Rome and Religion in the Medieval World: Studies in Honor of Thomas F.X. Noble 9781472421128, 9781315607030, 2013045829

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
List of Plates
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments
Thomas F.X. Noble: An Appreciation
Bibliography of the Works of Thomas F.X. Noble, 1974–2013
Discipuli Nobilis
1
“Whatever Mystery May be Given to
My Heart”: A Latent Image in Arator’s History of the Apostles
2
Getting to Know Virgil in the
Carolingian Age: The Vita Publii Virgilii
3
Why Not to Marry a Foreign Woman: Stephen III’s Letter to Charlemagne
4
Opposition to Pilgrimage in the Reign of Charlemagne?
5
The Sources of Textiles and Vestments in Early Medieval Rome
6
Christening, the Kingdom of the Carolingians, and European Humanity
7
The Astronomer’s Life of Louis the Pious
8
Paschasius Radbertus and Pseudo-Isidore: The Evidence of the Epitaphium Arsenii
9
Care of Relics in Early Medieval Rome
10
Rome and the Popes in the Construction of Institutional History and Identity in the Early Middle Ages: The Case of Leiden Universiteitsbibliotheek Scaliger MS 49
11
What’s in a Psalm? British Library, MS Arundel 60 and the Stuff of Prayer
12
Prolegomenon to a Study of the Vienna Coronation Gospels: Common Knowledge, Scholarship, Tradition, Legend, Myth
13
Toward Evolution: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and the Receptions of the Libri Carolini in the Seventeenth Century
Index of Manuscripts
General Index

Citation preview

Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West General Editors Brenda Bolton, Anne J. Duggan, and Damian J. Smith About the series The series Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West reflects the central concerns necessary for any in-depth study of the medieval Church – greater cultural awareness and interdisciplinarity. Including both monographs and edited collections, this series draws on the most innovative work from established and younger scholars alike, offering a balance of interests, vertically through the period from c. 400 to c. 1500 or horizontally across Latin Christendom. Topics covered range from cultural history, the monastic life, relations between Church and State to law and ritual, palaeography and textual transmission. All authors, from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, share a commitment to innovation, analysis and historical accuracy. About the volume Rome and Religion in the Medieval World provides a panoramic and interdisciplinary exploration of Rome and religious culture. The studies build upon or engage Thomas F.X. Noble’s interest in Rome, especially his landmark contributions to the origins of the Papal States and early medieval image controversies. Scholars from a variety of disciplines offer new viewpoints on key issues and questions relating to medieval religious, cultural and intellectual history. Each study explores different dimensions of Rome and religion, including medieval art, theology, material culture, politics, education, law, and religious practice. Drawing upon a wide range of sources, including manuscripts, relics, historical and normative texts, theological tracts, and poetry, the authors illuminate the complexities of medieval Christianity, especially as practiced in the city of Rome itself, and elsewhere in Europe when influenced by the idea of Rome. Some trace early medieval legacies to the early modern period when Protestant and Catholic theologians used early medieval religious texts to define and debate forms of Roman Christianity. The chapters highlight and deepen scholarly appreciation of Rome in the rich and varied religious culture of the medieval world.

Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West General Editors Brenda Bolton, Anne J. Duggan and Damian J. Smith Other titles in the series: Entering a Clerical Career at the Roman Curia, 1458–1471 Kirsi Salonen and Jussi Hanska Pope Alexander III (1159–81) The Art of Survival Edited by Peter D. Clarke and Anne J. Duggan Motherhood, Religion, and Society in Medieval Europe, 400–1400 Essays Presented to Henrietta Leyser Edited by Conrad Leyser and Lesley Smith Hugh of Amiens and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance Ryan P. Freeburn Commemorating the Dead in Late Medieval Strasbourg The Cathedral’s Book of Donors and Its Use (1320–1521) Charlotte A. Stanford Ansgar, Rimbert and the Forged Foundations of Hamburg-Bremen Eric Knibbs Saving the Souls of Medieval London Perpetual Chantries at St Paul’s Cathedral, c.1200–1548 Marie-Hélène Rousseau Shaping Church Law Around the Year 1000 The Decretum of Burchard of Worms Greta Austin Readers, Texts and Compilers in the Earlier Middle Ages Studies in Medieval Canon Law in Honour of Linda Fowler-Magerl Edited by Martin Brett and Kathleen G. Cushing Pope Celestine III (1191–1198) Diplomat and Pastor Edited by John Doran and Damian J. Smith

Rome and ReliGion in the MedieVal World

Thomas F.X. Noble

Rome and Religion in the Medieval World Studies in Honor of Thomas F.X. Noble

Edited by

Valerie L. GarVer

Northern Illinois University, USA

and Owen M. Phelan Mount Saint Mary’s University, USA

First published 2014 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Valerie L. Garver and Owen M. Phelan 2014 Valerie L. Garver and Owen M. Phelan have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Rome and religion in the medieval world : studies in honor of Thomas F.X. Noble / edited by Valerie L. Garver and Owen M. Phelan. pages cm. – (Church, faith and culture in the medieval West) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4724-2112-8 (hardcover) 1. Rome (Italy)–History–476-1420. 2. Rome (Italy)– History–476-1420–Sources. 3. Rome (Italy)–Religious life and customs. 4. Religion–Social aspects–Italy–Rome–History–To 1500. 5. Church history–Middle Ages, 600-1500. 6. Papacy– History–To 1500. 7. Rome (Italy)–Intellectual life. 8. Material culture–Italy–Rome– History– To 1500. 9. Political culture–Italy–Rome–History–To 1500. 10. Noble, Thomas F. X. I. Garver, Valerie L. (Valerie Louise), 1972- II. Phelan, Owen Michael. DG811.R625 2014 937.0072’04–dc23 ISBN 9781472421128 (hbk) ISBN 9781315607030 (ebk)

2013045829

Contents List of Plates ix Notes on Contributors xi Acknowledgmentsxv Thomas F.X. Noble: An Appreciation Valerie L. Garver and Owen M. Phelan xvii Bibliography of the Works of Thomas F.X. Noble, 1974–2013 xxi Discipuli Nobilis xxvii 1 2 3

“Whatever Mystery May be Given to My Heart”: A Latent Image in Arator’s History of the Apostles1 Giselle de Nie Getting to Know Virgil in the Carolingian Age: The Vita Publii Virgilii21 John J. Contreni



Why Not to Marry a Foreign Woman: Stephen III’s Letter to Charlemagne47 Walter Pohl

4

Opposition to Pilgrimage in the Reign of Charlemagne? Janet L. Nelson

65

5

The Sources of Textiles and Vestments in Early Medieval Rome Maureen C. Miller

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6

Christening, the Kingdom of the Carolingians, and European Humanity101 John Van Engen

7

The Astronomer’s Life of Louis the Pious David Ganz

8

Paschasius Radbertus and Pseudo-Isidore: The Evidence of the Epitaphium Arsenii Mayke de Jong



129

149

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9

Care of Relics in Early Medieval Rome Julia M.H. Smith

10

Rome and the Popes in the Construction of Institutional History and Identity in the Early Middle Ages: The Case of Leiden Universiteitsbibliotheek Scaliger MS 49 Rosamond McKitterick

11 12 13

179

207

What’s in a Psalm? British Library, MS Arundel 60 and the Stuff of Prayer Rachel Fulton Brown

235

Prolegomenon to a Study of the Vienna Coronation Gospels: Common Knowledge, Scholarship, Tradition, Legend, Myth Lawrence Nees

253

Toward Evolution: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and the Receptions of the Libri Carolini in the Seventeenth Century Karl F. Morrison

275

Index of Manuscripts General Index

335 337

List of Plates 1

St. Catherine at Maaseik, Belgium, casula of Sts. Harlindis and Relindis, pattern of the “David silk” reconstructed, eighth–early ninth century (Mildred Budny)

2

Vatican City, Museo Sacro of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Annunciation, compound twill silk from Constantinople, eighth–early ninth century (Scala/Art Resource, NY)

3

Vienna Coronation Gospels, front cover, early sixteenth century (Weltliche Schatzkammer der Hofburg, Kunsthistorisches Museum, s.n.) (Photo Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien)

4

Vienna Coronation Gospels, Evangelist John and opening of his Gospel, first quarter ninth century (Weltliche Schatzkammer der Hofburg, Kunsthistorisches Museum, s.n., fols. 178v–179r) (Photo Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien)

5

Alfred Rethel, fresco in the Krönungsfestsaal of the Rathaus in Aachen, showing Otto III kneeling before the enthroned corpse of Charlemagne, 1847 (Photo Peter Cürlis, 1943, © Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte)

6

Adhémar of Chabannes, drawing of Charlemagne’s tomb and palace chapel at Aachen, before 1033 (Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, cod. Reg. lat. 263, fol. 235r) (Photo Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)

7

Adhémar of Chabannes, drawing of the head of Charlemagne, before 1033 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, cod. Lat. 5943A, fol. 5r) (Photo Bibliothèque nationale de France)

8

Adhémar of Chabannes, drawing of St. Eparchius of Angoulême with self-portrait, before 1033 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, cod. lat. 3784, fol. 99v) (Photo Bibliothèque nationale de France)

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9

Vienna Coronation Gospels, Evangelist Matthew miniature, first quarter ninth century (Weltliche Schatzkammer der Hofburg, Kunsthistorisches Museum, s.n., fol. 15r) (Photo Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien)

10

Gospels from Reims, Evangelist Matthew miniature, c. 820s–830s (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, cod. lat. 265, fol. 11v) (Photo Bibliothèque nationale de France)

11

Image (Bildnis) for the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy from Johann Christoph Weigel, Biblia Ectypa. Bildnussen aus Heiliger Schrifft dess Alt- und Neuen Testaments in welchen alle Geschichte under Erscheinungen deutlich und schrifftmassig zu Gottes Ehre und andachtiger Seelen erbaulicher Beschauung vorgestellet werden (Augsburg: Christoph Weigel, 1695), n. p. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Image Source: Art Resource, NY)

Notes on Contributors Editors Valerie L. Garver is Associate Professor of History at Northern Illinois University. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of the Carolingian world, with particular interests in women, family, and material culture. She is the author of Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World. Owen M. Phelan is Associate Professor of Church History at Mount Saint Mary’s University. He specializes in the religious history of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. He is author of the forthcoming The Formation of Christian Europe: The Carolingians, Baptism, and the Imperium Christianum. Contributors John J. Contreni is Professor of History at Purdue University. He specializes in the intellectual, religious, and political culture of the early medieval period. Among his many articles, books, and collected papers is Learning and Culture in Carolingian Europe: Letters, Numbers, Exegesis, and Manuscripts, also published by Ashgate. Rachel Fulton Brown is Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of Chicago. A specialist in medieval religious, intellectual, and cultural history, she has published numerous articles in addition to her book From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200. Mayke de Jong is Professor in the Department of History and Art History at the University of Utrecht. She has authored and edited many publications about the early Middle Ages, especially the Carolingian Empire. Her most recent monograph is The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–840. Giselle de Nie is an independent scholar; until her retirement, she taught in the Department of Medieval History at the University of Utrecht. She specializes in the study of early and medieval Christianity. Her recent publications include Poetics of Wonder: Testimonies of the New Christian Miracles in the Late Antique Latin World.

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David Ganz is Emeritus Professor of Palaeography, King’s College London. In addition to his books and many articles on medieval manuscripts and intellectual history, he has translated and edited Einhard and Notker the Stammerer: Two Lives of Charlemagne. Rosamond McKitterick is 1937 Chair of Medieval History at Cambridge University. She specializes in the political, cultural, intellectual, religious, and social history of Europe in the early Middle Ages, with particular interests in the Frankish kingdoms, palaeography, and manuscript studies. Among her most recent books are Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity and History and Memory in the Carolingian World. Maureen C. Miller is Professor of History at The University of California Berkeley. Her primary research interests lie in the study of the rapid transformation of Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries and the life of medieval Italian cities. She has published numerous books and articles, including The Bishop’s Palace: Architecture and Authority in Medieval Italy. Karl F. Morrison is Lessing Professor Emeritus of History and Poetics at Rutgers University. He specializes in intellectual and religious history, with strong interests in the early Middle Ages, historiography, and Church history. Among his numerous articles, books, and edited volumes, is his most recent publication Studies on Medieval Empathies, co-edited with Rudolph M. Bell. Lawrence Nees is Professor of Art History at the University of Delaware. A specialist in early medieval art, he has published many articles, books, and edited collections. In addition to A Tainted Mantle: Hercules and the Classical Tradition at the Carolingian Court, he is the author of Early Medieval Art. Janet L. Nelson is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at King’s College London. She has published widely on medieval subjects, especially government, religion, and gender. Among her many book, articles and edited collections is Courts, Elites and Gendered Power, also published by Ashgate. Walter Pohl is Professor für mittelalterliche Geschichte und historische Hilfswissenschaften at the University of Vienna and Director of the Institut für Mittelalterforschung. He specializes in early medieval history, especially identity formation. He has authored or edited numerous volumes, including Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe. Julia M.H. Smith holds the Edwards Chair in Medieval History at the University of Glasgow. She has published numerous articles and books on early

Notes on Contributors

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medieval religion, gender, politics, and society, in addition to having edited Early Medieval Christianities, c. 600–c. 1100 with Thomas F.X. Noble. Her most recent monograph is Europe After Rome: A New Cultural History, 500–1000. John Van Engen is Andrew V. Tackes Professor of Medieval History at the University of Notre Dame. He specializes in societal reform in the high and late Middle Ages, with particular attention to women writers, monasticism, and canon law. He has published numerous articles, edited collections, and books, including Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Late Middle Ages.

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Acknowledgments This collection resulted from a discussion among Thomas F.X. Noble’s current and former doctoral students during the International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, Michigan in May 2011 as we thought about a fitting gesture to mark his 65th birthday. Many of the essays in this volume stem from papers delivered at a series of sessions in honor of Tom at the International Medieval Congress the following year. Others are by scholars who could not attend, but still wished to honor him. Many further students and colleagues—certainly more than could be accommodated in this volume—expressed to us their affection for and congratulations to Tom. The editors would like to acknowledge them all here, and thank them for their kind words and gestures of support. All of these friends of Tom expressed their deep appreciation for him, and many reminisced with us about his professional and personal importance to them. The editors have incurred many debts in the process of putting together this volume. We appreciate the enthusiasm of the contributors for this project, as well as their impressive scholarship. Emily Yates and her colleagues at Ashgate have been generous with their expertise and patience. We are thankful to John McGreevy, Dean of the College of Arts & Letters at the University of Notre Dame, for a generous subvention, which among other things allowed for the inclusion of vibrant color plates. Our families’ encouragement and sacrifices made possible the successful completion of our work. Finally, we remain especially grateful for the camaraderie and friendship of the discipuli nobilis, all of whom are to thank for the conception and execution of this volume. Addendum: Unfortunately, Rosamond McKitterick, John Osborne, Carol M. Richardson, and Joanna Story, eds., Old Saint Peter’s, Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) appeared too late for the editors and contributors to this volume to account for its valuable insights and information.

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Thomas F.X. Noble: An Appreciation In seeking to capture the breadth and significance of Thomas F.X. Noble’s career over the last forty years, a comparison with another great scholarteacher seems apt. Hrabanus Maurus, the so-called Praeceptor Germaniae, was schoolmaster and abbot at the large and prestigious monastery of Fulda before becoming archbishop of Mainz. Through the far-ranging subjects of his scholarship, the influence of his work, and the example of his life, Tom—like Hrabanus—exemplifies the finest qualities of a teacher. Thomas F.X. Noble is a consummate medievalist. Like Hrabanus Maurus, Tom moves easily among numerous disciplines and topics. While many scholars excel in one or two areas, in the finest traditions of interdisciplinarity, Tom’s work epitomizes how Hrabanus described his own encyclopedic De rerum naturis, as a project exploring singular phenomena and laying bare hidden connections between subjects. Through more than forty scholarly articles Tom has illumined the early medieval world in a variety of ways. Topics treated in various publications include monasticism, politics, religious ideals, learning and letters, aristocratic culture, justice, and administration. Tom is a leading scholar of the Early Middle Ages with expertise widely acknowledged in North America and around the world. Thoughtful reflections on historical sources and forceful argumentation characterize all his numerous works. Among Tom’s many strengths as a historian are his impressive command of historiography and his commitment to take religion seriously as a historical force. Often he enriches his studies with honest and frank evaluations of the role of religion in history, and not just the traditional Church history of institutions, but of religious ideas as well. Tom approaches early medieval sources with both technical expertise and a historical creativity restricted only by his careful attention to their context and genre. These characteristics appear in two areas of enduring interest to Tom: the significance of the papacy and the role of art in the medieval world. Moreover, Tom works and lives as a man of dialogue. His scholarship engages leading thinkers and key ideas past and present in no small part because he discusses central conundrums of medieval history. Invitations from around the world to give scholarly presentations as well as the distinguished lists of presenters at conferences held in his honor testify to the broad impact of Tom’s work on the profession. Like Hrabanus, Tom is a skillful, inspiring, and effective teacher. Among Tom’s many awards are testaments to his teaching and advising. In Charlottesville and in South Bend, Tom’s students and colleagues recognize his commitment to and excellence in teaching. At the University of Virginia Tom was awarded the

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David A. Harrison III Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising (1999) as well as the University of Virginia Alumni Association Distinguished Professor Award (1999). At Notre Dame, students and faculty similarly acknowledged his gifts with the Edmund P. Joyce Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2008) and the College of Arts & Letters’ Charles E. Sheedy, CSC Award for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship (2011). His surveys of Western civilization have been among the largest and most well-regarded undergraduate courses at Virginia and at Notre Dame. In the classroom, Tom marshals the perfect blend of keen intellect, sharp wit, and dazzling panache. Everyone from a Western Civilization class at UVa vividly remembers the day when, asked if his bow ties were real, he proceeded calmly to untie and remake a perfect knot—without interrupting the course of his lecture. At the graduate level, Tom advised more than twenty doctoral candidates at UVa and ND, taught them the skills of a medievalist, and encouraged them in their chosen areas of research. In addition to helping them find positions at fine institutions all across the country, he continues to mentor them through the various stages of their careers and maintains an interest in their wellbeing beyond the scholarly world. Tom’s commitment to and excellence in teaching extend far beyond the doors of his classroom. Like Hrabanus, Tom has co-authored widely admired textbooks. He is the lead author and project initiator for Western Civilization: The Continuing Experiment, which is now in its seventh edition. He also coauthored The Western Humanities, now in its eighth edition. In service to students and scholars, Tom has penned articles for the Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, the Lexikon des Mittelalters, the Encyclopedia of Late Antiquity, and the Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. And in a technological marvel that Hrabanus surely would have admired, Tom has made his authoritative voice available to those unable to attend his classes with four cycles of lectures recorded and published by The Teaching Company. Through translations and reference works, Tom has worked to make early medieval history more accessible and alive. He co-edited collections on several areas of his expertise: From Roman Provinces to Medieval Kingdoms, Early Medieval Christianities: 600–1100 and European Transformations: The Long Twelfth Century. He also edited, co-edited, or translated important early medieval sources: Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints’ Lives in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages and Charlemagne and Louis the Pious: Five Lives. By far his most influential work has revolved around two topics, ones also central to Hrabanus’ interests: Rome and images. Tom’s first monograph, The Republic of St. Peter: The Birth of the Papal State, 680–825, stands as the definitive treatment of the early medieval papacy. A thorough investigation of the emergence of the papal “republic” in the Early Middle Ages, Tom identifies the central political issue: a gradual understanding that the popes’ first allegiance should be to the people of the Republic of St. Peter, particularly after Byzantine

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influence on the Italian peninsula waned in the late seventh century. The strengths of the book are numerous. Reviewers at the time of its publication in 1984 remarked upon his extensive study of the secondary literature and his sensitivity to not only the political question at the heart of his study, but also the ecclesiastical and theological developments that touched upon his central theme. The book remains an indispensable reference work for anyone interested in the early medieval papacy, even as its argument continues to frame scholarly understanding of basic political history of the papacy. Tom’s second monograph, Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians—winner of the prestigious Otto Gründler book prize—supplies the first comprehensive study of Western responses to Byzantine iconoclasm. Tom’s meticulous work recovers the rich, well-informed, and practical approach to art cultivated by Carolingian intellectuals. In an impressive display of breadth, Tom contextualizes Carolingian thought within the broader Christian tradition of “art talk.” He surveys the long and deep historiographical traditions around art and keeps track of socio-political and theological dimensions of Christian art, especially icons. As with The Republic of St. Peter, Tom’s effort sketches a bold new vision of a central issue in the Early Middle Ages, offers detailed explanations and analyses of difficult and important texts, and succinctly surveys a complicated historiographical landscape. In short, he produced another indispensable reference work for scholars and students of the early medieval world. While Tom’s impressive scholarly achievements mirror the breadth (and size) of the celebrated abbot of Fulda, his service to his profession also resembles that of Hrabanus. On numerous occasions, Tom generously emerged from scholarly retreat to enter the fray of politics and administration. Tom spent eight years as the Robert M. Conway Director of the Medieval Institute at Notre Dame, before accepting the position of Chair of the History Department. At both UVa and ND, Tom has served on committees and task forces almost too numerous to count, and certainly too numerous to list. Beyond the walls of his institutions, he has served on the editorial boards of respected journals such as Speculum and Church History and of important series for the Catholic University of America Press and the University of Virginia Press. He has served as president of two of the most respected scholarly organizations in North America: the American Catholic Historical Association and the American Society of Church History. In addition, over the course of his distinguished career he has organized, chaired, or participated in a wide variety of conference panels and is a much sought after speaker, valued not only for his scholarship and powers of conceptualization, but also for the charm and good humor he brings to the lectern as a person. For those who are colleagues, friends, or students of Tom, it is this last dimension—the personal—that is most difficult to convey. The many who know Tom from his public appearances or official service certainly know his exuberant charisma, and may marvel at how he can attend grueling conferences

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and committee meetings only to emerge more energized than when he arrived. They may not know the tireless and joyful efforts he expends on the many who ask for his advice or aid. Tom’s personal generosity matches and exceeds his scholarly and professional efforts, as those fortunate enough to have worked or studied with him know well. Tom is also a devoted family man. Many of his students, friends, and colleagues will know how proudly and happily he talks about his wife, Linda, and their family. He takes equal joy in the family pictures and stories of others. In this sense, he serves as a model of balancing the personal and the professional. The essays collected in this volume have been offered by only a few of the many friends of Thomas F.X. Noble. Assembled under the title Rome and Religion in the Medieval World, the collection treats a wide variety of sources and questions related to medieval religion and the medieval papacy. In the tradition of the many florilegia assembled by Hrabanus, we dedicate this bouquet to Tom as a tribute to his long scholarly career, as a testament to the deep affection for him held by his friends and students, and as a gift for his future work. As Tom continues to reflect and write on the idea of Rome and the history of the papacy, we hope he sees these essays both as a testament to his mark on our lives and as encouragement and good wishes for his ongoing efforts.  

Valerie L. Garver DeKalb, Illinois

  

Owen M. Phelan Emmitsburg, Maryland October 2013

Bibliography of the Works of Thomas F.X. Noble, 1974–2013 2013 “Why Pope Joan?” Catholic Historical Review 99: 219–38. 2012 Envisioning Experience in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Dynamic Patterns in Texts and Images, edited with Giselle de Nie. Aldershot: Ashgate. European Transformations: The Long Twelfth Century, edited with John Van Engen. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. “Images, a Daydream, and Heavenly Sounds in the Carolingian Era: Walahfrid Strabo and Maura of Troyes.” In Envisioning Experience in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Dynamic Patterns in Texts and Images, edited with Giselle de Nie, pp. 23–45. Aldershot: Ashgate. “Introduction.” In Envisioning Experience in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Dynamic Patterns in Texts and Images, edited with Giselle de Nie, pp. 1–9. Aldershot: Ashgate. “Introduction.” In European Transformations: The Long Twelfth Century, edited with John Van Engen, pp. 1–16. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. 2011 “The Interests of Historians in the Tenth Century.” In England and the Continent in the Tenth Century, edited by David Rollason, Conrad Leyser, and Hannah Williams, pp. 495–513. Turnhout: Brepols. 2010 The Western Humanities (with Roy Matthews and F. DeWitt Platt), 7th edn. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010; 8th edn. 2013.

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2009 Charlemagne and Louis the Pious: Five Lives (edited and translated). University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009; paperback 2011. Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. (Winner of the Otto Gründler Prize for 2011.) “Kings, Clergy, and Dogma: The Settlement of Doctrinal Disputes in the Carolingian World.” In Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, edited by Stephen Baxter et al., pp. 237–52. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009. 2008 Early Medieval Christianities, 600–1100, edited with Julia M.H. Smith. Cambridge History of Christianity 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. “Greatness Contested and Confirmed: The Raw Materials of the Charlemagne Legend.” In The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages, edited by Matthew Gabriele and Jace Stuckey, pp. 3–21. New York: Palgrave. “Matter and Meaning in the Carolingian World.” In The Long Morning of Medieval Europe: New Directions in Early Medieval Studies, edited by Jennifer R. Davis and Michael McCormick, pp. 321–6. Aldershot: Ashgate. “Rome al tempo di Gregorio Magno” (in English). In Enciclopedia Gregoriana: La vita, l’opera e la fortuna di Gregorio Magno, edited by Giuseppe Cremascoli and Antonella Degl’Innocenti, pp. 307–10. Florence: SISMEL. “TheChristianChurchasanInstitution.”InEarlyMedievalChristianities,600–1100, edited with Julia M.H. Smith, pp. 249–74. Cambridge History of Christianity 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2007 “Boniface and the Roman Church.” In Bonifatius—Leben und Nachwirkung: Die Gestaltung des christlichen Europas im Frühmittelalter, edited by Franz J. Felten, Jörg Jarnut, and Lutz E. Von Padberg, pp. 327–39. Quellen und Abhandlungen zur mittelrheinischen Kirchengeschichte 121. Mainz: Gesellschaft für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte. “Secular Sanctity: Forging an Ethos for the Carolingian Nobility.” In Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World, edited by Patrick Wormald and Janet Nelson, pp. 8–36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2006 From Roman Provinces to Medieval Kingdoms (editor). London: Routledge.

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2005 “The Bible in the Codex Carolinus.” In Biblical Studies in the Early Middle Ages, edited by Claudio Leonardi and Giovanni Orlandi, pp. 61–74. SISMEL: Atti di Convegni 6. Florence: SISMEL. “The Vocabulary of Vision and Worship in the Early Carolingian Period.” In Seeing the Invisible in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Papers from “Verbal and Pictorial Imaging: Representing and Accessing Experience of the Invisible: 400–1000” (Utrecht, 11–13 December 2003), edited by Giselle de Nie, Karl F. Morrison, Herbert Kessler, and Marco Mostert, pp. 215–39. Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 13. Turnhout: Brepols. 2003 “The Roman Elite from Constantine to Charlemagne.” Acta ad Archaeologiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia 17: 13–25. 2002 “Gregory of Tours and the Roman Church.” In The World of Gregory of Tours, edited by Ian Wood and Kathleen Mitchell, pp. 145–61. Leiden: Brill. 2001 “The Intellectual Culture of the Early Medieval Papacy.” Roma nell’alto medioevo. CISAM 48: 179–217. “Topography, Power, and Ritual in the Making of Papal Rome, 700–900.” In Places of Power in the Early Middle Ages, edited by Frans Theuws, Mayke de Jong, and Carine van Rhijn, pp. 45–91. Leiden: Brill. 2000 “Paradoxes in the Papal Sources for Roman Society and Economy.” In Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West: Essays in Honor of Donald Bullough, edited by Julia M.H. Smith, pp. 55–83. Leiden: Brill. “The Changing Place of Biblical Testimonies in Carolingian Texts Concerning Images.” In Medieval Transformations: Texts, Power, and Gifts, edited by Esther Cohen, pp. 59–71. Leiden: Brill. The Letters of Saint Boniface, translated by Ephraim Emerton, with a new Introduction (pp. vii–xxxv) and Bibliography (pp. 171–3) by Thomas F.X. Noble. New York: Columbia University Press.

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1999 “From the Libri Carolini to the Opus Caroli Regis.” Journal of Medieval Latin 9: 131–47. “The Transformation of the Roman World: Reflections on Five Years of Work.” In East and West: Modes of Communication, edited by Evangelos Chrysos and Ian Wood, pp. 259–77. Transformation of the Roman World 5. Leiden: Brill. 1998 “Lupus of Ferrières in His Carolingian Setting.” In After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History. Essays Presented to Walter Goffart, edited by Alexander Callander Murray, pp. 132–50. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. “Popes for All Seasons.” First Things 86: 34–41. 1995 “Morbidity and Vitality in the History of the Early Medieval Papacy.” Catholic Historical Review 81: 505–40. “Rome in the Seventh Century.” In Archbishop Theodore: Commemorative Studies on His Life and Influence, edited by Michael Lapidge, pp. 69–87. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. “The Papacy in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 2, edited by Rosamond McKitterick, pp. 563–586. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. “Tradition and Learning in Search of Ideology: The Case of the Libri Carolini.” In The Gentle Voices of Teachers: Aspects of Learning in the Carolingian World, edited by Richard E. Sullivan, pp. 227–60. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. 1994 “Michele Maccarrone on the Medieval Papacy.” Catholic Historical Review 80: 518–33. Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints’ Lives in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, edited with Thomas Head. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.

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1993 “From Brigandage to Justice: Charlemagne 785–794.” In Literacy, Politics, and Artistic Innovation in the Early Medieval West, edited by Celia Chazelle, pp. 49–75. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. “Theodoric the Great and the Papacy.” In Teodorico il Grande e i Goti d’Italia, edited by Ovidio Capitani, pp. 395–423. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di studi sull’Alto Medioevo. Western Civilization: The Continuing Experiment, with five others (lead author and project originator). Boston, MA: HoughtonMifflin, 1993; 2nd edn. 1998; 3rd edn. 2001; 4th edn. 2004; 5th edn. Boston, MA: Cengage, 2007; 6th edn. 2010; 7th edn. 2013. 1990 “Literacy and the Papal Government in the Early Middle Ages.” In The Uses of Literacy in the Early Middle Ages, edited by Rosamond McKitterick, pp. 82–108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1989 “Louis the Pious and the Frontiers of the Frankish Realm.” In Charlemagne’s Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious, edited by Peter Godman and Roger Collins), pp. 333–47. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1987 Religion, Culture and Society in the Early Middle Ages: Studies in Honor of Richard E. Sullivan, edited with John J. Contreni. Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University Press/The Medieval Institute. “John Damascene and the Iconoclastic Controversy.” In Religion, Culture and Society in the Early Middle Ages: Studies in Honor of Richard E. Sullivan, edited with John J. Contreni, pp. 95–116. Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University Press/The Medieval Institute. 1985 “A New Look at the Liber Pontificalis.” Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 23: 347–58. “The Declining Knowledge of Greek in Early Medieval Rome.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 78: 56–62.

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1984 The Republic of St. Peter: the Birth of the Papal State, 680–825. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984; paperback 1986; Italian translation 1998. 1981 “Some Observations on the Deposition of Theodulf of Orléans (817).” Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 2: 29–40. 1980 “Louis the Pious and His Piety Reconsidered.” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 58: 297–316. 1976 “The Monastic Ideal as a Model for Empire: the Case of Louis the Pious.” Revue bénédictine 86: 235–50. “The Place in Papal History of the Roman Synod of 826.” Church History 45: 434–54. 1974 “The Revolt of King Bernard of Italy in 817: Its Causes and Consequences.” Studi Medievali 3(15): 315–26.

