mindful of the widow’s two mites in the Gospel, and of the prophet saying, ‘Break your bread with those who are hungry,’ but on the other hand foreseeing discretion of alms, so that everyone, namely giver and receiver, might have solace.”53 The key term in the passage is quamvis: “although.”54 Although a layman, Eric must perform God’s work. Although not a priest, Eric must be kind to the sick and to those less fortunate than he. Although not a monk, he is to console the dying and to show compassion for the woes of others. The moral burden of God’s work, the passage claims, is shared equally by all Christians. Through comparative statements about relative duty, Paulinus placed particular emphasis in his book on the equality of professional religious and lay aristocratic men. Paulinus urges Eric at a later point in Liber exhortationis to command the members of his household and all those subject to him to live a life of sobriety while at the same time not taking too much pride in their abstinence. With God’s help, they are to do all things “temperately, justly, kindly, and religiously” because, Paulinus explains, Christ poured out his blood “not only for us clerics, but also for the whole human race, who are

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predestined for eternal life.”55 The Kingdom of Heaven was promised not only to “us” (by which, again, Paulinus refers to himself and his “professional” religious identity—​­that is to say, his identity as a man who has professed formal vows) but to all laypersons who serve God’s precepts “with their whole heart.”56 The message is for all, he says; no laypersons, clerics, or sacral virgins should neglect the salvation of their souls.57 Paulinus’s comparative diction directly calls into question what he perceives to be a prevalent assumption among laypersons—­namely, that the lay Christian life requires fundamentally different precepts for living. Without question, for Paulinus, it does not. At first, he pressures Eric to learn Christian doctrine. There is “great confusion among lay souls” who believe that “a clergyman . . . ​should do the things that a clergyman does” and who thus fail to appreciate the importance of learning their Christian duties. In order to share in the goods of the earth provided by God and the happiness of the Kingdom of Heaven, all must “carry the yoke of Christ with equal labor.”58 “What good is it,” he continues, “for there to be men exalted by such things on one side within the secular world [i.e., the side of bishops and priests], and made lowly on the other [i.e., the lay side]?”59 Equality among aristocratic worldly men is Paulinus’s main theme. “Let there be no worry about being a layperson,” he writes, “for persona” (literally, one’s “mask”) “has no meaning in the house of God.”60 Taken out of context, the thrust of such statements may seem to support Riché’s observation of an inferiority complex inflicted by a sanctimonious and strict clergy upon the Carolingian lay world. Within context, however, it becomes clear that Paulinus is simply making a claim for shared responsibility. Thereby, he actually elevates the status of the layman to equal authority with his professional Christian brethren. He uses the word “persona”—​­the ancient Roman word for the theatrical mask—​­inflecting his lesson with the notion that worldly distinctions are simply the roles that humans play in life. He invokes traditional Christian corporal metaphors and explains to Eric that the celestial kingdom is open to all men—​­just as much for laymen as for clerics and ­monastics—​­because all men are in Christ and Christ is in all men.61 Once again, the novelty of what Paulinus writes lies not in the rhetoric or the doctrine but rather in the fact that he extends and recasts tradition to make a specific argument for equal lay and clerical authority. He rhetorically asks Eric how one hand could be the enemy of the other, how one foot could hate the other. In the body of the Christian ecclesia, God is the head. Layman and cleric are both hands, both feet. Neither is subordinate to the other. They are equal parts of the same holy body.62 Paulinus neither assuages nor creates

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feelings of lay inferiority. He instead calls for all aristocratic men to recognize their common identity and duty. To this end, he employs further metaphors of cohesion and cooperation: a city that is fortified in one part but ruined in another is open to enemy attack, he says; even the strongest boat will still sink if a single plank of its wood has a hole.63 God calls upon “every layman, cleric, and monk equally,” he writes, to exhibit faith, hope, and caritas; to serve God with his whole heart; to make true confession and to do worthy penance.64 All men share these qualities and deeds together because worldly differences are indistinguishable in the divine gaze.

An Ideology of Affect: “Faith Is Our Capacity to Feel, and Caritas Is Our Health” For both laymen and the professional religious, therefore, the performance of God’s service in the form of good works constitutes the sole criterion for discipleship, and caritas is the binding force that drives these works. Indeed, Paulinus describes active good works as the primary manifestation of caritas, working in concert with faith and hope to complete the Christian soul. Paulinus tells Eric that “there are three things” compared to which “in this world there are no better: the soul of a spiritual man persevering in good works, which is more brilliant than the sun; the holy angels who take up that soul; and paradise, into which that soul is led.”65 This call to work runs throughout the Liber: “faith is our capacity to feel,” he explains, “and caritas is our health. Faith believes, caritas works, hope strengthens.”66 Yet again, this is a long and well-​­established tradition of Christian doctrine cast within a particularly Carolingian ideological frame. The good works of caritas described within the Liber include the primary duties of the Frankish aristocrat. True holiness for Paulinus rests in doing works of “justice” (iustitia), defined not in the classical sense of balance but instead in terms of discipleship and correct understanding of the divine order: doing what God wills and not doing what God prohibits.67 Paulinus urges Eric to obey the teachings of the clergy, but he also encourages him to read scripture for himself. The holy books are a direct message from God, he says, about what he expects from humanity: “God himself, our Lord, speaks to us through them, and shows us feeling (affectum) with his pius will.”68 This statement would be extraordinarily rare to find in later centuries of the Christian church, but in this Carolingian text, it demonstrates just how clearly each individual Christian was thought to have control over his (or her) connection with the divine.

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All men should read scripture for themselves because the pius will of God—​ h ­ ere used in the Augustinian sense not of “pious” but “infinitely loving”—​­is the primary exemplar for the depth of feeling that each and every human should show ­toward others.69 It is true, as readers of Liber exhortationis have previously noted, that Paulinus describes God’s direct message in terms that Eric, a warlord in the service of Charlemagne, would certainly have understood.70 If a mission comes from the king, Paulinus asks Eric rhetorically, “do we not then accept the letters, throwing our cares aside with readied will and with all devotion?” Certainly, since the “King of kings and Lord of lords” has seen fit to direct his letters (that is, scripture) to Eric and to the rest of humanity through his prophets and apostles, Eric should respond with all the more diligence to his divine command.71 This is not, however, a simplification of the message so as to make it palatable for a lay audience. Rather, it frames the enactment of caritas in terms of a metaphor that both Paulinus and Eric, as Frankish aristocrats, know well. Just as they are equally in their service of their earthly lord, they are equally servants of their heavenly king.

An Ideology of Inner Asceticism: “May the Sweetness of This World Not Separate Us in Any Way from the Love of Christ” Throughout its discussion, Paulinus’s text naturalizes the ideological authority of the ascetic male, presenting it as a given that need not even be explained. This “natural” authority of the ascetic does not, however, require all Christian men to be monks. Instead, just as in Gregory the Great’s Regulae pastoralis liber, it requires men of the world to perform their asceticism symbolically and to tether themselves to God through affective deeds of caritas. “Do not obscure your goodness through the malice of others,” Paulinus continues, “but as much as you have power, may you everywhere appear lovable before God and all people.”72 Paulinus serves as his own model for the emotional bond that caritas represents, following exactly from Gregory the Great’s ideology—​­his pastoral caritas for his flock is more than a simple expression of care; it is also the means by which, as a man of the secular world, he avoids worldly corruption. Paulinus explains how Eric, too, must embody caritas in order to separate himself from worldly influences. “I desire and entreat God with all the feeling (affectu) of my heart,” he says, “that you stretch ­toward what is preeminent, reach for the lofty crown of everlasting beatitude, and not allow the nobility of your soul to be altered from the love of Christ by either the counsel of friends or secular ambition.”73 This is not a

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condemnation of the secular world, describing it as incongruent with Eric’s position. It is traditional Gregorian ideology of worldly authority. The Christian leader must live within the boundaries of the secular world but learn to keep his mind firmly connected to the heavenly world beyond. Caritas—​­love of God and neighbor—​­is the key to worldly authority because emotional connection between souls is the form of world denial that all men can perform. “Let us have the love of God and of neighbor inside us,” Paulinus urges. From love of God and neighbor comes tranquility, he writes. Hatred brings only disaster and ruin.74 Paulinus demonstrates in his discussion the differences between the Christian man with caritas in his heart and the Christian who harbors hatred. Fusing the language of the Gospel with Stoic, Augustinian, and Gregorian interpretations, he explains that the “meek” and “kindly” man (mitis et benignus), even if he suffers evil, does not retaliate in the face of injury, while the “evil man” (inequus) takes offense at even the slightest word: “He who is filled with caritas walks with tranquil soul and most serene face.”75 The text describes the second component of caritas, love of neighbor, in terms of emotional interconnection and shared feeling. If Eric sees his neighbor turning good deeds, he is to rejoice with him (congratulare). If his neighbor suffers sadness, Eric must make that sadness his own.76 Returning to his recurring theme of the “interior man,” Paulinus explains this call for other-​ o­ riented emotional connection with a rousing call to inner manly vigor of the soul: spiritual virtus. “Virtus of your soul is to love God and to hate those things that God does not love,” he writes, invoking the artful repetition and rhetorical crescendo of the popular preacher.77 Virtus of your soul is to follow patience and to avoid all impatience. Virtus of your soul is to guard chastity, of body as well as soul. Virtus of your soul is to despise the vain glory of this world and to spurn all fallen things and to work for the love of him who redeemed you while you live in the body. Virtus of your soul is to strive for humility and to abhor pride. Virtus of your soul is to confine and to repress anger and fury. Virtus of your soul is to decline from all folly and to embrace divine wisdom. Virtus of your soul is to subordinate all love of the flesh and to raise your mind ­toward Christ. Therefore, you can easily and readily obtain these virtutes if you will yourself to avoid caring for secular things and fallen things and earthly matters, and if you place nothing before the love of Christ.78

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Virtus of the soul, in other words, involves that which keeps a man properly connected to the heavenly otherworld and protected from the dangers of the secular world and carnal will. Eric must demonstrate his inner connection with God through outward deeds t­ oward his fellow man. “God is not a hearer and inspector of words,” Paulinus tells Eric, referring to the Old Testament’s Book of Wisdom 1:6 and echoing Augustine’s language of the interior will, “but a hearer and inspector of the human heart.”79 For laymen just as for clergymen, Paulinus explains, virtus flows from making God one’s most prized possession: “If we desire to possess anything in this secular world, let us possess with unencumbered mind God, who possesses all things, and let us hold in him whatever we happily and in a holy manner desire.”80 Christ himself becomes the model for secular living. Paulinus tells Eric that he must attempt to walk in Christ’s footsteps according to the Gospel: “What is it to walk just as Christ walked except to despise the vanity and happiness of this secular world and not to fear adversities suffered in his name? . . . ​ May the sweetness of this wretched secular world not separate us in any way from the love of Christ, and let there not be namely the excuse of a wife or the influence of one’s children, nor more glut of gold and silver, love of possessions.”81 “Alas,” he exclaims in another passage, “how subtly does the ancient enemy trick us by deceiving us, and draw blindness over the eyes of our mind, lest we succeed in discerning between the joys of this secular world and the joys of the eternal kingdom!”82 Liber exhortationis fully and unabashedly espouses ascetic philosophy in these passages, borrowing heavily from works written expressly for monks. The secular is wretched (miserabilis); wives and children are mere baubles of distraction like any other trinket of gold or silver. Nevertheless, Paulinus is not calling for monastic withdrawal from secular life.83 He makes patently clear that God does not expect bodily renunciation from Eric. Instead, God wishes only that Eric effect a correct ordering of priorities—​­a right valuation of his heavenly goals above his secular pursuits. Achieving salvation is a matter not of indiscriminate renunciation but rather of education—​­of “discerning” (discernere) between secular and heavenly delights. As Paulinus explains, if Eric desires the promise of eternal life, he needs to guard the Lord’s precepts within himself against the world’s distractions. He must understand the limited value of friends and family, gold and silver, gems, bountiful vineyards, and farms—​ ­these are not necessarily evil, but they offer no protection for the soul.84 Paulinus even suggests that Eric strive to be “dead to sin and to the world”—​­a staggeringly ascetic demand when read out of context. Within

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context, however, it is clear that Paulinus is portraying a state of mind. Paulinus describes “being dead to sin” as a metaphor. The dead body, he says, does no harm. The dead man commits no robbery. He is violent ­toward no one. He blames no one without proof. He oppresses no one. He neither envies good people nor insults the bad. A soul that is dead to the world is never a slave to the luxuries of the flesh. He does not drink too much. He does not incite hatred in others. He does not glorify the rich and powerful.85 Conversely, living by the flesh in the secular world entails the opposite: indulging in pleasures, going where one wants, sleeping when one wants, speaking what one wants and to whomever one wants, seeking whatever pleases the senses, and taking delight in “beautiful clothing and cavalry and weapons” just as one wants. Being dead to the world, according to Paulinus, is to live by God’s will; to live carnally is to live by one’s own.86 Underlining further the correct prioritization of mental before physical renunciation of worldly things, the Liber reminds Eric that worldly joy is not in and of itself evil. Paulinus affirms that jubilation is quite acceptable as long one simply refrains from rejoicing in sin.87 God seeks only spiritual gifts from humans and nothing more, Paulinus teaches in another passage.88 “I beg you, my brother, that you never let the love of the flesh block celestial love from you,” he tells Eric.89 “Always, always,” Paulinus urges with rhetorical repetition in a later section, “let our flesh be subject to the soul like a handmaid to her mistress.”90 In other words, Eric must never allow illicit forces to command his body lest it commit war against his spirit, and the flesh must always be subject so that it can properly obey the orders of the Holy Spirit.91 But subjection of the flesh does not mean renunciation for Paulinus. When Paulinus does suggest physical asceticism to Eric, he always takes into account Eric’s situation within the world. He understands perfectly well, that is, that Eric does not live in the cloister and therefore cannot renounce his worldly life entirely. He must give to the less fortunate, but Paulinus also urges him do so with discretion, “so that everyone, namely giver and receiver, might have solace.”92 When Paulinus discusses the excesses of indulging in too much food, he appeals not so much to Eric’s inner spirituality as he does to his sense of health: “excessive dishes” hurt the body as well as the soul. Too much food and drink weaken the stomach. An abundance of blood and cholera leads to a number of “table diseases.” He encourages Eric to avoid delicacies and over-​ ­opulence of food—​­if not all the time, then as much as he can, and at the very least on days of fasting and atonement.93 Likewise, when Paulinus warns Eric to refrain from “superfluous speech,” he is not recommending monastic si-

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lence. Rather, he is reminding Eric that the tongue is meant to bless and to praise God and not to speak badly of anyone. “Let us not,” he says, “grow accustomed to our worst habits in our every act, or even thought, because a habit that has been greatly prolonged and affirmed is avoided and rejected with no small labor.”94 In his injunction against drinking too much, Paulinus declares that God gave wine to humanity “for the happiness of the heart, not for drunkenness.” Eric is to drink only as is dictated by “natural weakness,” but Paulinus does not ban drinking altogether; Eric must simply use alcohol for its positive medicinal effects and not assign to the soul’s ruin what God gave for bodily healing.95 Discussing Eric’s earthly parents, Paulinus explains that Eric’s devotion to God should always supersede his allegiance to his family, yet he does so through an appeal to the filial loyalties that he knows Eric will always have. “If we love our earthly parents, who sustained labor on our behalf for a short time, with so much feeling (affectu),” he writes, “should not our celestial Father, who was nailed to the cross for us, be loved all the more?”96 These are not specific injunctions or practices that Paulinus teaches Eric to follow so much as they are variations on the same ideological theme. Paulinus understands Eric’s worldly status completely, just as well as he understands his own worldly status. He makes no suggestion whatsoever that Eric should renounce the world, nor does Paulinus frame the conduct that he teaches as a “lesser evil.” Eric simply needs to conduct his worldly life with the proper priorities and an inner will oriented t­oward the right kind of manliness. In this, he and Eric are effectively partners, bound to the same earthly duty. The key to our unlocking of Liber exhortationis as a historical artifact is to recognize the ways in which, textually, the book does far more than simply present a pragmatic listing of Eric’s Christian obligations. It tells an ideological tale of who a Christian man is and whence his authority derives. At the end of the book, Paulinus vividly describes the drama of final judgment. It is a courtroom scene in which God weighs all of the evidence of a man’s life in order to make his decision. The chief prosecutor is the “Demon Accuser” who “will throw in our face whatever we have done, and on what day we have sinned, and in what place, and what good work we ought to have done then in that time.”97 If a man is guilty, the Demon Accuser will plead convincingly. Paulinus brings to life the demon’s voice and the speech that he will make before the divine judge: For then the devil will have to say, “Most Fair Judge, judge that man, who did not wish to be yours through grace, to be mine on account of

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his guilt. He is yours through nature; he is mine through misery. He is yours because of your Passion; he is mine because of my persuasion. He is disobedient to you; to me he is obedient. From you he received the stola of immortality; from me this tattered tunic in which he is clothed. He casted away your clothing; he arrived here in my clothing. What sexual perversion did he commit? What intemperance? What avarice? What anger? What pride? What of the rest of my parts? He sent you away; he sought refuge in me. . . . ​Judge that man to be mine and to be damned along with me!”98 The function of the scene is not to scare the reader with fire and brimstone. It is rhetorically so frightening precisely because of its procedural cool. The Accuser addresses God, the judge, in the respectful tone of the most well-​­trained legal scholar. His airtight arguments list sin after sin, error after neglectful error of obliviousness and disloyalty. All are unassailable. And most tragically, all could have been easily avoided. Structurally, the theater of this final moment makes perfect sense as a performed end to the guiding life narrative that the book lays forth. The narrative begins with human origins and concludes with the two possible outcomes of human existence: salvation and damnation. In salvation, the soul rejoices from at last reconciling with God and returning home. In damnation, the reader must hear the demon’s voice and feel the cold terror of him speaking not lies but hard and sad truths. Far from a simple manual of conduct, therefore, we can see just how fundamentally the text serves as an explanation of Eric’s humanity and what it specifically entails. It warns Eric to do everything within his power to avoid damnation but also provides him with the macroscopic view that will help him to do so—​­knowledge about who he is, where he is going, and how the secular world in which he lives compares to the heavenly world to which he truly belongs. This macroscopic view, the same view that Gregory the Great advocated for the Christian bishop, is where we must focus our interpretative energy when reading the text. Paulinus does not just describe traits and practices to which Eric should or should not adhere. He also narrates the philosophy of mind—​­ the correct orientation of the will through caritas—​­that enfranchises Eric’s power, his purpose, and his ultimate authority to lead those under his care to their own eventual salvation.

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Alcuin and Wido Alcuin refrained from writing for Eric of Friuli, advising him to turn instead to Paulinus. Yet in 799 or 800, the abbot of Marmoutier did write a lay mirror of his own for the march-​­lord closer-​­by, Count Wido of Brittany—​­the same post held by the tragic hero Roland, who may have been Wido’s close relative.99 Alcuin’s book, De virtutibus et vitiis, would become his most well-​ ­known work after his death, achieving significantly more popularity during the Middle Ages than anything else he wrote and certainly more than any of the other lay mirrors. The book would be translated into no fewer than four vernacular languages during the later Middle Ages and is extant today in more than 140 surviving manuscripts.100 The composition, brevity, and relative stylistic simplicity of De virtutibus et vitiis lend Alcuin’s book its own distinctive flavor when compared to Liber exhortationis. Unlike Paulinus’s text, Alcuin’s work contains an introductory address, clarifying both author and recipient. Even with this opening nuncupatoria, however, Alcuin’s book is shorter than Liber exhortationis by more than two thirds. Alcuin’s Latinity is also less ornate than Paulinus’s, favoring shorter syntactical constructions and far fewer extended displays of exegetical freeplay.101 His principle sources are different, too. Although he certainly drew on the same kinds of patristic authorities that Paulinus did (including, importantly, Gregory the Great), Alcuin seems to have favored more direct use of scripture: the Old Testament books of Psalms and Prophets and the New Testament Gospels (Matthew and John) and letters of St. Paul. Clearly influencing Alcuin as well was the work of Augustine and, perhaps but not necessarily through Augustine, Cicero.102 Finally, Alcuin’s work has a different structure and flow than Liber exhortationis. Divided into thirty-​­six short capitula, his book still begins with caritas as the guiding theme and ends on salvation, but De virtutibus et vitiis presents less of a narrative arc from creation to end of days and is rather focused more intently, as the title indicates, upon the explication of various aspects of virtus (which, once again, we should understand both in its modern sense of “virtue” and its gendered etymological sense of “manly vigor”) and their corresponding negative vices. Still, the term that Alcuin used to describe the contents of his book is precisely the one that Paulinus used—​­exhortatio. And just as with the relationship between Paulinus and Eric, Alcuin wrote for Wido as his spiritual advisor, not as a hierarchical superior. If we can take Alcuin at his word (we

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have no reason not to do so), Wido is neither a reluctant recipient nor stricken with feelings of inferiority. Alcuin states only that he wrote his book in response to Wido’s direct request for brief advice regarding his occupation as a warrior.103 These words have received many different interpretations in modern scholarship, leading some to wonder whether Wido would have been happy with what he received. The book does not truly discuss war much at all.104 To make sense of the text’s logic, we must picture more generously that Wido, like Eric, wished to know how to make his religion apply more directly to his secular duties. Alcuin’s reply, like Paulinus’s, was to teach the nature of worldly power itself—​­how Wido could perform his worldly duties in a manner that would grant him greater access to God’s protection and authority. The most important parallels between the two texts, therefore, involve their ideological themes and arguments, which are effectively the same. Alcuin argues that both spiritual and lay power derive from exactly the same source, caritas. He argues that caritas involves cultivating an emotional connection with both equals and subordinates and acting upon that emotional connection with good deeds. He therefore claims that laymen and clergy have equal power and duty within the secular world because they are engaged in the same duties ­toward their fellow Christians and the same fight against evil. Finally, he teaches that the emotional bonds created by caritas are what connect the Christian layman to the heavenly realm, allowing him to rise above the corruption of the secular world and to see it more clearly. Just as with Liber exhortationis, Alcuin’s book espouses quite traditional Christian ideologies of ascetic masculinity, yet it would be a mistake to interpret this as urging Wido to retire from the world. While Alcuin describes the imagined ideological link between caritas and ascetic authority, he also shows Wido how to access that authority while still living and working as a secular lord and military commander.

An Ideology of Power: “Neither Martyrdom nor Contempt of the Secular World . . . ​Could Accomplish Anything Without the Duty of Caritas” De virtutibus et vitiis begins with a discussion of true wisdom and the obscurity of worldly knowledge. Meditation on true wisdom—​­correct knowledge—​­so central to the moral philosophies of Augustine and Gregory the Great sets the tone for Alcuin’s book as a whole. Citing 1 Cor 3:19, Alcuin writes that what seems to be wisdom in the world is stultitia (“folly” or “stupidity”) in the eyes of God. To achieve perfect wisdom, one must achieve cognitio divinitatis.

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Translated woodenly, this means “recognition of divinity,” yet Alcuin’s use of the pregnant phrase suggests not only contemplation of God’s nature but also recognition of the divinity that exists within the manly self. “Cognitio divinitatis,” Alcuin continues, “is the virtus of good work, and the virtus of good work is the reward of eternal blessing.”105 All is intertwined and interconnected. As with Paulinus, nothing that Alcuin writes is theologically new per se, but he innovates by applying a traditional Gregorian ideology of spiritual authority to lay power. Caritas is Alcuin’s foundation for all service to God. Caritas is the first principle, he writes, because nothing pleases God without it.106 Caritas is so fundamental, in fact, that “neither martyrdom nor contempt of the secular world . . . ​could accomplish anything without the duty of caritas.”107 This is a remarkable statement to flow from the pen of an abbot. In claiming that the physical acts of the ascetic and martyr accomplish nothing without the foundation of caritas, Alcuin makes caritas the key component of ascetic authority. This, in turn, allows him to build further ideological connections between caritas and Wido’s comital authority. Alcuin defines caritas as loving God and neighbor with complete conviction. It is the great leveler, the glue that binds Christian society together into one unified whole. “If by chance anyone asks what a neighbor is,” Alcuin writes, “let him know that every Christian is rightly called neighbor, because all are sanctified in the baptism of the son of God, so that we are brothers spiritually in perfect caritas.”108 To our modern eyes, Alcuin’s exclusion of non-​­Christians in his definition is distasteful at best. Yet the thrust of the passage is not so much to advocate Christian exclusivity as it is to teach a philosophy of aristocratic inclusivity. By claiming that all Christians are spiritual brothers in caritas, he is explaining to Wido that all men, highborn or low, lay or clergy, are part of the same harmonious community. “Our spiritual family is nobler than the fleshly one,” he adds in support.109 His words seek not to enforce boundaries between Christian and non-​­Christian but rather to perforate fixed boundaries of familial identity and partisanship. From this discussion, Alcuin moves ­toward a methodical explication of the manly qualities—​­the virtutes—​­that lead directly from caritas. Hope for salvation compels men ­toward good works. Good works lead to peacemaking. Peacemaking leads to just and righteous judgment. Alcuin’s emphasis on peacemaking and judicial justice has led interpreters to claim that his text perhaps pays more attention to the duties of a secular lord than the mirror of Paulinus.110 Reading these sections in the context of the entire book’s

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structure, however, suggests more that Alcuin was simply interested in outlining a standard hierarchy of qualities that descend from the love of God. Caritas is his integrating precept, and in the secular world, caritas manifests in emotional connection with others, both superiors and inferiors, and the performance of caring, loving deeds.

An Ideology of Secular Ascetic Sacrifice: “We Can Be Martyrs Without Sword and Flames If We Observe Patience with Our Neighbors Honestly in Our Soul” The virtus that was to be of particular use to Wido in performing love of God and neighbor was misericordia, or mercy.111 Carolingian writers did not make the same semantic distinctions as the Stoics between clementia and misericordia.112 However, Alcuin certainly knew Augustine’s discussions in De civitate dei and very likely read Seneca’s De clementia as well.113 Alcuin mirrors Augustine’s discussion of “an eye for an eye” in that he presents mercy as the first step on a path that leads to an inner disposition of truly unmitigated love and emotional connection with the other.114 Just as Seneca had written about clementia, Alcuin had no illusions that in the secular world, mercy must work in tandem with penalty. If there is only mercy, his text explains, it gives subjects license to sin, but if there is always only discipline, the soul is turned t­oward delinquency out of despair.115 “Everyone who judges properly holds the scales in hand,” he writes in a later passage on the role of the secular judge; “in another sense, he holds justice and mercy, so that for justice he returns sentence for sins and for mercy he tempers the penalty for the sinner.”116 Misericordia, therefore, helps the Christian lord achieve justice—​­balance and fairness—​­in his governing duties. This is of vital importance, Alcuin argues, because “the people are battered almost more severely by wicked judges than they are by the cruelest enemies. No robber among strangers is as greedy as an unfair judge among his own. Unfair judges are worse than enemies. Enemies can often be escaped by flight; judges cannot be avoided because of their power.”117 Still, the higher purpose of misericordia for Alcuin is that it helps the judge to receive mercy from God in final judgment. “No sinner can hope for mercy from God,” Alcuin writes, “who does not himself exercise mercy t­ oward the sinners among him.”118 Alcuin moves Wido quickly from a discussion of public caritas in the form of balanced mercy and justice to a discussion of private, interpersonal connections of affect through the virtutes of patience and tolerance. A judge who does not balance mercy and discipline will not

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merit the mercy of God, “but,” Alcuin continues, “a man ought to begin this mercy with himself.”119 Flipping Stoic clementia on its head, mercy becomes not about indulging criminality or reducing penalty for others. It involves the regulation of the self, making right decisions in the first place and avoiding the need for penance or restitution altogether. “How can he who is cruel to himself be merciful to others?” Alcuin argues.120 Through rhetorical repetition of the word “himself ” (“seipso . . . ​seipso . . . ​seipso”), he narrows the focus of his lesson from judicial acts of mercy to the person of the individual Christian lord: “He who prepares for himself perpetual flames with his sins is cruel to himself. He who begins with himself, and diligently guards himself lest he be punished along with the devil, is truly merciful. And thus he may offer to others what he observes to be good for himself.”121 Wido exercises mercy upon himself by refusing to sin and to invite damnation. And this is precisely what gives him his authority, because it proves that he understands the good well enough to bestow it upon others. As Alcuin’s focus continues to narrow, the sections that follow his discussion of misericordia begin to address more personal issues as well. Alcuin explains that the merciful act of pardon (indulgentia) is important not just in the public forum but also in personal relationships: “He who knows how to pardon sins with clementia receives the clementia of divine pietas in return. For it is granted to us so that we may grant it to those who harm us with whatever malice.”122 Pardon, in turn, leads to patience (patientia) in the face of personal injury. This, according to Alcuin, is the virtus that completes mercy for it ends injury. He is careful to explain that patience is not the art of lying in wait for the next opportunity for revenge. True patience involves pardoning from the heart, with no intention of later retaliation or vengeance. True patience, the passage suggests, will provide Wido with the facility to pardon others their transgressions against him. Yet patience also leads to something even greater. It is better to deflect injury with silence than with a response, Alcuin writes. What is best, in other words, is to make no judgment at all and to endure without retaliation or penalty. “We can be martyrs without sword and flames,” Alcuin’s text proclaims triumphantly, “if we observe patience with our neighbors honestly in our soul. It is more praiseworthy to deflect injury by being silent than to overcome it by responding. He who patiently tolerates evil will deserve the everlasting crown in the future.”123 It has been suggested that Alcuin’s “martyrs without sword or flame” is nothing more than cynically grandiose and hyperbolic.124 I am not persuaded by this reading. Alcuin would have understood completely the implications of

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his words. The gravity of his diction conveys not grandiosity, not naivety, not guilelessness or concession to “secular” laxity but rather the force of Alcuin’s ideological claim. Caritas links to asceticism in a series of logical steps that move from peacemaking to mercy to pardon to patience and, finally, to complete acceptance and nonretaliation. Followed to its end, caritas offers the worldly man the same prestige and divine authority as the martyrs of old.

An Ideology of Merit: “Each Will Be Crowned in Perpetual Glory According to the Merit of Good Work” Because caritas is the source of all Christian power and authority, Alcuin argues that laymen and clergy are both called equally to the same dedication to God’s service and to the protection of his chosen people. Salvation is the common goal of all humanity, and thus it is the duty of society’s leaders to guide those over whom they rule ­toward that goal. “Let not the nature of your lay habit or of your secular association frighten you,” he tells the count, “as though in this garb you will not be able to enter the gateway of celestial life. For just as the blessedness of the kingdom of God is preached to all equally, so is the entrance to the kingdom of God open to all sexes, ages, and persons equally according to the worthiness of their merits. For there, there is not the distinction which there is in the secular world between layman and cleric, rich man and poor man, young man and old, slave and master. Rather, each will be crowned in perpetual glory according to the merit of their good work.”125 Alcuin’s inflection is slightly different from the passages of Liber exhortationis in which Paulinus makes similar claims for shared duty. Rather than rhetorically suggesting that there are certain laymen who believe that they are not called to the same service as their priestly brethren, Alcuin focuses more strongly on the relationship between human souls and the divine. In this, Alcuin echoes more closely Paulinus’s argument that persona is meaningless in the eyes of God.126 Heaven is a meritocracy within Alcuin’s theology. All souls are judged on precisely the same basis: the worthiness of the deeds that they performed in life. As with the corresponding passages about human equality in Liber exhortationis, our interpretation should not be that Alcuin is only reassuring an anxious Wido that he, too, has access to heaven. Far more than this, Alcuin is making a call for equality and shared service—​­“all sexes, ages, and persons,” “layman or cleric, rich man or poor.” Such worldly distinctions matter not at all in the economy of salvation. God only sees good work and all souls are called to that work.

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An Ideology of Manliness: “Virtus Is Clothing for the Soul” Of particular interest in Alcuin’s statement of equality and shared service is his inclusion of male and female gender as part of his list of worldly distinctions that have no bearing upon God’s ultimate judgment of the soul and the merit of good works. In part, this seems to support modern arguments that the Carolingians judged both men and women according to a single scale of Galenic gender, recognizing difference between male and female bodies but defining the latter as a derivative subcategory of the former.127 We can interpret Alcuin’s use of terms here in this context, perhaps, yet I think that his particular inflection gestures ­toward a different end. Alcuin’s words suggest, at least rhetorically, not that the female is subordinate to and lesser than the male but rather that in his worldview, gender itself was an accidental rather than essential quality of the human. Like Paulinus’s “virtus of the soul,” the virtus that Alcuin teaches is neither innately male nor female; rather, it must be taught, learned, and performed. Reflecting further on the thought with which De virtutibus et vitiis begins, Alcuin teaches that good works can flow only through proper knowledge of the nature of the world and its effects on the human soul—​­a knowledge to which all humans potentially have access. Understanding the nature of the world not only allows human beings to guard against its potential harms but also teaches them how to transcend the world and to connect with the heavenly realm. In this way, Alcuin does not simply set forth rules of behavior for Wido to follow blindly. Instead, he teaches that ritual bodily deprivations and renunciations are means to pragmatic ends. Alcuin advises fasting “in alms and prayer” because, through these, “the spiritual man . . . ​is conjoined with the angels and connects freely with God.”128 Alcuin tells Wido that abstaining from excessive food and drink reveals celestial mysteries to the human soul: “Unclean spirits insert themselves among confidants in the places where they see carousing and drunkenness being exercised.”129 In a passage on chastity, Alcuin follows traditional Christian ascetic ideology in which bodily chastity holds the highest distinction: he writes that the chaste modesty of youth, by which he seems to refer not just to young age but also to adolescent childhood, is beautiful, lovable to God, and useful ­toward every good. He who lives in chastity, says Alcuin, has “an angelic way of life on earth.”130 And just as with alms and prayer, Alcuin describes the virtus of chastity as a link between the secular and heavenly worlds: “chastity connects a man to heaven and makes him a fellow-​­citizen with the angels.”131 Still, Alcuin has no

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illusions about Wido’s sexual life. As a married person with a “legitimate wife,” Wido must “legitimately use her at suitable times in order to merit from God the blessing of sons.”132 His chastity is simply a means of attuning his will ­toward heaven. What God ultimately wants, Alcuin teaches, is consistency—​­perseverance in what is good throughout the duration of a man’s life. One must carry out good works to the end of one’s days.133 Alcuin’s ultimate definition of virtus, therefore, like that of Paulinus, extends from his definition of the world. Virtus, once again, is not just a list of strict rules to follow but rather a higher knowledge of the basic principles that determine what to avoid and what to nourish. “Virtus,” teaches Alcuin, “is clothing for the soul—​­nature’s glory, life’s reason, the pietas of morals, divine splendor, human honor, and the reward of eternal blessedness.”134 It protects the soul against the harsh elements endured through life. Like Paulinus, Alcuin is very clear that he does not expect laymen to withdraw fully from the world. He simply advises Wido to be aware of the dangers that the world poses to his soul and to act with proper precaution. Thus, for Alcuin, as for Paulinus, the world is dangerous but never “evil” in and of itself. It is the neutral battleground on which good and evil fight for souls. Caritas is both Wido’s prize and his weapon. If you commit fraud, the text states, “you have lost better riches [than any gold or silver]: faith, justice, and love of God and neighbor.”135 “Envy is the enemy of all things good,” it says in another passage; “Where there is envy there can be no caritas. And where there is no caritas, there can be no good whatsoever.”136 If a man is proud in performing his good works, “he loses through pride what he gains through caritas.”137 In explication of avarice, the text presents a long list of crimes that lead from greedy sensibilities; “these are incompatible,” Alcuin writes, “with misericordia, alms for the poor, and all pietas for the downtrodden. They are conquered through fear of God, and through fraternal caritas.”138 “Whatever good a man does,” Wido learns, “let him do it for love of God and for the salvation of his soul and for fraternal caritas.”139 Alcuin ended his book with the same style of dramatic and vivid narrative imagery that Paulinus had used to end his own. Instead of a formidable “Demon Accuser,” however, Alcuin’s text depicts psychomachia on an epic scale. The “four most glorious dukes of the Christian religion,” namely the four Stoic virtues of the classical Roman world—​­prudence, justice, strength, and temperance—​­wage battle against the “warriors of diabolic evil.”140 These eight “dukes of evil” and their armies are “the strongest warriors of diabolic

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fraud against the human race.”141 Formidable as they may be, they are still no match for the “warriors of Christ,” whom God helps to win easily through the holy virtutes: one by one, each evil duke—​­pride, gluttony, fornication, greed, anger, sloth, sadness, and vainglory—​­falls to the strength of humility, abstinence, chastity, patience, the pursuit of good work, spiritual joy, and finally, the caritas of God himself.142 Ultimately, concludes Alcuin, there can be no better wisdom for the man living in the secular world than the love of God. It leads him to know and to fear God “according to the little measure of the human mind” and to believe in future judgment.143 God, Alcuin writes, is eternal, invoking an ancient category of the divine. The nature of the secular world is change, flux, and effervescence. Is it not better, he asks rhetorically, to love an eternal God over the ephemeral material of the world? The man who merits the eternal glory of fellowship with the angels of God is the man who loves and honors God tirelessly, Alcuin explains. This man embraces what is permanent and lets go what is transient.144 For Alcuin, just as for Paulinus, correct spiritual advice for the lay aristocrat was not a listing of acts to perform, strategies for governance and warfare, or traits to embody in the performance of devotion. The correct advice involved instead a narrative explanation of what human beings actually are, of the relationships that they have to each other, and of the obligations that they collectively share in the service of their God. Most of all, it involved teaching the qualities of mind that a man needed to cultivate in order to perform caritas and earn salvation and God’s favor. As with Eric of Friuli, Wido was taught to endeavor throughout his life against sin. But the lesson came in the form of a macroscopic view, an explanation of the world and its workings designed to give Wido the proper knowledge to make correct choices on his own and thus the authority to lead. Alcuin’s De virtutibus et vitiis may be less philosophically and linguistically complex than Paulinus’s Liber, but just like Paulinus’s work, it narrates a philosophy of mind that enfranchises the combined power of Frankish lay and “professional” religious aristocratic men and makes that harmonious fusion of power seem logical and natural.

Conclusion Around the year 820, Bishop Jonas of Orléans (d. 843 or 844) wrote another treatise about the ideal lay Christian life in response to the petition of another

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lay warlord, this time the lord of the southwestern imperial frontier, Count Matfrid of Orléans (d. 836).145 Historians have traditionally regarded Jonas’s De institutione laicali, as it was called, as a third Carolingian “mirror” text written specifically for the lay, nonroyal aristocracy. Jonas was familiar with the works of both Paulinus and Alcuin on the subject. And although his work is significantly longer and more exegetically detailed than either of the earlier mirrors, Jonas most certainly tailored his De institutione laicali to resemble the works of his predecessors in form and in style.146 Jonas asserts the same doctrine that allowed secular Christians access to the privileged authority of the ascetic male through the merits of their deeds.147 Jonas articulates the same ideology of aristocratic power and shared aristocratic obligation in God’s service: “The law of Christ,” he says, “is attributed by the Lord not specially to clerics, but is to be observed generally by all the faithful.”148 Key differences, however, between Jonas’s text and the earlier mirrors signal that Jonas’s worldview was not the same as those of either Paulinus or Alcuin. Jonas still argues for the centrality of caritas as the component of masculinity that connects a Carolingian lord to the authority of God, but Jonas does so with even greater fervor. He defines the ideal more strongly as not just love of God and neighbor but love of God more than the self and love of neighbor just as much as the self. Jonas also emphasizes in explicit, rather than simply implied, language that caritas involves love for one’s enemy—​­a key distinction, he explains, between New Testament and Old Testament law.149 Historians have frequently noted the most obvious difference of De institutione laicali—​­namely, that it pays far more attention than the earlier mirrors to the categories and attributes that render the lay way of life distinct, particularly marriage.150 Jonas also draws much clearer lines between ascetics and secular Christians. Like the earlier mirror authors, Jonas was careful to articulate that God decreed his law for all Christians, not just clergy. Yet in his text, he adds a clarification: “Although in the Gospel there are certain special precepts which are only appropriate for despisers of the world and emulators of the apostles; the rest are decreed indiscriminately without pretext to all the faithful, each of course according to the order by which one vows to serve God.”151 Ascetics—​­contemptores mundi et apostolorum sectatores—​­follow separate rules of living that do not apply to secular Christian laymen and priests. None of these distinctions between Christian male types was new doctrine, nor are they even completely absent in the earlier mirrors. What is most significant is that neither Paulinus nor Alcuin felt it necessary to make such distinctions so explicitly clear. Jonas advances the same ideological arguments

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that Paulinus and Alcuin did, but his inflection has shifted. Where Paulinus and Alcuin intoned their exhortationes with an unimpeachable enthusiasm and optimism, one detects in Jonas’s text the unmistakable hints of pessimism. Jonas urges Matfrid never to emulate those laypeople who falsely believe that the precepts of God pertain only to clerics and not to them. Again, Paulinus and Alcuin both conveyed the same message. Instead of framing the issue as a matter of “confusion” about whether there are separate precepts for laity and clergy, however, as Paulinus and Alcuin did, Jonas frames the issue as a problem of negligence. There are many laymen who manage to understand their Christian duties and to perform them as diligently as they are able, says Jonas, rhetorically explaining that this is not simple confusion or miseducation. The problem is that some know their calling and choose not to live by it; others falsely believe that they can glorify themselves with the name of Christ and be saved by this simple profession of faith alone.152 Jonas’s wording changes the orientation of the message from pastoral teaching to pastoral reprimand. Jonas also speaks in De institutione laicali of clergy and laity who participate in mutual negligence, something that the earlier mirrors do not address. There are many laymen, he explains, who revere members of the priesthood based solely on their power and wealth, not their ministries. These laymen show disrespect to poorer members of the clergy and to priests who have renounced their worldly riches—​­not inviting them to their table as equals but instead compelling them into service, making them administrators and overseers of their properties as if they were laypersons. They only want to be seen to have their own priests in name, Jonas rails, not to have proper intercessors among them. This is not only reprehensible and dishonest but also dangerous, he warns—​­a serious problem of aristocratic negligence for which both laymen and clergy must be held accountable.153 It is possible that the change in tone of Jonas’s mirror reflects an actual change of imperial circumstance in 820—​­the emergence of new abuses that Paulinus and Alcuin never saw the need to rebuke. Jonas’s world had indeed changed significantly from the one that Paulinus and Alcuin knew. Charlemagne had died in 814, leaving the entirety of his domain to his son, Louis “the Pious.” Conflict and insurrection, which would plague Louis for the entirety of his reign, had already boiled over in 817. As I take up in further detail in the next chapter, however, I think it far more likely that it was not so much aristocratic behavior that had changed but rather the worldview of the Carolingian episcopacy with regard to the

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aristocracy’s social position.154 I think, that is, that Jonas was seeing old, quite common practices in a new and unflattering light. Where Paulinus’s and Alcuin’s mirrors conveyed great faith and hope in the cooperative capacities of the aristocracy, Jonas’s mirror suggests a more critical point of view. Jonas was not teaching the ideology of aristocratic authority that Paulinus and Alcuin articulated in their texts. He was enforcing it. For Jonas, the problem was not that the aristocracy failed to understand its divine obligations; it was that certain of its members, both clergy and laity, knew their obligations quite well but were ignoring them.

Chapter 3

Louis the Pious and the Manliness of Forgiving

The envious could find only one fault to which he had succumbed: he was too merciful. With the apostle, however, we ought to say this: “Forgive him this fault!” —​­Astronomer, Vita Hludowici imperatoris prologus

The moral questioning suggested by Jonas of Orléans’s mirror matches a more widespread change that began to take shape within Carolingian aristocratic culture during the years of Louis the Pious. Louis would live for the duration of his life under the looming weight of his charismatic father’s shadow. Yet the difficulties of maintaining the empire that his father had built would lead him to wield his power and to claim his imperial authority in a very different way. He would portray himself as a particularly literal embodiment of the ideal of secular masculinity that the mirrors espoused. It was a style of leadership that reflected the increasingly radicalized moral environment that would gradually eclipse and engulf his political world. After the first decade of the ninth century, the aristocracy would focus its critical gaze more and more inwardly upon itself and find certain of its members wanting. While all aristocratic men would continue to bear the moral burden of acquiring and maintaining divine authority for the Frankish people, the yoke would fall heaviest upon the shoulders of the two figures at the top of the ideological hierarchies that defined otherworldly and worldly masculine power: the figure of the monk and the figure of the emperor himself.1 Recent studies by Mayke de Jong and Courtney Booker have illuminated the central role that Christian ideologies of salvation and penance played

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during the turbulent reign of Charlemagne’s heir. De Jong’s The Penitential State (2009) frames Ludovican politics as an ideological battle for an ever-​ s­hifting moral high ground, waged through the rhetoric of sin and the discourses of sacral kingship and pastoral rule.2 Booker’s Past Convictions (2009) draws our attention to this same ideological battle but from a different perspective, showing us the ways in which the constructed moralism of contemporary narrations of events has governed and effectively ensnared our historical interpretations of Louis the Pious ever since.3 Both de Jong and Booker have explained the logic of the early ninth-​­century political world by drawing direct attention to the common narratives and discourses of power that Louis the Pious and his aristocracy shared. The political history of the 820s and 830s unfolded as it did, in other words, because all of the political actors, allies and enemies alike, invested equally in the same conceptions and definitions of moral authority. My discussion in this chapter serves, on one hand, to underline with even more indelible ink the usefulness of de Jong and Booker’s interpretations for our comprehension of the unique character and tenor of early ninth-​­century Frankish political history. On the other hand, however, I seek to expand our view and to draw more careful attention to the ways in which Louis the Pious served not only as the touchstone for contemporary debates about kingship, justice, and equity but also, more fundamentally, as a focus for debates about the nature of male authority itself. Focusing in particular on the Astronomer’s Vita Hludowici imperatoris—​­a biographical portrait of Louis written most likely during the months of political, social, and cultural anarchy that followed the emperor’s death—​­I describe how the Astronomer constructed Louis as an avatar of empathetic masculinity as a means of demonstrating his imperial authority, even in defeat. For the Astronomer, Louis’s remarkable capacity to feel for his enemies and to forgive, not the strength of his sword-​ ­arm, made him deserving of his throne and kept his empire intact. Louis served the Astronomer as a model of ideal kingship but even more as a model of ideal manliness around whom the divided Carolingian aristocracy could potentially imagine themselves in unity, collectively rally, and cooperatively avoid impending civil unrest.

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From Prophylaxis to Penitence The Carolingian world that Louis the Pious inherited had changed considerably since his father’s pronouncement of Admonitio generalis in 789. This change seems to have accelerated during the final decade of Charlemagne’s reign, which saw a significant upsurge in the frequency and volume of chancery material generated by his court.4 Depending on one’s definition of the genre, we have twenty-​­five or so capitularies that date from before the year 802. From after 802, we have nearly eighty.5 The increase seems to have followed directly on the heels of a major royal conference that Charlemagne convened in 802, which produced a wide-​­ranging administrative capitulary document rivaled in legislative ambition and scope only by Admonitio generalis itself.6 In some ways, the Capitulary of 802 represents a call for New Testament– based moral rectitude quite similar to Admonitio generalis. In tone, however, it smacks of a very different energy. In 789, Charlemagne’s court had framed correctio rhetorically through the image of the Old Testament King Josiah, exhorting the faithful to help Charlemagne in his efforts to gather “erring sheep” back into the common fold.7 The rhetoric of the Capitulary of 802 is not nearly so pastoral. It directs its concerns far less t­ oward the reimagination of Frankish society than it does ­toward the regulation and reinforcement of Charlemagne’s royal authority.8 As Carolingian scholars frequently note, the Capitulary of 802 contains striking expansions to the loyalty oaths that Charlemagne demanded from his subjects.9 And as Rosamond McKitterick has further argued, the Capitulary of 802 and the majority of the capitularies that Charlemagne’s court issued thereafter are most directly concerned with the administration of Charlemagne’s imperial agents—​­the missi dominici—​­who conducted business throughout the realm on the emperor’s behalf.10 Charlemagne sought not only to define the authority of his missi more clearly but also to extend it. McKitterick ultimately plays down the significance of the proliferation of capitulary evidence after 802. Even so, her arguments still generally support the assessments of Janet Nelson and others, who have argued that we must interpret the higher volume of capitulary legislation if not as a dramatic evolution of governance then at the very least as a sign of new Carolingian royal behavior.11 Ganshof believed that the Capitulary of 802 and the flurry of imperial activity thereafter signal Charlemagne’s waning power—​­progressively desperate attempts

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at the end of his life to maintain dominion over a vast empire that he was increasingly unable to control.12 Nelson, conversely, has argued the opposite—​­that more activity indicates higher motivation on the part of Charlemagne himself, greater vigor, greater efficiency of rule, and a greater sense of his power to enforce his will among his aristocracy. His establishment of a static capital at Aachen (until the mid-​­790s, Charlemagne’s court had been itinerant), his new station in the world as Holy Roman Emperor (a title that he acquired from the pope in 800), and perhaps indeed his advancing age may have encouraged Charlemagne to govern less by personal presence and more by correspondence and proxy. As Nelson sharply quips, “It takes a certain willfulness, surely, to read this as evidence of Charlemagne’s failure.”13 From the perspective of the ideological history that I have explored thus far, I believe that our assessment of Charlemagne’s final decade should probably fall somewhere in the middle of these two interpretative extremes. I wholeheartedly agree with Nelson that the evidence seems to show if not an increase in Charlemagne’s power and will to govern then certainly not a decrease either. And I agree, furthermore, that it suggests that his belief in his own authority and capacity to demand real social change was still quite robust. If in Admonitio generalis he juxtaposed himself (he was careful not to equate himself ) with Josiah, he seems only to have taken his role as lawgiver more seriously at the end of his reign. Still, I cannot help but also see, within the apparent shift of royal activity after 802, a change in how Charlemagne projected his relationship with his God. In 789, Charlemagne had looked to the future far more than he looked to his past. He claimed to make his calls for aristocratic correctio out of a sense of thankfulness for the prosperity that the Franks continued to enjoy and with a proactive eye t­oward the procurement of further divine favor for himself and his people in the years to come. At the end of his reign, the majority of his decrees suggest more reactive concerns. Perhaps it is not surprising that an aging ruler would look backward upon his life more than forward into the future, yet still Charlemagne’s worries seem to have been less nostalgic than trepidatious. Charlemagne’s final years saw new hardships that he had not experienced before. There was a resurgence of trouble on the Saxon border that he could never fully quell. A great famine ravaged his empire in 805. And within an eighteen-​­ month period during 810 and 811, Charlemagne lost a favorite daughter and his two eldest sons to illness and stroke—​­deaths that, according to Einhard, took an enormous emotional toll.14 If in 789 Charlemagne worried about appeasing his God, then it is difficult for me to believe that these

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personal and imperial adversities would not have led him to wonder even more anxiously whether his former efforts ­toward spiritual prophylaxis had failed. Regardless of the motivations, however, the evidence indeed seems to indicate a distinct reorientation of his governing strategy—​­­toward not just protecting himself and his progeny in the future but also ­toward securing his authority in the present and atoning for the failures of his past. His goals seem to have turned, that is, from prophylaxis to penance. Here I break from de Jong, who reads penitential anxieties throughout the entirety of Charlemagne’s rule, citing his care to conduct ritual ceremonies of appeasement during his military campaigns.15 I distinguish, in other words, behaviors specifically designed to win divine favor in the future from behaviors designed to atone for sins of the past. The years in which Charlemagne lost his three children may be the most telling in this regard. In 810, he called for three separate empire-​­wide, three-​ ­day penitential fasts, during which he asked his aristocracy to reflect and to pray that God might reveal to them how “our way of life ought to be improved.”16 Four years earlier, in the midst of the great famine of 805, the Frankish leader had also ordered a trio of three-​­day fasts during the winter months of December, February, and March, in hopes that God might grant mercy and end the crop failure. Charlemagne suggested in his decree for the fasts that year that, surely, the outward tribulations that the Frankish people were now suffering were due to inward transgressions. Penance was the only means by which the Franks might once again return to prosperity and a state of unity with God.17 In the sense that these fasts bespeak complete belief in the intimate link between aristocratic behavior and the well-​­being of society, they are amplified projections of the ideology of male power upon which the Carolingians constructed their collective identity. This ideology had driven Admonitio generalis, the lay mirrors, and the Carolingian program of social renovatio as a whole. Nevertheless, I believe that the fasts mostly represent the Carolingian aristocracy experiencing the costs of that ideology rather than its benefits. The same definitions of male authority that naturalized their power had also naturalized their collective responsibility for worldly hardship. When events turned afoul, they could only look to their own behavior for answers. We know about the penitential fasts in 810 in large part from two closely related capitulary documents, which represent either successive drafts or alternate versions of a preliminary agenda for a council that Charlemagne convened in 811.18 The agendas suggest that Charlemagne commanded the fasts as a kind of penitential “research project” in preparation for the council itself,

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where attendees would then put their prayers for revelation about improvement into action.19 Charlemagne rhetorically addresses those convened for the council as a single collective, including himself as a member of that collective by means of the first person plural. Yet the documents also show rather explicitly that Charlemagne separated those in attendance into three identity groups—​­bishops, counts, abbots—​­indicating that such individuation may have been unnatural for royal councils of this kind (which is precisely what we should expect from the ideologies of Admonitio generalis and the mirrors).20 According to the agendas for the 811 council, Charlemagne’s primary issue of concern was that the aristocracy were not cooperating with one another. McKitterick attributes his anxiety to new frictions that had developed from regulations for the missi after 802, which dictated specifically that aristocrats serving in this function would be paired together, one layman and one cleric.21 Janet Nelson has argued more simply that Charlemagne was angry about corruption, especially episcopal corruption, and sought once and for all to root it out.22 Nelson’s playful observation that the 811 documents suggest a mix “between Quaker meeting and quality inspection” does indeed capture their spirit.23 And I further agree with her assessment that the diction of the documents is peculiarly (and fascinatingly) personal, seeming to reflect Charlemagne’s own voice and moreover to convey a tone of, as she suggests, “wrathful irony.”24 I might even add exasperation as an appropriate descriptor. Most certainly, Charlemagne expresses irritation with aristocratic, particularly episcopal, abuses of power. According to the document, his aristocrats are neglecting to come to each other’s aid when needed; they are illegally seizing property; they are harboring each other’s escaped slaves.25 Laymen and clergymen are confusing and encroaching upon their respective jurisdictions.26 Bishops are greedily collecting alms and land donations for their personal gain, resorting even to fraud and trickery—​­a practice that in turn is encouraging laymen, now bereft of their inheritances, to engage in brigandage in order to maintain their lifestyles.27 “We must take a hard look,” the agenda states (nobis despiciendum est), “at whether we are truly Christian.”28 The rhetorical pessimism of the Latin is difficult to render in English, but somewhat loosely translated, he continues by answering his own question: “We can learn the answer quite easily through inspection of our lives and our morals, if (only) we would be willing to discuss our way of life scrupulously and openly.”29 While corruption is certainly a concern, interpreting this as the main focus of his dismay does not fully capture either the extent of Charlemagne’s consternation or the primary goal that his questions reveal in full context. His

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inquiries suggest that he considers corruption to be the symptom rather than the cause of a far more insidious problem of general aristocratic moral deficiency. The source of Frankish problems, that is, lies deeper than simple corruption. It is a matter of confusion about identity and an unwillingness to self-​­reflect. He frames his concerns, however acerbically, not as commands for correction but as matters requiring counsel and discussion. And it is also important that he implicates himself along with the rest of the aristocracy through his use of the first person plural. Thirty-​­seven years into his reign, he finds himself searching once again for answers to the simplest yet profoundest of questions: who are we and what does our God expect from us? To these plain questions, he seeks plain answers. On the issue of jurisdiction: How far can bishops extend their business into the secular world? And how far can laymen extend theirs into the pastoral world?30 On the details of the contract into which Christians enter when pledging their devotion to God: What does baptism ­really do for us, and what are we ­really rejecting? And if a man goes back on his renunciation, who or what does he follow instead?31 Who exactly is this Satan whom we are renouncing? We need to know so that we do not follow him out of simple ignorance.32 On the boundaries of masculine identity itself: Is it true that bishops ought to serve the community as moral examples and teachers? If so, what are canons supposed to do? And can anyone who does not vow to follow the Benedictine Rule still call himself a monk? Were there not monks in Gaul before St. Benedict even lived? We have read that St. Martin was a monk and oversaw monks long before Benedict.33 And finally, perhaps the most penetrating question of them all: We need a clear explanation of what it means “to leave the world”—​­how can “those who have left the world . . . ​be distinguished from those who still follow the world? Is the difference only that they do not bear arms and are not publicly married?”34 These questions are genuine, not rhetorical, but they do not originate from a position of ignorance either. This is not an unlearned “pagan mind” asking about Christian doctrine. This is a learned ruler of a Christian people going back to the drawing board and reassessing the most fundamental questions of faith and existence to see whether there might be a flaw in his foundational thinking. Rachel Stone has suggested furthermore, I believe correctly, that these questions arise not simply from the new configuration of the missi dominici after 802 but rather more fundamentally from the fact that Charlemagne’s governance had always emphasized and relied upon equality and shared power between counts and bishops rather than strict hierarchy.35

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Although she does not put it in such terms, Stone’s suggestion in essence is that the ideology of equal lay and nonlay access to divine authority had worked perhaps too well. It had blurred boundaries of aristocratic professional identities to the point where they had become virtually indistinguishable. And now, in the retrospection of his old age, Charlemagne wondered whether those boundaries might need reinforcement. The repeated line of questioning in 811 suggests that Charlemagne and his court had begun to wonder whether ascetic declarations meant anything at all. For if they did not, there could be no link to the divine, and this might explain the punishments that the Franks continued to suffer as a people. It is in this light that I believe we need to interpret the final councils of Charlemagne’s reign and the first councils convened by Louis the Pious after his father’s death—​­as penitential measures enacted in hopes of revivifying the exclusivity of the ascetic male and restoring meaning to the entire Frankish enterprise of serving God as his chosen people. Questions about social hardship had led to new questions about aristocratic conversatio (“way of life”). Questions about aristocratic conversatio led to new questions about the boundaries between secular and spiritual worlds. Questions about these boundaries led, finally, to immense social pressure—​­pressure that fell upon secular aristocratic men, as it always had, but most of all on the extremes of the Carolingian male gender order. It can be no coincidence, in other words, that Charlemagne in his last years and Louis, with even greater fervor after inheriting the throne from his father, oriented Carolingian correctio ­toward stricter regulation of monastic masculinity. Since laymen and professional spiritual men had grown to be so alike, this spiritual elite required a clear re-​ c­ odification of form and function under a fixed and universal rule. The episcopal councils of 813 and the councils of 816 to 817 were precisely about defining what it truly meant to leave the world and to take monastic vows.36 The Christian ideology of male power upon which the Carolingians had founded their claims to worldly authority depended on the existence of a group of men who separated themselves from the rest of society as its moral elite. Benedict of Aniane’s monastic reforms under Louis the Pious ensured that this group of men would be present to serve society in perpetuity not only as its intercessors but also more fundamentally as its boundary markers. Like the recalibration of a clock or the retuning of a piano, reestablishing ascetic masculinity became the new solution to achieving right order everywhere. It could reveal once again clear direction for the Frankish people—​­clear definitions of where the bishops at the edge of the saeculum should symboli-

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cally situate themselves, clear conduits for the lay aristocracy to link themselves to ascetic power through caritas. Paired with this redefinition was new pressure placed on the other end of the male gender spectrum as well. As de Jong has argued, penitential governance during the reign of Louis the Pious shifted moral responsibility increasingly from the aristocracy as a whole to the figure of the emperor himself.37 De Jong points out the curiousness of the fact that Louis the Pious did not call for the same kinds of penitential fasts for which Charlemagne called in 805 and 810 until quite late in his reign. Frankish culture had focused its moralism, she argues, onto the emperor as the highest earthly moral authority and thus the man with the greatest obligation to ensure the welfare of Frankish society.

The Pietas of Hludowicus Pius The Astronomer’s panegyric portrait of Louis the Pious begins with a critique. Its preface claims that the memorialization of past princes can be of great use to the present for the teaching of correct behavior and that Louis embodied four virtues in particular. He was in life a paragon of temperance, the personification of wisdom, an unwavering devotee of justice, and the epitome of manly courage; “he clung so fully to their company,” the text says fawningly, “that you did not know which one to admire more in him.”38 Still, it continues, “the envious could find only one fault to which he had succumbed: he was too merciful (nimis clemens).”39 This line has garnered much attention but little extended discussion. Most readers have presumed it to be only a realistic assessment of Louis’s reign and thus an appropriate foreshadowing of the story that follows. Over and over again, the Astronomer’s text shows, Louis the Pious granted clemency to his defeated political foes and chose not to avenge sedition even when the law and common sense seemed to demand it, most often allowing these enemies to rise up against him again. Scholars have interpreted the preface’s critique, therefore, as an ultimately benevolent but sincere effort to offer a more honest image of the man, warts and all.40 As any political strategist today will attest, a head of state must delicately balance the capacity of his or her office to grant clemency with the need to establish and to maintain a public image of being tough on crime. Louis was in his heart quite a decent guy, the words seem to say, but he was perhaps not steely enough for the job of being in charge.