Discipuli Nobilis Notre Dame (2000–present) Hannah Matis (2013) “Daughters of Jerusalem: Early Medieval Commentary on the Song of Songs and the Carolingian Reform” Nathan Ristuccia (2013) “The Transmission of Christendom: Ritual and Instruction in the Early Middle Ages” Amber Handy (2011) “The Specula principum in Northwestern Europe AD 650–900: The Evolution of a New Ethical Rule” Courtney Luckhardt (2011) “Connecting Saints: Travel and Hagiography in the Northwestern Atlantic, 500–800” Eric Shuler (2011) “Almsgiving and the Formation of Early Medieval Societies, AD 700–1025” Phillip Wynn (2011) “War and Military Service in Early Western Christian Thought, 200–850” Jonathan Couser (2006) “The Chalice of Christ and the Chalice of Demons: The Making of Christendom in Agilolfing Bavaria, AD 500–788” Owen M. Phelan (2005) “The Formation of Christian Europe: Baptism Under the Carolingians” University of Virginia (1980–2000) Valerie L. Garver (2003) “Carolingian Aristocratic Women and the Transmission of Culture”

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Eric J. Goldberg (1998) “Creating a Medieval Kingdom: Carolingian Kingship, Court Culture, and Aristocratic Society under Louis of East Francia (840–876)” Martha Rampton (1998) “The Gender of Magic in the Early Middle Ages” Martin Claussen (1992) “Community, Tradition, and Reform in Early Carolingian Francia: Chrodegang and the Canons of Metz Cathedral” Lynda L. Coon (1990) “Women and Men in Early Hagiography (c.300–800)” Paolo Squatriti (1990) “Water and Society in Late Antique and Early Medieval Italy, A. D. 400–850” David F. Appleby (1989) “Hagiography and Ideology in the Ninth Century: The Narrative Descriptions of the Translation of Relics”

Chapter 1

“Whatever Mystery May be Given to My Heart”: A Latent Image in Arator’s History of the Apostles Giselle de Nie In April and May of the year 544, while the Ostrogothic army was advancing upon Rome, a sizeable part of the city’s non-combatant population was held spellbound for four separate days in the church of St. Peter ad vincula (his chains were kept there as a relic1) by the declamation of a poetic interpretation of the Acts of the Apostles.2 The performer was its author, the poet Arator (480/490–546/550), a former high official at the Ostrogothic court at Ravenna who had transferred his services to the Church of Rome. And his poem, probably composed under the supervision, if not at the request, of Pope Vigilius (537–55), explained selected events in Acts as announcing the central doctrines of the faith, and highlighted the apostle Peter’s role in defining it and leading the Church community. The medieval popularity of Arator’s History of the Apostles, with its glorifying emphasis upon St. Peter and Rome, is the reason I have selected it as my subject for this volume in honor of Tom Noble. For although he chose not to treat the ideology of what later became the papal state, the poem may well have helped to underpin what he has so admirably described as the rise of the “Republic of Saint Peter” in the period from 680 to 825.3 Since the Petrine dimension of Arator’s poem has already been fully examined by Paul-Augustin Deproost4 and Tom 1

  In Acts 12:1–11, an angel had appeared to Peter in prison, whereafter the chains fell from his hands and he was led out to safety. 2   Aratoris subdiaconi Historia apostolica (hereafter Hist. apost.), ed. Arpad P. Orbán, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (CCSL), 130, 2 vols. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), vol. I; an earlier edition with translation is Richard J. Schrader et al., ed. and trans., Arator’s On the Acts of the Apostles (De actibus Apostolorum), The American Academy of Religion, Classics in Religious Studies VI (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1987). 3   Thomas F.X. Noble, The Republic of St. Peter: The Birth of the Papal State, 680–825 (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984). 4   Paul-Augustin Deproost, L’apôtre Pierre dans une épopée du VIe siècle. L’Historia apostolica d’Arator, Collection des Études Augustiniennes, Série Antiquité CXXVI (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1990).

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has recently explored the role of images,5 I decided to look at Arator’s imagery in his presentation of Acts’ events as manifesting the faith’s central doctrines.6 Each selected visible event, he writes, is a “figure” (figura) of a central doctrine of the faith or “mystery” “situated in heaven” (quam nubila gestant).7 And it is his intention to explain, “to open up through various figures” (variis aperire figuris) of other biblical events regarded as models of the faith’s central doctrines, “what was the face of things” (Quae fuerit rerum facies), in particular miracles.8 Already in the poem’s letter of dedication, my attention was caught by an intriguing phrase: he says that he “will open up, in alternating ways, what the text makes known and whatever mystery may be given to my heart” (Alternis reserabo modis, quod littera pandit / Et res si qua mihi mystica corde datur).9 Should this be understood as pointing to the view that his poesis—the process of finding the “mysteries” informing the events in Acts—coincides with something like ongoing divine revelation? For one of his models, the early fifth-century poet Paulinus of Nola, had come close to formulating such a view; as it were free-associating in various directions at once, he had developed an original kind of poetic theology.10 Considering Arator’s confession, I thus wondered whether I could perhaps discover—alongside the recognized biblical “figures”—traces of an original image below the explicit level, one that had occurred to the poet 5

  Thomas F.X. Noble, Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). I want to thank him warmly here for his collaboration in our recently completed joint project: Giselle de Nie and Thomas F.X. Noble, eds., Envisioning Experience in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Dynamic Patterns in Texts and Images (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012). 6   On the rise of “figural” and allegorical thinking, see: Erich Auerbach, “Figura,” Archivum romanicum 22 (1938): 436–89, and Jean Pépin, La tradition de l’allégorie de Philon d’Alexandrie á Dante (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1988). 7   Hist. apost. 1.510, CCSL, 130, p. 262. On the rise of meditative reading in this period, see Michael Roberts, The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989); Patricia Cox Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity: Studies in the Imagination of a Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), and Patricia Cox Miller, The Poetry of Thought in Late Antiquity. Essays in Imagination and Religion (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001). 8   Hist. apost. 1.462 and 464, CCSL, 130, p. 259, describing Acts 3:1–11, Peter’s shadow healing crowds. On Arator’s use of allegory, see Bruno Bureau, Lettre et sens mystique dans l’Historia apostolica d’Arator. Exégèse et épopée (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1997). 9   Epistola ad Vigilium 21–2, CCSL, 130, p. 214. 10   See on this Catherine Conybeare, Paulinus Noster: Self and Symbol in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), and on this view, especially in his poetry, Giselle de Nie, Poetics of Wonder: Testimonies of the New Christian Miracles in the Late Antique Latin World, Studies in the Early Middle Ages 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), pp. 187–94.

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while writing the poem. And, indeed, I kept encountering fleeting glimpses of an as yet unnoticed tensive cluster of traditional images, never fully verbalized. As I hope to show in what follows, alongside the grandiose inspiring vision of Peter’s leadership of the Church, this underlying composite image appears to visualize the poet’s experience, or at least his conception of the experience, of a dynamic personal faith which he wished to impart to his audience in their crumbling world. The Poem and its Context The early sixth-century Ostrogothic revival of the Roman legacy was then being destroyed by the wars with the armies of the emperor Justinian in Constantinople, temporarily recovering wide stretches of the western Roman Empire. Arator’s poem has accordingly been described as a proclamation of a translatio imperii from the defunct visible empire of the ancient Romans founded by their mythical hero Aeneas, to the universal Church of Christ, founded and led by the apostle Peter, now represented by his successor, the city’s bishop.11 Trying to give its listeners the courage to deal with the current dire situation, the poem even assured them that the apostle in heaven would prevent further war.12 Nothing is known of the poet’s whereabouts after his recital in 544. Despite the poem’s promises of the city’s rescue, Rome was captured and plundered by the Ostrogothic army two years later, in 546, and all of its inhabitants were deported. Later liberated by Justinian’s general Narses, the city and all Italy came under the heavy hand of the emperor’s Greek administrators—only to be confronted in 568, after Justinian’s death, with the invasion by the Germanic Longobards and, then left to its own devices, forced to find a modus vivendi with them. 11   Bureau, Lettre et sens mystique, pp. 17–19. Something close to this reality of the invisible Church governed by Christ through the Roman bishop had also been envisaged in the statements of Pope Leo I (440–60) a hundred years earlier. On this tradition and the role of Leo, see Roger Collins, Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2009), pp. 58–76, who argues, however, that the claims to authority were elicited by circumstances and not then perceived as an autonomous ideology. This does seem to be the case with Arator, who is not mentioned by Collins. 12   Hist. apost. 1:1,073–6, CCSL, 130, p. 303. On the historical circumstances, Vigilius, and Arator’s life, see Bureau, Lettre et sens mystique, pp. 14–20; older but useful are Jeffrey Richards, The Popes and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages 476–752 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), pp. 100–161 (on Vigilius, pp. 125–54; on Arator, pp. 141–2), and Richard Hillier, Arator on the Acts of the Apostles: A Baptismal Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 1–19.

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Arator’s poem follows the precedent of earlier biblical epics in synthesizing his material and presenting it in an aesthetic guise to persuade his listeners.13 In certain respects echoing Sedulius’ early fifth-century Paschal Song14 which had woven the symbolic images into the happening events, it was also influenced by the didactic sermons of the Church Fathers, especially those of Augustine.15 Aside from the emphasis on Petrine leadership, the poem’s main themes have been listed as: the Christian way of life, belief in the Trinity, the Church as the anchor of the present and future life, and—especially—baptism as the access to all this.16 Modern scholars were long repelled by Arator’s didactic allegorizing, and the plentiful images he adduces around his material have been described by one as “a ‘transparent’ poetics of an astonishing baroqueness.”17 In the second half of the twentieth century, however, the poem finally began to be recognized and appreciated as—in many different ways—a last flowering of the Ostrogothic cultural revival in Italy under King Theodoric (489–526).18 Thus it has been described by Johannes Schwind as a “poetic meditation,”19 by Richard Hillier as a verse catechism about and for baptism, by Bruno Bureau as 13

  See Roger P.H. Green, Latin Epics of the New Testament. Juvencus, Sedulius, Arator (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 14   Sedulius, Paschale carmen, ed. Guillelmus de Hartel, edn. altera supplementis aucta, curante Margit Kamptner, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL) 30 (Vienna: Verlag der Östereichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1999). On Sedulius as one of Arator’s primary models, see: Schwind, Arator-Studien, pp. 161–79; see also Neil Wright, “Arator’s Use of Caelius Sedulius: A Re-examination,” Eranos 87 (1989), 51–64, at pp. 52 and 64, and Bureau, Lettre et sens mystique, pp. 212–14. 15   Johannes Schwind, Arator-Studien, Hypomnemata, Untersuchungen zur Antike und zu ihrem Nachleben, XCIV (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1990), pp. 179–201. 16   Ibid., pp. 155–7, and Hillier, Arator, passim. 17   “[C]e ‘transparant’ poétique d’un étonnant baroquisme”; Jacques Fontaine, “Images virgiliennes de l’Ascension céleste dans la poésie latine chrétienne,” in Jenseitsvorstellungen in Antike und Christentum: Gedenkschrift für Alfred Stuiber (Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 9 (1982), pp. 55–67, at p. 65, quoted by Hillier, Arator, p. 54. On the influence of the poem and its subsequent appreciations, see Schwind, Arator-Studien, pp. 9–25. 18   The most recent book-length publications about Arator, in chronological order are: Schrader, Arator’s On the Acts (1987); Schwind, Arator-Studien (1990); Deproost, L’apôtre Pierre (1990); Hillier, Arator (1993); Johannes Schwind, Sprachliche und exegetische Beobachtungen zu Arator, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Abhandlungen der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse 1995, nr. 5 (Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur; Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1995), and Bureau, Lettre et sens mystique (1997), who gives the most recent full bibliography. The latest elaborate discussion of Arator in a larger study is Green, Latin Epics, pp. 251–350. 19   Schwind, Arator-Studien, p. 53.

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an oscillation between hymn, apology, epic, and versified sermon,20 and most recently by Roger Green as all these things as well as a Roman-style panegyric for pope Vigilius,21 who had earlier been forcibly installed by Justinian’s general Belisarius against continuing local opposition. The fact that, a year after the declamation, when Vigilius had refused to align himself with the emperor’s politically motivated compromise view of the Trinity, he was dragged from the altar by imperial agents and taken to Constantinople to be browbeaten into submission is in stark contrast to the grandiose position claimed for him in Arator’s poem. As Hillier demonstrated, alongside the Petrine focus, the notion of baptism as a hinge event in the Christian’s life keeps recurring in Arator’s presentation, also where there is no reference to it in the text of Acts. It has even been remarked that the poet seems to see Acts through the image of baptism rather than the other way around.22 Why dwell upon this when infant baptism had become the rule and there were so many other urgent concerns?23 For one thing, the poem’s encouraging the heathen to be baptized indicates that the poet, and presumably also the pope, hoped for an expansion of the Church through the poem.24 Its reiterated attempts to persuade the Jews to recognize their lack of understanding of the Christian message and to let themselves be baptized25 indicates another reason for the prominence of the theme. It would have been especially relevant because, having enjoyed a protected status under the Ostrogothic regime, they tended to support the Gothic side in Justinian’s reconquista.26 Since the poem was recited in the period between the traditional dates for baptism of Easter and Pentecost, however, Hillier argues that its prime purpose must have been to teach the just-baptized or the about-to-be-baptized the 20

  Bureau, Lettre et sens mystique, p. 12; more fully, also on its precedents, see ibid., pp. 20–31, and on its modern appraisals, see ibid., pp. 32–9. 21   Green, Latin Epics, pp. 251–3. 22   Hillier, Arator, p. 198, cited in agreement in Green, Latin Epics, pp. 311–12. Bureau argues that Arator pre-organized his dogmatic points and “injected” them into pieces of the text that he deemed manipulable to agree with them—according to Bureau, at that time a perfectly acceptable manner of sermonizing interpretation which he had learned from Origen and Augustine; Bureau, Lettre et sens mystique, pp. 223–5, 283–6, 343–4. 23   As also Hillier, Arator, p. 197. 24   As, for instance, in Hist. apost. 1:875–7, 909–10, 966–1,006, CCSL, 130, pp. 289, 292, and 296–8 resp., and very explicitly in Epistola ad Parthenium 89–102, CCSL, 130, p. 407; cf. Bureau, Lettre et sens mystique, pp. 322–4. 25   Beginning with Hist. apost. 1:188–201, 261–92, 312–34, CCSL, 130, esp. pp. 237, 242–4, 246–8, and repeated often thereafter. See on this F. Châtillon, “Arator déclamateur anti-juif,” Revue du Moyen-Âge latin 19 (1963): 5–128 and 197–316; 20 (1964): 185–225; 24 (1968 [1977]): 9–22; 25–34, (1969 [1978]): 11–17; 35 (1979): 9–20. 26   Schwind, Arator-Studien, p. 222.

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essentials of the faith.27 Another reason for this focus, he adds, might be that the poet understood the infusion of the Holy Spirit at baptism as necessary for a true understanding of the Church’s “mysteries.”28 The central “figure” of the “mystery” of baptism is Christ’s dying and resurrection. It is not mentioned in Acts itself, but Arator’s poem reminds its listeners of it at the beginning and refers to it several times subsequently.29 The initiand re-enacts it through physical immersion and arising to a new life. Other figures or models of baptism in the poem include: the ascent of the “divine odor” of sacrifice, the ark saving all from the diabolic sea, the tongues of fire at Pentecost, the cure of the paralytic Aeneas, the resuscitation of Tabitha, Peter’s fishing, the passage through the Red Sea, circumcision, and the rejuvenation of the eagle or phoenix through the Sun’s fire.30 As already indicated, other ostensibly incidental images also keep recurring around the notions of baptism and the baptismal font. I shall put them alongside each other to see what emerges. Before undertaking this exploration, however, a word about my approach to the text. The traditional poetic—that is, imagistic—mode of Arator’s presentation is likely to have stimulated an affective receptivity that would open the listeners’ hearts. Because of this, the spiritually expanded visible events suggested by the poem could have been experienced as a brief foretaste of the “mysteries” traditionally “embodied” and enacted in the Church’s liturgy.31 For the deeper purpose of the poem, I suggest, was to inspire and lift everyone’s spirits by imparting the spiritual-affective dynamism of the Christian faith. The phrase dynamisme psychique was coined by the late philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962). In poesis, or the arising of verbal images in the poet’s mind, Bachelard asserted, the experience of a specific pattern of affective movement becomes conscious through an analogous image that seems to express, to encapsulate it. And when a verbalized image is visualized 27

  Hillier, Arator, p. 18.   Ibid., pp. 198–200. The first English translator of Arator’s poem, Richard Schrader, also

28

noted—without elaborating upon it—that “the true center of the poem is the descent of the Holy Spirit” (Schrader, On the Acts, pp. 8–9). As I have shown elsewhere, Sedulius’ epic too had an essential sacramental dimension—in his case, the Eucharist; Giselle de Nie, “‘Let All Perceive What Mysteries Miracles May Teach Our Souls’: Poetry and Sacrament in Sedulius’s Paschale Carmen,” Studia Patristica XLVIII (2010): 273–88. 29   Hist. apost. 1:4–17, 178–87, 318–26, 620–23, 1,055–7; 2:815–25, CCSL, 130, resp. pp. 222, 236–7, 247, 270, 302, and 367. 30   Resp.: Hist. apost. 1:30–31 (odor), 40–41 (ark), 139–40 (Pentecost), 768–70 (cure paralytic), 837–45 (resuscitation), 989–92 (Peter’s fishing); and 2:84–5 and 1,244 (Red Sea passage), 247–51 plus 273 and 305 (circumcision), 528–50 (phoenix), CCSL, 130, resp. pp. 224, 225, 233, 281–2, 287, 298; 310 and 401, pp. 322–24, 326, 345–6. All these are discussed in Hillier, Arator. 31   On Arator’s world as allegory, see Bureau, Lettre et sens mystique, esp. pp. 45–67.

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during reading, the dynamism is also communicated in the other direction: it induces in the subject the pattern of affective movement that had generated it. For the reader’s spontaneous visualization of an image effects an involuntary mimesis of the dynamic pattern of feeling which it makes visible.32 This capital insight is shared by modern psychotherapists, who use it to great effect in their visualization therapies.33 Our esteemed colleague Karl Morrison has, quite independently, explored these and similar dynamics in medieval sources, and in so doing revealed important experiential dimensions in them which had not yet been noticed in modern times.34 Inspired by these studies, I shall investigate the dynamic dimensions of the implicit imagery around baptism in Arator’s poem. “There Is a Burning in My Feelings” In contrast to Paulinus of Nola,35 Arator says little about his poetic process. He once, as it were incidentally, refers to the apostle’s power of binding and loosing (Matthew 16:19) and asks Peter to release the chains from his tongue—no doubt pointing to an active correspondence with the apostle’s broken chains in the church in which the poem was being declaimed.36 Elsewhere he simply tells his audience that “another event opens up to us what this matter holds” (altera nobis / Res aperit, quod causa gerit).37 In this case, the lame man at the Beautiful Gate (Acts 3) is said to replicate the patriarch Jacob after his wrestling with the angel (Gen. 32:24–31); Peter’s healing of him is then presented as the model of what present-day Jews should accept from the apostle’s Church: conversion. And after the poet has recounted how Paul revived a youth who had fallen from a third-story window (Acts 20), he says: “The glory of this deed instructs us to open up the event through an ancient figure” (Quae gloria facti / Instruit ad veterem causas aperire figuram).38 The ancient figure here is the three-storied ark of Noah, itself understood to be a proleptic figure of the Church, to whose

32

  Gaston Bachelard, L’air et les songes. Essai sur l’imagination du mouvement (Paris: Joseph Corti, 1943), pp. 10–13. 33   Very fully described, for instance, by Jeanne Achterberg, Imagery in Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine (Boston, MA: Shambala, 1985). 34   Esp. Karl F. Morrison, History as a Visual Art in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). 35   On this, see Gerhard Strunk, Kunst und Glaube in der lateinischen Heiligenlegende, Medium Aevum 12 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1970), pp. 26–31. 36   Hist. apost. 1:896–8, CCSL, 130, p. 291. 37   Ibid., 1:261–2, CCSL, 130, p. 261. 38   Ibid., 2:801–2, CCSL, 130, p. 366.

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three-storied height (a figure of the Trinity) the youth is again raised—as the Jews should be in the present day, according to the poet. This sensing/understanding of the dynamic pattern inherent in an event in Acts—often a miracle—as resembling that of a “figure” of a divine truth pattern elsewhere in the Bible, appears to be what Arator meant with “the mystery given to my heart.” For after telling the story of the paralytic Aeneas’s healing in Lydda (Acts 9:32–5)—perhaps an implicit allegory of the poet’s own rescue from the doomed court of Ravenna39—Arator credits Peter with helping him to understand the allegories. He says: “I shall speak about the hidden truths in the sacred figures here, if he whose word restored bodies will move my heart” (Eloquar hic, sacrae quae sint arcana figurae, / Si mihi corda movet, cuius vox corpora reddit).40 Following tradition, however, Arator also invokes the help of the Holy Spirit in his writing. Thus in the description of Pentecost (Acts 2), after stating that “eloquent fire [facundus … ignis] brought unknown words to [the disciples],” he pleads: “Nourishing Spirit [Spiritus alme], come! Without you, you are never spoken of. Give the gifts of language, you who give languages as a gift!”41 There is no further elaboration. In the middle of Book 2, however, the poet again calls upon the Holy Spirit to come and help him formulate the cardinal points of the Christian faith in worthy manner, addressing it as “the [very] way of speaking, the path of language” (Tu vocis iter, tu semita linguae).42 The Holy Spirit, then, is said to give the poet his words while Peter “moves [his] heart” to sense an event’s inherent dynamic pattern and to recognize it as that of one of the Bible’s “mysteries.” When explaining his motive to write about Acts, however, Arator makes a somewhat surprising statement, saying that “there is a burning in [my] feelings [sensibus ardor inest] to celebrate the efforts of those through whose word faith obtains its path in the world.”43 Is he thinking of the fire that impelled the prophet Jeremiah to speak, who wrote: “there is in my heart as it were a burning fire” (factus est in corde meo quasi ignis exaestuans) ( Jeremiah 20:9)? Or is it an allusion to the disciples’ “burning heart” (cor ardens) while they spoke with the 39   As the poet explains in his Epist. ad Vig. 1–14, CCSL, 130, pp. 213–14. Sedulius and other early Christian authors experienced a similar turn in their lives: Green, Latin Epics, pp. 258–9. 40   Hist. apost. 1:771–2, CCSL, 130, p. 282. 41   Ibid., 1:224, 226–7, CCSL, 130, p. 239: “Nescia verba viris facundus detulit ignis / … / Spiritus alme, veni! Sine te non diceris umquam; / Munera da linguae, qui das in munere linguas!” Cf. ibid., 1:139–42, 224, and 226, CCSL, 130, pp. 233 and 239, and Hist. apost. 2:579–82, CCSL, 130, p. 349. 42   Hist. apost., 2:581–2, CCSL, 130, p. 349. 43   Epist. ad Vig. 17–18, CCSL, 130, p. 214: “sensibus ardor inest horum celebrare labores, / Quorum voce fides obtinet orbis iter.”

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risen Christ on their way to Emmaus (Luke 24:32)? As will be seen, although it is not listed as a significant image or figure in any scholarly treatment of the poem, the image of a burning fire recurs insistently, attracting to itself other dynamic dimensions. One of these is fertility. “You Making Them Bear Fruit” The power of the divine word to “generate” faith or spiritual children, based upon Christ’s own parable of the Sower (Mt. 13:18–23),44 was a prominent notion in the late antique period. Peter Brown’s book The Body and Society has eloquently described the resounding theme of spiritual fecundity through the proclaiming and reception of the divine word in the context of the ascetic ideology that precluded physical sexual reproduction.45 As will be seen, the agrarian motif of the word as a spiritual seed, having seeped deeply into Christian discourse, is an essential dynamic element in Arator’s poem. Up to now, however, the theme of spiritual fertility, which I have shown elsewhere to pervade Sedulius’ presentation,46 has not been studied as a coherent whole in it.47 As in Sedulius, Christ’s restoration of nature and mankind, both vitiated after the first couple’s disobedience, is central. Thus Arator speaks of Christ’s sacrifice as making possible the return of estranged humanity “to the blossoming garden” [florigero … horto] of Paradise.48 And, significantly, the Jews’ rejection of Christ as the Messiah who had been foretold in their own sacred writings is said to doom them to spiritual “infertility” as well as “death.”49 The two states are contrasted in Arator’s treatment of Peter’s cure of the beggar lame from birth at the Beautiful Gate (Acts 3:1–11). The healing event itself is described as: “A powerful medicine sprang from the word of the one who 44   On this, see Marcia Colish, The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge, rev. edn. (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), esp. p. 19. 45   Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, Lectures on the History of Religions, new series, 13 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). 46   A full treatment of this theme may be found in my Poetics of Wonder, pp. 367–429. 47   Thus, in his otherwise very full treatment of Arator’s allegorical method and meanings, Bureau (Lettre et sens mystique, pp. 359–60) only briefly discusses Arator’s reference to Christ as cultor (Hist. apost. 1:150–59, CCSL, 130, p. 234) and omits spiritual fertility as a separate, if underlying, theme. 48   Hist. apost. 1:20, CCSL, 130, p. 223. Similarly: Sedulius, Paschale Opus 1.49–51, 53–5, CSEL 10, p. 19. 49   Thus he describes Israel as “a barren fig tree” (arida ficus); Hist. apost. 1:329, CCSL, 130, p. 247.

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commanded” (De voce iubentis / Exiluit medicina potens).50 Here we seem to see what Marcia Colish formulated so trenchantly: Christ, the divine Word, as it were, “incarnates” himself in the apostles’ words, and therewith also restores his creation.51 The aged beggar is thereupon said to begin to walk “with new feet” (plantis … novellis), “display[ing] what his birth had not given him” (protulit … quicquid non edidit ortus).52 Here and elsewhere, Arator’s descriptions of miracles as transformational inversions, like Sedulius’, are intended to be understood as model patterns of the faith’s life-giving mysteries in Christ’s restoration of his creation.53 Unsurprisingly, fertility is central in the story of the Queen of Ethiopia’s eunuch treasurer who was converted by the words of the apostle Philip (Acts 8:26–39). The poet rhapsodizes: O how many seeds of blessings will you see, you who come to take the precious gifts of baptism and store in your sterile body what you may harvest with better fruit! … If you hear with belief, [Christ] will also be born unto you, and from that time you will be reborn unto him.54

Underlying this passage is, of course, Mary’s virgin conception of Christ (Luke 1:26–38),55 then generally regarded as the prime model of divine fecundation through the divine Word. Thus Jerome had written: “Also in you, if you be worthy, will God’s Speaking be born” (et in te, si dignus fueris, nascitur Sermo Dei).56 And Augustine had similarly told his community in Hippo: “Let the members of Christ give birth in the mind, as Mary, a virgin, gave birth to him

50

    52   53  

Ibid., 1:255–6, CCSL, 130, p. 242. Colish, Mirror, p. 26. Hist. apost. 1:258, 260, CCSL, 130, p. 242. As also Deproost, L’apôtre Pierre, pp. 288–93. On Arator’s presentation of miracles in general, see Bureau, Lettre et sens mystique, pp. 287–339. 54   Hist. apost. 1:677–80, 685–6, CCSL, 130, pp. 274–5, and 275: “O quanta bonorum / Semina percipies, qui tam preciosa lavacri/ Sumere dona venis sterilique in corpore condis, / Quod fructu meliore metas! … Si credulus audis, / Et tibi nascetur tuque inde renasceris illi.” Hillier, Arator, pp. 92–121, discusses the sources of Arator’s interpretation here. Schwind, AratorStudien, pp. 185–6, quotes one mention of “spiritual generation,” in connection with the celibacy of the priesthood (Hist. apost. 2:368–71, CCSL, 130, p. 331, based on Acts 16:6–10); he does not, however, comment upon it as a recurring theme in the poem. Bureau, Lettre et sens mystique, p. 162, also does not go into its associative dimensions. 55   Referred to in Hist. apost. 1:532–5, CCSL, 130, pp. 263–4. 56   Eusebius Hieronymus ( Jerome), Origenis in Canticum Canticorum Homilia 2:6, in Patrologia Latina [PL], 23, col. 1,136 A. 51

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in her womb; and thus you will be mothers of Christ” (in mente pariant membra Christi, sicut Maria in ventre virgo peperit Christum; et sic eritis matres Christi).57 Not only in Arator’s passage about the eunuch, however, but elsewhere too in his poem, the word is said to be a channel of creative generation. Thus spoken words are “seeds of life” (semina vitae) and “seeds of salvation” (semina salutis) that germinate and bring forth faith in their hearers, and “genital speech” (eloquium genitale) produces spiritual offspring.58 In a revealing passage, Arator can even be understood to include a hope of his own contribution to Christ’s fertilizing and life-giving process through the words of his poem59 when he writes, addressing Christ: Grant that the seeds of the word [of salvation] be cultivated through your gifts, and that this hand/band [of apostles] (manus), having enjoyed newly ploughed miracles [signisque novalibus usa]—you making them bear fruit [te fructificante]—may gather bundles of grain.60

The double entendre here could be its application not only to the “band” (manus) of the apostles, but also to the “hand” (also manus) of the poet as ploughman (arator): the poem’s words about the miracles would contain the seeds of salvation; the “newly plowed miracles” would be those of which Arator’s interpretation has revealed the deeper meaning or “mystery” that transforms/ converts the reader or listener; and the bundles of grain would be the groups of new converts. The notion that Christ “fecundizes” is presumably based upon 1 Corinthians 3:6, where the apostle Paul says about that community: “I planted, Apollos [a fellow-missionary] watered, but God gave the growth” (ego plantavi, Apollo rigavit, sed Deus incrementum dedit). Arator hopes that Christ will do this as the divine Word inhering in the poet’s words about God. For had not the apostle Paul told the Thessalonians (2:13) that the words they heard from him about God were “in fact the Word of God who works in you who believe” (vere verbum Dei qui operatur in vobis qui credidistis)? The poetic process of a 57

  Augustine, Sermo (Denis) 25:8, ed. Germanus Morin, Sancti Augustini Sermones post Maurinos Reperti (Rome: Tipografia Polyglotta Vaticana, 1930), pp. 163–4. 58   Hist. apost. 2:69, 312, and 371, CCSL, 130, pp. 309, 327, and 331 resp. In addition, see ibid., 1:365, 2:368, 447, 757, and 836, CCSL, 130, pp. 250, 331, 338, 363, and 369 resp. With another, for us less familiar, metaphor, he also speaks in the context of the future heavenly banquet with Christ of there taking in his “breast-like words [uberi … verbi …)” (ibid., 1:577, CCSL, 130, p. 257)—an image of abounding fruitfulness. Like Sedulius, Arator lets the fecundating energy come from Christ as the Creator restoring his creation, as in Sedulius, Paschale Opus 5.15, ed. Johannes Huemer, CSEL 10 (1885), p. 286, ll. 4–6. Cf. De Nie, “Let All Perceive,” pp. 280–84. 59   Again like Sedulius: ibid., pp. 284–7. 60   Hist. apost. 1:365–7, CCSL, 130, pp. 250–51: “Da semina verbi / Per tua dona coli, signisque novalibus usa / Colligat ista manu—te fructificante—maniplos.”

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Christian poem too, then, that of the mysteries of God being given to the heart, is something akin to revelation. It is tempting to speculate that Arator, in his hoping or believing that the divine Word would also inhere in his own imagistic presentation of Acts’ miracles and thereby inspire and transform his listeners, somehow sensed the power of verbal images themselves too as representations and inducers of transformational patterns. Fecundity, however, surprisingly coalesces with fire when the poet tells us about the eunuch: “When he sees the water [of baptism], the fecund faith [fecunda fides] of the eunuch at once begins to burn [ardescere coepit].”61 Although variations of the expressions “fecund faith” and “burning faith” occur in patristic writings,62 as far as I could find their explicit coalescence does not occur outside of Arator’s poem. How can fire coexist with fecundity? Arator fuses them when, after describing the apostles’ speaking in tongues at Pentecost as accompanied by “separate tongues as though of fire” (dispertitae linguae tamquam ignis) above their heads (Acts 2:3), he continues: The Holy Spirit descending from the ethereal hall illumined with splendor the place where the founders of the nascent Church were present; fire being their teacher [igno … magistro], a flow of heat suffused their mouths [inbuit ora calor] and from their flowing words came forth an abundant harvest [populosa seges] of languages.63

Here, the Holy Spirit’s fire produces or generates a harvest of languages. The content of the word-seeds themselves, however, is also said to be fiery. For the poet there speaks of “the fire of doctrine” (dogmatis ign[is]), and holding this in the heart is “flaming faith” (succensa fides).64 Variations of these images appear throughout the poem. Thus the Old Testament writers are said to have drawn their prophecies from “the fire” (igni[s]) of the Lamb: that is, of Christ; the word of faith is described as “shining” (radians); and the poet hopes that “the faithful 61

  Ibid., 1:687–8, CCSL, 130, p. 275: “Conspectis properanter aquis ardescere coepit/ Eunuchi fecunda fides.” 62   For instance, in Leo Magnus, Tractatus septem et nonaginta, recension alpha, tract. 33, l. 28, ed. Antoine Chavasse, CCSL, 138 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1973), p. 171: “fidei fecunditate generanda” (born of faith’s fecundity), and Hieronymus ( Jerome), Epistula 122:15, edn. alt., ed. Isidor Hilberg and Margit Kamptner, CSEL 56.1 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1996), p. 57, l. 3: “ardens fides” (burning faith). 63   Hist. apost. 1:119–23, CCSL, 130, p. 232: “Spiritus aetheria descendens sanctus ab aula / Inradiat fulgore locum, quo stemma beatum / Ecclesiae nascentis erat, quibus igne magistro / Inbuit ora calor dictisque fluentibus exit / Linguarum populosa seges.” Cf. Acts 2:2–4; emphasis added. On the Holy Spirit in Acts, see “Spirit, Holy Spirit,” New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (NIDNTT), 3 vols., (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1976), vol. III, pp. 689–709, at pp. 698–700. On fire, see “Fire,” ibid., vol. I, pp. 652–8. 64   Hist. apost. 1:144 and 145, CCSL, 130, p. 233.

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will shine with the fire of the Word” (ut verbi lucerent igne fideles). 65 In all this, there is an implicit tensive coalescence of the Holy Spirit as fire with Christ as the fecundating Word. “The Flaming Spirit … in the Waves” When Arator describes the eagle or phoenix’s rejuvenation through fire as a figure of baptism, a connection begins to be made between the fire of Christ as well as of the Holy Spirit and the baptismal water. He writes: “When we are touched by the light of the true Sun [that is: Christ; Malachi 4:2], we lose the contagion of the ancient age as faith draws near; soon, [we are] reborn from our mother, the water.”66 Here, as parts of the same process, fire purifies and the baptismal water regenerates. Fire and water seem to share qualities, however, when Arator speaks about the Roman centurion Cornelius, who immediately after his conversion was visited by the fire of the Holy Spirit (Acts 10). The poet tells his listeners that he was baptized afterward “so that having been washed by the flames, he might be purified in the waves” (ut ablutos flammis, purgaret in undis).67 “Washed by the flames”? Is this a poetic metaphor, or perhaps something more? In the following passage, the poet actually situates the flames in the water. Speaking of baptism as replacing the traditional Jewish circumcision, and taking for granted his listeners’ knowledge of the Holy Spirit’s presence in the baptismal water,68 Arator says that “the flaming Spirit circumcises in the waves” (spiritus ardescens circumcidit in undis).69 In addition, he indicates that the fire continues after the immersion. For the newly baptized, having washed off their sins in the font, are themselves also said to “shine with fire-light through the holy waters” (sanctisque nitescere lymphis).70 And after Pentecost and the disciples’ subsequent baptism, Arator says, the Holy Spirit “commands 65

  Ibid., 2:6, 1, and 760, CCSL, pp. 130, 309, 304, and 363, resp.   Ibid., 2:541–3, CCSL, 130, p. 346: “Cum veri lumine Solis / Tangimur, antiqui contagia

66

solvimus aevi / Accedente fide; lympha mox matre renati.” 67   Ibid., 1:957, CCSL, 130, p. 295. 68   As, for instance, Ambrose, De mysteriis 59, ed. Bernard Botte, Sources chrétiennes (SC) 25bis (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1961), p. 192: “non est utique dubitandum quod superveniens in fontem spiritus vel super eos qui baptismum consequuntur veritatem regenerationis operatur” (“it is not in any way to be doubted that the Holy Spirit comes upon those who are truly regenerated in the baptismal font”). 69   Hist. apost. 2:305, CCSL, 130, p. 326. 70   Ibid., 2:666, CCSL, 130, p. 355. In this period, all light was produced by fire. On baptism as illumination, see Thomas Halton, “Baptism as Illumination,” The Irish Theological Quarterly 32 (1965): 28–41.

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them to teach with flaming words. Love urges their minds; a flame burns in their spoken words” (hic ore iubet flagrare docentes. / Mentibus instat amor; sermonibus aestuat ardor).71 The coalescence of fire and water is most clearly suggested in the story of Paul’s throwing the snake that had bitten him into the fire on Malta (Acts 28:1–6). Arator says there that “the flame [flamma] [presumably also that of Paul’s faith] that devoured the [snake’s] poison received its power from the holy waters [sacris aquis], burned by which [quibus ustus], he [the Devil, being the poisonous snake] gasps.”72 Here the Devil is actually said to be burned not only by the flame (singular), but also by the waters (plural) themselves. Arator could simply have referred to the Holy Spirit here,73 but he insists upon mentioning the water as burning. He concludes the story by extending the associative cluster, saying that: from the tinder [of the fire that destroyed the snake] the [people’s] faith grew and was kindled [crescens est accensa fides], a flame [ardor] was added to their feelings, and this fire [calor] went forth to the people from the breast of the fountain [of baptism][ab ubere fontis].74

There was no need to bring in baptism here. The reason for its “injection” may well be the fundamental image of “the breast of the fountain” imparting a flame. For here, the second time in the poem, the baptismal fountain as an image of dynamic regeneration in faith is overlaid with an image of the Holy Spirit as divine fire and its generativity of flaming words that—through Christ’s presence as the Word in them—generate a burning faith in others. In these coalescing images, what we see, in soft focus, is a startling new paradox: the flashing-shimmering multi-dimensional contours of a fountain of burning, generating water. It seems to make Arator’s view of the dynamic fecundity of baptismal rebirth and subsequent continuing regeneration through Christ visible. Peter’s love, then, moves the poet’s heart to find the “mysteries,” the Holy Spirit gives words, and Christ “fecundizes.” The poet’s having a 71

  Hist. apost. 1:146–7, CCSL, 130, p. 233.   Ibid., 2:1,188–9, CCSL, 130, p. 397: “vorat haec quae flamma venenum / A sacris vim

72

sumpsit aquis, quibus ustus anhelat”; emphasis added. 73   As Bede later does in his commentary on Acts: Expositio Actuum Apostolorum (Exp. Act.) 28:5, ed. M.L.W. Laistner, CCSL, 121, p. 96, l. 14: “eodem igni quo suos fovet bestiam comburit” (“the same fire that nourished them consumed the Beast”). 74   Hist. apost. 2:1,203–5, CCSL, 130, p. 398: “cuius de fomite crescens / Est accensa fides, est sensibus additus ardor, / Hicque calor populis processit ab ubere fontis.” Cf. Augustine, Sermo 362:5, Patrologia Latina (PL) 39, col. 1614C: “uberrimu[s] fon[s],” and Zeno of Verona, Tractatus, 1:12, ed. B. Löfstedt, CCSL, 22, p. 51: “genitalis fon[s].”

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“burning in his feelings”75 to spread the faith through a poem may now perhaps be understood as his sense of since his baptism constantly being filled with the fecund fire of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and thus with “flaming” words.76 The fire is undoubtedly understood to fulfill John the Baptist’s prophesy that Christ would “baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (ipse vos baptizavit in spiritu sancto et igni) (Matthew 3:11), a well-known image which Arator’s educated listeners would have had in the back of their minds. For those readers and listeners who, perhaps not quite knowingly, imbibed and internalized the fleeting but insistent tensive paradox of the burning, fecundizing fountain it is likely to have induced or inspired what the poet intended: an energy to create ever new ways of living and acting the faith. We can only speculate whether Arator consciously intended to hint at the image of a burning fountain, or simply free-associated the images he found in the Bible and its commentaries. Was it his own unique discovery or revelation, or could he have found intimations of it elsewhere? Possible Sources of the Image The fountain as a metaphor of spiritual life goes back at least to Psalm 35:10: “You are the fountain of life” (Apud te est fons vitae), and Jesus’ saying to the Samaritan woman in John 4:14: “The water I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (aquam quam dabo ei fiet in eo fons salientis in vitam aeternam). As already indicated, the metaphor of the burning fountain cannot be found in the Bible. When Augustine mentions burning springs, they are anomalies of nature, not spiritual figures.77 The then widely used similar image of “the fountain of light” (fons lucis) and its equivalents appears to have been developed from Psalm 35:10 (God as the fount of life and light of lights) and Malachi 4:2 (God as the Sun of Justice). As we find it in Ambrose and Augustine and many later Christian writers, however, it points directly to God, Christ, or the Holy Spirit,78 illumines rather than burns, and is not associated with baptism. 75

  Epist. ad Vig. 17–18, CCSL, 130, p. 214.   Hist. apost. 1:146–7, CCSL, 130, p. 233. 77   Augustine, De civitate Dei, 21:5 and 7, ed. Bernardus Dombart and Alfonsus Kalb, 76

CCSL, 48 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), pp. 764–75 and 768–9. 78   Probably best-known is the Ambrosian hymn: “Splendor paternae gloriae, / de luce lucem proferens, / lux lucis et fons luminis, / dies dierum luminans” (“Splendor of the Father’s glory, bringing forth light out of light, light of light and fountain of light, illuminating the day of days”); Ambroise de Milan. Hymnes, ed. Jacques Fontaine et al. (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1992), pp. 185–7). Also, Augustine, Enarratio in psalmis CIX:12, ll. 74–6, ed. Eligius Dekkers and Johannes Fraipont, CCSL, 40 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1956), p. 1,613, has, for instance: “Haec

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Although not as a fountain, there is an image of burning water, however, in the New Testament. In Revelation 15:2, the author speaks—cryptically—of seeing “as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire” (tamquam mare vitreum mixtum igne), and the martyrs “standing upon the sea of glass having harps of God in their hands” (stantes supra mare vitreum habentes citharas Dei). The first Christian commentary on Revelation, that by Victorinus of Pettau, now Ptuj in Slovenia (d. 304), is the first to explain this passage’s implicit symbolism. Since the treatise survives only in part, its explanation of Revelation 15:2 is preserved in Jerome’s edition. It explains the fiery sea as a metaphor of the baptismal water: “The meaning of ‘standing upon a sea of glass with harps and bowls [of incense]’ is to stand firmly in faith upon one’s baptism and sing one’s confession, about to exult in the presence of the Kingdom of God.”79 Here, the image of burning water as representing that of baptism first becomes explicit. The notion of generativity, although implicit, is not pointed to, and Victorinus does not single out the fire in the sea for qualification or explanation. “Standing upon” the water was, of course, somewhat similar to what Moses had done when he led the Hebrews through the Red Sea,80 itself also a figure of baptism. Nevertheless, a germ of Arator’s paradox can be discerned here. Another commentary on Revelation—whose original text is now lost—was that by a late fourth-century African writer, a moderate Donatist known as Tyconius Afer; scholars have reconstructed parts of his text through its imitations and adaptations by later writers on the same subject.81 The most recent, definitive, edition has the following comment on Revelation 15:2: claritas Dei est ineffabilis lux, fons lucis sine commutabilitate, veritas sine defectu, sapientia in seipsa manens, innovans omnia: haec substantia Dei est” (“This brightness of God is an ineffable light, a fount of light without change, truth without defect, wisdom remaining in itself, renewing everything: this is the substance of God”). 79   Victorinus of Pettau, Commentarius in Apocalypsin, Recensio Hieronymi xv, ed. Johannes Haussleiter, CSEL 49 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1916), p. 137: “Quod autem dicit ‘stetisse super mare vitreum habentem citharas et fialas,’ id est super baptismum suum stabiliter in fide constitisse et confessionum suam in ore habentes exultaturos in regno coram domino.” A phiala was a bowl which could be used in various ways: the avenging angels carry bowls of wrath (Rev. 15:7), but in this context it is almost certainly a censer; cf. Rev. 5:8, in which the 24 elders hold “cithers and golden bowls full of incenses which are the prayers of the saints”(citharas et fialas aureas plenas odoramentorum quae sunt orationes sanctorum). Many thanks to my colleagues of the Center of Patristic Research, and especially Dr. Theo Korteweg, for their suggestions on this subject. 80   Mt. 14:29 and Ex. 14:21–2; cf. Hilarius Pictaviensis, Tractatus super psalmos 51:6, ed. Jean Doignon and Roland Demeulenaere, CCSL, 61 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), p. 96, ll. 13–14: “cum rubrum mare pedes transivit.” 81   Kenneth B. Steinhauser, The Apocalypse Commentary of Tyconius: A History of Its Reception and Influence, European University Studies, Series XXIII, Theology, vol. 301 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1987).

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AND I SAW AS IT WERE A SEA OF GLASS, that is the perlucid fount of baptism, MINGLED WITH FIRE, that is with the Spirit or by the trial [temptationi]. Fire sometimes means the Holy Spirit, and sometimes trial [temptatio], as is written: The furnace will try the clay vase and the trial [temptatio] of tribulation [will try] the just [ Jesus Sirach 27:6].82

Did Tyconius see Victorinus-Jerome’s commentary? Here the sea is associated with the fountain of baptism, but its fountain-quality is not elaborated upon; stronger still, the quite opposite notion of its representing the martyrs’ trial appears for the first time. Tyconius’ older contemporary Hilary of Poitiers (c. 315–c. 367), among others, had already associated martyrdom with the purification of souls as that of precious metal by fire, as in Psalm 65:10.83 And Jesus too is reported to have said: “I came to cast fire upon the earth” (Lk. 12:49). Arator’s contemporary Primasius, one of pope Vigilius’ close associates, was possibly of African origin and may have been acquainted with Tyconius’ treatise. As bishop of Hadrumetum, now Sousse in Tunisia (550–60), he later wrote a commentary on Revelation. In it, he explains the fiery sea as: “the water of baptism, consecrated by the fire of the Holy Spirit” (Aquam videlicet baptismi igne sancti spiritus consecratam), in his turn adding: “as for the quality of the fire, it is reddened by [the blood of ] martyrdom” (vel etiam quod ad ignis pertinet qualitatem, martyrio rubricatam).84 Primasius’ thereupon quoting Jesus Sirach 27:6: “the furnace will try the vase of clay and the temptation of tribulation the just man” appears to point back to Tychonius. Here the fire is again purifying, not fecundizing. Did Primasius and Arator share ideas at the papal court? But Arator nowhere refers to a fire of tribulation, and its association with baptism is foreign to what we have seen to be his descriptions of it.85 82

  Tyconius Afer, Expositio Apocalypseos 5.23, ll. 1–5, ed. Roger Gryson, CCSL 107A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), p. 194: “ET VIDI SICUT MARE VITREUM, id est fontem baptismi perlucidum, PERMIXTUM IGNI, id est spiritui vel temptationi. Ignis enim aliquando spiritus sanctus intellegitur, aliquando temptatio, sicut scriptum est: Vasa figuli probat fornax et homines iustos temptatio tribulationis.” 83   Hilarius Pictaviensis, Tract. s. psalm. 65:22, CCSL, 61, p. 247, ll. 1–20. 84   Primasius, In Apocalypsin 4.15.1–2, ed. A.W. Adams, CCSL, 92 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985), p. 221. 85   The next association of the fiery sea with baptism is found in the early sixth century, when bishop Caesarius of Arles (469/470–542), apparently following Tyconius, explains the sea of glass as “the pellucid font of baptism” (fon[s] baptismi pellucidu[s]), adding: “‘Mixed with fire’: that means, with the [Holy] Spirit or with the trial” (Mixtum igne: id est, spiritu vel tentatione); Caesarius Arelatensis, Expositio in Apocalypsim B. Joannis, PL 35, cols. 2,417–52, at col. 2,438 C. In the eighth century, the same alternative meanings appear in a collection by Theodulph of Orléans. The treatise De enigmatibus ex apocalypsi Johannis 82, ll. 5–8, ed. Roger Gryson, CCSL 107A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 281–2, has: “babtismum mixtum igne spiritus,

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There is only one Christian writer before Arator who explicitly mentions a burning fountain and attributes a generativity to it: the early fifth-century poet Prudentius. In his hymn for burial, he refers to “God, the flaming fountain of souls” (Deus, ignee fons animarum),86 a meaning, however, that does not involve the presence of water and is an image of an infinitely creating God rather than of the regeneration of baptism. It may nevertheless have nudged Arator’s imagination in the direction of a generating, burning watery fountain. An anonymous pagan epigram from Italy in the period before 400, however, seems to come closer to Arator in its description of the presence of a god as fire in the “maternal” water—a spring?—that heals illnesses (and thus regenerates) as: “opposites that unite themselves if holy fire breathes upon bodies in the transparent waters” (adversa inter se coeunt si corpora rerum / et sacer in vitreis ignis anhelat aquis).87 Although there is no way of knowing whether Arator ever saw this, it does show that the paradox was, at least, “in the air.”88 Arator’s latent but pervasive “soft focus” paradox of a fecundizing flaming fountain, then, may, in part, have been triggered by Revelation’s image of burning baptismal waters in Victorinus-Jerome’s or Tyconius’ text, the poet’s conversations with Primasius, and/or his reading of Prudentius. Its unique and vitalizing combination of imagistic associations, however, appears to have clustered itself—as Arator understood it: to have been “given to his heart” by Christ or the Holy Spirit also through Peter—as he meditated upon his lifechanging experience of baptism and its lasting inspiration. In its medieval readers, his poem is likely to have inspired a bond with the apostle Peter and a grand vision for his Church. But the composite image which the poet weaves around the activity of Christ and the Holy Spirit in and after baptism, with the dynamism it—perhaps unknowingly—induced in the reader or listener, emerges fully expressed only in the later Middle Ages by an eloquent mystic who may never have seen Arator’s text. Thus Thomas à Kempis quia spiritus sanctus datur in babtismo, vel babtismum mixtum igne persecutionis” (“baptism mingled with the fire of the Spirit, for the Holy Spirit is given in baptism, or baptism mingled with the [purifying] fire of persecution”). And the Commemoratorium a Theodulpho auctum xv. 2, ll. 4–5 (CCSL 107A, 328) has: “MIXTUM IGNE spiritus sancti, vel vindicta, MARE VITREUM baptismum, mixtum sanguine martyrii” (“mixed with fire: of the Holy Spirit, or the [purificatory] trial; sea of glass: baptism, mixed with the blood of martyrdom”). 86   Prudentius, Cathemerinon 10:1, ed. Mauricius Cunningham, CCSL, 126 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1966), p. 53. 87   Epigrammata Bobiensia, 1 (In aquas Maternas), 7–8, ed. W. Speyer, Epigrammata Bobiensia (Leipzig: Teubner, 1963), p. 1. 88   Gregory of Nyssa’s fourth-century treatise on Christ’s baptism creates an image similar to Arator’s when it alludes to Elijah’s foreshadowing baptism and its coalescence of opposites by praying for fire from heaven coming down to light the sacrifice doused with water: Gregorius Nyssenus, In baptismum Christi, in diem luminum, Patrologia graeca 46, col. 591 C.

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(1379/80–1471) says to Christ: “you are a fountain ever full and superabounding, and at the same time a fire, ever burning and never diminishing.”89 For Thomas, however, rather than baptism, the burning fountain images a divine love that effects a total union with the worshipper during the ingestion of the Eucharist. In the twentieth century, the philosopher of literature Philip Wheelwright borrowed Prudentius’ image of the burning fountain—via its mention by the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley—for the title of his book about expressive language. He, in turn, understood the image as that of a poesis resembling Heraclitus’ experience of a cosmic “moment-by-moment rebirth.”90 The phrasing and associations in Arator, Thomas á Kempis, and Wheelwright are different; the dynamism, I suggest, is the same. However it formed itself or entered into the poet’s awareness, the image of a burning, generating fountain appears to make visible Arator’s intuition of a fundamental dynamic pattern in human awareness which perhaps few can put into words. In his case, it was that of a post-baptismal personal faith as the way toward the glorious Church which he envisioned in his poem. Acknowledgments I am grateful to Karl Morrison for his suggestions concerning an earlier version of this chapter.

89   Thomas à Kempis, De imitatione Christi, 4:18, ed. Paul Mons (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1959), p. 291: “Et tu fons es semper plenus et superabundans: ignis iugiter ardens, et numquam deficiens.” The Latin translation from the Dutch original is by Geert Groote. 90   Philip Wheelwright, The Burning Fountain: A Study in the Language of Symbolism, rev. edn. (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1982), p. 267.

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Chapter 2

Getting to Know Virgil in the Carolingian Age: The Vita Publii Virgilii John J. Contreni As the monks of the Carolingian abbey of St.-Philibert in Tournus (Burgundy) unpacked their liturgical fan from its ornate carved ivory case, did they ever pause to consider the juxtaposition of images on this complex and beautiful object?1 The pleated parchment fan is brightly decorated with images of luxuriant foliage and of Mary, the child Jesus, apostles, martyrs, and saints. The wooden case into which it folds is decorated with carved ivory panels. The narrow side panels are filled with excised vines heavy with grapes and with figures of animals and vineyard workers. The wider lid and the back of the case (23 cm × 5.7 cm) are each covered with three ivory panels bearing intricate scenes inspired by Virgil’s Eclogues.2 Modern scholars certainly have wondered about the juxtaposition of the case’s secular scenes inspired by a pagan poet with the fan’s Christian decor. That Virgilian images could waft above the eucharistic elements, however, seems not to have bothered ninthcentury monks.

1

  See the fundamental study of Lorenz E.A. Eitner, The Flabellum of Tournus (New York, 1944). The fan was used to create a bit of breeze and also to shoo insects away from the eucharistic elements. The Tournus flabellum is attracting increased attention. See Danielle Joyner, “Flabellum of Tournus,” in Jan M. Ziolkowski and Michael C.J. Putnam, eds., The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years (New Haven, CT, 2008), pp. 436–8 (hereafter, Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam); Herbert L. Kessler, “Borne on a Breeze: The Function of the Flabellum of Tournus as Meaning,” in Philippe Cordez, ed., Charlemagne et les objets: des thésaurisations carolingiennes aux constructions mémorielles (Bern, 2012), pp. 57–86. For images, see Henri de Villiers, “Le Flabellum de Saint-Philibert de Tournus—flabelli et ripidia d’Orient & d’Occident,” July 17, 2012, http://www. schola-sainte-cecile.com/2012/07/17/flabellum-de-saint-philibert-de-tournus/ (accessed December 28, 2013). 2   From the First, Second, Fifth, Seventh, and Tenth Eclogues. The prophetic Fourth Eclogue, interpreted in Christian circles as a presentiment of Christ’s birth and a new Christian golden age, is nowhere suggested on the panels. The source for the sixth panel was apparently an author portrait of Virgil. All the panels were inspired by classical models from manuscripts. See Eitner, The Flabellum of Tournus, pp. 17–23, who described the ivory reliefs as an “isolated medieval survival of an obsolete pictorial tradition”; ibid., p. 18.

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Virgil among Carolingians The physical evidence of the Flabellum of Tournus at the epicenter of the Christian cult complements abundant textual evidence of how intimately ancient Roman classics were part and parcel of the intellectual and educational revival sparked by the Carolingian literary elite. Carolingian authors for the most part comfortably joined their thoughts to those of their Roman predecessors. Einhard famously could draw on both Cicero and Suetonius when composing his complex portrait of a Frankish king and emperor. Carolingian masters interested in astronomy and cosmology wholly embraced Roman science.3 The perception that cultivation of Roman letters might lead to cultivation of dangerous Roman ways was decidedly a minority view.4 So comfortable was the Carolingian age with ancient Romans that Roman writings filled the cupboards of that most conservative of institutions, the school.5 There, generations of students worked through the “school authors,” with Virgil front and center among the canon. The weighty evidence for the Carolingian age’s familiarity with Virgil consists, in the first place, of the many surviving manuscripts of his works, more than 100 for the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries—a remarkable tally in a field in which the survival of Roman writings depended often on manuscripts numbering in the single digits.6 It 3

  See M.S. Kempshall, “Some Ciceronian Aspects of Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne,” Viator 26 (1997): 11–38; Matthew Innes, “The Classical Tradition in the Carolingian Renaissance: Ninth-Century Encounters with Suetonius,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 3 (1997): 265–82; Bruce S. Eastwood, Ordering the Heavens: Roman Astronomy and Cosmology in the Carolingian Renaissance (Leiden, 2007). 4   But an important view. For the “Roman question,” see Lawrence Nees, A Tainted Mantle: Hercules and the Classical Tradition at the Carolingian Court (Philadelphia, PA, 1991), pp. 47–143. 5   For an entry into the topic, see Günter Glauche’s still fundamental Schullektüre im Mittelalter: Entstehung und Wandlungen des Lektürekanons bis 1200 nach den Quellen dargestellt (Munich, 1970). See also Birger Munk Olsen, L’Etude des auteurs classiques latins aux XIe et XIe siècles, tome II: Catalogue des manuscrits classiques latins copiés du IXe au XIIe siècle (Paris, 1985), pp. 673–826, and Birger Munk Olsen, I classici nel canone scolastico altomedioevo, Quaderni di Cultura Mediolatina 1 (Spoleto, 1991). The invaluable compendium Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam, conveniently brings together the state of the question, texts, translations, and analyses. I adopt its nomenclature for the various lives of Virgil. 6   Remarkable also for a text that was heavily used and often discarded or reused to reinforce bindings. Forty Virgil manuscripts date from the ninth century, with the mid-century ushering in a period of “acceleration” in the production of Virgil’s works. For an important analysis and statistics, see Louis Holtz, “La redécouverte de Virgile aux VIIIe et IXe siècles d’après les manuscrits conservés,” in Lectures médiévales de Virgile, Collection de l’Ecole française de Rome 80 (Rome, 1985), pp. 9–30 (p. 27 for the mid-century accélération), and Louis Holtz, “Les manuscrits carolingiens de Virgile (Xe et XIe siècles),” in Marcello Gigante, ed., La fortuna di Virgilio (Naples, 1986), pp. 127–49. For a roster of surviving manuscripts of Roman authors, see also Olsen, I classici nel canone scolastico altomedievale, esp. pp. 117–22.

Getting to Know Virgil in the Carolingian Age: The Vita Publii Virgilii

Table 2.1 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35–9.

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Virgilian vitae

Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana (VSD) Jerome, Chronicon, etc. Vita Servii (late fourth–early fifth century) Vita Focae (late fourth–early fifth century) Vita Philargyrii I (fifth century, 2/2) Vita Philargyrii II (ninth/tenth century MSS) Vita Probi (probably fifth/sixth century) Expositio Donati (fourth century) Expositio Monacensis I (from fifteenth/sixteenth-century MS) Expositio Monacensis II (twelfth century) Periochae Bernensis I (ninth-century MS) Periochae Bernensis II (ninth-century MS) Periochae Gudianae (ninth century) Periochae Tegernseenses (eleventh-century MS) Periochae Vaticanae (tenth-century MS) Vita Aurelianus (tenth-century MS) Vita Bernensis I (ninth-century MS) Vita Bernensis II (ninth-century MS) Vita Bernensis III (ninth-century MS) Vita Gudiana I (ninth-century MS) Vita Gudiana II (ninth-century MS) Vita Gudiana III (ninth-century MS) Vita Leidensis (ninth/tenth century) Vita Monacensis I (tenth-century MS) Vita Monacensis II (fifteenth-century MS) Vita Monacensis III (fourteenth/fifteenth century) Vita Monacensis IV (fifteenth-century MS) Vita Noricensis I (ninth-century MS) Vita Noricensis II (ninth-century MS) Vita Parisina I (thirteenth-century MS) Vita Parisina II (thirteenth-century MS) Vita Vaticana I (fourteenth-century MS) Vita Vaticana II (fourteenth-century MS Vita Vossiana (ninth-century MS) Italian humanist authors

Source: Jan M. Ziolkowski and Michael C.J. Putnam (eds.), The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years (New Haven, CT, 2008), pp. 179–403 (Section II A, Vitae).

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consists also in the impressive array of commentaries, biographies, glosses, and other material that guided the study of Virgil’s works.7 Well might Ludwig Traube (1861–1907) have dubbed the Carolingian age the aetas virgiliana.8 But what of Virgil himself ? What did the Carolingian age know of him? It turns out that it knew a surprising amount. Carolingian teachers believed it important that their students know the context of the works they studied. To assist them, they adopted the rhetorical strategy of providing a brief introduction—a vita or accessus, they called it—to school authors.9 Over the centuries, medieval teachers composed more than thirty lives of Virgil to help orient their students. While it is often remarked that Einhard and the biographers of Louis the Pious jump-started secular biography after a hiatus of seven centuries, the vitae Virgilianae suggest that secular biography was not a lost literary form, even before the ninth century (see Table 2.1). Despite a long and prolific tradition of scholarship trained on vitae Virgilianae, Ziolkowski and Putnam put it correctly when they observed that the number of lives of Virgil is “vast, and their interrelations and evolutions tend to be complex.”10 Nevertheless, a few patterns emerge from the roster presented above. Many vitae survive in single manuscripts, suggesting many local authors or compilers of material on Virgil’s biography. Many of the texts date from the Carolingian age. It should be noted also that the names modern editors gave the vitae often reflect the names of modern libraries holding the manuscripts that preserve them and tell us nothing of the contents, origins, or filiations of the vitae. Vita Noricensis II (no. 29), for example, does not depend on Vita Noricensis I (no. 28). All they share in common is their preservation in the same manuscript, now conserved in St. Paul in Lavanttal (Carinthia, Austria), but originally copied at Reichenau.11 An accessus, generally in prose but also in verse, could be a simple threepronged summary of the persona, locus, and tempus that informed students about 7

  All of these are conveniently discussed in Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam, pp. 623–705 (Section IV, “Commentary Tradition”). 8   See “Einleitung in die lateinische Philologie des Mittelalters,” in Ludwig Traube, Vorlesungen und Abhandlungen (3 vols., Munich, 1909–20), vol. 2, p. 113. 9   Edwin A. Quain, “The Medieval Accessus ad Auctores,” Traditio 3 (1945): 215–64, is still useful. 10   Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam, p. 179. For graphic representations of the complexity of the relationships among vitae Virgilianae, see Fabio Stok, “Stemma vitarum Vergilianum,” in Giorgio Brugnoli and Fabio Stok, Studi sulle “Vitae Vergilianae”, Testi e Studi di Cultura Classica 34 (Pisa, 2006), pp. 59–78. 11   For convenient editions, see Georgius Brugnoli and Fabius Stok, eds., Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, Scriptores Graeci et Latini Consilio Academiae Lynceorum Editi (Rome, 1997) (hereafter, Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, Brugnoli and Stok), and Karl Bayer (ed.), Vergil-Viten, rev. edn. (Munich, 1977) (hereafter, Vergil-Viten, Bayer).