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The problem with this assessment is that historians of the past half-​ c­ entury have spilled vast amounts of ink to persuade us not to think of Louis the Pious in this manner. As Courtney Booker has most recently described in detail, for nearly a millennium of historical writing about the Carolingians, Louis bore the infamous reputation of a roi faible, unable to carry out effective rule and thus the main culprit for the fragmentation and eventual collapse of Charlemagne’s great imperial dream. Since the late 1950s, however, revisionists led by François-​­Louis Ganshof have suggested that instead of viewing Louis as a weakling, we might rather see him as a leader who did the best he could with an empire that was itself weak at its foundations.41 Historians have shown, in support of Ganshof ’s call for reconsideration, not only that Frankish political structures were already fragile in the final years of Charlemagne’s reign but that it may actually have been his remarkable leadership skills and talent that enabled Louis to maintain his father’s empire for as long as he did.42 This quite appropriate rehabilitation of Louis the Pious’s image requires us to reassess the Astronomer’s prefatory critique as well. Searching for further meaning in the persona of the Astronomer himself offers us little added insight. We attribute to him this name not only on account of the frequent astronomical observations that color the narrative but because at one point, he humbly inserts himself into his own story as a nameless expert in heavenly signs. The emperor summons the author to interpret a frightening comet portent for him (from the date, most scholars believe this to have been Halley’s Comet), a service that the author performs diligently before departing from the story as unassumingly as he enters it.43 Scholars have attempted to discern the identity of this Astronomer further in hopes of learning more about his motivations for writing, but all we can glean for certain is that he was a fiercely loyal courtier, likely a cleric trained in the cutting-​ ­edge astronomical and medical science of his day, who perhaps held a court position that was something akin to royal physician or, even more accurately, royal physicist.44 The particular moment in which the Astronomer was writing, however, yields important interpretative clues. Louis the Pious ruled for twenty-​­six years the vast territory that he had inherited from his father. Frankish tradition dictated that fathers distribute lands equally among legitimate sons, and Louis had been Charlemagne’s only such surviving heir. Louis himself, however, was survived by three legitimate sons—​­Lothar, the eldest; Louis “the German”; and Charles “the Bald.” Their father knew these sons far less as devoted and loving children than as dangerous rivals and seekers of his throne

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throughout his life, especially during the final decade of his reign.45 The sons continued in their struggle for power after Louis the Pious’s death in June of 840. Lothar quickly declared himself emperor and supreme lord of the Franks. His younger brothers, in defiance, allied together and militarily asserted their rights to equal partition. By the summer of 841, the brothers were embroiled in a violent series of battles and skirmishes that not only ravaged the imperial countryside but also demolished the ideal of ethnic unity that Frankish kings and emperors had cultivated painstakingly for more than a century. At the devastating Battle of Fontenoy, in the early morning hours of 25 June 841, Louis the German and Charles the Bald ambushed and massacred the army of their brother, Lothar, and nephew, Pippin II. Hincmar of Reims would later write that there had been nothing like that kind of bloodshed of Frank against fellow Frank since the Battle of Vinchy in 717.46 The civil war between the sons of Louis the Pious would mark the beginning of a new era for the Franks in which internecine violence would regularly scar the political landscape. Frankish consciousness would forever be divided into the rough cultural partitions of Western, Central, and Eastern that persist in the European imagination today. While the vita itself ends abruptly, if poignantly, with the emperor’s quiet passing, most scholars follow Ernst Tremp’s dating of the Astronomer’s text to the spring of 841, just before Fontenoy.47 Tensions were high and violence loomed, but significantly, the possibility still remained for fraternal cooperation and peaceful transition. In light of this context, it is worth taking a closer look at the Vita Hludowici imperatoris’ critique of the too clement emperor, because questions concerning the exigencies of forgiveness would have been of central importance to this turbulent moment.48 The future of the Frankish empire that Charlemagne had built and that Louis had struggled to maintain hung precisely on the capacity of the brothers to forgive and to forget their mutual grievances in the common interest of peace.49 If Tremp’s dating of the Astronomer’s text is even remotely correct, it seems likely that the vita’s treatment of the emperor’s extreme capacity to forgive would have served as more than just a simple corrective to the otherwise ideal image that the Astronomer paints of his liege. The imperial image that Louis the Pious sought to convey to his subjects throughout his reign seems to have emphasized in great detail his capacities for emotional self-​­connection with both social inferiors and enemies alike.50 Philippe Depreux has written about the prominent accentuation of Louis’s pietas in the earliest of the three biographies written about Louis by men who

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knew him during his reign, a verse panegyric composed in the epic mode by Ermoldus Nigellus sometime in the 820s.51 We should recall Augustine’s reminder, of which the Carolingian intellectual elite were well aware, that pietas, an ancient quality of the Roman sovereign, referred within a Christian framework to the very specific capacity for caritas exhibited by the early ascetics.52 The epithet by which Louis would be distinguished in posterity, “Pius,” referred not just to his personal religious devotion, his foundation and reformation of monasteries, and his continuation of his father’s program of New Testament correctio but also literally to his pietas—​­his capacity to enact caritas in the manner of the ascetic male.53 Historians still present the two translations of Pius that posterity has ascribed to Louis (“The Debonair” and “The Pious”) as two different aspects of his personality, but truly they refer to complementary aspects of the same term in its early medieval usage.54 Depreux notes the significance of pietas in Ermold’s poem, but in this Augustinian sense, pietas is the prominent theme of the subsequent biographies as well. The second biography, a prose work written in the late 830s by a minor bishop, Thegan, presents Louis as a steadfast Job figure, suffering the infidelity of his sons and allies with infinite patience and mercy.55 Thegan’s text dramatizes its oft-​­noted railing against lowborn bishops through juxtaposition with Louis’s undying care for his subjects and his desire to forgive, unconditionally, the crimes of his enemies.56 It is the last of three biographical narratives to be written about Louis the Pious, however—​­the Astronomer’s Vita Hludowici imperatoris—​­that articulates most artfully the extreme emotional bonding that Louis’s pietas entailed. As Walter Berschin and Courtney Booker in particular have argued, the narrative focus of the Vita Hludowici imperatoris upon Louis’s remarkable capacity for clemency and love for his enemies might indeed be its most striking feature.57 Clemency had been an ancient kingly ideal and a particular quality that the Christian elite had demanded of secular Christian rulers since at least the late Merovingian period.58 The particular brand of kingship depicted in Louis’s biographies, however, seems to extend well beyond the norms of traditional Christian kings. Thomas F. X. Noble has argued that Louis’s imperial image suggests that he attempted to practice a new kind of kingship, intentionally different from his father’s style of rule, founded instead upon a monastic conception of abbatial monarchy in which the king acted more as first among a body of otherwise equal brethren.59 Courtney Booker has recently noted, in support of Noble’s suggestion, how Louis’s biographies all make the claim that the emperor considered, as a young man, quitting the secular life

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for monastic pursuits. The most telling indication for Booker is that Ardo, the biographer of Benedict of Aniane, calls Louis monachius—​­“the monkish.”60 There can be little doubt that Louis the Pious adopted a new ideal of kingship for himself in his official representation—​­one that differed significantly but not necessarily diametrically from the image of his legendary father, Charlemagne. And I also believe that Louis indeed projected an image of himself as the first among a body of equals.61 Casting his reign as an attempt to base his rule upon monastic models, however, is in my estimation the wrong interpretative inflection. Twice married, a talented warrior, a brilliant military strategist, and an avid hunter, Louis was no monk, and his contemporaries never imagined that he was. As the Astronomer states in his vita, Louis’s heroism came in part from the fact that he repeatedly chose not to retreat from his secular duties, a trope upon which the depiction of devout laymen in the next century would significantly play.62 Louis’s projected royal image was “monkish” only in the sense that he drew heavily upon the authority of ascetic masculinity to establish and to maintain his power. Like the ideal Christian ruler of Gregory’s Regulae pastoralis liber, the biographies of Louis the Pious show him enacting the extremes of caritas as a means of rising above the strife of the secular world—​­placing him at its edges rather than in its center, avoiding secular entanglements whenever possible in favor of maintaining the divine authority that came from love of God and neighbor. For the Astronomer, Louis therefore served as the focus for an extended meditation on extreme forgiveness not only as a kingly ideal but also as an elite masculine ideal, demonstrating in relief the lack of authority that the text ascribes to those who rebelled against him, even in the face of their victories. Monastic masculinity remains the epitome of manhood even more than before, yet the Astronomer draws on this ideology by depicting Louis’s symbolic asceticism—​­his extreme capacity for caritas that he is even able to enact as emperor—​­at the very center of the secular world. The Astronomer’s prefatory language reveals the extent to which his text actually presents the critique of Louis’s overabundant clemency as a question for further debate and deliberation. Not only does the Astronomer undermine the criticism in its very utterance by attributing it to those who were jealous or begrudging of the emperor (it is leveled “ab emulis”), but in the very next sentence, he also quotes from the second letter of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians: “With the Apostle, however,” the Astronomer says, “we ought to say this: ‘Forgive him this fault.’ ”63 The reference recalls a moment in the epistle when Paul polemically speaks of his own personal shortcomings. The

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apostle’s claim is that these shortcomings, far from diminishing him in righteousness, actually bring him closer to God.64 In this context, Louis’s extreme indulgence transforms from a tragic flaw into a virtue in disguise—​­a defect that might render him more perfect, a weakness that may make him strong. The Astronomer follows by challenging his audience to keep an open mind about the matter and to base its judgment on the evidence that he is about to provide: “Whether these things are true or not, whoever peruses this account will be able to find out.”65 This was a striking provocation for the Astronomer to make, for while his audience would have known a long history of philosophical discussion concerning the virtue of clemency and its relation to ideal rulership, nowhere in this history would readers have been able to find a clear solution to the question of how much, exactly, was too much. The Astronomer’s deliberate diction would have recalled, for learned contemporary readers, Seneca and the late antique debates over the problem of clemency and its proper limits.66 Modern scholars of the Astronomer’s text have noticed that the four virtues ascribed to Louis the Pious in the preface are in fact the four “cardinal” virtues of Stoic philosophy—​­sobrietas, sapientia, iustitia, and virtus.67 None, however, has recognized the ways in which the critique of Louis’s nimis clemens behavior also harkens back to the ancient Stoics. Seneca was certainly read in the early ninth century, but readers of the Vita Hludowici would probably have contemplated his arguments through the lens of Augustine’s De civitate Dei, a text that was decidedly closer to their hearts.68 As discussed in Chapter 1, Augustine had reasoned in this text that while a secular ruler had to achieve a proper balance between justice and forgiveness, the extreme emotional connection with the other that misericordia entailed could never be a sin.69 His reluctance to condemn Senecan misericordia encapsulates precisely the problem of clemency to which the Astronomer’s preface draws attention. As protector of the peace, a ruler had to take care not to forgive all crime and allow evil to flourish with impunity. Yet in a Christian world, forgiving without restraint still had to remain a part of virtus, reminiscent of God’s absolution of penitent sinners in his final judgment. Importantly, beyond the acknowledgment and declaration of his opposition, Augustine would never articulate a clear solution to this conundrum. It is possible that Augustine failed to grasp the implications of the distinction that Seneca was trying to make and thus felt that reiterating the principle of balance was all that was necessary. More likely, however, Augustine was simply far more concerned with the question of tempering and making Christian the

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power of the sovereign than he was with restricting the power of the Christian forgiver to be clement. For these very same reasons, no doubt, Carolingian moralists would also focus their attention on the promotion of forgiveness and pay considerably less attention to the circumstances in which forgiveness might be detrimental. In the texts where Carolingians discussed such matters, forgiveness still existed generally within the same conceptual orbit of justice that Seneca and Augustine knew. Carolingian moralists recognized, in other words, that overly merciful behavior could threaten the integrity of social welfare. Yet they always oriented their discussion t­ oward the promotion of forgiveness as a means of tempering abuses. Their usage tended to elide the connotative separation between clementia and misericordia that the late antique discourse recognized.70 And even more than Augustine, early Carolingian moralists accentuated the role that unlimited forgiveness played as a prerequisite for God’s salvation, which was always to be the primary goal of a Christian life. Both Paulinus and Alcuin saw forgiveness as one of the central deeds that a secular leader could perform in his embodiment of caritas. It therefore served as a great leveler, rendering secular and nonsecular men alike in their shared authority under God.71 Just as Augustine had described with regard to pietas, in Christian discourse, misericordia, far from being the vice that it was in Senecan thought, was for Paulinus and Alcuin a trait of God himself: “God is loving and merciful (pius . . . ​et misericors),” the Liber exhortationis says, “and will not remember our crimes in the beyond” and again, even later: “The Lord is merciful (misericors) and shows mercy (misericordiam) to those who hope for it.”72 Paulinus and Alcuin wrote for nonroyal secular magnates. Moralists during the reign of Louis the Pious turned their gaze more directly ­toward the figure of the emperor himself than the aristocracy as a whole.73 Two short treatises from the first half of the ninth century may indeed represent this transition of focus, as they borrowed heavily from the mirrors of Paulinus and Alcuin in order to convey the same ideological lessons of those texts but directly to kings. Like the texts written for the lay aristocracy, these treatises encouraged the exercise of forgiveness in all royal affairs and de-​­emphasized the question of clemency’s proper limits. Smaragdus of St.-​­Mihiel’s Via regia, written in the first quarter of the ninth century for perhaps Louis the Pious himself, sets the themes discussed by Paulinus and Alcuin within the specific context of royal governance.74 After beginning his text with an extended passage concerning caritas and the

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necessity of observing the Lord’s commandments as the first two steps on the royal path, Smaragdus explains that wisdom, prudence, simplicity, and fear of the divine are the traits that ought to govern a king’s actions.75 These qualities, the text claims, allow for a king to embody patientia, the great virtue by which he does not return harm to those who harm him but loves and spares them instead.76 Smaragdus then underlines that it is a royal duty to provide just judgment. Quoting Proverbs 20.28 (“Mercy and truth guard the king, and his throne is reinforced by clemency”), Smaragdus presents misericordia and clementia as traits that help a king to achieve true justice.77 In Smaragdus’s usage, misericordia and clementia are more semantically distinct than in either Paulinus or Alcuin, who used the terms interchangeably. Smaragdus’s text seems to associate misericordia with almsgiving and the defense of the poor, widows, foreigners, and orphans and connects clementia to more universal ideals of peace and righteousness.78 Still, both misericordia and clementia work in tandem to allow the king ultimately to achieve salvation as his highest goal. “God is proven to be honored by works of misericordia,” Smaragdus writes.79 “Remember that you ought to exercise a zeal for righteousness,” he says later, “so that you may not abandon your duty to be humble and clement”; clementia is the “virtue that prepares us for immortal and eternal life.”80 Jonas of Orléans, too, developed similar connections in De institutione laicali. And more importantly, he revised this text in 831 into a much shorter piece, the De institutione regia, for King Pippin of Aquitaine (d. 838), a son of Louis the Pious.81 In De institutione laicali, Jonas discussed the merits of merciful behavior directly and in largely the same terms as Paulinus and Alcuin. The true followers of God reveal themselves by their works of misericordia, he wrote, and such works are the antidote to fears of being found wanting on the Day of Judgment.82 Yet it was truly when Jonas rewrote the text for Pippin that he focused his attention most intently on defining forgiveness and associating it directly with the qualities of ideal secular leadership. Following Smaragdus, Jonas’s later text cites misericordia as one of three guiding principles, along with pietas and iustitia, that an ideal ruler should follow, by which a king is deservedly called a king and through which a king renders his kingdom stable.83 Jonas invokes Proverbs 20.28 not once but twice in this context, linking misericordia to the quality that guards the king and clementia to the quality that reinforces his power.84 And like Paulinus’s Liber, Jonas’s De institutione regia uses the language of serving God as a “vessel of mercy.” Quoting Fulgentius, Jonas’s text states that the most clement emperor (clementissimus imperator) is not such a vessel simply because he assumes leadership but be-

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cause he lives according to right faith and because he enjoys serving God in fear more than dominating the people with fear.85 In all of these texts, clementia and misericordia work in close concert with justice to ensure the righteousness of the ruler before God, which in turn ensures the well-​­being of society. None of these texts, however, addresses in any detail the limits and restraints upon forgiveness that proper government might also require. Janet Nelson and Courtney Booker have emphasized the ways in which the Carolingians discussed ideal kingship through a language of aequitas iudicii—​­a golden mean that balanced strictness and benevolent leniency in equal measure.86 All of the Carolingian mirror texts support this claim. But importantly, none of the early Carolingian mirrors dwells in any detail on the precise distinctions of hard and soft that a king’s aequitas was specifically to entail. Forgiveness is always encouraged rather than discouraged. Jonas’s De institutione regia quotes a litany of biblical authorities—​ ­Proverbs, Isaiah, Amos, Daniel, and Ecclesiasticus—​­to help him explain once again that iustitia and misericordia work in tandem to maintain the integrity of a kingdom. Yet his discussion is far less concerned with the potential for a ruler to exercise too much of the latter. All of the classic royal abuses that Jonas enumerates are abuses of justice: injury to widows and orphans, false prosecution of the poor, harshly violent judgments, and the like.87 There is no mention whatsoever of the potential abuses of clemency to which the Astronomer’s text draws his readers’ attention. Carolingian moralists thus had a great deal to say about forgiveness, but the thrust of their conversation always involved its blanket promotion rather than its restraint. Reading the Vita Hludowici imperatoris in dialogue with these contemporary discussions reveals an image of a Christian ruler who acts very much in accordance with the principles that they espouse. The Astronomer’s Louis the Pious repeatedly chooses to favor forgiveness over the raw use of his retributive power, even when his counselors advise him otherwise, and the Astronomer’s narrative privileges Louis’s moral righteousness and salvation above all other concerns. Importantly, however, we can also see how much the Astronomer’s text dwells on what the mirrors do not—​­namely, the pragmatic difficulties that complete forgiveness could create for actual rule. The vita makes these difficulties the focus of its drama, depicting unabashedly the deleterious political consequences of the emperor’s leniency and juxtaposing Louis’s public emotional restraint in granting clemency with the intense private emotional anguish that he suffers as a result. The emperor’s capacity to feel and to express

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emotional pain, to experience remorse for the suffering that he sees inflicted on others, and to exhibit compassionate understanding for the deeply flawed humanity of his enemies—​­these are the attributes that the Astronomer’s vita emphasizes. His portrayal of Louis, both heroic and utterly human at the same time, exposes the fault lines that lurked just beneath the smooth surface of the mirrors’ seemingly stable moral system. It hints provocatively at the ways in which the vita could have served both author and audience as an imaginative space for working through and testing out the values with regard to caritas and clementia that the Astronomer’s generation of moralists held dear. In narrating Louis’s reign as a repeated cycle of betrayal and forgiveness, the Astronomer’s text openly encourages affective connection with its protagonist; it openly challenges its reader to contemplate the moral dilemmas that forgiveness could pose. Far from suggesting that imperial clemency needed to be curbed, however, the vita shows how an emperor forgave despite the extreme difficulties of doing so and, indeed, that forgiveness had been the central component of an active and conscious strategy of loving kingship that Louis the Pious pursued tirelessly throughout his long reign.

In Praise of the Too Clement Emperor The adjective that the Astronomer uses most often for Louis’s personal character is mitissimus—​­“most mild” or, even, “most meek.” Yet the Astronomer’s Louis cannot be said to act in any one, singular way. He makes controversial decisions, even makes mistakes from time to time, and is always the object of criticism from one faction or another. The preface says that Louis’s detractors criticize him for being too indulgent, but when the Astronomer himself criticizes his hero, it is typically because he judges Louis to be too harsh. In one moment of Louis’s young life, the emperor blinds a friend’s murderer in a fit of rage that, in the Astronomer’s words, “turned his mind from mercy (animum illius a misericordia . . . ​flexit)”; to this, the Astronomer cannot help but add that the murderer nevertheless “seemed almost worthy of pardon (venia) through the emperor’s clemency (clementia).”88 Such criticism of Louis along with other inconsistencies of Louis’s morality in the Astronomer’s text has led modern readers to be somewhat confused when trying to determine the message that the Astronomer ultimately wished to convey about Louis’s nature.89 It is precisely Louis’s human imperfection, however, his mildness “almost” (but not completely) “beyond human nature,” that makes him heroic in the

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Astronomer’s tale.90 The Astronomer’s Louis is not a saint. He is a layperson who aspires to be both an emperor and an elite disciple of God. Importantly, the two goals are presented as one and the same. The vita recounts how, in his youth, Louis actually built a strong reputation for both military and judicial toughness in the face of insurrection. As King of Aquitaine under Charlemagne, the Astronomer shows Louis to have served as the chief enforcer of his father’s will in Catalonia, ruthlessly putting down instances of rebellion and laying waste to Huesca and its surrounding countryside.91 Louis also quells a Basque uprising, punishing them, says the Astronomer explicitly, by lex talionis—​­the law of strictly equal retributive punishment.92 During the early years of his imperial reign, Louis stamps out no fewer than four more revolts at the edges of his empire—​­by the Slavic Abotrits, the Bretons in the northwest, the Basques again in the southwest, and then by his own nephew, Bernard of Italy, in the deeper south.93 The Astronomer’s narrative lingers in particular over Louis’s experience with the latter, describing how Louis struggles to find the most expedient manner with which to deal with the conspiracy.94 When Louis roots out the main culprits and Bernard begs Louis for forgiveness, the Astronomer is careful to note that the law demands a penalty of death. Louis decides, however, to act against not only this legal tradition but also the counsel of his advisors. He commutes the punishment to blinding for Bernard and his most culpable associates, tonsure or exile for the rest.95 It is significant, I think, that the Astronomer chose to mention lex talionis in the context of these early life events and equally telling that it is the only such mention in the entire narrative. As the fundamental law of strict justice that, according to Augustine, the Sermon on the Mount sought to perfect, the Astronomer’s invocation of lex talionis clearly marks the beginning of the moral transformation that Louis experiences for the remainder of the text. When Bernard and a count of the palace die from their rough handling, Louis’s remorse for these deaths seems, in the Astronomer’s description, to increase his propensity for indulgence by a significant order of magnitude. In October 821, Louis calls together a public assembly at Thionville for the marriage of his first-​­born son Lothar, to which he invites not only the pope and the Frankish dignitaries of the empire but also his political enemies, presumably those of Bernard’s earlier rebellion. The Astronomer writes that “although the emperor’s mercy (clementia) always sparkled in other admirable ways, in this assembly it became especially clear how much there was of it in his breast”; Louis grants his enemies not only their lives but also all of the

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possessions “of which they had been legally deprived.”96 In the following year, Louis takes this clemency to an even further extreme when he seeks to reconcile himself first with his half-​­brothers, whom he had exiled to monasteries upon his accession of the throne, seemingly as a precaution, and then “with all of those who appeared to have suffered any harm.”97 But he is not finished. The Astronomer recounts that then Louis undergoes public penance for the injuries that he had previously inflicted on his nephew, Bernard. Furthermore, he “corrected anything of the sort that he could discover anywhere, whether done by himself or by his father, both by generous almsgiving and by the continuous prayers of Christ’s servants, and even by making amends himself.”98 Here, it is important to note the Astronomer’s narrative choices in his recounting of events. Other contemporary accounts, such as the Royal Frankish Annals, corroborate the basic facts of the history, but the Astronomer emplots them as a story that highlights Louis’s extreme capacity to forgive. The text asserts pointedly that Louis performs this blanket pardon of all enemies—​ ­his own plus, amazingly, all those of his father—​­as an act of mercy that challenges prevailing concepts of justice. The emperor “was concerned,” the text narrates explicitly, “to return to God’s grace, as if those things which each person had legally suffered had in fact been done through his own cruelty.”99 And indeed, the Astronomer’s account of the final two decades of Louis’s reign becomes a litany of circular episodes in which, first, the emperor performs acts of extreme clemency ­toward his enemies; second, those enemies regroup and strike him again; and third, Louis yet again pardons them for their crimes. Such a cycle begins in February 828, when Louis learns at a public assembly that uprisings and atrocities are occurring in the Spanish March.100 Other contemporary accounts, notably Nithard’s History, describe these uprisings as well.101 The Astronomer, however, develops the story in much greater dramatic detail, telling his reader more about Louis’s motives for acting as he did. Louis dispatches missi to investigate the matter and discovers that his own vassals are the culprits. The atrocities in the Spanish March are not, that is, isolated incidents but rather chronic offenses committed in defiance of Louis by men who had sworn to him oaths of fealty. Louis strips these disloyal men of certain titles and commands that they atone for their crimes, but he leaves them with their wealth and, importantly, with their lives. “But then,” says the Astronomer, setting up the next part of the story, “the spirit of the emperor was most merciful (misericordissimus) by nature, and he was always eager to request mercy (misericordia) for those who had sinned. And yet it will be seen how those who revealed themselves in such affairs abused his mercy (clementia) and repaid it

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with cruelty.”102 We learn that in the next year, August 829, Louis again hears rumors that these same men to whom he had shown clemency were about to strike again: “their schemes,” writes the Astronomer, “were spreading like a cancer and undermining the confidence of many.”103 The leaders of the enemy faction approach the king armed and in great numbers. They publicly accuse his chamberlain of sodomy and incest and Louis himself of delusion.104 Louis quickly allows his chamberlain to flee for his own protection, then separates himself from his wife, the empress Judith, for her safety. The rebels capture Judith and compel her through torture, says the Astronomer, to persuade her husband to lay down his arms and to enter a monastery.105 The Astronomer thus presents a narrative in which Louis’s previously forgiven enemies take advantage of the caritas shown to them and rise up once again. Rather than glossing over this apparent mistake, however, the Astronomer dwells upon it dramatically. His narrative brings the reader into the mind of Louis, conveying the emperor’s great distress over the fact that his enemies loathed him despite the leniency and extreme kindness that he himself had shown to them: “So great was the unjust hatred under which the emperor labored, he who has always been kind to others, that his existence was painful to those who might legally and justly have lost their lives but who were alive through his gift.”106 Again, the Astronomer highlights the fact that Louis had been merciful to his enemies even beyond the recognized norms of justice. Yet this moment’s interlude of Louis’s personal anguish serves only to enhance the magnanimity that the emperor demonstrates directly afterward. He quickly turns the tables on the rebels, and the enemy faction, despite securing the backing of Lothar, begins to diminish.107 Still the Astronomer shows the emperor choosing to be merciful ­toward the enemies whose hatred he cannot understand. First, when the magnates of the enemy faction urge Lothar to make war against his father, Louis warns him against it without retribution: “his father . . . ​did not upbraid him with a bitter assault but corrected him with calm moderation.”108 Second, when the leaders of the conspiracy are later brought to judgment, he allows none of them to be sentenced to death. The critique of Louis’s clementia in the preface reverberates as the Astronomer describes Louis’s actions as “more forgiving than seemed fitting to many—​­nevertheless, kindness and clemency were his habits.”109 But then, the Astronomer explains how, as if this leniency were not enough, after keeping Lothar under close watch at his palace during the winter, Louis’s final act is to let his son go free once more. With the Astronomer invoking Job as an

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analogue for Louis’s actions, Louis summons all whom he had just exiled, reinstates them in their own properties, and grants leave to all whom he had tonsured.110 In other words, he completely pardons everyone involved, even after they had been previously pardoned and still risen against him a second time. With a narrative flourish that seems only to show how Louis departed from the matter with clean and clear conscience, the Astronomer ends the episode by narrating simply that the emperor, after sending Lothar on his way, crossed through the Vosges into the peaceful wilderness and “gave himself over to fishing and hunting as long as he liked.”111 In this complicated episode, the Astronomer paints a picture of an emperor who, despite emotional distress and in rejection of all customary notions of justice and political expediency, simply refuses to retaliate against his enemies and even to punish them for their crimes. The detailed description of Louis’s inner emotional distress demonstrates what is at stake for him—​­what he sacrifices in enacting clemency. Louis the Pious is no simpleton, nor is he withdrawn and above petty worldliness as a saint might be. He is greatly upset by the matters but does not indulge his emotional distress with retaliation. The Astronomer highlights Louis’s forgiveness as an active choice, not simple weakness or passivity. We can see this narrative strategy in another episode that takes place only a few years after the one just discussed, recounting Louis’s famous “humiliation” at the Field of Lies in 833, where Louis’s sons succeed in persuading (or forcing, depending on which perspective one favors) Louis to abdicate his rule.112 Louis’s political weakness in the Astronomer’s narrative becomes another opportunity for dramatic clementia. Louis suffers his humiliation yet quickly regains the political upper hand, and Lothar, not surprisingly, proceeds again to pillage Louis’s holdings in the countryside. The Astronomer presents Lothar’s brutality in stark juxtaposition to his father’s mercy. Lothar beheads the loyalist counts Ganzhelm and Sanilo, along with Louis’s personal vassal, one Madalhelm; he murders the nun Gerberga, sister of Bernard of Septimania, by drowning.113 When Louis hears word of these events, the Astronomer again dwells on the emperor’s inner emotion: the emperor grows very sad.114 Furthermore, the Astronomer’s personalization of these atrocities, mentioning the victims by name, renders the clemency that Louis still shows ­toward his son all the more striking in relief and perhaps lends even greater weight to the emotional difficulty of Louis’s decision for readers who may have known these figures personally.115 Louis yet again recaptures the recidivist Lothar, rebukes him and reminds him of his oaths, but does not otherwise

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punish or retaliate. He instead reminds his son of his duties and attempts to bind his son with oaths of obedience and service.116 Lothar falls ill to plague soon thereafter and, yet again, the Astronomer takes the opportunity to dwell on Louis’s emotional state. The emperor, “most merciful by nature (clementissimus natura),” hears of his chief enemy’s affliction and is deeply saddened. Louis “was most anxious,” says the Astronomer, “to learn all about his son’s distress. In this he imitated the blessed David, who, although afflicted by his son in many ways, nevertheless bore his death most bitterly.”117 The reference to David and his rebellious son, Absalom, helps to frame story not just as a father overindulging an insolent son, as one might be tempted to read it without these textual clues, but also as a tale of epic patience.118 And in case the reader failed to understand the point that the Astronomer’s text was trying to make, the narrative cycle repeats for another round. Lothar recovers from this illness but begins immediately to violate the oaths that he had pledged to his father. The Astronomer details Louis’s private emotional state after hearing this news. In a fit of extreme irritation, Louis immediately sends legates to Lothar to reprimand and to remind him, yet again, of his oaths (“These things r­eally did so embitter his normally mild spirit [animum illius mitissimum] that he sent missi”).119 But Louis still does not punish Lothar any further. Plague returns to Lothar’s camp, this time with far greater virulence, yet Louis does not rejoice in his enemies’ misfortune this time either. Nor, interestingly, does he or the Astronomer himself suggest that this second plague is any sort of divine retribution. The focus remains upon mercy and reconciliation, as Louis once again responds to news of the second plague only with compassion: “he took no pleasure in it himself, and he did not dismiss the dead as enemies, but he struck his breast with his fist, his eyes filled with tears, and with deep groans he prayed to God to shed his grace upon them.”120 The narrative cycle repeats itself one final time at the very end of the Astronomer’s vita. It is here where Louis sees the comet and asks the Astronomer to read what it portends. The Astronomer describes his conversation with the emperor as an exchange of both spoken and unspoken words. At first, the Astronomer asks his emperor to allow him time to think about what the portent could mean. The emperor, wise and warm, gently accuses the Astronomer of dissimulating, not wishing to give bad news. Fascinatingly, the Astronomer explains to the reader that this was true. And then he interprets the portent: it foretells that there will be a change in the realm and a prince will die. Quickly, says the Astronomer, quoting an obscure passage from the Book of Jeremiah,

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he tried to reassure Louis that heavenly signs do not always require fear. Louis, however, ever calm, reassures the Astronomer in return. In direct speech, the emperor turns the subject, not surprisingly, ­toward mercy: “We ought not fear anyone except him who is the creator of both us and that star. For we cannot praise or marvel enough at the clementia of him who deigns to warn our worthless selves with such signs, for we are sinners and impenitent. Because this manifestation touches me and everyone else commonly, let us hasten to do everything we can and know how to do, so that we do not find ourselves unworthy of the misericordia we have already asked for because our impenitence makes us so.”121 As the portent foretells, Louis soon grows sickly and begins the process of putting his house in order, readying the empire for partition among his sons. Following his very own words to the Astronomer himself, he not only endeavors to reconcile himself with each of his sons, one by one, before his death but also attempts to re-​­forge bonds of allegiance between the sons themselves. The last chapters describe how Louis offers Lothar a deal in which he grants him full clemency for all of his earlier crimes in exchange for agreeing to serve as protector and defender of Louis’s youngest son, Charles the Bald. Lothar sees the advantage in this and agrees immediately.122 Of course, however, this truce proves troubling to the other surviving son, Louis the German, who had previously supported his father at key moments of imperial weakness. Hearing about the new power structure in the realm, Louis the German takes up arms and invades his father’s eastern territories with a strong force. Louis the Pious hears of his son’s aggression and marches his own army to meet him before there is bloodshed. The Astronomer’s narrative, as is now to be expected, turns to emotion: “Louis addressed him angrily, and he [Louis the German] confessed that he had acted badly, and he promised that he would change for the better the things that he had done objectionably.”123 The emperor, “employing the friendly kindness that was always his way,” forgives Louis the German and allows him to return to his kingdom, only to see this same son conduct new aggression against his father in Alemannia during the following Christmas.124 Here the Astronomer actually depicts Louis the Pious experiencing something of a mental and physical breakdown upon hearing this news. “This affair was extremely disagreeable to him,” he says, “For he was already weighed down by old age, and his lung was more than usually burdened with an abundance of phlegm, which increased in winter, and his chest was heaving, so this messenger added to these ills. His message drove Louis to the point of

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bitterness, even though he was, almost beyond human nature, mild in his character, generous in his resolution, and prudent in his pietas. Increasing infection turned into an abscess, and a deadly ulcer grew more and more in his belly.”125 As emotion finally gets the better of the emperor, he quickly declines and fails in strength. Yet forgiveness remains the preoccupation of the narrative, for when he retreats to his deathbed, the bishops of the realm fear that he may die without reconciling with his son. They send Drogo of Metz, the emperor’s half-​­brother and closest confidant, to speak with him, and the Astronomer yet again focuses the account at this crucial moment on Louis’s emotional state. Drogo approaches Louis, urging him to reconcile with his final rebellious son, and the Astronomer writes that at first, the emperor is only bitter. His lungs are failing him, but with what little breath he has left, he protests what he has suffered from his son and complains that Louis the German deserves only ill for acting against nature and against God’s precepts. “But,” says Louis to Drogo, with the Astronomer granting him one final speech in direct discourse, “because he does not wish to come to me to give an account of himself, I do what is mine to do: with you and God as witnesses, I forgive him every sin he has committed against me. It will be for you to warn him that if I have forgiven him wholly for his wicked deeds, he should not forget who led his father’s gray hairs to death with sorrow and, in doing so, has despised the teachings and admonitions of our common father, God.”126 Louis’s speech presents the clemency that he enacts ­toward his son as ultimately his own satisfaction and the manifestation of his unconquered patience (invicta patientia). The last line, in which Louis takes pains to underline the suffering that he continues to endure from his son’s actions, only serves to emphasize the consciousness of the act and the sheer strength that it demands for the dying emperor to perform. What is crucially important in these repeated portrayals is that while the reader can have no illusions about the degree of emotional anguish that Louis suffers from his sons’ actions, the reader also sees that Louis does, in fact, perform the acts of clemency anyway. In the episode just described, the Astronomer reveals a man who experiences great personal distress when things do not go the way that he plans. Privately, he complains, he hurts, and he weeps. Yet publicly, he refuses to indulge his petty feelings of slight. He sacrifices his personal feelings for the integrity of the empire’s future. As he grumbles to Drogo, the precepts and warnings of God are simply more important, even if his son does not seem to understand them. Louis’s successful enactment of forgiveness, in the Astronomer’s text, in explicit spite of its political and

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emotional difficulty, becomes the central component of Louis’s heroism. Louis the Pious in the Vita Hludowici imperatoris therefore serves as more than a simple model of Christian suffering. He is an exemplum for the possibility of reconciling the two seemingly opposed demands of salvation and society that were to factor into a king’s use of clementia. The degree and nature of his suffering are significant. The biographical legacies of other early medieval kings who were remembered for this sort of steadfast Christian devotion—​­Bede’s Oswald or Gregory of Tours’ Guntram, for example—​­present their subjects as saintly. The Astronomer, conversely, presents his emperor as eminently human, a man of flaws who makes mistakes. The emotional displays are an important means for demonstrating precisely this human frailty.127 The Astronomer was of course not the only Carolingian writer to use the depiction of emotion for dramatic effect in describing a Frankish emperor. Einhard also used details about the emotional life of Charlemagne to convey his subject’s boisterous charisma.128 Thegan used descriptions of emotive reactions among Louis the Pious’s own men to highlight the emperor’s virtue and deep sacrifice.129 In the Astronomer’s text, unlike these earlier examples, because the emotions of the emperor are just as likely to be petty as they are to be grand, their function is more to provide important insight into the depth of Louis’s mind and actions. They reveal interior complexity, difficulty, and struggle. Were Louis a superhuman figure in the text, he might not experience the ill thoughts that he expresses to Drogo. But as they are spoken, the words of Louis the Pious in the Astronomer’s text demonstrate human possibility. Not only is it possible for a ruler to forgive utterly and completely the trespasses of his enemies; it is also perhaps the only human means of preserving the peace when all else goes awry. And it can be heroic.130 The final scene of the Astronomer’s vita sears this lesson into the mind of the reader. After the dying Louis performs his soliloquy in which he reconciles with Louis the German, he loses the power of speech altogether. Interestingly, the Astronomer now allows Louis only to communicate through emotional language. An evil spirit, unseen by all except Louis himself, appears at the emperor’s bedside. “Huz, Huz,” Louis wheezes, by which, the Astronomer narrates, the dying emperor wished to say, “Be gone!” Yet instead of offering further discursive explanation about what happens next, the text describes only the emperor’s face. Louis, who famously never laughed according to his earlier biographer, Thegan, in the Astronomer’s text joyfully fixes his eyes upon the celestial kingdom and laughs with his final breath.131 “In such a

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manner therefore,” says the Astronomer, “he obtained the end of the present life and went away to rest happily, so we believe, because as it has been said truthfully by a truth-​­speaking teacher: ‘He cannot die badly who has lived well.’ ”132 “He cannot die badly who has lived well” becomes the summation of Louis’s life. It is perhaps fitting that the Astronomer describes these words, which are in fact from Augustine, as coming only “from a truth-​­speaking teacher” (a veridico doctore).133 It is, on one hand, another subtle reference to precisely the late antique Christian authority who challenged the condemnation of misericordia in Roman philosophy. On the other hand, however, it is as though, for the Astronomer, what is most poignant about these words is not their provenance but rather the fact that in this scene, Louis, who has lived well throughout his life, truly does not die badly. An evil spirit appears at his deathbed, but Louis successfully stares it down and drives it away. The Astronomer is not so prosaic as to write simply that Louis is saved. He focuses instead on the expression of the emperor’s face and literally gives his emperor the last laugh. It is the finest conclusion to the life of his liege that the Astronomer can bestow: Louis lived as ideal a worldly existence as a man could and won the prize in the end. Privately, he railed bitterly against his misfortunes, but publicly, he treated everyone, friend, family, and foe alike, with caritas and perpetual forgiveness. And he died laughing. For an audience in early 841, when the empire was tottering ever so precariously on the verge of civil war, we cannot underestimate the message that this would have conveyed: an eleventh-​­hour promotion of patience, calm, and, yes, unlimited forgiveness in the face of what seemed (probably to all sides) to be iniquity. The empire could perhaps only survive, the Astronomer’s vita suggests, if Louis’s sons could learn to follow their father’s example.134 If they could heed their father’s memory (at least, as the Astronomer narrated it), if they could honor his desires for the partitioning of the empire, if they could ignore their former crimes against each other in favor of the greater imperial good, the empire could survive and return to its former glory. And thus the Astronomer presents a model for peace and perpetuation of Frankish power that draws directly from the ideology of authority articulated and advanced by the early lay mirrors. The Astronomer’s vita is the story of how Louis actively chooses, over and over again, not to avenge sedition even when justice demands it, allowing his enemies to commit repeated crimes against him and his family. And yet these choices flow from his pietas—​­his enactment of caritas—​­and as such they sanction and naturalize his imperial

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power even in defeat. It is only through Louis’s heroically human mercy despite the pain that it causes, his conscious refusal to retaliate against those who had injured him and would likely do so again, that he retains his authority to rule and the empire remains intact. His zeal for forgiveness is the binding force that keeps his beloved empire from tearing apart at its seams, and he dies in a moment of spiritual and temporal peace.

Conclusion No doubt to the Astronomer’s great sorrow, the sons of Louis the Pious chose not to follow in their father’s too clement ways. After almost three years of bitter strife, they signed an uneasy peace at Verdun in 843. They would maintain a relatively stable political status quo during the decades that followed, undergirded by an irregular series of public declarations of brotherly caritas.135 Yet despite these overt pronouncements of concord, the events of the post–civil war era suggest that the brothers succeeded in neither forgiving nor forgetting the trespasses that they believed had been enacted against them. Lothar attempted at least once during the later 840s to drive a hostile political wedge between Charles the Bald and Louis the German.136 In continuing cold war, he supported the repeated efforts of the brothers’ nephew, Pippin II of Aquitaine, to challenge Charles’s rule in the southwest. Charles suffered a staggering defeat in 844 as Pippin’s forces intercepted and slaughtered an army of his reinforcements near Toulouse.137 After Lothar died in the mid-​­850s, the power vacuum allowed Louis the German to begin seeking to undermine the strength of his former ally, Charles. Louis sent an army under the command of his son, Louis the Younger, to invade Aquitaine in 854. Louis the German then led an invasion of West Francia himself in 858.138 In addition to the burden of having to repel the increasing aggression of his brother, Charles began to suffer rebellions from his own sons similar to those that had risen against Louis the Pious. Charles not only struggled mightily to rein in the power of his heirs during the later 860s and 870s but also engaged in aggression of his own after Louis the German’s death by seizing holdings in the Eastern realms, only to see his army crushed by Louis the Younger’s forces at Andernach in 876. It may be no coincidence, given these hostilities, that Charles the Bald’s court is precisely where we find the reemergence, in the secular moral philosophical record, of lively debate on the subject of forgiveness. Around the year 870, Sedulius Scottus, an Irish courtier, wrote a mélange of verse and prose on

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Christian rulership for his king.139 In style, the Liber de rectoribus christianis is a text unlike any of the mirror literature that the Astronomer knew. In content, however, it echoes those earlier voices. A section on the nature of the peaceful and clement king claims that the peaceful king is among the seven most beautiful creations of God (along with the cloudless sky, the sun, the full moon, the fertile field, the reflection of the clouds in the sea, and a company of just men united in a single faith).140 As in Smaragdus’s Via regia, a peaceful ruler is to establish and to maintain the happiness of his subjects through the twin virtutes of misericordia and clementia. And we find, furthermore, Sedulius invoking the same quotation of Proverbs 20.28 that appears prominently in both Smaragdus and Jonas.141 Importantly, however, there is a tinge of nostalgia in Sedulius’s text that the earlier mirrors do not express. He embellishes his discussion with historical examples of rulers who embodied these ideals: among the five whom he names, Louis the Pious appears alongside Charlemagne, Theodosius, Constantine, and Caesar Augustus as the bygone avatars of forgiveness.142 Such nostalgia is also evident in the work of Sedulius’s friend and Charles the Bald’s closest advisor, Hincmar of Reims, who was the last of the ninth-​ ­century Carolingians to leave an extant treatise on virtue and vice. He actually wrote two. Both of these texts, De regis persona et regio ministerio and De cavendis vitiis et virtutibus exercendis, were likely written during the 870s in the waning years of Charles the Bald’s reign.143 De cavendis vitiis treats works of misericordia in much the same manner as Sedulius, associating forgiveness with those who seek the blessing of God’s grace and linking works of misericordia to the penitence that all Christians must show in order to escape the punishments of hell on the Day of Judgment.144 Curiously, however, De regis persona embarks on an entirely new path. It contains the most extended discussion concerning the limits of misericordia of the entire ninth-​­century Carolingian virtue and vice corpus and seems to express a distinct challenge to the model of extreme forgiveness on which the Astronomer’s text dwells in detail. Unlike the rest of the Carolingian mirrors, Hincmar’s De regis persona focuses on the limitation, rather than simply the promotion, of forgiveness. It quotes Augustine’s late antique argument against the Stoic conception of misericordia directly, yet it departs from Augustine’s own discussion dramatically by assuming a much harder line. Rather than blurring the Senecan distinction between ideal and too much mercy, De regis persona starkly redraws the boundary between them. Taking up Augustine’s doctrine of just warfare,

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Hincmar explains that while good kings should conduct war only out of necessity, it is nevertheless not a sin to take up arms in the name of God.145 In all things, good kings must observe justice, Hincmar wrote, in order to serve Christ.146 Quoting Ambrose’s exposition on Psalm 118, Hincmar wrote further that “there is just misericordia and there is also unjust misericordia.”147 The proper form of misericordia allows for just indulgence of the converted and penitent. Yet it is not always criminal, says Hincmar, for a good king to kill when the law and public welfare demand it.148 The greatest public criminals—​ ­those who fail to humble themselves and to admit their sins but rather seek to defend their sins and to make excuses—​­must never be pardoned.149 It is impossible to know, although fascinating to ponder, how much the remembrance of the events of 840 to 843 and the repeated difficulty of finding a lasting peace thereafter led to Hincmar’s emphasis in De regis persona on the need for a clear line between unlimited mercy and strong rulership.150 Historians of the ninth century have begun to suggest, however, that the traumatic events of the Frankish civil war did indeed have profound and lasting effects on conceptions and figurations of morality within the later Carolingian world. Janet Nelson has argued for a ritualization of Carolingian warfare after and as a direct result of the bloodshed of Fontenoy.151 John Gillingham has contended that the extreme death toll of that battle may even have been the catalyst for early codifications of “chivalric” rules to limit bloodshed in intra-​­Frankish warfare.152 Rachel Stone has suggested that the civil war may ultimately have caused ninth-​­century thinkers to grow pessimistic about the capacity of moral education to affect social welfare.153 I explore these ideas in further detail in the next chapter, but the first statement to make here is that the evidence seems clearly to show that the last response in the ninth-​­century Carolingian discussion of clementia included an unequivocal statement that forgiveness had to have limits even in a Christian world. It was possible for a ruler to abuse his power through indulgence just as much as through tyranny. Contextual analysis of the Astronomer’s heroic depiction of the too clement emperor thus provides an important complement to recent assessments of royal justice during the ninth century. Changing cultural ideals during the reign of Louis the Pious led to tensions, debates, and, in 833, open conflict over competing conceptions of the duty of rulers both to provide for the public welfare and to embody the ideals of Christian discipleship.154 The Astronomer’s text demonstrates how one contemporary thinker understood these tensions, imagined their resolution in literary form, and created a text that challenges its reader to contemplate a world in which

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forgiveness could govern political decision making even beyond considerations of justice. In other words, the Astronomer’s vita represents a moment when Carolingian political actors could think that the empire had a chance to remain intact despite the centrifugal forces that seemed intent on ripping it asunder. In contemplating this chance, the Astronomer advanced a novel discourse about unlimited clemency, in dialogue with other contemporary discourses about the enactment of Christian forgiveness in secular life. Given the precariousness of the political atmosphere in which the Astronomer wrote, the Vita Hludowici imperatoris’ encomium of a too clement emperor becomes a striking statement to his world that unmitigated forgiveness might be not only a path to salvation but also the only political strategy left for averting an impending civil war.

Chapter 4

Questioning Caritas in the Time of Troubles

I pray . . . ​that whoever you may be, you will read this not with the raven’s spite but rather the love of a dove; that you will remember Gottschalk, a sinner, before God; and that with paternal or fraternal feeling you might simply ask for God’s kindest clementia, and that he might deign in his gratuitous pietas to bestow upon me the excellence of true humility always and everywhere before him, and in perpetuity the distinction of pure caritas. —​­Gottschalk of Orbais, Confessio prolixior 17

Within only a short time after the Treaty of Verdun had been concluded, Carolingian chroniclers would label the bloody years from 841 to 843 their tempus perturbationum—​­their “time of troubles.”1 The open civil warfare between Louis the Pious’s heirs revealed to contemporary observers, in stark and shocking fashion, the utter failure of the Carolingian lay aristocracy to provide for the welfare and continuation of their society and way of life. The ideological forces that had once authorized and naturalized the collective power of the Frankish aristocracy now served only to prove how sinful and shameful the lay aristocracy had become. In this chapter, I discuss the ways in which the crisis of the civil war merged in destructive force with another social and cultural upheaval that arose during the middle decades of the ninth century, the doctrinal controversy provoked by the charismatic predestinarian preacher, Gottschalk of Orbais. Gottschalk’s ideas seem to have gathered popular force during precisely the same period as the civil war itself, then to have exploded into nearly two

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decades of theological debate that drew the wrathful attention of all three co-​ r­eigning Frankish kings, the pope, and the highest echelons of the Carolingian intelligentsia. Carolingian scholarship has never placed the crisis of the Gottschalk controversy and the crisis of the civil war into direct dialogue, nor has it explored the controversy within the context of Carolingian masculinity. Here I discuss the ways in which the confluence of the war and the theological debate led to widespread questioning and, I argue, an eventual weakening of the ideological links between caritas, deeds, and divine authority upon which the aristocracy’s collective identity had been built. I begin with four witnesses to the Carolingian time of troubles who all drew heavily upon the discourse of caritas and authority to make arguments about aristocratic male power. Dhuoda of Septimania lost her entire family to the ravages of her era yet still fervently believed that manly perfection through caritas would win her son favor in an enemy court. Florus of Lyon, the poet Angelbert, and Nithard of Saint-​­Riquier each invoked the ideological link between caritas and masculine authority to lament what they believed the aristocratic men of their era now lacked. For them, the war and its sorrows were patent reminders of the aristocracy’s catastrophic failure to live up to the ideal of perfection that Dhuoda’s writing espoused. In the chapter’s final section, I then discuss the Gottschalk debates and the manner in which they led to widespread theological doubt about the relationships between caritas, authority, and salvation that these earlier writers took for granted. Gottschalk preached that caritas was a quality of God alone, not the human. Salvation, in turn, was the gratuitous gift of God’s grace, not a reward for acts of pietas performed throughout life. Humans could either accept or deny God’s grace, but their deeds could have no effect on God’s will. For Gottschalk’s opponents, these arguments were not simply a matter of academic debate. They raised problems with significant and deeply troubling implications for the pastoral care of souls. Gottschalk’s theology, on one hand, freed the aristocracy from its burden of social responsibility, which no doubt made it appealing to some. On the other hand, his theology stripped aristocrats of their power to merit salvation through their actions. Pastors worried about the spiritual disillusionment, despair, and miscreance that Gottschalk’s ideas could potentially encourage. Gottschalk himself was ultimately condemned as a heretic, yet his ideas were persuasive enough that they led to new declarations of orthodoxy throughout the empire that affirmed the primacy of grace over deeds in the economy of salvation. These declarations fundamentally undermined the ideology of aristocratic power that Paulinus and Alcuin

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had articulated at the turn of the ninth century, enfeebling the ideological links presumed to exist between caritas and ascetic authority and ultimately begging new questions about aristocratic masculinity, salvation, and the will of God.

A Culture of Merit: Dhuoda and William The ideology of Carolingian aristocratic power that Paulinus and Alcuin articulated during the reign of Charlemagne had emphasized the capacity of all aristocratic males to link themselves to the divine through caritas and the performance of good deeds. Authority had been a matter of merit and thus of choice. Caritas had been the link that allowed men access, regardless of person or professional identity, to the wisdom and power of the ascetic male. This link provided aristocrats with both their authority to govern in the present and their capacity to achieve salvation in the future. I have argued that the turn to penitential sensibilities ­toward the end of the reign of Charlemagne and especially throughout the reign of Louis the Pious—​­what Mayke de Jong has labeled the emergence of “the Penitential State”—​­was a direct result of this ideology’s pervasion throughout the entirety of the Carolingian aristocratic thought-​­world. The aristocracy placed considerable moral and penitential pressure on themselves precisely because they believed so fundamentally in the essential connection between their behavior and the welfare of society. They placed particular pressure, furthermore, on the extremes of the masculine gender hierarchy—​­on the figure of the emperor and the figure of the monk. The ideology of masculine power articulated by Paulinus and Alcuin depended on the primacy of the ascetic male as the epitome of manhood, and the king, by nature of his position, as the ultimate embodiment of secular power—​­linked to ascetic authority by the tethers of caritas. It is important to recognize the extent to which the self-​­examination and penitential sensitivity that we see being asked of the aristocracy as a whole during the last decade of Charlemagne never diminished. If anything, such social demands seem only to have increased in fervor during the years of Louis the Pious and during the chaos that followed his death. Among our key pieces of evidence for the continued centrality of the ideological link between acts of caritas and divine authority within aristocratic collective identity is the fourth and final text that we today classify as a “lay mirror”: the handbook of poetry and moral advice written by Dhuoda of

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Septimania, a lay noblewoman, sometime very soon after the Astronomer wrote his Vita Hludowici imperatoris.2 Dhuoda’s personal story is tragic. She wrote her mirror from a family stronghold at Uzès, where she describes herself as living alone and distraught, afflicted in both body and spirit. Her teenage son was a hostage-​­ward at the court of King Charles the Bald, Louis the Pious’s youngest heir. Dhuoda’s husband, Bernard (d. 844), always a controversial figure within Carolingian politics, had once served as a courtier and close advisor to Louis but had failed to secure safe affiliation for himself and his family in the aftermath of Louis’s death. During the civil war, Bernard was forced to give up William as a hostage and to flee his lands, taking with him his only other son, a baby born in 841, likely with the intention to protect his only secure heir. The result was that Dhuoda ended her life separated from her children. She would die, likely of illness, probably no later than 844. Her husband would be executed for treason in the same year. William would attempt to avenge his father and be put to death at the age of twenty-​­three for doing so. Of the baby’s fate we are not entirely certain, although there is compelling evidence that he would actually survive the time of troubles and found the Duchy of Aquitaine.3 Sad though her life’s end was, Dhuoda’s manual would carry her legacy forward and into today’s world. As a witness to her intellectual acuity and literary skill (she had a talent for composing acrostic poetry), the manual would demonstrate her wise understanding of her social and political world, her formal education, and her central role, perhaps representative of all noblewomen within Carolingian culture, in the moral tutelage of her children.4 If the learned doctors of the Carolingian world wrote mostly for monks and kings during the ninth century, Dhuoda’s manual demonstrates that there may have been other writers who wrote for more private lay audiences. The ideology of Frankish power that Paulinus and Alcuin had articulated in their mirrors remained alive and well within the culture of the aristocracy as a whole, and it may largely have been taught by the voices of women. Dhuoda’s text is markedly different in structure from the earlier m ­ irrors—​ a­ reflection, perhaps, of the very different relationship between its author and audience. Dhuoda’s book is, however, remarkably close to the treatises of Paulinus and Alcuin in terms of its function as an ideological manifesto.5 We presume but ultimately cannot know whether she knew Paulinus’s work or the work of Jonas of Orléans, author of the third lay mirror, but she quotes directly from Alcuin’s. And like her earlier mirror-​­writing counterparts, she teaches an ideal of aristocratic self-​­ identity grounded in caritas and the

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cultivation of emotional connection with others. Caritas does not provide the single frame into which Dhuoda fits all of her moral teaching. In this, her text has more in common with the mirror of Jonas. Still, in precisely the same language as all of the earlier mirrors, quoting liberally from both biblical and patristic sources, she impresses upon her son the prevailing ideology of aristocratic masculinity that all of the other mirrors followed and articulated. According to her text, only those men who exhibited the correct virtus could truly claim the authority of divine sanction. She explained and naturalized the power of aristocratic men by describing their power not as an essential right, inherited only by blood, but rather as a gift of God, granted to great and small according to the measure of their merit. Readers of Dhuoda frequently note her arguments advocating loyalty to family and especially to the male head of household.6 I think it equally important, however, to note the ways in which Dhuoda’s text also teaches the essential compatibility between such familial and factional loyalties and a collective aristocratic identity grounded in caritas. She teaches William, in other words, that he does not need to betray his loyalty to his father in order to make peace with his father’s enemies—​­there is no conflict for her between these seemingly opposed ends. Thus, Dhuoda teaches her son that he will secure personal safety and career advancement only through upholding and knowing his place within worldly hierarchies of power. It is his duty to recognize the stature of those above him, regardless of their allegiances, and to learn from their example.7 William must ingratiate himself at the royal palace, seek out “whomever is splendid at court,” and “hold firmly to the example of their distinction.”8 He must respect the priests and bishops whom he meets, for in full accordance with traditional ideologies of Christian power and metaphoric space, she teaches that “they are closer and nearer to God” (Deo proximi et viciniores).9 Dhuoda knew very well that her son would walk a distinctly secular path during his life and had no delusions about the fact that he would walk it through a world of strict and immoveable power hierarchies, where lineage and favor reigned supreme. Her advice is thus always directed t­ oward guiding William safely and pragmatically through the brambles of this treacherous environment. In support of her words, Dhuoda explains to her son that ultimately, the most important hierarchies for him to recognize and to follow are those of merit and virtus.10 William might not hold the highest rank, but he is to be no pawn either. He must never follow his elders and betters blindly, warns the book. Heeding ancient tropes of the mirror genre, Dhuoda impresses that

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William must use his wits to seek out the best friends and advisors for himself and learn to live a good life from whatever proper sources he can find. At court, Dhuoda suggests to her son, there will be great conversations from which “if he wishes, one man can learn from another humility, caritas, chastity, patience, gentleness, modesty, sobriety, discretion, and the rest of the virtutes, along with the pursuit of good work.”11 She urges William to look up to priests, but she also teaches him to seek out only the best of them. He must judge for himself their worth—​­not necessarily condemning those who exhibit less quality than perhaps they should but taking as role models only the ones whom he (and not anyone else) finds to be admirable.12 The model of life that Dhuoda advocates, like that of the early mirrors, rests firmly upon an ideology of essential dignity and equality among all people under God, based on the measure of their merits. It is an equality that extends not only between the high born and the low but also between men of the professional religious ranks and laymen.13 She makes clear to her son that regardless of the traditions that exist in both the secular world and the world of the church, in which men and women imagine themselves to have great sway over their lands and the people within them, only God wields real power.14 And congruently, it is only William himself, no one else, who holds the power over his personal growth and spiritual enlightenment.15 Echoing the mirrors of Paulinus and Alcuin, the key to all of William’s pursuits is the tireless cultivation of love of God and neighbor. Dhuoda teaches her son not just classical love of family and friends but also a love without limitations of person or place. Through wordplay, she teaches William to merge self-​­identity with the identity of the collective: “Love all so that you may be loved by all, and cherish them so that you may be cherished. If you love all, all will love you. May you love singularly, they plurally.”16 In one of the most beautiful literary images of the entire medieval Latin corpus, she metaphorically connects the figure of the panting hart from Psalm 42 with a description from Pliny the Elder’s Natural History.17 She likens the ideal of emotional care and connection that William must embody to a group of harts crossing a river with a strong current. As they follow one another closely through the raging flow, each rests its horns and head on the back of the one in front. Supporting one another equally in this manner, they manage not to exhaust themselves against the rushing water and thus help each other across the stream. Furthermore, the harts have such a keen sense of equity, she adds, that when the one who is in front weakens, the leader becomes a follower—​ n ­ ot in a loss of status but simply so that others may help and support him:

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“Thus, as one individual takes the place of another, the brotherly fellow-​ s­ uffering of love (compassio dilectionis fraterna) runs through the one into the others.” The harts’ mutual care of one another, she concludes, demonstrates “that human beings must also have love for greater and lesser alike through the brotherliness of fellow-​­suffering, in every way and everything.”18 Again like the earlier mirrors, Dhuoda’s manual teaches William that his ultimate goal, which is the same for all human souls regardless of their way of life, is the attainment of salvation. She places repeated emphasis throughout her work on the notion that her son’s worldly life should be lived simply and in continual pursuit of this end. Referencing the words of Gregory the Great, she tells him that he must cultivate virtus as a remedy for vice, matching evil with the correct medicine of opposing good forces.19 The strongest weapons that William has against the scourge of the devil’s whip, however, are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and the beatitudes.20 Playing linguistically upon the double association of his earthly military service and his service to God as miles Christi, Dhuoda pleads with her son to act, as he performs his duties among his “fellow soldiers” in life, in such a way that “he will merit being joined, free among the free, with the servants and soldiers of Christ who serve together and not alone in the kingdom that will endure without end.”21 Through constant awareness and the perpetual contemplation and performance of good works, William can himself be endowed with the Holy Spirit’s gifts and reach the rank of the eight beatitudes.22 Dhuoda teaches William to study all of the books of scripture in order to learn the will of God, pushing her son to internalize God’s precepts so that he might walk “the straight path” in both good fortune and bad.23 Touching on precisely the same themes as the earlier mirrors, the liber explains that he must never allow anything to steal him away from nurturing compassion ­toward his neighbors in the “spirit of pietas.”24 Instead, he must turn pride and arrogance into gentleness, conquering anger with patience and peace.25 William is asked to demonstrate his misericordia whenever he participates in matters of the law. If he loves misericordia, his mother explains, he will be blessed in accordance with the Gospel teaching. Just as Alcuin explained to Wido, Dhuoda explains to William that he must show misericordia even to the least of humanity. “If you are meek,” she says, quoting the Gospel of Matthew’s first beatitude, “and a furrower of good work, proceeding always with integrity, you will deserve to be brought together with those of whom the Lord . . . ​says, ‘Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the land.’ ”26 Again, it is the cultivation of these behaviors that will link William to the

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authority of the most elite disciples of God. Dhuoda’s manly ideal was a matter of individual choice. In her book, God demands the same from every human being, and because of this, anyone who chooses to follow his precepts can live on earth secure in the hope of future salvation. Her epitome of manliness was the ascetic life, but the layman could access the ascetic’s power and authority through caritas and deeds. It is interesting to note Dhuoda’s emphasis, echoing Stoic notions of clementia, on the idea that virtus involved having the power to do ill but actively electing not to use this power.27 A man merited his salvation through understanding and affective interconnection. Like the harts crossing the river, sometimes it would be William’s turn to lead, other times to follow, but it would always be his duty to care lovingly for those above and below him, in recognition of their common humanity and common flaws. If he served God well in life, he could be confident that God would indeed select him as one of his own in the afterlife.