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the author, the place where a text was composed, and when it was composed. Some of the introductions added a fourth element, the causa scribendi, to explain why a text was composed. The most developed accessus, called circumstantiae or periochae, emerged in the ninth century. These introductory texts considered seven topics, quis, quid, cur, quomodo, quando, ubi, and quibus facultatibus. Remarkably in a genre characterized by anonymity, the periochae were attributed to John Scottus (Eriugena), the ninth-century Carolingian court scholar, poet, and philosopher. John’s periochae influenced four Virgilian lives (nos. 11, 13, 15, and 20 in the roster in Table 2.1), and provided readers and students with the who, what, why, how, when, where, and craft of Virgil’s work.12 By the ninth century, the Virgilian accessus had become as schematic as John’s topics suggest. While some of the vitae are very curt—a paragraph or two—some are quite extensive—ten or twelve paragraphs. The Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana is an outlier: for all intents and purposes Suetonius’ account of Virgil, and not an accessus prefatory to Virgil’s works.13 At 8, 14, and 39 printed pages in various formats, it far exceeds its companions in the vitae Virgilianae tradition in length and reads more like a self-contained chapter from Suetonius’ De poetis than as an accessus.14 Cumulatively, these texts informed readers about Virgil’s birth (accompanied in some accounts by his mother’s pre-natal dream), his parents, their social standing, his birthplace, his name, his education, his physical features (height; complexion), his eating habits, his home, his death, his grave, and the disposition of his body. The lives also provide basic facts about his works, noting the origin of their titles, their contents, their style, their models, and their patrons as well as detractors. Many of the vitae explore the political context of Virgil’s work. Carolingians knew that Virgil wrote to curry favor with and to gain the support of the emperor and the emperor’s political family.15 They knew, 12

  See, for example, the Periochae Gudianae (Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam, p. 243; Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, Brugnoli and Stok, p. 216; Vergil-Viten, Bayer, p. 256): “Set Iohannes Scottus has breviter scripsit periochas dicens: quis, quid, cur, quomodo, quando, ubi, quibus facultatibus.” The Periochae Vaticanae (no. 15) uses Greek as well as Latin terms and probably comes closer to John Scottus’ teaching (Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam, p. 246). 13   See Heinrich Naumann, “Suetonius’ Life of Virgil: The Present State of the Question,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 85 (1981): 185–7: “The Virgil Vita of Donatus’ commentary is the Vita written by Suetonius”; ibid., p. 185. 14   See, respectively, Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana, in Virgilian Tradition, Ziokowski and Putnam, pp. 181–9; Vita Suetonii, in Vergil-Viten, Bayer, pp. 214–40; Vita Donatiana, in Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, Brugnoli and Stok, pp. 17–56 (with apparatus). (Page counts do not include facing translations in the first two books.) For its likely origin in De poetis, see Virgilian Tradition, Ziokowski and Putnam, p. 163. 15   Ermoldus Nigellus (active 820–35) made this point explicitly in his Carmen Nigelli Ermoldi exulis in honorem gloriosissimi Pippini regis, pp. 189–90, in Ermold le Noir: Poème sur

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too, that as in their own day, being on the wrong side in a conflict could be costly. Indeed, the Carolingian age knew a great deal about Virgil. In trying to gain a handle on this large and complex body of material, it is useful to group the vitae into two general categories. Some were composed in the schools of late antiquity and were attached to commentaries on Virgil’s works. Only his dedicatory letter to Lucius Munatius, the preface to the Eclogues, and a life of Virgil survive from the commentary of Aelius Donatus, the fourthcentury grammarian and teacher of Jerome. Donatus’ vita drew much from the life composed by Suetonius for his De poetis in the second century and, thus, is known as the Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana (VSD; no. 1). The life that Servius included in his commentary (no. 3) seems incomplete. The lives composed by Phocas (no. 4) and Philargyrius (nos. 5 and 6) drew on Donatus’ life, while Probus (no. 7) drew on Servius.16 A second group of vitae Virgilianae emerged from medieval schools, mostly in the Carolingian age, when teachers creatively reworked the information they found in late antique texts. Vita Publii Virgilii It is surprising that despite more than three centuries of scholarly scrutiny of these texts and hundreds of studies of individual vitae and several editions and studies of all the vitae that one might have escaped serious study.17 This vita is the lead text in a remarkable and heavily used ninth-century guide to Virgil, the fifth-century Christian poet Sedulius, and the liberal arts now preserved in MS Laon, Bibliothèque Suzanne Martinet, 468.18 Its first five Louis le Pieux et Epitres au roi Pépin, ed. and trans. Edmond Faral (Paris, 1964), p. 216. See also Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam, pp. 100–101. 16   Jerome (no. 2) has scattered bits on Virgil throughout his works, but no actual vita. See Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam, pp. 199–202; Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, Brugnoli and Stok, pp. 5–8, and Vergil-Viten, Bayer, p. 326. 17   See Bayer’s bibliography, Vergil-Viten, pp. 842–76, for over 330 titles, and Brugnoli and Stok’s, Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, pp. xlv–lxii, for over 260 titles, including editions and major studies by Bayer (1958 etc.); Brummer (1912 etc.); Diehl (1911); Hardie (1954 etc.); Sabbadini (1907); Nettleship (1879); Oroz (1976); Upson (1940; Harvard dissertation); Wieser (1926; Erlangen dissertation). Additional titles, such as Heinrich Naumann and Giorgio Brugnoli, “Vitae vergilianae,” in Francesco Della Corte, ed., Enciclopedia virgiliana, 5 vols. in 6 (Rome, 1984–91), vol. 5.1, pp. 570–88, may be found in the pages of Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam, and in David Scott Wilson-Okamura’s “Virgil in Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance: An Online Bibliography,” at http://virgil.org/bibliography/ (accessed December 28, 2013). 18   I first studied this text and offered a preliminary edition of its Virgil vita in “À propos de quelques manuscrits de l’école de Laon: Découvertes et problèmes,” Le Moyen

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folios introduce Virgil and his works.19 Folios 5v–8v group under the heading Incipit ratio fabularum, de musis, fatis, de diis et deabus brief descriptions of the principal mythological figures, all drawn from the Vatican Mythographer I and II, Fulgentius, and Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae. Two following sections (fols. 9r–11r), titled “De proprietate philosophiae et de VII liberalibus artibus” and “De inventione liberalium artium,” provide a useful adaptation of information drawn from Books II, III, and IV of the Etymologiae. Likewise, a long list of descriptions gathered under the titles “De philosophiis,” “De poetis,” “De sibillis,” “De magis,” and “De diis gentium” (fols. 11r–14r) draw on chapters six and seven of Book VIII of the Etymologiae. Pertinent information from Book IX of Isidore of Seville’s encyclopedia furnished details for the section titled “De affinitatibus et propinquitatibus et gradibus affinitatum” (fols. 15r–17v). Students versed in the contents of these sections of the manuscript were well prepared to encounter a world and vocabulary very different from that of the Psalter, the first text they studied intensively.20 Their understanding of the Virgilian corpus was further enriched by the manuscript’s “De epythetis Virgilii” (fols. 18r–51r), which ends abruptly in the seventh book of the Aeneid (7.14) with the entry “Arguto pectine, id est sonoro, stridulo.” This glossary on the Bucolics, Georgics, and most of the Aeneid has not been studied nor published.21 The manuscript’s final section offers a similar glossary titled “Ex epistolis Sedulii glossae” (fols. 52r–61v). Sedulius’ Carmen Paschale was another important text in the Carolingian school curriculum. Danny Ethus Burton, who studied and edited the 933 glosses to the Carmen Paschale, found that the compiler of the glosses drew Age 78 (1972): 14–28. See Bernhard Bischoff, Katalog der festländischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts (mit Ausnahme der wisigothischen), Teil II: Laon–Paderborn (Wiesbaden, 2005), p. 37 (nos. 2,127, 2,128: “Laon, IX. Jh., 3. Viertel.”), and the facsimile edition, John J. Contreni, ed., Codex Laudunensis 468: A Ninth-century Guide to Virgil, Sedulius, and the Liberal Arts, Armarium Codicum Insignium 3 (Turnhout, 1984) (where, however, fol. B was printed upside down!), and David Ganz’s important review essay, “Codex Laundunensis 468,” Peritia 4 (1985): 360–70. The manuscript is available online at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8492139c (accessed December 28, 2013). 19   Michel Jean-Louis Perrin provided a useful transcription and French translation of these folios: “Virgile vu par un maître carolingien de l’école de Laon: à propos du manuscrit Laudunensis 468 (fol. 1ro–5vo) et de Martin d’Irlande,” in Gérard Gros, ed., Champ Fructueux, Images du legs esthétique et religieux de la Picardie (Amiens, 2007), pp. 37–45. 20   See John J. Contreni, “ ‘Let Schools be Established ….’ For What? The Meaning of Admonitio Generalis, cap. 70 (olim 72),” in Graeme Boone, ed., Music in the Carolingian World: Witnesses to a Metadiscipline (Columbus, OH, forthcoming). 21   However, Cécile Parras (Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3), who is studying Iunius Philargyrius’ commentary on the Eclogues, reports that more than 70 percent of the glosses in this section can be traced to Philargyrius’ explanationes (personal communication, August 29, 2012).

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principally on Augustine, Jerome, Servius, the Liber glossarum, and Isidore of Seville, and less frequently on the Bible, Virgil, Prudentius, Priscian, and Bede, among others.22 Some 258 of the glosses appear to have been specially crafted to explicate Sedulius’ metaphors, phrases, and vocabulary when definitions pulled from some source would not fit the specific context of Sedulius’ poem. Interestingly, Burton noted a penchant for using apocryphal names for biblical characters not named in the Bible.23 Who the glossator might be remains to be discovered. The Virgil vita that opens this unique schoolbook (for there seems to be no other like it) is as puzzling as the two sets of Virgil and Sedulius glosses. We begin with the text.24 The vita touches most of the bases of the traditional Virgil accessus. It opens with an account of the poet’s parents, birth, and the origins of his name. Then follows a discussion of the order of composition of Virgil’s works, their number, and the derivation of their titles. The vita provides information on the location of composition of each of the works and their respective patrons, their order, and the influence of Theocritus, Hesiod, and Homer on Virgil’s style. Next comes a relatively lengthy section (ll. 57–79) on Virgil’s political circumstances, especially his exile, and the Roman civil war, including the report that Octavian tried to save Cleopatra’s life (ll. 77–8) after the snake bite. The accessus closes with a recap of the basics (quare, tempus, persona, causa) and a very specific list of five duces in Octavian’s political family who implored Virgil to compose his works. Martin Hiberniensis of Laon (819–875), who owned and heavily annotated the manuscript, copied its first three lines (the 26 words from INCIPIVNT to Vt) and corrected his scribe’s work in the vita and throughout the entire book. He carefully noted “hoc est in Servio” in the margins of the Servian extracts from the Bucolics and Georgics on fols. 2r, 3v, and 4v, but he left anonymous the long opening biography of Virgil on fol. 1r.25 We are left to our own devices to determine where this accessus fits in the long and complex tradition of vitae Virgilianae. Is it another entry in the lengthy list of Carolingian vitae, a Vita Laudunensis, or is it an even older late-antique vita? 22

  “The Sedulian Glossary of MS 468 of Laon: An Introduction and Critical Edition” (Master of Arts thesis, Purdue University, December 1986). 23   Ibid., p. 49: Dorsilla (Lot’s wife); Ennises (an Egyptian magician); Iesus, Iohannes, or Turmius (the name of the child brought before Jesus); Marina (the Samaritan woman at the well). 24   See the end of this chapter for the text and a translation. 25   Glossing Bede’s De temporum ratione 33, 80, with its list of Italian cities, Martin paused on only one city, Cremona, to note, “Ibi fuit Virgilius.” See below, p. 38, l. 26, and John J. Contreni, “John Scottus and Bede,” in James McEvoy and Michael Dunne, eds., History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time, Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, De Wulf-Mansion Centre Series 1, XXX (Leuven, 2002), p. 129, reprinted in John J. Contreni, Learning and Culture in Carolingian Europe: Letters, Numbers, Exegesis, and Manuscripts, Variorum Collected Studies Series 974 (Farnham, 2011), ch. V.

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Its Place in the vitae Virgilianae Tradition The opening 12 lines (from Publius to virorum) of the Vita Publii Virgilii reproduce virtually verbatim the so-called Vita Bernensis I. The details about Virgil’s mother’s dream and the “Virgil” tree in lines 14–18 also occur in the Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana, as does another long section (ll. 28–37) on the number and names of the Eclogues. In two places (ll. 20–23 and again on ll. 51–3), the Laon vita cites Servius’ commentary on the Bucolics on the natural order of Virgil’s writings. Not surprisingly, there is considerable topical overlap (the order of Virgil’s works; his Greek models; his friends; his sexuality; the motivations for his works) between the Laon vita and others in the tradition. But there are also instances of specific similarities in language that link the vitae more explicitly. The Laon vita reports that Virgil’s one fault was that his sexuality was unchecked: “Uno tantum vitio laborans nam inpatiens fuit libidinis” (l. 27). The same sentence, slightly changed, occurs in the Vita Servii.26 In explaining the name of Virgil’s Bucolica, the vita points out how important cattle are to farmers: “quia praecipua sunt animalia apud rusticos boves.” These same words appear in Servius’ preface to his commentary on the Bucolics.27 There are also cross-vitae similarities that are slightly anomalous. Almost all the vitae mention the poet’s assumption of the toga. Only the Laon vita and the Vita Gudiana III elaborate (in different ways) on toga etiquette.28 Both the vita (ll. 25–26) and the Vita Servii identify Mantua as a city in Venetia, but the vita makes the point that the city is “primae partis Venetiae.” The vita shares its roster of Virgil’s amici, “Cornelius Gallus et Assinius Pollio, Quintinus Varus, Imilius Macer, Mecenas, quinque duces de familia Octaviani et amici Virgilii” (ll. 83–5) with the Vita Noricensis, Vita Vossiana, Vita Leidensis, and Vita Monacensis, but only the Laon vita describes them as duces and names them in its own peculiar order.29 These vitae credit Virgil’s friends with encouraging 26

  Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, Brugnoli and Stok, p. 150, 4–5: “uno tantum morbo laborabat; nam inpatiens libidinis fuit.” 27   Georg Thilo, ed., Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii Bucolica et Georgica commentarii, prooemium (Leipzig, 1887), p. 1, l. 2. 28   See below, p. 38, ll. 24–5: “Sed et toga meruit indui quod nulli erat licitum gestare nisi imperatori aut consuli”; Vita Gudiani III in Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, Brugnoli and Stok, 220, ll. 6–7: “toga autem uestis est magistrorum, quia illa non utebantur uulgares homines sed solummodo magistri.” 29   Aemilius Macer, Quintilius Varus, Maecenas, Cornelius Gallus, Asinius Pollio = Vita Noricensis (Vergil-Viten, Bayer, p. 238, ll. 19–21; Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, Brugnoli and Stok, p. 342, ll. 35–7; Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam, p. 279), Vita Leidensis (VergilViten, Bayer, p. 246, ll. 6–7; Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, Brugnoli and Stok, p. 344, l. 22–p. 346, l. 25; Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam, p. 261), and Vita Monacensis I (Vergil-Viten,

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him to compose his works. Almost every accessus notes that Homer was Virgil’s model for the Aeneid, but only the Laon accessus links the amici to Homer, reporting that just as Homer composed 44 books in praise of the Greeks who took Troy, the duces said they wanted books that would praise the Trojans (that is, the ancestors of the Romans!) who had held the city (ll. 86–9). There are also differences between the Laon vita and the other texts in the vitae Virgilianae tradition. The Laon vita does not describe the poet’s physical characteristics nor his studies in medicine and mathematics. The vita ignores a staple of many of the accounts of Virgil’s life, his precocious distich on Ballista, the gladiator master. The vita relates that Virgil lived for 52 years, but skips over his death and his poignant, widely reported epitaph (“Mantua me genuit …”). While the vita names his five friends, it neglects to mention his enemies. Several lives report that Mantua was given to Cornelius Gallus, but the Laon vita has Mantua going to Cornificius (ll. 82–3). The most striking difference between the Laon vita and its companions centers on the causa scribendi. The accessus agrees with the conventional story line that Virgil wrote to regain his lands after they were distributed to Augustus’s soldiers in the civil wars because Virgil was a member of Antony’s familia (ll. 68–9). The vita, however, goes far beyond the others in relating the history of the wars (ll. 57–79), including the enmity between Antony and Octavian, Antony’s three defeats (by land, on sea at Actium, and by horse), and especially the res Aegyptiacae, with its dénouement in the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra. In relating these events, many of which are only implicit in other vitae, the Laon vita adds two elements unique to its version of the wars. Its report (ll. 65–8) that Antony raised funds for his contest with Octavian by capturing King Artavasdes of Armenia and his treasure does not appear in the tradition of vitae Virgilianae, including the Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana, the generally accepted fount of all the vitae. Several ancient sources mention Antony’s involvement with Artavasdes, his erstwhile ally and enemy. Tacitus (Annals 2), Josephus (Jewish Antiquities 15.4, 3; Jewish Wars 1.18, 5), Strabo (Geography 11.13, 4 and 14, 9), Velleius Paterculus (Roman Histories 2.82), Livy (Periochae 131), Plutarch (Antony 50.4), and especially Dio Cassius (Roman History 49.33, 39, 40; 50.1; 51.5) preserve the essential elements of the Roman’s capture of the Armenian and the prisoner’s presentation in chains of gold (or silver) to Cleopatra, who ordered his death. Dio Cassius was apparently the only ancient historian to note with the Laon vita that Antony also used deception to collect Artavasdes’ treasure (l. 66 Bayer, p. 227, ll. 12–14; Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, Brugnoli and Stok, p. 334, ll. 52–4; Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam, p. 264); Aemilius Macer, Quintilius Varus, Cornelius Gallus, Asinius Pollo, Maecenas = Vita Vossiana (Vergil-Viten, Bayer, p. 266, ll. 20–21; Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, Brugnoli and Stok, p. 280, ll. 26–8; Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam, p. 290).

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and Roman History 49.39). None of the vitae Virgilianae report Cleopatra’s suicide by snake bite in sinistro brachio and Octavian’s effort to save her by calling in snake bite specialists: “Octavian sought out fisici medici to save her, but they were unable to do so because she was already dead and [then] she was buried with Antony in the same tomb” (ll. 77–9).30 Given these extraordinary historical details, it might be tempting to suggest that the author of the Laon vita pulled information from ancient classical sources or that the Laon vita is a “lost” ancient or late antique source, say, from the age of Servius.31 But the composer of the Laon vita drew historical nuggets on the contest between Antony and Octavian and on Cleopatra’s death from Paulus Orosius’ early fifth-century Seven Books against the Pagans.32 Orosius reported the history of Antony and King Artavasdes and the circumstances of Antony and Cleopatra’s death in words that the author of the vita altered only slightly.33 Vita, ll. 65–8

Hist. adv. Paganos 6.19, 3–4 (edn. 223)

Antonius enim Artabanem Armeniae regem dolo cepit et magnam copiam auri atque argenti ab eo abstulit. Qua elatus pecunia denuntiari bellum Caesari atque Octaviae repudium indici iussit.

Antonius Artabanen Armeniae regem proditione et dolo cepit: quem argentea catena uinctum ad confessionem thesaurorum regiorum coegi, expugnatoque oppido, in quo conditos esse prodiderat, magnam uim auri argentique abstulit. qua elatus pecunia denuntiari bellum Caesari atque Octauiae, sorori Caesaris, uxori suae, repudium indici iussit.

30

  The fisici medici is likely a garbled reference to psylli, North African snake charmers who could safely suck poison from victim’s wounds, that both Suetonius (Divus Augustus, 17, 4) and Cassius Dio (Roman History 51, 14, 3–4) mentioned in their accounts of the queen’s death. The manuscript’s fisici seems to have been an attempt to explain psylli as physici, with medici a later gloss on fisici that crept into the text. 31   This was my hypothesis in 1972: that the vita might be Donatus’ own vita Virgilii (as opposed to Suetonius’) from his lost commentary on Virgil’s works. See Contreni, “A propos de quelques manuscrits de l’école de Laon,” pp. 21–6. 32   David Ganz, “Codex Laudunensis 468,” p. 363, was the first to detect Orosius in the vita. Use of Orosius, a Christian source, is apparently unique in the vitae Virgilianae tradition. 33   Orose: Histoires (contre les païens), tome II: Livres IV–VI, ed. and trans. Marie-Pierre Arnaud-Lindet (Paris, 2003).

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Vita, ll. 73–9

Hist. adv. Paganos, 6.19, 16–18 (edn. 225–6)

Et quartum bellum in mari praeparabat, sed cum ad instruendam classim in portum descenderet, subito universae naves in aliam partem ad Caesarem defecerunt ab Antonio, cumque unico praesidio spoliatus esset, trepidus cum paucis in Alexandriam fugit. Deinde imminente Caesare sese ferro transverberauit. Cleopatra autem in sinistro brachio morsu serpentis voluntarie tacta, exanimis inventa est, et quaesiti sunt ab Octaviano fisici medici ut curarent eam et non valuerunt, nam mortua fuit et sepulta est cum Antonio in uno sepulchro.

Kalendis Sextilibus prima luce Antonius cum ad instruendam classem in portum descenderet, subito uniuersae naues ad Caesarem transierunt; cumque unico praesidio spoliatus esset, trepidus se cum paucis recepit in regiam. deinde inminente Caesare turbataque ciuitate idem Antonius sese ferro transuerberauit. … uoluntariam mortem petens, serpentis, ut putatur, morsu in sinistro tacta bracchio exanimis inuenta est, frustra Caesare etiam Psyllos admouente, qui uenena serpentum e uulneribus hominum haustu reuocare atque exsugere solent.

While here and elsewhere in the vita the medieval composer drew directly from his sources, he also ably paraphrased, as when, before describing Antony’s preparations for his fourth battle, he succinctly summarized Orosius’ account of the previous three battles: “Then, afterwards, he first fought a war on foot, then a second on sea, called [the battle of ] Actium, and a third on horse. In all three he was defeated” (ll. 70–72). In the first paired passages above, he also dropped Orosius’ description of Octavia as Caesar’s sister since that relationship was already specified earlier in the vita (l. 64). Despite the patchwork appearance of the vita, a few hints (references to Virgil’s exile [ll. 48 and 57], to his friends as duces [ll. 85 and 88], and an apparent fondness for praecello and praecellens [ll. 55 and 86]) might suggest the activity of one mind behind its composition. Whose mind this might be is impossible to say at this point. The almost complete Vita Bernensis I that opens the Laon vita would seem to suggest a ninth-century master, one familiar with the Vita Bernensis I.34 For their edition of Vita Bernensis I, Brugnoli and Stok 34

  See Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam, pp. 249–50; Vergil-Viten, Bayer, p. 248, and, Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, Brugnoli and Stok, pp. 205–7. The Laon text of the Vita Bernensis I with many other manuscripts lacks the title of the edition: “De nobilitate ac die

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consulted 35 manuscripts, only five of which (including the Laon schoolbook) they assigned generally to the ninth century. Karl Bayer judged one of the 13 manuscripts he used to be squarely in the ninth century; four others he listed as “saec. IX–X.”35 The two Bern manuscripts that gave their name to the text on somewhat slender grounds date from the second and last thirds of the ninth century.36 Only one other manuscript witness to Vita Bernensis I has been dated to the ninth century, as early as the Laon codex, which dates before 875, the death date of Martin Hiberniensis, and possibly as early as the 860s. The Virgilian texts of MS Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibl., cod. Guelf. 70 Gud. lat. 20 (4374) certainly date from the ninth century. However, its text of the Vita Bernensis I (fol. 2r) and other preliminary texts copied on the first four folios of the codex are more recent (tenth or eleventh century) and in a different handwriting than that of the manuscript’s principal scribes.37 The Laon manuscript with a firm date before 875, then, should be considered one of the earliest witnesses to the Vita Bernensis I, if not the earliest. Paleographically, it is certain that its texts were copied from an even earlier manuscript.38 What might be even more interesting to consider is that the Laon guidebook to Virgil, Sedulius, and the arts preserves the Vita Bernensis I in its original context—that is, as part of a longer and more elaborate accessus to the works of Virgil. As currently understood, Vita Bernensis I ends with “… probatissimorum uirorum. Vita Virgilii finit.”39 The version in the atque tempore nativitatis atque longitudine temporis vitae Publii Virgilii Maronis discipuli Epidii oratoris incipit.” See Vergil-Viten, Bayer, p. 710, and Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, Brugnoli and Stok, p. 205. (Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae is the first edition to collate the Laon manuscript for its Vita Bernensis I and its Vita Servii; Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, Brugnoli and Stok, pp. 149–54, ll. 3.) 35   Ibid., pp. 203–4; Vergil-Viten, Bayer, p. 710. The editors agreed that MS Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibl., cod. Guelf. 70 Gud. lat. 20 (4374) is a ninth-century witness to their text, but see n. 37 below. 36   Bischoff, Katalog I, no. 542 (p. 114), MS Bern, Burgerbibliothek 167 (“Bretagne, IX. Jh., 3 Drittel”); no. 545 (p. 115), MS Bern, Burgerbibliothek, 172 (“Umkreis von Paris [St.Denis?], IX. Jh., ca. 2. Drittel”). 37   See Franz Köhler and Gustav Milchsack, Die Handschriften der Herzoglichen Bibliothek zu Wolfenbüttel, 4te Abteilung: Die Gudischen Handschriften (Wolfenbüttel, 1913), pp. 122–3, who observed that the Ratio sperae Pithagore philosophi was added to the last leaf (fol. 87v) by a writer of the tenth/eleventh centuries. This writer’s script looks very close to that of the Vita Bernensis I on fol. 2r. For a digital facsimile, see http://diglib.hab.de/mss/70-gud-lat/start.htm (accessed December 28, 2013). 38   Paleographical characteristics suggest that the manuscript was copied at Laon from an exemplar that itself was copied at Soissons, a short 29 kilometers from Laon. See Contreni, “Introduction,” Codex Laudunensis 468, p. 22. 39   See below, p. 37, l. 13. See Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam, p. 250; Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, Brugnoli and Stok, p. 207, l. 5. Only five of the 35 manuscripts collated in the Brugnoli and Stok edition read “Vita Virgilii finit” (ibid., apparatus criticus). The texts edited

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Laon manuscript omits the last three words (along with most manuscripts of the text) and continues on, albeit on a new line, with the phrase, “Dicitur autem Virgilius …” and a discussion of the possible origins of Virgil’s name. It appears that what follows in the Laon text at line 13 is linked integrally to the Vita Bernensis I of the first 13 lines. Stylistically, there is no marked difference between the first 12 lines of the accessus and the text that follows them in the Laon vita. In the opening 12 lines, the author provided a brief cameo of Virgil’s life, based largely on information from the Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana.40 He then followed this with several explanations of the origins of Virgil’s name before proceeding to elaborate the chronology, contents, and circumstances of his works. Jan Ziolkowski observed that the Vita Bernensis I occupies an unusual position among the early lives. Though indebted loosely to the tradition of earlier vitae, it contains features found in no or very few others. Chief among the features characteristic of it are that Virgil is identified as having been an eques (member of the knightly class), as having studied under the orator [Marcus] Epidius … , and as having received special consideration from Caesar Augustus because of their having been students together; and it gives special prominence to a citation of Eclogues I.6.41

The same (“it contains features found in no or very few others”) can also be said of the lines that follow the so-called Vita Bernensis I in the Laon vita.42 The entire Laon vita, I would suggest, should be regarded as a complete work, representing the accessus in its entirety before the brief, so-called Vita Bernensis I was excised from it to begin its history as a separate, truncated text intended to introduce the pseudo-Virgilian Culex.43 This scenario might explain why it has been difficult to connect the Vita Bernensis I with other vitae Virgilianae: it is an earlier vita than has been thought, one based largely on early sources (Suetonius/ Donatus, Servius, and Orosius), and one that took form before the Carolingian age, when vitae cross-pollinated each other.44 It might also be worth noting in Vergil-Viten, Bayer, are not accompanied by variant readings. Its edition of Vita Bernensis I does not include “Vita Virgilii finit” (p. 248, l. 16). 40   See the apparatus of Vergil-Viten, Bayer, pp. 205–7, where VSD is cited as a source in 11 of the text’s 21 lines. The Vita Servii, the only other source referenced, is listed once. 41   Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam, p. 249. 42   See below, pp. 37–9. 43   See Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam, pp. 26–7, 249, and Friedrich Vollmer, P. Virgilii Maronis iuvenalis ludi libellus, Sitzungsberichte der königlich-bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-philologische und historische Klasse, Jahrgang 1908, 11. Abhandlung (Munich, 1908), pp. 20–22, 26, 60–61. 44   Vergil-Viten, Bayer, p. 711: “Es ist schwierig, die VB I mit irgendeiner anderen Vita in Verbindung zu setzen.” Another section of the Laon vita, below pp. 37–8, ll. 13–37 (“Dicitur .…

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that the Laon vita may have evolved in a school setting dominated by Donatus’ commentary on Virgil, rather than that of Servius. The vita originally was part of a longer commentary on Virgil that began with the Bucolics: “Incipiunt glossae in initio Bocolicorum. Vita Publii Virgilii” (l. 1). What this title plainly suggests is that the introductory vita was originally embedded in a commentary or set of glosses on the Bucolics and that the Bucolics was the first work of Virgil’s glossed by the author of the vita. One significant point of divergence between the commentary of Servius and that of Donatus, his predecessor, is that Servius commented on the Virgilian corpus in the order Aeneid (where, in fact, he placed his vita Virgilii), Bucolics, and Georgics, while Donatus preferred the order Bucolics, Georgics, Aeneid, which he believed reflected the poet’s conception of the natural evolution of humanity from pastoralism, to farming, to warfare.45 Donatus’ order is suggested by the title of the Laon vita and is maintained throughout it whenever the three works of Virgil are described, as well as in the manuscript’s glosses on Virgil’s works, De epythetis Virgilii (fols. 18r–51r). These suggestive clues point in the direction of a new vita Virgilii made up largely of late-antique sources influenced by Donatus’ approach to Virgil. They also raise a number of questions, not the least of which concerns the relationship between the Laon Vita Publii Virgilii, with its apparently unique passages and its unique use of Orosius, and other vitae—questions that can only be broached in the context of a new investigation of the vitae Virgilianae tradition. This is not the place to continue that investigation, but perhaps it is time to widen the lens from its focus on the intriguing Laon vita to consider the implications of the vitae Virgilianae tradition for the Carolingian age. Carolingian Romes It would be no exaggeration to conclude that the works of Virgil and the many commentaries, glosses, and vitae that they spawned were the principal portals through which many literate Carolingians viewed ancient Rome: “It all begins with Virgil.”46 While the many manuscripts of Virgil’s works and the number Gallus”), also appears in a Virgil manuscript connected with Laon and shows how the process of excerpting from a complete vita Virgilianae might have led to the independent existence of the Vita Bernensis I. For MS Paris, BNF, lat. 10307, see Contreni “A propos de quelques manuscrits de l”école de Laon,” p. 23, n. 37, and pp. 28–37, and Olsen, L’Etude des auteurs classiques latins, pp. 764–5. 45   See in the vita, ll. 20–22. Servius paraphrased Donatus here. See also on this point, Louis Holtz, “Servius et Donat,” in Monique Bouquet and Bruno Méniel, eds., Servius et sa réception de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance (Rennes, 2011), pp. 209–10. 46   See Thomas F.X. Noble, “Rome and the Romans in the Medieval Mind: Empathy and Antipathy,” in Karl F. Morrison and Rudolph M. Bell, eds., Studies on Medieval Empathies (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 291–315 (p. 295 for the quotation). For other avenues, besides the relatively little-known Roman historians, see the essays in Roma antica nel Medioevo: Mito, rappresentazioni,

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and variety of the glosses and vitae Virgilianae surely are impressive, even more impressive and noteworthy is the sheer intensity with which Carolingian readers studied their Virgil. Carolingian scriptoria developed a special layout for Virgil manuscripts that featured on each folio a central column for Virgil’s verse, flanked right and left by narrower columns ruled for commentary with twice as many (or more) lines than the main column. If the main central column and the narrower flanking columns were ruled for the same number of lines, invariably writers squeezed two or more lines of text into each line in the commentary columns. The effect might be of a grand, central presentation of the ancient poet’s verse accompanied by less handsome, more crowded lateral texts, except that teachers and readers also glossed almost every other word in Virgil’s text. Often, these interlinear glosses and lateral comments (in minuscule and tironian notes) were added over time, producing across the entire folio an overall busy (not to say messy!) effect of intense and continuous study.47 Carolingian students and masters who studied these pages invariably learned and absorbed not only Roman grammar and vocabulary, but more significantly, some sense of Roman institutions, places, and ideas, along with a multitude of other markers of Roman life. Through Virgil and the works that traveled with his, they entered into the history of the late Republic and early Empire. They journeyed imaginatively to far-flung places, to Mantua, Rome, Actium, Alexandria, and participated vicariously in the drama of Virgil’s lost lands and the murderous conflicts among the generation of Augustus, Antony, and Cleopatra. They were able also to glimpse through texts aspects of Roman culture that must have seemed familiar to them: the importance of land, animals, and agriculture, powerful political leaders, women at the nexus of political alliances, loyalty and disloyalty, friendship, pride, patronage, the power of poetry, and, though they be false, the power of gods. And Carolingian readers seem to have been comfortable knowing that Virgil preferred boys and reading his songs that celebrated panerotic love: “Love conquers all; let us yield to love.” This line or some form of it from Eclogues 10.69 was suprisingly popular among scribes, even more so than “Arma virumque cano” (Aen. 1.1), when they tried out their quills.48 And of course, with all viewers of the distant sopravvivenze nella “Respublica Christiana” dei secoli IX–XIII, Atta della quattuordicesima Settimana internazionale di studio Mendola, 24–8 agosto 1998 (Milan, 2001). 47   See, for example, the ninth-century Virgil from St.-Martial in Limoges, MS Paris, BNF, lat. 7925, fol. 3r (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8478994n/f17.item [accessed December 28, 2013]). See also the plates in Silvia Ottaviano, “Il Reg. Lat. 1669: Un’edizione di Virgilio d’età carolingia,” Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticana 15 (2009): 259–324, depicting the layout of this Reims Virgil. For these manuscripts, see Olsen, L’Etude des auteurs classiques latins, pp. 754 and 781. 48   Olsen, in ibid., pp. 882–3, recorded 16 manuscripts with Virgilian “essais de plume,” in 11 of which scribes traced out “Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus amori.” The opening line of the Aeneid occurs only twice.