A Culture of Shame: Florus of Lyon and Angelbert Dhuoda articulated or rather rearticulated this ideology of secular moral authority at exactly the same political moment that the Astronomer was composing his literary image of what that authority should look like in his vita of Emperor Louis. Writers could also exploit connections between caritas and authority, however, to cast shame and to place even further pressure on aristocratic men to perform their manliness more correctly. It is no coincidence that the Astronomer and Dhuoda’s contemporaries would invoke caritas to express their collective horror, self-​­questioning, and disillusionment as they witnessed the civil war that followed Louis the Pious’s death. Public emotional expression began to play a new role within the identity politics of the mid-​­ninth-​ c­ entury Carolingian aristocracy as writers rhetorically came to terms with the war’s physical and psychological wounds. They invoked caritas discourse as a means of interrogating and calling into doubt the power structures that allowed these wounds to occur. We have a significant body of contemporary evidence from the civil war period all expressing the ways in which the internecine slaughter led to profound grief. These writers, in remarkably similar language, placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of the aristocracy as a whole—​­not on particular factions but rather on all of the aristocracy for its collective impiety. In so doing, they described the warfare as a rupture of the very bonds that defined

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Frankish collective and personal identity.28 What once seemed possible for the Frankish people now no longer did because they no longer were who they once had been. “We see the fall of noble cities,” Lupus, Abbot of Ferrières, wrote in a contemporary sermon; “the leaders cannot agree with their equals, the community is not as great as it was, the generals are not as many or as fine as they were. We have rejected order.”29 His criticism mobilized the ideology of salvation by choice and merit in the service of arguing that all Frankish men of the aristocratic caste had failed to act correctly as men. Collective sin, not the sin of any individual or faction, and lay sin in particular had resulted in the destruction and collapse of their world. The war demonstrated the clear signature of the wrath of God in retribution for an unfulfilled promise of moral reformation. Two poems written by Frankish noblemen of the period, one an ecclesiastic scholar observing the war from a distance and the other a warrior who claims to have been an eyewitness and participant in the bloodshed, serve to demonstrate further the ways in which contemporaries not only described the war in a common language of emotional anguish but also narrated the war as a failure of aristocratic men to perform love of God and neighbor correctly. Each poem expresses deep and painful sorrow about the fighting. Each agonizes, in wrenching diction, over the brutal and senseless destruction of bodies and property that the war brought about. The poems lament most of all, however, the irreparable rupture of Frankish aristocratic identity itself. The force of these expressions of lamentation draws directly upon the ideological connections between lay caritas and authority. Frankish identity was in crisis because this authority had been lost. The deacon and exegete, Florus of Lyon, wrote a poem of forty-​­seven quatrains in which he lamented the war as evidence that the Franks as a whole had turned away from God.30 The majority of his poem details his profound sorrow about the state of affairs in the Frankish realm, using vivid affective language that invites the reader (or hearer, probably, in the original moment) to share completely in the speaker’s emotional experience. Yet just as his lament builds to a crescendo of doleful sorrow, it ends in dramatic calm with a prayer to God for release from this emotional anguish and a triumphant expression of hope. Florus was a talented practitioner of Carolingian lamentation, which infused elements of the ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Latin lamentation traditions with the solemnity of Christian patristic sermon poetry.31 His poem grounds itself in the grief of the historical moment but in the end offers its reader a glimmer of hope that future salvation might still be

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possible. Juxtaposing pain with joy, Florus’s poem argues that although the Franks have fallen from their once great heights, they can return to glory and unity if they collectively embrace their current hardship, learn from it, repent, and rebuild. Florus’s lament begins with an image of nature itself mourning for the Franks: “Let the elements in sympathy share this grief/ . . . ​for the hearts of men grow hardened.”32 Wickedness is everywhere according to the poem; the church is cast down, and proper worship of God has diminished: “love and fear of God’s law have disappeared,” the poem’s speaker bemoans, “and all that has been determined by canon is trodden underfoot.”33 The common folk suffer from “constant pillage,” and the nobility “barbarously murder one another”; “adultery is everywhere, oaths are broken, innocent blood is shed with no hope of justice”; “mortals have abandoned their fear of kings and of laws and make their way, eyes closed, to [hell’s] fire.”34 The poem describes rampant violence: monasteries being destroyed, nuns being raped, the princes of the Church being oppressed by worldly thuggery.35 Still, there is no single villain. The cause of all this trouble, the poem states explicitly, is the splitting of the empire: “The excellent realm . . . ​once prospered; there was a single prince and one people as his subjects, . . . ​our citizens lived in peace, our might frightened the enemy away.”36 “But now,” Florus’s poem decries in summary, twenty-​­five lines later, “that pinnacle of power, fallen from its great heights, . . . ​is trodden underfoot by all, stripped of its crown; It has lost both the name and the distinction of empire, and the united kingdom has fallen to three lots, for there is no one at all who is recognized as emperor, a petty king supplants a monarch, the fragments of a kingdom replace a realm.”37 The lamentation reaches its lowest emotional depth in the thirty-​­third quatrain, two thirds of the way through the poem: “What good man cannot see and grieve that the voice of the prophet thunders upon us in the words of God?” it asks in a rhetorically interrogative voice that directly addresses the reader, appealing to common experience.38 “Will the Son of Man, coming from the heights of Heaven, find, do you think [putas—​ ­second-​­person singular], any trace of faith on earth? In human hearts foxes have built their dark lairs and the foul birds of the air have made their nests; the devil’s deceit and pride hold universal sway, there is no place on which Christ may rest his head.”39 After this moment, however, the poem begins linguistically to exorcize the grief that the speaker has expressed thus far, replacing anguish gradually with hope. “In these circumstances may that little flock groan but [also] have

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trust, the Father reserved for it the joys of the eternal kingdom,” it states.40 Tears of pain are shown to achieve useful ends: “Let tears spring forth from [the flock’s] eyes both night and day, and may it keep knocking with its prayers at the door of life.”41 And in the final section of the poem, sorrow finally transforms into an image of inspiration: “For as the sun shines of its own accord or the spring flows abundantly, as the gentle rain drops spontaneously from the clouds, so that kindly Father who is considered the fount of goodness with divine favor grants all good things to His children.”42 A solemn prayer for understanding follows, infusing the sorrow of the poem with the power to effect change. Grief becomes a sought-​­after boon: “Almighty Lord, grant that we may understand with our minds so many evils, so many massacres, and so many pitiable dangers, and grant that we may groan and grieve for them with all our hearts and entreat Your divine power with constant prayers.”43 The worldly ills detailed in the early quatrains transform into a bracing scourge that impels good Christians on a direct path to salvation: “beat us, holy father, with paternal blows, chastise and strengthen us with your rod and staff, let all the evil in the world serve to cleanse us.”44 And in the poem’s final lines, the lamentation turns fully t­oward triumph: “May those who always love you increase with every hardship, so that, saved from the black waves of the sea, winning through to the port of peace by your guidance, we may pluck sweet fruit grown from this dismal seed, and sing again in perpetual praise of your triumphs!”45 In narrating the traumatic rupture of aristocratic culture but ending in acknowledgment of the wisdom and goodness of God, the speaker (and the reader by extension) assumes control over the hardship and lays forth a rhetorical plan for the Frankish people to move on to better days. This plan is founded, however, on the notion that the Franks merit their punishment from God and can thus merit their salvation and future prosperity through different action. Cultural trauma is framed in a manner that ultimately affirms the ideology of authority upon which the aristocracy had built its power, in hopes of changed behavior and a better future. Another poet from the period also used the lamentation genre to confirm the ideology of aristocratic authority upon which the Carolingians had founded their empire, yet he did so seemingly without any of the hope with which Florus’s poem ends.46 The speaker calls himself Angelbert, but beyond this name, we know little about him other than that he seems to have been a lay member of Lothar’s retinue and that he seems to have fought in the decisive battle of the civil war, at Fontenoy in 841. Angelbert’s lamentation—​­a

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rhythmic chant of fifteen three-​­line stanzas—​­describes experience of the violence by pulling the reader inside the emotional world of the battle itself. It depicts the bloodshed in florid language and evocative imagery and ends with what we could certainly call a cathartic prayer to God. But unlike the poem of Florus, the spiritual release at the end of Angelbert’s rhythmus is significantly less triumphant. Angelbert’s poem still expresses pain, grief, regret, and mourning, but it does not employ the same movement from earthly sorrow to spiritual hope that that we see in the poem of Florus. Angelbert’s poem also does not recount the ravages of the war generally, like Florus’s lament, but rather details a very specific moment directly after the Battle of Fontenoy, when the speaker finds himself a surviving warrior of the losing army. Instead of quatrains, the poem consists of three-​­line stanzas built from rhythmic trochees, thus lending itself to being chanted or sung. And this function is reinforced by the fact that the opening letters of the stanzas unfold alphabetically (a, b, c, and so forth), a mnemonic device. This mnemonic form becomes especially intriguing given the poem’s content. The lamentation opens with sunrise after a dark night and with an image of the demon Saturn looming above—​­the titan of ancient myth who was both parricide and eater of his own young. The fighting begins in the second stanza. Like Florus, Angelbert emphasizes that this is a battle among kin—​ b­ rothers versus brothers, uncles versus nephews, sons versus fathers.47 Like Florus, Angelbert declares that Christian law has been violated and illustrates the violation with gory imagery of raw flesh being devoured: “blood flows in waves,” the poem states in its third stanza, “and in hell the maw of Cerberus opens with glee.”48 Angelbert’s poem feigns a turning away from lamentation when it begins to suggest, in stanza 4, the tropes of heroic battle poetry. The speaker’s gaze falls upon Lothar, his lord, as a hero: “The hand of almighty God protected Lothar, who himself put up a valiant struggle. Had the rest fought like him swift concord would have been won.”49 And the speaker focuses the reader’s attention, furthermore, on how the loss of the battle was not Lothar’s failure but rather the result of treachery: “even as Judas once betrayed the Savior, so, Sire, your generals abandoned you in the struggle. Be careful lest you be deceived like the lamb before the wolf.”50 The symbolism is Christological and the flattery thus obvious. Yet the poem returns to sorrow in the next two stanzas, again using natural imagery similar to that used by Florus:

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Fontenoy is the name the peasants give to the spring and village where Frankish blood was shed in slaughter and destruction. The fields shudder, the woods shudder, the marshes shudder. May neither dew nor showers nor rain fall on that meadow on which mighty men, seasoned warriors, were laid low, and wept for by fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and friends.51 Here the descriptive language becomes highly personalized. And in the next stanza, the exact midpoint of the poem, the speaker both names himself and ascribes a label to what he has described in the poem thus far—​­scelus (“crime”): “I, Angelbert, witnessed this crime which I have described in rhythmical verse, as I fought with the others. I alone survived among many in the front line.”52 The placement of his name together with his condemnation of the battle as crime foreshadows the guilt and shame that the speaker expresses for the remainder of the poem. At first, the referent of scelus is ambiguous for the reader. The reader is left to wonder, that is, whether the crime is the massacre and violation of Christian law, described in stanzas 2 through 4, or the Judas-​­like betrayal of the Christ-​­like Lothar by his dukes. Heroic poetic analogues would favor the latter reading—​­that the crime is the betrayal—​­and stanza 9 proceeds as though it might continue this tragic heroic thread, highlighting again Lothar’s heroism: “From the height of the hill I looked down into the valley’s depths where the brave king Lothar was vanquishing his enemies who fled to the other side of the brook.”53 The remainder of the poem, however, makes it clear that the speaker is actually referring to the bloodshed in general as the true crime. The ambiguity begins to abate in stanza 10: “On Charles’ side and on that of Louis too the fields become white with the linen garments of the dead as they often grow white with birds in the autumn.”54 This gruesomely beautiful image of the white linen vestments of the dead resembling dense flocks of birds during autumn migrations could be a depiction of Lothar’s prowess with the blade, slaughtering all who challenge him. Stanza 11, however, demonstrates patently that it is a tragic image and the ultimate source of the speaker’s grief. The speaker’s voice contradicts the poem’s own mnemonic form with a plea for the day to be forgotten: “The battle does not deserve to be praised,” he says, “or . . . ​the subject of fine song. Let every quarter of the globe lament for those who died with such suffering.”55 “Cursed be that day,” propounds the next stanza, “may it not be counted in the round of the year,

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but expunged from all memory, unlit by the brilliance of the sun or by dawn’s morning-​­light.”56 The conflict between content and form is then underlined again in the final stanzas, which, instead of ending in triumph like Florus’s poem, return from the prayer of the previous lines to wallow directly in horror: That night and the following day—​­the night was especially terrible—​­ a night mingled with plaint and suffering, when some died and others groaned in dire straits. O grief and lamentation! The dead are stripped naked, vultures, crows, and wolves greedily devour their flesh. They grow stiff, and their corpses lie there, unburied, helpless.57 The speaker invokes God but does not ask for perseverance like the speaker of Florus’s poem. He asks instead for forgiveness and compassion for the dead on both sides: “I shall not describe further the weeping and the wailing. Let each man restrain his tears as much as he is able to. Let us implore the Lord on behalf of their souls.”58 If the reader takes the speaker at his word and believes that he truly hopes for the battle to be forgotten, the reader must then ask what, exactly, is meant to be memorialized and immortalized through the mnemonic form of the lamentation. The answer to this question can only be the sorrow and deep shame that the speaker feels for participating in the event. In memorializing not the event but the emotion of the event—​­a degree of shame beyond sorrow that normally human beings wish only to hide from public view, to bury and to forget—​­Angelbert’s poem becomes cathartic in a very different manner than Florus’s lament. Angelbert expresses no hope for better days, no vision of release. Instead, the speaker holds on to the sorrowful emotion and lets it engulf his entire worldview (and, by extension, that of the reader). Certainly, this rhetorical move serves the speaker as a very personal spiritual confession to his God and a public demonstration of his willingness to make amends for the sin of the moment. It is also, however, a very powerful expression of self-​­identity. Angelbert is not a simple penitent. His lament does not express only a personal crime but rather indicts every participant in the battle equally, petitioning without labels of culpability the protection and succor of a benevolent God after an unspeakable horror. The poem only makes sense as a declaration of collective shame born, once again, out of an ideology

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of salvation and authority achieved through choice and merit. In declaring collective remorse, the poem asserts control over both heavenly and earthly fates, supplanting sorrow over losing a battle and witnessing disloyalty within his own comitatus, with a form of sorrow that places him inside a universal comitatus of God’s followers, unassailable by any earthly faction. In the moment (if, that is, the poem actually was written from the battlefield, which we cannot necessarily assume), the poem would certainly have achieved a utilitarian end. Not knowing where proper allegiance was to go, Angelbert could maintain a safe identity—​­loyal to his lord but also in a position of sympathy with regard to Louis and Charles. Presuming the sentiment of the poem to be somehow less important or less sincere than the theater of it, however, would cause us to lose sight of the poem’s more powerful ideological work, which I think is far more significant. Both Florus and Angelbert expressed the emotion of their moment in a highly artistic and public form in order to reassert Frankish collective identity itself, which the battle had ruptured. In juxtaposition, therefore, the two poems ultimately suggest how the lamentation genre served artistically as a tragic reaffirmation of what Paulinus and Alcuin had articulated in their mirrors some forty years earlier. They both promote an ideology of equal power, equal purpose, and equal responsibility among all aristocratic men as a single group—​­an ideology that allowed for the transcendence of professional identities and political loyalties in favor of more fundamental bonds. The poems rely on the culpability of the men involved and their presumed capacity to have chosen differently. The great sorrow that the poems express is that the bloodshed could have been, indeed should have been, avoided. God’s punishment is clear, and the profound shame of that punishment falls on all aristocratic men for having allowed it to happen.

A Culture of Sorrow: Nithard of Saint-​­Riquier Nithard of Saint-​­Riquier (d. 844/845), a distant grandson of Charlemagne and vassal of Charles the Bald, provides us with yet another view of the war, no less self-​­condemning and dismal than the others. His text also mobilizes the ideology of the early mirrors to argue for a general failure of aristocratic manliness and the loss of past greatness under Charlemagne.59 Scholars have traditionally regarded Nithard as an almost purely secular figure, actively engaged in worldly politics, whose religious sensibilities, although certainly present in his

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life, were not overly devout.60 He wrote a history of his time in which God is present but present much more in the world’s underlying structures than in its foreground. Nithard is never wracked by the deep, personal worry for salvation that persistently haunts Dhuoda’s writing, for example, nor is he nearly as willing to excuse the men and women of his time for their sinful culpability.61 Only on two occasions in his text does he explain an event directly as the work of God.62 Yet while God is a distant figure in Nithard’s history, Nithard himself was nevertheless passionately concerned with the incapacity of his fellow aristocrats to follow God’s precepts. As Janet Nelson has argued, the text appears to have been composed in three separate moments during the civil war.63 The first two books narrate the opening months of the war on behalf of Charles the Bald, ostensibly as a record for his court. The third book, Nelson suggests, Nithard added in order to justify aristocratic claims after the Battle of Fontenoy. And the final book, depicting the last months of the war, represents Nithard’s personal loss of his lands in the imperial negotiations for peace and his newfound position as a political outsider, cast aside and undermined by particular aristocratic colleagues whom he describes as greedy and unjust. In keeping with the ideology of Frankish aristocratic power under which he had lived from birth, Nithard presented caritas as the foundation not just of the Christian life lived in the pursuit of heaven but of secular government and social prosperity as well. It has been suggested that the primary ethical characteristic that Nithard valorized in his history is loyalty.64 But loyalty is only one aspect of a more multifaceted ideal of Frankish behavior that Nithard espouses. His ultimate argument relies on the ideology of power and authority articulated in the mirrors: true authority in the secular world comes from unmitigated love for one’s fellow and the refusal to allow the temptations of worldly power to undermine that love. Thus, the heroes in the first two books of Nithard’s history, notably Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, and Charles the Bald, are depicted as equitable, peaceful, and merciful men who seek to love even their enemies. And they direct this love always t­oward the service of what Nithard calls utilitas ­publica—​­the “common good” or the “public welfare.” It is a phrase that he borrowed from classical Roman political philosophy but cast with a Carolingian inflection all its own. It is clear throughout Nithard’s history that he uses “common good” or “public welfare” to refer not to an abstract care for the “state” and its continuation (although he means this as well) but to selflessness and the willing relinquishment of personal interest.65 Nithard’s villains fail to

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uphold the utilitas publica and act instead only out of self-​­seeking private desire. Differently from the lamentations of Florus and Angelbert, the first two books of Nithard’s history clearly use Louis the Pious’s son, Lothar, as a foil against which Nithard demonstrates over and over again the ideal behavior of his heroes. Lothar is the instigator of bad behavior against the forces of good within the empire. He seeks to obtain power that is not his, often attaining the upper hand, but ultimately he squanders his advantage through egotism and impotence. After 829, Nithard writes that Lothar failed miserably as a captain of government. Under Lothar’s influence, “the state of the empire grew worse from day to day, since all were driven by greed and sought only their own advantage.”66 Lothar’s own allies turn back to Louis the Pious on account of Lothar’s general incompetence, asking the emperor to promise “to reconstruct the government and stand behind it if the kingdom were restored to him” and “to promote religious worship, by which all order is protected and preserved.”67 When Lothar is able to win power yet again in 833, his coup d’état fails, just as before, because of his greed and the self-​­centered infighting among his vassals: “They began to quarrel,” writes Nithard, “and, since each of them looked out for his own, they entirely neglected the government.”68 When Louis finally grows feeble and dies in 840, Lothar quickly becomes the archenemy of his brother, Charles. Nithard’s depiction of Charles subsequently begins to parallel the Astronomer’s image of Louis the Pious as the true paragon of Christian Frankish virtus. Lothar almost immediately refuses to honor his oaths to uphold the division of the empire that he swore just before his father’s death. He begins to make hostile advances ­toward the lands of Charles, who has succeeded their father as ruler in the West. In these first two books of his history, Charles is a champion of peace, concord, and the common good. He implores his older brother “to stop stirring up his people and disturbing the kingdom committed to him by God, and sent word to Lothar that peace and harmony should rule everywhere.”69 And when Lothar pretends to receive his brother’s words favorably but continues to position himself in an aggressive manner, Charles keeps his emotional distance and remains the better man. He declares to his men that “he wished wholeheartedly to serve the common good and would not hesitate to die for it if that should be necessary”; he even suggests that he would share power with his brother if it could lead to peace, agreeing with his counselors that, “should Lothar be willing to put the common good ahead of his own, as he had

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promised, this would please everybody and they [Charles and his men] would welcome him.”70 The Battle of Fontenoy, however, provides Nithard with the best stage on which to display the authority of his hero. Unlike Angelbert’s poem, Nithard’s text barely describes the battle itself but instead focuses in greatest detail on the scene immediately following the battle, when Lothar’s men are routed and running from the field. Charles and his brother, Louis, deliberate over how to proceed, and some of their entourage counsel pursuit. “Seized with rage,” the text describes, their advisors sought to cut down what remained of their enemies and end Lothar’s threat of treachery forever; others, however, “especially the kings themselves,” lamented for their brother and his people. “As always,” Nithard explains, invoking precisely the same language with which Gregory the Great described the Christian rector, Charles and Louis “wished from the bowels of their pietas [piis visceribus . . . ​optabant] that their opponents would turn away from evil greed and then, with God’s granting it, come to be harmonious in true justice.”71 Nithard’s history continues, describing the slaughter of the battle and the spoils as “truly astonishing” but stating that, comparatively, the mercy of Charles and Louis was even more worthy of note. In an act of solemn reverence for the dead, the kings decide to celebrate Sunday mass on the site of the battle, and after the mass, they bury “friends and enemies alike, the faithful and the faithless” in a spirit of forgiveness; “with equal sincerity,” writes Nithard, they tended to the wounded and they also sent word to the fleeing army of Lothar that all would be pardoned if they returned in good faith.72 And finally, Charles and Louis ask their spiritual advisors, the bishops, for counsel about how they might proceed to appease God further. This was, as we have seen, standard practice among the laity of this period, and the bishops respond with sage advice. In a public assembly, the bishops agree that Charles and Louis had fought for justice and equity and that the outcome of the battle was evidence of God’s judgment in the matter. Everyone in the conflict was to consider himself a “minister of God” (Dei minister) and thus free from guilt.73 But then Nithard’s account adds an intriguing bit of information. The bishops claim further that anyone who had acted out of “wrath or hatred or vainglory or any excess passion” had to confess this sin in secret and do penance according to his guilt; they advise a three-​­day fast for the remission of the sins of the fallen, not only so that the dead would be freed of their wrongdoing but also “so that the Lord, who up to that moment had been their succor and protector in a just cause, would forever remain so.”74 Even in

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just war, warriors had to atone for their violence. Even in victory, God’s further protection required sacrifice and self-​­reflection. Charles and Louis are the reluctant heroes of a Pyrrhic victory in books 1 and 2. A distinct shift in Nithard’s moralizing, however, occurs during the course of book 3, and in the fourth book, his heroes are no longer the focus of his narrative at all. He turns his literary gaze instead upon the wretchedness of the aristocracy as a whole. Nithard surmises, as he reflects upon the utter sadness of his moment near the turn of the year 843, that all the key political ­actors—​­on both sides, including his own—​­had quite simply failed to act on behalf of the many and only sought the advancement of the few or the one. As Stuart Airlie has argued, Nithard increasingly presents a less and less flattering portrait of the entire aristocracy in his eyewitness account of events. Adalhard the seneschal, Bernard of Septimania, and Adalbert of Metz, all former allies, are a trio of evil in the narrative of the late war—​­selfish, slippery, cowardly, bloodthirsty ladder climbers who represent the worst of what the Franks had become.75 Nithard’s experience of these men leads to more and more general despair over his own plight in the context of the rupture of aristocratic culture as a whole. Reminiscent of Dhuoda’s lesson concerning the harts and the raging river, Nithard moralizes that in reading his history, “everyone may gather how mad it is to neglect the common good and to follow only private and selfish desires, since both sins insult the Creator so much, in fact, that he turns even the elements against the madness of the sinner.”76 In the time of Charlemagne, Nithard recalls nostalgically, peace and concord ruled the land because the Frankish people walked “the one right and common way of God,” but “now,” he laments with regard to his own time, “on the contrary, everyone walks whatever path he or she wants, and flagrant dissensions and violent disputes are everywhere.”77 The last lines of his book might qualify for the most unhappy ending in all of Carolingian literature: “About this time, on March 20, there occurred an eclipse of the moon. Besides, a great deal of snow fell in the same night and the just judgment of God, as I said before, filled every heart with sorrow. I mention this because rapine and wrongs of every sort were rampant on all sides, and now the unseasonable weather killed the last hope of any good to come.”78 With these final words—​­“gloomy” fails to describe them accurately enough—​­Nithard’s history, just as the poems of Florus and Angelbert, expresses a profound despair driven by unmet expectations of collective moral behavior. The civil war was an abomination and an affront to everything that he believed about how things “should” have been. And it was a

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belief that came from an ideology of the world in which prosperity and correct aristocratic masculinity were intimately connected.

A Culture of Grace: Gottschalk of Orbais These contemporary accounts of the war reveal at the very least, therefore, a literary trope of collective self-​­excoriation among aristocratic writers in their observation and narration of the war. This self-​­expressed disillusionment questioned the very foundations of aristocratic identity itself, even as it was driven by the ideological underpinnings of that identity in the first place. Aristocratic disillusionment would become an issue of further concern over the course of the next two decades. In precisely the same moment that Dhuoda, Florus of Lyon, Angelbert, and Nithard were writing about the Frankish aristocracy, its flaws, and the devastation of the civil war, a charismatic scholar, monk, and provocateur was touring throughout the southeastern region of the empire, preaching a highly persuasive theory about a very different kind of ideological relationship between human behavior and salvation. The preacher’s name was Gottschalk of Orbais.79 The source material that we have for the exact nature and scope of Gottschalk’s preaching during the war period is scant, yet it is possible to reconstruct some basic outlines. Around the year 840, Hrabanus Maurus (d. 856)—​­the towering intellect and, at the time, Abbot of Fulda, the important monastery and center of learning in the northeast of the empire—​­wrote a letter to Bishop Noting of Verona in which he included, apparently in response to a request from Noting himself, an extended treatise on free will and predestination.80 Gottschalk is not named directly in this correspondence, but the Annals of St. Bertin attest that Gottschalk was indeed in the region during this time.81 From 846, we have another long letter from Hrabanus that refers to Gottschalk and his preaching directly. Hrabanus addressed this letter to Eberhard of Friuli, the march-​­lord of the region, and the letter asks the count to rethink his patronage and protection of Gottschalk: “They say that a certain know-​­it-​­all named Gottschalk is staying with you, who is teaching that the predestination of God binds all men in such a way that even if someone would want to be saved and would struggle for this by the correct faith and good works in order to come to eternal life by the grace of God, he would labor in vain and for naught, if he has not been predestined to life, as if God, who is the author of our salvation and not of our perdition, forces a human being to perish by his

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predestination.”82 Hrabanus’s fear was that Gottschalk had been preaching what is called “double” or “twofold predestination.” The claim of double predestination is essentially that God predestined both the elect to eternal life in salvation and the degenerate to eternal death in hell’s punishment. Humanity was therefore effectively divided into two very distinct and permanently fixed groups: the chosen and the reprobate. What Gottschalk actually preached is a matter of considerable modern debate, but Hrabanus’s principal concern seems to have been that Gottschalk might have been teaching the flock that God was not interested in saving all people and, in so doing, leading the flock into despair.83 Because no human had the power to change his or her designation within these groups, if a soul was predestined as reprobate, there was nothing that anyone could do—​­no deed—​­that could make amends and change that soul’s doomed fate. Perhaps even more disturbingly, double predestination suggested that if a soul was predestined as chosen, there was no deed, however ill, that could prevent that soul from being saved. It was a salvation theology that had not been preached with such rhetorical persuasiveness since Pelagius (d. 418) in the early fifth century and that would not again reappear with such populist fervor until the writing and public preaching of John Calvin in the sixteenth century. Before exploring the theological implications about which Hrabanus was concerned in further detail below, however, it is important first to understand the context within which Hrabanus wrote these two letters and the story of the controversial man over whom they worry.

Sleeping Near a Serpent Gottschalk and Hrabanus knew each other well—​­Gottschalk having lived his early life as an oblate at the monastery of Fulda, where Hrabanus was abbot. Gottschalk seems to have been something of an intellectual and charismatic prodigy, perhaps even, some have suggested, Hrabanus’s star pupil. Yet after a boyhood spent growing up within the highly regulated confinements of the monastic way of life, Gottschalk grew restless as a young man. He engaged, sometime during his early to mid-​­twenties, in a public dispute with Hrabanus, claiming that as an oblate, he had been forced into his monastic vows against his will. Because he had never been allowed to choose his tonsure, he petitioned that he ought to be released from his monastic obligations at once and returned to the secular world to live out the remainder of his days. While the particular arguments that Gottschalk wrote on this matter are unfortunately lost, his early preoccupation with questions of free will is clear.

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And we know something about the nature of his attacks on both the practice of infant oblation and the monastic life in general because we have the response that Hrabanus Maurus wrote to counter them.84 In his Liber de oblatione puerorum (“Book on the Oblation of Boys”), Hrabanus Maurus championed monasticism as the only true form of devotion for God’s people.85 His liber does not mention Gottschalk by name but rails against those who would hate the monastic life with such fervor that they would wish to turn the Christian community against it.86 Hrabanus took especially great offense at any claim that the regular life served no purpose other than to bind free souls in servitude. In point of fact, the abbot retorted, the monastic life was the only true freedom on earth, for it was the only possible means for a man to escape the sins that worldly life inevitably inflicted upon the soul. Monks were the remnant of the original Christian ecclesia, keepers of the zeal with which the original apostles loved their God, he argued. This zeal had dissipated and diminished with the growth and expansion of the Christian community of souls, and so now monks withdrew from the civitas and its corruption as a demonstration of their apostolic fervor.87 Here we have in part a rearticulation of the ideology of Christian male power at the center of Carolingian aristocratic culture, which held up the ascetic male as the ultimate image of Christian manly authority. Hrabanus invoked this ideology, however, in a different manner than we have seen thus far—​­not ­toward equalizing the authority of secular and nonsecular men but rather ­toward establishing and reconstituting the hierarchical superiority of the ascetic male over all other male forms. As explained in Chapter 1, Christian writers had regarded monasteries since their inception during the late Roman period as refuges where devout Christians could seek to know God’s will without (or at least with fewer) distractions from the obfuscating forces of the secular world. Yet the most influential doctrinal thinkers of the fourth and fifth centuries, Augustine in particular, had also warned against extending this line of thought too far. Augustine had no trouble lauding the ascetic life, yet he argued stridently against those who presumed that monks might somehow be better in essence than the rest of humanity simply on account of their ascetic fortitude.88 Famously, Augustine likened some of the more extreme ascetic performances of his world to the tricks of street performers farting tunes.89 At the heart of Hrabanus’s defense of monasticism against Gottschalk, however, he quotes directly from an early fourth-​­century textual authority with which Augustine had been in dialogue, the Contra Vigilantium admonitio

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of St. Jerome (d. 420).90 This polemical tract had been written originally to counter the invective of a certain preacher named Vigilantius, who railed, similarly to Augustine, against what he thought to be too much emphasis placed by the Christian community on the veneration of the saints and the exaltation of sexual renunciation.91 Quoting Jerome, Hrabanus identified three main arguments against the cenobitic life that therefore required defense. The first was the contention that monastic vows might be unnecessary to salvation. Jerome’s text did not refute the fact that all children of God had access to God’s forgiveness. In this it agreed with Augustine. But, Jerome continued, monasticism was the only path to Christian perfection and thus the surer road to salvation.92 The second attack against monasticism that Jerome attempted to refute was more grave for Hrabanus, for it involved the question of how humanity would survive if, taking the exaltation of the monastic life to its extreme conclusion, everyone on earth became a monk. “If everyone became a recluse,” Hrabanus quotes from his fourth-​­century authority, “who would be left to celebrate mass in the churches? Who would teach secular persons? Who could curb sinners away from sin and t­ oward virtue? And if all are virgins, what would become of the human race?”93 The text, written as it was by a talented rhetorician, does not argue the terms of the hypothetical fantasy that it suggests but rather rephrases the issue. It reminds its reader that monks are few in any age of the Church and that therefore, as an argument against the monastic life, such a position fails to propose a realistic possibility. More than that, however, monks have a specific role within the Church, which is “not to teach, but to weep” for the souls of sinners.94 For Jerome, the monk’s purpose in society was to embody empathetic care for others but an empathetic care performed from afar. This in and of itself is a decidedly odd passage to cite for a man who oversaw the most elite monastic school in the land. Yet Hrabanus’s unabashed quotation of Jerome’s response to a third attack against the monastic way of life is even more surprising and demonstrative of the extreme lengths to which the ninth-​­century abbot was willing to argue against Gottschalk’s polemic. Jerome addresses an accusation that the monastic life was, in point of fact, a cowardly way to serve God—​­a flight from the real war between virtues and vices, which was fought on the battlefields of the secular world. Jerome’s response does not attempt to refute these claims but rather concedes their veracity: it was not only necessary but also good to recognize the fact that the monastic life constituted a flight from battle. For Jerome, the cloistered life truly was an escape from evil and a resignation to the fact that to fight against

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it within the world could only be a futile exercise. Cowardly though it may have seemed, it was a truth that Christians needed to embrace. “I admit my weakness,” says Jerome in a spectacular rhetorical flourish, typical of the tone that he sets for the debate; “I do not wish to fight in hope of victory, lest I lose the higher victory. If I flee, I avoid the sword; but if I stand firm, I will either be vanquished or I will fall into sin. . . . ​There is no safety when sleeping near a serpent.”95 Hrabanus was attempting to keep a man—​­perhaps a man about whom he cared very personally—​­inside his monastery and thus no doubt was reaching for any authority he could to support his claims for the worthiness of the cenobitic life. It is striking nevertheless that it was possible and legible for arguably the most prominent and influential thinker of his time to quote Jerome so brazenly. Jerome’s words asserted more than just the qualitative superiority of the monk as the Christian masculine ideal, which the Carolingian ideology of worldly masculinity fully supported. They also professed with confident vigor that the monastic life was the only certain means of achieving perfection. Jerome had even embraced the notion that the monastic life was indeed a flight from the dangers of the material realm, a concession that he used to support the monk’s superiority rather than to deny it. These were precisely the sorts of ideological claims that the lay mirrors controverted. Paulinus and Alcuin made clear that God judges deeds, not bodies. Dhuoda encouraged her son to aspire to spiritual perfection as a courtier, never as a monk. It is difficult to know for certain how Gottschalk’s early life debate with his mentor actually ended.96 Whatever the outcome, however, perhaps the most lasting result of his petition was to create a vitriolic rift between himself and Hrabanus Maurus that would never be traversed, along with a clear desire on the part of Gottschalk to be the thorn in his former master’s side in whatever way that he could be for the remainder of his life. This, perhaps, was Gottschalk’s goal from the start. His combativeness ­toward Hrabanus, if not outright hatred and what can only be described as a vendetta against the entire ideological structure of authority that governed his early life, would lead Gottschalk to find himself on the side of the rebel or underdog for virtually the entirety of his career. In the 830s, he fell in with Ebbo, Archbishop of Reims, before Ebbo was deposed and publicly scapegoated in the political vicissitudes of that decade. Sometime soon after that, the evidence shows that Gottschalk left Reims for the southeastern edges of the empire, taking a group of followers south to Carinthia, Friuli, and Lombardy, where at some point,

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probably early on, he became a member of the extended entourage of the powerful march lord Eberhard. This is the context for the exchange of letters that we see between Hrabanus and Noting around 840 and Hrabanus and Eberhard in 846. Gottschalk had begun preaching that humans actually had no free will at all. It was the second time that Gottschalk had risen in intellectual defiance of an orthodoxy that Hrabanus felt bound to defend. But now, ironically, the words that Hrabanus quoted in defense of monasticism resembled, more than a little, Gottschalk’s new arguments for predestination. One logical extension of Jerome’s statement about the monastic life is that it would render elite discipleship far less a matter of caritas and deeds than a matter of physical renunciation. The Christian soul in the world risked inevitable corruption, regardless of its capacity for caritas and good works. Gottschalk argued for an even more radical disempowerment of works in the economy of salvation, and once again Hrabanus had to engage.

The Carolingian Predestination Crisis Indeed, Hrabanus expressed his fears repeatedly concerning the implications of Gottschalk’s preaching upon the ideology of aristocratic male identity that was so influential within their world. If the years of the civil war led to declarations among the aristocracy of ruptured identity and the collective failure of aristocratic men to act correctly in their protection and service of the common good, surely Gottschalk’s preaching would have been heard in relation. Gottschalk invoked specifically the same discourse of caritas that the lay mirrors used to articulate the ideology of aristocratic authority, only Gottschalk inverted the orientation and attributed caritas directly to God, separating it from the human realm altogether. Caritas, for Gottschalk, could never be a choice. It was always solely a gift of God’s gratuitous grace. In the articulation of his ideas, Gottschalk wielded caritas discourse in complete contradiction to its previous uses, arguing the exact opposite of what caritas previously represented. For him, humans effectively had no natural capacity for caritas or acts of pietas. These were attributes of the divine, and thus, without divine help, humans had only the capacity to commit evil. “For absent God’s caritas,” he wrote, “carnal lust rules. And because of it, absent God’s caritas, there is no freedom to do good.”97 Grace alone allowed good behavior to exist in the human realm, preceding and predestining the human will that would then carry it out in time.98 The elect were passive recipients of his grace, while the reprobate actively rejected it. This receptiveness is what

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won humans their salvation, not the quotidian deeds that they chose to perform or not to perform during life.99 This doctrine, as well as its direct invocation of caritas discourse ­toward new ends, was seen by Gottschalk’s opponents to have profound implications upon pastoral care. If deeds no longer held primacy in the achievement of salvation, all of the measures of moral reform that Charlemagne and his court had decreed, all of the public penances of Louis the Pious, would be transformed into exhibitions of human folly—​­useless, futile, wasted energy expended by a population so hubristic that it believed it could actually have an effect upon the infinite power and will of God. Gottschalk’s detractors saw these implications clearly and made the disillusionment of the flock one of the main pragmatic focuses of their anti-​­predestinarian arguments. To return again to Hrabanus’s letter from 846 entreating Eberhard to withdraw his protection and support of Gottschalk, Hrabanus explained the reasons for his request directly: “this sect has led many into despair over themselves so that they say, ‘Why is it necessary for me to work for my salvation and eternal life? For if I do good but I have not been predestined to life, it profits me nothing. But if I do evil, it is in no way an obstacle to me. For the predestination of God causes me to come to eternal life.’ Teaching this is a scandal to many in these regions.”100 Scholars have had difficulty reconstructing how Eberhard responded to Hrabanus’s reasoning, but from either the compulsion of Eberhard or his own personal desire to challenge his former master openly once again, Gottschalk did return from the southeastern frontier in 848 to attend a synod convened by Hrabanus, who in the interim had left Fulda for an appointment as the Archbishop of Mainz. The synod at Mainz of 848 was presided over by King Louis the German himself and attended by a large number of the important bishops and magnates of the East Frankish realm. There, the records attest, supported by a small group of monks who were probably his closest disciples, Gottschalk presented to the assembly a treatise that he had composed in response to the accusations of his former master. In this document, Gottschalk laid forth once again his belief in double predestination: “Just as [God] truly predestined all of the elect to life through the gratuitous benefit of his grace alone . . . ​so he also absolutely predestined any reprobate to the punishment of eternal death, that is, through the most just judgment of his immutable justice.”101 Deeds, he confirmed, had nothing to do with salvation. The reception of this document by the dignitaries of the synod was probably not what Gottschalk had hoped, for he was publicly flogged and made to

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swear that he would never again preach in Louis’s kingdom. Gottschalk was sent back to his metropolitan bishop, who was Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims—​­another towering figure of Carolingian intellectual culture and future chief advisor to Charles the Bald—​­with an accompanying letter from Hrabanus explaining the terms of Gottschalk’s censure and the charges against him. To Hincmar, who was powerful but certainly not universally loved, Hrabanus framed the teaching of Gottschalk in precisely the terms that he had for Eberhard, emphasizing again how Gottschalk’s predestination theology was a dangerous catalyst for religious disillusionment among the Christian flock: [For Gottschalk says] that the predestination of God is found in a bad person just as it is in a good person. He also says that certain people are such in this world that, according to the predestination of God, which compels them to go into death, they cannot correct themselves from error and sin, as if God from the beginning had made them to be incorrigible and to go to destruction, subject to punishment. . . . ​As I have heard, he already has led astray and made [Christian people] less devout ­toward their own salvation, who say, “How will it profit me to labor in the service of God? For if I have been predestined to death, I will never escape it. But if I live badly and I have been predestined to life, I will without any doubt go to eternal rest.”102 In Hrabanus’s eyes, at least according to the rhetoric of his arguments, the danger of Gottschalk’s teaching was fundamentally pragmatic: it could lead and indeed had led to religious malaise among the laity. Predestined salvation removed deeds and merit, the very foundations of lay identity within the church, entirely from their religious life. And for a lay aristocratic world already disillusioned and scarred by the events of the civil war, the realm only risked descent into further chaos. After Gottschalk’s flogging and condemnation, Hincmar convened another synod at Quierzy, perhaps because it was unclear to him what to do, beyond censure, with the rebel monk. He wished to know where Gottschalk should reside and how. The Synod of Quierzy, during the spring of 849, was this time presided over by the West Frankish king, Charles the Bald. Again Gottschalk presented his ideas to the assembly and again was found to be a heretic and publicly flogged. Furthermore, his books were burned, he was stripped of his priesthood, and he was sent to reside, supposedly for the rest of

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his days, in imposed silence at the abbey of Hautvillers, which lay under Hincmar’s direct gaze within his own diocese of Reims. This might have been the end had Gottschalk’s charismatic ability to win friends and his relentless need to thwart Hrabanus not been so strong. Through both public and clandestine epistolary exchanges, Gottschalk managed to converse with members of the intelligentsia throughout the empire. This “jailhouse” correspondence makes at least two points clear. First, a significant number of church leaders remained concerned about the implications of Gottschalk’s ideas for the lay culture of salvation and good deeds that had been so painstakingly constructed during the first half of the century. Amolo, bishop of the important see of Lyon, wrote a magisterial letter to Hincmar containing words for Gottschalk that plead with the rebel monk to reconsider his position. The trouble that Amolo had with Gottschalk’s teaching again involved primarily its disillusioning effects on the laity: We . . . ​detest and abhor that you so burst out in flames against those who are worthy of eternal death that you said they were irrevocably and immutably predestined to perdition, just as God himself is immutable and unalterable. And you exhort the bishops, to whom you write, as if compassionately, that they should preach to people that since they cannot escape the predetermined condemnation, they should plead with God a little and humble themselves so that he may soften a little and lighten the punishments established for them. I ask, where in the sacred scriptures did you ever read that? Where did you find that in the holy and catholic doctors of the church?103 Amolo’s words are sharp, but their tone is undeniably pastoral, one could even argue avuncular. It is impossible to know whether his feelings were genuine or whether, as a trained rhetorician, Amolo was simply invoking the polite discourse of ancient epistolary tradition. Regardless, his diction demonstrates the second point that Gottschalk’s prison correspondence makes clear—​­namely, that there was widespread willingness throughout the Carolingian world to engage in further predestination debate. That is, Amolo does not ignore Gottschalk after his imprisonment.104 And we see this pattern from virtually all the scholars to whom Gottschalk seems to have written while under confinement, which comprised nearly the whole of the Carolingian intellectual world: Amolo of Lyon, Marquard of Prum, Lupus of Ferrières, Ratramnus of

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Corbie—​­the list goes on. From Ratramnus, Gottschalk received a warm reply indeed: a letter and two accompanying poems of friendship.105 These extended exchanges and the continued production of Gottschalk’s scholarship on predestination led Hincmar to become increasingly insecure in his attempts to maintain occupancy of the moral high ground. We have several letters from him asking peers for further advice concerning how he might proceed with the rebel monk. And in 849, Hincmar composed, in response to Gottschalk’s capacity not only to continue to spread his ideas but also to generate further interest in his case, a long pastoral Letter to the Monks and Simple Folk of his Diocese.106 Despite all of Hincmars efforts, however, Gottschalk’s ideas had, by mid-​­century, made significant gains among the Carolingian intellectual elite. Specifically, debate about predestination had led to an important cultural reconsideration of the efficacy of works and the primacy of grace in the pursuit of salvation. From the renewed study of Augustine’s thoughts on predestination that Gottschalk’s preaching encouraged, bishops throughout the realm began to revise their earlier summary condemnations of Gottschalk’s ideas. Ratramnus of Corbie, who seems always to have been sympathetic to Gottschalk’s ideas, now felt comfortable enough to voice public condemnation of Hincmar’s Letter to Monks, claiming it to be theologically unfair to Gottschalk. Prudentius of Troyes, who had previously been an outspoken opponent of Gottschalk, seems to have changed his mind and, in a letter to Hincmar, argued for an interpretation of Augustine that contradicted Hincmar’s own.107 In changing his opponents’ minds, Gottschalk not only compiled endless scriptural and patristic evidence in support of his theology but also launched direct salvos against the pastoral arguments that his enemies voiced against him, once again using the language of caritas to do so. Gottschalk’s explanations of twofold predestination used caritas as a conceptual analogue. Predestination is singular in form but bipartite for the elect and the reprobate, Gottschalk wrote, in the same manner that caritas is singular in form but bipartite in love of God and love of neighbor.108 Pastors who taught merit and deeds were giving false hope, he argued. They had no love for their flocks, for anyone who would deceive in matters of religion was the worst kind of liar. Gottschalk claimed to have at least enough integrity to tell people the hard truth.109 The love that he owed his God compelled him to speak honestly.110 And ever the showman, he even offered to suffer ordeal in order to inspire caritas in these pastors.111 Ordeal, he goaded further, might prove to all who

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witnessed that his soul had been endowed with “most sincere love” and the “truest humility.”112 Indeed, in the closing prayer of his longer confession at Quierzy, Gottschalk subverts caritas discourse completely in the service of his arguments: “I pray . . . ​that whoever you may be, you will read this not with the raven’s spite but rather the love of a dove; that you will remember Gottschalk, a sinner, before God; and that with paternal or fraternal feeling you might simply ask for his kindest clementia, and that he might deign in his gratuitous pietas to bestow upon me the excellence of true humility always and everywhere before him, and in perpetuity the distinction of pure caritas.”113 What seems at first to be a reasonably generic request for intercession takes on very different meaning when we realize that it comes from the pen of a man for whom intercession held little bearing in the pursuit of God. In addressing his persecutors, he asks not for their caritas but that they themselves pray to God on Gottschalk’s behalf for the caritas, pietas, and clementia that only God could possess. In one sentence and using language that had always been associated with deeds, he encapsulates the full implications of his argument with regard to the economy of salvation on earth. He does not ask for his persecutors’ caritas because in his theology, they have no power to give it. He ends his prayer with yet another invocation of caritas, but he wields it not to link himself with ascetic masculinity; he invokes it rather to cast sympathy and understanding upon his opponents. He hopes that they might have the truest, sincerest, and kindest caritas in the face of those who would deny the truth altogether.114 These arguments led to theological chaos. As if the situation were not complicated enough, John Scotus Eriugena entered into the fray in 850 or 851 and published his own work on the subject, On Divine Predestination. This treatise was ostensibly written as a challenge to Gottschalk, but it proved to be so controversial among the intellectual elite of the empire that it actually almost served to sink Hincmar’s authority altogether. Eriugena, in his attempt to refute Gottschalk’s theological argument, pleaded a case against predestination so strident that it denied the role of God’s grace altogether in the human pursuit of salvation, arguing that human beings had the capacity to choose good or evil without divine aid and thus alone had the ability to decide their fates.115 This led an entire group of prominent Carolingian church a­ uthorities—​­Wenilo of Sens, Prudentius of Troyes, Florus and Remigius of Lyon, and others—​­to condemn Eriugena’s position and effectively to move against Hincmar in a manner that supported Gottschalk.116

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The concession that Hincmar and the anti-​­Gottschalk theologians had to make during the decade plus of contention that followed the publication of Eriugena’s work—​­a period that saw not just one but three more synods devoted to the issue (at Valence in 855, presided over by a third Frankish king, Lothar; at Savonnières in 859; and at Tusey in 860)—​­was to argue for free will while also emphasizing the crucial role of divine grace in salvation. An example of this new emphasis on grace is a letter that Hincmar wrote to the Archbishop of Sens in 866, requesting assistance in persuading the pope not to agree with Gottschalk, who had written the pope a long letter that outlined his theological position. In Hincmar’s letter to the archbishop, grace is now the main subject of debate, not predestination or free will. Hincmar turns Gottschalk’s argument about the merit that the elect are judged to have at the moment of creation into a suggestion that Gottschalk himself is in fact denying God’s grace. Free will, Hincmar claims, is the only doctrine that allows men to recognize that grace. “If . . . ​there were no free choice,” he writes, “how would the whole world lost in the mass of Adam’s perdition . . . ​be justly judged? And again, if there were no grace of God [an argument that he now attributes, surely not without intention, to Gottschalk], how would the world chosen from the same mass of perdition, that is, chosen by grace, be saved?”117 The aftermath of the Gottschalk controversy thus proved to be not a confirmation of double predestination but not exactly a condemnation either. It forced clear and public orthodox reaffirmation of the need for grace in human salvation, something that was never emphasized in the articulation of lay moral culture before the civil war, when there was such a strong focus on deeds. Hincmar was able to secure agreement on the language of God wanting all men to be saved. But in doing so, he had to affirm and to underscore that no man could be saved by his own choice through works alone.

Conclusion By the late ninth century, Carolingian aristocratic culture had by no means turned completely away from the ideology of equal and shared aristocratic power upon which early ninth-​­century aristocratic collective identity had been constructed. It had, however, judged this ideology’s emphasis on good works in exchange for salvation to be far more theologically problematic than the early Carolingian exegetes had ever recognized. The debate over

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predestination forced new articulations from churchmen about the necessity of grace as well as acts. The discernible effects of this debate beyond the intellectual battlegrounds of theology were not immediate. We do, however, see an unmistakable hint that at the very least, the prevailing ideological winds had begun to shift and that the discourse of Carolingian masculinity was beginning to change as a result. The hint comes in the form of absence. The intellectuals of the second half of the ninth century do not seem to have had very much at all to say to laypeople, at least from the evidence of the written record. The same social group of scholars that was writing texts such as the lay mirrors before the civil war did not write them after. And even with regard to kingly advice, the mirror for princes genre saw a resurgence only in the court of Charles the Bald and only during the last years of his reign. His brothers and their progeny seem to have had little use, at least according to the evidence that survives, for written spiritual advice of that nature. Rachel Stone, in trying to explain this disappearance of conversation between the lay secular elite and their spiritual advisors, has concluded that the problem was not one of demand. We have no evidence for diminished lay interest in spiritual matters—​­no evidence, that is, that there were simply fewer morally concerned lay aristocrats during this period.118 On the contrary, Stone argues, we see active lay readers with large personal libraries such as Eberhard of Friuli, Eccard of Mâcon, and Count Conrad of Auxerre. Stone’s answer is that after the ravages of the war, the promoters of the “lay moral elite” simply lost interest or, perhaps more specifically, lost faith in the capacity of laypeople to learn. The war showed, painfully, that the moral education once so prominent within aristocratic culture during the first half of the ninth century had not led to better behavior—​­had not, most importantly, led to prosperity for the Frankish people. And so, in Stone’s formulation, the Carolingian intelligentsia elected no longer to waste their intellectual energies on the lay world.119 I agree with Stone that the dearth of conversation between lay aristocrats and their spiritual advisors is indeed a striking feature of the later Carolingian historical record that we cannot attribute simply to loss. I wonder, however, whether we must see the reasons for this change a bit differently. I have argued in this chapter that the Carolingians framed the trauma of their time of troubles as they did precisely because of the ideology of aristocratic power that Paulinus and Alcuin articulated in their mirrors—​­precisely because, that is, this ideology had become so deeply ingrained within the structures of

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Carolingian aristocratic identity. Aristocrats viewed the tragedies of the civil war as their collective moral failure precisely because they had learned to think of the welfare of the saeculum and their moral qualities as intimately interlinked. I believe that we must see the Gottschalk controversy, therefore, as another highly significant contributing factor to the disappearance of extended intellectual conversation about the lay aristocracy in the second half of the ninth century. If only the war were to blame, we might expect to see redoubled efforts from the clergy, preaching messages of penance and a resurgence of good deeds so as to regain the favor of God. But that is not what we see. We see instead a turning inward, perhaps including a renewed focus on defining kingship, as Stone surmises (although again, only in the court of Charles the Bald), but most definitely featuring, as I will explore in the final chapter, a renewed focus on using caritas discourses to define monasticism and the importance of its separation from secular ways of living. Finally, it is worth posing one last series of questions about the connections between the Carolingian civil war and the predestination controversy discussed in this chapter. I have presented them as a savage double blow to the foundations of Carolingian lay aristocratic identity—​­fomenting, first, disillusionment about their capacity for good works and, second, disillusionment that humans might not have control over their salvation at all, that caritas and authority might have no natural link whatsoever. Yet as a double blow, the question remains as to whether there might have been a causal connection between the two phenomena. That is, did the grief caused by the violence of the war create an intellectual space for Gottschalk not only to preach his message about predestination but also to gain support and to be viewed as a dangerous threat—​­not just by the likes of Hrabanus Maurus and Hincmar of Reims but also by the Frankish kings? Did the experience of the civil war help prove Gottschalk’s arguments? Did his persuasiveness in fact draw on the widespread despair about the aristocratic capacity to control fate, the capacity of the secular clergy to intercede appropriately on behalf of souls, or the ultimate power of confession to ameliorate and to cleanse the stain of sin? Did double predestination provide, in the end, a kind of comfort that because the die had already been cast long ago, present feelings of responsibility for the devastation of the war were unwarranted? We have no clear answers to these questions beyond coincidental timing, language, and themes. Still, David Ganz and, more recently, Albrecht Diem have both usefully suggested that we must indeed connect Gottschalk’s career with the power politics and social upheavals of his day.120 I surmise that it is

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no coincidence that the predestination controversy’s challenge against the efficacy of good works occurred at precisely the same moment that contemporaries were chastising themselves for not being able to live up to the moral ideals to which they had been taught to aspire. I do not suggest any sort of collapse of the Frankish aristocracy. The aristocracy carried on and continued its interest in maintaining a role in the ecclesia. It had other means of self-​ i­dentification on which it could still rely. We must consider carefully, however, the fact that a significant and powerful portion of the learned doctors of the church during the latter half of the ninth century began to think differently about salvation than they had before the Frankish civil war. Because the promotion of caritas in this culture was so deeply intertwined with salvation theology, we must consequently consider whether the role of caritas may have diminished in importance within Carolingian conceptions of authority as a result. And we must consider, too, whether that may have led to active decisions among the intelligentsia to think differently about elite Christian discipleship, which began to take on new forms t­oward the end of the ninth century and certainly in the tenth.

Chapter 5

The Emergence of the Secular-​­Spiritual Hybrid

Sometimes, he would seem to be crying out and groaning in a grieved voice over all who were inclined to evil, as though he was making a kind of complaint that indeed all men were perishing for love of this world, that pietas was failing, that iniquity was overflowing, and that almost everyone now was letting innocence slip from his heart and truth from his mouth. He would reflect upon it often: “Oh, how the holy man is gone! How the truth has been shattered by the sons of men!” —​­Odo of Cluny, Vita Geraldi brevior 8

The Carolingian world at the end of Gottschalk’s life had changed considerably since the halcyon days of Paulinus and Alcuin and the apex of Charlemagne’s success. Whereas the ideology of aristocratic manhood articulated at the beginning of the ninth century had been founded on the capacity of empathetic deeds to link men of the world with God’s realm, circumstances after the death of Charlemagne had led to aristocratic soul-​­searching, penitential concerns, and finally self-​­excoriation for the woes of Carolingian social fragmentation. It had placed particular pressure on the extremes of the masculine identity spectrum—​­monks and kings—​­to perform their caritas as a demonstration of their right to God’s authority. And when civil war tore apart any still-​­existing notions of Frankish political unity, the connections between caritas and authority at the heart of aristocratic male identity led to even further sorrow, further self-​­criticism, and, ultimately, doubt. These pressures,

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along with decades of theological concern about the undeniable role of grace in salvation, ushered in inevitable winds of change. As the ninth century drew to a close, the ascetic male remained the epitome of manhood, but the power of caritas to link worldly men to the ascetic’s authority had endured a serious and sustained challenge. Orthodox doctrine still maintained that humans had the free will to choose salvation, yet now, no one could deny Gottschalk’s insistence that caritas was a quality of God, not humanity. In the post-​­Gottschalk Carolingian world, any learned discussion of caritas had to be qualified with an emphasis on grace, rather than deeds, as the most important commodity in the economy of heaven. In this, the final chapter, I draw attention to three textual markers through which we might begin to measure the direction and gathering force of a new ideology of aristocratic masculinity within the Carolingian world—​ a­ n ideology that would deny laymen the direct access to divine authority that they had previously enjoyed as brothers-​­in-​­arms with their professional spiritual brethren. The vita of Saint Benedict of Aniane, written by a follower named Ardo sometime during the reign of Louis the Pious, marks how a monastic writer from the early ninth century world could articulate multiple possible ways for a devout layman to perform ascetic world denial in the service of God. The range of these possibilities in Ardo’s text becomes striking in juxtaposition with the works of two late-​­Carolingian writers—​­the Monk of St. Gall, at the end of the ninth century, and Odo of Cluny, in the early decades of the tenth. These monastics exploited the same equalizing function of caritas discourse that the early lay mirrors promoted, but they did so paradoxically as a means of arguing for a new masculine gender hierarchy in which symbolic asceticism held significantly less meaning. Hierarchy was precisely what the texts of Paulinus and Alcuin had taught the Carolingian aristocracy to avoid. In their eyes, lay and spiritual men were to work in tandem as the two strong arms of a healthy social body, two separate male identities but still cut from the same cloth. With the Monk of St. Gall and Odo at the turn of the tenth century, hierarchy and separation emerged once again. The Monk of St. Gall and Odo of Cluny painted images of devout laymen not as a means of inspiring other laymen, as the Astronomer had depicted his fallen emperor. Instead, they used the figure of the devout layman performing caritas to place moral pressure on professional religious men, urging them to distinguish themselves in new ways as the spiritual avatars of society. The Monk of St. Gall and Odo of Cluny segregated men of the secular

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world from men of the cloister, subordinated them, and weakened presumed connections between symbolic ascetic acts and the heights of divine authority. In their texts, the middle ground on which laymen and professional religious men once stood together under God disappears, metamorphosed through their writing from a welcoming expanse of imagined shared space into a shrinking no man’s land, inhabited only by increasingly monstrous forms. For them, the corrosive influences of the saeculum required men to choose either to flee from it or to submit to its ravages and brutality. Gregory the Great’s ideological notions of suspension between heavenly and earthly realms no longer served these writers as a means of describing the world in which they believed they lived.

Between Secular and Ascetic Masculinity Benedict of Aniane (d. 821), the longtime mentor of Louis the Pious and architect of his monastic reforms during the early years of his reign, was recognized widely as a saint shortly after his death.1 This zealous reformer and champion of Benedictine monasticism is remembered today as a passionate devotee of the monastic life. It is easy to forget that Benedict actually began his career not as a monk in the service of God but as a warrior and chamberlain in the service of Charlemagne and Charlemagne’s father, Pepin the Short. De vita Benedicti Anianensis, written sometime before Louis’s death by a pupil of Benedict named Ardo (d. 843), says tantalizingly little about Benedict’s early business in arms, a fact that has made it tempting to regard the text’s description of Benedict’s early secularity as little more than a conventional introduction to the life of a so-​­called noble saint.2 Ardo took enough pains to describe unique aspects of this part of Benedict’s life, however, that upon further analysis, his words reveal themselves to be much more than a simple nod to tradition. Somewhat different from the archetypical hagiographic tropes that one might expect to find, Ardo ascribes to Benedict no precocious ascetic aspirations.3 Benedict was not like St. Martin, that is, who also spent his young life in military service but revealed himself as a young child to be far more suited to a quieter way of life.4 Instead, Ardo wrote that Benedict came to his monastic vows quite late in age and by an extremely circuitous, one might even say serendipitous, route. The saint had grown up in southwestern Europe (Gothia), the son of a noble family. For much of his life, as was expected of a Frankish boy of the

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aristocratic caste, he followed closely in the footsteps of his father, who had served the Frankish king loyally for the duration of his life as Count of Maguélonne, in the region of Montpelier. It was Benedict’s father who sent his young son to the palace of King Pepin the Short (d. 768) and Queen Bertrada (d. 783), where Benedict lived and trained as a courtier among the other boys of the king’s entourage—​­boys who included the young Charlemagne and his brother, Carloman. There, at the court of the Frankish king, Benedict lived an unabashedly secular life. He distinguished himself among his fellow soldiers through feats of speed and industriousness. When he was of age, he was appointed to the high office of chamberlain, and when he was not serving at court, he embarked on military campaigns to fight for the king. After Pepin died, Ardo tells us, Benedict continued to serve for many years in the court of Charlemagne. He served not as a spiritual advisor, however, like his colleagues Paulinus and Alcuin, but as a military advisor. Ardo’s words are clear about this distinction.5 But then, something suddenly changed within Benedict’s psyche: “with divine grace enlightening him, [Benedict] began to burn with celestial love”; he resolved that he would relinquish the world, “boiling with all its pressures,” and disdain the ephemeral honor that he could achieve with his toil but could quickly lose.6 Benedict hid these thoughts deep inside himself for a period of three years, during which he continued to conduct the duties of his courtly office, “sharing the secret with God alone.” He served with his body but not his mind. And as he otherwise went about his secular life, he privately “tested whether he could attain the pinnacle of continence,” practicing ascetic discipline by denying himself sleep, refraining from excessive speech, fasting, and drinking wine only sparingly. “Like a skilled athlete (peritus athleta),” Ardo adds, Benedict “trained himself for future war.”7 Ardo explains further that, “while still appearing in his worldly form,” Benedict pondered the next steps of his life. He knew that he wanted to cast off his worldly ways but did not know precisely in what manner he would do it. The vita explains that Benedict thought originally that he had three choices: he could become a pilgrim; he could marry and become a herdsman, providing service to all free of charge; or he could become a cobbler in town and give all that he earned to those less fortunate than he.8 Happenstance, however, led him to choose a fourth path. The Latin of Ardo’s description of this moment in Benedict’s life has proven difficult to render for modern editors and translators alike, although the basic information is clear enough: during that same year while Benedict is

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weighing his life-​­path options, an incident occurs in which Benedict nearly drowns while attempting to save his brother from an overpowering current while crossing a river. Ardo’s language could be interpreted to suggest even that it was a failed rescue attempt and that Benedict’s brother in fact died. Having barely escaped, Benedict makes a vow to God then and there that he will no longer serve as a soldier in the world. He returns to his homeland but does not tell his father what he plans to do. Instead, he seeks out a different kind of father figure, a certain “holy man” (religiosus) named Widmar, who helps him to devise a plan to trick his father and steal away into a monastery, where Benedict then takes the tonsure and enters fully into the state of being a “true monk.”9 Ardo’s handful of words about Benedict’s early life and conversion is fascinating when considered in juxtaposition with his labeling of Louis the Pious as monachius (“monkish”) later in the text, especially if one reads the epithet as a comparative adverb (“rather monkly”), which at the very least a contemporary reader would have had to consider as a homonym.10 Louis is monkish, says Ardo, due to his habit of calling monks “his own” and the fact that he declared himself (lay) abbot of Benedict’s monastery after Benedict died.11 Benedict, however, is a true monk. He pushes beyond the three ­middle-​­ground secular life paths that he first considers and chooses instead full conversion to a monastic rule. For Ardo, then, the pinnacle of spiritual perfection was the complete bodily continence of the ascetic monk, yet he still recognized plenty of middle space between a fully secular life and a fully monastic one. Louis’s monkishness and Benedict’s many choices make this clear. As a pilgrim, Benedict would withdraw from his daily rhythms and enter the liminal space of the penitent traveler; as a herdsman or cobbler, he would perform his world denial by serving others without remuneration. Ardo’s story certainly presents monasticism as the ultimate test of manly vigor, using the familiar analogies of athleticism and battle training. He does not present monasticism, however, as the layman’s only option for physical ascetic observance.12

A Diminishing Middle Ground Toward the end of the ninth century, two monastic writers would present the lay world somewhat differently. Between 884 and 887, the Monk of St. Gall composed an untitled collection of entertaining stories, most featuring

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Charlemagne as the main protagonist, probably for the late-​­Carolingian emperor Charles the Fat (d. 888).13 Even though it was written seventy years after Charlemagne’s death by an author who never knew the emperor personally, this collection of tales has often been considered a biography of Charlemagne, a classification that has served only to create considerable frustration for over a century of historians in their attempts to glean truly useful information from its pages.14 Modern scholars refer to the author as the Monk of St. Gall because of numerous references to that monastic house within the text, and most assume that the author must therefore have been Notker “Balbulus” (“the Stammerer”) (d. 912), the schoolmaster of St. Gall during Charles the Fat’s reign.15 But beyond such bits of historical information and the subsequent clues available through our general comprehension of the state of the empire during this waning moment of the Carolingian dynasty, readers have found the content of the Monk of St. Gall’s text largely unsuitable for providing much helpful insight into the reign of Charlemagne or his times. Historians have furthermore only been able to guess about factors that led to the text’s creation and the motivations and ultimate purposes that its author might have had in writing it beyond presenting a generally positive image of Charlemagne to the current sitting emperor.16 The reason that the text has been so difficult for historians to penetrate is that it is not ­really about the historical Charlemagne at all. It uses the figure of Charlemagne for extended meditation, in the form of a collection of tongue-​­in-​ ­cheek, often absurd tales, on the proper role, function, and form of churchmen within the greater Christian community. While Charlemagne and indeed sometimes Louis the Pious and Louis the German figure prominently in the stories, the true subjects of virtually all of the tales are monks, priests, and bishops. In this light, the text can be read as a commentary that emphasized, in direct dialogue with secular aristocratic ideology, the differences between ascetic observance through caritas and more bodily expressions of secular renunciation. As such, the text demonstrates how the image of the ideal layperson practicing caritas could serve as an important means through which ecclesiastic writers, especially monastic writers, could ponder new ideological positions for themselves within the perceived hierarchies of Christian masculine power. The Monk of St. Gall would draw directly upon the discourse of caritas to demonstrate the layman’s capacity to dwell in metaphoric suspension between worlds. Yet unlike Ardo, the Astronomer, and the lay mirror writers of the first half of the ninth century, this late ninth-​­century writer would also use caritas

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discourse to emphasize not aristocratic equality between lay and professional religious identity types but rather the higher echelon of divine power that he believed professional religious men ought to embody.