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past, they knew the future awaiting ancient Rome and that in that future the Rome of the Romans was no longer. But just as Carolingian power could shelter and protect Christian Rome, Carolingian books and their readers could revivify Virgil’s Rome and make it their own. Text49 The text in the manuscript is formatted in three long paragraphs (ll. 1–12, 13–45, and 46–89). Two-line majuscule letters (and in most cases paragraphus signs in the margins) at Dicitur (l. 13), Qui (l. 20), Numerus (l. 28), Decem (l. 38), Decem (l. 42), In (l. 46), Pollioni (l. 50), Item (l. 57), and Virgilius (l. 80) suggest further topical divisions, a format that is followed here. The siglum L1 designates the principal scribe of the text, while L2 designates an annotator and corrector who most often was Martin Hiberniensis.50 The orthography of the manuscript, especially regarding proper nouns, is retained here. References to editions of other vitae Virgilianae are to the texts in Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae (Brugnoli and Stok, eds.), with appropriate indications of page and line numbers in parentheses. Editions of Servius and Orosius are provided in footnotes 27 and 33 above. With one exception (l. 66), ę is expanded as ae. INCIPIUNT GLOSSAE IN INITIO BOCOLICORUM. VITA PUBLII VIRGILII.

Publius Virgilius Maro, genere Mantuanus, dignitate aeque Romanus, natus idibus Octobris Gneo Pompeio et Marco Crasso consulibus. Vt primum se contulit Romae, studuit apud Epedium oratorem cum Caesare Augusto. Vnde cum 5 omnibus Mantuanis agri auferrentur, quod Antonianis partibus favissent, huic solo concessit memoria condiscipulatus, ut et ipse poeta testatur in Bocolicis dicendo “Deus nobis haec otia fecit.” In quibus ingenium suum expertus est, favorem quoque Caesaris emeruit. Ac deinde Georgica conscripsit, et in his corroborato ingenio eius, Aeneida conscripsit. Cui finem non posuit raptus a fatis, et ideo 10 inveniuntur apud eum versus non peracti, quibus non supervixit ad replendum. Vixit annos quinquaginta duos, amicitia usus imperatoris Augusti et aliorum complurium probatissimorum virorum.   Dicitur autem Virgilius vel a patre Virgilio vel quasi verecundus. Ideo etiam Virgilius dicitur quia concipiens illum mater sua somniavit se laureum 49

  I am very grateful to Dr. Olivier Szerwiniack, who read an earlier draft and made important suggestions for its improvement. 50   Most of the corrections are helpful. Twice changing duodecim to duodecem (ll. 47–8) is odd. Connecting anio and andes to make anioandes (l. 83) where ario (or arrio) andes is wanted escapes explanation.

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15 ramum peperisse, vel quia in loco quo cecidit nascens, secundum morem regionis in puerperiis illius virga populea deputata est quae in brevi ita convaluit, ut multo ante satis populis adaequaretur; quae arbor “Virgilius” ex eo dicta atque consecrata est. Est autem illi ut Virgilius vocetur agnomen; Maro vero cognomen a patre ut dicitur. 20   Qui in scribendis carminibus naturalem ordinem secutus est. Primo enim pastoralem vitam in montibus exsecutus est stilo, secundo agricolandi, tertio bellandi. Et pastoralem in Bocolicis, agriculturae in Georgicis, bellorum vero in Aenedis rationem descripsit. Vnde non solum agros suos et Mantuanorum apud Caesarem obtinuit ut redderentur, sed et toga meruit indui quod nulli erat licitum 25 gestare nisi imperatori aut consuli. Fuit autem Mantuanus a Mantua quae est civitas primae partis Venetiae. Nam et Cremonae et Mediolani et Neapoli litteris studuit. Vno tantum vitio laborans, nam inpatiens fuit libidinis.   Numerus Eglogarum manifestus est, nam x sunt, ex quibus proprie Bocolicae vii esse creduntur quod ex his excipiantur “Pollio,” “Silonus,” et 30 “Gallus.” Prima igitur continet privationem publicam, id est privatam gratulationem de agro et dicitur “Tytirus”; secunda amorem pueri, et dicitur “Alexis”; tertia certamen pastorum et dicitur “Palemon”; quarta genethlia, et dicitur “Pollio”; quinta epitafion, et dicitur “Dapnis”; /fol. 1v/ sexta metamorfosis et dicitur “Varus” vel “Silenus”; septima delectatio pastorum et dicitur “Coridon”; 35 octava mores diversorum sexuum et dicitur “Damon”; nona propriam poetae conquestionem de amisso agro et dicitur “Moeris”; decima desiderium Galli circa Polimiam et dicitur “Gallus”.   Decem enim Eglogas fecit Virgilius et quattuor libros Georgicorum et xii Aeneidorum. “Ege” enim dicitur capra, logos verbum vel lectio, inde egloga, id 40 est caprinum verbum vel caprina lectio. Bocolica a “bobus” dicuntur, id est boum culturae. Georgica, id est terrae culturae, “ge” enim terra dicitur.   Decem Eglogae vocantur Bocolica non ut de bobus ibi loquatur, sed de capris et pastoribus, sed quia praecipua sunt animalia apud rusticos boves, ideo decem Eglogae Bocolica vocantur. In Georgicis tamen de bobus loquitur. 45 Aeneidorum dicit secundum Latinam regulam, quasi Aeneidus fiat.   In his ergo libris Virgilii quaerendum est quot artes scripsit, et sic invenimus quod tres, id est Bocolica, Georgica, et duodecim libros Aeneidos. Sed Bocolica et Georgica in Partenope scripta sunt quando exul fuit; duodecim vero libri Aeneidos in Mantua postquam de exilio venit. 50   Pollioni scripsit Bocolica, Mecenati Georgica, Octaviano Aeneida, et omnia in laudem Caesaris ut ei placeret scripsit. Nam in his scribendis naturalem ordinem servavit, primo enim pastoralem vitam, deinde vitam agricolandi, postea bellandi descripsit, id est humilis caracter et medius et grandilocus. Prius enim pastorali vita vivebant maxime omnes, deinde agricolandi, postea bellandi. In

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55 Bocolicis fuit imitatus Theocritum Siracusanum qui in ista arte praecelluit, Hesiodum in Georgicis, Homerum in Aeneidis.   Item quaerendum est quae causa fuit exilii eius, et sic invenitur quod fuit Gaius Iulius Caesar, rex Romanorum, et ipse maxime regnum Romanorum dilatavit per orbem et ipsi postea Romani occiderunt eum in ostio Capitolii, et 60 dedit regnum suum filio filiae sororis suae, qui nominabatur Octavianus, et nomen suum imposuit ei, id est Caesar. Et ipse postea, et familia Gaii, vindicaverunt eum in Romanos. Et tunc fuerunt apud Romanos duces duo pene compares, id est Octavianus et Antonius, amici quidem primitus, nam filiam Antonii Caesar habuit, et sororem Octaviani, nomine Octaviam, Antonius habuit. Tandem 65 discordia orta fuit inter istos per superbiam Antonii. Antonius enim Artabanem Armeniae regem dolo cepit et magnam copiam auri atque argenti /fol. 2r/ ab eo abstulit. Qua elatus pecunia denuntiari bellum Caesari atque Octaviae repudium indici iussit. Et Virgilius cum Antonio huc illucque pergebat quia de familia Antonii erat. Et a meridiana parte Italiae, bella Antonius Octaviano contulit, nam 70 reginam Aegypti Cleopatram in coniugium invitavit pro adiutorio suo. Deinde tunc dimicavit, primo pedestri bello, secundo maritimo quod dicitur Acciacum, tertio equestri. Et in his tribus victus est. Et quartum bellum in mari praeparabat, sed cum ad instruendam classim in portum descenderet, subito universae naves in aliam partem ad Caesarem defecerunt ab Antonio, cumque unico praesidio 75 spoliatus esset, trepidus cum paucis in Alexandriam fugit. Deinde imminente Caesare sese ferro transverberavit. Cleopatra autem in sinistro brachio morsu serpentis voluntarie tacta, exanimis inventa est, et quaesiti sunt ab Octaviano fisici medici ut curarent eam et non valuerunt, nam mortua fuit et sepulta est cum Antonio in uno sepulchro. 80   Virgilius itaque propter adulationem ut Octaviano placeret fecit primas duas partes, id est Bocolica et Georgica. Haec autem ars in tempore Octaviani scripta est; persona vero Virgilius; causa vero quia postquam tenuit Cornificius Mantuam et Anio Andes propriam haereditatem Virgilii in Mantua. Cornelius Gallus et Assinius Pollio, Quintinus Varus, Imilius Macer, Mecenas, quinque 85 duces de familia Octaviani et amici Virgilii, postulaverunt hos libros a Virgilio, ut suaderent amorem eius Octaviano. Vel quia Homerus praecellentissimus poeta Grecorum quadraginta quattuor libros fecit de laude Grecorum qui expugnaverunt Troiam, similiter duces praedicti dixerunt hos libros facere de laude Troianorum qui tenuerunt civitatem.

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Notes 4 Epedium] Epidium L2 | 5 omnibus] corr. ex hominibus | 6 concessit] scilicet Caesar Augustus L2 in mg. | condiscipulatus] corr. L2 cun- L1 | ipse] corr. L2 ips L1 | 7 Deus] id est in prima Egloga L2 sup. lin. | 8 et in] corr. L2 tin L1 | 9 finem] corr. L2 fine L1 | 14 etiam] L2 sup. lin. | dicitur] L2 add. | 17 satis] id est seminatis L2 in mg. | 22 Bocolicis] corr. L2 Buc- L1 | Georgicis] corr. L2 -gius L1 | 23 apud] corr. L2 aput L1 | 28 Bocolicae] corr. L2 Bocolice L1 | 29 Prima] Dramaticon dicitur ubi personae loquentes introducuntur sine poetae interlocution[em]. Introducuntur enim personae non loquente poeta ad ipsas, sed sibi ipsi L2 in mg. | 30 id est] L2 sup. lin. | privatam] id est //// L2 in mg. | gratulationem] corr. L2 gratulatione L1 | 31 Tytirus] scilicet in eius titulo L2 sup. lin. | 32 genethlia] id est generatio saeculi L2 sup. lin. | 33 epitafion] id est titulus L2 sup. lin. | 33 metamorfosis] corr. L2 meta morfosis L1 | id est transformatio L2 sup. lin. | 34 delectatio] corr. L2 dil- L1 | 44 Eglogae] corr. L2 eg loge L1 | 44 Aeneidorum] corr. L2 Ane- L1 | 46 ergo] L2 sup. lin. | quot] corr. L2 quod L1 | quaerendum] corr. L2 querendum L1 | 47 duodecim] L1 -decem corr. L2 | 48 duodecim] L1 -decem corr. L2 | vero] add. L2 | 49 in Mantua] corr. L2 inman tua L1 | 53 et1] L2 | 54 bellandi] scilicet propter abundantiam agrorum L2 in mg. | 55 Theocritum] corr. L2 Thec- L1 | 59 ostio] corr. L2 hostio L1 | 61 imposuit] corr. L2 inp- L1 | 63 Caesar] add. L2 | 66 cepit] cępit L1 | 67 Qua elatus] corr. L2 qu//latus L1 | pecunia] corr. L2 penia L1 | atque] corr. L2 //tque L1 |69 Italiae] corr. L2 Italie L1 | 72 tertio] corr. L2 tertiu L1 | 74 defecerunt] id est venerunt L2 sup. lin. | cumque] corr. L2 cu//que L1 | 75 Deinde imminente] corr. L2 Deindeimminente L1 | 77 voluntarie tacta] corr. L2 voluntari// cacta L1 | 80 Virgilius] scilicet quare fecit L2 in mg. | Octaviano] corr. L2 Ɔctaviano L1 | 81 ars] corr. L2 mars L1 | 83 Anio Andes] anioandes corr. L2 | haereditatem] corr. L2 hereditatem L1 | 86 Homerus] corr. L2 Omerus L1 | praecellentissimus] corr. L2 precellentissimus L1 | 87 fecit] L2 sup. lin. | 88 hos] corr. L2 os L1 2 Publius–12 virorum] Vita Bernensis I (edn. 205,4–207,4) | 7 Deus – fecit] Virg., Ecl 1,6 | 14 mater–15 ramum; 15 morem–18 est] Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana 3,5 (edn. 19,1–2; 19,9–20,3) | 20 in–21 montibus] Servius, Comm. in Verg. Buc., proem. (edn. 3,29–31) | 25 Mantuanus–27 studuit] cf. Vita Servii (edn. 149,5–150,1) | 27 Uno–libidinis] Vita Servii (edn 150,3–4) | 28 Numerus–37 “Gallus”] Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana 68 (edn. 51,3–52,6) | 43 quia–boves] Servius, Comm. in Verg. Buc., proem. (edn. 2,2) | 51 in–53 bellandi] Servius, ibid. (edn. 3,29–31) | 53 humilis–grandilocus] ibid. (edn. 2,1) | 65 Antonius–68 iussit] Orosius, Hist. adv. paganos 6.19,3-4 (edn. 223) | 73 cum–76 transverberavit] ibid. 6.19,16–17 (edn. 225) | 76 Cleopatra–78 fuit] cf. ibid., 6.19, 18 (edn. 226).

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THE GLOSSES BEGIN IN THE BEGINNING OF THE BUCOLICS. THE LIFE OF PUBLIUS VIRGIL. Publius Virgilius Maro, by birth a Mantuan and by dignity a Roman knight,51 was born on the ides of October during the consulships of Gnaeus Pompeius and Marcus Crassus.52 As soon as he could, he set off for Rome where, with Caesar Augustus,53 he studied under Epidius, the orator.54 That was why, when all the Mantuans had their fields taken from them because they favored the party of Antony,55 his fellow student [Augustus], remembering their times together, returned only Virgil’s lands to him. As the poet himself said in the Bucolics, “God gave us this leisure.” In the Bucolics, he proved his talent and gained the favor of Caesar. Then, he composed the Georgics, and further corroborating his genius, he wrote the Aeneid. Taken off by fate, he was not able to finish it. That’s why some of his verse remains incomplete, because he did not live long enough to finish them. He lived for fifty-two years and enjoyed the friendship of Emperor Augustus and of many other most worthy men. He was called Virgil either after his father, Virgil, or on account of his bashfulness [verecundus]. He was also called Virgil because when his mother conceived him she dreamt that she brought forth a laurel bough, or because (according to the custom of the region in which he was born) during delivery a poplar branch [virga] was cut [and planted] that in a short time grew as tall as poplars already planted. This tree was called “Virgil” after the poet and was dedicated to him. He was called by the surname Virgil and by the added name, Maro, from his father. He followed the natural order when he composed his poems: the first one was expressed in the style of mountainous pastoral life, the second, in the style of farming life, and the third, in the style of military life. He portrayed the pastoral way of life in the Bucolics, farming life in the Georgics, and military life in the Aeneid. Then, not only did he obtain the return of his fields and those of the Mantuans from Caesar, but he earned [the right] to put on the toga, which no one except the emperor or consul could legally wear. He was a Mantuan from Mantua, which is a city in the first part of 51

  The manuscript reads “dignitate aeque Romanus,” but other versions of this passage in the so-called Vita Bernensis I read “dignitate eques Romanus,” which seems preferable. See Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, Brugnoli and Stok, p. 205, l. 5. 52   That is, October 15, 70 BCE. Gnaeus Pompeius (106–48 BCE); Marcus Licinius Crassus (c. 115–53 BCE). 53   Emperor C. Octavius Augustus (63 BCE–14 CE). 54   Suetonius recorded that Marcus Epidius taught both Antony and Augustus and had an unsavory reputation; The Lives of Illustrious Men: On Rhetoricians IV, in Suetonius, ed. and trans. J.C. Rolfe, 2 vols. (London, 1914), vol. 2, pp. 442–3. 55   Marcus Antonius (c. 83–30 BCE).

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Venetia, though he studied literature in Cremona, Milan, and Naples. He struggled with only one defect, for his lust was unchecked. The number of Eclogues is obvious, for there are ten, of which seven properly are considered to be Bucolics because, of the ten, the “Pollio,” the “Silenus,” and the “Gallus” are excepted. The first one, then, concerns public loss, that is, of the personal enjoyment of [one’s] land, and is called the “Tityrus”; the second, the love of a boy and is called the “Alexis”; the third, rivalry among shepherds and is called the “Palaemon”; the fourth is a genethlia [birthday poem] and is called the “Pollio”; the fifth is an epitaphium [funeral oration] and is called the “Daphnis”; the sixth concerns metamorphosis [transformation] and is called the “Varus” or the “Silenus”; the seventh, the pasttimes of shepherds and is called the “Corydon”; the eighth, the ways56 of the different sexes and is called the “Damon”; the ninth, the poet’s own complaint about the loss of [his] land and is called the “Moeris”; the tenth, Gallus’ longing for Polimia57 and is called the “Gallus.” Virgil composed ten Eclogues, four books of Georgics, and twelve of the Aeneid. In fact, Ege means “goat” and logos means a “word” or a “reading,” hence, egloga, that is, “goat word,” or “goat reading.” The Bucolics are so named from bobus, that is, the care of cattle [boum]. The Georgics [are so named from ge], that is, the cultivation of the earth since ge means earth. The ten Eclogues are called Bucolics, not that he [Virgil] speaks of cattle in them, but [rather] of goats and shepherds, but because cattle are the principal animals of farmers, so the ten Eclogues are called Bucolics. He does speak of cattle in the Georgics. It says Aeneidorum according to Latin usage, as if it [the hero’s name] were Aeneidus [rather than Greek Aeneas].58 In these books of Virgil’s it needs to be determined how many works of art he wrote and so we find that he wrote three, the Bucolics, the Georgics, and the twelve books of the Aeneid. Now, the Bucolics and Georgics were written in Parthenope when he was an exile, however the twelve books of the Aeneid [were written] in Mantua after he came 56

  The editors of the Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana (VSD), which the Laon vita follows closely here, preferred amores for mores. See VSD 68 in Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, Brugnoli and Stok, p. 52, l. 2. The translation in Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam, p. 198, accepts amores and renders this passage as: “Romantic relations between the opposite sexes form the content of the eighth Eclogue ….” 57   “An actress and mistress of Marc Antony”; Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam, p. 198. 58   This seems to be an explanation of xii Aeneidorum (ll. 38–9 of the text), but see duodecim libros Aeneidos at l. 47 and Aeneidos again at l. 49.

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back from exile. He wrote the Bucolics for Pollio,59 the Georgics for Maecenas,60 and the Aeneid for Octavian61 and he wrote all of them in praise of Caesar so that he might please him. Now, in these writings he observed the natural order, he described pastoral life first, then agricultural life, after this military life, that is, in a humble, middling, and lofty style. At first, everyone mostly lives the life of shepherding, then of farming, and, afterwards, of soldiering. In the Bucolics, he imitated Theocritus of Syracuse62 because he excelled in this art [form], in the Georgics, Hesiod,63 in the Aeneid, Homer.64 It also needs to be determined why he was exiled. We find that it was Gaius Julius Caesar,65 king of the Romans and the one who greatly enlarged the kingdom of the Romans throughout the world and the very one who later the Romans killed in the entrance to the Capitolium. He gave his kingdom to the son of the daughter of his sister, who was named Octavian, and conferred his name on him, that is, Caesar. Afterwards, he along with the Gaii family66 avenged him among the Romans. Then, at that time, there were two leaders among the Romans almost equal [to each other], Octavian and Antony. They were friends at first, for Caesar married the daughter of Antony, and Antony married Octavia, the sister of Octavian.67 In the end, enmity arose between them on account of Antony’s pride. For Antony captured King Artavasdes of Armenia68 by trickery and robbed him of a great deal of gold and silver. Emboldened by this money, he declared war against Caesar and repudiated Octavia. Virgil went along with Antony hither and yon because he was a member of Antony’s [political] family. Antony attacked Octavian in the south of Italy, since he

59

  Gaius Asinius Pollio (76 BCE–4 CE), soldier, politician, and patron of the arts who was instrumental in returning Virgil’s lands to him. 60   Gaius Maecenas (70–8 BCE), a confidant of Augustus and supporter of Virgil and others whose name became synonymous with artistic patronage. 61   Emperor Augustus, who, when adopted by Julius Caesar, took the name Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. 62   Lived c. 300–c. 260 BCE. His bucolic Idylls inspired Virgil. 63   Lived c. 700 BCE. His Works and Days influenced Virgil. 64   Homer, c. seventh or eighth century BCE, composed the Iliad and the Odyssey, and completes the trinity of Greek poets Virgil drew on. 65   100–44 BCE. 66   That is, the family of Julius Caesar and Augustus. 67   Sometimes known as Octavia Minor or Octavia the Younger (69–11 BCE); a highly respected and politically active woman, she ended up raising Antony’s children by other women. The unnamed daughter of Antony was actually his step-daughter, Clodia Pulchra. She was born in 57/56 BCE, and married to Augustus in 42. She left scant tracks on the historical record. 68   King Artavasdes II ruled Armenia 53–34 BCE and played the Parthians off against the Romans. After his capture by Antony, he was taken to Egypt, reportedly in golden chains, and beheaded in 31.

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had married Cleopatra,69 the queen of Egypt, to gain her support. Then, afterwards, he first fought a war on foot, then a second on sea, called [the battle of ] Actium,70 and a third on horse. In all three he was defeated. He prepared a fourth battle on sea, but when he went down to the port to ready his fleet [for battle], suddenly all the ships defected from Antony to Caesar on the other side. And when he had lost his only forces, he fled anxiously to Alexandria with a handful [of companions]. Then, with Caesar closing in, he ran himself through with a sword. Cleopatra, on the other hand, pricked by a self-inflicted snake bite on her left arm, was found lifeless. Octavian called in Psylli71 to care for her, but to no avail, for she died and was buried with Antony in the same tomb. And so, Virgil composed the first two parts, the Bucolics and Georgics, for the sake of flattery that he might please Octavian. This work of art was written in the time of Octavian. Virgil, of course, was the person [who wrote it]. However, the reason [for writing it] was because after Cornificius72 occupied Mantua, Arrius73 took over Andes, Virgil’s very own inheritance in Mantua. Cornelius Gallus,74 Asinius Pollio,75 Quinctilius Varus,76 Aemilius Macer,77 and Maecenas,78 five leaders in Octavian’s [political] family and friends of Virgil, requested these books of him so that they might persuade Octavian of Virgil’s love [for him]. Or, perhaps [it was] because Homer, the most outstanding poet among the Greeks, composed forty-four books in praise of the

69

  Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt (69–30 BCE) ruled Egypt 51–30 BCE.   September 2, 31 BCE, near modern Preveza, Greece, in the Ionian Sea. 71   Suetonius, Divus Augustus 17, recorded the emperor’s appeal to the Psylli, male members 70

of an Egyptian tribe who could safely suck poison from victims of snakebites. 72   Lucius Cornificius, consul in 35 and friend of Augustus. 73   Mentioned as the “centurion Claudius Arrio” in the Vita Noricensis I (Virgilian Tradition, Ziolkowski and Putnam, p. 279); as “Arius tiranus avidissimus” in Vita Vaticana I (ibid., p. 282), as the centurion Arius who nearly killed Virgil when he came to reclaim his land in the fourteenthcentury vita of the grammarian Zono de’Magnalis (ibid., p. 296); distinguished as two persons, Claudius, a veteran soldier, and Arius the centurion in the fifteenth-century Donaus auctus (ibid., pp. 348, 355), and as the centurion Arrius in a twelfth-century introduction to the Eclogues and in a twelfth-century accessus (ibid., pp. 709, 713). The manuscript clearly reads “et anio andes” (fol. 2r, l. 17), but the corrector inexplicably used a sub-linear pen stroke to close up the gap to make “et anioandes.” 74   Gaius Cornelius Gallus, poet and soldier (c. 69–26 BCE). 75   See n. 59. 76   Publius Quinctilius Varus (46 BCE–9 CE), a soldier who famously “lost” three legions to Arminius in the Battle of Teutoburg Forest. 77   A poet from Verona who apparently died in 16 BCE. 78   See n. 60 above.

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Greeks who captured Troy. Likewise, the leaders just named told [Virgil] to compose those books in praise of the Trojans79 who held the city.

Acknowledgments My first encounter with the texts and issues broached in this chapter occurred more than forty years ago when Tom Noble and I were both students at Michigan State University. It is an honor to offer these latest reflections in celebration of his remarkable career as a teacher, scholar, and administrator.

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  That is to say, Aeneas and his followers who in Virgil’s telling, turned defeat into spectacular victory by founding the city of Rome and, by extension, its empire. Augustus rebuilt the city of Ilium on the traditional site of Troy.

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Chapter 3

Why Not to Marry a Foreign Woman: Stephen III’s Letter to Charlemagne Walter Pohl In 770, Pope Stephen III wrote a letter to the young Frankish kings Charles and Carloman to dissuade them from marrying a daughter of the Lombard king Desiderius.1 The letter is a key to our understanding of the shifting alliances both within Rome and between the “Republic of St. Peter” and the Lombard and Frankish kingdoms in the years before Charlemagne’s intervention in Italy in 774. It is in this context that it has often been studied. It has helped to overcome the simplistic view of a stable alliance between the popes and the Franks against the Lombard expansion, so that the complexity and volatility of the situation has become increasingly clear.2 This chapter will concentrate on another, rather 1

  Codex Carolinus 45, ed. Wilhelm Gundlach, MGH EE 3 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1891), pp. 560–63. Excerpts of the letter in English translation: Paul Dutton, Carolingian Civilization: A Reader (Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 1993), pp. 23–4. See also Walter Pohl, “Alienigena coniugia: Bestrebungen zu einem Verbot auswärtiger Heiraten in der Karolingerzeit,” in Andreas Pečar and Kai Trampedach, eds., Die Bibel als politisches Argument (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007), pp. 159–88. 2   Thomas F.X. Noble, The Republic of St. Peter: The Birth of the Papal State 680–825 (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), pp. 120–26; Ottorino Bertolini, Roma di fronte a Bisanzio e ai Longobardi (Rome: L. Capelli, 1942), p. 644; Ottorino Bertolini, “La caduta del primicerio Cristoforo (771) nella versione dei contemporanei, e le correnti antilongobarde e filolongobarde in Roma alla fine del pontificato di Stefano III (771–72),” Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia 1 (1947): 227–62, or see Ottorino Bertolini, Scritti scelti di storia medioevale, vol. 2 (Livorno: Il telegrafo, 1968), pp. 613–77; Jörg Jarnut, “Ein Bruderkampf und seine Folgen: Die Krise des Frankenreiches,” in Matthias Becher, Stefanie Dick, and Nicola Karthaus, eds., Herrschaft und Ethnogenese im Frühmittelalter (Münster: Scriptorium, 2002), p. 240; Janet L. Nelson, “Making a Difference in Eighth-century Politics: The Daughters of Desiderius,” in Alexander C. Murray, ed., After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History. Essays Presented to Walter Goffart (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998); Walter Pohl, “Das Papsttum und die Langobarden, ” in Matthias Becher and Jörg Jarnut, eds., Der Dynastiewechsel von 751. Vorgeschichte, Legitimationsstrategien und Erinnerung (Münster: Scriptorium, 2004); Rudolf Schieffer, Die Karolinger (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2006), pp. 70–74; Rosamond McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 84–7. See also Clemens Gantner Freunde Roms and Völker der Finsternis. Die päpstliche Konstruction von Anderen im 8 und 9 Jahrhundert (Vienna: Bohlau, forthcoming 2014).