“God is caritas” If any single theme pervades the Monk of St. Gall’s work, it is that caritas in the world is, at best, a messy business. Echoing the thought of St. Augustine some five centuries earlier, the Monk of St. Gall’s text repeatedly demonstrates how caritas in the world does not resemble and indeed cannot resemble its forms in the heavenly realm above.17 Although the tales in the Monk of St. Gall’s text are all simply written, light, and sometimes even funny, few are as pointedly constructed as a story that the monk tells about a lay envoy of the king who lodges for the winter with a certain bishop from a diocese under the Frankish emperor’s dominion. In this story, the bishop receives the envoy into his estate, as he is obligated to do under both Frankish and ecclesiastical law. Instead of showing the man the hospitality that love of neighbor demanded, however, the bishop thinks it better to display his extreme devotion by spending all his time in fasting and prayer. Moreover, he forces the mortification of the flesh that he valued for himself upon the envoy, says the Monk of St. Gall, by never giving him enough to eat. The Monk of St. Gall implies that it was not neglect but rather the bishop’s belief in a certain form of Christian life that led him to treat his guest in this way. When warmer weather descends upon the realm during the following spring and the envoy returns to the king, Charlemagne asks the envoy to report about his stay with the bishop. The envoy, says the Monk of St. Gall, dramatizing the scene, sighed deeply. He answers, “The bishop is as holy as a man can be without having any conception of God.” Taken aback, Charlemagne asks the man to explain further how anyone can be holy without knowing God. The envoy replies simply, “God is caritas; but this man is completely lacking in caritas.”18 It is a tale that openly challenges those who follow the letter of the rules without paying attention to the rules’ spirit, and this is indeed a thesis that runs throughout all of the monk’s stories. Charlemagne and the secular world in general serve not as the object t­ oward which this story expresses its message about caritas but rather the medium of that message. While the story does not undermine the ideological underpinnings of aristocratic male equality, it does use the figure of the layman to demonstrate the requirement of bishops to understand the nature of caritas properly. Charlemagne as a figure does not

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serve primarily in the tale to exhibit the layman’s capacity to link himself to divine authority. Instead, Charlemagne and his envoy represent a basic level of common sense against which the Monk of St. Gall can set the bishop’s unthinking austerity and incapacity to comprehend caritas in stark relief. Another tale from the Monk of St. Gall uses the figure of Charlemagne in a similar manner to demonstrate common sense in the face of wooden moral thinking. The story describes how Charlemagne customarily broke his Lenten fast an hour before the appointed time and that one night, a bishop, “very just but stupid beyond measure,” approaches Charlemagne to reprimand him for this practice. Charlemagne calmly responds that the bishop is correct that the letter of the law states clearly that during Lent, one is to fast until the appointed time. Charlemagne agrees to follow the law strictly, but, he says, in return, he will order the bishop to eat nothing himself until the last of the officials of the court have been fed. The bishop has no choice but to agree, and the Monk of St. Gall goes on to elucidate the lesson that Charlemagne’s behavior teaches to the overzealous bishop. When Charlemagne eats, he is served by the next highest ranking members of his court—​­dukes and lesser kings. These men eat next, served by their immediate underlings and so on until everyone has eaten. Because of this custom, the story explains, the last members of court to eat did so well after midnight. Charlemagne’s command that the bishop eat last is therefore a command that he experience personally the pangs of hunger that the lowest members of court could feel when having to wait for food until the small hours of the morning. As the end of Lent draws near, the “most clement” (clementissimus) Charlemagne calls back the bishop and rescinds the punishment but not before explaining why he had given it; he then eats before nightfall out of consideration for others.19 Once again, the figure of Charlemagne serves the Monk of St. Gall as the embodiment of the ideal secular aristocratic male not to teach lessons to other laypersons but rather to demonstrate the baseline of emotional care for others that the episcopal male must embody. Charlemagne’s empathy for the lowest of his court is an object lesson, in other words, that gestures ­toward the even greater empathy that a bishop ought to show. In describing the sanctimonious bishop as, effectively, both extremely just and extremely stupid, the text of the story places emphasis on the requirement of bishops to know the proper forms that pietas must take. Charlemagne’s caritas guides his behavior and informs his understanding of the deeper purposes that undergird ritual behavior. The bishop’s stupidity is not a lack of intellect but rather a lack of feeling for others. Feeling for others is the key to proper wisdom.

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The Layman as Moral Judge These stories use the figure of the ideal secular male to promote, in effect, the inverse of the lay mirrors’ ideological messages of equality and shared, nonhierarchical social responsibility. Charlemagne acts as judge and critic of the professional ranks of the Church not by following his own will but as someone who correctly understands God’s will. His capacity to comprehend truths through caritas serves not to raise the layman to the heights of elite discipleship, however, so much as it works to shame professional religious men into practicing deeper contemplation and devotion. In another episode that demonstrates this further, the Monk of St. Gall introduces Charlemagne as the defender of a “common and low-​­born” monk who is not at all talented in his studies. Although everyone dislikes this monk and begs the emperor to dismiss him from his court, the “most loving” ( piissimus) Charlemagne refuses to do so.20 One day, it falls upon Charlemagne to appoint a new candidate for a recently vacated episcopal see. He summons one of the court clerics known for his great intelligence and ability and offers the bishopric to him. In response, the newly appointed bishop-​­elect decides to celebrate by hosting an enormous feast at his home, not only inviting the important members of the palace but also receiving “with immense pomp” a number of the power holders of his new diocese. The cleric is easily overcome by his own self-​­aggrandizement, eats and drinks too much at his party, and decides not to attend that night’s vigil. This is a grave mistake, says the Monk of St. Gall, for the cantor of the royal chapel had appointed the newly elected bishop a special response in that night’s service. The text says nothing else at this point but does, curiously, quote the words of this unintended response directly: “Lord, if I still belong to your people” (Domine si adhuc populo tuo). It is an important clue to the reader for understanding what occurs further on in the tale.21 The tale shifts in time to the vigil’s ceremony. With the bishop-​­elect absent, there is a deafening silence at the scripted moment for his special response. The members of the choir stare at each other awkwardly, not knowing what to do. And when no one volunteers to fill the silence, Charlemagne steps in and exasperatedly demands that someone take the initiative and chant the response: “Someone sing!” (cantet aliquis!). It is the untalented monk who jumps in before anyone else and heeds the emperor’s command. Almost immediately, the untalented monk falters in the task—​­he is simply not bright enough to understand the lines. And at precisely the moment when the

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response should have ended, the monk continues to sing both out of phase with the rest of the choir and entirely the wrong lyrics: he conflates the response with the Lord’s Prayer. The others reach ­toward the monk to scold him for ruining the vigil service, but Charlemagne forbids them from interfering. He wishes to see, says the Monk of St. Gall, how far the untalented monk will go. The monk finishes what he had mistakenly begun, and the rest, not knowing what else to do, give the correct response—​­not to the night’s vigils but to the Lord’s Prayer. Again, the Monk of St. Gall quotes directly—​­both the end of the lowly monk’s chant, “Thy kingdom come” (Adveniat regnum tuum), and the choir’s bewildered response, “Thy will be done” (Fiat voluntas tua)—​ ­without further comment.22 The next day, Charlemagne calls the untalented monk to his palace chamber and asks him why he had chosen to sing that particular response. The monk cowers in fear and responds only that he sang because his king had commanded that someone should step in. Charlemagne presses the monk to tell him who had chosen the particular words that he sang, and the monk again, not knowing what else to say, responds only with the truth: he failed to glean the proper words of the response from those around him, so he decided to chant something that he knew and that was close in form to the words of the vigil. The emperor, described by yet another superlative, “most moderate” (moderatissimus), then smiles kindly and turns to announce to the nobles of his court that he has changed his mind. He will rescind the election of the cleric to whom he had originally appointed the empty bishopric because that cleric had been too proud to respect either his God or his king. In place of this man, he will appoint the lowly monk.23 The curious direct quotations peppered throughout the tale invite consideration from the reader, for their specificity seems at first to be gratuitous. Analyzed more closely, however, they may in fact reveal that the appointment of the lowly monk is God’s choice, not Charlemagne’s. The text encourages the reader to join the quoted responses together, not only by singling out these quotations in the presentation of the tale but also by narrating Charlemagne’s own demands to know the reason why the lowly monk had chosen those particular words to sing. The response that the bishop-​­elect was supposed to sing, “Lord, if I still belong to your people,” combines sequentially in the story with the other directly quoted words of the night’s vigil—​­namely, the monk’s ridiculous ending of the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come,” and the befuddled response of the group, “Thy will be done.” Together, the quotations form the following statement: “Lord, if I still belong to your people, let

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thy kingdom come, and your will be done.” I think it cannot be coincidental that Charlemagne asks not the simple question of why the lowly monk sang but of why he specifically sang those words. The question suggests that Charlemagne himself wonders, as the reader might also wonder, whether it is simply coincidence that this is the ultimate statement of the vigil or whether it is God’s will. Charlemagne judges it to be the latter and interprets God’s will to be for him to give the bishopric to the lowly monk. What appears at first to be little more than a charming tale of Charlemagne exercising compassion for a lowly, simpleton monk becomes a story about a king understanding God’s will when his bishops do not. Charlemagne certainly serves the Monk of St. Gall as an image of ideal kingship—​­he values the will of God and rewards earnest devotion over haughty doctrinal expertise. But as an image of the ideal secular Christian ruler, Charlemagne also serves the Monk of St. Gall as a shaming mechanism for bishops, conveying the degree of devotion and capacity to hear the will of God that they were to exhibit commonly.

Caritas in the World Charlemagne’s capacity to know God’s will and to act upon it is demonstrated further in an episode in which the Monk of St. Gall recounts the scheme hatched by Charlemagne’s bastard son, Pepin the Hunchback, to overthrow his father. As Pepin and his allies plot, a cleric hiding behind the altar overhears their seditious plan. The rebels actually find the cleric where he is hidden but let him go after forcing him to take an oath that he will not betray their secret. As soon as the conspirators depart, however, the cleric immediately informs the king. It is the middle of the night, and so when the cleric passes through the series of security “checkpoints” within the palace and arrives at Charlemagne’s inner chamber, the king is surprised that someone wishes to see him at such a late hour.24 Charlemagne orders the man to be admitted, and the cleric reveals all that he has heard.25 The plotters suspect nothing, says the Monk of St. Gall, employing a touch of dramatic license, and Charlemagne’s men deal with the insurrection quickly and easily before mid-​­morning. Charlemagne punishes Pepin with a severe lashing and sentences him to a monastic life at, incidentally, St. Gall, which sets up the second half of the story. For only a short time later, another group of Frankish magnates attempts to murder the king and, although Charlemagne once again uncovers the plot, this time he hesitates to exact vengeance upon them. If only they were loyal, says the Monk of St. Gall, narrating

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to his audience the emperor’s inner reasoning, they might be great protectors of the Christian community.26 Charlemagne commits an act of royal clemency, therefore, but the text inflects his forgiveness differently than the Astronomer. Following the trend that seems to have been successfully installed into Carolingian royal culture after Hincmar of Reims, the Monk of St. Gall uses discussion of clementia to demonstrate once again that true love of God in the secular world necessarily involves not just following the letter of his law but rather its spirit. Charlemagne acts at first just like Louis the Pious and does not exact vengeance upon his enemies. His correct comprehension of God’s will, however, soon changes his mind. The Monk of St. Gall describes how Charlemagne sends messengers to Pepin the Hunchback to ask for advice about what he should do with regard to the second insurrection. This appears once again to be dramatic license—​ ­perhaps a signal to the reader that the story is attempting to present a moral rather than an actual historical tale (there is little reason for Charlemagne to ask advice of an enemy in such a matter). And indeed, the story immediately takes on an allegorical tone. The messengers find Pepin among the brethren of St. Gall, digging up weeds from the monastic garden “so that more useful plants could grow there without obstruction.” When Charlemagne’s envoys enlighten Pepin as to why they have come, Pepin snaps resentfully. He has no advice to give his father and orders the messengers simply to tell his father what they see his son doing. The messengers, afraid to return to the emperor empty-​­handed, continue to press Pepin for a straighter answer, but Pepin is obstinate. In the end, Pepin fully loses his temper and shouts again that the envoys should tell the emperor only what he is doing: “I am digging up useless overgrowth,” quotes the Monk of St. Gall once again, “so that needed vegetables might prevail to grow more freely.”27 When the messengers finally return to Charlemagne’s court, they have no choice but to tell him precisely what Pepin had said. It is clear from the Monk of St. Gall’s narration that Pepin seeks only to spite Charlemagne, but the emperor sees through his bastard son’s malice and extracts the deeper meaning from his words. To the messengers’ great surprise, Charlemagne is pleased rather than angered by the response and declares that Pepin has indeed provided him with sage advice. Without an ounce of further anxiety about whether he is acting correctly, the emperor immediately orders that the rebels be put to death and washes his hands of the situation entirely. “Removing all of the plotters from the midst of the living,” writes the Monk of St. Gall, “he

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gave his fideles the room to grow and spread that had been taken up by those who bore him no fruit.”28 This unabashed exercise of violent justice—​­not out of revenge, it must be understood, but, as it is inflected in the story, out of fellow-​­feeling for the loyal supporters in his care—​­is once again in keeping with Hincmar of Reims and certainly not with the Astronomer. Yet it represents precisely the Gregorian notion of caritas in the world that the Monk of St. Gall wished to convey: a love that required judgment about the spirit of God’s command as well as the letter. Charlemagne, who lives in the world, initially follows the letter of the law and chooses clemency for the conspirators, but he is confused. Ultimately, love demands the protection of his realm and people against those who would harm them. I furthermore do not believe it coincidental to the story that Charlemagne seeks advice from Pepin after he has been removed from the world. In the cloister, far from the world’s obscuring contamination, the solution to the dilemma is revealed to be as simple as the solution to weeds in the garden. The Monk of St. Gall uses the moral dilemmas of the secular world, in other words, to present the figure of the devout layperson as an object of contemplation. Unlike earlier invocations of aristocratic secular masculinity, Charlemagne’s actions invite comparison with what the identity and authority of men who lived at the edges or beyond secular space should be. The figure of the layperson and thoughts about worldly discipleship had always been inextricably linked; no change to the one could ever be divorced from the other. The Monk of St. Gall’s ideal image of the emperor, however, taught very different lessons about secular life than Paulinus and Alcuin had taught almost a century earlier. Rather than a means of linking laymen to divine authority, caritas within the Monk of St. Gall’s stories serves as a means of pressuring professional religious men ­toward higher states of moral understanding.

The Emergence of the Secular-​­Spiritual Hybrid It is within this context that we can look t­oward the early tenth century and the influential Benedictine abbot, Odo of Cluny (d. 942), arguably the most important ecclesiastical thinker of his historical moment.29 He, too, would find use for the figure of the ideal layman as an object through which to debate clerical identity. Yet for Odo, the ideal layman would serve only to prove the

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essential and undeniable differences that he believed to exist between secular and nonsecular men. Sometime around 930, Odo was called upon to investigate and to write about the miracles of a certain lord Gerald, who had lived among the forested hills of the Auvergne. The inquiry demanded a man of Odo’s learning and gravitas because the miracle stories were as troubling as they were exciting. They told of spontaneous healings—​­healings of blindness, in particular, but also of deafness, paralysis, and demonic possession. The alleged holy man to whom they were attributed, however, was not like any that had come before. He had lived the entirety of his life as a wealthy and powerful layman. He had been Gerald of Aurillac—​­a warlord and secular judge who had commanded the region in the fragmented political world of the Carolingian late ninth and early tenth centuries and died in 909.30 Most scholars believe Gerald of Aurillac to have been the earliest lay saint who was neither a martyr nor a king.31 Thus, the story of Gerald’s life has been an important text for not only our questions about the possibilities of sanctity during this period but also about the access of the laity to certain kinds of divine power and, indeed, about Carolingian conceptions of masculinity itself. There has been considerable debate with regard to how, precisely, we should understand Gerald in the context of these questions, however. And our understanding has been further shaken up by Mathew Kuefler’s recent argument that the De vita Sancti Geraldi Auriliacensis comitis Libri Quattuor—​­the text that, quite literally, all scholars who work on Gerald have used to study his case—​­is actually an early eleventh-​­century forgery, written not by Odo of Cluny, as the text itself contends, but probably, Kuefler argues, by Ademar of Chabannes.32 Kuefler has revealed, that is, that scholars have been making tenth-​­century arguments about Gerald and Odo using what seems now almost certainly to be an eleventh-​­century text, a text not written by Odo at all. There is, however, a far more obscure vita brevior of St. Gerald that is also attributed to Odo of Cluny, which scholars once believed to be an early draft of the larger vita prolixior. Kuefler has argued that this text does seem to date from around 930 and thus must in fact be Odo’s original account.33 While a far less rich work of literary art than the vita prolixior, the vita brevior nevertheless clearly demonstrates Odo’s manner of using the figure of the devout layman to separate and to subordinate secular masculinity. Historians have traditionally regarded the hagiographic depiction of St. Gerald as an imago designed specifically for lay aristocrats to copy in their endeavors to live the ideal Christian life. In his history of Les trois ordres,

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George Duby famously read Gerald’s hagiography in precisely this way: as the earliest moment when, he argued, we can clearly see clergy creating a well-​ d ­ efined role and accordant model for the aristocratic layman to follow as a fixed ordo of the ecclesia.34 More recent scholars have challenged Duby but not his line of thinking that Gerald’s story was composed as a model for lay imitation. These scholars dwell instead on the notion that Gerald would not have served as a very good model for laypersons (that is, to an even greater degree than Duby, who suggested largely the same). Thus, for Jacqueline Murray, Odo’s Gerald demonstrates “the extent to which the worldly life of action and the imperatives of the religious life were perceived to be at odds.”35 Stuart Airlie has written that “[The Life of St. Gerald] represents a serious effort to apply the ideals of the Carolingian reform movement to the Carolingian aristocracy. But [the text’s] intensely monastic preoccupations made . . . ​Gerald an inappropriate model.”36 And Janet Nelson has suggested that the Vita Geraldi records nothing less than an outright crisis of masculine identity in the latter half of the ninth century, in which aristocratic Frankish boys were forced to negotiate impossibly “competing, even conflicting, models of manliness” and could face mental anguish and even physical sickness as a result.37 These scholars all based their arguments on the vita prolixior. Yet Kuefler continues the trend for the vita brevior as well. He argues for a new dating and authorship of the key texts, but he still reads Gerald’s hagiography, Odo of Cluny’s authentic vita brevior included, as holding up for laypersons an example of ideal Christian secular life—​­a sort of high bar that was simply too impractical for them to reach. This is a function of most saints, Kuefler suggests, whose perfection placed them beyond the capacity of most human beings to imitate yet still allowed them to serve as examples of what human beings could become.38 I agree wholeheartedly that issues of mimesis are central to the narrative of the Life of St. Gerald, only not in the ways that these scholars have thus far understood. The key is to recognize the manner in which the vita brevior functions—​­perhaps even more overtly than the vita prolixior, about which I have written elsewhere—​­as a mimetic image for monastic men, not laymen.39 This is the reason that St. Gerald is indeed an impossible model for laypersons to imitate. As a text for monks, the irreproducibility that the story reveals over the course of its episodes becomes not the ineffective promotion of an unreachable, impractical model of secular spirituality; it becomes instead a portrayal that is essentially irreproducible. That is to say, the text does not represent some sort of ultimately overzealous attempt on the part of Odo, nor does it

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represent his failure of imagination. We must embrace and recognize that the structure and diction of Odo’s narrative depict Gerald as a completely unique, one-​­off character, whom God brought to earth at a very particular moment in time and with a very particular purpose but who could never and maybe should never appear again. As such, the figure of St. Gerald of Aurillac serves not to encourage a new kind of secular masculinity but rather to contain and to control it—​­to keep it from spreading further into aristocratic culture in unpredictable ways.

A Monk in Lay Clothing At first glance, Gerald does seem, as a lay saint, to be the perfect model for the ideology of worldly masculinity that Paulinus and Alcuin had once described. Odo writes in his prologue to the vita that God had offered Gerald “so as to inspire imitation” (ad imitationis incitamentum).40 He says, furthermore, that even though Gerald has been “powerful in the affairs of this life, that is no hindrance for a layman who has managed well the things he has justly received.”41 “The grace of God,” Odo’s text continues, invoking that word so dear to Gottschalk of Orbais, “is bound by no law.”42 And Gerald appears indeed, at least on the surface, to live in harmony with his spiritual devotion. He embraces humility in his secular life at every opportunity, donating to the poor and inviting them to dine at his table.43 He keeps his will focused on salvation and worries vigilantly, says Odo, that as head of his household, “he would be distracted and surrounded by earthly entanglements.”44 Underneath this seemingly stable exterior, however, Odo’s narrative describes how Gerald’s secularity and spirituality are actually in continual tension, threatening always to tear him apart. Gerald persistently resists what Odo describes as a worldly masculinity focused more on physical prowess than spiritual understanding. The text explains that even as a layman, Gerald “had already decided that wisdom was better than strength and that nothing was richer.”45 When his parents pass away and he inherits his position of leadership in adulthood, he leads his armies against rival warlords and adjudicates criminal complaints. Yet famously, he abhors killing and orders his men to fight with the butts of their spears.46 Gerald maintains strict celibacy throughout his life and refuses to live, as earlier Carolingian models of ideal laity advocated, as a married man. Throughout the text, furthermore, Gerald expresses a repeated desire to quit his secular duties, both official and familial. He eventually takes monastic tonsure in secret and becomes, quite literally, a monk in lay clothing. The text explains in detail how Gerald cleverly hides his tonsure

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by shaving off his beard and simply expanding the circle of his already balding crown.47 It is important to recognize, therefore, the language through which Odo describes Gerald’s secularity in these episodes. Odo distinguishes the worldly male from the spiritual male in binary terms. Worldly life follows from bodily strength; spiritual life follows from education. In his description of Gerald’s childhood, Odo writes that Gerald is born the son of a prominent Frankish aristocratic family and learns all of the values, duties, and pursuits of his station. Gerald is nevertheless sickly, which renders him most naturally inclined to the study of letters. His capacity to recite scripture is so great, Odo recounts, that it surpasses that of many clerics. His father allows him to pursue these interests, thinking that Gerald might be best suited for life as a priest rather than as a warrior. Yet as Gerald grows up, Odo’s story continues, Gerald’s sickliness subsides and he enters into the typical life of the lay aristocratic warrior.48 These narrative details might be read as traditional tropes of the hagiographic genre. In juxtaposition with Ardo’s example of Benedict of Aniane, however, the distinctions that Odo draws with regard to Gerald’s possible life paths seem remarkably rigid. He may be either a spiritual man hidden in secular form or a secular man who forgoes elite discipleship. There is no room for a middle identity. As a lay saint, Odo’s Gerald represents not the harmonious merging of secular and spiritual masculine forms but rather a conglomerate of two distinct masculinities—​­one secular, one religious—​­imperfectly combined. The two elements of his identity do not bond but rather constantly conflict with each other. Indeed, Gerald can only exist, according to the text, through paradox. His reluctance to conduct warfare invites repeated enemy attack, the text says, yet Gerald always emerges victorious, somehow never wounding anyone or receiving wounds himself. How this comes about Odo does not explain but rather signals that he is aware of its strangeness by mentioning the obvious fact that Gerald’s nonviolence—​­his “pietas in the recesses of his heart”—​ ­encourages his enemies to take advantage.49 Gerald’s extreme misericordia for the poor, furthermore, invites frequent scorn from his own men, who think him “soft and timid” since he allows himself to be harmed by even the basest of enemies as though he has no power to stop them.50 Gerald’s pacifism and humility should logically lead to his downfall, the text suggests, and yet in Gerald’s case, they never do. And as his men show, Gerald’s behavior does not endear him to those under his command—​­a stark contrast again when compared to St. Martin or Benedict of Aniane, whose commilitones love them

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dearly for their pacifist and kindly ways. Instead, Gerald’s giving nature strikes his men as weak, ineffective, and ultimately unmanly leadership. “Divine grace,” says Odo in another reference to the many troubles that Gerald suffers because of his nonviolence, “miraculously freed him from each and every one of his enemies.”51 There is another important difference. Unlike the Astronomer’s portrait of Louis the Pious, who one could argue performed similar acts of pacifism at great personal expense, Odo’s Gerald of Aurillac is not presented as a normative model of secular male life, however ideal. Odo makes sure, in other words, to explain to his reader that Gerald was an anomaly. He wrote that he strained to find adequate words through which to explain Gerald’s strangeness: “How, then, he lived soberly and justly and with pietas [pie], in a manner according to apostolic precept, and how he conducted himself zealously both in these and in the other precepts of God, my ability does not fully suffice for the telling. To be sure, it was possible for him by the grace of God, but in our days it is so unusual for almost everyone that what he did seems scarcely believable.”52 The only way that Odo could reconcile Gerald’s troubling mixed masculinity was to describe him in paradoxical hybrid terms—​­as a secular male who was actually a monk, a warrior who did not fight. Unlike St. Martin, the historical Gerald never left the world for the cloister and yet still performed miracles. Odo had to explain this fact and could only do so by concluding that, actually, Gerald had been a monk without a monastery. Modern cultural theorists have demonstrated how hybrids point far more ­toward conflict than ­toward the sort of harmonious melding of forms that they seem initially to display.53 While hybrid forms appear to resist essentialist thinking, the very act of identifying a hybrid—​­of naming a form as a conglomeration of types—​­actually serves to create essentialist thinking and to impose it upon systems where diversity and admixture may previously have been the rule rather than the exception.54 We can see this happening within the world constructed by Odo in the vita. While Odo lauds Gerald’s spiritual secularity and locates within it his sanctity, Odo also can only comprehend Gerald and the resistance of traditional categories that Gerald seemingly represents by describing him in terms of a binary taxonomy of “pure” types. Odo presents Gerald not as a new form for the lay aristocracy to follow but as an amalgam of fixed male forms—​­one purely secular, the other purely monastic—​­that ultimately demonstrates how a secular male could never be alloyed with a monastic one. A man had to be one or the other.

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As a model of ideal Christian masculinity, therefore, Gerald paradoxically affirms fixed boundaries between the lay and monastic life while demonstrating the apparent transcendence of them. Odo carves clear lines between what ontologically denotes “warrior” and “monk.” And via the categories that Odo uses to describe and to comprehend Gerald’s identity, Gerald’s hybridity only serves to affirm rather than to undermine what is considered to be essentially “lay”—​ ­namely, sexual activity and fighting—​­and what is essentially ­“monastic”—​­sexual abstinence and pacifism. The result was to deny the possibility of any gray area or middle ground in which certain kinds of actions could belong to both ways of life. Rather than understand this as an inappropriate ideal for laypeople that most could not or would not reach, we need to view this instead as an entirely different kind of mimetic call. Gerald serves Odo as not a model for lay imitation but rather as a model for monastic imitation. Again, as I have argued elsewhere, the vita prolixior’s first and most immediate audience would almost certainly have been monastic, not lay.55 This must also be true for the vita brevior. The earliest manuscripts of the text are all monastic in origin.56 The clearest evidence for a monastic audience, however, just as in the text of the vita prolixior, is the narrative inflection of the text itself. The vita brevior contains repeated messaging around the theme that Gerald would have become a monk had anyone been devout enough to join him in the cenobitic life. This holds St. Gerald up as a measure for monastic men, not laymen—​­a paragon of the kind of masculine virtus that the professional religious men of Gerald’s region ostensibly lacked. The stories about Gerald increasingly reveal that Gerald would have fled the secular world entirely had not the cloister proved to be just as flawed. In the final chapter before the series of miracle tales that end the vita brevior, Odo explains that Gerald used to make a pilgrimage to Rome every other year and that he would donate to the monasteries that he passed along the route. The story becomes a lesson not about Gerald’s generosity as a layman but rather about the dearth of religious devotion among Gerald’s fellow Auvergnats. Odo explains that Gerald would often lament that everyone around him (the language is hyperbolically universal in its declamations) seemed predisposed ­toward evil. “Pietas was failing,” he would complain; men loved the transient world too much, iniquity was rampant, and innocence and truth had been lost. “He would repeat it over and over again,” says Odo, ascribing to Gerald his only moment of direct speech in the text: “Oh, how the holy man is gone! How truth has been shattered by the sons of men!”57 The

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passage then describes how Gerald was disgusted by the fact that he had been unable to congregate a monastic community around him and often spoke about his failure to do so with his friends. One day, a comrade finds Gerald weeping in deep despair and asks him why he cries. In Gerald’s final words to his friend, the text reveals a crucial and largely overlooked message for its audience: “ ‘Because,’ [Gerald] replied, ‘I gaze upon that place [the monastery that he attempted to found] which in no way whatsoever has come to its intended result, and I am overcome with sadness, like one who is alone and bereft, because the monks are missing. Nonetheless, I hope that almighty God, when it should please Him, will deign to satisfy my desire.’ ”58 This is a thinly veiled admonition against failing devotion that would have held far more meaning for a monastic reader than a lay one. “The monks are missing” (Quia desunt monachi), Odo warns in his protagonist’s own voice, a literary tactic that the Astronomer used as well. The words make St. Gerald an exemplum not for the lay world but for the monastic world, a lamentation for the ascetic manliness that the professional religious men of Gerald’s region now lacked and needed desperately to regain. Most importantly, the words offer a compelling explanation for why the anomaly of Gerald had occurred in the first place. Gerald was a secular saint and not a monastic one only because monasticism in the Auvergne had grown cold. Gerald would otherwise have become a monk, suggests Odo, had there been anyone truly “man enough” to join him. Gerald’s particular form of sanctity thus renders him not only irreproducible but also safely irreproducible. The Vita Geraldi presented to its contemporary audiences a model of lay life that served to essentialize difference, not harmony, between lay and clerical masculine identities—​­differences that Odo and his Cluniac intellectual heirs would only fight more strongly to assert as the tenth century continued.

Conclusion With this explicitly gendered critique of the professional religious men of the Auvergne, Gerald’s speech highlights the localism of the history that the Vita Geraldi contains within. It also allows us to see the emergence, however, of a conception of aristocratic masculinity during the tenth century that drew stricter boundaries between secular and ascetic male identities while still affirming the essential brotherhood of all aristocratic men that earlier Carolingian ideologies of masculinity had promoted. Gerald of Aurillac may seem to

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represent only the irreconcilable oppositions between secular and monastic male identities. Scholars of tenth-​­and eleventh-​­century masculinity have argued that when devout laymen tried to live in accordance with New Testament precepts or monks fashioned themselves as the virile warriors of Christ, such negotiations necessarily had to be imperfect compromises that grew out of social and personal pressures to embody conflicting ideals.59 Yet because Carolingian culture had traditionally considered warriors and monks to be, at essence, far more similar than different and bound to follow a common masculine ethos, opposition may not be our best interpretation of what we see. There can be no doubt that the different values of the two ways of life produced rivalry between lay and monastic men, but this rivalry did not always lead to contest. Sometimes it led to self-​­critique. Rather than reading the Vita Geraldi brevior, therefore, as evidence of the difficulties of translating monastic ideals into the secular world, we must entertain the distinct possibility that Odo may never have meant for St. Gerald to represent the new ideal of lay Christianity that modern scholars have ascribed to him at all. Instead, the reading of the text that I have presented here forces us to shift our comprehension of the relationship between monastic and secular men in this era. Odo of Cluny’s Vita Geraldi signaled not the beginning of a new era of Christian laity but the beginning of a new era for Christian monasticism. In lauding the manliness of a lay elite worshipper of God but associating his performance of manliness with distinctly nonsecular, even antisecular behaviors, Odo paradoxically pushed the “professional” ranks of the Church an important step ­toward making elite discipleship the sole dominion of ascetics. His story was far more about imposing greater stricture on ascetic monastic devotion than it was about presenting lay Christian men with a new way of life. It was a message that built directly upon the long Carolingian tradition of reminding both laymen and men given to the religious life of their common bonds not just as Christians but also as men of the Frankish aristocracy. It demonstrated how Odo and his audience could conceive of various forms of masculinity without the need for either the prescriptive reconciliation of differences between them or the conceptualization of new gender categories to contain those differences.60 Rather than seeing secular men and monastic men as competing against one another for control over a single overarching masculine embodiment, we must describe them as sharing two sides of the same gender coin, different but inextricably linked and therefore mutually capable of claiming maleness without necessarily undermining the masculinity of the other.

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The change that we see in Odo’s text is not that he showed traditional secular masculinity and Christianity to be at odds. It is that he showed traditional secular masculinity and asceticism to be at odds. No longer could a man such as Gerald claim access to divine authority through symbolic performances of caritas. “Pietas was failing” in the Auvergne because not enough men were tough enough—​­as tough as Gerald was—​­to assume unto themselves the ascetic embodiment that created it. Odo’s text returns to a pre-​ ­Augustinian notion of asceticism in which men could not deny the world metaphorically and expect the same access to their God as their bodily ascetic brethren. Where the authors of the early Carolingian lay mirrors had professed the essential capacity of all Christian men to enact asceticism and thus to achieve the highest echelons of God’s grace, Odo depicted that grace only as a function of a man’s willingness and capacity to separate himself from the world in body as well as mind.61 Odo’s image of Gerald drew a line in the sand between elite discipleship and the lay world that was far clearer and more fixed than it ever had been during the ninth century. The edges of the sword, the points of sexual contact between a man and a woman, the divisions of power between haves and have nots—​­these were impermeable barriers for Odo that of necessity rendered lay and monastic access to divine authority unequal. After the tenth century, ascetic men would increasingly proclaim themselves, and themselves alone, to be the true elite disciples of God on earth, yet it is worth noting in conclusion that Gerald’s irreproducibility is not the same kind that we see in some of the extreme ascetics of the later Middle Ages, whose unquiet souls and existence at the margins of society marked them as intercessors between humanity and the divine but not models for Christian life.62 Gerald of Aurillac was a perfectly accessible fellow, comparatively. His irreproducibility stemmed not from any extreme form of humanity that he exhibited—​­his asceticism was utterly common for a monk—​­but rather from his capacity to live as an ascetic in secular space. In this aspect, Odo made him an anomalous, monstrous form, born alien into a backward world. What I am ultimately arguing for is perhaps only a small shift of the inflection with which scholars have previously read the life of St. Gerald, but I think that the intervention is important. It allows us to understand the text as serving an entirely different purpose than we have previously presumed. If we read Gerald of Aurillac and his cult as having grown out of a Carolingian moment in which laypeople enjoyed a greater degree of access to spiritual power than in later periods of the Christian Church, the vita brevior represents a

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narrative that was structured to bring this phenomenon under a new kind of control. Like Gerald himself, perhaps, the text represents a fascinating balance between oppressive and inclusive forms of power: it takes a cult, harnesses its positive energy, yet nevertheless brings it “safely” under the dominion and subjugation of an increasingly centralized and hierarchized religious system. The monastic reforms under the Cluniacs during the tenth century would strive to clarify and to distinguish further the diverse spheres of Christian life. They would draw an ever more impermeable boundary line between spiritual and secular realms, setting into motion a final overturning and transformation of the ideal of worldly Christianity represented in the thought of the early Carolingian lay mirrors. The imagined space within which devout laypeople could perform the unlimited caritas of elite discipleship would continue to diminish, until finally there would be little space for it at all.

Conclusion

Manliness and Empathy

Modern cultures seldom associate “being manly” with “being emotionally aware.” Our popular art regularly depicts the so-​­called typical male as insensitive, uncaring, and callous. Our most renowned neuroscientists and psychologists assert that men are less naturally able to empathize with others and are therefore more prone to aggression and violence.1 Even the critics of such claims, who argue that the difference must be far more a matter of culture than of biology, still accept as a given that men are conditioned from boyhood to be less emotionally capable than women.2 Regardless of whether we favor nature or nurture in our conceptions of the human animal, there remains a prevailing sense within our world that the relationship between manliness and empathy is decidedly vexed. I have shown in this book that, historically, this has not always been true. During the Carolingian era, manliness and compassionate emotional sensitivity to the lives of others were quite intimately linked. Not only did the men and women of this culture consider the capacity for empathetic awareness and fellow-​­feeling to be an essential part of being male, but they also constructed their notions of moral rectitude, power, and authority upon it. Manliness and empathy’s “natural” interconnectivity shaped how the Carolingians understood themselves, how they structured their society, and how they conceived of their place within the greater world around them. The link was forged in the intellectual fires of the Roman late fourth and early fifth centuries, a moment of profound questioning and contemplation about the possibilities of New Testament morality in a brave new world of Christian majority. Distinctions of elite Christian discipleship before the fourth century had reflected the countercultural orientations of the first Christian communities. Yet as Christians rose to social and political power after the conversion of the Roman Empire, those distinctions grew far less

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practical and proportionally less clear. New forms of elite Christian discipleship began to appear in the deserts of the eastern Mediterranean, and as these forms spread charismatically into the early monastic communities of the European West, even more complex questions arose about where elite Christianity could exist and who might be best equipped to perform it. Caritas—​­the extreme love and universal emotional interconnection between souls called for in the Gospels—​­provided a solution. It allowed for a hegemonic ideology of Christian ascetic masculinity that still gave all men access to the authority of the divine. It made it possible for ascetic men to label themselves the epitome of what it truly meant to be Christian, but it also gave nonascetic men the capacity to embody ascetic manliness while living and working in worldly space. By the sixth century, Gregory the Great would develop these ideological connections and define caritas as the source of Christian power itself. Christian manliness outside of the cloister became a matter of attaching oneself symbolically to the heavenly realm by means of a tether constructed from the sinews of emotional care. Affective interconnection between self and other became a means not only of bonding fellow worldly souls in their common humanity but also of protecting worldly men against the corrosion of the saeculum and of granting them the capacity to see and to interpret God’s will more clearly. With the rise of the Carolingian dynasty during the eighth century, the Carolingian aristocracy drew upon Gregory’s ideology of worldly masculine authority in the service of their own political ends. This ideology served the Carolingians well for a time. Charlemagne benefited the most. When circumstances turned ill, however, the ideology also served to trap the men of the Carolingian ruling caste within an endless cycle of shame. In Charlemagne’s final decade, that shame took the form of collective penitence. During the reign of Louis the Pious, his successor, it transformed into even more radical penitential observance—​­even stricter regulation of ascetic masculinity coupled with enormous pressure mounted upon the sovereign to perform his manliness in the service of his society. The capacity of Carolingian laymen to draw upon this ideology began to wane with the traumas of the civil war between Louis the Pious’s heirs and the empire-​­wide theological reconsiderations of good works fomented by the Gottschalk of Orbais controversy. In a world where secular caritas seemed rare and salvation was first and foremost a matter of grace, not deeds, lay claims to divine authority inevitably grew more problematic. The Christian professional elite assumed a new social status and ascetics would begin to guard their

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divine authority more closely than ever before. Caritas discourse at the end of the ninth century, once a tool for including and implicating the lay aristocracy in the duties and obligations of pastoral care, could now be invoked to block off the direct access to God’s authority that laymen had enjoyed in earlier, more confident moments of ecclesiastical leadership. We see the emergence of self-​­defining narratives in which the Christian professional elite now sought to transcend the secular altogether and to form a higher authority all their own. As a consequence of this increasing separation between lay and spiritual aristocratic men, the ideological links between caritas and divine authority would weaken. Caritas and deeds remained central to Christian identity; the ascetic male remained forever at the pinnacle of Christian hierarchies of masculine power. Yet secular men who wished to draw on ascetic authority would increasingly turn to different performances of their connection to the divine. Ideas that had always been present in Christian intellectual circles about the benefits to the soul of physical ascetic withdrawal from the world grew into arguments about the necessity of ascetic withdrawal from the world for the achievement of true elite discipleship. And, ironically, the figure of the ideal Christian layman would become a key battleground for this debate. The devout layman, whom Paulinus and Alcuin had invited into the ranks of elite Christian discipleship with open arms, became for the Monk of St. Gall and Odo of Cluny the measure and foil against which “true” disciples of God were increasingly to judge themselves. Even as it had become possible to speak of a nonroyal lay saint in the early tenth century, it became impossible to speak of this saint as having lived a completely secular life. What emerged was a model of elite discipleship that could no longer accommodate the layman and his life lived fully in secular space. Attachment to God’s authority in the post-​­Carolingian world would increasingly require far more overt bodily renunciations, physical sacrifices, and open demonstrations of subservience to the priestly and monastic orders. And it is important to recognize, in reflection upon the longue durée of this process, the degree to which, as Peter Brown noted years ago, the push for more outward displays of bodily asceticism among the professional ranks of the Church began with demands not from the clergy but from the laity. It was the laity, not the clergy, who in self-​­chastisement for their failures to please their deity sought to ensure that their intercessors had appropriate access to God’s ear.3 In narrating this history, I have advanced a series of interwoven arguments

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concerning our traditional understanding of the Carolingian world. First, I have argued for new readings of its texts, the Laienspiegel most of all. I have read the lay mirrors each as works of literary art rather than simple collections of wisdom or manuals of banal advice. I have agreed with previous scholars that they share the conventions of a genre in the sense that they were all written for lay, nonroyal aristocrats, but I have also argued that while recognizing their genre conventions, we must nevertheless pay closer attention to their separate orientations. We must understand, that is, the ways in which the lay mirrors each speak to the different moments in which they were written. Jonas and Dhuoda invoked largely the same ideology of secular Christian male power that Paulinus and Alcuin had, yet they wrote for very different audiences and within very different political worlds. And while the ideology that each promoted may have been the same, their applications of that ideology were quite distinct. Finally, all of the lay mirrors, I have argued, must be reintegrated with the monastic and royal mirrors of the Carolingian world as a unified corpus of diverse but intimately related texts, representing similar impulses and similar uses of language by their writers. Second, I have argued that the Gottschalk of Orbais controversy was more than just a theological dispute among the Carolingian intelligentsia. Instead, I have shown that Gottschalk and his ideas represented a watershed moment in the history of Carolingian culture, indeed the history of Western Christianity. If we define Christianity not in terms of the adoption or rejection of traits and ritual practices but instead in terms of the adoption of particular ideologies of authority, we can recognize the profound ways in which Gottschalk’s preaching and the responses to that preaching changed Carolingian ideologies of masculine authority, and thus Carolingian Christianity, forever. Third, while I have confirmed the great usefulness of de Jong’s “Penitential State” as a characterization of Frankish ideological thinking, I have also drawn distinctions between Charlemagne’s prophylaxis and his unique brand of penitence, as well as between his brand of penitence and the penitential culture that emerged during the reign of Louis the Pious. More importantly, I think, I have reintegrated ninth-​­century royal penance firmly back into the world of lay penance more broadly. Separating them has created an artificial divide that the Carolingians themselves did not observe. They saw differences between kings and other secular aristocrats, no doubt. Yet the ideology of Christian power upon which they based their authority saw all power as one and the same, deriving from and authorized by the same source regardless of

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who wielded it. The mechanics of a king’s access to divine authority were no different from anyone else’s, and he had to perform them to procure authority in the same way. Fourth, I have presented the history of early medieval “Christianization” not as a process of ritual indoctrination that was either followed or ignored but rather as a process of ideological permeation, infusion, and transformation over time. For too long, the history of Carolingian Christianity has been framed as a kind of missionary effort on the part of an institutional Church, in which churchmen indoctrinated the laity and sought royal assistance in dragging the masses from a state of malformed Christianity t­ oward a state that was somehow more “pure.” In contrast, as I have narrated it in this book, “Christianization” is about the adoption of a worldview, not just ritual behaviors. It is about the assumption and naturalization of ideologies that explain the nature of power and its sources. Indeed, I would argue further that we need to abolish “Christianization” as a concept for understanding the Carolingian renovatio altogether. Christianity had been part of daily life for centuries at the dawn of the Carolingian era. The men and women who called themselves Christian practiced their religion in a manner that was only beginning to resemble what would become normative for the Europe of later periods. Yet while Carolingian religion may seem very different from that with which we are most accustomed, I have endeavored to present a convincing demonstration that this was not a world of fallen or corrupted Christianity either. Carolingian Christians neither failed to uphold the traditions of the early ecclesia nor lacked the “rigor” of the post-​­eleventh-​­century Church. Such assessments presume false teleologies that only move us further away from understanding the choices that the men and women of this epoch actively and consciously made in relation to their world. Fifth, I have argued for a new comprehension of the masculine identities that populated the ninth-​­century Carolingian world. We can no longer think about Carolingian masculinity in monolithic terms, nor can we understand the inconsistency with which Carolingian men adhered to notions of ideal traits in terms of apathy or failure. Instead, we must consider the ways in which Carolingian gender identity was fluid and oriented t­ oward inward dispositions of emotional connection to the divine and to other human souls rather than outward displays of physical embodiment. Furthermore, the hierarchies of Carolingian aristocratic masculine authority were always contested and ever changing. Carolingian society and culture underwent several tectonic shifts—​­the transition of authority from Charlemagne to Louis, the

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increased pressure placed by secular aristocrats on their monastic brethren, the aftermath of civil war, the theological emphasis on grace over deeds, and the expansion of monastic authority. With each of these tremors, gender ideology shifted, too. My study only reinforces the notion that the Carolingian civil war between the sons of Louis the Pious was a particularly important moment of change within the aristocratic culture of Carolingian Europe, something about which I have written elsewhere and will continue to write in the future. Paying attention to changes in ideologies of masculinity is yet another way to map key differences between the pre– and post–civil war Carolingian world. Sixth, in demonstrating the ways in which Carolingian culture invoked its own concepts of fellow-​­feeling within its social and political discourse, I have offered a new perspective for understanding more clearly our own concepts of fellow-​­feeling and the always shifting forces that shape, mobilize, and restrain its performance within our own world.4 The biological human capacity for the practice of empathy is clear, but the values and understandings that a given culture associates with such behavior must always be seen to govern empathy’s enactment. In our world, we tend to invoke empathy as an appeal to something universally human, a quality that transcends culture and that can thus be tapped to create peace, to resolve conflict, and, in short, to build a better world. In such invocations, we share a certain commonality with the Carolingians. They, too, believed that fellow-​­feeling was a universal human trait that, if developed, could lead to a stronger society for all. Yet instead of the language of biological science, the idiom that the Carolingians used was theological. Human beings were created in the image of a divine entity whose essence was unlimited wisdom and unmitigated love. The human capacity to practice this love and the acts of emotional interconnection that it entailed were a matter not of DNA and evolutionary selection but of proper alignment and connection between body and deity. Empathy, in other words, was both natural and the product of learning, a recognized symbol of both divine election and knowledge about the physics of secular and nonsecular spaces. In focusing on the connection between fellow-​­feeling and masculinity within Carolingian culture, we must take care not simply to make “empathy” only the latest addition to our lists of key prescriptive traits for the aristocratic male. It is true that we see an enormous amount of interest among Carolingian aristocratic men, particularly during the first half of the ninth century, to depict themselves as loving and compassionate and to associate those qualities specifically with their manliness. Yet simply pointing out that what we call empathy may have been a valued trait does not tell us a great deal more about

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Carolingian culture than we already knew before. Even comparisons of degree are far too nebulous and simplistic to be of much scholarly use. It would probably be safe to say, for example, that Carolingian culture was particularly interested in the kinds of behaviors that the modern world associates with empathy and thus that perhaps this culture encouraged men to exhibit fellow-​ f­ eeling more than some other cultures in the history of Europe. Not only are such comparisons difficult to defend with hard evidence, but they also ultimately tell us little about the men and women who lived within these cultures other than that they could value some of the human qualities that we value in ourselves. Of primary interest in this study has been not the simple fact that Carolingian culture associated empathetic behaviors with masculinity or the degree to which it did so but rather the vast array of creative ways in which the Carolingians used conceptions and representations of fellow-​­feeling to argue, implicitly or explicitly, that certain kinds of authority and power should be the domain of certain kinds of men. Thus, while the qualities and behaviors that in today’s world we label “empathetic” were no doubt prominent, valued, and worried over by the Carolingians, this book has shown more specifically the crucial role that these qualities and behaviors played within the ideological narratives of Carolingian power and authority. When learned spiritual advisors used the discourse of caritas to emphasize the essential equality of all men in the eyes of God, they forged an ideological foundation for the shared nature of lay and clerical social power among the Carolingian Frankish ruling elite. When Gottschalk declared that caritas could never be learned by choice and only received by grace, he declared that humans had no capacity to influence their God through acts of emotional care. No longer could just any man claim divine authority through behavior. Men had to construct authorization for their power by other means. Studying Carolingian masculinity as an ideological process in this manner challenges us to think anew not only about the ninth century but about subsequent centuries as well. It renders Stephen Jaeger’s observation about Ottonian bishops—​­namely, that they never invoked Gregory’s Rule for pastors in the public performance of their identity—​­all the more curious and in need of further study.5 Understanding gender as an ideological process encourages us to describe differently the concerns about spiritual purity and the forced de-​­secularization of the episcopacy and priesthood that we see at the turn of the millennium and especially during the eleventh century. We can consider how these changes may have reflected not only the changing

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regulatory structures of the institutional Church and Cluniac monasticism but also the advent of and cultural purchase bestowed upon new ideologies of divine authority and its relationship to the human body. These new ideologies required more and more outward performances of ascetic observance for that authority to be recognized and understood; they mounted pressure on priests to shun marriage, on bishops to avoid warfare and wealth—​­all practices that had made perfect sense within ideologies of masculinity only a century before. This allows us to see in a different light how the priestly reforms of the eleventh century may have connected to the dramatic rise of papal power that occurred between the world of Charlemagne’s coronation in 800 and the world of Henry IV’s voluntary humiliation at Canossa in 1077. The shift was i­deological—​­the result of new prevailing ideas about the nature of divine authority itself. Dominant gender ideologies increasingly undermined the capacity for metaphorical demonstrations of purity to signify attachment to God. The history presented in this book even provides new insight, as I briefly suggested in Chapter 2, into the fervor with which laymen followed Urban II’s call for crusade in 1095. Gender ideologies at the turn of the twelfth century allowed laymen far less direct access to the elite ranks of Christian authority than they could assert at the turn of the ninth century. Caritas remained a source of lay salvation and access to divine authority only insofar as it could be enacted through bodily pledges of pilgrimage and blood and sacrifice, through escape from the world of quotidian life and entry into the holy space of divine calling. Ideological associations between empathy and asceticism remained constant, yet the degree to which metaphorical and symbolic ascetic observances received the same weight as outward performances fluctuated significantly over time.6 In the final paragraphs of my concluding remarks, let me also draw attention to some of the most important ways in which this study subverts traditional narratives of the “Dark Ages” and connects this distant era to our own. The truth is that on the European continent during the Early Middle Ages, historians find themselves in strange territory. Carolingian culture was not the same as the diverse cultures of the early Christian Mediterranean, of later medieval Europe, or of colonial and postcolonial modernity. The ascetic spiritual athletes of late antiquity existed only in the Carolingian cultural imagination. Figures resembling the oratores, bellatores, and labores of the European High Middle Ages began to appear only as the Carolingian era waned and even then as small, shimmery dots on a far-​­away horizon. My hope is that in casting new light upon a Carolingian world that has always seemed foreign,

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my book has made it less so. I have tried to present the ninth century as a world of living human beings who, rather like us and in fascinatingly inventive ways, were simply trying to find purpose and meaning in their lives. Some of their customs remain rightly, in our eyes, backward. Theirs was a firmly patriarchal society that commodified women and enslaved the peasant caste. Yet one cannot help but wonder whether the Christianity that these men and women practiced might have been far more inclusive, far more oriented ­toward helping people in their daily lives, than the forms of Christianity that followed after the year 1000. Alcuin’s clear statements of equality among all souls regardless of station or gender are extraordinary declarations of inclusive fellow-​­feeling and community—​­declarations that glorify a martyrdom not of death and destruction and bodily sacrifice but of gentle patience and tolerance, of sensitivity to the troubles of others and forgiveness of their trespasses. Christianity seems far less beyond the reach of “normal folk” in the ideologies of the ninth century than in other centuries of the institutional Church. The whole of humanity could achieve salvation through hard work. Heaven was a meritocracy. The Carolingians defined fellow-​­feeling as both sign and signifier: its enactment demonstrated proximity to the divine, and proximity to the divine was thought to lead to its enactment. Such connections may seem at first to be distant and foreign to the secularized modern world in which we live. That distance diminishes considerably when we realize how much we still associate the outsider, the rebel, the counterculture with empathy and the center, the politician, the moneymakers with empathy’s lack. The mystical element has been removed, but the metaphoric links between space and power are largely the same. In this light, we can see that the discourse of empathy in our culture, like caritas discourse in Carolingian culture, is also a discourse of power. No one ever tells the hurting and the destitute to cultivate empathy for the healthy and happy. As with Mauss’s anthropology of the gift and gift exchange, empathy creates hierarchies of high and low just as much as it creates bonds of equal recognition.7 When political leaders stump that there is an “empathy deficit” within the financial sector or encourage empathy as the foundation for world peace, they surely mean well.8 Yet I would point out that their evocation of empathy in such ways does absolutely nothing to subvert the naturalization of the constructed power hierarchies that they seek to undermine. Imagine how different the message would be if we reversed our political discourses of empathy—​­if leaders campaigned for the masses to empathize with

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the wealthy and the victims of violence to practice empathy for their attackers. Such notions would seem at best unfair; in some circumstances, they might even feel obscene. The immediate distaste would nevertheless draw attention to the ideologies of authority that govern our world. Undeniably, the capacity to accrue wealth and to exert violence leads to power—​­the power to influence, the power to kill, the power to control. But only ideology can authorize the use of that power. The authorization of personal profit at the expense of public loss, the sanctioning of violence in the projection of political will—​­these come not from nature but from the constructed narratives of the world that we choose to believe are natural. To reverse the direction of our empathy discourses would be to employ precisely the tactic of the Gospels’ message: forgive them for they know not what they do. It would rhetorically raise the victim to the position of power and lower the aggressor to the position of subordination. I am neither guileless enough nor hubristic enough to argue here that a simple shift in the inflection of our empathy discourses would change the structures of power and authority that govern our world. That would require further action. I am confident enough in my understanding of ideologies and discourse, however, to join the chorus of cultural critics, from Benjamin to Spivak, in their essential argument that words truly do have power. At the heart of this power is their capacity to naturalize relationships that are not, in fact, natural at all. I contend, therefore, only that different invocations of empathy in our modern discourses of global society might assist us in exposing the completely artificial associations, some of them terribly dangerous and destructive, that the prevailing ideologies of our world promote. From this closer attention could follow questioning. From the questioning might follow revelation of the wizard behind the curtain. And from that revelation we might see the wizard for the lowly human construct that he is. That may be the beginning of change.

Notes

Introduction Note to epigraph: Dhuoda, Liber manualis, ed. and trans. Marcelle Thiébaux, Dhuoda: Handbook for Her Warrior Son: Liber Manualis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 6.2, 288: “Ut vir perfectus esse valeas admoneo. Beatus ille vir qui, ob meritis dignis, adhuc terram pergradiens, coenoque et limo pedem conterit suo. Et iam nomen suum in regnum habet transcriptum supernum.” My translation. 1. In my use of the terms “aristocratic” and “aristocracy” throughout this book, I follow Chris Wickham’s sensible definition and important recognition that the identity of the early medieval aristocracy was always nebulous, contested, and unstable—​­a matter of active definition and redefinition in the service of specific assertions of authority, with which notions of ideal masculinity were always directly connected. See especially Chris Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400–800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 154; Helmut Reimitz, History, Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 550–850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Rachel Stone, Morality and Masculinity in the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 21–26. 2. Dhuoda, Liber manualis 6.2–3, 184: “Si nosse vis, fili, qualis sit ille vir, vel quales habeat virtutes ut talis ditetur, agmen copulans dignitatum, et possessor atque fruitor sit regno tabernaculo Dei, audi Prophetam, quasi per similitudinem interrogationis ita dicentem: ‘Domine, quis habitabit in tabernaculo tuo, aut quis requiescat in monte sancto tuo?’ Volo ut ostendas. En interrogationem audivimus. Sed quid ei responderit Dominus scire et intelligere debemus. Ait namque: I, ‘Qui ingreditur sine macula’; II, ‘Qui operatur iustitiam’; III, ‘Qui loquitur veritatem’; IIII, ‘Qui non agit in lingua sua dolum’; V, ‘Qui non facit proximo malum’; VI, ‘Qui non iurat ut eum decipiat’; VII, ‘Qui pecuniam ad usura non adcommodat’; VIII, ‘Qui obprobrium non intulit in proximo’; VIIII, ‘Qui munera super innocentem non accepit’; X, ‘Qui inlatas iniurias patienter tolerat’; XI, ‘Qui innocens est manibus’; XII, “Qui mundus est corde et castus corpore’; XIII, ‘Qui potest transgredi et non fuerit transgressus’; XIIII, ‘Qui valet facere malum et non fecerit’; XV, ‘Qui pauperi in quo valuerit manum porrexit suam.’ ” For further discussion, see Chapter 4. 3. Alcuin of York, De virtutibus et vitiis 3, PL 101, col. 615: “In praeceptis vero Dei charitas obtinet principatum, sine cujus perfectione nihil Deo placere posse Paulus testatur apostolus, qui nec martyrium nec saeculi contemptum, nec eleemosynarum largitionem, sine charitatis officio quidquam proficere posse ostendit. Inde et ipse Dominus a quodam scriba interrogatus quod esset mandatum maximum, respondit: ‘Diliges Dominum Deum tuum ex toto corde tuo, et ex tota anima tua, et ex tota mente tua.’ Addidit quoque: ‘Secundum autem simile est huic: Diliges proximum tuum sicut teipsum; in his duobus mandatis tota Lex pendet et prophetae.’ ” Cf. 1 Cor 13, Mt 22:36ff. My translation. For further discussion, see Chapter 2.

166  Notes to Pages 3–5 4. See the important recent study of Carolingian femininity and women’s practices, Valerie L. Garver, Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), especially her discussion of women and social well-​­being, 8–9. See also Julia M. H. Smith, “Gender and Ideology in the Early Middle Ages,” in Gender and Christian Religion, ed. R. N. Swanson (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998); Suzanne Fonay Wemple, Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister, 500 to 900 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981). 5. Cf. comments by Stone, Morality and Masculinity, 14; Rachel Stone, “ ‘In what way can those who have left the world be distinguished?’: Masculinity and the Difference Between Carolingian Men,” in Intersections of Gender, Religion and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages, ed. Cordelia Beattie and Kirsten A. Fenton (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2011), 14–15. 6. Thomas F. X. Noble, “Secular Sanctity: Forging an Ethos for the Carolingian Nobility,” in Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World, ed. Janet L. Nelson and Patrick Wormald (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 16–17. 7. Stone, Morality and Masculinity, 7. She also notes the importance of food practices. 8. Courtney M. Booker, Past Convictions: The Penance of Louis the Pious and the Decline of the Carolingians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 217–246; Mayke de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 204; Eric Goldberg, Struggle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict Under Louis the German, 817–876 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 45–46; Stuart Airlie, “Semper fideles? Loyauté envers les Carolingiens comme constituant de l’identité aristocratique,” in La royauté et les élites dans l’Europe carolingienne (du début au IXe aux environs de 920), ed. Régine Le Jan (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Centre d’Histoire de l’Europe du Nord-​­Ouest, 1998); Janet L. Nelson, “On the Limits of the Carolingian Renaissance,” in Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London: Hambledon, 1986), 57. 9. J. M. Wallace-​­Hadrill, The Barbarian West, 400–1000 (London: Hutchinson’s University Press, 1952), 125. 10. Cf. Stone, Morality and Masculinity, 311. 11. See, for example, the classic studies by Friedrich Prinz, “King, Clergy and War at the Time of the Carolingians,” in Saints, Scholars and Heroes: Studies in Medieval Culture in Honour of Charles W. Jones, ed. Margot H. King and Wesley M. Stevens (Collegeville: Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, 1979); Friedrich Prinz, Klerus und Krieg im früheren Mittelalter: Untersuchungen zur Rolle der Kirche beim Aufbau der Königsherrschaft, Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 2 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1971). 12. See, for example, Stuart Airlie, “The Anxiety of Sanctity: St Gerald of Aurillac and His Maker,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 43, no. 3 (1992): 376, 380, 395; Nelson, “On the Limits of the Carolingian Renaissance,” 57. I take up these arguments in further detail in Chapters 2 and 5. 13. Stone, Morality and Masculinity, 19–21, 323–326, 334; Lynda L. Coon, Dark Age Bodies: Gender and Monastic Practice in the Early Medieval West (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 247–248. For an important contrary view with regard to the issue of Carolingian male gender anxiety ­toward the turn of the tenth century, see Janet L. Nelson, “Monks, Secular Men and Masculinity, c. 900,” in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. Dawn M. Hadley (London: Longman, 1999). I address her arguments more directly in Chapter 5. 14. While my approach in this book differs significantly from the vast majority of medieval gender study to date, I do not at all seek to undermine or to diminish the hard-​­won advancements of medieval gender scholarship in recent decades. This book stands squarely on the shoulders of Bynum, Cohen, Karras, McNamara, Newman, Nelson, Rubin, Smith, and so many other scholars whose work has shaped my own. I hope only to guide the conversation down a

Notes to Pages 6–10  167 new path and to see what we might find along the way. I should also note that the subject of medieval masculinity in general is a relatively new field of inquiry that has reached early medieval studies only tentatively. On this, see the important comment by Stone, Morality and Masculinity, 14–19. By far the best theoretical treatments of masculinity for the Carolingian world have been Stone’s Morality and Masculinity and Coon’s Dark Age Bodies; cf. also Lynda L. Coon, “Gender and the Body,” in Early Medieval Christianities, c. 600–1100, ed. Thomas F. X. Noble and Julia M. H. Smith (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Notable essay collections that feature further scholarship on early medieval masculinity include Jennifer D. Thibodeaux, ed., Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Lisa M. Bitel and Felice Lifshitz, eds., Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Leslie Brubaker and Julia M. H. Smith, eds., Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West, 300– 900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Patricia H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis, eds., Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004); Jacqueline Murray, ed., Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West (New York: Routledge, 1999); Dawn M. Hadley, ed., Masculinity in Medieval Europe (New York: Routledge, 1998); Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, eds., Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, New Middle Ages 4 (New York: Routledge, 1997). 15. Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 16. “Manhood—​­or ‘masculinity,’ as it is commonly termed today—​­is a continual, dynamic process. Through that process, men claim certain kinds of authority, based upon their particular type of bodies. At any time in history, many contradictory ideas about manhood are available to explain what men are, how they ought to behave, and what sorts of powers and authorities they may claim, as men. Part of the way gender functions is to hide these contradictions and to camouflage the fact that gender is dynamic and always changing. Instead, gender is constructed as a fact of nature, and manhood is assumed to be an unchanging, transhistorical essence, consisting of fixed, naturally occurring traits. To study the history of manhood, I would argue, is to unmask this process and study the historical ways different ideologies about manhood develop, change, are combined, amended, contested—​­and gain the status of ‘truth’ ” (ibid., 7). 17. See Stone, Morality and Masculinity, 89, 238, 304, 317, 319–323. 18. Coon, Dark Age Bodies, especially at 2. The considerable late antique prehistory of these ideologies is discussed in Chapter 1. 19. “The good historian is like the giant in the fairy tale. He knows that wherever he catches the scent of human flesh, there his quarry lies”; Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft (Apologie pour l’histoire ou Métier d’historien [1949]), trans. Peter Putnam (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), 22. Cf. comments on the role of the historian versus the literature scholar by Nelson, “Monks, Secular Men and Masculinity, c. 900,” 138. 20. The difficulty of recovering this type of historical experience has been much discussed in the theorization of emotions history. See Peter N. Stearns and Carol Z. Stearns, “Emotionology: Clarifying the History of Emotions and Emotional Standards,” American Historical Review 90, no. 4 (1985); John E. Toews, “Cultural History, the Construction of Subjectivity and Freudian Theory: A Critique of Carol and Peter Stearns’ Proposal for a New History of the Emotions,” Psychohistory Review 18, no. 3 (1990); Fred Weinstein, “Some Comments on the History of Emotion,” ibid. 21. See especially Karl F. Morrison, “Framing the Subject: Humanity and the Wounds of Love,” in Studies on Medieval Empathies, ed. Karl F. Morrison and Rudolph M. Bell (Turnhout:

168  Notes to Page 11 Brepols, 2013). Morrison’s first book on the subject argues in part that cultural constructs from the deep and distant past can have profound effects on the ways in which human beings interact and perceive their world today: Karl F. Morrison, I Am You: The Hermeneutics of Empathy in Western Literature, Theology, and Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). I certainly concur with the general conclusions of I Am You, although it is fairest to say that this book is in most direct dialogue with Morrison’s more recent work. 22. Morrison, “Framing the Subject,” 46. 23. The British psychologist Edward Titchener is usually credited with first using the term to describe the array of behaviors and dispositions with which we most commonly associate empathy today. The term first appeared in English as a translation for a nineteenth-​­century German word, Einfühlung—​­“in-​­feeling” or “feeling into.” This term had been used by philosophers of aesthetics, Robert Vischer and Theodor Lipps, to refer to the human capacity to project feelings onto objects. See especially Edward Bradford Titchener, Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought-​­Processes (New York: Macmillan, 1909); C. Daniel Batson, Altruism in Humans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking Penguin, 2011), 573–592. 24. Foucault’s theorization of the generative power of discourse runs throughout his work yet is perhaps most classically described in Michel Foucault, La volonté de savoir, Histoire de la sexualité 1 (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1976). See also, especially in relation to Bederman, Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason [translation of Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (1964)] (New York: Vintage, 1988). 25. Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). Cf. also her earlier discussions in Barbara H. Rosenwein, “Worrying About Emotions in History,” American Historical Review 107, no. 3 (2002); Barbara H. Rosenwein, “Writing Without Fear About Early Medieval Emotions,” Early Medieval Europe 10, no. 2 (2001). For the ever-​­growing bibliography of medieval emotions history, particularly in the context of the early medieval period, see especially Barbara H. Rosenwein, “Histoire de l’émotion: Méthodes et approches,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, Xe–XIIe siècles 49, no. 1 (2006); Jeroen de Ploige, “Studying Emotions. The Medievalist as Human Scientist?” in Emotions in the Heart of the City (14th–16th Century), ed. Élodie Lecuppre-​­Desjardin and Anne-​­Laure Van Bruaene (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005); Walter Prevenier, “Conclusion: Methodological and Historiographical Footnotes on Emotions in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period,” ibid.; Barbara H. Rosenwein, “Identity and Emotions in the Early Middle Ages,” in Die Suche nach den Ursprüngen: Von der Bedeutung des frühen Mittelalters, ed. Walter Pohl (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2004); Barbara H. Rosenwein, “The Places and Spaces of Emotion,” in Uomo e spazio nell’Alto Medioevo (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2003); Barbara H. Rosenwein, “Pouvoir et passion: Communautés émotionnelles en France au VIIe siècle,” Annales—​­Histoire, Sciences Sociales 58, no. 6 (2003); Barbara H. Rosenwein, “Writings and Emotions in Gregory of Tours,” in Vom Nutzen des Schreibens: Soziales Gedächtnis, Herrschaft und Besitz im Mittelalter, ed. Walter Pohl and Paul Herold (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2002); C. Stephen Jaeger, Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); Barbara H. Rosenwein, ed., Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998); Stuart Airlie, “The History of Emotions and Emotional History,” Early Medieval Europe 10, no. 2 (2001). Because of the significantly different social and cultural forces at work in the later medieval period, I intentionally do not attempt to situate this book in direct dialogue with the vast literature of emotion’s history for the later Middle Ages.

Notes to Pages 14–17  169 However, two recent studies may be of particular relevance here for their explorations and very different kinds of conclusions concerning late medieval ideological connections between femininity and empathy: Barbara Newman, “Indwelling: A Meditation on Empathy, Pregnancy, and the Virgin Mary,” in Studies on Medieval Empathies, ed. Rudolph M. Bell and Karl F. Morrison (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013); Sarah McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010).

Chapter 1 1. Sulpicius Severus, Vita sancti Martini Turonensis 3.1–6, ed. Jacques Fontaine, SC 133 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1967–1969), 257–259. 2. Ibid. 2.3–5, 254–256. 3. Ibid. 2.6, 256: “Triennium fere ante baptismum in armis fuit, integer tamen ab his vitiis quibus illud hominum genus inplicari solet.” Trans. Carolinne White, Early Christian Lives (New York: Penguin Classics, 1998), 137. 4. Ibid. 2.7, 256: “Multa illius circa commilitones benignitas, mira caritas, patientia vero atque humilitas ultra humanum modum. Nam frugalitatem in eo laudari non est necesse, qua ita usus est, ut iam illo tempore non miles, sed monachus putaretur.” 5. Ibid. 2.8, 256: “Necdum tamen regeneratus in Christo, agebat quendam bonis operibus baptismi candidatum: adsistere scilicet laborantibus, opem ferre miseris, alere egentes, vestire nudos, nihil sibi ex militiae stipendiis praeter cotidianum victum reservare.” 6. Ibid. 2.7, 256: “Pro quibus rebus ita sibi omnes commilitones devinxerat ut eum miro adfectu venerarentur.” 7. Peter Robert Lamont Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, Lectures on the History of Religions 13 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). See also Mathew Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), with bibliography. 8. For early medieval Christian notions of moral limits and extremity, see especially Arnold Angenendt, Thomas Braucks, Rolf Busch, and Hubertus Lutterbach, “Counting Piety in the Early and High Middle Ages,” in Ordering Medieval Society: Perspectives on Intellectual and Practical Modes of Shaping Social Relations, ed. Bernhard Jussen (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); Thomas Lentes, “Counting Piety in the Late Middle Ages,” ibid.; Jacques Chiffoleau, La comptabilité de l’au-​­delà: Les hommes, la mort et la religion dans la région d’Avignon à la fin du Moyen Age, vers 1320–vers 1480, Collection de l’École française de Rome 47 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1980). 9. Mt 5:38–42. All Old and New Testament quotations herein are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). 10. For pre-​­Christian ideals of balanced justice, see, with bibliographies, Paul Woodruff, The Ajax Dilemma: Justice, Fairness, and Rewards (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Sid Schwarz, Judaism and Justice: The Jewish Passion to Repair the World (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2006); Michael Gagarin, Antiphon the Athenian: Oratory, Law, and Justice in the Age of the Sophists (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002); Ryan K. Balot, Greed and Injustice in Classical Athens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Jean-​­François Balaudé, Les théories de la justice dans l’Antiquité (Paris: Nathan, 1996); David Cohen, Law, Violence, and Community in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). While the interpretation of “an

170  Notes to Pages 17–19 eye for an eye” as a call to vengeance has become a modern commonplace, in ancient thought, it was instead meant to represent the proper balance between injury and retribution that served as a limit to rather than an instigator of violence. For further discussion of the “eye for an eye” maxim in the ancient world, see especially Calum M. Carmichael, The Spirit of Biblical Law (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 105–125, with bibliography. Cf. also Calum M. Carmichael, Illuminating Leviticus: A Study of Its Laws and Institutions in the Light of Biblical Narratives (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); Calum M. Carmichael, The Origins of Biblical Law: The Decalogues and the Book of the Covenant (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992). 11. For agape in relation to classical traditions, see Jacqueline de Romilly, La douceur dans la pensée grecque (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1979), 312. For secular scholarship on the history of agape in Western culture, particularly as it has been understood in modern thought, see Gene H. Outka, “Universal Love and Impartiality,” in The Love Commandments: Essays in Christian Ethics and Moral Philosophy, ed. Gene H. Outka, Edmund N. Santurri, and William Werpehowski (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1992); Gene H. Outka, Agape: An Ethical Analysis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972). See also Ceslas Spicq, “Benignité, Mansuétude, Douceur, Clémence,” Revue Biblique 54 (1947). 12. Cf. Romilly, La douceur dans la pensée grecque, 314. “Les grands principes d’amour et de charité qu’apportaient les Évangiles se plaçaient donc à un niveau qui n’avait plus rien de commun avec la morale païenne. Ils demandaient plus, et dans un esprit autre. Pourtant, on constate que, dans la pratique, ils pouvaient se rencontrer avec certains des préceptes païens qui ont été étudiés ici, et qui concernent, justement, la bonté et la douceur.” 13. Augustine, De sermone Domini in monte libros duos 1.19/56.1370–1382, ed. Almut Mutzenbecher, CCSL 35 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967), 64: “Pharisaeorum iustitia minor est non excedere in vindicta modum, ne plus rependat quisque quam accepit; et magnus hic gradus est. . . . ​ Et haec est pacis inchoatio; perfecta autem pax est talem penitus nolle uindictam.” 14. Ibid. 1.19/57.1381–1405, 65. 15. Ibid. 1.19/57.1405–1417, 65: “Hinc ascendens qui omnino nihil rependerit propinquat praecepto domini, nec tamen adhuc ibi est. Parum enim adhuc videtur domino, si pro malo quod acceperis nihil rependas mali, nisi etiam amplius sis paratus accipere. Quapropter non ait: Ego autem dico vobis non reddere malum pro malo, quamquam hoc etiam magnum praeceptum sit, sed ait: non resistere adversus malum, ut non solum non rependas quod tibi fuerit inrogatum, sed etiam non resistas, quo minus aliud inrogetur. Hoc est enim quod etiam consequenter exponit: sed si quis te percusserit in dexteram maxillam tuam, praebe illi et alteram. Non enim ait: si quis te percusserit, noli tu percutere, sed: para te adhuc percuti.” Trans. Michael G. Campbell, “The Lord’s Sermon on the Mount,” New Testament I and II, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century 1/15–16 (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2014), 55. 16. Cf. Ibid. 1.19/57.1383–1389, 64: “Inter illud ergo primum quod praeter legem est, ut maius malum pro minore malo reddatur, et hoc quod dominus perficiendis discipulis dicit, ne pro malo ullum reddatur malum, medium quendam locum tenet, ut tantum reddatur quantum acceptum est, per quod a summa discordia ad summam concordiam pro temporum distributione transitus factus est.” 17. Mt 5:43–48. 18. Augustine, De sermone Domini in monte 1.19/57.1418–1428, 66: “Quod ad misericordiam pertinere hi maxime sentiunt, qui eis quos multum diligunt tamquam filiis uel quibuslibet dilectissimis suis aegrotantibus serviunt vel parvulis vel freneticis, a quibus multa saepe patiuntur et, si eorum salus id exigat, praebent se etiam ut plura patiantur, donec vel aetatis vel morbi

Notes to Pages 19–20  171 infirmitas transeat. Quos ergo dominus medicus animarum curandis proximis instruebat, quid eos aliud docere posset, nisi ut eorum quorum saluti consulere uellent inbecillitates aequo animo tolerarent? Omnis namque inprobitas ex inbecillitate animi venit, quia nihil innocentius est eo qui in virtute perfectus est.” 19. Ibid. 1.19/59.1512–1515, 70: “Hominem namque homo tamquam se ipsum diligere debet, cui ab omnium domino . . . ​etiam ut inimicos diligat imperatur.” My translation. 20. Augustine, De civitate Dei, ed. Bernard Dombart and Aphons Kalb, CCSL 47–48 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955); Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni 2.24, ed. Oswald Holder-​­Egger, MGH SS rer. Germ. 25 (Hanover: Hahn, 1911), 29. 21. For the philological study of pietas in the ancient and Christian world, see James D. Garrison, Pietas from Vergil to Dryden (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), especially 1–126. Cf. also Bernard Bortolussi, “Étude morpho-​­sémantique de impius et de ses dérives en latin préchrétien,” in Impies et païens entre Antiquité et Moyen Age, ed. Lionel Mary and Michel Sot (Paris: Picard, 2002); Lyliane Sznajder, “Les employs de impius et impietas dans la Vulgate. Un problème de filiation sémantique,” ibid.; Hendrik Wagenvoort, Pietas: Selected Studies in Roman Religion, Studies in Greek and Roman Religion 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 1–20, 220; Huguette Fugier, Recherches sur l’expression du sacré dans la langue latine (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1963), 398–406. 22. Augustine, De civitate Dei 10.1, ed. Bernard Dombart and Aphons Kalb, CCSL 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), 403: “Pietas quoque proprie Dei cultus intellegi solet, quam graeci εủσέβειαν vocant. Haec tamen et erga parentes officiose haberi dicitur. More autem vulgi hoc nomen etiam in operibus misericordiae frequentatur; quod ideo arbitror evenisse, quia haec fieri praecipue mandat Deus eaque sibi vel pro sacrificiis vel prae sacrificiis placere testatur.” 23. Romilly, La douceur dans la pensée grecque, 232, 262. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, De clementia 2.3.1, ed. and trans. Susanna Braund, Seneca: De Clementia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 142–143: “clementia est temperantia animi in potestate ulciscendi vel lenitas superioris adversus inferiorem in constituendis poenis.” Seneca wrote his treatise on clementia, ironically, for the emperor Nero. For the vast scholarly work concerning clementia in Roman culture, see also Melissa Barden Dowling, Clemency and Cruelty in the Roman World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), especially 1–28, 169–284, with bibliography; David Konstan, “Clemency as a Virtue,” Classical Philology 100, no. 4 (2005). For Seneca in the Carolingian period, see also Chapter 3. 24. Seneca, De ira 1.5.2–3, ed. Leighton Durham Reynolds, Dialogi (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), 45: “Quid homine aliorum amantius? quid ira infestius? Homo in adiutorium mutuum genitus est, ira in exitium; hic congregari vult, illa discedere, hic prodesse, illa nocere, hic etiam ignotis succurrere, illa etiam carissimos petere; hic aliorum commodis vel inpendere se paratus est, illa in periculum, dummodo deducat, descendere. Quis ergo magis naturam rerum ignorat quam qui optimo eius operi et emendatissimo hoc ferum ac perniciosum vitium adsignat?” Trans. Robert Kaster, Anger, Mercy, Revenge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 18. 25. Cf. Seneca, De ira 2.17.1–2. For apatheia (freedom from the passions) in Stoic philosophy, see Tad Brennan, “The Old Stoic Theory of Emotions,” in The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy, ed. Juha Sihvola and Troels Engberg-​­Pedersen, New Synthese Historical Library 46 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1998); Tad Brennan, The Stoic Life: Emotions, Duties, and Fate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), especially 35–48, 82–114; Brad Inwood, Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 23–64, 235–236; Katerina Ierodiakonou, ed., Topics in Stoic Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 71–127. 26. Seneca, De clementia 1.8.6–7, 108–109, and 1.11.4, 114–115.

172  Notes to Pages 20–22 27. Ibid. 1.5.6, 104: “non decet regem saeva nec inexorabilis ira, non multum enim supra eum eminet cui se irascendo exaequat; at si dat vitam aut dignitatem periclitantibus et meritis amittere, facit quod nulli nisi rerum potenti licet; vita enim etiam superiori eripitur, numquam nisi inferiori datur.” 28. Romilly, La douceur dans la pensée grecque, 175–195. 29. Cf. Seneca, De clementia 2.6.4, 148–149: “misericordia vitium est animorum nimis miseria paventium, quam si quis a sapiente exigit, prope est ut lamentationem exigat et in alienis funeribus gemitus.” (“Misericordia is a defect of minds that are excessively terrified because of misery. Demanding it of a wise man is like requiring him to lament and groan at the funerals of strangers.”) This is a principle with deep roots in classical Greco-​­Roman ethics; see especially the discussion by Martha C. Nussbaum, Sex and Social Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 154–183. Cf. Plato, Republic 2.375E, ed. Simon Roelof Slings, Respublica (Oxford Classical Texts) (Oxford: Clarendon, 2003), 71, whose ideal guardian of society balances gentleness and ferocity in the manner of a well-​­bred dog: “he is gentle as can be to those he’s used to and knows, but the opposite to those he doesn’t know”; trans. George M. A. Grube, rev. C. D. C. Reeve, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 1014. 30. Seneca, De clementia 1.2.2, 98–99: “Non tamen volgo ignoscere decet; nam ubi discrimen inter malos bonosque sublatum est, confusio sequitur et vitiorum eruptio.” 31. Ibid. 2.5.1, 144–145: “itaque pessimo cuique familiarissima est; anus et mulierculae sunt quae lacrimis nocentissimorum moventur, quae, si liceret, carcerem effringerent. Misericordia non causam, sed fortunam spectat; clementia rationi accedit.” 32. Augustine, De civitate Dei 9.5, 375: “Nam et misericordiam Stoicorum est solere culpare; sed quanto honestius ille Stoicus misericordia perturbaretur hominis liberandi quam timore naufragii. Longe melius et humanius et piorum sensibus accommodatius Cicero in Caesaris laude locutus est, ubi ait: ‘nulla de virtutibus tuis nec admirabilior nec gratior misericordia est’ . . . ​Hanc Cicero locutor egregius non dubitauit appellare virtutem, quam Stoicos inter vitia numerare non pudet.” 33. Ibid.: “Servit autem motus iste rationi, quando ita praebetur misericordia, ut iustitia conservetur, sive cum indigenti tribuitur, sive cum ignoscitur paenitenti.” 34. Ibid.: “Quid est autem misericordia nisi alienae miseriae quaedam in nostro corde compassio, qua utique si possumus subvenire compellimur?” Trans. Robert W. Dyson, The City of God Against the Pagans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 365. 35. Augustine, De civitate Dei 10.1, 482: “Ex qua loquendi consuetudine factum est, ut et Deus ipse dicatur pius; quem sane Graeci nullo suo sermonis usu εủσεβέν vocant, quamvis εủσέβειαν pro misericordia illorum etiam uulgus usurpet.” Trans. Dyson, The City of God Against the Pagans, 392. 36. For philanthropia in the Grecophone tradition, particularly its relation to the semantic usage of praotes and epieikeia, see Romilly, La douceur dans la pensée grecque, 37–63. Cf. David Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 77–89, 216–218. 37. See especially Lisa Sowle Cahill, Love Your Enemies: Discipleship, Pacifism, and Just War Theory (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 39–54. Cf. also Bernard V. Brady, Christian Love (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2003), 1–124. 38. See, for example, Pliny the Younger, Epistolae 10.96–97, ed. Adrian Nicholas Sherwin-​ W ­ hite, Fifty Letters of Pliny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 68–71; Robert Louis Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 1–67.

Notes to Pages 22–23  173 39. Robert A. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1–84; Peter Robert Lamont Brown, Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1–27; Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (A.D. 100–400) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), especially 43–73. 40. See Peter Robert Lamont Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). This book expands upon his earlier thoughts on the subject, discussed in Peter Robert Lamont Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2002). 41. For discussion of early monasticism as a withdrawal from the corrosive effects of social structures, see Daniel Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 33 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 15–16, 167–168, 199–200; Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 1–41, 59–110. See also William Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), with bibliography. 42. Benedict, Regula, ed. and trans. Bruce L. Venarde, The Rule of Saint Benedict, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 6 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011). 43. Ibid. 7.42–43, 50: “Sed et praeceptum Domini in adversis et iniuriis per patientiam adimplentes qui percussi in maxillam praebent et aliam, auferenti tunicam dimittunt et pallium, angariati miliario vadunt duo, cum Paulo apostolo falsos fratres sustinent et maledicentes se benedicent.” 44. Ibid. 4.3–5, 32: “Deinde non occidere, non adulterari, non facere furtum.” 45. Ibid. 4.9, 32: “et quod sibi quis fieri non vult, alio ne faciat.” 46. Ibid. 4.22–23, 32: “Iram non perficere, iracundiae tempus non reservare”; 4.29, 32: “Malum pro malo non reddere”; 4.31, 65: “Inimicos deligere.” 47. Ibid. 4.65, 34: “nullum odire”; 4.68, 34: “contentionem non amare”; 4.73–74, 34: “cum discordante ante solis occasum in pacem redire. Et de Dei misericordia numquam desperare.” 48. Ibid. 4.75–78, 34–36: “Ecce haec sunt instrumenta artis spiritalis. . . . ​Officina vero ubi haec omnia diligenter operemur claustra sunt monasterii et stavilitas in congregatione”; prologus 45–48, 8: “Constituenda est ergo nobis dominici scola servitii. In qua institutione nihil asperum, nihil grave, nos constituturos speramus sed et si quid paululum restrictius, dictante aequitatis ratione, propter aemendationem vitiorum vel conservationem caritatis processerit, non ilico pavore perterritus refugias viam salutis quae non est nisi angusto initio incipienda.” 49. Ibid. 2.22, 22: “Ergo aequalis sit ab eo omnibus karitas, una praebeatur in omnibus secundum merita disciplina”; 64.14–15, 208: “In quibus non dicimus ut permittat nutriri vitia, sed prudenter et cum caritate ea amputet ut viderit cuique expedire sicut iam diximus, et studeat plus amari quam timeri”; 65.11, 210: “Ideo nos vidimus expedire propter pacis caritatisque custodiam in abbatis pendere arbitrio ordinationem monasterii sui.” 50. Ibid. 27.2–4, 106: “Et ideo uti debet omnimodo ut sapiens medicus inmittere senpectas, id est seniores sapientes fratres, qui quasi secrete consolentur fratrem fluctuantem et provocent ad humilitatis satisfactionem et consolentur eum ne abundantiori tristitia absorbeatur, sed sicut ait item apostolus: Confirmetur in eo caritas et oretur pro eo ab omnibus.” 51. Ibid. 7.67–69, 54: “Ergo, his omnibus humilitatis gradibus ascensis, monachus mox ad caritatem Dei perveniet illam quae perfecta foris mittit timorem, per quam universa quae prius non sine formidinem obserbabat absque ullo labore velut naturaliter ex consuetudine incipiet

174  Notes to Pages 23–25 custodire, non iam timore gehennae, sed amore Christi et consuetudine ipsa bona et dilectatione virtutum.” 52. Ibid. 35.1–2, 126: “Fratres sibi invicem serviant et nullus excusetur a coquinae officio nisi aut aegritudo aut in causa gravis utilitatis quis occupatus fuerit, quia exinde maior merces et caritas adquiritur”; 35.6, 126: “ceteri sibi sub caritate invicem serviant.” 53. Ibid. 68.4–5, 218: “Quod si post suggestionem suam in sua sententia prioris imperium perduraverit, sciat iunior ita sibi expedire, et ex caritate, confidens de adiutorio Dei, oboediat”; 71.3–4, 224: “Praemisso ergo abbatis aut praepositorum qui ab eo constituuntur imperio, cui non permittimus pribata imperia praeponi, de cetero omnes iuniores prioribus suis omni caritate et sollicitudine oboediant”; 4.24–26, 32: “Dolum in corde non tenere, pacem falsam non dare. Caritatem non derelinquere.” 54. Ibid. 72.8–10, 226: “Caritatem fraternitatis caste inpendant, amore Deum timeant, abbatem suum sincera et humili caritate diligant”; 53.3–4, 172: “Ut ergo nuntiatus fuerit hospis, occurratur ei a priore vel a fratribus cum omni officio caritatis et primitus orent pariter et sic sibi socientur in pace”; 66.3–4, 214: “Et mox ut aliquis pulsaverit aut pauper clamaverit, ‘Deo gratias,’ respondeat aut ‘Benedic,’ et cum omni mansuetudine timoris Dei reddat responsum festinanter cum fervore caritatis.” 55. As with so much of this early history of the Christian Church, the work of Peter Brown has been crucial for our understanding of the arguments and flow of these debates. He has shown that while exegetes such as Jerome continued to advocate strict denial of the world as a central tenet of devotion for the average Christian, others (of whom Augustine became the most prominent voice for later generations) argued for moderation. See especially Brown, The Body and Society, 396–408. 56. Augustine, Contra Faustum Manicheum libri triginta tres, ed. Joseph Zycha, CSEL 25, 249–797. 57. For the extensive scholarship on the history and development of just war theory, see especially Phillip Wynn, Augustine on War and Military Service (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013); Cahill, Love Your Enemies, 1–96; J. Daryl Charles, Between Pacifism and Jihad: Just War and Christian Tradition (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 31–66; David A. Lenihan, “The Influence of Augustine’s Just War: The Early Middle Ages,” Augustinian Studies 27 (1996); John Kelsay and James Turner Johnson, eds., Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions (New York: Greenwood, 1991); Brian Patrick McGuire, ed., War and Peace in the Middle Ages (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag, 1987); Frederick H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Third Series 8 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), especially 1–39, 213–257; William R. Stevenson, Christian Love and Just War: Moral Paradox and Political Life in St. Augustine and His Modern Interpreters (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987); J. M. Wallace-​­Hadrill, “War and Peace in the Earlier Middle Ages,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5, no. 25 (1975). 58. Augustine, Contra Faustum 22.21, 610: “nec liuida perturbatione, sed tranquilla bonitate zelantem, ne uni deo debens anima castitatem per multos falsos corrupta et prostituta turpetur; nec ira uelut humana turbide saeuientem, sed alia diuina seuere iusta retribuentem, quae non propter ulciscendi libidinem, sed propter iudicandi uigorem certo usu locutionis ira nominatur; nec ob leuia uel nulla commissa hominum milia perimentem, sed aequissimo examine per temporales mortalium mortes utilitatem timoris sui populis inponentem.” 59. Ibid. 22.25, 619: “nihil enim sapiunt nec intellegunt in magnis animis quasdam uirtutes

Notes to Pages 25–27  175 uitiis paruorum animorum esse simillimas nonnulla specie, sed nulla aequitatis conparatione. Similes autem sunt, qui in magnis ista reprehendunt, pueris inperitis in schola, qui cum pro magno didicerint nomini numeri singularis uerbum numeri singularis esse reddendum, reprehendunt latinae linguae doctissimum auctorem.” 60. Ibid. 22.27, 621: “ergo peccatum est factum uel dictum uel concupitum aliquid contra aeternam legem. Lex uero aeterna est ratio diuina uel uoluntas dei ordinem naturalem conseruari iubens, perturbari uetans. quisnam igitur sit in homine naturalis ordo, quaerendum est. Constat enim homo ex anima et corpore, sed hoc et pecus. Nulli autem dubium est animam corpori naturali ordine praeponendam. uerum animae hominis inest ratio, quae pecori non inest. Proinde sicut anima corpori, ita ipsius animae ratio ceteris eius partibus, quas habent et bestiae, naturae lege praeponitur; in que ipsa ratione, quae partim contemplatiua est, partim actiua, procul dubio contemplatio praecellit. In hac enim et imago dei est, qua per fidem ad speciem reformamur.” 61. Ibid.: “quia et sancti ac sublimes angeli habent contemplationem et actionem suam; id enim sibi agendum inperant, quod ille, quem contemplantur, iubet, cuius aeterno imperio liberaliter, quia suauiter, seruiunt; nos uero, quorum corpus mortuum est propter peccatum, antequam uiuificet deus et mortalia corpora nostra per inhabitantem spiritum eius in nobis pro modulo infirmitatis nostrae secundum aeternam legem, qua naturalis ordo seruatur, iuste uiuimus, si uiuamus ex fide non ficta, quae per dilectionem operatur.” 62. Cf. Peter Robert Lamont Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, new ed. with epilogue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), especially 500–503; Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, 45–84. 63. Augustine, Contra Faustum 22.29, 623: “mortales autem delectationes usque ad reparandam seu custodiendam istam mortalem salutem siue uniuscuiusque hominis siue ipsius humani generis uel excitandae uel relaxandae sunt; ultra si prolapsae fuerint et contra temperantiae rationem hominem non se regentem abripuerint libidines, erunt profecto inlicitae ac turpes et dignae doloribus emendari.” 64. Ibid. 22.73, 670–671: “quaedam enim facta lex illa aeterna, quae ordinem naturalem conseruari iubet, perturbari uetat, ita medio quodam loco posuit hominibus, ut in eis usurpandis merito reprehendatur audacia, in exequendis autem oboedientia iure laudetur. Tantum interest in ordine naturali, quid a quo agatur, et sub quo quisque agat.” Trans. Roland Teske, Answer to Faustus, a Manichean, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century 1/20 (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2007), 350. 65. Augustine, Contra Faustum 22.76, 674: “si autem propterea putant non potuisse deum bellum gerendum iubere, quia dominus postea iesus christus, ego, inquit, dico uobis non resistere aduersum malum; sed si quis te percusserit in maxillam tuam dexteram, praebe illi et sinistram, intellegant hanc praeparationem non esse in corpore, sed in corde.” Trans. Teske, Answer to Faustus, 352. 66. Gregory of Tours, Libri historiarum X 6.8, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, MGH SS rer. Merov. 1/1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1951), 277–278. For Eparchius, also known as St. Cybard, see Jean-​­Claude Ignace, “Saint Cybard, ermite d’Angoulême et le Périgord,” Bulletin de la société historique et archéologique du Périgord 112, no. 1 (1995). 67. Gregory of Tours, Libri historiarum X 6.8, 277: “Quodam vero tempore, dum pro furtum quis ad adpendendum deduceretur, qui et in alia multa scelera, tam in furtis quam in homicidiis, accusabatur ab incolis criminosus, et haec ei nuntiata fuissent, misit monachum suum ad deprecandum iudici, ut scilicet culpabilis ille vitae concederetur.”

176  Notes to Pages 27–31 68. Ibid., 278: “ ‘Vade,’ inquid, ‘a longe, quia scito, quod, quem homo reddere noluit, Dominus suo munere redonabit. Tu vero, cum eum cadere videris, protinus adprehensum adducito in monasterium.’ ” 69. Cf. Kevin Uhalde, “Proof and Reproof: The Judicial Component of Episcopal Confrontation,” Early Medieval Europe 8, no. 1 (1999). 70. Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, ed. Marcus Adriaen, Sancti Gregorii Magni Moralia in Iob, CCSL 143, 143A, 143B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1979–1985). Gregory, of course, was not the only writer during these centuries to be preoccupied with the problem or to reach similar conclusions. Cf., for example, Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae 4–5, ed. Claudio Moreschini (Munich: De Gruyter Saur, 2005), 100–162. 71. Gregory the Great, Regulae pastoralis liber, ed. Bruno Judic, Floribert Rommel, and Charles Morel, Règle pastorale, trans. Charles Morel, SC 381–382 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1992). All translations my own. 72. Although Gregory’s Regulae pastoralis liber is most typically associated with bishops and episcopal culture today, it should be noted that Gregory’s subject in the treatise was the Christian rector, not just the Christian episcopus. 73. Gregory the Great, Regulae pastoralis liber 2.5.1–14, 196: “Sit rector singulis compassione proximus, prae cunctis contemplatione suspensus, ut et per pietatis viscera in se infirmitatem ceterorum transferat, et per speculationis altitudinem semetipsum quoque invisibilia appetendo transcendat, ne aut alta petens proximorum infirma despiciat, aut infirmis proximorum congruens, appetere alta derelinquat. Hinc est namque quod Paulus in paradisum ducitur, coelique tertii secreta rimatur, et tamen illa invisibilium contemplatione suspensam ad cubile carnalium mentis aciem revocat, atque in occultis suis qualiter debeant conversari dispensat.” 74. Ibid. 2.5.19–27, 196–198: “Ecce iam caelestibus secretis inseritur, et tamen per condescensionis viscera carnalium cubile perscrutatur; et quem sublevatus ad invisibilia erigit, hunc miseratus ad secreta infirmantium oculum cordis flectit. Caelum contemplatione transcendit, nec tamen stratum carnalium sollicitudine deserit, quia compage caritatis summis simul, et infimis junctus, et in semetipso virtute spiritus ad alta valenter rapitur, et pietate in aliis aequanimiter infirmatur.” 75. Ibid. 2.11.3–11, 252: “Sed omne hoc rite a rectore agitur, si supernae formidinis et dilectionis spiritu afflatus, studiose cotidie sacri eloquii praecepta meditetur; ut in eo vim sollicitudinis, et erga caelestem vitam providae circumspectionis, quam humanae conversationis usus indesinenter destruit, divinae ammonitionis verba restaurent; et qui ad vetustatem vitae per societatem saecularium ducitur, ad amorem semper spiritalis patriae compunctionis aspiratione renovetur.” 76. Ibid. 2.5.82–87, 202: “Et fit plerumque ut dum rectoris animus aliena tentamenta condescendendo cognoscit, auditis tentationibus etiam ipse pulsetur, quia et haec eadem per quam populi multitudo diluitur, aqua procul dubio luteris inquinatur. Nam dum sordes diluentium suscipit, quasi suae munditiae serenitatem perdit.” 77. Ibid. 2.5.87–90, 202: “Sed haec nequaquam pastori timenda sunt, quia Deo subtiliter cuncta pensante, tanto facilius a sua eripitur, quanto misericordius ex aliena temptatione fatigatur.” 78. Ibid. 3.prologus.19–22, 260: “Unde et doctor quisque, ut in una cunctos virtute caritatis aedificet, ex una doctrina, non una eademque exhortatione tangere corda audientium debet.” 79. Ibid. 3.prologus.3–13, 258–260: “non una eademque cunctis exhortatio congruit, quia nec cunctos par morum qualitas astringit. Saepe namque aliis officiunt, quae aliis prosunt. Quia et plerumque herbae, quae haec animalia nutriunt, alia occidunt; et lenis sibilus equos mitigat,

Notes to Pages 31–34  177 catulos instigat. Et medicamentum quod hunc morbum imminuit, alteri vires iungit; et panis qui vitam fortium roborat, parvulorum necat. Pro qualitate igitur audientium formari debet sermo doctorum, ut et ad sua singulis congruat, et tamen a communis aedificationis arte nunquam recedat.” 80. I provide these (chapters 3.2–7, 3.9, 3.12, and 3.27) only as examples of the thirty-​­eight chapters in Book III that Gregory devotes to correct application of form based on a learned comprehension of circumstance alone. 81. Ibid. 3.prologus.13–19, 260: “Quid enim sunt intentae mentes auditorum, nisi ut ita dixerim, quaedam in cithara tensiones stratae chordarum, quas tangendi artifex, ut non sibimetipsi dissimile canticum faciat, dissimiliter pulsat. Et idcirco chordae consonam modulationem reddunt, quia uno quidem plectro, sed non uno impulsu feriuntur.” 82. For this interpretation, see especially Robert A. Markus, Gregory the Great and His World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 17–33; Carole Ellen Straw, Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 90–178. 83. Pseudo-​­Bede, In Matthaei evangelium expositio 5, PL 92, col. 30: “ ‘Audistis quia dictum: Diliges proximum tuum, et odio habebis inimicum tuum; ego autem dico vobis: Diligite inimicos vestros, benefacite his qui oderunt vos, et reliqua.’ Sciendum est ergo non impossibilia, ut quidam aestimant, in dilectione inimicorum Christum praecipere, sed perfecta, quae fecit David in Saul, et martyr Stephanus cum pro persecutoribus oravit.” For the dating of this document, see Michael Gorman, “The Commentary on the Pentateuch Attributed to Bede in PL 91.189– 394,” Revue Bénédictine 106 (1996). 84. John Thomas McNeill and Helena Margaret Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance: A Translation of the Principal “Libri Poenitentiales” and Selections from Related Documents (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990 [1938]), 3–22, 44–45. 85. Mayke de Jong, “Monastic Prisoners or Opting Out? Political Coercion and Honour in the Frankish Kingdoms,” in Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Mayke de Jong, F. Theuws, and Carine van Rhijn (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 292–294. 86. See also the important discussions in Barbara H. Rosenwein, Negotiating Space: Power, Restraint, and Privileges of Immunity in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 1–134; Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre, eds., Property and Power in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), especially 1–16.

Chapter 2 1. Admonitio generalis (789), ed. Klaus Zechiel-​­Eckes and Michael Glatthaar, Die Admonitio generalis Karls des Großen, MGH Fontes iuris 16 (Hannover: Hahn, 2012). For its importance within European social and cultural history, see, for example, Peter Robert Lamont Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200–1000, Tenth Anniversary rev. ed. (Oxford: Wiley-​­Blackwell, 2003), 441, 446–452. Rosamond McKitterick has emphasized the need to view Admonitio generalis, “remarkable though it is, . . . ​in the context of the succession of increasingly elaborate statements about the integration of the Christian faith within the institutional and political framework of the Frankish realm in the first three decades of Charlemagne’s reign”; Rosamond McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 240. 2. Among the most important contributions to the general history of Carolingian reform and renewal in recent decades are Owen M. Phelan, The Formation of Christian Europe: The

178  Notes to Pages 34–36 Carolingians, Baptism, and the Imperium Christianum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Philippe Depreux, “Ambitions et limites des réformes culturelles à l’époque carolingienne,” Revue historique 304:3, no. 623 (2002); Jean Chélini, L’aube du moyen age: Naissance de la chrétienté occidentale, 2e édition—​­La vie religieuse des laïcs a l’epoque carolingienne, 750–900 (Paris: Picard, 2000); Pierre Riché, Éducation et culture dans l’occident barbare, VIe–VIIIe siècle, 4e éd., rev. et corr. (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1995); Giles Brown, “Introduction: The Carolingian Renaissance,” in Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Donald A. Bullough, Carolingian Renewal: Sources and Heritage (New York: St. Martin’s, 1991). See also the related and underappreciated study by Frederick S. Paxton, Christianizing Death: The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996). For the role of the Carolingian cultural achievement in the foundation of Latin Christian culture, see also Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization, and Cultural Change, 950–1350 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 18–20, 285–286. 3. Rosamond McKitterick, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms, 789–895 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977), 207. 4. Alcuin, in particular, is widely considered to have been Charlemagne’s closest advisor of them all and was likely a chief architect, if not the chief architect, of Admonitio generalis. See comments by Zechiel-​­Eckes and Glatthaar, eds., Die Admonitio generalis, 47–63; Donald A. Bullough, “Aula renovata: The Carolingian Court Before the Aachen Palace,” Proceedings of the British Academy 71 (1986). 5. Paulinus became Patriarch of Aquileia in 787 CE, remaining there until his death in or around 802. Alcuin became Abbot of Marmoutier nearly a decade after Paulinus left the imperial court and remained abbot until his own death in 804. 6. For aging and mortality in the Carolingian era, see Pierre Riché, La vie quotidienne dans l’empire carolingien (Paris: Hachette, 1973), 63–64. 7. Within Charlemagne’s entourage in 789, Alcuin may have been the eldest at fifty-​­four years of age. While the exact date of Charlemagne’s birth is debated, his extreme longevity (the preponderance of the evidence suggests that he lived to the age of seventy-​­two) would grow into a central component of his legendary remembrance. The saracens of the Chanson de Roland believed that Charlemagne might have been 200 years old; Chanson de Roland, laisse 42.550–556, ed. Cesare Segre, La chanson de Roland édition critique par Cesare Segre (Geneva: Droz, 2003), 120: “Dist li Paiens: « Merveille en ai mult grant/ De Carlemagne ki est canuz e blancs:/ Mien esceïntre, plus ad de .II.C anz./ Par tantes teres est alét cunquerant,/ Tanz colps ad pris de bons espiez trenchanz,/ Tanz riches reis morz e vencuz en champ:/ Quant iert il mais d’osteier recreant ? ».” For Charlemagne’s legendary age, see also Julian Harris, “How Old Was Charlemagne in the Chanson de Roland?” Romance Philology 25, no. 2 (1971). 8. See Einhard, Vita Karoli 1.9. The story was never lost in popular memory, existing in several forms written down during the twelfth century, the most famous of which being the Chanson de Roland. Contemporary annalists were certain that it remained in the memory of Charlemagne as well. Cf. Annales regni Francorum inde ab a. 741 usque ad a. 829, qui dicuntur Annales Laurissenses maiores et Einhardi, ed. Friedrich Kurze, MGH SS rer. Germ. 6 (Hanover: Hahn, 1895), 51–53: “Et licet Franci Wasconibus tam armis quam animis praestare viderentur, tamen et iniquitate locorum et genere imparis pugnae inferiores effecti sunt. In hoc certamine plerique aulicorum, quos rex copiis praefecerat, interfecti sunt, direpta impedimenta et hostis proper notitiam locorum statim in diversa dilapsus est. Cuius vulneris accepti dolor magnam partem rerum feliciter in Hispania gestarum in corde regis obnubilavit.”

Notes to Pages 36–37  179 9. Einhard, Vita Karoli 1.11. Cf. Annales regni francorum, 80–84. For the relationship between the Royal Frankish Annals and Tassilo, see especially Matthias Becher, Eid und Herrschaft: Untersuchungen zum Herrscherethos Karls des Grossen, Vorträge und Forschungen 39 (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1993), 74–77. See also Stuart Airlie, “Narratives of Triumph and Rituals of Submission: Charlemagne’s Mastering of Bavaria,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6, no. 9 (1999); Philippe Depreux, “Tassilon III et le roi des Francs: Examen d’une vassalité controversée,” Revue historique 593, no. 1 (1995). 10. For the best treatments of Carolingian political history, see especially Marios Costambeys, Matthew Innes, and Simon MacLean, The Carolingian World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Rosamond McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 751–987 (London: Longman, 1983). See also Rosamond McKitterick, The Frankish Kings and Culture in the Early Middle Ages (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995). 11. 2 Kgs 22–23:30. Admonitio generalis praefatio, 182: “Ne aliquis, queso, huius pietatis ammonitionem esse praesumtiosam iudicet, qua nos errata corrigere, superflua abscidere, recta cohartare studemus, sed magis benivolo caritatis animo suscipiat. Nam legimus in regnorum libris, quomodo sanctus Iosias regnum sibi a Deo datum circumeundo, corrigendo, ammonendo ad cultum veri Dei studuit revocare: non ut me eius sanctitate aequiparabilem faciam, sed quod nobis sun ubique sanctorum semper exempla sequenda, et, quoscumque poterimus, ad studium bonae vitae in laudem et in gloriam domini nostri Iesu Christi congregare necesse est.” For Charlemagne as lawgiver, see especially Mayke de Jong, “Charlemagne’s Church,” in Charlemagne: Empire and Society, ed. Joanna Story (New York: Palgrave, 2005); Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom, 449–451; Brown, “Introduction: The Carolingian Renaissance,” 17–18. In addition to aligning himself with Old Testament rulers, Charlemagne was acting within a Roman imperial tradition that he had inherited from his Merovingian Frankish predecessors. On this, see Yitzhak Hen, “Conversion and Masculinity in the Early Medieval West,” in Religious Conversion: History, Experience and Meaning, ed. Ira Katznelson and Miri Rubin (London: Ashgate, 2014); Andrew Wallace-​­Hadrill, “The Golden Age and Sin in Augustan Ideology,” Past and Present 95 (1982). 12. Admonitio generalis 78, 60: “Item et pseudografia et dubiae narrationes, vel quae omnino contra fidem catholicam sunt et epistola pessima et falsissima, quam transacto anno dicebant aliqui errantes et in errorem alios mittentes quod de celo cecidisset, nec credantur nec legantur sed conburentur, ne in errorem per talia scripta populus mittatur.” Ibid. 82, 62: “Et hoc ideo diligentius iniungimus vestrae caritati, quia scimus temporibus novissimis pseudodoctores esse venturos, sicut ipse Dominus in evangelio praedixit, et apostolus Paulus ad Timotheum testatur.” Millenarian language and references to the visions of the New Testament Gospel and Book of Revelation all suggest how strongly Charlemagne and his advisors believed the end of the world to be fast approaching. For Carolingian millenarianism, see James T. Palmer, The Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Cf. also Richard Landes, Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 69–74; Robert E. Lerner, “Medieval Millenarianism and Violence,” in Pace e guerra nel basso medioevo. Atti del XL Cononvegno storico internazionale, ed. Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2004); David C. Van Meter, Richard Allen Landes, and Andrew Colin Gow, eds., The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious Expectation and Social Change, 950–1050 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), with bibliography. 13. As I address in further detail in the next chapter, Mayke de Jong has also noted Charlemagne’s interest in social welfare through discipline. She frames his motivations as more

180  Notes to Pages 37–40 penitential than prophylactic, however, which I see as a crucial distinction between his later and earlier reign. See Chapter 3; Jong, The Penitential State, 153–155. See also the relevant discussion in Matthew Innes, “Charlemagne’s Will: Piety, Politics and the Imperial Succession,” English Historical Review 112 (1997). 14. Admonitio generalis praefatio, 181–182: “Considerans pacifico piae mentis intuitu una cum sacerdotis et consiliariis nostris abundantem in nos nostrumque populum Christi regis clementiam, et quam necessarium est non solum toto corde et ore eius pietati agere gratias incessanter, sed etiam continua bonorum operum exercitatione eius insistere laudibus, quatenus qui nostro regno tantos contulit honores, sua protectione nos nostrumque regnum in aeternum conservare dignetur quapropter placuit nobis vestram rogare solertiam, o pastories ecclesiarum Christi et ductores gregis eius et clarissima mundi luminaria, ut vigili cura et sedula ammonitione populum Dei ad pascua vitae aeternae ducere studeatis, et errantes oves bonorum exemplorum seu adhortationum humeris intra ecclesiasticae firmitatis muros reportare satagamini, ne lupus insidians aliquem canonicas sanctiones transgredientem vel paternas traditiones universalium conciliorum excedentem, quod absit, inveniens devoret.” 15. These are digested from an already augmented seventh-​­century document known as the Dionysio-​­Hadriana; Zechiel-​­Eckes and Glatthaar, eds., Die Admonitio generalis, 31–34; McKitterick, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms, 1. 16. For further analysis of the addresses and their ambiguities, see Zechiel-​­Eckes and Glatthaar, eds., Die Admonitio generalis, 40–44. 17. Admonitio generalis 72. Further calls for action include the establishment of universal measures and weights (74), protection of pilgrims and foreigners (75), and the strict prevention of women from giving priestly blessings (76). 18. Ibid. 60–61, 210: “ab episcopis et presbiteris diligenter legatur et omni populi praedicetur . . . ​ut pax sit et concordia et unianimitas cum omni populo christiano inter episcopos, abbates, comites, iudices et omnes ubique seu maiores seu minores personas.” 19. Ibid. 63–64, 66–67, 69. 20. Ibid. 82, 236–238: “Sed omnia instantia ammonete eos de dilectione dei et proximi, de fide et spe in deo, de humilitate et patientia, de castitate et continentia, de benignitate et misericordia, de elimosinis et confessione peccatorum suorum, et ut debitoribus suis secundum dominicam orationem sua debita dimittant, scientes certissime, quod, quia talia agunt, regnum dei possidebunt.” My translation. 21. Jonathan Riley-​­Smith, “Crusading as an Act of Love,” History 65, no. 215 (1980). Cf. also the classic study by Carl Erdmann, The Origin of the Idea of Crusade [English translation of Die Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens (1935)], trans. Walter A. Goffart and Marshall Whithed Baldwin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977). 22. Paulinus of Aquileia, Liber exhortationis, PL 99, cols. 197–282. 23. Alcuin, De virtutibus et vitiis liber, PL 101, cols. 613–638. 24. Along with Jonas of Orléans, De institutione laicali (discussed later in this chapter), and Dhuoda of Septimania, Liber manualis (discussed in Chapter 4). Paulinus’s work is the earliest extended meditation on the Christian moral life written specifically for a lay audience. Some scholars point to earlier late antique texts that bear resemblance in terms of audience and orientation, but there is no indication that any were known to the Carolingian world; see Stone, Morality and Masculinity, 36; Kate Cooper, The Fall of the Roman Household (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 93–142. For lay literacy during the Carolingian period, see especially Adam J. Kosto, “Laymen, Clerics, and Documentary Practices in the Early Middle Ages: The Example of Catalonia,” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 80, no. 1 (2005); Mary

Notes to Pages 40–41  181 Garrison, “The Emergence of Carolingian Latin Literature and the Court of Charlemagne (780– 814),” in Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Rosamond McKitterick, ed., The Uses of Literacy in Early Mediaeval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Rosamond McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 211–270. 25. For the labels “ascetic florilegia” or “exegetical chains,” see Henri-​­Marie Rochais, “Contribution à l’histoire des florilèges ascétiques du haut moyen age Latin: Le Liber Scintillarum,” Revue Bénédictine 63 (1953). 26. For Laienspiegel, see especially Hans Hubert Anton, Fürstenspiegel des frühen und hohen Mittelalters, Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters 45 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006); Franz Sedlmeier, Die laienparänetischen Schriften der Karolingerzeit: Untersuchungen zu ausgewählten Texten des Paulinus von Aquileia, Alkuins, Jonas von Orléans, Dhuodas und Hinkmars von Reims, Deutche Hochschuledition 86 (Nuried: Ars Una, 2000); Hans Hubert Anton, Fürstenspiegel und Herrscherethos in der Karolingerzeit, Bonner historische Forshchungen 32 (Bonn: L. Röhrscheid, 1968). See also Alain Dubreucq, “La littérature des specula: délimitation du genre, contenu, destinataires et réception,” in Guerriers et moines: Conversion et sainteté aristocratiques dans l’occident médiéval, IXe–XIIe siècle, ed. Michel Lauwers (Antibes: APDCA Association pour la promotion et la diffusion des connaissances archéologiques, 2002), 36–39; McKitterick, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms, 154–183. 27. Cf. Stone, Morality and Masculinity, 8–14; Airlie, “The Anxiety of Sanctity,” 379. 28. J. M. Wallace-​­Hadrill, The Frankish Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 409. 29. For traditional academic views of ninth-​­century secular Frankish culture, see especially Franz Irsigler, “On the Aristocratic Character of Early Frankish Society” [English translation of “Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des fruhfrankischen Adels” (1969)], in The Medieval Nobility: Studies on the Ruling Classes of France and Germany from the Sixth to the Twelfth Century, trans. Timothy Reuter (New York: Elsevier North-​­Holland, 1979); Pierre Riché, Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne [English translation of La vie quotidienne dans l’empire carolingien (1973)], trans. Jo Ann McNamara (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), 75–120; Dennis Howard Green, The Carolingian Lord. Semantic Studies on Four Old High German Words: balder, frô, truhtin, hêrro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965). Cf. traditional views of contemporary Anglo-​­Saxon secular culture in Patrick Wormald, “Bede, Beowulf and the Conversion of the Anglo-​­Saxon Aristocracy,” in Bede and Anglo-​­Saxon England: Papers in Honour of the 1300th Anniversary of the Birth of Bede, Given at Cornell University in 1973 and 1974, ed. Robert T. Farrell (London: British Archaeological Reports, 1978). 30. Heinrich Fichtenau, Living in the Tenth Century: Mentalities and Social Orders [English translation of Lebensordnungen des 10. Jahrhunderts: Studien über Denkart und Existenz im einstigen Karolingerreich (1984)], trans. Patrick J. Geary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 147–148. 31. “Définissant la guerre juste et sainte, les clercs situent l’aristocratique par rapport aux ecclésiastiques et aux moines. Cela était nécessaire car, bien souvent, dans cette société dominée par les clercs, les laïcs souffraient de ce qu’on pourrait appeler un complexe d’infériorité.” Riché, La vie quotidienne dans l’empire carolingien, 99. 32. Nelson, “On the Limits of the Carolingian Renaissance,” 57. Stuart Airlie has also argued that the mirrors seem banal; Airlie, “The Anxiety of Sanctity,” 376, 380, 395.

182  Notes to Pages 41–45 33. Stone, Morality and Masculinity, 311. 34. Raffaele Savigni, “Les laïcs dans l’ecclésiologie carolingienne: normes statutaires et idéal de ‘conversion,’ ” in Guerriers et moines: Conversion et sainteté aristocratiques dans l’occident médiéval, IXe–XIIe siècle, ed. Michel Lauwers (Antibes: APDCA Association pour la promotion et la diffusion des connaissances archéologiques, 2002), 62. 35. This occurred at the fifth ecumenical council (second council of Constantinople) in 553, during the controversy over the so-​­called Three Chapters. See Judith Herrin, The Formation of Christendom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), especially 119–125. 36. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 2996; see Stone, Morality and Masculinity, 38. 37. See Stone, Morality and Masculinity, 38–39; Yves-​­Marie Duval, “Paulin d’Aquilée et le duc Eric: Des clercs et moines au laïcs et des laïcs aux clercs aux moines,” in Aquileia e le Venezie nell’Alto Medioevo, Antichità altoadriatiche 32 (Udine: Arti Grafiche Friulane, 1988), 122–125. 38. Alcuin of York, Epistola 98, ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH Epp. 4 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1895), 142. 39. Ibid.: “Plura tibi, vir venerande, de christianae pietatis observatione forte scripsissem, si tibi doctor egregius et pius caelestis vitae praeceptor Paulinus meus praesto non esset.” 40. McKitterick, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms, 167. 41. For a comparative view of the intellectual pursuits and library of a mid-​­ninth-​­century Duke of Friuli, see Paul Kershaw, “Eberhard of Friuli, a Carolingian Lay Intellectual,” in Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World, ed. Janet Nelson and Patrick Wormald (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Christina La Rocca and Luigi Provero, “The Dead and Their Gifts: The Will of Eberhard, Count of Friuli, and His Wife Gisela, Daughter of Louis the Pious (863–864),” in Rituals of Power: From Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, ed. Frans Theuws and Janet L. Nelson, Transformation of the Roman World 8 (Leiden: Brill, 2000). 42. For full bibliographical citation, see note 22; all translations of this text are my own. For its manuscript tradition, see Stone, Morality and Masculinity, 38. Cf. McKitterick, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms, 166–168. 43. Julianus Pomerius, De vita contemplativa, PL 59, cols. 415–520. Julianus Pomerius wrote his text for priests, not at all coincidentally in answer to the question of whether pastoral duties barred them from the rewards achieved by Christian ascetics. 44. Paulinus, Liber exhortationis 1, cols. 197–198: “O mi frater, si cupias scire, quamvis ego nesciam quam perfectissima atque plenissima est justitia, Deum toto corde amare, illique tota adhaerere voluntate, qui est summum bonum! Summum vero amare bonum summa est beatitudo. Qui Deum amat bonus est: si bonus ergo et beatus: quem quanto quis ardentius amat, tanto melior efficietur.” 45. E.g., ibid. 6, col. 617: “Sacerdotis est in pace populum Dei admonere quid debeat agere: populi est in humilitate audire quae monet sacerdos. Quidquid non licet, pastoris est prohibere ne fiat: plebis est audire, ne faciat.” For early medieval rhetorical style, particularly with regard to Alcuin and Paulinus, see Paul E. Prill, “Rhetoric and Poetics in the Early Middle Ages,” Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 5, no. 2 (1987). 46. Paulinus, Liber exhortationis 1, cols. 197–198: “Quatenus hoc beatissimo bono abundare te faciat, charissime frater, ipse qui est hoc bonum, quotidianis precibus integro cordis desiderio eum, etsi indignus, deprecari studeo.” 47. See Chapter 1. 48. Paulinus, Liber exhortationis 3, cols. 199–200: “Nec hoc solum quod consilio sanctae Trinitatis sic excellenter a Conditore conditus es, sed etiam quod ad imaginem et similitudinem

Notes to Pages 45–47  183 suam ipse Creator omnium te creavit: quod nulli alii ex creaturis, nisi soli homini concessit. Et haec est imago unitatis et trinitatis omnipotentis Dei, quam anima tua habet in se: primum quia secundum Dei donum vivis ac sapis, secundum quia ad imaginem tui conditoris creatus es: tertium licet unus appelleris homo, tamen tres habes a Patre, et Filio, et Spiritu sancto concessas dignitates, id est intellectum, voluntatem et memoriam. Quod idem, licet aliis verbis, in Evangelio designatur, dum dicitur, Diliges Dominum Deum tuum ex toto corde tuo, et ex tota anima tua, et ex omnibus viribus tuis (Mt 22:37). In his igitur tribus imaginem Conditoris nostri mirabiliter gerit in sua natura noster interior homo, ex quibus quasi excellentioribus animae dignitatibus jubemur diligere Conditorem, ut quantum a nobis intelligitur, diligatur; et quantum diligitur semper in memoria qua recipitur, habeatur.” Cf. Gillian R. Evans, “ ‘Interior Homo’: Two Great Monastic Scholars on the Soul: St. Anselm and Ailred of Rievaulx,” Studia monastica: Commentarium ad rem monasticam investigandam 19, no. 1 (1977). 49. Ibid. 3, col. 200: “Nec solum sufficit nobis Deum intelligere, nisi fiat in amore ejus voluntas nostra: imo nec hoc sufficit, nisi cum memoria et voluntate opus addatur.” 50. Ibid. 4, col. 200: “Tuo vero capiti, frater charissime, addatur gratia spiritualis scientiae, quae mentem tuam illuminet, et ad vitam aeternam, sicut desidero et opto, perducat.” 51. Ibid. 14, col. 208: “Et ut facilius, frater mi, bonitas tua intelligat, si placet, qualiter illi primi homines, Adam scilicet et Eva, commiserunt tam grande peccatum, pandam, quatenus gratia Domini nostri Jesu Christi te ab hoc semper cavere concedat: quia in illis duobus originaliter totum damnatum est genus humanum. Illi enim non ederent de ligno prohibito, nisi concupiscerent; nec concupiscerent nisi tentati: nec tentarentur, nisi deserti: nec desererentur a Deo, nisi ipsi prius deseruissent Deum: nec illi Deum desererent, nisi superbirent, et similitudinem Dei ad quam facti erant, damnabiliter neglexissent.” 52. Ibid. 2, col. 199: “Tu vero, frater charissime, intellige quia consilio sanctae Trinitatis, et opere majestatis divinae creatus es: ex primoque conditionis honore intellige quantum debeas Conditori tuo, dum tantum mox in conditione dignitatis privilegium praestitit tibi Conditor aeternus, ut tanto eum ardentius amares, quanto mirabiliorem te ab eo esse conditum intelligeres.” 53. Ibid. 5, cols. 200–201: “Esto, quaeso, quamvis laicus, ad omne opus Dei promptus, pius ad pauperes et infirmos, consolator moerentium, compatiens miseriis omnium, largus in eleemosynis, memorans evangelicae viduae duo minuta (Lk 21:2), et prophetam dicentem: Frange esurienti panem tuum (Is 52:7), at caute praevidens discretionem eleemosynae, ita ut utrisque, danti scilicet et accipienti, solatium sit.” I discuss the moderation for which Paulinus calls at the end of this quotation at note 92. 54. Prill, “Rhetoric and Poetics,” especially 146–147. 55. Paulinus, Liber exhortationis 38, cols. 239–240: “Tu autem, frater mi, omnibus domesticis tuis et tibi subjectis praecipe, ut se sobrios exhibeant, et iterum propter abstinentiam in superbiam se non erigant; sed omnia temperate, juste, pie, et religiose secundum Dei adjutorium faciant: quia non solum pro nobis clericis, sed etiam pro omni genere humano, qui praedestinati sunt ad vitam aeternam, Christus sanguinem suum fudit.” 56. Ibid. 38, col. 240: “nec solum nobis, sed etiam omnibus laicis, ejus ex toto corde praecepta servantibus, regnum coelorum promissum est.” 57. Ibid. 55, col. 262: “Pro omnibus nobis dicit: ideo nulli laici, nulli clerici, nullae sacratae virgines debent negligere salutem animarum suarum, dum tanti sanguinis pretium pro nobis fusum esse manifestum est.” 58. Ibid. 38, col. 240: “Grandis namque confusio est animabus laicorum, qui dicunt: Quid pertinet ad me libros Scripturarum legendo audire vel discere, vel etiam frequenter ad sacerdotes

184  Notes to Pages 47–49 et ecclesias sanctorum recurrere? Dum clericus fiam, faciam ea quae oportet clericis facere. Quare non intelligit, quia panem et vinum, et omnia hujus terrae bona, et regni felicitatem aequaliter vult participare, et aequali labore jugum Christi ferre non vult?” 59. Ibid.: “Quid prodest talibus una parte in hoc saeculo esse sublimes, et alia prostratos: in una parte fulgere auro et pretiosis vestibus, et in alia miseriis hujus saeculi, et vitiorum caligine occupari?” 60. Ibid. 38, cols. 240–241: “Non sit tibi aliqua sollicitudo de laici habitus persona, quia non est personarum acceptio apud Deum.” 61. Ibid. 38, col. 241: “Similiter enim mandata Dei servantibus laicis coeleste palatium patet, veluti clericis et sanctimoniali habitu praeditis: dum non est Judaeus neque Graecus, non est servus neque liber (Gal 3:28), sed omnia et in omnibus Christus.” 62. Ibid.: “Quicunque in corpore illius est, magnus est. Insere te ipsum suo sancto corpori, ut sis membrum nobilissimi capitis. Ama ex toto corde caput tuum et membra capitis illius. Quomodo potest manus manui inimica esse, vel pes pedem odisse, vel caetera membra suae juncturae non congaudere? Crescere debent in virum perfectum, in augmentum corporis Christi. Omnis enim clericus et laicus, qui pretioso sanguine Christi redemptus est, qui baptismo Christi tinctus est, debet humiliter ambulare et perseverare in Spiritu sancto.” 63. Ibid. 38, col. 242: “Nam civitas si fuerit in una parte munita, et in alia destructa, aditum ad se hostibus praebet. Et navis si fuerit fortiter compaginibus solidata, et unam habuerit tabulam perforatam, aquae fluctibus mergitur in profundum.” 64. Ibid: “Omnibus enim laicis, clericis, monachis aequaliter convenit fidem, spem, charitatem, humilitatem habere, et Deo ex toto corde servire: veram confessionem facere, et dignam poenitentiam ageret.” 65. Ibid. 50, cols. 253–254: “Iterum tria sunt quibus in hoc mundo non sunt meliora: anima sancti in bonis operibus perseverans, quae speciosior est sole; et sancti angeli qui eam suscipiunt; et paradisus, in quem ducitur, exspectatioque regni coelestis.” 66. Ibid. 52, col. 255: “Teneamus sicut jam superius insertum est, fidem rectam, spem certam, charitatem perfectam, quia fides tanquam sensus noster est, et charitas tanquam nostra sanitas. Fides credit, charitas operatur, spes roborat.” 67. Ibid. 9, col. 205: “Sanctitas vero in justitiae operibus constat. Justitia vero duobus modis adimpletur, ut quae prohibita sunt ab eo non faciamus, et quae jussa sunt ab eo faciamus.” 68. Ibid.: “Omnis enim sanctorum librorum series ad nostram doctrinam scripta est: et hoc maxime nostris auribus intonat, et iterum atque iterum replicat, quid sit homini cavendum, vel quid sequendum. In quibus libris tua dignitas optime exercere se novit; quia per illos nobis loquitur ipse Deus et Dominus noster, et piae voluntatis nobis demonstrat affectum.” 69. See Chapter 1. 70. Stuart Airlie, “Charlemagne and the Aristocracy: Captains and Kings,” in Charlemagne: Empire and Society, ed. Joanna Story (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005). 71. Paulinus, Liber exhortationis 9, cols. 205–206: “Recognoscamus et recogitemus quali honore nobis illius legatio sit accipienda. Quid si a rege legatio aut indiculus ad nos veniret, numquid non mox aliis curis postpositis prompta voluntate et cum omni devotione litteras acciperemus, et legentes implere satageremus? et certe de coelo Rex regum et Dominus dominantium, imo et Redemptor noster per prophetas et apostolos dignatus est nobis dirigere litteras suas: non ut aliquod servitium sibi necessarium demandet, sed quae ad salutem et gloriam nobis prodesse possint, innotescat.”