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neglected aspect. Arguably, the letter contains some of the most xenophobic rhetoric transmitted to us from the Early Middle Ages. This has often been noted. Thomas Noble has called it “one of the most exquisitely intemperate letters ever written.”3 Others have stressed that it is “by our standards taste- and measureless” and “uses a language that is even more violent than the most vehement letters against Aistulf.”4 The intention and political context that explain its ferocious rhetoric have been diligently analyzed. But the way in which the letter builds its argument merits further consideration. Therefore, I would like to explore the implicit references to the Old Testament, and trace the context and impact of its main contention: that it should be illicit to marry foreign-born women. The letter opens on a strong note of moral exhortation with an extensive passage that associates the weakness of women with the workings of the devil. It then clearly states its objective: to dissuade both kings from the planned union with a daughter of Desiderius and an alliance with the Lombards, about which the pope has heard. This would be an “instigation by the devil” and a “union of most wicked trickery.” Obviously, the letter had been written on the basis of rather vague intelligence from the Lombard court, before any more detailed information had reached Rome. Then comes the main argument: “For we hear of many, as we learn from the history in Holy Scripture, who departing from the divine mandates through the unjust association with an alien nation have fallen into great sin.”5 This is as explicit as the letter gets in its reference to the Old Testament. All the worse it would be, the text continues, if the praeclara Francorum gens, “which is conspicuous among all peoples,” would be “polluted by the perfidious and extremely fetid people of the Lombards, which is not even counted among the number of peoples, and from whom the race of the lepers certainly originate.”6 Intemperate, indeed. Christian scholars, based on the Old Testament, thought that the number of peoples was limited, and several attempts were made to enumerate the 70 or 72 gentes descended from the sons of Noah—it was difficult to fit in all known biblical, ancient, and contemporary 3

  Noble, Republic, p. 121.   “Das für unsere Begriffe geschmack- und maßlose Schreiben”: Jarnut, “Bruderkampf,”

4

p. 240; “linguaggio ancor più violente delle lettere più impetuose contro Aistolfo”: Bertolini, Roma, p. 645. 5   Codex Carolinus, ep. 45, 561, ll. 6–10: “Quod certe si ita est, haec propriae diabolica est immissio et non tam matrimonii coniunctio, sed consortium nequissimae adinventionis esse videtur, quoniam plures conperimus, sicut divinae scripturae historia instruimur, per aliene nationis iniustam copulam a mandatis Dei deviare et in magno devolutos facinore.” 6   Ibid., ll. 10–15: “Quae est enim, praecellentissimi filii, magni reges, talis desipientia, ut penitus vel dici liceat, quod vestra praeclara Francorum gens, quae super omnes gentes enitet [other versions have: eminet], et tam splendiflua ac nobilissima regalis vestrae potentiae proles perfidae, quod absit, ac foetentissimae Langobardorum genti polluatur, quae in numero gentium nequaquam conputatur, de cuius natione et leprosorum genus oriri certum est.”

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peoples here.7 These speculations had little pragmatic significance. But as the Gospel of Mark had called all gentes to salvation, exclusion from their number might imply that the Lombards’ way to salvation was barred. They were doomed to stay with the lepers, which is not only a powerful image of exclusion, but also a reference to heresy—a point that is developed further in another passage.8 Then, the letter turns to another argument: both kings have already been married to beautiful Frankish women by their parents. A century or so later, this would have been the decisive point, but not so in the eighth century, when the legitimacy of a princely marriage was malleable. That Charles’s (and probably also Carloman’s) son from this union was called Pippin seems to indicate that these marriages were regarded as dynastic at the time. Later sources, Einhard for instance, insist that Pippin the Hunchback’s mother was a concubine.9 Stephen’s letter seems to anticipate this problem, for after admonishing both kings that they should love their wives, it returns to the familiar motif, warning them: “And certainly you are not allowed, having dismissed them, to marry others or to join yourself in consanguinity with another nation.”10 Quite clearly, marrying a foreigner adds to the sin of princely polygamy here. And the letter follows that line of argument by reminding the young Carolingians that none of their family has ever had a wife from “another kingdom or a foreign nation,” and even less polluted themselves by a contamination with the horrible Lombard people. “For nobody,” it goes on, “who has taken a wife from a foreign people, has remained unharmed; realize, please, how many and which powerful men strayed from the precepts of God by marriages with foreign-born women [alienigena coniugia] and followed the will of their wives from a foreign people [aligenae gentis],” running an immense risk.11 The ethnic rhetoric reaches a peak here, using the unclassical 7

  See Arno Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel: Geschichte der Meinungen über Ursprung und Vielfalt der Sprachen und Völker (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1957–63). Isidore lists both Lombards and Franks: Etymologiae IX, 2, 95, and 101, ed. Wallace M. Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911; reprinted 1966 and 1991). 8   Saul N. Brody, The Disease of the Soul: Leprosy in Medieval Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974). 9   Einhard, Vita Karoli c. 20, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger, MGH SS rer. Germ. 25 (Hanover: Hahn, 1911), pp. 25f. 10   Codex Carolinus, ep. 45, 561, ll. 23–4: “et certae non vobis licet, eis dimissis, alias ducaere uxores vel extranaee nationis consanguinitate immisci.” 11   Ibid., ll. 25–32: “Etenim nullus ex vestris parentibus, scilicet neque avus vester neque proavus, sed nec vester genitor ex alio regno vel extranea natione coniugem accepit; et quis de vestro nobilissimo genere se contaminare aut commiscere cum horrida Langobardorum gente dignatum est, ut nunc vos suademini, quod avertat Dominus, eidem horribili gente pollui? Itaque nullus, exterrae gentis assumta coniuge, innoxius perseveravit; advertite, queso, quanti qualesque potentes, per aligenigena coniugia a praeceptis Dei declinantes et suarum sequentes uxorum aligene gentis voluntatem, validis inrepti excessibus immensa pertulere discrimina.”

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adjective aligena to overdetermine the phrase. This line of argument ends with a precedent, an offer by the Byzantine emperor Constantine V to marry Pippin III’s daughter Gisela that had been refused. Unfortunately, the text is not quite clear here, but it continues with the already familiar conclusion: “and neither are you allowed to ally yourself in marriage with another nation, and nor should you dare to do this against the will of the bishop of the Apostolic See.”12 This may be taken to imply that Pippin had also followed papal advice in the case of Gisela. The letter goes on for another 70 lines, revolving around its three main arguments: warning the royal brothers not to marry a foreign-born woman (and not to let their sister Gisela marry Desiderius’ son), exhorting them to stay with the wives that both brothers already have, and reminding them of their sworn alliance with the popes, which was mainly directed against their Lombard enemies. At the end, it culminates in a massive threat of anathema: Should either of you, which we do not wish, presume to disregard the thrust of our entreaty and exhortation, then know that by the authority of my Lord St. Peter Prince of the Apostles you will be placed under the ban of anathema; you will become an alien from the kingdom of God, and you will be doomed, with the devil and his most wicked ministers, and all impious men to eternal flames.13

The “intemperate” rhetoric of the letter makes ample use of the classical art of political invective, and its key passages artfully juxtapose slander (against the perfida ac foetentissima Langobardorum gens) and praise (for the praeclara Francorum gens).14 Late antique invectio could also be directed against peoples, and the letter explicitly or implicitly contains some of the typical loci of Christian invective rhetoric: Lombard barbarianism, paganism/heresy, perfidy, 12   Ibid., 562, ll. 10–14: “Itaque et hoc, peto, ad vestri referre studete memoriam: eo quod, dum Constantinus imperator nitebatur persuadere sanctae memoriae mitissimum vestrum genitorem ad accipiendum coniugio filii sui germanam vestram nobilissimam Ghisylam neque vos aliae nationi licere copulari, sed nec contra voluntatem apostolicae sedis pontificum quoquo modo vos audere peragere.” The lacuna that Gundlach has printed in his edition only appears in the early modern copy in CVP 449 and in its derivates, whereas the medieval manuscript does not have it. I owe this information to Clemens Gantner. 13   Ibid., 563, ll. 35–9: “Et si quis, quod non optamus, contra huiusmodi nostrae adiurationis atque exhortationis seriem agere praesumserit, sciat se auctoritate domini mei, beati Petri apostolorum principis, anathematis vinculo esse innodatum et a regno Dei alienum atque cum diabolo et eius atrocissimis pompis et ceteris impiis aeternis incendiis concremandum deputatum.” 14   Jaqueline Long, Claudian’s In Eutropium, Or, How, When and Why to Slander A Eunuch (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), pp. 65–146; Christopher P. Craig, “Self-restraint, Invective, and Credibility in Cicero’s First Catilinarian Oration,” American Journal of Philology, 128(3) (Fall 2007): 335–9. I owe these references to Mayke de Jong; see also her forthcoming book on Paschasius Radbertus and the Epitaphium Arsenii.

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tyranny, impurity, and sexual misconduct, and their respective opposites on the Frankish side. Some of this is achieved through allusions to the Old Testament (for instance, to the number of gentes). But the letter also refers to the New Testament, for instance to 2 Corinthians 6:14–15: “Quae enim societas luci ad tenebras”—what is the connection between light and darkness, that is, between the Franks and the Lombards?15 Such offensive language should not deceive us; the letter was written by a highly trained specialist. However, unlike several other letters sent to the Franks in the period, it does not limit itself to slandering the Lombards and praising the Franks. There is a pressing political issue behind it, and that is preventing a marriage alliance between Franks and Lombards. The background of the letter is relatively well known, as far as our patchy sources for the events of those years allow. Thomas Noble has masterfully narrated it in his Republic of St. Peter.16 It represents one specific stage in the fast-moving kaleidoscope of Roman Church politics before 774. At the death of Pope Paul, one aristocratic faction had put the layman Constantine II on the see of Rome. The primicerius Christophorus, the ablest and perhaps most ruthless political actor of the period, had relied on the support of the Lombard king Desiderius to oust Constantine. But then he turned against the Lombards and had Desiderius’ chief representative in Rome, the priest Waldipert, blinded, to raise his own candidate, Stephen III, to the pontificate in 768. When it transpired in 770 that Charlemagne planned to marry the daughter of Desiderius, Christophorus therefore had an extra reason to fear Lombard revenge. The Liber Pontificalis makes it quite likely that Christophorus was in fact the author of Stephen’s letter.17 Soon after, Charlemagne’s mother Bertrada came to Rome, obviously with an offer to join Charles’s alliance with Desiderius, and promised that some cities would be restituted. Now the pope turned against his powerful primicerius, and after some resistance it was Christophorus’ turn to be blinded, in spite of the support of Carloman’s envoy Dodo.18 But alliances were reversed once again when Carloman and Stephen III both died, in late 771 and early 772 respectively. Charles did not need allies against his brother any 15

  Cf. T.F.X. Noble, “The Bible in the Codex Carolinus,” in Claudio Leonardi and Giovanni Orlandi, eds., Biblical Studies in the Early Middle Ages (Florence: SISMEL—Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2005), pp. 61–74. 16   Noble, Republic, pp. 116–27. 17   “This blessed pontiff [Stephen III] took great care to send his envoys and letters of advice to his Excellency Charles king of the Franks and his brother Carloman, also king—Christophorus the primicerius and Sergius the secundicerius were involved and engaged in this—about exacting from Desiderius king of the Lombards St. Peter’s lawful rights”; Liber Pontificalis 96, Stephen III, trans. Raymond Davies, The Eighth-century Popes (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1992), pp. 102–3. Sergius was Christophorus’ son. Cf. Noble, Republic, who also sees the hand of Christophorus behind the letter. 18   Bertolini, “La caduta.”

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more, and Pope Hadrian soon returned to the anti-Lombard line. Stephen’s rather detailed biography in the Liber Pontificalis, written shortly after 774, is markedly pro-Christophorus again. So far, the historical narrative is clear, although it rests on time-honored conjectures in some parts. We do not even know the name of the bride, whom modern scholars have variously named Desiderata, Ermengarda (a name invented for her in Alessandro Manzoni’s popular drama Adelchi and later adopted by Italian scholars), or, as Janet Nelson suggests, Gerberga.19 As Desiderius’ other daughters were called Adelperga and Liutperga, we would expect such consistency in naming. Moreover, it is unclear whether Charles actually married his Lombard bride.20 Some annals state that Bertrada brought her back from Italy, probably in the autumn of 770.21 Only later sources speak of an actual marriage, chiefly Einhard, who says that Charles sent her back after a year, a cause for the only quarrel he ever had with his mother Bertrada: “There was never any disagreement between them except when he divorced the daughter of King Desiderius, whom he had married at her advice.”22 The Vita of Adalhard claims that Charles’s repudiation of his bride, in spite of the oaths given by several Frankish nobles, had motivated Adalhard’s conversion to monastic life.23 Both sources show that opinions about Charles’s Lombard marriage differed fundamentally, and that his later conquest of Desiderius’ kingdom had not erased the deep-rooted memories of heated debates in a situation obviously regarded by many as embarrassing. 19   Ermengarda: Bertolini, Roma, p. 648. Desiderata: “Carolus Desideratam, Desiderii regis Italorum filiam, repudiaret.” Vita Adalhardi, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH SS 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1829), p. 525, while Migne (PL 120, Paris: Migne, 1864, col. 1,511) reads: “desideratam … filiam.” “Gerberga”: Nelson, “Making a Difference,” pp. 183f. 20   McKitterick, Charlemagne, p. 86. 21   Annales Laureshamenses a. 770, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH SS 1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1826), p. 30; Annales Petaviani a. 770, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH SS 1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1826), p. 13: “hoc anno domna Berta fuit in Italia propter filiam Desiderii regis, et redditae sunt civitates plurimae sancto Petro”; Annales Nazariani a. 770, ed. Walter Lendi,

Untersuchungen zur frühalemannischen Annalistik: Die Murbacher Annalen mit Edition (Freiburg: Editions Universitaire, 1971), p. 155: “Berta duxit filiam Desiderii regis

Langobardorum in Franciam”; Annales Mosellani a. 770, ed. Johann M. Lappenberg, MGH SS XVI (Hanover: Hahn, 1859), p. 496; Annales Fuldenses a. 770, ed. Friedrich Kurze, MGH SS rer. Germ. 7 (Hanover: Hahn, 1891), p. 8. For Bertrada, see Janet L. Nelson, “Bertrada,” in Matthias Becher and Jörg Jarnut, eds., Der Dynastiewechsel von 751. Vorgeschichte, Legitimationsstrategien und Erinnerung (Münster: Scriptorium, 2004), pp. 93–108. 22   Einhard, Vita Karoli c. 18, p. 23, trans. Dutton, Carolingian Civilization, p. 34. 23   Paschasius Radbertus, Vita Adalhardi, PL 120 (Paris: Migne, 1879), col. 1,511. See Brigitte Kasten, Adalhard von Corbie—die Biographie eines karolingischen Politikers und Klostervorstehers (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1985), pp. 19–27.

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We do not know whether the arguments in Stephen’s letter played any part in these debates. We can easily assume that those at court who were very disappointed with Charles’s decision to send his bride back did not agree with them. After all, it was Bertrada who had been instrumental in the downfall of Christophorus, and it is not unlikely that young Adalhard had accompanied her. Was the letter more than an isolated and exaggerated statement by a desperate papal official who repeatedly overstepped the mark and finally paid for that with his eyesight? Most scholars think that the letter had little influence, and that Charlemagne did in fact marry the daughter of Desiderius. Yet we may ask ourselves whether the argument had some impact in the end, when politics had changed and reasons had to be found for their reversal. It is not unlikely that those who argued in favor of breaking the marriage alliance with Desiderius complemented the obvious arguments of political expediency with the moral authority of Stephen’s letter. In any case, the letter, so full of threats and insults, was included in the Codex Carolinus, although one might have regarded it as an unwelcome reminder of unpleasant conflict and political maneuvering. However that may be, more importantly, for a long time, the Carolingians did in fact refrain from marrying wives from outside their kingdom. This is usually explained by political expediency—avoid foreign influence or rights of inheritance by external princes, and integrate the realm by marriage alliances with powerful families within it.24 That is, of course, very reasonable. But most of these good reasons are just as valid for any other dynasty that did not avoid marriages with foreign women. For instance, Merovingian queens came from the Burgundians (Chlothild), Thuringians (Radegund), Lombards (Wisigarda), Visigoths (Brunhild), and Anglo-Saxons (Balthild).25 Intermarriage with the Byzantine court might have enhanced the status of the Carolingians, both when they took on the royal and the imperial title. But, as the letter implies, Pippin III was dissuaded by the pope to give his daughter to the emperor (although the text is not quite clear here). If the goal of a marriage was prestige and status, papal rhetoric could have an impact by challenging this improvement of status on the symbolic level. But what could lend authority to the letter, apart from the fact that it came from the shifting ground of papal exhortations which Frankish recipients did not always take too seriously? No doubt the argument against foreign-born 24

  Silvia Konecny, Die Frauen des karolingischen Königshauses. Die politische Bedeutung der Ehe und die Stellung der Frau in der fränkischen Herrscherfamilie vom 7. bis zum 10. Jahrhundert (Vienna: Verband der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaften Österreichs, 1976); Silvia Konecny, “Eherecht und Ehepolitik unter Ludwig dem Frommen,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 85 (1977): 1–21. 25   Ian Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450–751 (London and New York: Longman, 1994), pp. 120–39.

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wives in the letter is ultimately based on the Old Testament. It is indicative that the reference “how many and which powerful men strayed from the precepts of God by marriages with foreign-born women” remains so general: obviously, there was no need to explain. Therefore, regardless of the exact circumstances, the letter allows us to study not only a specific, historically placed argument, but also the underlying discourse in the sense of Foucault: that is, what could be said (and said with the presumption of supreme moral authority).26 The Hebrew Bible is famously ambiguous in its attitude toward strangers. Mixed marriages do occur, and some of them receive a positive treatment, most famously Ruth as David’s (and in Christian belief, also Jesus Christ’s) progenitor. But the condemnation of marrying foreign wives is much more insistent. The strongest statements come in three contexts: first, the occupation of the Holy Land, when the Israelites are repeatedly called upon not to marry any women of the former inhabitants, but rather, as the Deuteronomium requests, eradicate subdued peoples completely (Ex. 34:15–16; Dt. 7:1–4). The second is in Kings, where Solomon strays from the right path (1 Kg. 11:1–4): King Solomon loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites. They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, ‘You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.’ Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been.

Similar things happened to King Ahab when he married the Sidonian princess Jezebel (1 Kg. 16:31–4). Jezebel became a convenient comparison for bad queens of foreign origin—Brunhild, the sixth-century Merovingian queen of Visigothic stock, was criticized as a second Jezebel. It is remarkable that Judith, the second wife of Louis the Pious, who was of noble Bavarian origin, could also be slandered as a foreigner in this manner.27 It is interesting that 26

  Michel Foucault, L’ordre du discours (Paris: Gallimard, 1972).   Ionas, Vita Columbani, I, c. 18, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH SS rer. Germ. 37 (Hanover:

27

Hahn, 1905), p. 187 (without explicitly mentioning that she was of Gothic origin); Agobard, Liber Apologeticus, 2, 3–4, ed. Lieven Van Acker (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981), pp. 316–17; Janet Nelson, “Queens as Jezebels: Brunhild and Balthild in Merovingian History,” in Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London: Hambleton Press, 1986), pp. 1–48; Brigitte Merta, “Helenae conparanda regina—secunda Isebel. Darstellungen von Frauen des merowingischen Hauses in frühmittelalterlichen Quellen,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 96 (1988): 1–32; Mayke de Jong, “Bride Shows Revisited: Praise, Slander and Exegesis in the Reign

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such slander was not directed against foreign marriages as such; it just sought to mobilize ancient prejudice against individuals. The third Old Testament context is the return from Babylon, when the prophets Ezra and Nehemiah preach against mixed marriages. It is in this post-exilian context that biblical scholars locate the preoccupation of the deuteronomian redaction against foreign-born wives, and the introduction of this whole chain of strong statements against them.28 For Christian exegesis, these passages constituted a problem: should not all gentes have access to salvation? Christian writers of the patristic period follow no clear line here. There are relatively few statements in late antiquity that take them at face value. For instance, in his chronicle written c. 400 CE, Sulpicius Severus summed up the setbacks of the Israelites after the death of Joshua, which he blamed on the foreign wives they had taken (who are not even mentioned in the relevant passages in Jud. 2–4): “Contract marriages with the defeated, and soon you take on foreign habits.” He concludes: “All association with foreigners is pernicious.”29 Sulpicius even argued that the barbarians of his time, permixtas barbaras nationes, should have been eradicated instead of settled on Roman territory, as suggested in the Old Testament.30 Sometimes, marriages between Christians and pagans were forbidden, but others saw them as an opportunity for conversion. Augustine, for instance, commenting on the passage in Ezra, insisted that God had neither commanded nor forbidden that a man or a woman who became Christian should leave their pagan partner.31 But Isidore of Seville of the Empress Judith,” in Leslie Brubaker and Julia Smith, eds., Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West, 300–900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 257–77, at p. 269. 28   Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezra–Nehemiah: A Commentary (London: The Westminster Press, 1988); Daniel L. Smith-Christopher, “Between Ezra and Isaiah: Exclusion, Transformation and Inclusion of the ‘Foreigner’ in Post-Exilic Biblical Theology,” in Mark G. Brett, ed., Ethnicity and the Bible (New York: Brill, 2002), p. 120: “There is a clear aversion to foreign women as marriage partners in later texts.” 29   “Matrimonia ex victis assumere paulatimque externos mores trahere. … cuncta cum externis societas perniciosa est …”: Sulpicius Severus, Chroniques I, 24, 2, ed. Ghislaine de Senneville-Grave (Paris: Editions du CERF, 1999), p. 152; cf. ibid., II, 10, 4; I, 2, 7–8; 246 and 94. See Stefan Weber, Die Chronik des Sulpicius Severus. Charakteristika und Intentionen (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 1995), pp. 49 and 54; Veronika Weiser et al., ed., Abendländische Apokalyptik. Kompendium zur Geschichte der Endzeit (Berlin: Akademieverlag, 2013), pp. 661–92. Veronika Wieser, “Die Weltchronik des Sulpicius Severus. Fragmente einer Sprache der Endzeit im ausgehenden 4. Jahrhundert,” in Veronika Wieser, ed., Abendländische Apokalyptik. Kompendium zur Genealogie des Untergangs im europäischen Kontext (Berlin: Akademieverlag, forthcoming). 30   Sulpicius Severus, Chroniques II, 3, 5–6, 228. 31   Augustine of Hippo, De adulterinis coniugiis, 1, 18, ed. Joseph Zycha, CSEL 41 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1900), p. 367.

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realized that this could create a problem. It was not Solomon who had converted his foreign wives; on the contrary, he had been weakened in his faith by them, so this was not a fitting model for Christian missions.32 In general, patristic exegesis tended to avoid understanding the Old Testament refutations of mixed marriages literally.33 For instance, Ambrose posed the question of how Ruth, cum esset alienigena, could marry a Jew. Had Jesus Christ ultimately come from an illegitimate marriage?34 AntiChristian polemics resound in this argument. But Ambrose argued with Paul’s words that (Mosaic) law was not valid for the just (1 Tim. 1:9). Ruth had surpassed the law through her sanctity, and thus had become a fitting model for all Christians, “because in her all of us, who are collected from the gentes, entering the Church of God have been prefigured.” The foreign-born wives could therefore be seen as an allegory of the ecclesia in gentibus.35 Bede found a rather different solution; for him, the alienigenae uxores could represent heresy.36 Allegorical interpretations defused the prohibitions of the Old Testament, but at the same time kept them present. Stephen’s letter, therefore, is not in line with most of the exegesis of the passages he implicitly refers to, and the author may have realized that. That could explain the extensive use of the rhetoric of invective against the Lombards. The insinuation that they were in fact pagans and/or heretics was totally unfounded in his day, but could rely on perceptions from the past, not least Gregory the Great’s complaints about the nefandissimi Longobardi.37 One implication of 32

  Isidore of Seville, Mysticorum expositiones sacramentorum seu quaestiones in vetus Testamentum 11, 6, ed. Jacques P. Migne, PL 83 (Paris: Migne, 1850), cols. 400f. I owe this passage to Gerda Heydemann, Vienna. 33   Pohl, “Alienigena coniugia.” 34   “Quia in illa nostrum omnium qui collecti ex gentibus sumus, ingrediendi in Ecclesiam Domini figura praecessit”: Ambrose of Milan, Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucam 3, ed. JacquesPaul Migne, PL 15 (Paris: Migne, 1845), cols. 1,684f. 35   See, for instance, Rufinus’ translation of Origenes, Homiliae in librum iudicum 5, ed. Wilhelm A. Baehrens (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1921), p. 495: “Iahel mulier ista alienigena … figuram tenet ecclesiae, quae ex alienigenis gentibus congregata est”; Augustine, Contra Faustum, ed. Joseph Zycha, CSEL 25 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichisches Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1891), p. 693. 36   Bede, In Esra et Nehemiam, ed. David Hurst, CCSL 119A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969), pp. 235–392, at pp. 327 and 391; English trans., Scott De Gregorio, On Ezra and Nehemiah, Translated Texts for Historians 47 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006), pp. 139 and 225; more generally, see also ibid., pp. 136–53 and 225–6. 37   Gregory the Great, Registrum epistolarum, V, 38, ed. Paul Ewald andLudwig M. Hartmann, MGH Epistolae I–II (Berlin: Weidmann, 1957), p. 325. Walter Pohl, “Gregorio Magno e il regno dei longobardi,” in Gregorio Magno, l’impero e i regna, ed. Claudio Azzara (Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2008), pp. 15–28.

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addressing the Franks as a most noble, privileged people may also have been that they were under a covenant with the see of St. Peter and had to meet higher moral standards than other peoples.38 Although it is the most forceful polemic against alienigenae uxores, letter 45 of the Codex Carolinus is not quite isolated as a statement to that end in the Carolingian period. There are further examples. One seems quite remote at first glance: a document from two Anglo-Saxon synods. The relevant source is a letter by Bishop George of Ostia to Pope Hadrian from Britain, where he had traveled as a papal legate in 786.39 It includes the chapters discussed at two synods in Northumbria and in Mercia. It seems that they had been drafted by George, with the help of Alcuin, according to local needs. Chapter 15 deals with proper marriage, and interestingly, not only condemns incest, but also marriage cum alienigenis uxoribus.40 A possible context is indicated by chapter 19, which warns Christians not to assume the pagan practices of their recently converted Pictish neighbors. The connection between foreign wives and relapse into paganism is strongly suggested by the Old Testament. George of Ostia was a die-hard papal diplomat who had worked together with Christophorus, so both documents were contrived by the same restricted circle of papal bureaucrats; Joanna Story has detected a number of “Carolingian affinities” in George’s chapters, and Carl Hammer has drawn attention to Wigbod, who had been dispatched by Charlemagne to accompany George’s 38

  For the notion of the Franks as a chosen people, see Mary Garrison, “The Franks as the New Israel? Education for an identity from Pippin to Charlemagne,” in Yitzhak Hen and Matthew Innes, eds., The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge: University Press, 2000), pp. 114–61; Walter Pohl, “Introduction: Strategies of Identification, a Methodological Profile,” in Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann, eds., Strategies of Identification. Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 1–64. 39   Published in MGH Epistolae 4 among the letters of Alcuin, n. 3, ed. Ernst Dümmler (Berlin: Weidmann, 1895), pp. 20–29. Cf. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles a. 786, ed. Michael Swanton (London: Phoenix Press, 2000), pp. 54f. For the context, see Catherine Cubitt, AngloSaxon Church Councils, c. 650–c. 850 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1995), pp. 153–91; Joanna Story, Carolingian Connections: Anglo-Saxon England and Carolingian Francia, c. 750–870 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 55–92, with an extensive account of George’s mission. See also Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 215–17; Edward James, Britain in the First Millennium (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2000), pp. 192f. For Charlemagne’s relations with England, see Joanna Story, “Charlemagne and the Anglo-Saxons,” in Joanna Story, ed., Charlemagne: Empire and Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 195–210. 40   “Interdicuntur omnibus iniusta connubia, et incaestuosa, tam cum ancillis Dei vel aliis illicitis personis, quam cum propinquis et consanguineis vel alienigenis uxoribus: et omnino anathematis mucrone perfoditur, qui talia agit”. Cubitt, Anglo-Saxon Church Councils, p. 183, translates this as “wives of others,” which the word alienigena does not really suggest.

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mission.41 Of course, no direct link with the marriage project between the Carolingians and King Offa of Mercia that Charlemagne stopped a few years later can be established.42 However, one of the protagonists in both was Alcuin, who must have been involved in the diplomatic tensions between his new lord and his old homeland. In a letter, he refers to criticisms from his old homeland to have been disloyal to the gens Anglorum and to the king; the letter is usually placed in the context of the marriage crisis, although Rosamond McKitterick would rather link it with Northumbria.43 Later, in 796, Alcuin wrote a letter to Pippin of Italy in which he advised him to keep the woman of his adolescence, and not to turn to foreign ones: “Be happy with the woman of your adolescence, and strange ones [alienae] should not be your company, so that God’s blessing on you will go forth in a long series of offspring.”44 The letter sounds like a friendlier echo of Stephen’s exhortations. Alienae (mulieres) might of course simply mean “wives of others” or “other women,” as it often does, although some eminent French scholars have translated it as étrangères.45 Alcuin did use alienus in this sense: he remembered that he had come to Francia as a stranger, alienus, and underlined the example of Moses, who had relied on the advice of an alienigena, his Midianite father-in-law Jethro (Ex. 18:17–27).46 41

  Story, Carolingian Connections, pp. 78–87; Carl I. Hammer, “Christmas Day 800: Charles the Younger, Alcuin and the Frankish Royal Succession,” English Historical Review 127(524) (2012): 1–23, at 8–9. 42   Gesta Abbatum Fontanellensium, ed. Samuel Löwenfeld, MGH SS rer. Germ. 28 (Hanover: Hahn, 1886), pp. 46f. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 220; Wilhelm Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 111–13; Pauline Stafford, Queens, Concubines and Dowagers: The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1983), p. 47; Story, Carolingian Connections, pp. 184–8; McKitterick, Charlemagne, pp. 282–4. Hammer, “Christmas Day 800,” argues that he may have been entrusted with finding an Anglo-Saxon bride for Charles the Younger, which seems unlikely, not least in the light of chapter 15 of the document. 43   Alcuin, Ep. 82, ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH Epistolae 4 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1895), p. 125; Story, Carolingian Connections, p. 187; McKitterick, Charlemagne, p. 283. 44   “Laetare cum muliere adoliscentiae tuae; et non sint alienae participes tui; ut benedictio tibi a Deo data in longam nepotum procedat posteritatem”: Alcuin, Ep. 119, ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH Epistolae 4 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1895), p. 174. 45   Heinrich Fichtenau, Das Karolingische Imperium: Soziale und geistige Problematik eines Großreiches (Zürich: Fretz und Wasmuth, 1949), p. 46, understands the letter as a warning against polygamy. The French translation has aucune étrangère, in: Heinrich Fichtenau, L’Empire Carolingien (Paris: Payot, 1958), p. 63. Correspondingly, Jean Devisse, Hincmar, Archevêque de Reims, 845–82, 3 vols. (Genf: Librairie Droz, 1975), vol. 1, p. 373, and Pierre Riché, “La Bible et la vie politique dans le haut Moyen Âge,” in Pierre Riché and Guy Lobrichon, eds., Le Moyen Âge et la Bible (Paris: Editions Beauchesne, 1984), pp. 385–400, interpret aliena as “a foreigner.” 46   Alcuin, Epistolae 69, p. 113.