Notes to Pages 49–51  185 72. Ibid. 4, col. 200: “Noli tuam bonitatem aliorum malignitate obscurare; sed ubique quantum vales, amabilis coram Deo et omni populo appareas.” 73. Ibid.: “Toto enim cordis mei affectu opto, Deumque deprecor, ut semper ad anteriora te extendas, donec pervenias ad sublimem perpetuae beatitudinis coronam, et animi tui nobilitatem, quam in te optime scio, nullis amicorum consiliis, nulla saecularium ambitione desideriorum, ab amore Christi immutari permittas.” 74. Ibid. 22, col. 216: “Habeamus ergo in nobis dilectionem Dei et proximi, quia qui diligit proximum legem implevit (Rom 13:8). Qui autem e contrario odit, homicida est (1 Jn 3:15). Qui diligit fratrem suum in tranquillitate est cor ejus: fratrem vero odiens tempestate circumdatus est.” 75. Ibid. 22, cols. 216–217: “Vir mitis et benignus, etiamsi patitur mala, pro nihilo ducit: iniquus autem etiam parvum verbum audiens a proximo, contumeliam arbitratur. Qui charitate plenus est, tranquillo animo et serenissimo vultu procedit.” 76. Ibid. 22, cols. 217–218: “Si eum videris in bonis actibus conversantem, congratulare ei, et illius gaudium tuum dicito: et si aliquid adversum patitur, illius tristitiam tuam deputa.” 77. Thomas N. Hall, “The Early Medieval Sermon,” in The Sermon, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000); Thomas L. Amos, “Early Medieval Sermons and the Holy,” in Models of Holiness in Medieval Sermons: Proceedings of the International Symposium (Kalamazoo, 4–7 May 1995), ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Textes et Études du Moyen Âge 5 (Louvain-​­la-​ ­Neuve: Fédération international des instituts d’études médiévales, 1996); Thomas L. Amos, The Origin and Nature of the Carolingian Sermon (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1983). See also Phelan, The Formation of Christian Europe, 239–241. 78. Paulinus, Liber exhortationis 23, cols. 218–219: “Nam virtus est animae tuae Deum diligere, et odisse illa quae Deus non diligit. Virtus est animae tuae patientiam sectari, et ab omni impatientia declinare. Virtus est animae tuae castitatem tam corporis quam animae custodire. Virtus est animae tuae vanam hujus mundi gloriam contemnere, et omnia caduca calcare, et pro illius amore qui te redemit, dum vivis in corpore, laborare. Virtus est animae tuae humilitati studere, et superbiam abominari. Virtus est animae tuae iram et furorem cohibere ac reprimere. Virtus est animae tuae ab omni stultitia declinare et sapientiam divinam amplecti. Virtus est animae tuae omnem delectationem carnis subjicere, et mentem tuam ad Christum erigere. Has ergo virtutes facile et perfacile potuisses obtinere, si saecularium curam et caducas ac terrenas res devitare voluisses, et nihil amori Christi praeposuisses.” 79. Ibid. 24, col. 220: “Deus enim non se vult verbis tantum diligi, sed corde puro et operibus justis; quia non verborum, sed cordis est auditor et inspector.” 80. Ibid. 10, col. 206: “Proinde si aliquid in hoc saeculo possidere delectamur, Deum qui possidet omnia, expedita mente possideamus, et in eo habeamus quaecunque feliciter et sancte desideramus.” 81. Ibid. 13, cols. 207–208: “Et ideo si in illo esse volumus, quod esse debemus, sicut sanctus Joannes apostolus dicit, quomodo ille ambulavit, ita et nos spiritaliter ambulemus. Quid est ambulare sicut Christus ambulavit, nisi contemnere vanitatem et felicitatem hujus saeculi, et non timere adversa pro nomine illius pati? . . . ​Non nos ullo modo ab amore Christi separet hujus saeculi miserabilis dulcedo; neque excusatio uxoris aut filiorum gratia scilicet, nec multa auri argentique congestio, possessionum delectatio.” 82. Ibid. 11, col. 206: “Heu quam subtiliter nos ille antiquus hostis decipiendo fallit, eamque caecitatem ante oculos mentis nostrae obducit, ne discernere valeamus gaudia hujus saeculi et gaudia regis aeterni!”

186  Notes to Pages 51–52 83. Cf. Savigni, “Les laïcs dans l’ecclésiologie carolingienne,” 67. 84. Paulinus, Liber exhortationis 8, cols. 203–204: “Salvator nos amat, et proditor nos odit: ideo non praetermittamus Redemptorem, nec sequamur praedonem. Charior nobis sit qui libertati restituit, quam qui nos captivavit, et servituti subdidit. Semper ante oculos cordis pone, quod non amicorum turba, nec familiae multitudo, non auri argentique congestio, non gemmarum lapilli fulgentes, non vindemiarum ubertas, non densitas segetum, non jucunditas extensa pratorum possunt animae exeunti de corpore ullum afferre praesidium; sed plus lugent qui ea plus diligunt. Ideo diligendus est verus amicus noster Dominus Jesus Christus, qui praesentem felicitatem et aeternam nobis tribuet beatitudinem.” 85. Ibid. 16, cols. 209–210: “Quid est peccato mori, nisi opera maligna in nobis damnare, et hoc miserabile saeculum fugere? Ut sicut homo mortuus in sepulcro carne nulli detrahit, nemini violentus existit, neminem calumniatur, neminem opprimit, non invidet bonis, non insultat malis, non luxuriae carnis servit, non bibendo magis ac magis in se sitim accendit, non odiorum flamma inardescit, non potentibus ac divitibus hujus saeculi adulatur, non inquieta curiositate raptatur, non turbae maximae sibi astantis curam gerit, non auro argentoque sive pallio circumdatus distenditur, non salutationibus potentum nec parentum delectatur, non se injuriis fatigat, non eum superbia inflat, non ambitio hujus saeculi necat, non vana gloria turpiter jactat, non aurum sive armillae atque omnes hujus saeculi falsae divitiae inflammant, non rabies insani furoris exagitat, non equorum crassitudo amorque invitat, non pulcherrima species feminarum avidum reddit, non histrionum miserabilium verba in risum excitant, non contentiones hujus saeculi perturbant, non audacia extollit, non gaudia hujus saeculi delectant, non iracundum animositas, non suspiciosum perversitas, non verbosum vanitas, non risorem malignitas, non mobilem instabilemque eum hujus saeculi versatilis amor facit.” 86. Ibid. 17, col. 210: “Nec simus carnales, id est, carnaliter in hoc saeculo viventes, quia Apostolus dicit: Si secundum carnem vixeritis, moriemini. Igitur ille secundum carnem vivit, qui secundum seipsum vivit: quia ipse homo est, et vivit, et secundum seipsum vivit, id est, pergit quo vult, dormit quando vult, loquitur quae vult, et cui vult, et ubi vult; manducat et bibit quando vult et quantum vult; ridet et jocatur turpiter inter quos vult et quando vult. Postremo quidquid naribus suave est, quaerit; quidquid tactu blandum, quidquid oculis delectabile, quidquid corpori suo jucundum, exercet ac sequitur qualiter vult et quando vult, quia omnia licita et illicita carnaliter vult. Delectatur in vestimentis pulcherrimis et equitibus et armis sicut vult et quando vult: et sic non secundum Deum, sed carnaliter vivit et delectatur, et omnia desideria carnis suae perficit sicut vult et quando vult.” 87. Ibid. 11, col. 207: “Et cum sit gaudere bonum: de his atque hujusmodi tamen gaudere grande malum est, et perducens ad mortem peccati. Nec ullum quodlibet scelus coram Deo tam abominabile fit, quam praeterita peccata unicuique nostrum reminiscendo gaudere et inde exsultare, atque in eis semper jacere.” 88. Ibid. 8, col. 204: “Ille a nobis non aliud quaerit munus, nisi spiritale.” 89. Ibid. 24, col. 220: “Nunquam, quaeso, frater mi, carnalis amor amorem coelestem a te excludat: nunquam, quaeso, te, hujus fluctivagi ac miserabilis saeculi dulcedo decipiat.” 90. Ibid. 35, cols. 233–234: “Et semper atque semper caro nostra subjecta sit animae, et sicut ancilla famuletur dominae suae. . . . ​Neque incrassari permittamus ancillam ne contemnat dominam suam, sed omnibus jussis ejus et obsequiis mancipetur.” 91. Ibid.: “Ne praebeamus vires illicitas corpori nostro, ne committat bellum adversus spiritum nostrum; sed semper subjecta sit caro, ut obtemperet jussis Spiritus sancti.” 92. Ibid. 5, col. 201: “Frange esurienti panem tuum (Is 52:7), at caute praevidens discretionem eleemosynae, ita ut utrisque, danti scilicet et accipienti, solatium sit.”

Notes to Pages 52–55  187 93. Ibid. 36, cols. 234–235: “Escae enim nimiae non solum animas, sed etiam corpora nostra plurimum laedunt, et ad infirmitatem perducunt. Solet enim per nimiam ciborum aviditatem et poculi intemperantiam frangi stomachi fortitudo, nec non et abundantia sanguinis et cholera, et plurimae aegritudines escarum largitate contrahi. Sicut enim animae et corpori sunt ista contraria; ita medela est utriusque temperantia jejunii. Et si non per omne tempus, saltem sacratissimos dies jejuniorum, quantum possumus cum Dei adjutorio, delicias mundi et ciborum opulentiam fugiamus: ne quando, quod avertat Deus, cruciati in flamma quaeramus guttam aquae, et nullum refrigerium consequamur.” 94. Ibid. 42, cols. 244–245: “Nec consuescamus consuetudines pessimas in omni actu nostro, sive etiam cogitatione, quia consuetudo, quae longius fuerit protracta et confirmata, non cum parvo labore vitatur vel expellitur.” Cf. ibid. 49, cols. 252–253: “Sermones boni et optimi procedant ex ore nostro, sale divino conditi ad aedificationem audientium. Dilectionem Dei et proximi, in quo tota lex pendet et prophetae (Mt 22:40), semper mente meditemur, et opere perficiamus.” 95. Ibid. 37, cols. 237–238: “Fugiamus ebrietatem, ne crimen luxuriae incurramus, quia Apostolus praecipit nobis non nos inebriare vino, in quo est luxuria (Eph 5:18). Vinum enim nobis Deus ad laetitiam cordis, non ad ebrietatem donavit. Bibamus ergo non quantum gula exigit, sed quantum naturae imbecillitas postulat. Ne igitur quod ad medelam corporis nostri tributum est, ad perniciem deputemus.” 96. Ibid. 21, cols. 214–216: “Ideo, frater charissime, consideremus quis est, qui nos pretioso sanguine redemit, et quid ei debeamus, qui nos cum tanta penuria redemit. Si terrenos parentes cum tanto affectu diligimus, qui parvo tempore pro nobis sustinuerunt laborem, nonne magis nobis coelestis Pater noster amandus est, qui pro nobis cruci affixus est?” In part due to passages such as these, “loyalty” has long been considered a key trait of the Frankish aristocrat. On sacramentum as an ordering principle for Carolingian society, see especially Phelan, The Formation of Christian Europe, 8–43. 97. Paulinus, Liber exhortationis 62, col. 271: “Praesto enim erit adversarius diabolus, et recitabuntur verba professionis nostrae et objiciet nobis in faciem quidquid fecimus, et in qua die peccavimus, et in quo loco, et quid boni operis tunc temporis facere debuimus.” 98. Ibid. 62, col. 272: “Habet enim dicere tunc ipse diabolus: Aequissime judex, judica istum meum esse ob culpam, qui tuus esse noluit per gratiam. Tuus est per naturam: meus est per miseriam. Tuus est ob passionem: meus est ob suasionem. Tibi inobediens: mihi obediens. A te accepit immortalitatis stolam: a me hanc pannosam, qua indutus est, tunicam. Tuam vestem amisit: cum mea veste huc advenit. Quid apud eum impudicitia faciebat, quid intemperantia, quid avaritia, quid ira, quid superbia, quid caetera mea membra? Dimisit te: confugium fecit ad me . . . ​Judica illum meum esse, et mecum damnandum esse!” Interestingly, Paulinus uses the word stola—​­the feminine garb of ancient Rome that corresponded to the male toga. Whether he was aware of the gendering of the phrase beyond linguistic gendering is difficult to know; he may simply have been aligning the word with the feminine immortalitas or even anima. 99. Julia M. H. Smith, Province and Empire: Brittany and the Carolingians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 52–68. 100. For full bibliographic citation, see note 23. All translations of this text are my own. For its manuscript tradition, see Alain Dubreucq, “Autour du De virtutibus et vitiis d’Alcuin,” in Alcuin, de York à Tours: Écriture, pouvoir et réseaux dans l’Europe du haut moyen âge, ed. Philippe Depreux and Bruno Judic (Rennes: Presses universitaires, 2004); Donald A. Bullough, “Alcuin and Lay Virtue,” in Predicazione e società nel Medioevo: Riflessione etica, valori e modelli di comportamento. Proceedings of the XII Medieval Sermon Studies Symposium, Padova, 14–18 Iuglio 2000,

188  Notes to Pages 55–58 ed. Laura Gaffuri and Riccardo Quinto (Padua: Centro Studi Antoniani, 2002); Sedlmeier, Die laienparänetischen Schriften der Karolingerzeit, 117–189; Paul E. Szarmach, “The Latin Tradition of Alcuin’s Liber de virtutibus et vitiis, cap. xxvii–xxxv, with Special Reference to Vercelli Homily xx,” Mediaevalia 12 (1989); Clare A. Lees, “The Dissemination of Alcuin’s De virtutibus et vitiis liber in Old English: A Preliminary Survey,” Leeds Studies in English 16 (January 1, 1985); Paul E. Szarmach, “A Preliminary Handlist of Manuscripts Containing Alcuin’s Liber de virtutibus et vitiis,” Manuscripta 25 (1981); McKitterick, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms, 168–170. 101. It is tempting to wonder whether Wido was less skilled in Latin than was Eric and thus that Alcuin wrote more simply. Alcuin does, however, refer at least twice to his intentional brevity; thus, the simpler Latinity could be a reflection of this or perhaps even of Alcuin’s training at York, where there was a stronger written vernacular tradition than in the south, perhaps rendering his Latin closer to Anglo-​­Saxon construction. 102. Liutpold Wallach, Alcuin and Charlemagne: Studies in Carolingian History and Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1959), 231–254; Liutpold Wallach, “Alcuin on the Virtues and Vices,” Harvard Theological Review 48, no. 3 (1955); Henri-​­Marie Rochais, “Le liber de virtutibus et vitiis d’Alcuin, note pour étude des sources,” Revue Mabillon 41 (1951). 103. Alcuin, De virtutibus et vitiis epistola nuncupatoria, col. 613: “Memor sum petitionis tuae et promissionis meae, qua me obnixe flagitasti, aliqua tuae occupationi, quam te in bellicis rebus habere novimus, exhortamenta brevi sermone conscribere.” 104. “Such points [made by Alcuin in the book] may be regarded as having some general relevance for the lay aristocracy but one wonders if Wido ­really felt that he had been given what he had asked for”; Airlie, “The Anxiety of Sanctity,” 377. 105. Alcuin, De virtutibus et vitiis 1, cols. 614–615: “Primum omnium quaerendum homini est quae sit vera scientia veraque sapientia: quia sapientia hujus mundi stultitia est apud Deum (1 Cor 3:19). Scientia vera est a diaboli servitio, quod sunt peccata, recedere; et sapientia perfecta est Deum colere secundum mandatorum illius veritatem: quia in his duobus vita beata acquiritur, sicut Psalmista ait: Diverte a malo et fac bonum (Ps 33:15). Non enim sufficit cuiquam mala non facere, nisi etiam et bona faciat: nec bona facere, nisi etiam et mala non committat.” 106. Ibid. 3, col. 615: “In praeceptis vero Dei charitas obtinet principatum, sine cujus perfectione nihil Deo placere posse Paulus testatur apostolus (1 Cor 13).” 107. Ibid.: “qui nec martyrium nec saeculi contemptum, nec eleemosynarum largitionem, sine charitatis officio quidquam proficere posse ostendit.” 108. Ibid. 3, col. 616: “Si forte quislibet quaerat quis sit proximus, sciat omnem Christianum recte proximum dici, quia omnes in baptismo filii Dei sanctificamur, ut fratres simus spiritualiter in charitate perfecta.” 109. Ibid. 3, col. 617: “Nobilior est generatio spiritualis quam carnalis.” 110. Cf. Savigni, “Les laïcs dans l’ecclésiologie carolingienne,” 62. 111. Alcuin, De virtutibus et vitiis 7, col. 617: “Praecipuum est misericordiae bonum.” For Alcuin and ritualized forgiveness, see Michael S. Driscoll, “Penance in Transition: Popular Piety and Practice,” in Medieval Liturgy: A Book of Essays, ed. Lizette Larson-​­Miller (New York: Garland, 1997). 112. See Chapter 1. 113. See Chapter 3. 114. See Chapter 1. 115. Alcuin, De virtutibus et vitiis 7, col. 618: “In judice misericordia et disciplina debet esse: quia una sine altera bene esse non possit. Nam misericordia sola si fuerit, securitatem facit

Notes to Pages 58–61  189 peccandi subjectis. Iterum, si disciplina sola semper aderit, vertitur animus delinquentis in desperationem.” 116. Ibid. 20, col. 628: “Omnis qui recte judicat, stateram in manu gestat. In utroque sensu, justitiam et misericordiam portat, ut pro justitia reddat peccatis sententiam pro misericordia peccati temperet poenam.” 117. Ibid. 20, cols. 628–629 (my emphasis): “Pene gravius lacerantur pauperes a pravis judicibus, quam a cruentissimis hostibus. Nullus enim praedo tam cupidus in alienis, quam judex iniquus in suis. Pejores sunt hostibus judices iniqui. Hostes saepe fuga vitantur; judices propter potentiam effugi non possunt.” Cf. Carolingian considerations of judges and judicial fairness, particularly within the context of the lay mirrors: Rob Meens, “Sanctuary, Penance, and Dispute Settlement under Charlemagne: The Conflict Between Alcuin and Theodulf of Orléans over a Sinful Cleric,” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 82, no. 2 (2007); Lawrence Nees, A Tainted Mantle: Hercules and the Classical Tradition at the Carolingian Court (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), especially 110–143. 118. Alcuin, De virtutibus et vitiis 7, col. 617: “Non potest peccator a Deo misericordiam sperare, qui misericordiam non facit peccantibus in se.” 119. Ibid. 7, col. 618: “Sed hanc misericordiam a seipso debet homo incipere.” 120. Ibid.: “Quomodo in aliis est misericors, qui in seipso crudelis est?” 121. Ibid.: “In seipso crudelis est, qui sibi perpetuas peccatis suis parat flammas. Bene misericors est, qui a seipso incipit, et se diligenter custodit, ne puniatur cum diabolo, et sic aliis praestet, quod sibi bonum esse perspicit.” For Alcuin’s stylistic influences, see Prill, “Rhetoric and Poetics,” especially 135–144. 122. Alcuin, De virtutibus et vitiis 8, cols. 618–619: “Qui clementer peccantibus ignoscere novit, clementiam divinae pietatis certissime accipiet. Sic enim remittetur nobis, ut nos remiseremus eis qui nobis quacunque malignitate nocuerunt.” 123. Ibid. 9, col. 619: “In patientia vero querenda est ignoscendi facultas, non vindicandi opportunitas. Tales sunt quidam, qui tempore injuriarum patienter sufferunt, ut subsequenter facilius vindicare valeant. Hi veram non habent patientiam. Patientia vera est in faciem fortiter sustinere injurias, et in futuro vindictam non quaerere, sed ex corde ignoscere. Sine ferro vel flammis martyres esse possumus, si patientiam veraciter in animo servamus cum proximis nostris. Laudabilius est injuriam tacendo declinare, quam respondendo superare. Qui patienter tolerat mala, in futuro coronam merebitur sempiternam.” 124. “Certainly a moralist who can claim: ‘We can be martyrs without sword or flames if we truly preserve patience in the soul with our neighbours’ is not making excessive demands for holiness on his audience”; Stone, Morality and Masculinity, 311. 125. Alcuin, De virtutibus et vitiis 36, col. 638: “Nec te laici habitus vel conversationis saecularis terreat qualitas . . . ​Igitur sicut omnibus aequaliter regni Dei praedicata est beatitudo, ita omni sexui, aetati, et personae aequaliter secundum meritorum dignitatem regni Dei patet introitus. Ubi non est distinctio, quis esset in saeculo laicus vel clericus, dives vel pauper, junior vel senior, servus vel dominus: sed unusquisque secundum meritum boni operis perpetua coronabitur gloria.” 126. See note 60. 127. On men as the default audience of the mirrors and the scholarly frustrations of attempting to glean specifically gendered moral advice for women, see Stone, Morality and Masculinity, 14; Garver, Women and Aristocratic Culture, 53–54. 128. Alcuin, De virtutibus et vitiis 16, col. 624: “Perfectum est jejunium, quod in eleemosynis et oratione fit. Coelum transit, et ad thronum altissimi Dei pervenit. Tunc enim homo

190  Notes to Pages 61–63 spiritualis effectus angelis conjungitur, Deoque liberius copulatur, si abstinentia carnis orationibus exaltatur.” 129. Ibid. 16, col. 625: “Immundi enim spiritus ibi se fiducialibus immittunt, ubi videbunt frequenter comessationes et ebrietates exerceri.” 130. Ibid. 18, col. 627: “Pulchra est casta juvenum pudicitia, et Deo amabilis, et ad omne bonum utilis. Qui filios habet spirituales, vel carnales, nutriat illos in castitate Deo, non in fornicatione diabolo. Quid prodest homini filium habere, nutrire, amare, si aeternis eum nutriet tormentis? Qui in castitate vivunt, angelicam habent in terris conversationem.” 131. Ibid.: “Castitas hominem coelo conjungit, angelis facit concivem.” 132. Ibid.: “Qui mulierem habet legitimam, legitime utatur ea temporibus opportunis, ut benedictionem mereatur filiorum a Deo recipere.” 133. Ibid. 26, col. 632: “Virtus boni operis est perseverantia, ipso Domino dicente: Qui perseveraverit usque in finem, hic salvus erit (Mt 10:22). Non igitur qui coeperit bonum, sed qui perseveraverit in bono, hic salvus erit. Tunc enim placet Deo nostra conversatio, quando bonum quod inchoamus, perseveranti fine complebimus. Bonum ergo non coepisse, sed perfecisse, virtus est. Non inchoantibus praemium promittitur, sed perseverantibus datur. Semper in vita hominis finis quaeritur, qualis sit extremo tempore vitae suae: quia de fine suo unusquisque aut justificatur, aut condemnatur. Ideo unusquisque instantissime bona quae coepit, perficere contendat, ut perpetuam a Domino mereatur mercedem accipere.” 134. Ibid. 35, col. 637: “Virtus est animi habitus, naturae decus, vitae ratio, morum pietas, cultus divinitatis, honor hominis, aeternae beatitudinis meritum.” 135. Ibid. 19, col. 628: “His omnibus meliores divitias perdidisti, id est, fidem, et justitiam, et dilectionem Dei et proximi.” 136. Ibid. 22, col. 630: “Omnibus inimica est bonis invidia. Ubi est invidia, charitas esse non potest. Et ubi charitas non est, ibi nihil boni esse poterit.” 137. Ibid. 23, col. 630: “dum homo in suis bonis operibus superbit: et hoc perdit per superbiam, quod habuit per charitatem.” 138. Ibid. 30, col. 634: “Cujus genera sunt invidia, furta, latrocinia, homicidia, mendacia, perjuria, rapinae, violentiae, inquietudo, injusta judicia, contemptus veritatis, futurae beatitudinis oblivio, obduratio cordis. Quae fit contraria misericordiae, eleemosynis in pauperes, et toti pietati in miseros. Quae vincitur per timorem Dei, et per fraternam charitatem, et per opera misericordiae, et per eleemosynas in pauperes, et per spem futurae beatitudinis, dum falsae hujus saeculi divitiae futurae beatitudinis veris divitiis vincuntur. 139. Ibid. 25, col. 631: “quidquid homo facit boni, pro Dei amore et salute animae suae, et fraterna charitate faciat.” 140. Ibid. 34, col. 637: “Igitur ex his Christianae religionis ductoribus, quos opposuimus diabolicae impietatis bellatoribus, quatuor praesunt duces gloriosissimi: prudentia, justitia, fortitudo, temperantia.” For Alcuin’s use of the classical virtues and their broader role within Carolingian culture, see McKitterick, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms, 168–170; Sibylle Mähl, Quadriga virtutum, Die Kardinaltugenden in der Geistesgeschichte der Karolingerzeit (Köln: Böhlau, 1969), 89–125. See also Chapter 3. 141. Alcuin, De virtutibus et vitiis 34, col. 636: “Hi sunt octo totius impietatis duces cum exercitibus suis, et fortissimi contra humanum genus diabolicae fraudis bellatores.” 142. Ibid. 34, col. 637: “Isti vero bellatores Deo auxiliante facillime vincuntur a bellatoribus Christi per virtutes sanctas. Prima superbia per humilitatem, gula per abstinentiam, fornicatio per castitatem, avaritia per abstinentiam, ira per patientiam, acedia per instantiam boni operis, tristitia mala per laetitiam spiritualem, vana gloria per charitatem Dei vincitur.”

Notes to Pages 63–64  191 143. Ibid. 35, col. 637: “Nulla melior est sapientia, quam ea qua Deus secundum modulum humanae mentis intelligitur et timetur, et futurum ejus creditur judicium.” 144. Ibid. 35, col. 638: “Nonne melius est et beatius Deum diligere, qui est aeterna pulchritudo, aeterna fragrantia, aeterna jucunditas, aeterna dulcedo, aeterna suavitas, perpetuus honor, indeficiens felicitas; quam hujus saeculi amare vanitates et insanias falsas (Ps 39:5), species pulchras, dulces sapores, sonos suaves, odores fragrantes, tactus jucundos, honores et felicitates saeculi transitorias, quae omnia velut volatilis umbra recedunt et transeunt, et decipiunt amantem se, et in aeternam mittunt eum miseriam? Qui vero Deum et Dominum fideliter amat, et indesinenter colit, et ejus mandata perseveranter implet, aeternam cum angelis Dei gloriam perpetualiter possidere dignus efficietur.” 145. Jonas of Orléans, De institutione laicali, ed. and trans. Odile Dubreucq, Instruction des laïcs, SC 549–550 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2012–2013). Pierre Riché made much of the fact that Jonas refers to the lay status as an “institutio,” arguing that the Bishop of Orleans was bestowing upon laypeople status of their own “institution” within the Church; Riché, La vie quotidienne dans l’empire carolingien, 99–100. Perhaps Jonas was, but the title can also simply mean “On lay instruction” or “On lay education.” For Matfrid of Orléans, see Philippe Depreux, “Le comte Matfrid d’Orléans (av. 815–836),” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 152, no. 2 (1994). 146. Jonas’s treatise makes frequent reference to both the Old and New Testaments, drawing particularly from the historical books and the letters of St. Paul but also, liberally, from the Gospels of Matthew, John, and Luke. Like Paulinus and Alcuin, Jonas quotes from the prophets, from the Book of Proverbs, and, less frequently, from the Book of Psalms. Of the Fathers, Jonas refers most often to the works of Augustine, Jerome, and Ambrose, as well as the homilies and Dialogues of Gregory the Great. Jonas’s text is divided into three books of twenty, twenty-​­nine, and twenty capitula, respectively. For scholarly work on the De institutione laicali, see especially Savigni, “Les laïcs dans l’ecclésiologie carolingienne,” 71–72ff. with notes. Cf. also Étienne Delaruelle, “Jonas d’Orléans et le moralisme carolingien,” Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique 55 (1954): 129–143, 221–228. For Jonas’s life, see Raffaele Savigni, Giona di Orléans: Una ecclesiologia carolingia, Cristianesimo antico e medievale 2 (Bologna: Pàtron, 1989). 147. Jonas of Orléans, De institutione laicali 1.19–20; cf. also 1.1–3, 2.20–23, 3.1. 148. Ibid. 1.20, 1/290: “Lex itaque Christi non specialiter clericis, sed generaliter cunctis fidelibus observanda est a Domino adtributa.” 149. Ibid. 3.1, 2/181: “Ille charitatem habet qui et Deum plus quam se et proximum tanquam se. ‘In his duobus praeceptis tota lex pendet, et prophetae’ (Mt 22:40). Porro christianorum proprium est et amicum diligere in Deo, et inimicum propter Deum. Unde dicitur in Psalmo: ‘Latum mandatum tuum nimis’ (Ps 118:96). Ideo ‘latum’ dicitur ‘mandatum,’ quia et amicum et inimicum pari dilectione complectitur. Iudeis nempe moris est amicum diligere et inimicum odiis exsecrabilibus insectari. A christianis vero uterque, Domino praecipiente in Evangelio, aeque diligendus est.” 150. Ibid. 2.6; cf. also 1.6–8, 1.9–13, 1.15–16, 2.19. See Savigni, “Les laïcs dans l’ecclésiologie carolingienne,” 76–77. There can be no doubt that Jonas chose to place so much emphasis on marriage in his treatise because this was precisely what Count Matfrid asked his spiritual advisor to discuss; Jonas of Orléans, De institutione laicali praefatio, 1/120: “Tuae nuper strenuitatis litteras suscepi, quibus meam extremitatem commonefecisti, ut tibi citissime et quam brevissime scriberem qualiter te ceterosque qui uxorio vinculo ligantur, vitam Deo placitam ducere oporteret.” 151. Jonas of Orléans, De institutione laicali 1.20, 1/290–292: “Licet in Evangelio quaedam sint praecepta specialia quae solummodo contemptoribus mundi et apostolorum sectatoribus

192  Notes to Pages 65–67 conveniant, cetera tamen cunctis fidelibus, unicuique scilicet in ordine quo se Deo deservire devovit, indissimulanter observanda censentur.” My translation. The notion of separate “precepts” and “commandments”—​­one for the elite, the other for the ecclesia in its entirety—​­would not become a theological commonplace until the thirteenth century; cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae 2.1.108.4, ed. The Aquinas Institute, Complete Works of Thomas Aquinas 16 (Lander: Aquinas Institute, 2012). 152. Jonas, De institutione laicali 1.20, 1/292 “Multi namque laicorum existunt qui legem evangelicam et apostolicam sibi datam credunt et intelligere procurant et secundum eam vivere pro viribus invigilant. Sunt alii qui eam sibi datam credunt, hanc tamen intellegere et secundum eam vivere detrectant. . . . ​Porro sunt alii tantae vecordiae qui eam non ad se, sed solummodo ad clericos pertinere contendant, gloriantes se nomine Christi insignitos et putantes fide tenus tantum salvari posse.” 153. Ibid. 2.20.1–22, 2/58–59: “Cum igitur sacerdotes, mediatores videlicet inter Deum et populum, ob amorem et honorem illius cuius ministerium gerunt, congruo honore, remota personarum et divitiarum acceptione, sint venerandi, multi in eis non ministerium Christi sed, quod fas non est, divitias et honores venerantur mundi; et quanto potentiores et ditiores existunt, tanto maioris honoris et venerationis ab eis habentur. Sunt etiam quidam sacerdotes divitiis et honoribus mundi carentes qui adeo contemptui a quibusdam laicis habentur ut eos non solum administratores et procuratores rerum suarum faciant, sed etiam sibi more laicorum servire conpellant, eosque convivas mensae suae habere dedignentur. Qui videlicet habere sacerdotes nomine tenus sibi videri gestiunt, re autem ipsa propter quam habendi sunt, nolunt, talesque intercessores apud Dominum habere volunt, quales esse prorsus despiciunt. Hoc quam sit periculosum ac reprehensibile et religioni christianae incongruum et inhonestum, verbis explicari non est. Hoc nempe non solum propter quorundam negligentiam et peccata sacerdotum, verum etiam propter quorundam superbiam et ignorantiam laicorum accidere dubium non est.” 154. Michael Edward Moore, A Sacred Kingdom: Bishops and the Rise of Frankish Kingship, 300–850, Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Canon Law 8 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2011); Steffen Patzold, Episcopus: Wissen über Bischöfe im Frankenreich des späten 8. bis frühen 10. Jahrhundertes, Mittelalter-​­Forschungen 25 (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2008); Steffen Patzold, “Redéfiner l’office épiscopal: Les Évêques francs face à la crise des années 820–830,” in Les Élites au haut moyen âge: Crises et renouvellements, ed. François Bougard, Laurent Feller, and Régine Le Jan, Collection haut moyen âge 6 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006); Steffen Patzold, “L’episcopat du haut Moyen Age du point de vue de la médiévistique allemande,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, Xe–XIIe siècles 48, no. 4 (2005).

Chapter 3 1. I agree with Rachel Stone’s argument that moral advice oriented ­toward kings held significant gravity and involved issues that did not apply to all laypersons; Stone, Morality and Masculinity, 25; Rachel Stone, “Kings Are Different: Carolingian Mirrors for Princes and Lay Morality,” in Le Prince au miroir de la littérature politique de l’Antiquité aux Lumières, ed. Frédérique Lachaud and Lydwine Scordia (Rouen: Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2007). For reasons that I explain further below, however, I deem the figure of the king through the tenth century as a special layperson but a layperson nonetheless. See Savigni, “Les laïcs dans l’ecclésiologie carolingienne,” 59–92. Cf. Dubreucq, “La littérature des specula,” 33–36. For the unique character of the king in this context, not yet fully developed into the more standard

Notes to Pages 68–71  193 notions of kingship that were prominent during the High Middle Ages, see especially Janet L. Nelson, “Bad Kingship in the Earlier Middle Ages,” Haskins Society Journal: Studies in Medieval History 8 (1999). Cf. also Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1–113; Fichtenau, Living in the Tenth Century: Mentalities and Social Orders, 157–164; Patrick Corbet, Les saints ottoniens: sainteté dynastique, sainteté royale et sainteté féminine autour de l’an mil, Beihefte zu Francia 15 (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1986); Robert Folz, Les saints rois du moyen âge en occident, VIe–XIIIe siècles, Subsidia hagiographica 68 (Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 1984). 2. Jong, The Penitential State. See also the important groundwork laid forth in Mayke de Jong, “Power and Humility in Carolingian Society: The Public Penance of Louis the Pious,” Early Medieval Europe 1 (1992). 3. Booker, Past Convictions. 4. Janet L. Nelson, “The Voice of Charlemagne,” in Belief and Culture in the Middle Ages: Studies Presented to Henry Mayr-​­Harting, ed. Richard Gameson and Henrietta Leyser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 77–80. 5. McKitterick, Charlemagne, 235. 6. Capitulare missorum generale (802), ed. Alfred Boretius, MGH Capit. 1.33 (Hanover: Hahn, 1883), 91–99. McKitterick emphasizes the orientation of this capitulary ­toward regulation of the missi dominici and thus argues against the traditional designation of the capitulary of 802, following Ganshof, as “Programmatic”; see McKitterick, Charlemagne, 258. 7. See Chapter 2. 8. McKitterick, Charlemagne, 258. 9. Ibid., 269–270; Janet L. Nelson, “Kings with Justice, Kings Without Justice: An Early Medieval Paradox,” Settimane 43 (1997): 804–805. 10. McKitterick, Charlemagne, 235–236. 11. Ibid., 212–213. 12. François Louis Ganshof, “The Last Period of Charlemagne’s Reign: A Study in Decomposition” [English translation of “La fin du règne de Charlemagne, une décomposition” (1948)], in The Carolingians and the Frankish Monarchy, trans. Janet Sondheimer (London: Longman, 1971); François Louis Ganshof, “Charlemagne’s Failure” [English translation of “L’échec de Charlemagne” (1947)], in The Carolingians and the Frankish Monarchy, trans. Janet Sondheimer (London: Longman, 1971). 13. Nelson, “The Voice of Charlemagne,” 80. Cf. the similar conclusions of Jennifer R. Davis, Charlemagne’s Practice of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 347–378. 14. Rotrude died in June 810. Carloman/Pippin died a month later. Charles the Younger died in December 811. Cf. Einhard, Vita Karoli magni 19. 15. Jong, The Penitential State, 153–156. For the continuities and vicissitudes of penitential discipline during the Early Middle Ages more broadly, see Rob Meens, Penance in Medieval Europe, 600–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 16. Capitula de causis cum episcopis et abbatibus tractandis (811) 1 (cited hereafter as Capitula de causis), ed. Alfred Boretius, MGH Capit. 1.72 (Hanover: Hahn, 1883), 162: “conversation nostra coram illo emendari.” For the extended quotation in the context of further discussion, see note 19. 17. Charlemagne mentions these fasts in a letter, dated to 807: Karoli ad Ghaerbaldum episcopum epistola (807), ed. Alfred Boretius, MGH Capit. 1.124 (Hanover: Hahn, 1883), 244–246. 18. Capitula tractanda de causis cum episcopis et abbatibus (811) (cited hereafter as Capitula

194  Notes to Pages 72–76 tractanda), ed. Alfred Boretius, MGH Capit. 1.71 (Hanover: Hahn, 1883), 161–162; Capitula de causis, 162–164. Nelson even suggests that the second document represents a list of afterthoughts hurriedly disseminated after the first: Nelson, “The Voice of Charlemagne,” 82. 19. Capitula de causis 1, 162: “Primo commemorandum est, quod anno praeterito tria triduana ieiunia fecimus, Deum orando ut ille nobis dignaretur ostendere, in quibus conversatio nostra coram illo emendari debuisse: quod nunc facere desideramus.” 20. Capitula tractanda 1, 161. 21. McKitterick, Charlemagne, 259. 22. Nelson, “The Voice of Charlemagne,” 82–83. 23. Ibid., 81. 24. Ibid., 83. Cf. her analysis of what we can glean from the evidence of Charlemagne’s earlier life: Janet L. Nelson, “Charlemagne the Man,” in Charlemagne: Empire and Society, ed. Joanna Story (New York: Palgrave, 2005). 25. Capitula tractanda 2–4, 161. 26. Ibid. 2, 161. 27. Ibid. 5, 161. 28. Ibid. 9, 161: “Quod nobis despiciendum est, utrum vere christiani sumus.” I translate this section of the document somewhat differently than Nelson to capture what I believe to be the more acidic tone of the diction; cf. Nelson, “The Voice of Charlemagne,” 86. 29. Capitula tractanda 9, 161: “Quod in consideratione vitae vel morum nostrorum facillime cognosci potest, si diligenter conversationem coram discutere voluerimus.” 30. Ibid. 5, 161; Capitula de causis 2, 162. 31. Capitula tractanda 6–7, 161. 32. Capitula de causis 9, 163. 33. Capitula tractanda 10–12, 161–162; Capitula de causis 12, 163. 34. Ibid. 4, 163: “Iterum inquirendum ab eis, ut nobis veraciter patefaciant, quid sit quod apud eos dicitur seculum relinquere, vel in quibus internosci possint hi qui seculum relinquunt ab his qui adhuc seculum sectantur; utrum in eo solo, quod arma non portant nec publice coniugati sunt.” 35. Stone, “ ‘In What Way Can Those Who Have Left the World Be Distinguished?’ ” 19–20. 36. See, with bibliography, Coon, Dark Age Bodies, 49–54, 69–133, 158–160. 37. Jong, The Penitential State, 156. See also Matthew D. Ponesse, “Smaragdus of St. Mihiel and the Carolingian Monastic Reform,” Revue Bénédictine 116, no. 2 (2006). 38. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici imperatoris prologus, ed. Ernst Tremp, Thegan: Die Taten Kaiser Ludwigs; Astronomus Das Leben Kaiser Ludwigs, MGH SS rer. Germ. 64 (Hanover: Hahn, 1995), 282: “Etenim auctoritate divini eloquii adiscimus, sanctam sapientiam docere sobrietatem et sapientiam et iustitiam et virtutem, quibus nihil est in vita hominibus. Quarum ille ita comitatui indivise adhesit, ut nescires potius quam in eo ammirari deberes.” Trans. Thomas F. X. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious: Lives by Einhard, Notker, Ermoldus, Thegan, and the Astronomer (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 227. 39. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici prologus, 284: “Uni tantummodo ab emulis ascribebatur subcubuisse culpe, eo quod nimis clemens esset.” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 228. 40. E.g., most recently, Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 224: “The Astronomer is deeply sympathetic to Louis. That is clear. But he is not so partisan as to whitewash his hero.” 41. François Louis Ganshof, “Louis the Pious Reconsidered,” History 42 (1957): 261–272.

Notes to Pages 76–77  195 42. Booker, Past Convictions, especially 215–217; Courtney M. Booker, “Histrionic History, Demanding Drama: The Penance of Louis the Pious in 833, Memory, and Emplotment,” in Vergangenheit und Vergegenwärtigung: Frühes Mittelalter und europäische Erinnerungskultur, ed. Helmut Reimitz and Bernhard Zeller, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 14 (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2009), especially 106. Important among the abundant literature are Janet L. Nelson, “Rewriting the History of the Franks,” in The Frankish World, 750–900 (London: Hambledon, 1996); Philippe Depreux, “Louis the Pieux reconsidéré? A propos des travaux récents consacrés à l’héritier de Charlemagne et à son règne,” Francia: For­ schungen zur westeuropäischen Geschichte 21, no. 1 (1994); Nicholaus Staubach, “ ‘Des grossen Kaisers kleiner Sohn.’ Zum Bild Ludwigs des Frommen in der älteren deutschen Geschichtsforschung,” in Charlemagne’s Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814–840), ed. Peter Godman and Roger Collins (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990); Thomas F. X. Noble, “Louis the Pious and His Piety Re-​­Reconsidered,” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 8, no. 2 (1980): who also credits Theodor Schieffer with a key role in Louis the Pious’s historiographical rehabilitation; Peter R. McKeon, “The Empire of Louis the Pious: Faith, Politics, and Personality,” Revue Bénédictine 90 (1980). The most recent full consideration of Louis the Pious’s reign is Egon Boshof, Ludwig der Fromme (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 1996). 43. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 58, 520. The traditional association of the portent with Halley’s Comet has been recently challenged; see Scott Ashley, “What Did Louis the Pious See in the Night Sky? A New Interpretation of the Astronomer’s Account of Halley’s Comet, 837,” Early Medieval Europe 21, no. 1 (2013). 44. For discernment of the Astronomer’s identity, see, most recently, Tremp, Thegan: Die Taten Kaiser Ludwigs; Astronomus Das Leben Kaiser Ludwigs, 53–66, with bibliography. 45. For a recent, concise introduction to the political vicissitudes of this period, see Costambeys, Innes, and MacLean, The Carolingian World, 194–222. See also Janet L. Nelson, “The Last Years of Louis the Pious,” in Charlemagne’s Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814–840), ed. Peter Godman and Roger Collins (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990). 46. Hincmar of Reims, Instructio ad Ludovicum Balbum, PL 125, cols. 985–986, cited in John Gillingham, “Fontenoy and After: Pursuing Enemies to Death,” in Frankland: The Franks and the World of the Middle Ages, ed. Paul Fouracre and David Ganz (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), 246. 47. See Tremp, Thegan: Die Taten Kaiser Ludwigs; Astronomus Das Leben Kaiser Ludwigs, 66–68. 48. Concerning renewed valuation of clemency among the early Carolingians, see Gerd Althoff, “Ira Regis: Prologomena to a History of Royal Anger,” in Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages, ed. Barbara Rosenwein (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 66. See also the relevant discussion in Joanna Story, “Cathwulf, Kingship, and the Royal Abbey of Saint-​­Denis,” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 74, no. 1 (1999). 49. This and the lack of elite will to protect the utilitas publica are key preoccupations of the contemporary Histories of Nithard as well; see Chapter 4. Cf. Booker, Past Convictions, 253; Dana M. Polanichka, “ ‘As a Brother Should Be’: Siblings, Kinship, and Community in Carolingian Europe,” in Kinship, Community, and Self: Essays in Honor of David Warren Sabean, ed. Jason Coy, Benjamin Marschke, Jared Poley, and Claudia Verhoeven (Oxford: Berghahn, 2014). 50. For the Astronomer’s text in relation to the revival of secular biography during this period, see Andrew J. Romig, “Charismatic Art and Biography in the Carolingian World,” in The Faces of Charisma, ed. Brigitte Miriam Bedos-​­Rezak and Martha Rust (Boston: Brill, forthcoming); David Ganz, “The Astronomer’s Life of Louis the Pious,” in Rome and Religion in the

196  Notes to Pages 78–80 Medieval World: Studies in Honor of Thomas F. X. Noble, ed. Valerie L. Garver and Owen M. Phelan (Dorchester: Ashgate, 2014); Gereon Becht-​­Jördens, “Einharts und die antike Tradition von Biographie und Historiographie. Von der Gattungsgeschichte zur Interpretation,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 46 (2011). 51. Ermold the Black, In honorem Hludovicii Pii, ed. and trans. Edmond Faral, Ermold le Noir: Poème sur Louis le Pieux et épitres au roi Pepin, Les classiques de l’histoire de France au Moyen Âge 14 (Paris: Champion, 1932), 2–201; Philippe Depreux, “La pietas comme principe de gouvernement d’après le Poème sur Louis le Pieux d’Ermold le Noir,” in The Community, the Family and the Saint: Patterns of Power in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Joyce Hill and Mary Swan (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998). 52. See Chapter 2. 53. This was an epithet that Louis appears to have held during his lifetime as well as in his post mortem remembrance; see Booker, Past Convictions, 67. 54. Cf. comments by Allen Cabaniss, Son of Charlemagne: A Contemporary Life of Louis the Pious, trans. Allen Cabaniss (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1961), 8–9. 55. Thegan, Gesta Hludowici imperatoris, ed. Ernst Tremp, Thegan: Die Taten Kaiser Ludwigs; Astronomus Das Leben Kaiser Ludwigs, MGH SS rer. Germ. 64 (Hanover: Hahn, 1995), 167–277. 56. Thegan’s famous condemnation of Ebbo of Reims’s low birth and of Louis the Pious’s overreliance on nonnoble counselors would solidify Ebbo’s role as an archvillain in the standard narratives of Carolingian history: Thegan, Gesta Hludowici imperatoris 20 and 44; cf. Peter R. McKeon, “Archbishop Ebbo of Reims (816–835): A Study in the Carolingian Empire and Church,” Church History 43, no. 4 (1974): 437–447. 57. Walter Berschin, Biographie und Epochenstil im lateinischen Mittelalter 3. Karolingische Biographie: 750–920 n. Chr., Quellen und Untersuchungen zur lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters 10 (Stuttgart: A. Hiesermann, 1991), 230. In particular relation to the tragic framing of the year 833, see Booker, “Histrionic History, Demanding Drama,” 112; Booker, Past Convictions, 35. 58. See Chapter 1; and especially Paul Fouracre, “Carolingian Justice: The Rhetoric of Improvement and Contexts of Abuse,” La Giustizia nell’alto Medioevo (Secoli V–VIII) 42, no. 2 (1995). 59. Thomas F. X. Noble, “The Monastic Ideal as a Model for Empire: The Case of Louis the Pious,” Revue Bénédictine 86 (1976). 60. Booker, Past Convictions, 215–217, 222–224. I discuss Ardo’s text further in Chapter 5. 61. This is in full keeping with the Frankish tradition of viri inlustres. See Reimitz, History, Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 295–308. 62. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 19, 336. For further discussion of this trope, see Chapter 5. 63. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici prologus, 284: “Nos autem cum apostolo dicamus talibus: ‘Dimittite illi hanc inuiuriam!’ ” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 228. Cf. 2 Cor 12.13: “How have you been worse off than the other churches, except that I myself did not burden you? Forgive me this wrong!” 64. 2 Cor 12.7–10: “Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given to me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

Notes to Pages 80–82  197 65. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici prologus, 284: “Sed haec utrum ver necne sint, perlegens quisque scire poterit.” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 228. 66. See Chapter 1. 67. For the Stoic virtues in the Astronomer, see most recently Tremp, Thegan: Die Taten Kaiser Ludwigs; Astronomus Das Leben Kaiser Ludwigs, 99–107. Discussion of the four “cardinal” virtues appears prominently, for example, in texts of Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great that were widely read in the ninth century; see Marcia L. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, Studies in the History of Christian Traditions 34–35 (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 57–67, 209–217, 264–265, 297. For the four cardinal virtues in early medieval culture more generally, see, in addition to Mähl, Quadriga virtutum, Paul E. Szarmach, “Alfred’s Boethius and the Four Cardinal Virtues,” in Alfred the Wise: Studies in Honour of Janet Bately on the Occasion of Her Sixty-​­Fifth Birthday, ed. Jane Roberts, Janet L. Nelson, and Malcolm Godden (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997), 223–236. 68. There are at least two extant manuscripts of Seneca’s De clementia from the early ninth century, indicating its presence within Carolingian intellectual culture: Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MSS Pal. lat. 1547 and Reg. lat. 1529. See, most recently, the introductory editorial comments by Braund, Seneca, 77. The De civitate dei was of course so well known to the Carolingians that Einhard could claim it to be Charlemagne’s favorite book (Einhard, Vita Karoli magni 24, 29: “Delectabatur et libris sancti Augustini, praecipueque his qui de civitate Dei praetitulati sunt.”). 69. See Chapter 1. 70. Even in the rare moments when the two terms were not used synonymously in Carolingian texts (see, for example, the discussion of Smaragdus below), they were also never set in opposition, as in Seneca. 71. See Chapter 2. 72. See Chapter 1. Paulinus, Liber exhortationis 39, cols. 242–243: “Pius est enim Dominus et misericors, nec ultra facinorum nostrorum recordabitur. Ne quaeso taliter cogitemus, quia summa stultitia est haec cogitare: cum et impium sit talem licentiam a Deo postulare quem piam velle, cujus initium est, a Deo separare qui haec cogitat. ‘Impiae enim cogitationes separant nos a Deo.’ Ideo, inquam, ne talia cogitemus, cum nesciamus qua die morituri sumus. Nemo enim hominum novit diem exitus sui.” Liber exhortationis 46, col. 248: “Misericors est Dominus, et misericordiam in se sperantibus praestat.” 73. As Mayke de Jong has also argued: Jong, The Penitential State, especially 59–67, 112–114. 74. Smaragdus of St.-​­Mihiel, Via regia, PL 102, cols. 931–970. 75. Smaragdus, Via regia 1–6, cols. 935–946. Cf. Jasmijn Bovendeert, “Royal or Monastic Identity? Smaragdus’ Via Regia and Diadema monachorum Reconsidered,” in Texts and Identities in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Richard Corradini, Rob Meens, Christina Possel, and Philip Shaw, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 12 (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2006). 76. Smaragdus, Via regia 7, col. 947: “Magna enim est virtus patientia, quae laedentem se non laedit, sed diligit; quae injurianti injurias remittit, non reddit; [quae] cui nocere potest non nocet, sed parcit.” Patience also commends human beings to God and protects them from evils; ibid.: “Patientia est quae nos Deo commendat, et a malis omnibus custodit et servat.” 77. Ibid. 10, col. 950. 78. Cf. also ibid. 19, col. 958. 79. Ibid. 11, col. 952: “Operibus enim misericordiae honorari Dominus comprobatur.”

198  Notes to Pages 82–85 80. Ibid. 19, col. 958: “Memento quia sic debes exercere rectitudinis zelum, ut humilitatis atque clementiae non relinquas officium. Audi quod scriptum est: ‘Clementia praeparat vitam: et sectatio malorum, mortem.’ Non enim parvipendenda est, sed summopere quaerenda, firmiterque tenenda virtus, quae nobis immortalem et aeternam praeparat vitam.” 81. Jonas of Orléans, De institutione regia, ed. and trans. Alain Dubreucq, Jonas d’Orleans, ‘Le métier de roi,’ SC 407 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1995). 82. E.g., Jonas of Orléans, De institutione laicali 2.28, 2/158.3–8: “Quisquis in tremendi examinis die auditum malum cavere et se benedictum Patris a Christo optat vocari, sex operibus misericordiae in Evangelio ab eodem Christo Domino nostro promulgatis studeat deditus esse. Ille quippe digne his valet insistere, qui a se ipso primum eleemosynam incipit facere.” 83. Jonas of Orléans, De institutione regia 3, 184: “Rex a recte regendo vocatur. Si enim pie et juste et misericorditer regit, merito rex appellatur; si his caruerit, nomen regis amittit”; ibid. 6, 214: “Quibus verbis liquido claret, quod pietas, iustitia et misericordia stabiliant regnum.” For further discussion of Jonas’s vision of the king’s office, see Nelson, “Kings with Justice,” 799–800. 84. Jonas of Orléans, De institutione regia 3, 192, and 6, 214. 85. Ibid. 3, 192: “Fulgentius in libro de veritate praedestinationis et gratiae: ‘Clementissimus,’ inquit, ‘imperator, non ideo est vas misericordiae praeparatum in gloriam, quia apicem terreni principatus accepit. Sed si imperiali culmine recta fide vivat et, vera cordis humilitate praeditus, culmen regiae dignitatis sanctae religioni subiciat; si magis in timore servire Deo, quam in timore dominari populo delectetur.’ ” 86. Nelson, “Kings with Justice,” 799; Booker, Past Convictions, 214–249. 87. Jonas of Orléans, De institutione regia 6, 214: “Quibus verbis liquido claret, quod pietas, iustitia et misericordia stabiliant regnum; et laesiones viduarum et pupillorum, calumniaeque miserorum, violentaque judicia, et perversio justitiae evidenter illud evertant. Unde et multorum regnorum collapsio, quia pietatis, justitiae et misericordiae non habuerunt stabilimentum, his quae praemissa sunt patenter fidem attribuit.” 88. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 21, 350: “Que cum nuntiata imperatori fuissent, animum illius a misericordia exitium flexit amici in tantum, ut Tullius quidam talium, qui pene iam imperatoris clementia venia videbatur dignus, luminum amissione multaretur.” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 247, with slight emendation. Noble translates “pene iam” to mean “formerly,” but it can also mean “(even now) almost.” 89. See, for example, Costambeys, Innes, and MacLean, The Carolingian World, 158–159; Cabaniss, Son of Charlemagne, 8–15. 90. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 62, 540: “Cuius relatu adeo affectus est ameritudine, quamvis esset pene ultra humanum modum natura mitissimus, fortitudine magnanimus, pietate cautissimus, ut in apostema pituita excrescens duresceret et intra vitalia ulcus letale concresceret.” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 298. 91. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 10, 308–310. 92. Ibid. 13, 314: “Qui vocati, cum primum venire detrectarent, quoquo modo ad causam dicendam venerunt et poenas debitas pro talibus ausis dederunt, ita ut quidam talionis lege igni conflagrarent.” 93. Ibid. 29–32, 378–396. 94. For Bernard’s rebellion as a result of Louis’s youthful aggression, see Costambeys, Innes, and MacLean, The Carolingian World, 204–205. 95. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 30, 384: “Post cuius festivitatis transactam celebritatem

Notes to Pages 86–87  199 Berhardum hactenus regem eiusque in supradicto scelere fautores, cum leges iuditioque Francorum deberent capitali invectione feriri, supressa tristiori sententia luminibus orbari consensit.” 96. Ibid. 34, 404: “Imperatoris porro clementia cum in aliis semper admirabilis claruerit rebus, in hoc quam maxime conventu, quanta eius inesset pectori, manifestissime patuit: Nam revocatis omnibus, qui contra vitam suam regnumque coniuraverant, non modo vitam membraque donavit, sed et possessiones, quibus legaliter fuerant privati, cum magno liberalitatis testimonio restituit.” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 262. 97. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 35, 406: “Anno hunc sequente domnus imperator conventum generale coire iussit in loco, cuius est vocabulum Attiniacus. In quo convocatis ad concilium episcopis, abbatibus spiritalibusque viris, necnon et regni sui proceribus, primo quidem fratribus reconciliari studuit, quos invitos adtondi fecerat, deinde omnibus, quibus aliquid laesurae intulisse videbatur.” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 262. 98. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 35, 406: “Post haec autem palam se errasse confessus est et, imitatus Theodosii imperatoris exemplum, penitentiam spontaneam suscepit, tam de his quamque de illis, que adversus Bernhardum nepotem gesserat proprium; et corrigens, si quid talium vel a se vel a patre suo gestum repperire alicubi potuit, elemosinarum etiam largitione plurimarum, sed et servorum Christi orationum instantia.” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 262–263. 99. Vita Hludowici 35, 406: “necnon et propria satisfactione adeo divinitatem sibi placare curabat, quasi haec que legaliter super unumquemque decucurrerant, sua gesta fuerint crudelitate.” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 263, my emphasis. 100. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 42, 442–450. 101. Nithard, Historiarum libri IIII 1.3. See Chapter 4. 102. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 42, 444: “Et quidem imperatoris animus natura misericordissimus semper peccantibus misericordiam praerogare studui; at vero hii, in quibus talia praestita sunt, quomodo clementia illius abusi sunt in crudelitatem, post pauca patebit, cum claruerit, quomodo pro vite benefitio summam ei, quantum in se fuit, inportaverint cladem.” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 272. I have modified Noble’s translation to reflect the Astronomer’s diction. 103. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 43, 452–454: “In eo etiam conventu conperiens clandestinas contra se eorum, quos vita reservaverat, machinationes more cancri serpere et multorum animos quasi per quosdam cuniculos sollicitare, statuit contra eos quasi quoddam prougnaculum erigere.” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 274. 104. This chamberlain was, incidentally, Bernard of Septimania, husband of Dhuoda, whom I discuss in further detail in Chapter 4. 105. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 44, 456–458. 106. Ibid. 44, 458: “Tanto enim imperator, aliis benigne semper vivens, inusto odio laborabat, ut tederet eos vite ipsius cuius illi nisi benefitio viverent, iuste et legaliter vita caruissent.” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 276. 107. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 45, 460–464. 108. Ibid. 45, 462: “Haec cum hi, qui imperatori adversaturi convenerant, perviderent, ad desperationem ultimam infracti viribus sese verterunt; denique per totam noctem coeuntes atque ad habitaculum Hlotharii filii imperatoris convenientes, hortabantur aut bello confligendum aut aliquo secedendum absque imperatoris voluntate. In qua deliberatione cum totam expendissent noctem, mane imperator filio mandat, ne inimicis communibus credat, sed ad se tamquam ad patrem filius veniat. Quibus ille auditis, licet dehortantibus qui circa illum erant,

200  Notes to Pages 87–90 ad patrem venit; a quo non est spera increpatione invectus, sed modesta lenitate correctus.” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 277. 109. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 45, 464: “Post hec imperator omnes illos huius impie conspirationis principes sub privata custodia praecepit adservari. Quos postea ad iuditium adductos, cum omnes iuris censores filiique imperatoris iuditio legali tamquam reos maiestatis decernerent capitali sententia feriri, nullum ex eis permisit occidi; sed usus, ut multis visum est, leniori quam debuit pietate, sibi tamen consueto benignitatis et clementiae more, laicos quidem praecepit locis oportunis attundi, clericos vero in convenientibus itidem monasteriis custodiri.” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 277 (with slight modification for diction). 110. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 46, 466: “Ipso denique tempore consuete non immemor misericordie, que, sicut de se ait Iob, ‘ab initio crevit cum illo et de utero matris videtur cum ipso egressa,’ eos quos dudum exigentibus meritis per diversa deputaverat loca, evocatos bonis propriis restituti, et si qui attonsi fuerant, utrum sic manere an in habitum redire pristinum vellent, facultatem contribuit.” 111. Ibid.: “Dehinc imperator in partes Rumerici montis per Uosagum transiit, ibique piscationi atque venationi quamdiu libuit indulsit, et filium Hlotharium in Italiam direxit.” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 278. 112. For further recent discussion of the events of 833 as described in contemporary accounts, see Booker, Past Convictions, 15–67; Jong, The Penitential State, 214–259. 113. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 52, 496. 114. Ibid. 53, 496: “Que dum geruntur, imperator cum filio Hludowico Lingonum civitatem advenerat, in qua urbe huiuscemodi suscepit nuntium, qui eum valde reddidit mestum.” 115. Thegan’s account of these events uses a similar rhetorical tactic, focusing on the drowning of Gerberga, although for the others, names are not used in the same manner; Thegan, Gesta Hludowici imperatoris 52. 116. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 53, 498. 117. Ibid. 55, 506–508: “Imperator vero clementissimus natura, ut filium adversa valitudine correptum audivit, per missos fidelissimos, Hugonem videlicet fratrem suum sed et Adalgarium comitem, eum visitavit atque eius omnia incommoda rescire studuit, imitatus videlicet beatum David, qui multis insectationibus lacessitus a filio, mortem tamen eius egerrime tulit.” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 289. 118. 2 Sm 15. 119. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 55, 508: “Que res adeo animum illius mitissimum asperavit.” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 290. 120. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 56, 514: “Sed et imperatoris animum quis miretur digne, quanta hunc temperantia divina guberaverit clementia? Etenim hoc suscepto nuncio, nec in se exultavit, nec morti inimicorum insultavit, sed pugno pectore tunso lacrimisque oculis oppletis, Deum illis propitium fieri cum ingenti gemitu precatus est.” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 291. 121. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 58, 522: “ ‘Non alium,’ inquit, ‘timere debemus praeter illum, qui nostri et huius creator est syderis. Sed eius clementiam non satis mirari et laudare possumus, qui nostram inhertiam, cum simus peccatores et inpenitentes, talibus ammonere dignatur inditiis. Quia ergo et me et omnes communiter hoc tangit ostentum, omnes pro posse et sapere ad meliora festinemus, ne forte misericordiam illo praerogante et nostra inpenitudine inpediente, nos illa inveniamur indigni.’ ” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 293, with minor adjustment to clarify meaning. 122. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 59, 524–528.