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A clearer example for the political relevance of the argument is a passage from the Ordinatio Imperii of 817. Its chapter 13 regulates the marriages of Louis the Pious’s sons after his death and states: “that none of them presumes to take a wife of foreign nationality.”47 Explicitly, the clause should prevent the princes from seeking external support against each other, and encourages them to find wives from other parts of the realm to strengthen the unity of the empire. It is the only division document from the period that contains such a clause. Still, it attests to at least one instance in which the hesitation in the Carolingian family to enter into marriage alliances with dynasties from outside their realm is officially stated. Perhaps there was a strand of deliberate policy in Carolingian attitudes to mixed marriages after all? The marriage projects with Byzantium, with the Lombards, and with Mercia had all come to nothing, and Charlemagne had also stubbornly kept his daughters unmarried; his “negative attitude to foreign marriages” was consistent, as Rosamond McKitterick underlines.48 The development of the papal position is harder to trace; papal letters are lacking for most of the ninth century. No further attempt to influence Carolingian marriage policies is attested. But there is one example in a letter by John VIII written in 872 to Sophonesta, a widow of Urbino whom he chastised because she “longed for foreign relationships with alien peoples.”49 Obviously, the citizens of Urbino had intervened lest the considerable estates owned by the widow would pass to an outsider. The pope explained to her that as a widow, she was not even supposed to remarry at all, but it was even worse to choose a foreigner. Thus, the letter allowed her to marry an indigenous man (ex nostratibus), giving her 20 days to pick one with the consent of the citizens of Urbino; otherwise she would have to retire to a monastery. The general principle 47   Ordinatio Imperii a. 817, c. 13, ed. Alfred Boretius, MGH Capitularia I (Hanover: Hahn, 1883), p. 272: “Illud tamen propter discordias evitandas et occasiones noxias auferendas cavendum decernimus, ut de exteris gentibus nullus illorum uxorem accipere praesumat. Omnium vero homines propter pacem artius conligandam, ubicumque inter partes elegerint, uxores ducant.” Cf. Franz-Reiner Erkens, “Divisio legitima und unitas imperii. Teilungspraxis und Einheitsstreben bei der Thronfolge im Frankenreich,” Deutsches Archiv 52 (1996): 423–85; Sören Kaschke, Die karolingischen Reichsteilungen bis 831. Herrschaftspraxis und Normvorstellungen in zeitgenössischer Sicht (Hamburg: Dr. Kovac, 2006), pp. 324–53, at p. 332. 48   McKitterick, Charlemagne, p. 284; for Charlemagne’s unmarried daughters, see Janet L. Nelson, “Women at the Court of Charlemagne: A Case of Monstrous Regiment?”, in John Carmi Parsons, ed., Medieval Queenship (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), pp. 43–61. 49   Fragmenta registri Johannis VIII. Papae ep. 10, ed. Erich Caspar, MGH EE 7 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1928), p. 278 (871/72): “Multorum relatione didicimus te ad discidium patriae alienigenas viros appetere et, cum debuisses utpote post discessum benivoli tibi viri sub sacro velamine castimoniam profiteri, tu … in eisdem domibus ac prediis alienarum diceris gentium alienigenas copulas anhelare.”

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stated in the letter is surprisingly clear: “We do not permit marital unions of the indigenous to foreigners”; the emperor was legally entrusted with separating such marriages.50 But in spite of the over-determined rhetoric, alienarum gentium alienigenas copulas, what seems to have mattered here was that the estates remained in the hand of the powerful families of the city or the region. At the end of the ninth century, the Eastern Frankish Council of Tribur (895) had to rule on the issue of foreign-born wives.51 Obviously, the assembly was confronted with a number of divorce cases in which the husband had argued that the marriage was void because it had been concluded between partners from different peoples, who also lived according to different laws. One of these cases (highlighted in a variant version) is explicitly mentioned, and concerned a Frank who had married a Saxon woman and lived with her for 15 years. But then he suddenly declared that he had been deceived and that he had not married her under Frankish law, so he divorced her, and married another.52 A similar case involved a Bavarian woman. The decision was simple: “If someone marries a foreign-born, he will have to keep her.”53 50

  “Alienigenis nostratum copulas non permittimus … a domino serenissimo imperatore … continuo dissociandas esse iure sancimus.” A different interpretation is in J.F. Böhmer, Regesta Imperii I,4, Papstregesten 800–911, Teil 3, 872–82, ed. Veronika Unger (Vienna: Böhlau, 2013), p. 45, n. 82, where the nostrates are translated as “päpstliche Hörige”—papal serfs. This is not only unlikely from the context—why should a woman who had inherited a fortune marry a serf ?—but also unlikely in the light of other occurrences of the term. A search in the entire series of the MGH Epistolae shows that nostrates are usually juxtaposed with exteri or peregrini (for example, MGH Briefe der Deutsche Kaiserzeit 1, p. 18; MGH Epp. Saec. XIII, 1, p. 28, which reflects papal usage). It is also highly unlikely for popes to assign emperors any role in managing papal dependents! 51   Rudolf Pokorny, “Die drei Versionen der Triburer Synodalakten von 895. Eine Neubewertung,” Deutsches Archiv 48(2) (1992): 429–511; Christopher Carroll, “The Last Great Carolingian Church Council: The Tribur Synod of 895,” Annuarium historiae conciliorum 33 (2001): 9–25. 52   Die Konzilien der karolingischen Teilreiche 875–911, n. 39: Tribur, c. 38, ed. Wilfried Hartmann, Isolde Schröder, and Gerhard Schmitz, MGH Concilia 5 (Hanover: Hahn, 2012), pp. 319–415, at pp. 386 and 406f.: “Pervenit ad notitiam nostram quendam Franchum genere Saxonicae gentis mulierem communi propinquorum consultu duxisse uxorem et ad subolis procreationem publice plus quam XV annis sibi commansisse; quamvis enim ‘una fides et unum baptisma’ utramque nationem regat, legem tamen inter se, quantum ad seculum, sortiuntur diversam. Unde contigit, ut antiqui hostis calliditate praefatus homo deceptus diceret non suam, quae tunc credebatur, iure Franchorum ullo modo sibi desponsasse uxorem. Dimissa igitur legitima coniuge aliam sibi sociavit.” 53   Die Konzilien der karolingischen Teilreiche 875–911, n. 39, pp. 362f.: “Si quis alienigenam in matrimonium duxerit, habere debebit. Quicunque alienigenam, hoc est alienae gentis feminam, verbi gratia Francus mulierem Baioaricam, utrorumque consultu propinquorum legitime vel sua vel mulieris lege adquisitam in coniugium duxerit, velit nolit, tenenda erit nec ultra ab eo separanda, excepta fornicationis causa. Quamvis enim, ut apostolus ait, ‘unus Dominus, una fides,

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The only condition was that the two partners had to be united by “one faith, one baptism.” The multiplicity and personality of the law in the Carolingian realm had created similar problems in other fields, from the misuse of the judicial duel of the Burgundian code which Agobard of Lyon had criticized, to Gottschalk’s contention that his oblation as a child to the monastery of Fulda had been unlawful because the formalities of Saxon law had been neglected.54 But we may also see the impact of the Old Testament examples behind the logic of the husbands seeking divorce. In comparison with the heated debates of the ninth century about incest, divorce and polygamy,55 these examples are peripheral, and have not even earned as much as a footnote in histories of early medieval marriage.56 The thrust of Catholic teaching on rightful marriage concentrated more and more on incest, which crystallized in Lothar’s marriage crisis and in Hincmar’s polemic against it.57 Unlike the outspoken critics of incest, those who opted for a prohibition of foreign marriages in certain cases have not even left a general statement or program. Carolingian exegesis did address the problem, but not as a key issue. Hrabanus Maurus is a telling case. He uses a passage in Deuteronomy (Dt. 17:16) that forbids choosing foreign-born kings to discuss Solomon’s foreign wives—the biblical text does not mention foreign women here, so Hrabanus’ digression indicates that the problem must have been on his mind. But what really mattered to him was not so much the foreignness, but the polygamy, multiplicatio, of the wives. This was, according to Hrabanus, unum baptisma’ utrique communis sit nationi, legem tamen habent diversam et, quantum ad saeculum, interdum longe disiunctam.” 54   Agobard, Adversus legem Gundobadi, ed. Lieven Van Acker, Agobardi Lugdunensis Opera Omnia, CCCM 52 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981), pp. 19–28; Ian Wood, “Ethnicity and Ethnogenesis of the Burgundians,” in Herwig Wolfram and Walter Pohl, eds., Typen der Ethnogenese unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Bayern, vol. 1 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1990); Matthew Gillis, “Noble and Saxon: The Meaning of Gottschalk of Orbais’ Ethnicity at the Synod of Mainz, 829,” in Richard Corradini et al., eds., Ego Trouble: Authors and their Identities in the Early Middle Ages (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010). 55   Karl Ubl, Inzestverbot und Gesetzgebung: die Konstruktion eines Verbrechens (300–1100) (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008). 56   Paul Mikat, Dotierte Ehe–rechte Ehe. Zur Entwicklung des Eheschließungsrechtes in fränkischer Zeit (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1978). 57   Janet L. Nelson, Charles the Bald (London: Longman, 1992), pp. 215–18; Devisse, Hincmar; Karl Heidecker, The Divorce of Lothar II: Christian Marriage and Political Power in the Carolingian World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010); Stuart Airlie, “Private Bodies and the Body Politic in the Divorce Case of Lothar II,” Past and Present 161 (1998): 3–38; Pierre Toubert, “La théorie du mariage chez les moralistes carolingiens,” Settimane di studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’alto Medioevo 24 (1977): 233–82.

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what had made Solomon turn away from God. But surely, the foreignness had made it worse.58 Once again, the issue of foreignness became conflated with problems of polygamy, political rule, and of difference of religion. Foreign wives appear more as a moral hazard than as something totally unacceptable in principle. This corresponds with the impression from the examples in which, as we have seen, foreignness became an issue. Even though the arguments, and the Old Testament cases that provided a frame of reference for them, seem similar at first glance, the issues are in fact rather different. In the case of Pope Stephen’s letter, the intention was to prevent a political shift regarded as harmful. The Northumbrian synod seems to have worried about pagan influences from recently converted Pictish neighbors. In the Ordinatio imperii, the issue was avoiding possible discord in the Carolingian family and strengthening the unity of the empire. In Urbino, the leading families wanted to maintain control over their properties. And a few late ninth-century Frankish husbands sought a pretext to get rid of their wives. In none of these cases was any consistent practice established. That would have required a more elaborate discourse and pragmatic rules. But we have no trace of that. It was difficult enough to decide what incest was. But who exactly was an alienigena? Was it simply a woman from another gens, whatever that meant? Was it anyone not from Urbino, as John VIII’s letter seems to indicate, or only those who were not subjects of the Carolingians? After all, when Charlemagne sent home the daughter of Desiderius, he married a Swabian woman instead. By the standards of the time, she was an alienigena (as were the Saxon or Bavarian wives on the agenda at the Council of Tribur); but she came from a people that had lived under Frankish rule for a while. Thus, the issue raised in Stephen’s letter 45 is an example of a road not taken in the Carolingian attempts to construct a truly Christian society. The popes as “cultural brokers”59 could create influential models for Carolingian reform, but not all of their suggestions had a lasting impact. In the controversial discussion about proper Christian marriage, and above all about the marriage of princes, the argument did not catch on, although it seems to have been in the air for a while. What is instructive about the issue is the role of Old Testament models for the reform efforts and political struggles of the Carolingian period. The Old Testament could serve, under certain circumstances, to stigmatize women, to propagate notions of ethnic “purity,” and to reinforce distinctions between 58   Hrabanus Maurus, Enarratio super Deuteronomium II, 17, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, PL 108 (Paris: Migne, 1852), cols. 903f. Hraban’s commentary to Dt. 7:1–26, a passage directly dealing with foreign women, relies on Isidore of Seville, Mysticorum expositiones, cols. 366ff. 59   Clemens Gantner, “The Eighth Century Papacy as Cultural Broker between East and West,” in Rosamond McKitterick, Sven Meeder, and Clemens Gantner, eds., Cultural Memory and the Resources of the Past, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

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nostrates and alienigenae within the Christian world. The issue of foreign wives is not the only case in which an attempt at drawing sharper lines between “us” and the “foreigners” had only limited success. The inclusive concept of the populus Christianus—una fides et unum baptisma—prevailed. But the example also demonstrates how much the gentes, and their kingdoms, had become part of the Christian world. Christianity provided ample space for propagating an ethnic basis for political rule.60 Therefore, it is not a coincidence that a papal letter should offer a particularly strong statement for the significance of ethnic ties in the power politics of the period. By the eighth century, the popes had adapted to living in a world of gentes, which gave them more room to move than a dominant empire. Acknowledgments The research leading to the results presented in this chapter has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no. 269591; from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), Project F 42-G 18—SFB “Visions of Community” (VISCOM), and from the HERA Collaborative Research Project on “Cultural Memory and the Resources of the Past.” I am grateful to Mayke de Jong, Rosamond McKitterick, Helmut Reimitz, Clemens Gantner, Gerda Heydemann, Nicola Edelmann, Alexander O’Hara, and Marianne Pollheimer for their comments and support.

60   Pohl, “Introduction: Strategies of Identification”; Walter Pohl, “Introduction: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West,” in Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann, eds., Post-Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), pp. 1–46.

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Chapter 4

Opposition to Pilgrimage in the Reign of Charlemagne? Janet L. Nelson A recent study of the geography of pilgrimages provides an interesting pair of statistics: in western Europe, the number of Christian sanctuaries today is 6,150; the number of Hindu sacred places worldwide is 35 million.1 These facts, presented by a social scientist just like that, however interesting, are of limited use unless geography is contextualized in history. Historians of medieval Europe have long been interested, and become increasingly so, in such questions as how saint-cults, and pilgrimage to shrines, originated in space as well as time, and how their distribution varied geographically. Other frequently asked questions are of a more historical kind: how such cults are documented; who created and ran shrines and who frequented them; how far pilgrimage was an elite or popular phenomenon, and why some shrines and cults attracted much more patronage and devotion than others. Seldom asked are questions about when, why, and by whom opposition to pilgrimage was voiced—though there is an exception in the form of a classic, luminous article by Giles Constable, which ranged broadly across the Middle Ages and set an example to us all.2 In what follows, I shall focus on the early Carolingian period, and particularly the reign of Charlemagne, which looks backwards to formative early Christianity as well as forwards to criticism of pilgrimage as a genre akin to criticism of crusading. The Carolingian period presents some revelatory local moments symptomatic of medieval attitudes generally, like that in 801–2, when the pilgrims and pauperes and canons of Tours combined to defend the honor of “their” St. Martin: “One thing indeed is common to all people everywhere that they take it badly when their saints are dishonored.”3 But my concern in 1

  A. Jackowski, “Geography of Pilgrimages,” in P. Doleźal and H. Kühne, eds., Wallfahrten in der europaischen Kultur (Frankfurt, 2006), pp. 25–33, at p. 26. 2   “Opposition to Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages,” Studia Gratiana 19 (1976): 126–46—a pioneering and still indispensable essay. 3   Alcuin, Epp. 245, 246, 249, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH Epp. KA II (Berlin, 1895), pp. 393–8, 246, 398–9, 249, 401–4, with the quoted words at p. 403: “Illud etiam commune est omnibus ubique quod moleste ferant suos dehonorare sanctos.” On the episode, especially its legal aspects, see R. Meens, “Sanctuary, Penance and Dispute Settlement in the Reign of Charlemagne: The Conflict between Alcuin and Theodulf of Orléans Over a Sinful Cleric,” Speculum 82 (2007): 277–300.

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this chapter is less with commonalities than with what is distinctive about the reign of Charlemagne. In recent work, there has been a focus on change. Why did Carolingian rulers, especially Charlemagne, try to regulate saintcults?4 Why is there less evidence for the cult of relics in domestic settings and more evidence for the housing of relics in churches and their protection by the lords of churches?5 I want to investigate opposition to pilgrimage as another potential aspect of distinctiveness. Expressing the title of this chapter in the form of a question is clearly advisable, and the most that can be achieved is probably some filling out of thin places in the available material. Posing the question may nevertheless be timely in so far as recent historiography supplies a number of overlapping contexts for religious practice.6 The subject is timely in another, special, sense too: as a tribute to our honorand, T.F.X. Noble. For Tom’s contributions to the study of Carolingian religious thought and practice, the interchanges between those, and the interplay of the institutional and the personal, have been replete with exceptional insights, his influence on scholars of his own and next generations immense.7 Charlemagne’s reign, 768–814, was unusually long, and by earlier medieval standards, unusually well documented. Yet, compared with the pre-Carolingian period and the ninth century after 814, hagiographical texts are scarce, and there are few accounts of miracles at shrines. The patchy evidence has to be assembled from diverse sources and genres.8 Early medieval Christianities have roots, and these need to be traced before any search for opposition to pilgrimage in the decades around 800 can make sense. Between the ancient world and the age of Charlemagne, historians over the past forty years or so, thanks largely to Peter 4

  Indispensable on the present topic is P. Fouracre, “The Origins of the Carolingian Attempt to Regulate the Cult of Saints,” in J. Howard-Johnson and P.A. Hayward, eds., The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown (Oxford, 1999), pp. 143–65, esp. 161–4. 5   J.M.H. Smith, “Portable Christianity: Relics in the Medieval West (c.700–1200),” Proceedings of the British Academy 181 (2012): 143–67; J.M.H. Smith, “Christianity in the Early Medieval Household: New Approaches,” Studies in Church History 48 (forthcoming). 6   See further J.L. Nelson, “Religion in the Age of Charlemagne,” in J.H. Arnold, ed., The Oxford Handbook to Medieval Christianity (Oxford, forthcoming). 7   See, notably, T.F.X. Noble, “Secular Sanctity: Forging an Ethos for the Carolingian Nobility,” in P. Wormald and J.L. Nelson, eds., Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 8–36; T.F.X. Noble, “The Christian Church as an Institution,” in T.F.X. Noble and J.M.H. Smith, eds., The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. III, Early Medieval Christianities c.600–1100 (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 249–74, and T.F.X. Noble, Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians (Philadelphia, PA, 2009)—a masterwork. My debts to these and other writings of Tom’s will be evident in what follows, and this is the place to express my thanks for an academic lifetime’s worth of inspiration. 8   Nelson, “Religion in the Reign of Charlemagne.”

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Brown, have inserted Late Antiquity: a period now seen not as one of decline and fall, not of the corruption and degradation of Christianity, but of constructive, often dramatic transformation. At the heart of that were changes in religious sensibilities which could be summed up in the titles of two of Brown’s books: The Cult of the Saints and Sexual Renunciation.9 In the broad sweep from c. 200 to c. 650, the Church was established within the Roman Empire, and became official, grounded in the ecclesiastical landscapes and spaces of dioceses and local churches, but also in homes. Fourth-century pilgrimage was a new phenomenon. Christians were getting about more. They also wrote a lot more about where they got to, and why. Egeria, a Spanish nun, traveled to the Holy Land in the 380s and wrote for her sisters about the thrill of hearing, at every shrine, the same Book read out to pilgrims as the one she knew at home.10 The Book, as she called it—meaning Scripture, Old Testament as well as New—acquired new meanings in context. Jerome (?347–420) wrote letters to pious Roman ladies encouraging pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Yet at the same time he warned sternly against the risks of indiscreta societas, unregulated sociability, that occurred around shrines. He advised a male correspondent, Paulinus of Nola, a monk, that he might do better to stay piously at home, and that “what deserves praise is not to have been to Jerusalem but to have lived well among the people of Jerusalem.”11 In both eastern and western Christendom, there were many who agreed with Jerome about the spiritual dangers of pilgrimage especially for women and for monks, and about overestimating its benefits. At the western end of Christendom, Paulinus of Périgueux gave a puff to the shrine of St. Martin at Tours: “although the places where Christ suffered and was resurrected are holy, holy places are to be found in other places in the world that were blessed with the presence of martyrs and righteous men like Martin.”12 There was debate among intellectuals, and diversity of practice among the faithful at large. Your neighborhood shrine had its own attractions. The long fourth century saw both the rise of Holy Land pilgrimage and, on an even huger scale, the rise of local pilgrimage. Debate did not necessarily mean disagreement. Jerome targeted different advice to different people. Views evolved. 9   P. Brown, The Cult of the Saints (Chicago, IL, 1981); P. Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in early Christianity (Columbia, NY, 1988). See further, and invaluably in the present context, Brown’s “Introduction” to Noble and Smith, Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. III, pp. 1–18. 10   Egeria (also known as Sylvia), Peregrinatio I, 4. 3, 10. 7, ed. P. Geyer, Itinera Hierosolymitana, CSEL 39 (Vienna, 1898), pp. 41, 52. 11   Jerome, Ep. ad Paulinum, in I. Hilberg, CSEL 54 (Vienna and Leipzig, 1910), Ep. 58, p. 529. 12   Paulinus of Périgueux, Vita S. Martini, ed. M. Petschenig, CSEL XVI, 1 (Vienna, 1888), cited in Constable, “Opposition to Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages.”

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Augustine began by criticizing relic cults, and ended, late in life, by championing them, most movingly in the final book of The City of God. For Augustine, the metaphor of pilgrimage, of being at home nowhere on earth but always in via towards a future life, was in the end compatible with everyday miracles in his here and now. In Augustine’s mind, the pilgrim city moved from being an abstract concept to a thoroughly tangible, material one experienced at the shrine down the road, where the miracle-working martyr’s body “bears witness to the resurrection of the flesh.”13 Augustine links Late Antiquity and the age of Charlemagne. According to his biographer, Einhard, who had known him well in his later years, Charlemagne particularly liked to listen at mealtimes to The City of God being read out.14 His favorite passages in that enormous work can only be guessed at, but he may have relished the physicality of the miracle cures of Book XXII, 8, which included a story about the finding of a ring in a fish’s belly—a motif reprised in the Liber de episcopis Mettensibus which Paul the Deacon wrote for Charlemagne, retailing the king’s own information back to him about the life of his ancestor, Bishop Arnulf.15 Further, the reality of miracles in his own lifetime was brought home to Charlemagne in 799 when Pope Leo III, horribly mutilated in a Roman street—in via—after being attacked on April 25 by an enemy faction during the procession of the Major Litany, was made whole by a miracle.16 Three months later, the king’s adviser Alcuin pointed this out in a letter to him on the subject, after quoting The City of God and reminding the king that amidst the violence and cruelty of this world God intervened directly through miracles, the signs of his misericordia, his lovingkindness.17 The writings of the Fathers, especially Jerome and Augustine, colored the thinking of all Carolingian scholars, and of Charlemagne himself, on a great 13

  Augustine, De civitate Dei, XXII, 9, ed. B. Dombart and A. Kalb, CCSL 46 (Turnhout, 1955), p. 828, trans. R.W. Dyson, The City of God (Cambridge, 1998), p. 1,120. 14   Einhard, Vita Karoli c. 24, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH SRG (Hanover, 1911), p. 29. 15   Paul the Deacon, Gesta episcoporum Mettensium, ed. G. Pertz, MGH SSRM II (Hanover, 1829), p. 264; see W. Goffart, “Paul the Deacon’s Gesta Episcoporum Mettensium and the Early Design of Charlemagne’s Succession,” Traditio 42 (1986): 59–93; J.L. Nelson, “Charlemagne the Man,” in J. Story, ed., Charlemagne: Empire and Society (Manchester, 2005), repr. J.L. Nelson, Courts, Elites and Gendered Power (Aldershot, 2007), ch. XVI, pp. 22–37, at pp. 32–4; see also D. Kempf, “Paul the Deacon’s Liber de episcopis Mettensibus and the Role of Metz in the Carolingian Realm,” Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004): 279–99, and D. Kempf, “A Textual Détournement: From Paul the Deacon’s Liber de episcopis Mettensibus to the Vita Clementis,” Early Medieval Europe 20 (2012): 1–16, at 3–4. 16   Liber Pontificalis, Life of Leo III cc. 11–13, trans. R. Davis, pp. 184–6. 17   Alcuin, Ep. 178, p. 294–5. David Ganz in a note to his new translation of Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne (London, 2008), p. 122, points out Alcuin’s reference to The City of God I, 6, but does not say what Alcuin made of it.

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many topics, not least that of pilgrimage. Among the most searing memories of Charlemagne’s life was that of his pilgrimage to Rome at Easter 774, when the future of his regime hung in the balance and he trusted in St. Peter’s power to aid him and the Franks.18 In the run-up to Charlemagne’s journey to Rome in 800, he made a Lenten circuit of saints’ burial places, culminating in visits to the shrine of St. Riquier, Ponthieu at Easter, and to St. Martin, Tours in May–June, when he had deep conversation with his three sons and putative heirs, Charles, Pippin, and Louis.19 It is worth insisting on Charlemagne’s devotion to pilgrimage because one or two influential modern commentators have claimed to discover rationalists in the Carolingian renaissance who were hostile to relic-cults and pilgrimage as symptoms of Volksreligiosität. The alleged rationalists were Theodulf, bishop of Orléans, Agobard, bishop of Lyon, and Claudius, bishop of Turin.20 According to Heinrich Fichtenau, who labeled them “the Spaniards,” these intellectuals drove Charlemagne’s legislation against “the false names of martyrs and unrecognized saints’ days,” and the cults of “new saints … whose shrines are being put up along the roadsides.”21 Fichtenau did not add that in each case Charlemagne’s bishops repeated fourth- and early fifth-century canons, nor that the copying of these canons had occurred in 789 and 794. Certainly the copying-out was far from mindless, but it does need to be contextualized in a period of anxiety about heresy before 800. What exactly were the concerns of the alleged rationalists? Theodulf (?c. 760–820/21) called himself an “exile,” a Visigoth, from Hispania, which for him included not only what we call Spain, but Septimania, southern Gaul between the Pyrenees and the Rhone. That whole area had been part of the Visigothic kingdom that fell in 711–13 to a Muslim army from Africa. Theodulf seems to have fled to territory ruled by the Franks after reprisals in the Ebro valley in the early 780s followed Charlemagne’s raid in 778. He 18

  See Nelson, “Charlemagne the Man’, pp. 28–31, and cf. ibid., pp. 24–8, for Charles’s boyhood encounter with the power of St. Germain. For the continuing currency of pilgrimage to Rome, see Formulary of Marculf II, 49, ed., K. Zeumer, MGH Formulae Merowingici et Karolini Aevi, MGH Leges V (Hanover, 1886), pp. 104–5, trans. A. Rio, The Formularies of Angers and Marculf (Liverpool, 2008), p. 227. 19   Annales regni Francorum s.a. 800, ed. F. Kurze, MGH SRG 6 (Hanover, 1895), pp. 110–11; Annales Laureshamenses s.a. 800, ed. G. Pertz, MGH SS I (Hanover, 1826), p. 38. 20   H. Liebeschütz, “Wesen und Grenzen des karolingischen Rationalismus,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 33 (1951):17–44; H. Fichtenau, Das Karolingische Imperium (Zurich, 1949), pp. 198, 208. 21   Ibid., pp. 170–71, with references to Capitularia, no. 22, cc. 16, 42 (Admonitio Generalis of 789), and no. 28, c. 42 (Council of Frankfurt, 794), in A. Boretius, ed., Capitularia regum Francorum I (Hanover, 1883), pp. 55, 56, 77. For the Admonitio Generalis, see H. Mordek, K. Zechiel-Eckes, and M Glatthaar, eds., Die Admonitio generalis Karls des Großen (Hanover, 2012).

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is first documented at Charlemagne’s court in 790–91, when he was given the task of drafting the Franks’ riposte to the recent “heretical” Byzantine decision at the Council of Nicaea in 787 to restore the veneration of icons.22 In Frankish eyes, this was a policy swing from one extreme to another: from the horror of iconoclasm to equally horrific icon-worship. Part of what Theodulf presented as a middle way was a fierce attack on icons as graven images, and it has been argued that his devaluation of particular places (Nicaea itself, for one) was part of a critique on pilgrimage to Rome: “it is not having gone to Rome that gives you any help, so much as living well, whether at Rome or wherever human beings are living out their lives,” Theodulf wrote in a poem which echoes Jerome on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. This cannot actually be read as opposition to pilgrimage as such.23 The second alleged representative of enlightenment and rationalism is Agobard of Lyon (769–840), another “transplanted” Spaniard.24 True, Agobard wrote a vitriolic diatribe against the insulsa opinio vulgi, the absurd belief of the common people he claimed to have encountered in the countryside around Lyon, concerning storm-makers, tempestarii, who sent hailstorms and thunder to destroy crops—in Agobard’s view, a sign of surviving pagan superstitions among the rural population. In the same diatribe, Agobard also derided the folly of those who believed in spreaders of poisonous dust sent 22

  See Noble, Images, pp. 158–243, esp. 207; J.L. Nelson, “The Libera Vox of Theodulf of Orleans,” in S. Stofferahn and C. Chandler, eds., Discovery and Distinction in the Early Middle Ages: Studies in Honor of John J. Contreni (Kalamazoo, MI, 2013) pp. 288–306. 23   Theodulf, Carmen LXVII, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH Poetae latini aevi karolini I, p. 557: “Quod Deus non loco quaerendus sit, sed pietate colendus Non tantum isse iuvat Romam, bene vivere quantum, Vel Romae, vel ubi vita agitur hominis. Non via, credo, pedum, sed morum ducit ad astra, Quis quid ubive gerit, spectat ab arce deus.” “God should not be sought in a place but cherished in devotion. It does not help so much to have gone to Rome as to live well, Whether a man’s life is lived at Rome or anywhere else. It is not the road your feet take, I think, but the road of your conduct that leads to the stars And whoever does anything, and wherever they do it, God watches from heaven.” E. Dahlhaus-Berg, Nova Antiquitas et Antiqua Novitas (Cologne and Vienna, 1975), pp. 224–5, notes an echo of Isidore, Sententiae II, 14, 1, PL 83, col. 617: “Non per locorum spatia, sed per affectum bonum vel malum itur recediturve a Deo. Neque enim gressu pedum, sed gressu morum elongamus vel propinquamus ad Deum.” 24   For this and what follows, se P.E. Dutton, “Thunder and Hail Over the Carolingian Countryside,” in D. Sweeney, ed., Agriculture in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, PA, 1995), pp. 111–37, repr. in P.E. Dutton, Charlemagne’s Mustache and Other Cultural Clusters of a Dark Age (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 169–88, at 169–72, noting the Visigothic Church’s concerns about weather magic as the Devil’s work.