Notes to Pages 90–93  201 123. Ibid. 61, 534: “increpatus ab eo male se egisse confessus, emendaturumque se perperam gesta professus est.” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 296. 124. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 61, 534: “At imperator consueta et sibi semper amica utens mansuetudine.” The aggression begins again at the opening to 62. 125. Ibid. 62, 540: “Que res maximum ei peperit incommodum; etenim cum iam senile gravaretur aetatae, et flegmatis habundantia—​­que hieme augmentatur—​­ultra solitum pulmo eius gravaretur pectusque quateretur, accessit etiam hic tristis nuntius. Cuius relatu adeo affectus est amaritudine, quamvis esset pene ultra humanum modum natura mitissimus, fortitudine magnanimus, pietate cautissimus, ut in apostema pituita excrescens duresceret et intra vitalia ulcus letale concresceret.” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 298, with minor adjustment. 126. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 63, 550: “ ‘Sed quia ipse,’ inquit, ‘ad me venire satisfacturus nequit, ego quod meum est ago: vobis testibus de Deo, omnia que in me peccavit illi remitto. Vestrum autem erit illum monere, ut si ego illi totiens perperam gesta indulsi, ille tamen sui non obliviscatur, qui canos paternos deducit cum dolore ad mortem et in talibus communis patris Dei precepta minasque contemsit.’ ” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 301. 127. Cf. the direct association in later medieval thought, borrowing from Augustine, between miseria and the general human (as opposed to angelic) condition: Edith Scholl, “Mercy Within Mercy: Misericordia and Miseria,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 42, no. 1 (2007). 128. E.g., Einhard, Vita Karoli magni 18–19, 22, 27. 129. E.g., Thegan, Gesta Hludowici imperatoris 42. Cf. Booker, Past Convictions, 31. 130. Booker discusses how authors after the ninth century would draw extensively on the Astronomer’s account for precisely its emotive narration. See Booker, Past Convictions, 56, 84–85. 131. For further discussion of this trope in Carolingian political literature, see Matthew Innes, “ ‘He Never Even Allowed His White Teeth to Be Bared with Laughter’: The Politics of Humour in the Carolingian Renaissance,” in Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Guy Halsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 132. Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 64, 552: “Instante autem migrationis eius articulo, iunctis pollice cum articulis—​­hoc enim facere consueverat, si quando fratrem nutu vocabat—​­Drogonem accersibat. Quo veniente et reliquis sacerdotibus, verbis quibus potuit et nutibus semet commendait benedici petivit, et que solent agi in egressu animae fieri postulavit. Quibus id agentibus, sicut plures michi retulerunt, conversa aciae in sinstram partem, indignando quodammodo, virtute quant potuit bis dixit: ‘Huz! Huz!’, quod significat foras. Unde patet, quia malignum spiritum vidit, cuius sotietatem nec vivus nec moriens habere voluit. At vero elevatis ad celum oculis, quanto hac minatius intuebatur, tanto illac letius intendebat, ita ut nichil a ridente differre videretur. In talibus ergo vite praesentis terminum sortitus, ad requiem feliciter, ut credimus, commigravit, quia veraciter dictum est a veridico doctore: ‘Non potest male mori, qui bene vixerit.’ ” Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 302. Cf. Thegan, Gesta Hludowici imperatoris 19. Although I strongly favor an onomatopoetic reading of “Huz!” for an alternate interpretation, see Patrick Geary, “Huz, Huz: Did the Devil Speak German?” in Sprache und Identität im frühen Mittelalter, ed. Walter Pohl and Bernhard Zeller, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 20 (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2012). 133. Trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 302. The provenance of these words, which is Augustine, De disciplina Christiana 12:13, has been specified only recently by Tremp. Cf. Cabaniss, Son of Charlemagne, 176. 134. Hans-​­Werner Goetz questions whether the Astronomer’s text should properly be

202  Notes to Pages 94–96 labeled a mirror for princes, although he strongly asserts that the text was “intended to be an admonition, being written at a time when the Frankish Empire was greatly afflicted by the wars and conflicts between the Emperor’s sons (and many references to later events, given in a preview, allude to these afflictions).” See Hans-​­Werner Goetz, “The Perception of ‘Power’ and ‘State’ in the Early Middle Ages: The Case of the Astronomer’s ‘Life of Louis the Pious,’ ” in Representations of Power in Medieval Germany, 800–1500, ed. Björn Weiler and Simon MacLean (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 25. 135. For extended discussion, see Costambeys, Innes, and MacLean, The Carolingian World, 388–427. 136. Janet L. Nelson, Charles the Bald (London: Longman, 1992), 149–150. 137. Gillingham, “Fontenoy and After,” 246. 138. Goldberg, Struggle for Empire, 234–262; Nelson, Charles the Bald, 180–196. 139. Sedulius Scottus, Liber de rectoribus christianis, ed. Siegmund Hellman, Sedulius Scottus, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters 1/1 (Munich: Beck, 1906), 1–91. 140. Sedulius Scottus, Liber de rectoribus christianis 9, 46: “Septem speciosiora sunt aliis creaturis Dei, ut sapientes ferunt, coelum innubiale quando argenteo colori mirabili similitudine comparatur; sol in virtute sua, quando reciprocis cursibus in splendore gloriae suae habitatores mundi illuminat; luna in integritate nudataque facie nubibus recedentibus, quando proprio cursu solis vestigia investigat; ager fructuosus, quando diversis floribus nodisque crispantibus depingitur; varietas maris, quando serenitas coeli nubiumque placidis fluctibus in littoribus pulcherrime ostenditur; chorus justorum in una fide habitantium; rex pacificus in gloria regni sui, quando in aula regia ostensis muneribus donisque traditis multa beneficia praestat.” 141. Ibid., 47: “Fructus autem pacificae mentis est, erga subjectos et amicos benignam ostendere misericordiam simul et clementiam, quibus virtutibus tam pius regnator quam ejus regnum gloriose conservatur; testante Salomone, qui ait: Misericordia et veritas custodiunt regem, et roborabitur clementia thronus ejus. Non enim quidquam est quod bonum rectorem melius populo favorabilem atque amabilem commendet, quam clementia et pacifica serenitas.” 142. Ibid.: “Haec, ut alios causa brevitatis omittam, Augustum Caesarem fecit celeberrimum; haec Antoninos, magnum quoque Constantinum, Theodosios caeterosque magnificos principes sublimiter beatificavit. Eadem quoque magnum Carolum inter caetera virtutum insignia in sacratissimum prae caeteris terrarum principibus Augustum dedicavit. Haec Ludovicum piissimum adordinavit imperatorem.” 143. Hincmar of Reims, De cavendis vitiis et virtutibus exercendis, ed. Doris Nachtmann, MGH QQ zur Geistesgesch. 16 (Munich: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1998), 99–268; see also Jean Devisse, Hincmar, Archévêque de Reims 845–882, vol. 2, Travaux d’histoire éthico-​ ­ olitique 29 (Geneva: Librarie Droz, 1977), 680–687. Hincmar of Reims, De regis persona et regio p ministerio, PL 125, cols. 833–856. For the latter, see also Anton, Fürstenspiegel des frühen und hohen Mittelalters, 710–717; Devisse, Hincmar, 286–287. 144. Hincmar of Reims, De cavendis vitiis 2.2, 177–179. 145. Hincmar of Reims, De regis persona 9, col. 841: “Non peccasse eos qui Deo auctore bella gesserunt” and ibid. 10, col. 841: “qui bella tractant, et sub armis militant, Deo non displiceant.” Soldiers who kill out of obedience to their lords do not sin either; see ibid.: “Militem potestati sub qua est obedientem non peccare si hominem occidat.” Cf. Nees, A Tainted Mantle, 209–212. 146. Hincmar of Reims, De regis persona 18, col. 845: “Quia etiam disciplinam exercendo in improbos et perversos, non odii sui rancore, vel vindictae suae livore, sed amore justitiae et divinae vindictae Christo serviat.”

Notes to Pages 96–101  203 147. Ibid. 19, col. 846: “Item de discretione in habenda misericordia, Ambrosius in expositione psalmi centesimi decimi octavi: ‘Est justa misericordia, et est etiam injusta misericordia.’ ” My translation. 148. Ibid. 20, col. 847: “Cui ergo licite ignoscere liceat principi vel judici, sub justo et misericordi judice, qui convertenti et poenitenti ignoscit, beatus Gregorius in homilia Evangelii demonstrat”; ibid. 24, col. 850: “Quod occidere hominem non semper criminosum sit, sed malitia non legibus occidere criminosum sit, quia non factum in talibus, quoniam interdum et recte fit, sed animus male consulens damnetur, Augustinus in libro de Civitate Dei demonstrat.” 149. Ibid. 31, col. 855: “Qui autem de maximis et publicis criminibus ex corde se non humiliat, sed ad excusandas excusationes in peccatis, peccata sua defendere curat, huic non impendenda est misericordia, quia praestari nullatenus praevalet indulgentia.” 150. Also fascinating to consider is the extent to which it may have shaped his dealings with Gottschalk of Orbais, discussed in the next chapter. 151. Janet L. Nelson, “Violence in the Carolingian World and the Ritualization of Ninth-​ C ­ entury Warfare,” in Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West, ed. Guy Halsall (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998), 90–107. 152. Gillingham, “Fontenoy and After,” 255. 153. Rachel Stone, “The Rise and Fall of the Carolingian Elite,” in La culture du haut Moyen Âge: une question d’élites? ed. François Bougard, Régine Le Jan, and Rosamond McKitterick, Haut Moyen Âge 7 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 363–375. Cf. also Stone, Morality and Masculinity, 42. 154. Paul Kershaw, Peaceful Kings: Peace, Power, and the Early Medieval Political Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 174–213; Booker, Past Convictions, especially 214; Jong, The Penitential State, especially 260–264; Donald A. Bullough, “Was There a Carolingian Anti-​ ­War Movement?” Early Medieval Europe 12, no. 4 (2003); Mayke de Jong, “Power and Humility in Carolingian Society: The Public Penance of Louis the Pious,” 1 (1992): 29–52, especially 49– 50; Roger Bonnaud Delamare, L’idée de paix à l’époque carolingienne (Paris: F. Loviton et Cie, 1939).

Chapter 4 1. Janet L. Nelson, “The Search for Peace in a Time of War: The Carolingian Brüderkrieg, 840–843,” in Träger und Instrumentarien des Friedens im hohen und späten Mittelalter, ed. Johannes Fried, Vorträge und Forschungen 43 (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1996), 98. 2. For full bibliographic reference, see Introduction, note to epigraph. 3. For Dhuoda’s personal history, see also Patricia Ranft, Women in Western Intellectual Culture, 600–1500 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 13–23; Clella I. Jaffe, “Dhuoda’s ‘Handbook for William’ and the Mother’s Manual Tradition,” in Listening to Their Voices: The Rhetorical Activities of Historical Women, ed. Molly Wertheimer (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997), 177–198; Marie Anne Mayeski, Dhuoda: Ninth Century Mother and Theologian (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 1995); Carol Neel, Dhuoda, Handbook for William: A Carolingian Woman’s Counsel for Her Son, trans. Carol Neel (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), xviii–xxii; Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua to Marguerite Porete (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 36–54; Pierre Riché, Dhuoda. Manual pour mon fils, ed. Pierre Riché, trans. Bernard de Vregille,

204  Notes to Pages 101–103 SC 225 bis (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1975). For the identity of Dhuoda’s youngest son as Bernard Plantevelue, see Garver, Women and Aristocratic Culture, 153; Nelson, Charles the Bald, 211–212; Constance B. Bouchard, “Family Structure and Family Consciousness Among the Aristocracy in the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries,” Francia: Forschungen zur westeuropäischen Geschichte 14 (1986): 641–644, 651–658. 4. For women’s roles in moral teaching, see especially Garver, Women and Aristocratic Culture, 152–153. 5. E.g., Savigni, “Les laïcs dans l’ecclésiologie carolingienne,” 80–85. See also Anne C. McGuire, “Liturgy and Laity in the Ninth Century,” Ecclesia orans 13, no. 3 (1996). 6. Neel, Dhuoda, Handbook for William, xviii–xxii. 7. Dhuoda, Liber Manualis 3.1–2. While I disagree with their assessment, Rafaele Savigni and others have read Dhuoda’s patent concern for secular matters in her text as an effort to put forth a new ideal for lay Christian life, different from the lay mirrors written by clerics and more suited to secular purposes; Savigni, “Les laïcs dans l’ecclésiologie carolingienne,” 62–63. Her admonitions, repeated throughout her text, about correct public service and the necessity of loyalty to father and family at all cost have also received much scholarly attention; see especially Martin A. Claussen, “Fathers of Power and Mothers of Authority: Dhuoda and the Liber Manualis,” French Historical Studies 19, no. 3 (1996). 8. Dhuoda, Liber Manualis 3.9, 106–108: “Optimates ducum et consiliarios illorum, suisque similibus fideliter servientes, totum in partes, et partes per totum quisquis ille est vel sunt fulgentes in aula, ama, dilige et servi frequenter. Exempla dignitatum illorum perquire humiliter, et tene firmissime.” 9. Ibid. 3.11, 116–120: “Venerandi sunt sacerdotes, fili, pro eo quod in sorte ministerio Dei sunt electi, quia propeccatis nostris intercessores existunt, sacrum tenentes ordinem. Tu ergo in tota anima tua time Deum et sacerdotes illius honorifica dilige, venerare eos. . . . ​Ipsi sunt in exemplo Apostolorum, ligantes et solventes, ‘peccata populi comedentes’; Deo proximi et viciniores assistunt.” 10. Ibid. 3.5–6. 11. Ibid. 3.9, 108: “In domo etenim magna, ut est illa, fuitque, et erit, si iusserit pius, collationes conferuntur multae. Unus ibi ab alio potest, si vult, discere humilitatem, karitatem, castitatem, patientiam, mansuetudinem, modestiam, sobrietatem, astutiam, ceterasque cum studio operis boni virtutes.” My translation. Cf. Alcuin on swords in court; Mary Alberi, “ ‘The Sword Which You Hold in Your Hand’: Alcuin’s Exegesis of the Two Swords and the Lay Miles Christi,” in The Study of the Bible in the Carolingian Era, ed. Celia Chazelle and Burton Van Name Edwards (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003). 12. Dhuoda, Liber Manualis 3.11, 120: “Et si tot et tantis nominibus atque virtutibus pollent ut talis illorum in saeculo fulciatur dignitas, ortor te ut eis qui digni sunt, in quantum vales, honorem impende. Illos etenim qui meritis in sacris non aequantur antis, hos si conspexeris, noli temere iudicare, eorumque vitam, ut faciunt multi, reprehendere in omnibus orresce. Considera David: cum ora chlamydis ex vestimento abscideret Sauli poenituit se, etc. Non sunt a nobis reprehendendi, fili.” 13. Ibid. 3.10, 110: “Scriptum est in brevi: ‘Omnis spiritus laudet Dominum.’ Ipse humani generis amator, et magnis et minimis secundum qualitatis mensuram suam, ut vult, non denegat pro meritis beneficia largiri.” 14. Ibid. 1.5, 64: “Usus locutionis nostrae in saeculo talis est, ut cuiuslibet rem in nostrum vertamur potestatem, cum non sit ita.” 15. Ibid. 1.1, 58: “Diligendus est Deus atque laudandus, non solum a supernis virtutibus,

Notes to Pages 103–104  205 sed etiam ab omni humana creatura quae gradiuntur per terram et ad superos tendunt. Inter quos adoror te, fili, ut, in quantum vales, illa semper perquiras ubi cum dignis et antis Deumque diligentibus, ad certum possis scandere culmen, atque una cum illis ad regnum valeas pertingere sine fine mansuram.” 16. Ibid. 3.10, 112: “Ama omnes ut ameris ab omnibus, dilige ut diligaris. Si tu omnes, omnes te; sit tu singulariter, illi pluraliter.” My translation. 17. Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia 8.14, ed. Roderich König and Gerhard Winkler, Naturkunde, Buch 8, Zoologie: Landtiere (Kempten: Heimeran Verlag, 1976). 18. Dhuoda, Liber Manualis 3.10, 112: “Tu ergo, fili Wilhelme, dilige et agnosce a quo vel a quibus agnosci cupis; ama, venera, collige et honora omnes, ut ab omnibus vicissitudinis retributionem cum honoris pensum merearis acipere. Nam quidam doctor de similitudine animalis mutis ob aedificationis exemplo, magnum et lucidissimum in brevi transcurrit sermonem. Dicit enim in XL primo psalmo: ‘Sicut ceruus, etc.’ Cerui hanc habent consuetudinis morem, ut, cum pluraliter mari spatiosa maritimis undarum gurgitis flumina transuehi coeperint, unus post unum caput cum cornibus super dorsa compare suo colla submittant, ut paululum quiescentes facilius amnem possint transcurrere voloces. Est in illis talis intellectus et talis aequa discretio, ut, cum priorem senserint adgravari, mutant primum posteriorem, et extremum, ad ceteros sublevandum vel refocilandum, eligunt primum; sicque in singulis versa vice mutantes, talis per singula in illis transcurrit compassio dilectionis fraterna: hoc semper caventes ut caput cum cornibus, ne in amnis mergantur profundis, super ostendi et anefari satagunt. Qualis hic sensus volvatur, non latet a doctis. Cuncta illis patent ad visum promptissime. Nam in subportationem, vel vicissitudinis mutationem, dilectionem tam in maioribus quam in minoribus per compassionis fraternitatem omnimodis per cuncta in generi humano ostendit esse tenendam.” My translation. 19. Ibid. 4.1, 126: “Contrariis etenim contraria sunt opponenda medicamina”; 4.2, 130: “Si tibi aliquando vitia surrexerint, quod absit, obpone, ut praedictum est, contrariis contraria.” 20. Ibid. 4.4–8. Cf. Mayeski, Dhuoda: Ninth Century Mother, 93–116; Marie Anne Mayeski, “The Beatitudes and the Moral Life of the Christian: Practical Theology and Biblical Exegesis in Dhuoda of Septimania,” Mystics Quarterly 18, no. 1 (1992): especially 10–15. 21. Dhuoda, Liber Manualis 4.4, 134: “et volo ut talem te inter comilitones temporaliter servientium satagere studeas, qualiter in finem, cum famulis et militibus Christi, non sequestrate sed pluraliter militando, liber cum liberis merearis iungi in regnum sine fine mansurum.” My translation. Cf. ibid. 1.1. 22. Ibid. 4.4, 134: “Quod si ita, ut supra, pervigil certaveris, non solum ex donis septiformem gratiae Sancti Spiritus infusionem mereberis conditus esse, verum etiam in octo beatitudinibus dignitatem, per contemplationem operis boni, fiducialiter proximare unquam valebis, in quas virtutes et dona volo ut vigeas semper.” 23. Ibid. 4.4, 136: “Si in prosperis atque in adversis recto gradieris tramite, eo tamen tenore ut nec in adversis deiciaris, nec in prosperis unquam mens elevetur tua, consilium perquirendo Domini, ut tibi in utrumque negotii pensum adiutorium dignetur parare, tunc requiescat super te spiritus consilii.” 24. Ibid.: “Si compassionem erga proximos habueris fraternam, et hospitalium sectator, pauperumque et moerentium consolator assiduus fueris, habebis spiritum pietatis.” 25. Ibid. 4.5, 222: “Iam ex origine, temeritatis superbiae atque tumorem elationis in mansuetudinis pensum vertendo, magnam digessimus ordinem. Nunc, auxiliante gratia Sancti Spiritus triformem, ad cetera quae secuntur, quasi sagitam contra sagitam, bitia morum emendando, fortem in undis undique obponamus murum”; cf. 4.7, 234: “Multi namque iram refrenantes

206  Notes to Pages 104–107 suam et mitissime inter plures concordiam mittentes, Deum, per fidem et mentis puritatem, placuisse probantur. Magne etenim est patientibus virtus adtributa.” 26. Ibid. 4.4–8, 148: “Si mitis atque exsulcator operis boni fueris, cum honestate semper incedens, mereberis iungi cum illis quos Dominus magnam concedens haereditatem laudandis affectibus dicit: Beati mitis, quoniam ipsi haereditabunt terram,” citing Mt 5:4. My translation. Cf. the relevant discussions in Valerie L. Garver, “The Influence of Monastic Ideals upon Carolingian Conceptions of Childhood,” in Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: The Results of a Paradigm Shift in the History of Mentality, ed. Albrecht Classen (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), 67–86; Martin A. Claussen, “God and Man in Dhuoda’s Liber manualis,” Studies in Church History 27 (1990): 43–52. 27. See Introduction, note 2. 28. For “cultural trauma,” see especially Ron Eyerman, Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 1–22. I plan one day to write more extensively on this subject with regard to the Carolingian Brüderkrieg. 29. Trans. and quoted in David Ganz, “The Debate on Predestination,” in Charles the Bald: Court and Kingdom, 2nd ed., ed. Margaret T. Gibson and Janet L. Nelson (Aldershot: Variorum, 1990), 284. 30. Florus of Lyon, Carmen 28, ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH Poetae 2 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1884), 559–564. For this text, I quote, with minor emendation, the translation by Peter Godman, Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 265–273. 31. According to Peter Godman, the lamentation genre had first been revived and recast in this Carolingian voice by Alcuin of York and members of his circle: Godman, Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, 50–51. 32. Florus of Lyon, Carmen 28, 560.5–8: “Hunc elementa sibi sumant conpuncta dolorem/ . . . ​hominum quia corda rigescunt.” 33. Ibid., 560.15–16: “Divinae iam legis amor terrorque recessit,/ Et scita iam canonum cunctorum calce teruntur.” 34. Ibid., 560.21–28: “Continuis praedis plebes miseranda laborat,/ Nobilitas discors in mutua funera sevit;/ Sanguine terra madet, fervescunt cuncta rapinis,/ Et rabies scelerum ruptis discurrit habenis./ Flagrat adulterium, periuria nulla timentur,/ Funditur innocuus nullo iam vindice sanguis,/ Iam regum legumque metus mortalia liquit,/ Tartareum clausis oculis iamque itur ad ignem.” 35. Ibid., 560.29–32: ”Quis digne expediat monachorum septa revulsa,/ Sacratas domini famulas laycale subisse/ Infami ditione iugum, rectoribus ipsis/ Ecclesiae armorum impositum caedisque periclum?” 36. Ibid., 561.41–44: “Floruit egregrium claro diademate regnum,/ Princeps unus erat, populus quoque subditus unus,/ Lex simul et iudex totas ornaverat urbes,/ Pax cives tenuit, virtus exterruit hostes.” 37. Ibid., 561.69–76: “At nunc tantus apex, tanto de culmine lapsus,/ Florea ceu quondam capiti deiecta corona,/ Quam varius texit redolenti gramine fulgor,/ Cunctorum teritur pedibus diademate nudus./ Perdidit imperii pariter nomenque decusque,/ Et regnum unitum concidit sorte triformi,/ Induperator ibi prorsus iam nemo putatur,/ Pro rege est regulus, pro regno fragmina regni.” 38. Ibid., 563.129–130: “Vocem evangelicam divino ex ore tonantem/ Quis non iam videat doleatque instare piorum?” 39. Ibid., 563.131–136: “Filius en hominis veniens ex arce polorum/ Invenietne, putas, fidei

Notes to Pages 108–111  207 vestigia terris?/ Cordibus humanis latebrosa foramina vulpes/ Inmundae et caeli nidos fecere volucres,/ Fraus haec atque tumor diri late obtinet hostis,/ Nec locus est Christo, quo vel caput ille reclinet.” 40. Ibid., 563.137–138: “Haec inter gemat et fidat grex ille pusillus,/ Cui pater aeterni conservat gaudia regni.” 41. Ibid., 563.139–140: “Deducatque oculis lacrimas noctuque dieque/ Ac precibus vitae pulsans ad limina perstet.” 42. Ibid., 564.149–152: “Nam pius ille pater, qui fons bonitatis habetur,/ Ut sol sponte micat seu fons uberrime manat,/ Utque ultro placidus rorat de nubibus ymber,/ Sic bona cuncta suis prono dat numine natis.” 43. Ibid., 564.157–160: “O domine omnipotens, da nobis mente videre,/ Tot mala, tot clades et tot lacrimanda pericla,/ Da gemere et toto fac nos ea corde dolere,/ Assiduisque tuum precibus deposcere numen.” 44. Ibid., 564.165–167: “Tu nos, sancte pater, hic verbere caede paterno,/ Tu virga baculoque tuo nos corripe, firma;/ Omne malum mundi fiat purgatio nostri.” 45. Ibid., 564.168–172: “Qui te semper amant, omni discrimine crescant,/ Quatinus erepti pelagi de fluctibus atris/ Teque gubernante iam portum pacis adepti/ Carpamus dulcem tristi de semine frugem/ Perpetuaque tuos recinamus laude triumphos!” 46. Angelbert, Versus de bella quae fuit acta Fontaneto, ed. Ernst Müller, MGH SS rer. Germ. 44 (Hanover: Hahn, 1907), 51–53. For this text, I quote, with minor emendation, the translation by Godman, Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, 263–265. 47. Ibid. 1–2, 52: “Aurora cum primo mane tetram noctem dividens,/ sabbatum non illud fuit, sed Saturni dolium,/ de fraterna rupta pace gaudet demon impius./ Bella clamant, hinc et inde pugna gravis oritur,/ frater fratri mortem parat, nepoti avunculus,/ filius nec patri suo exhibet quod meruit.” 48. Ibid. 3, 52: “Fracta est lex christianorum sanguinis proluvio,/ unde manus inferorum gaudet, gula Cerberi.” 49. Ibid. 4, 52: “Dextera prepotens Dei protexit Hlotharium,/ victor ille manu sua pugnavitque fortiter;/ ceteri si sic pugnassent, mox foret concordia.” 50. Ibid. 5, 52: “Ecce olim velut Iudas salvatorem tradidit,/ sic te, rex, tuique duces tradiderunt gladio:/ esto cautus, ne frauderis agnus lupo previo.” 51. Ibid. 6–7, 52: “Fontaneto fontem dicunt, villam quoque rustici,/ ubi strages et ruina, Francorum de sanguine/ orrent campi, orrent silvae, orrent ipsi paludes.// Gramen illud ros nec ymber nec humectet pluvia,/ in quo fortes ceciderunt, proelio doctissimi,/ pater, mater, soror, frater, quos amici fleverant.” 52. Ibid. 8, 53: “Hoc autem scelus peractum, quod descripsi ritmice,/ Angelbertus ego vidi pugnansque cum aliis,/ solus de multis remansi prima frontis acie.” 53. Ibid. 9, 53: “Ima vallis retrospexi verticemque iugeri,/ bi suos inimicos rex fortis Hlotharius/ expugnabat fugientes usque foras rivuli.” 54. Ibid. 10, 53: “Karoli de parte vero, Hludovici pariter/ albescebant campi vestes mortuorum lineas,/ velut solent in autumno albescere avibus.” 55. Ibid. 11, 53: “Laude pugna non est digna nec canatur melode,/ oriens, meridianus, occidens et aquilo/ plangant illos qui fuerunt illic casu mortui.” 56. Ibid. 12, 53: “Maledicta dies illa nec in anni circulo/ numeretur, sed radatur ab omni memoria,/ iubar solis illi desit, aurora crepusculo.” 57. Ibid. 13–14, 53: “Nox et sequens dies illam—​­noxque dura nimium—​­/ Nox illaque planctum mixta et dolore pariter,/ hic obit et ille gemit cum in gravi peniuria.// O luctum atque

208  Notes to Pages 111–114 lamentum! nudati sunt mortui;/ horum carnes vultur, corvus, lupus vorant acriter,/ orrent, carent sepulturis, vane iacet cadaver.” I follow manuscript P for these lines. 58. Ibid. 15, 53: “Ploratum et ululatum nec describo amplius: unusquisque, quantum potest, restringatque lacrimas,/ pro illorum animabus deprecemur Dominum.” 59. Nithard, Historiarum libri IIII, ed. and trans. Philippe Lauer and Sophie Glansdorff, Nithard: Histoire des fils de Louis le Pieux, Les classiques de l’histoire au Moyen Âge 51 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2012). For the historical Nithard, see especially Karl Leyser, “Three Historians,” in Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: The Carolingian and Ottonian Centuries, ed. Karl Leyser and Timothy Reuter (London: Hambledon, 1994), 19–26; Janet L. Nelson, “Public Histories and Private History in the Work of Nithard,” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 60, no. 2 (1985). 60. See, for example, Bernhard Walter Scholz and Barbara Rogers, eds., Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, trans. Bernhard Walter Scholz and Barbara Rogers (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), 29–30. Cf. also Janet L. Nelson, “History-​­Writing at the Courts of Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald,” in Rulers and Ruling Families in Early Medieval Europe: Alfred, Charles the Bald, and Others, ed. Janet L. Nelson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 437–440. 61. For a different argument about Nithard and Dhuoda’s separate worldviews and conceptions of masculinity than the one I present here, see Meg Leja, “The Making of Men, Not Masters: Right Order and Lay Masculinity According to Dhuoda and Nithard,” Comitatus 39 (2008). 62. Nithard, Historiarum libri IIII 2.8 and 3.3. 63. Nelson, “Public Histories and Private History,” especially 253–255. 64. Janet L. Nelson, “Ninth-​­Century Knighthood: The Evidence of Nithard,” in The Frankish World, 750–900 (London: Hambledon, 1996); Nelson, “On the Limits of the Carolingian Renaissance,” 57. Cf. Introduction. 65. The phrase appears at 1.1, 2.5, 4.6, and 4.7, in addition to numerous positive references to the attentive service of the res publica. See Philippe Depreux, “Nithard e la res publica: Un regard critique sur le règne de Louis le Pieux,” Médiévales 22–23 (1992). For the “common good” in relation to the medieval world, with discussion of its relation to classical thought and full bibliography, see M. S. Kempshall, The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Thought: Moral Goodness and Material Benefit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), especially 1–75. 66. Nithard, Historiarum libri IIII 1.3, 12: “Res autem publica, quoniam quisque cupiditate illectus sua querebat, cotidie deterius ibat.” Trans. Scholz and Rogers, 131. 67. Nithard, Historiarum libri IIII 1.3, 12: “Quamobrem tam monachi, quos supra memoravimus, quam et ceteri, qui quod factum fuerat dolebant, illum percontari ceperunt, si res publica eidem restitueretur, an eam pro viribus erigere ac fovere vellet maximeque cultum divinum, quo omnis ordo tuetur ac regitur.” Trans. Scholz and Rogers, 131. 68. Nithard, Historiarum libri IIII 1.4, 18–20: “Nam Pippinus et Lodhuwicus, videntes quod Lodharius universum imperium sibi vindicare illosque deteriores efficere vellet, graviter ferebant. Insuper autem, dum Huc, Lambertus atque Mathfridus quis illorum secundus post Lodharium in imperio haberetur ambigerent, dissedere ceperunt et, quoniam quisque eorum propria querebat, rem publicam penitus neglegebant. Quod quidem populus cernens, molestus erat.” Trans. Scholz and Rogers, 134. 69. Nithard, Historiarum libri IIII 2.2, 48: “Insuper etiam quicquid actenus in illum deliquerat pollicitus est se ex corde remittere, deprecatus ne amplius suos sollicitet, ne regnum sibi a Deo commissum perturbet. Cederent undique paci atque concordie, et hoc se sua suorumque ex parte ratum videre ac per hoc conservare velle mandavit.” Trans. Scholz and Rogers, 143.

Notes to Pages 115–116  209 70. Nithard, Historiarum libri IIII 2.5, 62–64: “Ergo participes secretorum convocat, rem omnibus notam replicat ac quemammodum a tanta calamitate congruentius se suosque exui posse existimarent ut aperiretur deposcit; seque in omnibus publice utilitati et parere velle, insuper etiam, si oporteret, pro ea mortem subire minime differre fatetur. Quibus cum undique vires crevisse viderentur, reminiscentes insidiarum quas Lodharius temporibus patris sui patri et Karolo inferre studuerat, quas etiam post obitum patris fratribus suis absque remedio struebat—​ ­occurrebant insuper sacramenta, que tunc nuper fefellerat,—​­aiebant se omnem justiciam ab eo libenter consequi velle, sed his inditiis nil boni sperare posse; idcirco sibi undique consultum videri, quocumque modo posset, ad condictum placitum venire minime differret; quod si frater suus, uti promiserat, communem utilitatem querere ac statuere vellet, hoc omnibus notis placere et, ut gratanter reciperetur, congruum esse; sin aliter, fretus justicia ac per hoc auxilio divino suorumque fidelium et, quicquid regni pater suus amborumque fidelium consensu illi dederat, obtinere omni virtute non neglegat.” Trans. Scholz and Rogers, 146–147. 71. Nithard, Historiarum libri IIII 3.1, 90: “Et quidam, ira correpti, persequi hostes suadebant; quidam autem, et maxime reges, miserantes fratris plebisque, et ut, judicio Dei et hac plaga repressi, ab iniqua cupiditate resipiscerent et Deo donante deinceps unanimes in vera justicia devenirent, piis visceribus solito more optabant; in quo negotio Dei omnipotentis misericordia ut prestolaretur suadebant.” My translation. See Chapter 1. 72. Nithard, Historiarum libri IIII 3.1, 90: “Fuit quidem ingens numerus praedae et ingens cedes et insuper ammirabilis, immo et merito notabilis misericordia tam regum quam et universorum. Nam diversis pro rebus diem dominicum inibi acturos se deliberarunt, in quo, missa peracta, amicos et inimicos, fideles et infideles pariter sepulture tradebant, plaga correptos ac semivivos eodem modo pro viribus ex animo refovebant. Post hos qui fuga evaserant miserunt, offerentes, si reverti sana fide vellent, omnia delicta remitti.” Trans. Scholz and Rogers, 155–156. 73. Ibid. 3.1, 92: “et hoc Dei juditio manifestum effectum sit ac per hoc immunis omnis Dei minister in hoc negotio haberi, tam suasor quam et effector, deberetur.” 74. Ibid.: “at quicumque, consciens sibi, aut ira aut odio aut vana gloria aut certe quolibet vitio, quiddam in hac expeditione suasit vel gessit, esset vere confessus secrete secreti delicti et secundum modum culpae dijudicaretur. Verumtamen in veneratione ac laude tante declarationis justiciae; pro remissione delictorum mortuorum fratrum suorum (in eo quod inperfecti, peccatis intervenientibus, se noverant, ut in multis volentes nolentesque delinquebant) ut suo adjutorio ab his exuti liberarentur, insuper autem, uti actenus in justicia adjutor et protector illis Deus extitit, ita ut deinceps ubique existeret, proque his omnibus triduanum jejunium inventum immoque libenter ac celebre celebratum est.” Trans. Scholz and Rogers, 156. 75. Stuart Airlie, “The World, the Text, and the Carolingian: Royal, Aristocratic, and Masculine Identities in Nithard’s Histories,” in Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World, ed. Janet Nelson and Patrick Wormald (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 76. Nithard, Historiarum libri IIII 4.7, 156: “Hic quique colligat, qua dementia utilitatem publicam neglegat, privatis ac propriis voluntatibus insaniat, dum ex utrisque creatorem adeo offendat, ut etiam omnia elementa ejus vesanie contraria reddat.” Trans. Scholz and Rogers, 174. 77. Nithard, Historiarum libri IIII 4.7, 156: “Nam temporibus bone recordationis Magni Karoli, qui evoluto jam pene anno XXX decessit, quoniam hic populus unam eandemque rectam ac per hoc viam Domini publicam incedebat, pax illis atque concordia ubique erat, at nunc econtra, quoniam quique semitam quam cupit incedit, ubique dissensiones et rixae sunt manifestae.” My translation. 78. Ibid. 4.7, 158: “Per idem tempus eclypsis lunae XIII kal. aprilis contigit; nix insuper multa eadem nocte cecidit meroremque omnibus, uti praefatum est, justo Dei juditio incussit.

210  Notes to Pages 117–119 Id propterea inquam, quia hinc inde ubique rapine et omnigena mala sese inserebant, illinc aeris intemperies spem omnium bonorum eripiebat.” Trans. Scholz and Rogers, 156. 79. For Gottschalk’s life, see Matthew Bryan Gillis, Heresy and Dissent in the Carolingian Empire: The Case of Gottschalk of Orbais (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). For a second brief yet comprehensive narrative of Gottschalk’s life, see also Victor Genke’s introduction to Victor Genke and Francis X. Gumerlock, eds., Gottschalk and a Medieval Predestination Controversy: Texts Translated from the Latin (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2010), 7–63. 80. Hrabanus Maurus, Epistola 22 (to Noting), ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH Epp. 5 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1899), 428. 81. Annals of St Bertin, year 849, ed. Félix Grat, Jeanne Vielliard, and Suzanne Clémencet, Annales de Saint-​­Bertin (Paris: Klincksieck, 1964), 56–57: “Godesscalcus Gallus quidam, monasterii Orbacensis parroechiae Suessonicae monachus et presbyter, scientia tumidus, quibusdam superstitionibus deditus, Italiam specie religionis adgressus inde turpiter eiectus, Dalmatiam, Pannoniam Noreiamque adorsus.” 82. Hrabanus Maurus, Epistola 42 (to Eberhard), MGH Epp. 5, 481.27–32: “De cetero quoque, quia divulgatum in istis partibus constat quendam sciolum, nomine Gotescalcum, apud vos manere, qui dogmatizet, quod predestinatio Dei omnem hominem ita constringat, ut etiam, si quis velit salvus fieri, et pro hoc fide recta atque bonis operibus certet, ut ad vitam aeternam per Dei gratiam veniat, frustra et incassum laboret, si non est predestinatus ad vitam, quasi Deus predestinatione sua cogat hominem interire, qui auctor est salutis nostr[a]e, non perditionis.” Trans. Gumerlock, 166. 83. For further summary of Gottschalk’s theological views, see Genke and Gumerlock, Gottschalk and a Medieval Predestination Controversy, 54–61; Ganz, “The Debate on Predestination,” 288. 84. See Steffen Patzold, “Hraban, Gottschalk und der Traktat De oblatione puerorum,” in Raban Maur et son temps, ed. Philippe Depreux, Philippe Depreux, Stéphane Lebecq, Michel J.-​­L. Perrin, and Olivier Szerwiniack (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010); Mayke de Jong, In Samuel’s Image: Child Oblation in the Medieval West (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 73–99. See also, for her shrewd discussion of formal monastic and lay education during the Carolingian era, M. M. Hildebrandt, The External School in Carolingian Society, Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1992). 85. Hrabanus Maurus, Liber de oblatione puerorum, PL 107, cols. 419–440. 86. Ibid., cols. 434–435: “Sed quia sunt quidam qui monachicam vitam de testantes, constitutionibus sanctae Regulae contradicunt, despicientesque eam, murmurando invicem susurrant, quod superflua sit sanctio regularis, et non necessaria; magisque humanae fictioni, quam auctoritati divinae eam inniti: primum, secundum eorum sensum qui, catholica veritate imbuti, de hujus ordinis initio et ratione plenissime scripserunt, ostendemus monasticam conversationem Deo auctore per sanctorum Patrum dicta vel facta institutam esse; dehinc subjungemus ex canone divino testimonia huic disciplinae convenientia: ut qui jam diutius huic errori deserviunt, saltem, patefacta in omnibus veritate superati, vana garrire erubescant. Itaque coenobitarum disciplina a tempore praedicationis apostolicae sumpsit exordium.” 87. Ibid., col. 435: “talis itaque erat tunc omnis Ecclesia, quales nunc perpaucos in coenobiis invenire difficile est. Sed cum apostolorum post excessum tepescere coepisset credentium multitudo, ea vel maxime, quae ad fidem Christi de alienigenis ac diversis gentibus confluebat, a quibus apostoli, prae ipsis fidei rudimentis et inveteratae gentilitatis consuetudine, nihil amplius expetebant, nisi ut ab ipsis immolatitiis idolorum, et fornicatione, et suffocatis, et sanguine tem-

Notes to Pages 119–122  211 perarent: atque ista libertas, quae gentibus propter infirmitatem primae credulitatis indulta est, etiam illius Ecclesiae perfectionem, quae Jerosolymis consistebat, paulatim contaminari coepisset, et crescente quotidie vel indigenarum numero, vel advenarum, primae illius fidei refrigesceret fervor; non solum hi qui ad fidem Christi confluxerant, verum etiam illi qui erant Ecclesiae principes, ab ipsa districtione laxati sunt; nonnulli aestimantes id quod videbant gentibus prae infirmitate concessum, sibi etiam licitum, nihil se detrimenti perpeti crediderunt, si cum substantiis ac facultatibus suis fidem Christi confessionemque sequerentur. Hi autem quibus apostolicus adhuc inerat fervor, memores illius pristinae perfectionis, discedentes a civitatibus suis, illorumque consortio, qui sibi vel Ecclesiae Dei remissioris vitae negligentiam esse credebant, multoties suburbanum ac secretioribus commanere, et ea quae ab apostolis per universum corpus Ecclesiae generaliter meminerant instituta, privatim ac peculiariter exercere coeperunt.” 88. Brown, The Body and Society, 359, 385, 397–398, 405–408. 89. A felicity of Augustine cited widely; see especially Kate Cooper and Conrad Leyser, “The Gender of Grace: Impotence, Servitude, and Manliness in the Fifth-​­Century West,” Gender and History 12 (2000): 543. Cf. Chapter 1 and Conrad Leyser, Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000). 90. Jerome, Adversus Vigilantium, ed. J. L. Feiertag, CCSL 79C (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005). 91. John Norman Davidson Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1998), 286–290. 92. Hrabanus Maurus, Liber de oblatione puerorum, col. 438. 93. Ibid., cols. 438–439: “Nec astu tuo ac studio monachi deterrendi sunt, arte linguae vipereae et morsu saevissimo; de quibus argumentaris et dicis: ‘Si omnes se recluserint, et fuerint in solitudine, quis celebrabit ecclesias, quis saeculares homines lucrifaciet, quis peccatores ad virtutes poterit coarctare? hoc enim modo, si omnes tecum fatui sunt, sapiens esse quis poterit?’ ” My translation. 94. Ibid., col. 439: “Clara est virtus, nec a pluribus appetitur, atque utinam omnes hoc essent quod pauci sunt, de quibus dicitur: ‘Multi vocati, pauci autem electi’; vacui essent carceres. Monachus autem non doctoris hujus, sed plangentis officium, qui vel se, vel mundum lugeat, et Domini pavidus praestoletur adventum; qui sciens imbecillitatem suam, et vas fragile quod portat, timet offendere, ne impingat et corruat ut frangatur.” 95. Ibid., col. 440. “Respondebis: Hoc non est pugnare, sed fugere; sta in acie: adversario armatus obsiste, ut postquam viceris, coroneris. Fateor imbecillitatem meam: nolo spe pugnam victoriae, ne perdam aliam victoriam; si fugero, gladium devitavi; si autem stetero, aut vincendum mihi est, aut cadendum. Quid autem necesse certa dimittere, et incerta sectari? aut scuto, aut pedibus meis vitanda est. Tu qui pugnas, et superari potes et vincere. Ego cum fugio, non vincor in eo quod fugio, sed ideo fugio ne vincar. Nulla securitas est serpente vicino dormire. Potest fieri ut me non mordeat, tamen potest fieri ut aliquando mordeat.” My translation. 96. Gillis argues, I think persuasively, that Gottschalk did not remain a monk but then becomes one again later in the 830s after being forcibly tonsured in between. See Gillis, Heresy and Dissent in the Carolingian Empire, 24–75. 97. Gottschalk of Orbais, De praedestinatione, ed. Lambot, 241–242: “Regnat enim carnalis cupiditas ubi non est dei caritas. Et ob id, ad benefaciendum ibi nulla est libertas ubi non est dei caritas.” My translation. Cf. ibid., 232: “Iam vero de dilectione quae deus est notissimum vobis est quod nisi nobis eam deus det, nullus illam habere potest, ac per hoc deus eam dat dicente apostolo: ‘Caritas dei diffusa est in cordibus nostris per spiritum sanctum qui datus est nobis’ (Rom 5:5)”; Gottschalk of Orbais, “Another Treatise on Predestination” 1, ed. Lambot, 338: “deus id est timor a nobis timetur proprie quoque nostri dominatur proprieque miseretur . . . ​licet ei

212  Notes to Pages 122–124 misericordia sit inpropria cui pietas et clementia probatur esse penitus propria, ob id enim est illi inpropria misericordia quia non est in eo quod absit immo nec ullatenus esse potest miseria.” 98. Gottschalk of Orbais, De praedestinatione, 233: “Verum est quidem quod sicut apostolus bonum certamen certavit cursum consummavit fidem servavit, sic et electi quique prout possunt bonum certamen certant cursum consummant fidem servant, sed . . . ​nihil propriis viribus arrogant sed fonti de quo fluunt id est gratiae dei qua sunt id quod sunt totum semper applicant et instanter adsignant”; Gottschalk of Orbais, “Answers to Various Questions,” ed. Lambot, 150–151: “Si quis autem post tot ac tanta seu talia testimonia reprobos liberum arbitrium ad bene faciendum habere immo vel habere posse dicit, hunc nimirum filius dei clarius luce et splendidius etiam sole convincit dum de spiritu sancto dicit: ‘Quem mundus non potest accipere.’ Ergo sic a sancto Augustino dicitur iure de reproborum arbitrio: ‘O malum arbitrium sine deo!’ Claret igitur sine scrupulo liquet sine ambiguo patet sine nubilo quod sicut id non habent reprobi ad bene sed ad male faciendum, sic prorsus illud non habent ad verum dicendum sed ad mentiendum.” 99. Gottschalk of Orbais, Confessio Godescalchi monachi damnati (Confessio brevior), ed. Lambot, 52. “Credo et confiteor deum omnipotentem et incommutabilem praescisse et praedestinasse angelos sanctos et homines electos ad vitam gratis aeternam, et ipsum diabolum caput omnium daemoniorum cum omnibus angelis suis apostaticis et cum ipsis quoque universis hominibus reprobis membris videlicet suis propter praescita certissime ipsorum propria futura mala merita praedestinasse pariter per iustissimum iudicium suum in mortem merito sempiternam.” Cf. Gottschalk of Orbais, De praedestinatione, 202: “Deus qui nescit et nequit errare fallive seu fallere nihil aliud umquam debuit debet debebit quod absit agere, nisi quemadmodum semel simul sempiternaliter praescitum praedestinatum praefixum praeparatum praefinitum praeordinatum super electos gratuitum gratiae suae beneficium superque reprobos iustum iustitiae suae iudicium.” 100. Hrabanus Maurus, Epistola 42 (to Eberhard), 481.32–35: “Et iam hinc multos in desperationem suimet h[a]ec secta perduxit, ita ut dicant: Quid mihi necesse est pro salute mea et vita aeterna laborare? quia si bonum fecero, et predestinatus ad vitam non sum, nihil mihi prodest; si autem malum egero, nihil mihi obest, quia predestinatio Dei me facit ad vitam aeternam pervenire. H[a]ec traditio multis in istis partibus scandalum est.” Trans. Gumerlock, 166. 101. Fragment 14 (reply to Hrabanus Maurus), ed. Lambot, 38: “Quia revera sicut electos omnes praedestinavit ad vitam per gratuitum solius gratiae suae beneficium quemadmodum veteris et novi testamenti paginae manifestissimum praebent sollerter ac sobrie considerantibus indicium sic omnino et reprobos quosque ad aeternae mortis praedestinavit supplicium per iustissimum videlicet incommutabilis iustitiae suae iudicium.” Trans. Gumerlock 66. 102. Hrabanus Maurus, Epistola VIII Synodalis (to Hincmar) PL 112, cols. 1575–1576: “dicens quod praedestinatio Dei, sicut in bono, sit ita et in malo: et tales sint in hoc mundo quidam, qui propter praedestinationem Dei, quae eos cogat in mortem ire, non possint ab errore et peccato se corrigere; quasi Deus eos fecisset ab initio incorrigibiles esse, et poenae obnoxios in interitum ire. Hanc ergo opinionem nuper in synodo apud Moguntiam habita ab eo audientes, et incorrigibilem eum reperientes, annuente atque jubente piissimo rege nostro Ludovico, decrevimus eum cum perniciosa sua doctrina damnatum mittere ad vos, quatenus eum recludatis in vestra parochia, unde primum inordinate recessit: et non sinatis eum amplius errorem docere, et seducere populum Christianum: quia jam multos, ut audivi, seductos habet, et minus devotos erga suam salutem, qui dicunt: Qui mihi proderit laborare in servitio Dei? quia si praedestinatus sum ad mortem, nunquam illam evadam; si autem male egero, et praedestinatus sum ad vitam, sine ulla dubitatione ad aeternam requiem vado.” Trans. Gumerlock, 167–168.

Notes to Pages 125–126  213 103. Amolo of Lyon, Epistola 2 (to Gottschalk), ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH Epp. 5 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1899), 374: “detestamur et horremus, quod ita exarsisti adversus eos, qui aeterno interitu sunt digni, ut dixeris eos tam irrevocabiliter et incommutabiliter perditioni esse praedestinatos sicut Deus ipse incommutabilis et inconvertibilis est. Et episcopos, ad quos scribis, quasi misericorditer adhortaris, ut hoc predicent populis, ut quia iam prefinitam dampnationem evadere non possunt, saltim aliquantulum Deo subplicent et humilientur, ut statutas eis vel modicum mitiget et leviget poenas. Obsecro, ubi haec unquam in scripturis sacris legisti, ubi in sanctis et catholicis aeclesi[a]e doctoribus invenisti?” Trans. Genke, 194. 104. For Carolingian concerns about orthodoxy and its management, see Thomas F. X. Noble, “Kings, Clergy, and Dogma: The Settlement of Doctrinal Disputes in the Carolingian World,” in Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, ed. Stephen Baxter, Catherine Karkov, Janet L. Nelson, and David Pelteret (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009). 105. See Genke and Gumerlock, Gottschalk and a Medieval Predestination Controversy, 43–45. 106. Hincmar of Reims, Epistola ad reclusos et simplices suae dioceseos, ed. Wilhelm Gundlach, “Zwei Schriften des Erzbischofs Hinkmar von Reims,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschte 10 (1889): 258–309. 107. Genke and Gumerlock, Gottschalk and a Medieval Predestination Controversy, 46–48. 108. Gottschalk of Orbais, Confessio prolixior, ed. Lambot, 67: “Tale est autem quod dicitur praedestinatio gemina in electos videlicet et reprobos bipartita, cum sit una licet sit dupla, quale est quod frequenter a beato Augustino et a ceteris patribus dicitur caritas vel dilectio gemina, cum utique non sint duae sed una licet propter deum et proximum sit etiam dupla.” Cf. also Gottschalk of Orbais, “Another Treatise on Predestination,” 339: “Praedestinatio dicitur gemina, ut nequaquam duae praedestinationes quod absit dicantur sed una, sicut caritatem geminam [dicunt] et unam.” 109. Gottschalk of Orbais, Confessio prolixior, 62: “Audiant haec generaliter universi quidem mendaces, sed illi tamen potissimum qui in doctrina religionis non modo non verentur aut verecundantur, verum etiam nullatenus cunctantur esse fallaces, quia profecto isto genere mendacii nullum gravius unquam valet inveniri, immo nullum reperitur tam grave, licet nonnullis esse videatur leve sive putetur etiam suave”; ibid., 70–71: “Nihil autem sunt falsitas et mendacium, quae profecto super omnia corporalium genera mortium vitant et cavent et horrent ut debent corda semper veracium. Maxime tamen in doctrina religionis evitant omni modo praecipitium falsidicae locutionis”; ibid., 72: “Haec inquam domine fac precor ut sicut oportet attendant appendant atque perpendant et tandem aliquando videant quod se hactenus non vidisse dissimulant, quale ac quantum malum de te semper incommutabili domino deo nostro in ecclesia tua longe atque mendaciter et exitialiter ad proprium suum suorumque simul interitum palam praedicaverint praedicent, asseveraverint asseverent, et precor et revoces eos miseranter ad viam veritatis ne in tam lethalis haereseos errore pertinaces perseverent.” 110. Ibid., 68: “Tantum siquidem amoris tibi domine Iesu veritas invicta perpetualiter debeo ut, quemadmodum ab Augustino perhibetur veraciter tuo, neque hominibus placendi studio neque respectu devitandorum quorumlibet incommodorum detorquear quod absit a vero.” Cf. ibid., 74: “quia profecto nimis ingentem patior dolorem et maximum die noctuque perfero moerorem quod propter mei nominis vilitatem vilem hominibus esse video veritatem et quod erga te sinceram, ut debuerant, non servant caritatem, qui ut tantummodo victores mei esse videantur nihil vel omnino perparum dilexerunt et diligunt te, quem negare non refugerunt neque refugiunt propter me.” 111. Ibid., 75: “Utinam haec domine legentibus et intelligentibus huiusmodi, sicut est opus,

214  Notes to Pages 126–134 inspirare digneris affectum ut exorent te suppliciter quo celeriter hoc animi mei desiderium meum, sicut indiget ecclesia tua, perducas ad effectum et si quidem te suffragante de cunctis inlaesus prodiero amplexentur veritatem et execrentur falsitatem.” 112. Ibid.: “Immo quisquis te timens vere diligensque sincere dignatur haec legere vel auditu percipere, imploret gratuitam misericordiam tuam fraterna compassione ac germana simul dilectione ut tu, qui solus es ‘adiutor in opportunitatibus in tribulatione’ (Ps 9:10) digneris instanter adiuvare me credentem scilicet ac sperantem in te tua gratuita miseratione ditesque me simul ad id et incipiendum et perficiendum integra fide corrobores quoque solida spe ac dones etiam sincerissima caritate atque gratis etiam decores verissima coram te semper humilitate.” 113. Ibid., 76: “Precor quantumcunque mihi datur divinitus humilitate coram trinae unitatis et unius trinitatis praesentissima maiestate, ut quisquis haec non livore corvino sed amore potius columbino legeris Gotteschalci peccatoris ante deum memineris et paterno sive fraterno affectu simpliciter implores benignissimam ipsius clementiam ut dignetur mihi gratuita pietate largiri verae semper et ubique coram se humilitatis excellentiam et sincerae caritatis perpetualiter eminentiam.” My translation. 114. Ibid.: “Obsecra ergo et exora quaeso dominum deum nostrum, eiusque maiestatem ut contra latratus haereticorum verissimam simplicissimam ac benignissimam habeamus caritatem et ad extremum quoque retundamus dentes eorum atque mordacissimam falsitatem per invictissimam, velint nolint, ac solidissimam veritatem. Si quis vero mihi haec loquenti iratus fuerit, de se dictum fatebitur, ut alius auctor asserit.” 115. Cf. John Marenbon, “John Scottus and Carolingian Theology: From the De praedestinatione, Its Background and Its Critics, to the Periphyseon,” in Charles the Bald: Court and Kingdom, 2nd ed., ed. Margaret T. Gibson and Janet L. Nelson (Aldershot: Variorum, 1990). 116. Genke and Gumerlock, Gottschalk and a Medieval Predestination Controversy, 48–50. 117. Hincmar of Reims, Epistola X (to Egilo), PL 126, col. 72: “Si enim, quod caecus iste in meridie palpans non videt, liberum non esset arbitrium, unde totus in massa perditionis Adam perditus, cum suis etiam additis juste judicaretur mundus? Et rursum, nisi Dei gratia esset, quomodo ex eadem massa perditionis electus, id est, gratia lectus salvaretur mundus?” Trans. Genke, 180. 118. Stone, “The Rise and Fall of the Carolingian Elite,” 371. 119. Ibid., 373–375. 120. Albrecht Diem, “Een verstoorder van de ‘ordo’: Gottschalk van Orbais en zijn Leer van de Dubble Predestinatie,” in Macht en gezag in de negende eeuw, ed. Mayke de Jong, Marie-​ ­Therese Bos, and Carine van Rhijn, Utrechtse Historische Cahiers 16 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1995); Ganz, “The Debate on Predestination,” 299–301.

Chapter 5 1. Philippe Depreux, Prosopographie de l’entourage de Louis le Pieux (781–840), Instrumenta 1 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1997), 123–129. 2. Ardo, Vita Benedicti abbatis Anianensis et Indensis, ed. Oswald Holder-​­Egger, MGH SS 15/1, (Hanover: Hahn, 1887), 198–220. For further discussion, see Martin A. Claussen, “Benedict of Aniane as Teacher,” in Discovery and Distinction in the Early Middle Ages: Studies in Honor of John J. Contreni, ed. Cullen J. Chandler and Steven A. Stofferahn, Festschriften, Occasional Papers, and Lectures 23 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2013). For Adelsheil in early

Notes to Pages 134–136  215 medieval hagiography, see especially Werner Hechberger, “Die Theorie vom Adelsheil im früheren Mittelalter,” in Das frühmittelalterliche Königtum: Ideelle und religiöse Grundlagen, ed. Franz-​­Rainer Erkens, Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 49 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005); Friedrich Prinz, “Aristocracy and Christianity in Merovingian Gaul: An Essay,” in Gesellschaft, Kultur, Literatur: Rezeption und Originalität im Wachsen einer europäischen Literatur und Geistigkeit. Beiträge Luitpold Wallach gewidmet, ed. Karl Bosl, Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 2 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1975). 3. See, most recently, Garver, “The Influence of Monastic Ideals,” 76, 82–83; István P. Bejczy, “The Sacra Infantia in Medieval Hagiography,” Studies in Church History 31 (1994). 4. Cf. Chapter 1. 5. Ardo, Vita Benedicti 1, 201.20–24: “Hic pueriles gerentem annos prefatum filium suum in aula gloriosi Pipini regis reginae tradidit inter scolares nutriendum; qui mentis indole gerens aetatem, diligebatur a commilitonibus; erat quippe velox et ad omnia utilis. Post haec vero pincernae sortitur offitium. Militavit autem temporibus prefati regis. Post cuius excessum cum regni gubernacula Karolus gloriosissimus rex potiretur, ei adaesit serviturus.” 6. Ibid. 1, 201.24–27: “Interea illustrante divina gratia, superno coepit flagrare amore, et ut saeculum linqueret totis aestuare nisibus, periturumque fastidire honorem, ad quem cum labore attingere posse cernebat, sed adeptum cito amittere.” 7. That is to say, spiritual warfare. Ibid., 201.27–30: “Per triennium autem hoc corde tegens, soli Deo secretum tenuit, corpore, non mente se saeculi actibus inserens. Tentabat igitur infra hoc spatium, si continentiae culmen arripere posset, subtrahere corpori somnum, reprimere linguam, abstinere a cibo, parcius sumere vinum, et veluti peritus athleta ad futurum se componere bellum.” My translation. 8. Ibid., 201.31–35: “Praemeditabat siquidem in saeculari adhuc habitu sistens, quae postea devotus implevit; sed quanquam se a saeculi actibus exuere vellet, haesitabat tamen quibus hoc modis faciendum esset: utrum peregrini assumeret habitum; an forte se alicui conjungeret, et hominum oves aut armenta gratis pasceret; an etiam in civitate sutoris exerceret artem, et quae habere posset pauperibus erogaret.” 9. Ibid. 1–2, 201.35–48: “Sub tali quippe certamine fluctuante animo ad amorem se vitae regularis convertit. Eo namque anno quo Italia gloriosi Caroli regis ditioni subjecta est, cum frater ejus incaute fluvium quemdam transfretare vellet, et a tumentibus raperetur undis, hic equo sedens, periculum conspiciens fratris, sese inter undas praecipitem dedit, ut pereuntem a periculo redderet extorrem, atque natante equo fratris attigit manum; quem cum tenuit, tentus est; vixque qui eripere morientem voluit, mortis evasit periculum. Tunc se voto Deo constrinxit, saeculo deinceps non militaturum. Patriam petit, sed hoc patri non patefecit. Quidam autem erat religiosus Widmarus nomine, corporea luce carens, sed cordis luce resplendens, cui velle suum ostendit; isque secretum tenuit, et consilium salubre praebuit. Praeparatis itaque omnibus iter quasi Aquis iturus arripuit; sed ubi sancti Sequani ingressus est domum, redire suos ad patriam jubet, seque in eodem coenobio Christo Deo servire velle indicavit. Postulat ingrediendi licentiam; qua adepta, mox capitis comam deposuit, et veri monachi habitum sumpsit.” 10. For Louis as “monachius,” see Chapter 3. 11. Ardo, Vita Benedicti 42, 219.12–15: “Imperator autem omne eius consilium libenter audivit et fecit; unde et a quibusdam Monachius vocitatur, vidilicet quia monachos sancti viri pro eius amore semper suos proprios appellavit et post eius discessum actenus abbatem se monasterii illius palam esse profitetur.” 12. Cf. the discussion of monastic proximity to secular space in Richard E. Sullivan, “What

216  Notes to Pages 137–141 Was Carolingian Monasticism? The Plan of St Gall and the History of Monasticism,” in After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History. Essays Presented to Walter Goffart, ed. Alexander C. Murray and Walter A. Goffart (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998). 13. For the intellectual world of Charles the Fat and his reign, see most recently Anna A. Grotans, Reading in Medieval St Gall, Cambridge Studies in Paleography and Codicology 13 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Simon Maclean, Kingship and Politics in the Late Ninth Century: Charles the Fat and the End of the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), with bibliography. 14. See, for example, the introductory comments by Lewis G. M. Thorpe, Two Lives of Charlemagne (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), 27–28. 15. For the Monk of St. Gall’s particular role during this period, see Maclean, Kingship and Politics, especially 199–229. 16. Matthew Innes, “ ‘A Place of Discipline’: Carolingian Courts and Aristocratic Youth,” in Court Culture in the Early Middle Ages: The Proceedings of the First Alcuin Conference, ed. Catherine Cubitt (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003). 17. See Chapter 1. 18. Notker Balbulus (The Monk of St. Gall), Gesta Karoli magni imperatoris 2.6, ed. Hans F. Haefele, MGH SS rer. Germ. N.S. 12 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1959), 53: “At ille ex imis praecordiis alta suspiria trahens: ‘Sanctissimus est’ ait ‘ille vester episcopus, quantum sine Deo possibile est.’ Ad quod stupefactus rex: ‘Quomodo’ inquit ‘sine Deo aliquis sanctus esse potest?’ Tum ille: ‘Scriptum est’ inquit ‘Deus caritas est, qua iste vacuus est.’ ” My translation. 19. Charlemagne is described in this passage by four superlatives: religiosissimus, temperatissimus, sapientissimus, and clementissimus—​­remarkably close to the four Stoic virtues. Ibid. 1.11, 16: “Religiosissimus et temperatissimus Karolus hanc consuetudinem habebat, ut in XLmae diebus octava hora diei, missarum celebritate pariter cum vespertinis laudibus peracta, cibum sumeret; nec tamen idcirco ieiunium violaret, cum secundum Domini praeceptum ab hora ad horam comederet. Quod episcopus quidam contra interdictum sapientis viri multum iustus et nimium stultus inprovide reprehendit. Sapientissimus autem Karolus indignatione dissimulata admonitionem eius humiliter suscepit, dicens: ‘Bene admonuisti, laete vir episcope; ego autem tibi praecipio, ut nihil degustes antequam extremi officiales, qui sunt in curte mea, reficiant.’ Comedente autem Karolo ministrabant duces et tiranni vel reges diversarum gentium. Post cuius convivium cum illi comederent, serviebant eis comites et praefecti vel diversarum dignitatum proceres. Ipsis quoque manducandi finem facientibus militares viri vel scolares alae reficiebantur. Post hos omnimodorum officiorum magistri, deinde ministri, post inde vero eorundem ministrorum ministri, ita ut ultimi ante noctis medium non manducarent. Cumque iam prope finita esset XLma et praefatus episcopus in tali castigatione permansisset, dixit ad illum clementissimus Karolus: ‘Ut puto, probasti, episcope, quia non intemperantiae sed providentiae gratia ante vespertinam horam in XLma convivor.’ ” 20. Ibid. 1.5, 7–9: “Erat quidam clericus in comitatu regis, vilis et abiectus et scientia litterarum non satis instructus. Quem piissimus Karolus paupertati eius compassus, licet omnes odio eum haberent et expellere niterentur, nunquam tamen persuaderi poterat, ut ipse illum abiceret vel a sectatu suo removeret.” 21. Ibid.: “Fuit autem consuetudo, ut magister scolae designaret pridie singulis, quod responsorium cantare deberent in nocte. Huic autem, qui episcopatum iam quasi in manu retinebat, responsorium ‘Domine si adhuc populo tuo’ erat iniunctum.” 22. Ibid.: “Omnibus vero illum impedire volentibus, probare volens sapientissimus Karolus, ad quem finem ille perveniret, prohibuit, ne quis ei molestus esset. Quo versum in haec

Notes to Pages 141–145  217 verba concludente: ‘Adveniat regnum tuum’ caeteri, vellent nollent, respondere coacti sunt: ‘Fiat voluntas tua.’ ” 23. Ibid.: “Tunc moderatissimus imperator sensim arridens illi pronuntiavit coram principibus suis: ‘Superbus ille, qui nec Deum nec praecipuum illius amicum timuit vel honoravit, ut se vel ad unam noctem a luxuria sua refrenaret, quatenus responsorium, quod sicut audio cantare debuit, saltim incipere occurrisset, divino et meo iudicio careat episcopatu, et tu illum Deo donante et me concedente iuxta canonicam et apostolicam auctoritatem regere curato.’ ” 24. For the vigilance of Charlemagne, see Paul Edward Dutton, The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 5–22. 25. Notker Balbulus, Gesta Karoli 2.12, 71–72. 26. Ibid. 2.12, 72–73: “Quod cum eum minime lateret et tamen non libenter eos perderet, quia, si bene voluissent, magnum christianis munimen esse potuissent.” 27. Ibid. 2.12, 73: “direxit legatos suos ad eundem Pippinum sciscitans ab eo, quid de his fieri oporteret. Quem cum in orto cum senioribus fratribus, iunioribus ad maiora opera detentis, urticas et noxia quaeque tridente extrahentem repperissent, ut usui proficua vivacius excrescere valerent, indicaverunt ei causam adventus sui. At ille ex imis praecordiis suspiria trahens, ut omnes debiles animosiores sanis esse consueverunt, in haec verba respondit: ‘Si Karolus consilium meum dignaretur, non ad tantas me deponeret iniurias. Ego nihil illi demando. Dicite illi, quid me agentem inveneritis.’ At illi timentes, ne sine certo aliquo responso ad formidabilem reverterentur imperatorem, iterum atque iterum requirebant ab eo, quid domino renuntiare deberent. Tunc ille stomachando: ‘Nihil’ inquit ‘aliud ei demando, nisi quod facio. Inutilia recrementa extraho, ut holera necessaria liberius excrescere valeant.’ ” My translation. 28. Ibid. 2.12, 73–74: “His auditis astu non carens et sapientia pollens augustus confricatis auribus et inflatis naribus dixit ad eos: ‘Rationabile responsum, optimi vassalli, reportastis.’ Illis itaque de periculo vitae metuentibus ipse vim dictorum ad effectum perducens, cunctos illos insidiatores suos de medio viventium auferens, fidelibus suis occupata ab infructuosis loca crescendi et se extendendi causa concessit.” My translation. 29. Odo had once been a student of the famous Master Remigius at Auxerre and was therefore among the most esteemed intellects of his day. Master Remigius died in 908. See Christopher A. Jones, “Monastic Identity and Sodomitic Danger in the Occupatio by Odo of Cluny,” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 82, no. 1 (2007): especially 5–10, with notes; John Marenbon, Early Medieval Philosophy (480–1150): An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1988), 71–89, especially 78–79. Cf. also Patrick Wormald, “Aethelwold and His Continental Counterparts: Contact, Comparison, Contrast,” in Bishop Aethelwold: His Career and Influence, ed. Barbara Yorke (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1988), 19–22. 30. Gerald is a ubiquitous figure in scholarship of the tenth and eleventh centuries, although few studies treat him exclusively. For Gerald the man, see Joseph-​­Claude Poulin, Geraldus von Aurillac, vol. 4, Lexikon des Mittelalters (Stuttgart: Metzler, [1977]–1999). 31. Joseph-​­Claude Poulin, L’idéal de sainteté dans l’Aquitaine carolingienne, d’après les sources hagiographiques, 750–950 (Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1975), 82ff. Odo’s vita brevior is the earliest life of a nonroyal lay saint attested in the manuscript tradition. Historians disagree, however, as to whether the anonymous Vita Gangulfi, another hagiographical account of a nonroyal lay saint, might have been written during this period as well, perhaps even prior to Odo’s life of Gerald. Its earliest textual attestation dates from the second half of the tenth century, and thus I follow the majority of scholarship, which places Odo’s vita as the earliest. See I. Deug-​­Su, “Note sull’agiografia del secolo X e la santità laicale,” Studi medievali 30, no. 1 (1989) and Steffen Patzold, “Laughing at a Saint? Miracle and Irony in the Vita Gangulfi prima,” Early Medieval

218  Notes to Pages 145–147 Europe 21, no. 2 (2013). For the text of the Vita Gangulfi, see Vita Gangulfi martyris Varennensis, ed. Wilhelm Levison, MGH SS rer. Merov. 7 (Hannover: Hahn, 1919–1920), 142–174. Levison found the Vita Gangulfi in no fewer than sixty-​­five extant codices, in comparison to the Vita Geraldi, which is extant in thirty-​­six. Canonization did not become an official process under papal oversight until the thirteenth century, and so the writing of vitae by important churchmen served as an important legitimizing function in the early medieval world; see André Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Age: d’après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques (Rome: École française de Rome, 1988). 32. Odo of Cluny (attributed), Vita sancti Geraldi Auriliacensis (vita prolixior), ed. and trans. Anne-​­Marie Bultot-​­Verleysen, Subsidia Hagiographica 89 (Brussels: Societé des Bollandistes, 2012). See Mathew Kuefler, The Making and Unmaking of a Saint: Hagiography and Memory in the Cult of Gerald of Aurillac (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), especially 31–34; Anne-​­Marie Bultot-​­Verleysen, “Le dossier de saint Géraud d’Aurillac,” Francia 22, no. 1 (1995). 33. Kuefler, The Making and Unmaking of a Saint, 22–23. 34. Georges Duby, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined [English translation of Les trois ordres: ou, l’imaginaire du féodalisme (1978)], trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 97–98. Cf. Barbara H. Rosenwein, Rhinoceros Bound: Cluny in the Tenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), 57–76. 35. Jacqueline Murray, “Masculinizing Religious Life: Sexual Prowess, the Battle for Chastity and Monastic Identity,” in Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. Patricia H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004), 24. 36. Airlie, “The Anxiety of Sanctity,” 375, 395. 37. Nelson, “Monks, Secular Men and Masculinity, c. 900,” 123, 141–142. 38. Kuefler, The Making and Unmaking of a Saint, 97–99. 39. Andrew J. Romig, “The Common Bond of Aristocratic Masculinity: Monks, Secular Men, and St. Gerald of Aurillac,” in Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. Jennifer D. Thibodeaux (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Portions of the following discussion are taken in modified form from this article. 40. Vita Sancti Geraldi comitis (Vita Geraldi brevior), Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum latinorum antiquiorum saeculo XVI: qui asservantur in Bibliotheca nationali Parisiensi. Tomus II [CCLXXV–DXXX. Cod. signati 5296 C-​­11341], ed. Société des Bollandistes, Subsidia hagiographica 2 (Brussels: Apud editores, 1890), prologus, 392.25–27: “Unde et nunc forte, quia iam succrescente iniquitate patrum exempla non curamus, hunc servum suum nobis ad imitationis incitamentum profert.” 41. Ibid., 393.1–2: “Nam si potens in rebus huius vitae erat, hoc nihil obstat laico homini qui res juste acceptas bene disposuit.” Trans. Kuefler, The Making and Unmaking of a Saint, 193. 42. Vita Geraldi brevior, 393.4–5: “Gratia quippe Dei nulla lege contringitur.” 43. Ibid. 6, 396.25–27: “Semper enim subsellia pauperibus coram se parabantur, ut ipse videret quid vel quantum eis daretur; quibus semper medietatem sui panis transmittebat.” 44. Ibid. 3, 394.32–34: “Mordaces igitur curas atque domesticorum occupationes moleste ferebat, quoniam in secreto cordis timebat expelli et terrenis implicationibus involvi.” Trans. Kuefler, The Making and Unmaking of a Saint, 196. 45. Ibid. 2, 394.25–26: “Credo namque iam intellexerat quia melior est sapientia quam vires et nihil est locupletius illa.” Trans. Kuefler, The Making and Unmaking of a Saint, 195. 46. Vita Geraldi brevior 3, 394.34–37: “Verum cum hunc aliquando grandis necessitas

Notes to Pages 148–151  219 perurgeret, ut violentos qui praedia vel pagenses ejus nimium devastabant cum armis opprimeret, suis militibus imperiosa voce praecepit ut aversis hastis cum hostibus pugnarent.” 47. Ibid. 7, 397.36–398.3: “Ad celandum vero sui tonsuram hoc argumentum repperit quia barbam, quasi onerosam sibi recidebat, et quoniam a vertice ejus capilli defiuxerant, novaculam desuper trahens coronam celabat.” 48. Ibid. 2, 394.22–23: “Et quia viribus corporis et velocitate satis praeeminebat, ad armatam militiam quaerebatur.” 49. Ibid. 3, 394.37–395.4: “Sed pietas quae in ipso praeliandi articulo cordis ejus affectum incitabat, mox illum hostibus intolerabilem fecit: neque enim aliquando auditum est quod aliquis pro fidelitate Geraldi pugnaverit quem eventus victoriae fefellisset. Sed hoc certum constat quia nec ipse quemlibet umquam vulneravit nec ab aliquo vulneratus est.” 50. Ibid. 5, 396.9–11: “Nam frequenter ipsi qui suae dicionis erant improperabant ei quod mollis esset et timidus, qui se ab infimis personis tamquam impotens laedi permisisset.” 51. Ibid. 6, 397.18–19: “Multa nihilominus ab adversariis passus est, de quibus singulis eum divina gratia mirabiliter liberavit.” My translation. 52. Ibid., 397.17–21: “Quomodo autem, juxta apostolicum praeceptum, sobrie et juste et pie vixerit, et quam certatim et in his et in ceteris praeceptis Dei se exercuerit, ad enarrandum nobis pleniter facultas non suppetit quod ei quidem per Dei gratiam possibile fuit, sed jam nostris temporibus ita paene cunctis inusitatum est ut vix quod egerit credibile videatur.” Trans. Kuefler, The Making and Unmaking of a Saint, 198. 53. See Penelope Harvey, Hybrids of Modernity: Anthropology, the Nation State, and the Universal Exhibition (New York: Routledge, 1996); Nestor Garcia Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995); Robert J. C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race (New York: Routledge, 1995); Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994). The self-​ ­conscious theorization of hybrid forms and middle spaces has entered into the discussion of the Middle Ages only tentatively; see, most recently, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Hybridity, Identity, and Monstrosity in Medieval Britain: On Difficult Middles (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 54. Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity, 206–263. See also Nederveen Pieterse, “Hybridity, So What? The Anti-​­Hybridity Backlash and the Riddles of Recognition,” Theory, Culture, and Society 18, nos. 2–3 (2001): 224–225. 55. Romig, “The Common Bond of Aristocratic Masculinity,” 40. 56. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 3783 t. II and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 5301 date from the late tenth or early eleventh century. For the full manuscript tradition, see Kuefler, The Making and Unmaking of a Saint, 205–218. 57. Vita Geraldi brevior 8, 398.23–28: “Nonnumquam vero in vocem plangoris erumpens et super omnes quos ad malum proclivos videbat ingemiscens, quasi et quandam querimoniam faciebat, quod quidem omnes pro amore mundi perirent, quod pietas deficeret, quod iniquitas redundaret, quod paene iam universi amitterent a corde innocentiam, ab ore veritatem; illud subinde replicans: ‘O quantum deficit sanctus, quantum diminutae sunt veritates a filiis hominum!’ ” My translation. 58. Ibid. 8, 398.27–399.3: “Porro desiderium quod de congregandis monachis conceperat explere non valens, nausiabat super illos qui locum non regulariter incolebant. Saepe enim cum familiaribus de hac re conferebatur, dicens: ‘Cetera quae coenobitis necessaria videntur, Deo largiente non desunt; sed proh dolor! monachi soli non reperiuntur ipsi soli nequeunt inveniri.’ Quadam namque die respiciens ad fabricam domus, ubertim flebat. Cum quidam e familiaribus

220  Notes to Pages 152–160 inquireret curnam fleret: ‘Quod,’ inquit, ‘locum istum ad effectum nequaquam venire conspicio, et quia desunt monachi, velut solus orbatus maerore conficior. Spero tamen quod omnipotens Deus, quando ei placuerit, desiderium meum implere dignetur.’ ” Trans. Kuefler, The Making and Unmaking of a Saint, 200–201. 59. For such phenomena, see, for example, Katherine Allen Smith, “Saints in Shining Armor: Martial Asceticism and Masculine Models,” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 83, no. 3 (2008). 60. In this I agree with Ruth Mazo Karras’s argument for “a fluidity of meaning within the binary categories of masculine and feminine” rather than a spectrum of genders between masculine and feminine poles or any sort of “third gender” category represented by chastity; Ruth Mazo Karras, “Thomas Aquinas’s Chastity Belt: Clerical Masculinity in Medieval Europe,” in Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives, ed. Lisa M. Bitel and Felice Lifshitz (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2008), 53ff. For the counterargument, see Jacqueline Murray, “One Flesh, Two Sexes, Three Genders?” ibid., 34–51. 61. Cf. Odo of Cluny, Collationum libri tres 1.41, PL 133, col. 548: “Sciendum sane quia sicut nostris temporibus omnia pene suum ordinem perdiderunt, plerique prodigas rerum suarum expensas charitatem nominant, cum res ad inanem gloriam profuse dispensae, comestio vel effusio magis dicendae sunt quam charitas”; ibid. 3.28–29, cols. 611–612: “Cum omnis esset mundus in maligno positus, persuasum est tamen hominibus timere Deum, et non solum non diligere mundum, sed et contemnere, ut pro amore sequentis vitae semetipsos ad quaelibet tormenta tradiderint; nunc vero cum universa ad eruditionem Christianorum pertinent et verbis et exemplis dilucidata sunt, tamen ista simul omnia contemnuntur, ut Judaeorum perversitatem nostris moribus inesse demonstremus.” Cf. the comments with regard to parallel sentiments in Odo of Cluny’s Occupatio, ed. Antonius Swoboda (Leipzig: Teubner, 1900), by Jan M. Ziolkowski, “The Occupatio by Odo of Cluny: A Poetic Manifesto of Monasticism in the 10th Century,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch: Internationale Zeitschrift für Mediävistik 24–25 for 1989– 1990 (1991). 62. Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-​­Century Saints and Their Religions Milieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

Conclusion 1. “The female brain is predominantly hard-​­wired for empathy. The male brain is predominantly hard-​­wired for understanding and building systems”; Simon Baron-​­Cohen, The Essential Difference: Male and Female Brains and the Truth About Autism (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 1. Frans de Waal’s research on primate fellow-​­feeling has been central to the biological discussion of empathy in the past decade; see, most recently, Frans de Waal, The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society (New York: Harmony Books, 2009). 2. “It’s true, then, that girls are more empathetic than boys. But the difference is small and clearly shaped by learning”; Lise Eliot, Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps—​­And What We Can Do About It (New York: Mariner Books, 2009), 78. 3. See especially Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom, 223–224. 4. For the relationship between empathy and culture, see also, with bibliographies, Amy Coplan and Peter Goldie, eds., Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Tracy G. Cassels, Sherilynn Chan, Winnie Chung, and Susan A. J. Birch, “The Role of Culture in Affective Empathy: Cultural and Bicultural Differences,”

Notes to Pages 161–163  221 Journal of Cognition and Culture 10 (2010). In my use of the term “culture,” I closely follow Stephen Greenblatt’s definition of the concept as a system of social forces that constrain and mobilize thought and behavior. I also share his theoretical perspectives with regard to the use of literary artifacts in the service of cultural study. See, in particular, Stephen Greenblatt, “Culture,” in Critical Terms for Literature Study, 2nd ed., ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). 5. C. Stephen Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness: Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939–1210 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 48. 6. Cf. Matthew Gabriele, “The Last Carolingian Exegete: Pope Urban II, the Weight of Tradition, and Christian Reconquest,” Church History 81, no. 4 (December 2012). 7. Marcel Mauss, Essai sur le don: Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaiques (Paris: L’année sociologique, 1923). 8. On this and its problematic social implications, see, most recently, John Paul Rollert, “Between the World and Me: Empathy Is a Privilege,” Atlantic, September 28, 2015. Cf. also Tony Blair, “Pain, Passion and Empathy—​­What I’ve Learned About Peacemaking,” Guardian, October 24, 2013; John Paul Rollert, “Reversed on Appeal: The Uncertain Future of President Obama’s ‘Empathy Standard,’ ” Yale Law Review, October 15, 2010.

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Bibliography

The task of the translator is too often undervalued within the modern academy, thus I have tried whenever possible to use published translations when quoting non-​­Anglophone texts in English. I offer translations of my own for untranslated works and texts in which I wish to draw special attention to diction.

Primary Works Admonitio generalis (789). Ed. Klaus Zechiel-​­Eckes and Michael Glatthaar in Die Admonitio generalis Karls des Großen. MGH Fontes iuris 16. Hanover: Hahn, 2012. Alcuin. De virtutibus et vitiis liber. PL 101, cols. 613–638. ———. Epistolae. Ed. Ernst Dümmler. MGH Epp. 4, 1–493. Berlin: Weidmann, 1895. Amolo of Lyon. Epistola 2 (to Gottschalk). Ed. Ernst Dümmler. MGH Epp. 5, 368–378. Berlin: Weidmann, 1899. Angelbert. Versus de bella quae fuit acta Fontaneto. Ed. Ernst Müller. MGH SS rer. Germ. 44, 51–53. Hanover: Hahn, 1907. Trans. Peter Godman. Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, 263–265. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985. Annales Bertiniani. Ed. Félix Grat, Jeanne Vielliard, and Suzanne Clémencet. Annales de Saint-​­Bertin. Paris: Klincksieck, 1964. Annales regni Francorum inde ab a. 741 usque ad a. 829, qui dicuntur Annales Laurissenses maiores et Einhardi. Ed. Friedrich Kurze. MGH SS rer. Germ. 6. Hanover: Hahn, 1895. Trans. Scholz and Barbara Rogers. Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, 35–125. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970. Ardo. Vita Benedicti abbatis Anianensis et Indensis. Ed. Oswald Holder-​­Egger. MGH SS 15/1, 198–220. Hanover: Hahn, 1887. Astronomer. Vita Hludowici imperatoris. Ed. and trans. Ernst Tremp. Thegan: Die Taten Kaiser Ludwigs; Astronomus Das Leben Kaiser Ludwigs. MGH SS rer. Germ. 64, 278–555. Hanover: Hahn, 1995. Trans. Thomas F. X. Noble. Charlemagne and Louis the Pious: The Lives by Einhard, Notker, Thegan, and the Astronomer, 226–302. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009. Augustine. Contra Faustum Manicheum libri triginta tres. Ed. Joseph Zycha. CSEL 25, 249–797. Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1891. Trans. Roland Teske. Answer to Faustus, a Manichean. The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century 1/20. Hyde Park: New City Press, 2007. ———. De civitate Dei. Ed. Bernard Dombart and Aphons Kalb. CCSL 47–48. Turnhout: Brepols, 1955. Ed. and trans. Robert W. Dyson. The City of God Against the Pagans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

224  Bibliography ———. De disciplina Christiana. Ed. Roel Vander Plaetse. CCSL 46, 207–224. Turnhout: Brepols, 1969. ———. De sermone Domini in monte libros duos. Ed. Almut Mutzenbecher. CCSL 35. Turnhout: Brepols, 1967. Trans. Michael G. Campbell. “The Lord’s Sermon on the Mount.” New Testament I and II, 23–114. The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century 1/15–16. Hyde Park: New City Press, 2014. Benedict. Regula. Ed. and trans. Bruce L. Venarde. The Rule of Saint Benedict. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 6. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011. Boethius. De consolatione philosophiae. Ed. Claudio Moreschini. De consolatione philosophiae. Opuscula theologica, 3–162. Munich: De Gruyter Saur, 2005. Capitula de causis cum episcopis et abbatibus tractandis (811). Ed. Alfred Boretius. MGH Capit. 1.72, 162–164. Hanover: Hahn, 1883. Capitulare missorum generale (802). Ed. Alfred Boretius. MGH Capit. 1.33, 91–99. Hanover: Hahn, 1883. Capitula tractanda de causis cum episcopis et abbatibus (811). Ed. Alfred Boretius. MGH Capit. 1.71, 161–162. Hanover: Hahn, 1883. Chanson de Roland. Ed. Cesare Segre. La chanson de Roland édition critique par Cesare Segre. Geneva: Droz, 2003. Dhuoda. Liber manualis. Ed. and trans. Marcelle Thiébaux. Dhuoda: Handbook for Her Warrior Son: Liber Manualis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Einhard. Vita Karoli Magni. Ed. Oswald Holder-​­Egger. MGH SS rer. Germ. 25, 69–130. Hanover: Hahn, 1911. Ermold the Black. In honorem Hludowicii. Ed. and trans. Edmond Faral. Ermold le Noir: Poème sur Louis le Pieux et épitres au roi Pépin, 2–201. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1967. Florus of Lyon. Carmen 28. Ed. Ernst Dümmler. MGH Poetae 2, 559–564. Berlin: Weidmann, 1884. Trans. Peter Godman. Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, 265–273. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985. Gottschalk of Orbais. “Another Treatise on Predestination.” Ed. Lambot, 338–346. ———. “Answers to Various Questions.” Ed. Lambot, 146–158. ———. Confessio Godescalchi monachi damnati (Confessio brevior). Ed. Lambot, 52–54. ———. Confessio prolixior. Ed. Lambot, 55–78. ———. De praedestinatione. Ed. Lambot, 180–258. ———. Fragment 14 (reply to Hrabanus Maurus). Ed. Lambot, 38. Gregory the Great. Moralia in Job. Ed. Marcus Adriaen. Sancti Gregorii Magni Moralia in Iob. CCSL 143, 143A, 143B. Turnhout: Brepols, 1979–1985. ———. Regulae pastoralis liber. Ed. Bruno Judic, Floribert Rommel, and Charles Morel. Règle pastorale. Trans. Charles Morel. SC 381–382. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1992. Gregory of Tours. Libri historiarum X. Ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison. MGH SS rer. Merov. 1/1. Hanover: Hahn, 1951. Hincmar of Reims. De cavendis vitiis et virtutibus exercendis. Ed. Doris Nachtmann. MGH QQ zur Geistesgesch. 16, 99–268. Munich: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1998. ———. De regis persona et regio ministerio. PL 125, cols. 833–856. ———. Epistola ad reclusos et simplices suae dioceseos. Ed. Wilhelm Gundlach. “Zwei Schriften des Erzbischofs Hinkmar von Reims.” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschte 10 (1889): 258–309. ———. Epistola X (to Egilo). PL 126, cols. 70–76. ———. Instructio ad Ludovicum Balbum. PL 125, cols. 983–990. Hrabanus Maurus. Epistola VIII Synodalis (to Hincmar). PL 112, cols. 1575–1576.

Bibliography 225 ———. Epistola 22 (to Noting). Ed. Ernst Dümmler. MGH Epp. 5, 428. Berlin: Weidmann, 1899. ———. Epistola 42 (to Eberhard). Ed. Ernst Dümmler. MGH Epp. 5, 481–487. Berlin: Weidmann, 1899. ———. Liber de oblatione puerorum. PL 107, cols. 419–440. Jerome. Adversus Vigilantium. Ed. J. L. Feiertag. CCSL 79C. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. Jonas of Orléans. De institutione laicali. Ed. and trans. Odile Dubreucq. Instruction des laïcs. SC 549– 550. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2012–2013. ———. De institutione regia. Ed. and trans. Alain Dubreucq. Jonas d’Orléans, Le métier de roi. SC 407. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1995. Julianus Pomerius. De vita contemplativa. PL 59, cols. 415–520. Karoli ad Ghaerbaldum episcopum epistola, 807. Ed. Alfred Boretius. MGH Capit. 1.124, 244–246. Hanover: Hahn, 1883. Nithard. Historiarum libri IIII. Ed. and trans. Philippe Lauer and Sophie Glansdorff. Nithard: Histoire des fils de Louis le Pieux. Les classiques de l’histoire au Moyen Âge 51. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2012. Trans. Bernhard Walter Scholz and Barbara Rogers. Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, 127–174. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970. Notker Balbulus (The Monk of St. Gall). Gesta Karoli Magni imperatoris. Ed. Hans F. Haefele. Taten Kaiser Karls des Großen. MGH SS rer. Germ. N.S. 12, 93–172. Berlin: Weidmann, 1959. Trans. Thomas F. X. Noble. Charlemagne and Louis the Pious: The Lives by Einhard, Notker, Thegan, and the Astronomer, 59–118. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009. Odo of Cluny. Collationum libri tres. PL 133, cols. 517–638. ———. Occupatio. Ed. Antonius Swoboda. Leipzig: Teubner, 1900. ———. Vita Sancti Geraldi comitis (Vita Geraldi brevior). Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum latinorum antiquiorum saeculo XVI: qui asservantur in Bibliotheca nationali Parisiensi. Tomus II. Subsidia hagiographica 2, 392–420. Brussels: Societé des Bollandistes, 1890. Trans. Mathew Kuefler. The Making and Unmaking of a Saint: Hagiography and Memory in the Cult of Gerald of Aurillac, 193–203. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. ——— (attributed). Vita sancti Geraldi Auriliacensis (Vita Geraldi prolixior). Ed. and trans. Anne-​ ­Marie Bultot-​­Verleysen. Subsidia Hagiographica 89. Brussels: Societé des Bollandistes, 2012. Paulinus of Aquileia. Liber exhortationis, vulgo de salutaribus documentis, ad Henricum comitem seu ducem forojuliensem. PL 99, cols. 197–282. Plato. Republic. Ed. Simon Roelof Slings. Respublica (Oxford Classical Texts). Oxford: Clarendon, 2003. Trans. George M. A. Grube, rev. C. D. C. Reeve. Ed. John M. Cooper. Plato: Complete Works, 971–1223. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997. Pliny the Elder. Naturalis historia. Ed. and trans. Roderich König et al. Naturkunde: Lateinisch-​­deutsch. 32 vols. Munich: Heimeran Verlag, 1973–2004. Pliny the Younger. Epistolae. Ed. Adrian Nicholas Sherwin-​­White. Fifty Letters of Pliny. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969. Pseudo-​­Bede. In Matthaei evangelium expositio. PL 92, cols. 9–131. Sedulius Scottus. Liber de rectoribus christianis. Ed. Siegmund Hellman. Sedulius Scottus, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters 1/1, 1–91. Munich: Beck, 1906. Seneca. De clementia. Ed. and trans. Susanna Braund. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. ———. De ira. Ed. Leighton Durham Reynolds. Dialogi (Oxford Classical Texts). Oxford: Clarendon, 1977. Trans. Robert Kaster. Anger, Mercy, Revenge, 3–129. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Smaragdus of St.-​­Mihiel. Via regia. PL 102, cols. 931–970. Sulpicius Severus. Vita Sancti Martini Turonensis. Ed. and trans. Jacques Fontaine. SC 133, 248–316.

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Index

Aachen, establishment as Charlemagne’s capital, 70 abbots: caritas of, 23; in Carolingian power hierarchies, 37–­38, 72; lay, 4, 136 Adalbert of Metz, 116 Adalhard the seneschal, 116 Ademar of Chabannes, 145 Admonitio generalis (789), 36–­39, 72; Alcuin and, 178 n.4; capitula of, 37–­38; Capitulary of 802 compared with, 69, 70; contents of, 34; context for, 177 n.1; “love of God and neighbor” in, 38–­39; moral reforms of, 36–­37 agape, 17 Airlie, Stuart, 116, 146 Alcuin of York: as Abbot of Marmoutier, 35, 178 n.5; as advisor to Charlemagne, 3, 6, 35, 178 n.4; letter to Eric of Friuli, 43, 55; Paulinus of Aquileia and, 9; power dynamic with Wido of Brittany, 55. See also Alcuin of York, De virtutibus et vitiis Alcuin of York, De virtutibus et vitiis, 8, 35, 40, 55–­63; brevity and simplicity of, 55, 188 n.101; caritas in, 3, 34, 55, 56–­58, 62–­63, 103, 163; cognitio divinitatis in, 56–­57; conclusion of, 62–­63; Gottschalk’s ideas’ undermining of, 99–­100, 157; heaven as meritocracy in, 60, 121, 133, 163; ideology of manliness in, 61–­63; ideology of power in, 56–­58; ideology of secular ascetic sacrifice in, 58–­60; introductory address, 55; Jonas of Orléans’s views compared with, 64–­66; misericordia in, 58–­60, 62, 81, 104; moderation and consistency as virtues in, 61–­63; Monk of St. Gall’s ideas contrasted with, 144, 158; purpose of, 41, 42, 56, 129–­ 30; sources used in, 55; structure of, 55 Ambrose of Milan, 22, 96, 191 n.146 Amolo, bishop of Lyon, 125 Amos, Book of, 83

Angelbert, lamentation poem by, 8, 108–­12, 116, 117 Annals of St. Bertin, 117 Ardo Smaragdus, 9; De vita Benedicti anianensis, 133, 134–­36, 148; Louis called “monkish” by, 79 ascetics and asceticism: Charlemagne’s questions about, 73; chastity and, 61–­62, 220 n.60; Cluniac monastic reforms, 153–­54, 162; debates about, 23–­24, 119–­21; fasting and, 52, 61; Gerald as new model for, 151–­ 54; Gerald’s disappointment with, 150–­51; inner, as outlined by Paulinus, 49–­54; Jonas’s views on, 64–­65; in late antiquity, 7, 15–­33, 119, 153, 162; late ninth to early tenth-­century views on, 9, 133–­54, 157–­58, 162; moderation and, 51–­53, 120; monasticism as testing grounds for new social rules, 23–­27; as paragon of manhood, 6–­7, 14, 119, 157; penitential acts and, 32–­33; post–­civil war views of, 130; secular sacrifice, 58–­60 “Astronomer”: comet portent interpreted by, 76, 89. See also “Astronomer,” Vita Hludowici imperatoris “Astronomer,” Vita Hludowici imperatoris, 8, 68, 75–­81, 137; conclusion of, 77, 92–­93; as contemporaneous with Dhuoda’s account, 101, 105; Job invoked in, 87–­88; Louis the Pious portrayed as “too merciful,” 75–­76, 77, 79–­80, 83–­85, 90–­94, 96–­97, 143, 144, 149; Louis the Pious’s direct speech in, 90, 151; as model for Louis’s sons, 93–­94; narrative choices of, 83–­84, 86–­92; prologue, 67, 80 Augustine of Hippo: Alcuin influenced by, 55, 56; on ascetic life, 119–­20; Astronomer’s quotation of, 93; caritas, understanding of, 7, 27, 38, 78, 138; De civitate Dei, 19, 21–­22, 58, 80–­81, 197 n.68; exegesis on the Sermon

244  Index Augustine of Hippo (cont.) on the Mount, 15, 17–­20, 85; Jonas influenced by, 191 n.146; “just war” theory of, 24, 26–­27, 95–­96; letter against Faustus the Manichean, 24–­27; Platonic influences on, 24; on predestination and grace, 126; on sin, 25–­26 Ausonius of Bordeaux, 22 balanced justice, social idea of, 17–­20, 27–­28, 58–­59, 80–­86, 96, 143–­44 Basil the Great: Admonitio ad filium spiritualium, 43 Bede, 92 Bederman, Gail, 6 Benedict of Aniane: commilitones’s love of, 148–­49; life path of, 134–­36, 148; monastic reforms, 74; vita of, 79, 133, 134–­36 Benedict of Nursia, Rule of. See Rule of St. Benedict Bernard of Italy, 85, 86 Bernard of Septimania, 88, 101, 116 Berschin, Walter, 78 Bertrade, Queen, 135 bishops: advice given to Charles the Bald and Louis the German by, 115–­16; caritas capacity and, 7, 16; Carolingian power hierarchies, 37; Charlemagne’s questions about, 73; Monk of St. Gall’s shaming of, 136–­42; Ottonian, 161–­62; secular roles of, 5, 7 Booker, Courtney, 67–­68, 76, 78–­79, 83 Brown, Peter, 15, 157, 174 n.55 Caesar Augustus, 95 Calvin, John, 118 canonization, 218 n.31 Capitulary of 802, 69–­70, 193 n.6 caritas: Alcuin on, 3, 34, 55, 56–­58, 62–­63, 163; of aristocrats after civil war, 129–­30, 132–­ 33; of aristocrats under Charlemagne, 8, 34–­66; of aristocrats under Louis the Pious, 9, 67–­97; Augustine on, 7, 27, 38, 78, 138; as available to all, 32, 33, 46–­48, 60, 121, 133, 163; of Charlemagne toward bastard son Pepin, 142–­44; common good and, 113–­14; Crusades and, 162; Dhuoda of Septimania on, 99, 101–­5; early understanding of, 15, 156; emotional bonds created by, 56; “eye for an eye” doctrine and, 16–­19; as final step of humility, 23; Florus

of Lyon on, 99; as foundation of Frankish authority, 35; from God’s grace, 9, 98–­100, 122–­23, 126–­27, 132, 140–­42, 147, 153, 156–­ 57, 161; good works and, 57–­58, 60, 99, 121, 128–­31, 163; Gottschalk of Orbais on, 8–­9, 98, 122–­23, 126–­28, 132; Gregory on, 28–­29, 30–­32, 41, 79, 156; of hermits and cenobitics, 7, 23; inner ascetism and, 49–­ 54; Jonas of Orléans on, 64–­66; justice and, 58–­60; in late ninth–­early tenth century, 9, 133–­54, 157–­58; of Louis the Pious, 79; “love of God and neighbor” phrase and, 38–­39; Martin of Tours and, 14–­15; meanings of, to Carolingians, 3; as means of delineating ideal forms of aristocratic masculinity, 4–­5; misericordia and, 19, 81; Monk of St. Gall on, 137–­44; Nithard on, 99, 113; pagans and heretics and, 38–­39; paradoxical aspects of, 31–­32; Paulinus’s use of, 44, 48–­50, 54; as “perfected” morality, 17–­19; pietas and, 19, 22, 62, 78; power dynamics of, 7, 33, 41–­42, 44–­45, 56–­58, 100–­105, 130, 131, 156, 163–­64; primacy of, 39; shaming authority through, 105–­12; Smaragdus on, 81–­82; societal importance of in Carolingian culture, 161; terms associated with, 3; uses and ends of, 3–­4, 7 Carloman (brother of Charlemagne), 135 Carloman/Pippin (son of Charlemagne), 70, 193 n.14 cenobitics. See ascetics and asceticism Chanson de Roland, 178 nn.7–­8 Charlemagne: Admonitio generalis as prophylactic for rule, 36–­39; Alcuin as advisor to, 3, 8, 178 n.4; Augustine of Hippo’s De civitate Dei’s importance to, 19; balanced justice of, 143–­44; battles and campaigns of, 36; Benedict of Aniane and, 135; capitulary legislation in latter part of reign, 69–­70; caritas under, 8, 142–­44, 156; corruption as concern of, 72–­73; council of 811, 71–­74; death of, 65; Einhard’s depiction of, 92, 197 n.68; as figure in Monk of St. Gall’s story collection, 136–­44; hardships of final years, 70–­71, 193 n.14; longevity of, 178 n.6; Louis the Pious’s kingship ideal compared with, 79; Nithard’s depiction of, 113; papacy under, 162; as paragon, 95; Paulinus as advisor to, 8, 35; penitential fasts ordered by, 71–­72, 100, 158–­59; power dynamics

Index 245 under, 42, 44–­45, 71–­74, 159–­60; royal conference (789), 34, 35–­39; royal conference (802), 69–­70, 193 n.6; self-­ comparison to Josiah, 36, 179 n.11; successes of, 35–­36 Charles the Bald, 90, 101; continuing struggles with brothers, 94; mirror for princes genre in last years of reign, 129; Nithard as vassal of, 112; Nithard’s depiction of, 113–­ 116; Sedulius Scottus’s work for, 94–­95; spiritual advice sought by, 115–­16; succession struggle with brothers, 76–­77; synod presided over by, 124–­25 Charles the Fat, 137 Charles the Younger, 70, 193 n.14 Christianization: of Frankish culture, 5, 34, 42, 159; of Roman Empire, 15–­16, 16, 22–­ 27, 155–­56 clementia, 3; Alcuin on, 58–­59; caritas and, 7; early debates over, 15, 80–­81; Gottschalk of Orbais on, 98, 127; as kingly ideal, 78–­79, 83, 139, 142–­44; in late Roman and Merovingian eras, 27–­33; limits seen as needed for, 96–­97; of Louis the Pious, 75–­80, 83–­94; positive emotion and, 19–­ 20; Sedulius Scottus on, 95; Seneca the Younger and Stoics on, 19–­21, 58, 59, 80, 105; Smaragdus on, 82 “common good,” 2, 20–­21, 113–­14, 116–­17 compassio, 3, 21, 104 compassion in Greco-­Roman culture, 16, 20–­21 Conrad, Count of Auxerre, 129 Constantine, 95 Coon, Lynda, 6 criminals’ imprisonment in monastic spaces, 32–­33 Crusade, 38, 162 Daniel, Book of, 83 de Jong, Mayke, 67–­68, 71, 75, 100, 158, 179–­ 80 n.13 Dhuoda of Septimania: advice to her son, 1–­2, 8, 99, 100–­105, 117, 158, 180 n.24; Alcuin of York read by, 9; concept of perfect man, 1–­2, 18, 121; harts and river image, 103–­5, 116; personal suffering of, 99, 101, 113 dilectio, 3 Drogo of Metz, 91, 92 Duby, George, 145–­46

Ebbo, Archbishop of Reims, 121, 196 n.56 Eberhard of Friuli, 117–­18, 122, 123, 129 Eccard of Mâcon, 129 Ecclesiasticus, Book of, 83 Einhard, 19, 70, 92, 197 n.68 “emotional community,” concept of, 11 empathy: caritas and, 10–­11; current understanding of, 160, 163–­64; manliness and, 155–­64; as neologism, 11. See also caritas; fellow-­feeling Eparchius of Angoulême, 27–­28, 29 Eric of Friuli: Alcuin’s letter to, 43, 55; Paulinus’s lay mirror for, 40, 42–­54, 63, 188 n.101; power dynamic with Paulinus, 43 Eriugena, John Scotus: On Divine Predestination, 127–­28 Ermoldus Nigellus, 77–­78 eusebeia, 19, 21 “eye for an eye” doctrine, 16–­19, 58, 169–­70 n.10 Faustus the Manichean, 24–­27 fellow-­feeling: Augustine’s understanding of, 21; in Carolingian thinking, 9–­11, 160–­62, 163; Gregory’s understanding of, 16, 28–­31. See also caritas; empathy Fichtenau, Heinrich, 40–­41 Field of Lies (833), 88 Florus of Lyon, lamentation poem by, 8, 99, 106–­8, 112, 116, 117, 127 Fontenoy, Battle of (841), 77, 108, 109–­11, 115 Foucault, Michel, 11 free will. See predestination vs. free will, controversy over frugalitas, 14–­15 Fulda, monastery of, 118 Fulgentius, 82–­83 Ganshof, François-­Louis, 69–­70, 76 Ganz, David, 130 gender ideologies, tenth–­twelfth centuries, 161–­62 gender in Carolingian Europe. See male gender construction in Carolingian Europe; women in Carolingian Europe Gerald, St.: continual conflicts between secularity and spirituality, 147–­54; pilgrimages of, 150–­51; as secular monk, 149–­50; uniqueness of, 145, 147, 149, 151–­52, 153; vita of, 9, 132, 144–­54 Gerberga, 88

246  Index Gottschalk of Orbais: caritas controversy, 8–­9, 98–­100, 122–­23, 130, 147, 156–­57, 158, 161; charisma of, 125; civil war’s creation of intellectual space for, 130–­31; Confessio prolixior, 98; imprisonment of, 124–­25; infant oblation practice attacked by, 119; opponents of, 99–­100, 119–­20, 121; preaching of during war years, 117–­18; predestination beliefs of, 117–­18, 122–­28; prison correspondence, 125–­27; public floggings of, 123–­25; rejection of monastic life, 118–­ 20; travels of, 121–­22 grace-­deeds controversy, 9, 98–­100, 118–­31, 132, 156–­57, 158, 160, 161. See also Gottschalk of Orbais; predestination vs. free will, controversy over Gregory of Tours, 92; Historiarum libri decem, 27–­28 Gregory the Great, Pope: Dialogues of, 191 n.146; fellow-­feeling as bridge for, 16, 28–­ 32, 156; Moralia in Job, 28, 43; Regulae pastoralis liber, 7, 13, 16, 29–­32, 38, 41, 45, 49, 54, 79, 104, 115, 161, 176 n.72; as source for Alcuin, 55, 56 Guntram, 92 Hautvillers, abbey of, 125 Henry IV, King, 162 hermits. See ascetics and asceticism Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims: on Battle of Fontenoy, 77; clemency of, 143, 144; De cavendis vitiis et virtutibus exercendis, 95; De regis persona et regio ministerio, 95–­96; Gottschalk and, 124–­28, 130; letter to Archbishop of Sens, 128; Letter to the Monks and Simple Folk of his Diocese, 126 Hrabanus Maurus: Gottschalk and, 118–­20, 121, 125, 130; letter to Bishop Noting of Verona, 117, 122; letter to Eberhard of Friuli, 117–­18, 122, 123; Liber de oblatione puerorum, 119–­21; synod convened by, 123–­24 humilitas ultra humanum modum, 14 indulgence: Alcuin and, 59; in Greco-­Roman culture, 16, 20–­21; of Louis, 80, 84–­85, 96 Isaiah, Book of, 43, 83 Jaeger, Stephen, 161 Jeremiah, Book of, 89–­90 Jerome, St., 17, 22, 174 n.55, 191 n.146; Contra Vigilantium admonitio, 119–­21

Jewish law, 16 John, Gospel of, 43, 55, 191 n.146 Jonas, Bishop of Orléans: De institutione laicali, 63–­66, 67, 82, 101, 102, 150, 158, 180 n.24, 191 n.146; De institutione regia, 82–­83 Josiah, King, 36, 69, 70, 179 n.11 Judith, Holy Roman Empress, 87 Julianus Pomerius: De vita contemplativa, 43, 44 “just war” theory, 24, 26–­27, 95–­96 Kuefler, Mathew, 145, 146 lay aristocratic roles in Carolingian Europe, 165 n.1; Admonitio generalis and, 34; caritas capacity and, 7, 35, 79, 136–­44, 156; Carolingian power hierarchies, 37, 42–­45, 67–­ 68, 71–­74, 99, 100–­105, 129–­31, 133–­34, 156, 159–­60, 163–­64; chastity and, 61–­62, 147; corruption and, 72; duties as viewed by Alcuin, 56–­58; duties as viewed by Jonas, 64–­65; duties as viewed by Paulinus, 46–­ 48; flexibility of, 4–­5; Gerald’s uniqueness, 145–­54; grace-­deeds theology controversy and, 99–­100, 124–­31, 153, 156–­57; under Louis the Pious, 67–­68, 74–­75 lay mirrors: absence after civil war, 129; advice contained in, 40–­41; of Alcuin, 34, 40, 41, 42, 55–­63, 103, 158; Astronomer influenced by, 93–­94; of Dhuoda, 1–­2, 100–­105, 158; as genre, 40; of Hincmar of Reims, 95–­96; ideological function of, 41–­42, 72, 81, 137, 158; of Jonas, 63–­66, 67, 158; limitations of, 83–­84; necessity for reintegration with monastic and royal mirrors, 40, 67, 129, 158, 192 n.1; of Paulinus, 39–­40, 42–­54, 103, 158; of Sedulius Scottus, 94–­95 lay society in late Roman Empire, 15, 23–­24 lex talionis, 85 Lothar: in Angelbert’s poem, 109–­10; brutality of, 88; continuing struggles with brothers, 94; father’s deal offered to, 90; illness of, 89; lack of written spiritual advice to, 129; marriage of, 85–­86; Nithard’s depiction of, 114–­15; rebellions against father, 87–­89; succession struggle with brothers, 76–­77; synod presided over by, 128 Louis the German, 90–­91, 92; continuing struggles with brothers, 94; as figure in Monk of St. Gall’s story collection, 137; lack of written spiritual advice to, 129;

Index 247 Nithard’s depiction of, 115–­16; spiritual advice sought by, 115–­16; succession struggle with brother, 76–­77; synod presided over by, 123–­24 Louis the Pious, 133; accession of, 65, 67; Ardo on, 136; Astronomer’s portrayal of, 68, 75–­81, 83–­84; Charlemagne’s kingship ideal compared with, 79; comet during reign of, 76, 89–­90; deal offered to Lothar, 90; early councils under, 74; epithet of, 78; Ermoldus Nigellus’s biography of, 77–­78; as exemplum, 91–­92; Field of Lies defeat, 88–­89; as figure in Monk of St. Gall’s story collection, 137; heirs of, 8; invitations to enemies for son Lothar’s wedding, 85–­86; Jonas’s life of, 82–­83; as King of Aquitaine under Charlemagne, 85; leadership skills of, 76, 77–­78; Nithard’s depiction of, 113; as paragon, 95, 114; penitential governance of, 8, 67–­68, 75, 79–­80, 83–­94, 96–­97, 100, 123, 143, 156, 158–­59; reconciliation with half-­brothers, 86; repeated forgiveness and reconciliations toward sons, 88–­92; Smaragdus’s mirror for, 81–­82; sons’ power struggle, 76–­77, 90–­91, 93–­94, 114, 160; Spanish March uprisings, 86–­87; temporary abdication of, 88; Thegan’s biography of, 78, 92; virtues ascribed to, 80 Louis the Younger, 94 “love of God and neighbor” phrase: in Admonitio generalis, 38–­39; Alcuin’s equation with caritas, 3, 57–­58; collective identity and, 39, 57, 71, 103–­4, 116–­17, 157; Jonas’s view expanded to enemies, 64; Nithard on, 113; in Paulinus’s Liber Exhortationus, 44–­ 45, 50 Luke, Gospel of, 191 n.146 Lupus, Abbot of Ferrières, 106, 125 Mainz, Synod of (848), 123–­24 male gender construction in Carolingian Europe: binary views of, 5, 148–­50, 153–­54; caritas discourse and, 3–­4, 98–­100; common badges of manhood, 1–­2; core traits, 4; fluidity of, 159–­60; global designations for aristocrats, 4; as historical, ideological process, 5–­6; lay mirrors’ articulation of, 41–­42; manliness and empathy, 155–­64; power and authority, 2–­3, 6, 33, 35, 37–­39, 44–­45, 71–­74, 98–­100, 119, 133–­34, 152–­53, 156, 159–­60; secular and nonsecular poles

of, 6–­7, 44–­45, 132–­33, 134; shame and sorrow during time of troubles, 105–­17, 132–­33, 156; social roles of aristocrats, 4–­5, 35, 37, 145–­46. See also specific names and concepts Martin of Tours, St.: commilitones’s love of, 148–­49; life path of, 13, 134, 149; monastic house founded by, 35, 73; norms defied by, 14–­15; tale of beggar and, 13–­15, 22–­23 Matfrid, Count of Orléans, 64–­66, 191 n.150 Matthew, Gospel of, 43, 55, 191 n.146; Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount in, 16–­19, 21, 32, 85 Mauss, Marcel, 163 McKitterick, Rosamond, 69–­70, 72, 177 n.1, 193 n.6 millenarianism, 36 misericordia, 3; in Admonitio generalis, 38; Alcuin on, 58–­60, 62, 104; Augustine’s use of, 21–­22, 80–­81, 93, 95; Benedict’s Rule on, 23; caritas and, 7, 19, 81; clementia distinguished from, 20–­21, 58, 82; Dhuoda on, 104; early debates over, 15; of Gerald, 148–­49; Hincmar on, 95–­96; Jonas on, 82; as kingly ideal, 83, 84; laymen duties and, 23–­24; Louis the Pious on, 90; Sedulius Scottus on, 95; Smaragdus on, 82; Stoic conception of, 20–­21, 80–­81, 95, 172 n.29 Monk of St. Gall, 133; caritas discourse in, 137–­44, 157; Notker Balbulus viewed as, 9, 137; story collection by, 9, 136–­44; story of Charlemagne’s continued forgiveness toward Pepin, 142–­44; story of Charlemagne’s defense of untalented monk, 140–­42; story of lay envoy lodging with bishop, 138–­39; story of why Charlemagne broke fast early, 139 monks: Carolingian power hierarchies, 37, 100, 119; Charlemagne’s questions about, 73; Gerald as image for, 146–­54; Hrabanus Maurus’s defense of monasticism, 119–­21; Martin’s behavior and, 14–­15; reforms under Louis the Pious, 74; service at court, 5 Morrison, Karl, 10–­11 Murray, Jacqueline, 146 Nelson, Janet, 41, 69, 70, 72, 83, 96, 113, 146 Nithard of Saint-­Riquier, 99; as Charlemagne’s grandson, 112; History, 8, 86–­87, 112–­17; personal losses of, 113 Noble, Thomas F. X., 4, 78

248  Index Noting, Bishop of Verona, 117, 122 Notker Balbulus. See Monk of St. Gall Odo of Cluny, 133; Remigius and, 217 n.29; vita brevior of St. Gerald, 9, 132, 144–­54, 157; vita prolixior of St. Gerald (possibly forged), 145, 150. See also Gerald, St. Oswald, St., 92 Ottonian bishops, 161 papacy, rise of power, 162 patientia, 3, 14, 59–­60, 82 Paul, St., letters of, 43, 55, 56, 79–­80, 191 n.146 Paulinus of Aquileia: as advisor to Charlemagne, 8, 35; Alcuin of York and, 9; as patriarch of Aquileia, 35, 42, 178 n.5; power dynamic with Eric of Friuli, 43. See also Paulinus of Aquileia, Liber Exhortationis Paulinus of Aquileia, Liber Exhortationis, 7–­8, 35, 39–­40, 42–­54, 63, 82; age of, 180 n.24; authorities quoted in, 43; caritas in, 44, 48–­50, 54, 103; final judgment in, 53–­54, 121; Gottschalk’s ideas’ undermining of, 99–­100, 157; ideology of affect in, 48–­49; ideology of equality in, 46–­48, 133; ideology of inner asceticism in, 49–­54; ideology of mind in, 45–­46; Jonas’s views compared with, 64–­66; lack of opening epistle, 42; length of, 55; misericordia in, 81; moderation in, 52–­53; Monk of St. Gall’s ideas contrasted with, 144; ordering of priorities in, 51; purpose of, 129–­30, 158; recipient of, 42–­45; structure of, 43–­45, 54 Paulinus of Nola, 22 Pelagius, 118 penitence: Angelbert’s plea for, 110–­12; of criminals, 32–­33; fasts ordered by Charlemagne, 71–­72, 158–­59; Gottschalk’s view as useless, 123; under Louis the Pious, 74–­ 75, 123, 156, 158–­59; in Nithard’s History, 115–­16; reintegration of lay and royal, 158–­59 Pepin the Hunchback, 142–­44 Pepin the Short, King, 135 persona, 46–­48, 60 philanthropia, 21–­22 pietas, 3; caritas and, 7, 19, 22, 62, 78, 122; Dhuoda on, 104; early debates over, 15; Eparchius’s application of, 27–­28, 29;

Gottschalk of Orbais on, 98, 127; Gregory on, 29–­30; Jonas on, 82; of Louis the Pious, 75–­84, 93–­94; misericordia and, 21–­22, 59; Nithard on, 115; Odo of Cluny on, 150–­51, 153 Pippin I of Aquitaine, King, 82–­83 Pippin II of Aquitaine, King, 77, 94 Pliny the Elder: Natural History, 103 predestination vs. free will, controversy over, 9, 117–­31; Calvinism and, 118; concept of twofold predestination, 118, 123, 126; as cultural watershed, 158; culture reconsideration from, 126–­28; as danger to Frankish laity, 124–­28, 129–­30; Eriugena on, 127–­28; forgiveness and, 120; Gottschalk’s beliefs, 117–­18, 122–­28; Hrabanus on, 117–­ 18; Pelagius and, 118; shift to grace as debate subject, 128 priests: caritas capacity and, 7, 16, 28–­31; Carolingian power hierarchies, 37; Jonas of Orléans’s criticism of, 65; married, 5; secular life of, 7 Proverbs, Book of, 82, 83, 95, 191 n.146 Prudentius of Troyes, 126, 127 Psalms, Book of, 43, 55, 191 n.146 Quierzy, Synod of (849), 124–­25, 127 Ratramnus of Corbie, 125–­26 rectors, 115, 176 n.72 religious aristocratic roles in Carolingian Europe: caritas capacity and, 7; Charlemagne’s questions about, 73–­74; expansion of authority, 159–­60; flexibility of, 4–­5; Gerald as image for, 146–­54; under Louis the Pious, 74–­75; power hierarchies, 37, 100, 133–­34, 162. See also abbots; bishops; monks; priests Remigius, Master, 217 n.29 Remigius of Lyon, 127 Riché, Pierre, 41, 47 Riley-­Smith, Jonathan, 38 Roland, 55, 178 n.8 Roman Empire: Christianization of, 15–­16, 16, 22–­27, 155–­56; Christian martyrs in, 22; pietas in, 78 Roncesvalles Pass, Battle of, 36 Rosenwein, Barbara, 11 Rotrude (daughter of Charlemagne), 70, 193 n.14 Rule of St. Benedict, 23, 73

Index 249 Savigni, Rafaele, 41, 204 n.7 Savonnières, Synod of (859), 128 Sedulius Scottus: Liber de rectoribus christianis, 94–­95 Seneca the Younger: De clementia, 19–­21, 58, 80, 197 n.68; De ira, 19–­20; misericordia distinguished from clementia, 20–­21, 80–­ 81, 172 n.29 Sermon on the Mount, 17–­20, 21, 32, 85 Smaragdus of St.-­Mihiel: Via regia, 81–­82, 95 Spanish March, uprisings and atrocities in, 86 Stoic philosophy, 19–­21, 58, 59, 80, 95, 105. See also Seneca the Younger Stone, Rachel, 4, 6, 41, 73–­74, 96, 129, 130, 166 n.5, 192 n.1 Sulpicius Severus: Vita Sancti Martini, 13–­15, 22–­23 Tassilo, Duke of Bavaria, 36 Thegan, 78, 92, 196 n.56 Theodosius, 95 “time of troubles” civil war, 94; battles during, 77, 98; conceptions of morality and, 96, 105–­12, 129; as cultural upheaval, 98–­ 99, 122; Dhuoda’s advice during, 1–­2, 8; theological aftermath of, 129–­31, 132–­33, 156–­57, 160

Tremp, Ernst, 77 Tusey, Synod of (860), 128 Urban II, Pope, 38, 162 Valence, Synod of (855), 128 Verdun, Treaty of (843), 94, 98 Vigilantius, 120 Vinchy, Battle of (717), 77 virtus: Gerald as paragon of, 150; as used by Alcuin, 55–­62; as used by Astronomer, 80, 114; as used by Dhuoda, 102–­5; as used by Paulinus, 44, 50–­51 Vita Gangulfi, 217–­18 n.31 Wallace-­Hadrill, J. M., 4, 5, 40 Wenilo of Sens, 127 Widmar, 136 Wido of Brittany: Alcuin’s lay mirror to, 34, 40, 55–­63, 188 n.101; power dynamic with Alcuin of York, 55; warrior occupation, 56 William of Septimania, 1–­2, 8, 101–­5 women in Carolingian Europe: Alcuin’s view of, 61, 163; Dhuoda of Septimania’s life and manual, 100–­105; gender expectations and, 3–­4, 6

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Acknowledgments

Authors’ acknowledgments must be the most cliché-​­ridden of all the cliché-​ r­ idden genres, which is ironic considering that they are meant to convey the most heartfelt thanks that we feel t­ oward those who have helped us along the way and in the most personalized language that we can publicly muster. I am convinced that all authors sit down with the best intentions of composing something fresh and from the heart but that the clichés inevitably find their way to the nibs of our pens and spill irrepressibly onto the page whether we desire to avoid them or not. “No one writes a book without depending on the undying support of family and friends.” “Researching and writing always lead to hidden paths and directions unimagined.” “A scholar is only as good as the research librarians and archivists who provide assistance.” And so on. These formulas and phrases appear again and again for the simple reason that they are all true. My gratitude begins with Brown University, the J. William Fulbright Program, l’Université de Bourgogne, and Harvard University for their support, both monetary and moral. I also thank the research librarians of the Rockefeller Library, Widener Library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and Bobst Library. The material resources of these institutions are invaluable, yet their human resources are infinitely more so. Portions of the book revise and expand upon work that has appeared previously in publication: “The Common Bond of Aristocratic Masculinity: Monks, Secular Men, and St. Gerald of Aurillac,” in Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. Jennifer D. Thibodeaux (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 39–56, reproduced by permission of Palgrave Macmillan; and “In Praise of the Too-​­Clement Emperor: The Problem of Forgiveness in the Astronomer’s Vita Hludowici imperatoris,” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 89, no. 2 (2014): 382–409, copyright ©2014 by The Medieval Academy of America, Cambridge, Massachusetts. I am grateful to the publishers and editors of these volumes for allowing my repurposing of those materials here.

252  Acknowledgments

For support of the most precious kind, I thank Jerry Singerman and Ruth Mazo Karras of the University of Pennsylvania Press. Their professionalism, intelligence, compassion, and class have been second to none. This book could not have found a better home. Erica Ginsburg and Hannah Blake shepherded the manuscript through its various stages of production with skill and style. The careful assistance of Paris Spies-​­Gans was also vital as I compiled the final manuscript submission. I will be eternally grateful for the unflagging support of New York University and, especially, the Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Working with my enormously dedicated faculty workmates, talented administrative colleagues, and truly remarkable students is a privilege that I do not and will not ever take for granted. A sabbatical grant from the NYU Center for the Humanities, furthermore, gave me the time and space to make finishing this book possible. My year as a Humanities Center fellow counts among the very best experiences that I have enjoyed as a scholar to date. Extraordinary friends have been there for me in various supportive capacities along the way. While I could not possibly list everything that you have done (another cliché), I will nevertheless attempt to name as many of you as I am able so that the future may remember your quality. For your nature: Kurt Benkstein, Lia Brozgal, Greg Cohen, Merek Deacon, Linda Heumann, Mic Jurgens, Sara Kippur, Josh Lambert, Alex Lee, Krista Martocci, Mia Mor, Wajma Mohseni, and Deborah Sabat. For your nurture: Stavros Deligiorgis, Tom Lutz, Tony Molho, Tara Nummedal, Joe Pucci, Amy Remensnyder, Katherine Tachau, and my family, both immediate and extended. For your wisdom: Steve Biel, Jason Crawford, Marcia Dambry, Kim Davis, Dan Donoghue, Karen Flood, Jeanne Follansbee, Jeffrey Hamburger, Anna Henchman, Jill Lepore, Stephanie Lin, Leah Price, Maureen McLane, Lauren Mulcahy, Sally Livingston, Marie Rutkoski, Claire Sammon, Andy Scheil, Rebecca Schoff, Jessica Shires, Dan Smail, Elly Truitt, Nicholas Watson, and Jeff Webb. For your courage: Brigitte Bedos-​­Rezak, Cyd Cippola, Steve Duncombe, Greg Erickson, June Foley, Lisa Goldfarb, Matt Gregory, Fiona Griffiths, Louise Harpman, Hallie Franks, Karen Hornick, A. B. Huber, Lauren Kaminsky, Nina Katchadourian, Jessica Lee, Hal Momma, Sara Murphy, Celeste Orangers, Rachel Plutzer, Millery Polyné, Linda Reiss, Martha Rust, George Shulman, Laura Slatkin, Kathryn Smith, Amy Spellacy, Matt Stanley, Michael Stoller, Jack Tchen, Meredith Theeman, Yevgeniya Traps, Alejandro Velasco, and Susanne Wofford. For your temperance: Ademidé Adelusi-​ ­ Adeluyi, Dwai Bannerjee, J. Deleon, Dania Hueckmann, Tom Looser,

Acknowledgments 253

Gwynneth Malin, Cara Shousterman, Delia Solomons, and Jane Tylus. And for your justice: my dear friends and fellow New York medievalists Jay Diehl, Arnold Franklin, Sara Lipton, Lauren Mancia, Sara McDougall, Janine Peterson, and Nesli Şenocak. To Courtney Booker, Val Garver, Matt Gabriele, Matthew Gillis, Eric Goldberg, Owen Phelan, Dana Polanichka, Martha Rampton, Helmut Reimitz, and Rachel Stone, I am honored to call you my friends and to count myself among your Carolingianist ranks. I thank you in addition for proving that scholarly talent and generous humanity need not ever be mutually exclusive. Finally, I wish to thank Lynda Coon and Paul Dutton—​­friends and colleagues in the field whom I have also been lucky enough to consider mentors of the first rate. Your erudition astonishes, your creativity inspires, your humility embraces, and your caritas moves us all.