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to Francia by the duke of Benevento in 810. Agobard counter-attacked with Old Testament citations showing God’s control over the natural world.25 But, crucially in the present context, this work, written after Charlemagne’s death, contained no criticism of relic-cults or pilgrimage. The complaints of Claudius of Turin (?780–827x832), another Spaniard, who had served in the clerical household of Agobard’s predecessor at Lyon, were directed against some forms of relic-cult and pilgrimage under certain circumstances. His “letter,” in reality a collection of extracts of a huge treatise, to Abbot Theutmir of Psalmody, near Nîmes in Septimania, was a spirited piece of invective.26 Claudius knew what he was against: against the abbot for his garrulitas and stoliditas (stupidity), against his bumpkin of a lettercarrier, but more seriously against the filthy images that abounded in the churches of his alpine diocese. Claudius based his counter-case on the Second Commandment and certain New Testament sayings (St. Paul, the Gospels). He took his arguments to extreme lengths: “Cogimurque contra stultos stulta proponere.”27 A closer look reveals that Claudius was not against pilgrimage to Rome. For him, that was, strictly speaking, as the journey to Jerusalem had been for Jerome, a matter of indifference. What Claudius denounced was the abbot’s neglect of episcopal authority, the abbot’s failure to convey to his monks the crucial importance of the spiritual state of penitence, without which the intercession of the apostle or the saints counts for nothing:28 Why do you bow down to false images? … God made you upright.29 We must reply that if they wish to adore all wood fashioned in the shape of a cross because Christ hung on a cross, then it is fitting for them to adore many other things that Christ did in the flesh. He hung on the cross scarcely six hours, but he was in the Virgin’s womb for nine months. Let virgin girls be adored, then, because a Virgin gave birth to Christ. Let mangers be adored because as soon as he was born he was laid in a manger. Let old rags be adored because immediately after he was born he was wrapped in old rags. Let boats be adored because often sailed in boats. … Let asses be adored because he rode into Jerusalem on an ass. All these things are intended facetiously, of course—and they should be lamented rather than recorded.

25

  Ibid., p. 171.   See Noble, Images, pp. 287–92, esp. 294. Claudius’ treatise was written, Noble suggests,

26

in 824–5. 27   Claudius, Ep. 12, ed. Dümmler, MGH Epp KA II (Berlin, 1895), pp. 610–13. 28   Claudius, Ep. 12, trans. Dutton, Carolingian Civilization: A Reader (Peterborough, Ontario, 1993), pp. 248–50. 29   For Claudius’ condemnation of bowing and prostration before “holy images” that are really idols, see Noble, Images, pp. 292–3.

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If you say I forbid men to go to Rome for the sake of penance, you lie. I neither approve nor disapprove that journey, since I know that it does not injure, it does not benefit, nor profit, nor harm anyone. If you believe that to go to Rome is [the same as] to do penance, I ask you … why you have restrained so many souls in your monastery … and have not sent [them] to Rome?

Pace some modern German scholars, not one of these Spaniards was a Carolingian Martin Luther.30 They were bishops, devoted to penitential discipline. An element of class prejudice was only to be expected of a scholarly elite, especially of men who had risen to the top by their own merits and service to the Carolingian regime. Immigrants to Francia, they were profoundly troubled by an outbreak in north-eastern Spain of a heresy called Adoptionism, which seemed to them to make Christ too separate from the Father—an adopted son.31 They were persons displaced, literally, by political troubles in the Ebro valley when the amir of Cordoba took revenge on locals who had dabbled in alliances with Charlemagne in 777–78, luring him to Spain and part of his army to disaster at Roncesvaux/Roncesvalles.32 The amir never persecuted Christians as such: he needed them as subordinates and tax-payers. But ambitious young Spanish Christians foresaw that there might be more castles for them in Francia than in Spain, especially if they could reach the court of Charlemagne. Pilgrimage was among the large number of religious matters with which Charlemagne and his advisers concerned themselves. A variety of written regulations emanated directly or indirectly from discussions and decisions made at assemblies: that is, they dealt with topics on assembly agendas or with matters arising—topics, in either case, that could be considered products of an assembly culture. These texts can be assigned the label of capitularies, even if not all are literally set out in “chapters.”33 Rightly called “administrative,” they are just as much ideological and programmatic, or in modern parlance, about political 30

  Dahlhaus-Berg, Nova Antiquitas, pp. 224–5.   J. Cavadini, The Last Christology of the West: Adoptionism in Spain and Gaul, 785–820

31

(Philadelphia, PA, 1993); C. Chandler, “Heresy and Empire: The Role of the Adoptionist Controversy in Charlemagne’s Conquest of the Spanish March,” International History Review 24 (2002): 505–27. 32   Annales regni Francorum s.a. 777, pp. 48–51. The great set-piece when Saracen envoys were received at an assembly at Paderborn in Saxony seems to have gone to Charlemagne’s head: valor for once got the better of discretion. 33   T. Reuter, “Assembly Politics,” in P. Linehan and J.L. Nelson, eds., The Medieval World (London, 2001), pp. 432–50, repr. in T. Reuter, Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities, ed. J.L. Nelson (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 193–216. See the important forthcoming study by J.R. Davis, Charlemagne’s Practice of Empire. I am very grateful to Jenny Davis for letting me read this work in draft.

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connectivity and public relations.34 They are very diverse, some lengthy, others mere agenda headings. They are uniquely revealing, for they reflect not only the ambitions of Charlemagne’s regime, but the active engagement of regional and local elites on whose collaboration depended the putting into practice of orders and the policing of regulations.35 Pilgrimage is a recurrent theme. The dominant note, far from being critical of pilgrimage, is that of protecting pilgrims against intrusive public officials. Charlemagne’s father, Pippin, who in 751 removed the last king of the previous Merovingian dynasty and took over the Frankish kingdom himself, addressed toll-collectors in his very first capitulary: “you are not under any circumstances to detain pilgrims at bridges or crossing-points or ferries, and you are not to demand from any pilgrim false charges on their bag [scrippa, alias scerfa, meaning shoulder-bag], and you are not to ask for any tolls from them.”36 Such orders are linked with protection of other vulnerable persons: orphans and widows, quintessential pauperes, or persons lacking social power, if not necessarily poor.37 Charlemagne followed suit, but more insistently, and with a personal note: it seems to us proper and respectful that strangers [hospites] and pilgrims and pauperes should have hostels established at various places by monks and canons, for the Lord himself will say on the great day of reward: “I was a stranger and you took me in” [Mt. 25:35], and the Apostle, praising hospitality said: ‘Through this some have pleased God, that they have given hospitality to angels [Hebr. 13:2].38 34   J.L. Nelson, “How Carolingians Created Consensus,” in W. Fałkowski and Y. Sassier, eds., Le monde carolingien (Turnhout, 2009), pp. 67–81, esp. 71–2. See S. Patzold, “Normen im Buch: Überlegungen und Geltungsansprüchen sogennanter ‘Kapitularien,’” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 41 (2007): 331–50, and M. Innes, “Charlemagne, Justice and Written Law,” in A. Rio, ed., Law, Custom, and Justice in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (London, 2011), pp. 155–203. 35   J.L. Nelson, “The Voice of Charlemagne,” in R. Gameson and H. Leyser, eds., Belief and Culture in the Middle Ages: Studies Presented to Henry Mayr-Harting (Oxford, 2001), pp. 76-88; J.L. Nelson, “Elites in the Carolingian Empire,” in F. Bougard, H.-W. Goetz, and R. Le Jan, eds., Théorie et pratique des élites au haut moyen âge (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 309–23, and J.L. Nelson, “Revisiting the Carolingian Renaissance” (forthcoming). 36   Capit. I, no. 13 (754/755), c. 4, p. 32: “De peregrinos [sic] … constituimus qui propter Deum ad Romam vel alicubi vadunt, ut ipsos per nullam occasionem ad pontes vel exclusas aut navigio non deteneatis, nec propter scrippa sua ullo peregrine calumpniam faciatis, nec ullum theloneum eis tollatis. Et si aliquis hoc fecerit, qualiscumque homo hoc comprobaverit, de LX solidis triginta illi concedimus, et illi alii in sacello regis veniant.” For context, see J. Stevenson, “Brothers and Sisters: Women and Monastic Life in Eighth-century England and Frankia,” Netherlands Journal for Church History 82 (2002): 1–34. 37   Capit. no. 14 (755), cc. 22, 23, p. 37. 38   Capit. no. 22, c. 75, p. 60.

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In the so-called programmatic capitulary of 802, which was actually a large collection of draft regulations on many points, Charlemagne, in the aftermath of his coronation as emperor on Christmas Day 800, forbade anyone “to impose any fraud or theft or injury on God’s holy churches, on widows, orphans or pilgrims [peregrini], because the Lord Emperor himself has been constituted, after the Lord God and his saints, their protector and defender.”39 Bishops, abbots and abbesses, and counts were to take responsibility for the defense and comfort of the same vulnerable people; counts and hundredmen were to ensure that their subordinates did not oppress the pauperes; and no one at all was to deny hospitality to pauperes et peregrini perambulantes.40 By lateral thinking, the next clause enjoined care for royal messengers and officers sent out from the emperor to the provinces, “to speed them on their way.”41 Royal officers, like pilgrims, depended on public highways and the ruler’s ability to keep them safe. Capacity to care for peregrini was signaled as “a sort of litmus-test of the ruler’s competence and of the state of public order.”42 Public order had its dark side. Already in Charlemagne’s Admonitio generalis (789), an uneasy undertone rumbling in the prescription for monks and canons to provide hostels for strangers and pilgrims grew progressively more insistent in ensuing capitula: one responded to rumors of abbesses performing blessings, which in context could be read as including blessings of pilgrims, and forbade these “absolutely,” while another prohibited credence to “false writings and false stories about letters that just this last year were said to have fallen from heaven and led people into error—letters not to be believed or read, but burned.”43 Finally, clergy and people alike were alerted to further danger signs: Those pedlars [mangones] and itinerant cooks [cociones] roaming about [vagabundi] through this land subject to no law at all must not be allowed to wander and perpetrate trickeries on people; and nor are those men, naked and in chains, who say that they’ve been given a penance which imposes wandering around on them. If they have committed some exceptional and capital crime, it seems better that they should remain in one place laboring and doing service and performing penance, according to what has been imposed on them canonically.44 39

  Capit. no. 33, c. 5, p. 93.   Ibid., cc. 14, 25, 27, pp. 93, 94, 96; see Mordek et al., eds., Die Admonitio, c. 73, pp. 226–7,

40

at n. 192; cf. Capit. no. 36, c. 7, p. 106. 41   Capit. no. 33, c. 28, p. 96. 42   See T. Reuter, “The Insecurity of Travel in the Early and High Middle Ages,” trans. from the original German in Reuter, Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities, ed. J.L. Nelson, (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 38–71, at p. 39. 43   Capit. no. 33, cc. 76, 77, 78, p. 60. 44   Ibid., c. 79, pp. 60–61.

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Here, anxiety about vagi, wandering men, echoes the very first chapter of the Rule of St. Benedict on “the most wretched way of life of gyrovagi,” so-called monks but of no fixed address. Similar anxiety recurs in requirements that “fugitive clerics and pilgrims [fugitivi clerici et peregrini] are not to be received without letters of commendation [litterae commendatitiae], but are to be held under arrest, so that we can find out who they are and whence they have come.”45 Fugitive and wandering clergy had needed litterae according to canon law regulations as early as the fourth century (Nicaea [325], c. 16, Antioch [341], c. 3, cf. Chalcedon [451], c. 13), but for Charlemagne to require pilgrims to have passes was something new.46 With these can be compared strangers or migrant workers (adveni) about whom concerns were expressed in 806: “those who have been married and long settled can stay where they are, but fugitive slaves and criminals [fugitivi servi et latrones] must return to the places where they belong.”47 “Beggars [mendici] who run about through different districts [qui discurrunt per patrias]” were not the only ones condemned for their wandering state: their lords were also to blame, for not ensuring that they were fed (nutriti) and for allowing them to wander.48 Lords were sternly reminded that the welfare of their peasants was their responsibility. This year, 806, was a year of famine. In biological anciens régimes, where famine was likely to occur every ten years or so, there would be gyrovagi and there would be mendici, and kings and local elites would get jumpy about social control. But it does look as if the increased scale of pilgrimage constituted a new threat to public order in the eighth century. The Formulary of Marculf, probably produced early in that century, and continuing in use through to the reign of Charlemagne and beyond, includes a form letter of recommendation for a pilgrim to Rome who, according to the sender (perhaps an abbot) desires “to go to the tombs of the apostles … so as to flourish through his prayer, not, as is the habit for many people, to take time off [non, ut plerisque mos est, vacandi causa].”49 If wandering monks evoked anxiety, wandering nuns evoked much more. St. Boniface, himself an assiduous Rome pilgrim, wrote to Archbishop Cuthbert of Canterbury in 748: 45   Capit. no. 35, c. 2, p. 102; Capit. no. 40, Capitulare missorum, 803, c. 6, p. 115: “De fugitivis ac peregrinis, ut distringantur, ut scire possimus qui sunt aut unde venerint”; cf. Capits. 62, c. 5, p. 150: “de vagis peregrinis qui propter Deum non vadunt,” and no. 63, c. 5, p. 152. 46   Capit. no. 47 (806?), c. 12, p. 133: “De litteris peregrinorum et clericis sine litteris ambulantibus.” 47   Capit. no. 46 (806), cc. 5, 9, pp. 131, 132. 48   Ibid., c. 9, p. 132; cf. Capit. no. 91 (Italy, 782 cm × 787 cm, drawing on Liutprand, Leges c. 44, in Leges Langobardorum, ed. F. Bluhme, MGH Leges IV (Hanover, 1869), c. 10, p. 193. 49   Formulary of Marculf II, 49, p. 104, trans. Rio, Formularies, p. 227 (with a small alteration by the present writer), and for excellent discussion of the date of the collection, see ibid., pp. 110–13.

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it would be favorable to the purity of your church and a sure protection against vice if your synod and your kings banned mature women and nuns from journeying frequently to and from Rome. Many of them die, and few remain intact. There are few cities in Lombardy or in Francia or in Gaul in which there isn’t an English whore.50

The bishops assembled at Friuli in Lombardy in 797 or 798 were even more peremptory: “At no time whatever ever [nullo ullo umquam tempore] should an abbess or any nun be given permission, when Satan transforms himself into an angel of light, to go to Rome or other holy places on the pretext that prayer is the reason.”51 Such expressions of bare-faced misogyny may strike us (as perhaps they struck the women in question) as disfiguring the churchmen who uttered them; but it would be unfair to consider them typical of the Church in Charlemagne’s reign, still more unfair to infer that pilgrimage itself was being criticized. Just as Charlemagne’s personal alarm on learning of unchaste monks was back-handed testimony to his reliance on monks’ chastity as “offering hope of salvation for all Christians,” so horror at the rumored gallivantings of nuns abroad paradoxically attested the trust that men, including clergy, on war service (in itinere) continued to place in their chaste and enclosed womenfolk at home who prayed and kept their vows of stability in sancto ad Dei servitio.52 “The naked men with chains who profess to be penitents” were another type of dubious wayfarers. Such people really were to be encountered in the Carolingian countryside. Penitential pilgrimage seems to have become much commoner in the eighth century on the European Continent with the spread of Irish and Anglo-Saxon penitential handbooks. Like other forms of penance, it was picked up by Frankish clergy as a key method of pastoral care and reaching their flocks, but it was also picked up by the Carolingian regime itself as a way of dealing with exceptionally serious crimes that were also sins: treason against the king, for instance, or incest, or killing a very close male relative. Penitential pilgrimage to local shrines was a very public and humiliating form of punishment, and conversely, from the regime’s point of view, an imposing demonstration of cultural power.53 50

  Boniface, Ep. 78, ed. M. Tangl, MGH Epp. selectae I (Berlin, 1916), 169. On V, 8, cf. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. C. Plummer (Oxford, 1896), p. 282: “the moral results were often disastrous enough.” 51   Council of Friuli (796/97) c. 12, MGH Concilia I, I, ed. A. Werminghoff (Hanover, 1906), 194: “et nullo ullo umquam tempore licentia sit abbatissae vel cuilibet monachae, transfigurante se satana in angelum lucis [2 Cor. 11:14], quasi orationis causa suggerente eis Romam adire vel alia loca venerabilia circuire.” 52   Capit. 33, cc. 17, 19, pp. 94–5. The dangers of itinera are repeatedly documented in annals and capitularies alike. 53   The case of the patricide Frotmund from the 850s is recounted at gruesome length in the Gesta sanctorum Rotonensium, ed. C. Brett, The Monks of Redon (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 206–13;

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A case in point occurred in the aftermath of a rebellion which shook Charlemagne’s regime in 786. Once the rebels surrendered, and were sentenced at a great assembly at Worms in the Rhineland: the king sent them off in groups, accompanied by his officials [missi], some to Italy and St. Peter, some into Neustria and some into Aquitaine. He sent them to the tombs of saints so that they could swear fidelity to the king and his sons. Several of them were arrested on their return journey: their eyes were torn out. Some reached Worms and … their eyes were torn out there and they were sent into exile. And all their possessions and estates were confiscated by the king.54

Penitential pilgrimage provided the basis, first, for rituals of political submission as the oaths were sworn on the bodies of saints, and then for exemplary royal punishment of a new and savage kind in the early medieval West. A text that dates from the last year of Charlemagne’s life echoes the concerns expressed back in 789 and amplifies them; and it also focuses on penitential pilgrimage: Certain people who travel without due thought [inconsulte] to Rome or Tours or other places under the pretext of prayer go completely off track. There are priests and deacons and others of the clerical order who live negligently and then think that, if they get to the places above-mentioned, they can purge themselves of their sins and then that they ought to be able to perform their clerical function. Then there are laymen who think that they can sin, or have sinned, unpunished, because they go often to those places to pray. There are powerful men who, for the sake of acquiring taxes [census] collect a lot of things under the pretext of the journey to Rome or Tours, and oppress many of the poor and weak, and what they do solely out of greed they pose as doing for the sake of prayer and visiting holy places. There are poor people who visit such places to get more stuff [materia] out of begging, and among those there are people who wander about all over the place but tell lies and say that they are heading for holy places or are so utterly mad [tantum vecordes] as to think that they can be purged of their sins simply by seeing holy places, not heeding what St. Jerome said: “what is praiseworthy is not to cf. also the penitential itinerary imposed on Charles the Fat in 873: Annales Bertiniani s.a., ed. F. Grat et al. (Paris, 1964), 192; and for earlier instances of oaths required at multiple shrines, see M. Becher, Eid und Herrschaft (Sigmaringen, 2001), pp. 36, 185, 187. The otherwise very helpful R. Meens, “Remedies for Sins,” in Noble and Smith, eds., Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. III, pp. 399–415, does not comment on this form of remedy, which has perhaps fallen between historiographical cracks. 54   Annales Nazariani s.a. 786, ed. G.H. Pertz, MGH Scriptores I, pp. 41–2. See Becher, Eid, pp. 188–9; R. McKitterick, Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN, 2006), pp. 81–9; J.L. Nelson, Opposition to Charlemagne, The 2008 Annual Lecture, German Historical Institute, London (London, 2009), pp. 20–22.

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have seen Jerusalem but to have lived well among the people of Jerusalem.” On all the above persons, we await the emperor’s judgment as to what penalty has to be imposed. But those who have confessed their sins to the bishops in whose dioceses they live and have received instruction on the penance they must perform, if they are assiduous in prayers, and in dispensing alms, and in amending their way of life and improving their conduct, and if they want to see the shrines of the Apostles or of other saints, then their piety is wholly to be applauded.55

This text is a canon issued by the bishops assembled at Chalon in 813, one of the five great councils that met on the orders of Charlemagne, and whose decisions were brought to Aachen and kept with the canons of the other councils. This was to be the last great reforming effort of the reign. Though the five councils share many themes, none of the other four has anything like this canon. It and the other canons of Chalon were almost certainly drafted by Theodulf of Orléans himself. His is the voice we hear.56 The adverb inconsulte denotes actions that are seriously bad. In Theodulf ’s view, every kind of person has their own reasons for misusing pilgrimage. Clergy think it lets them off scot-free from any penalties from sin. Powerful laymen, potentes, have the additional reason that they can extract extra dues and renders from their peasant pauperes. Some pauperes think pilgrimage gives them an alternative income from begging. Some people think pilgrimage in itself removes sin, not heeding the words of Jerome. All this has the ring of actuality. Theodulf and his episcopal colleagues had encountered these behaviors and the excuses offered for them. Clearly, the bishops, at any rate when massed and wearing their miters, did not oppose pilgrimage, but they 55

  Council of Chalon (813), c. 45: MGH Concilia II, i, pp. 282–3: “Nam et a quibusdam, qui Romam Turonumve et alia quaedam loca sub praetextu orationis inconsulte peragrant, plurimum erratur. Sunt presbyteri et diacones et caeteri in clero constituti, qui neglegenter viventes in eo purgari se a peccatis putant et ministerio suo fungi debere, si praefata loca attingant. Sunt nihilominus laici, qui putant impune se aut peccare aur peccasse, quia haec loca oraturi frequentant. Sunt quidam potentum, qui adquirendi census gratia sub praetextu Romani sive Turonici itineris multa adquirunt, multos pauperum obprimunt, et quod sola cupiditate faciunt, orationum sive sanctorum locorum visitationis causa se facere videri affectant. Sunt pauperes, qui vel ideo id faciunt, ut maiorem habeant materiam mendicandi. De quorum numero sunt illi, qui circumquaque vagantes illo se pergere mentiuntur, vel quia tantum sunt vecordes, ut putent se sanctorum locorum sola visione a peccatis purgari, non attendentes quod ait beatus Hieronymus: ‘Non Hierosolimam vidisse, sed Hierosolymis bene vixisse laudandum est.’ De quibus omnibus domni imperatoris, qualiter sint emendenda, sententia expectetur. Qui vero peccata sua sacerdotibus, in quorum sunt parroechiis, confessi sunt et ab his agendae paenitentiae consilium acceperunt, si orationibus insistendo, elymosinas largiendo, vitam emendando, mores componendo apostolorum limina vel quorumlibet sanctorum invisere desiderant, horum est devotio modis omnibus collaudanda.” 56   Dahlhaus-Berg, Nova Antiquitas, pp. 221–35, esp. 224–5.

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considered it no substitute for living well—for seeking penance and performing it properly, for praying, and being charitable. If people then wanted to “see shrines,” that was perfectly praiseworthy. Do attitudes towards pilgrimage contain a paradox, then, or a real contradiction? In the end, I think it’s a paradox—that is, a merely apparent contradiction which can actually be resolved. There were no rationalists of the modern sort in the age of Charlemagne, but there were plenty of moralists, plenty of people deeply concerned with reform. Touching base with Late Antique Christianity sensitized them to deficits in their own. To appreciate this means to break with some fairly deep-rooted stereotypes about Dark Age religion, its lack of interiority, and its lack of outreach to the laity. It is time we abandoned those stereotypes, and thought about the religion of the age of Charlemagne in its own terms. With that in mind, I will make two points about context which sum up what I have already said, and signal new dimensions. First, there was a fundamental ambivalence in Christianity about pilgrimage. It was heightened in the case of monks and nuns. The Jerome tag that has run through the textual story was originally addressed to a monk—and monks had particular anxieties about breaking the vow of stabilitas. Benedict’s views on gyrovagi were utterly uncompromising. The true monastic life entailed an interior journey, not an exterior one. An underlying truth about the human condition was registered by the pagan Roman poet Horace: “those who go away beyond the sea / change the climate but not the soul.” Changing places does not change what you essentially are. When Charlemagne and his advisers appraised the moral risks of pilgrimage as against its potential benefits, they came out on the side of benefits. There was something special, though, in Charlemagne’s ambivalence. He himself was a veteran pilgrim to the shrine of St. Germain at Paris, to St. Peter’s at Rome, and to St. Martin’s at Tours.57 After 800 he was the established protector of pilgrims. His own piety, especially later in life, centered on New Testament rather than Old Testament values: it was the quality of devotion inside a church, not the splendor of the church’s exterior, which mattered to God. Alcuin compiled a book of private prayer specifically for him. As a man busy in the world, Charlemagne legislated vigorously against cults of “false” saints, and against the proliferation of unauthorized shrines which he alleged were invented for moneymaking purposes. Such “opposition” was the obverse of his own personal devotion. At the same time, as a ruler, and in political terms, Charlemagne was determined to control what went on in his 57

  For what follows, see H. Mayr-Harting, “Charlemagne’s Religion,” in P. Godman, J. Jarnut, and P. Johanek, eds., Am Vorabend der Kaiserkrönung (Berlin, 2002), pp. 113–24, and M. McCormick, Charlemagne’s Survey of the Holy Land (Washington, DC, 2011); see also Nelson, “Charlemagne the Man,” Nelson, “The Voice of Charlemagne,” and Nelson, “Religion in the Reign of Charlemagne.”

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empire, and that included religious practice. His successors were to have a much harder time maintaining such control, but thanks to the energetic production of written records Charlemagne inspired, the memory and model of what he had attempted, more or less successfully, in his own time persisted in later times. When Napoleon told a cardinal at the papal curia in February 1806, “Je suis Charlemagne,” he did not mean just that he was very devout, though he was devout enough according to his lights. He meant that in his imperial capacity he would take care—in the old sense as well as in the modern sense—of the Church, including the papacy.58 It would be going too far, but perhaps not much too far, to suggest that there was something of Bentham’s Panopticon about Charlemagne’s Aachen, where, according to a later ninth-century author, from the upper floor of his palace he could look down and observe the comings and goings of everyone.59 My second point is about travel: the motivation to seek holy places, the availability of routes, the accessibility of destinations, the presence of hospitality en route: these were the preconditions of pilgrimage. Circumambient mobility was relevant too. Thanks to modern research by economic historians, which in fact rests on foundations a century old, the stereotype of the Dark Ages as a time when peasants never left the clearing around the village, estates were selfsufficient, and there were no markets has given way to a new understanding of the age of Charlemagne as a world on the move, with a commercial dynamic. Consider the mangones and cociones of c. 79 of the Admonitio generalis: a translator may make them “swindlers” and “tramps,” but why not leave open the possibility that they were what the late Roman words say—namely, smallscale traders? Now, you can turn the word “tradesman” into an insult—many centuries later, cocio became modern French coquin—but it is not necessary to go down that road: mangones mutated into all kinds of mongers, some of them still favored by discriminating customers today. Charlemagne’s legislation on coinage and prices and markets could hardly have worked at all had there not been mangones and cociones and market women about selling pennyworths of this and that and offering credit.60 58

  Napoleon, letter to Cardinal Fesch, ambassador to the Holy See, Correspondance, ed. M.-A. Dupuy et al. (Paris, 1999), no. 9,806. 59   Notker the Stammerer, Gesta Karoli, I, 30, ed. H.F. Hefele, MGH SRG n.s. 12 (Munich, 1980), p. 41. For comment on the extent of Charlemagne’s surveillance, and interventionism, see Davis, Charlemagne’s Practice of Empire, and J.L. Nelson, “Aachen as a Place of Power,” in M. de Jong, F. Theuws, and C. van Rhijn, eds., Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2001), pp. 217–41, at p. 23, repr. Nelson, Courts, ch. XIV. 60   For widespread evidence of small-scale credit in Charlemagne’s world, see F. Bougard, “Le crédit dans l’Occident dans le haut moyen âge,” in J.-P. Devroey, L. Feller, and R. Le Jan, eds., Les Élites et la richesse au haut Moyen Âge (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 439–78; for market women

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Anxieties about pilgrimages were actually symptomatic of a huge increase in pilgrimage. Traders might indeed be pilgrims moonlighting.61 There are form letter books containing letters of commendation for pilgrims.62 There is descriptive evidence of lively local pilgrim traffic on routes to local shrines, and the existence of the necessary infrastructure to welcome pilgrims and record the miracles effected; convents as well as monasteries were engaged in such business.63 The associated hagiographical texts were being produced for the first time, or on a scale larger than ever before, whether you think of miracle collections, martyrologies, or topographical guides.64 Of Pat Geary’s 51 furta sacra, 24 date to the period c. 750–c. 900, making the Carolingian century and a half the great age of holy theft.65 More long-distance routes were opening for pilgrimage too, part of a general expansion of communications across the Mediterranean triangulated on Byzantium, the caliphate, and the Carolingian empire. A Memorandum dating to the later years of Charlemagne and now beautifully published and discussed by Michael McCormick notes 35 monks in the Frankish monastery on the Mount of Olives, and 17 nuns from Charlemagne’s empire resident in the Holy Land and serving at the Holy Sepulcher.66 This was the context within which George, abbot of the Mount of Olives, “whose real name was Egilbald, from Germany,” was an envoy of the patriarch of Jerusalem to Charlemagne in 807.67 A counterfactual reading of the ban imposed by those Italian bishops in 796/7 on women pilgrims to Rome could in fact reflect quite

attested in the mid-ninth century, see MGH Capit. II, no. 271, p. 302: “… quia et feminae barcaniare solent.” 61   Alcuin, Ep. 100, p. 145. 62   See above, n. 49, Formulae Marculfi II, 49, also Formulae Senonenses Recentiores, no. 11, “Tradituriam pro itinere,” MGH Formulae, p. 217; cf. ibid., Formulae Salicae Lindenbrogianae, no. 17, p. 278 (referring to lex peregrinorum). 63   For later ninth-century Bavaria, cf. A. Bauch, Ein bayerisches Mirakelbuch aus der Karolingerzeit: Die Monheimer Walpurgis-Wunder des Priesters Wolfhard (Regensburg, 1979), and cf. the review by J.L. Nelson, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 33(1) (1982): 117–19. 64   G. Philippart with M. Trigalet, “Latin Hagiography before the Ninth Century,” in J.R. Davis and M. McCormick, eds., The Long Morning of Medieval Europe: New Directions in Early Medieval Studies (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 111–29; R. Schieffer, “Charlemagne and Rome,” in J.M.A. Smith, ed., Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West (Leiden, 2000), pp. 279–96; R. McKitterick, Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN, 2006), pp. 35–61. 65   P. Geary, Furta Sacra. Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ, 1990), pp. 149–56. 66   McCormick, Charlemagne’s Survey, p. 207. 67   Annales regni Francorum, s.a. 807, pp. 123–4; McCormick, Charlemagne’s Survey, pp. 79–80.

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large numbers of such pilgrims more generally—women who simply retorted to episcopal “never evers” with a firm, “Yes we can!” For Charlemagne, then, pilgrimage within the empire and beyond was something to claim and to celebrate. At the same time, it raised problems of general safety and social order. Some things did not change. The roughly decennial occurrence of crop failure and famine affected public health and morale in ways that can only be surmised. But an increase in pilgrimage as a social as well as a religious phenomenon, with its simultaneous attendant benefits and problems, signaled the distinctive character of the reign. Trends then clear were not necessarily sustained. Growing insecurity on the roads was not the only change that occurred in some regions in the ninth century: the number of travelers also grew, sometimes in the very same regions, as did the volume of economic exchange attested by coin evidence. State-of-the-art interdisciplinary research suggests the possibility that Charlemagne’s reign coincided with exceptionally favorable climatic conditions.68 Old-fashioned rummaging in long-familiar texts suggests that Charlemagne’s regime was exceptionally, even astonishingly, alert to circumstances, responsive to social problems, and ambitious in efforts—which were only partly about selfpublicizing—to promote the attainment in this world of justice and social peace of a kind, and, in the world beyond, salvation.

68

  M. McCormick, P.E. Dutton, P.A. Mayewski, and N. Patterson, “Volcanoes and the Climate Forcing of Carolingian Europe, A.D. 750–950,” Speculum 82 (2007): 865–95.

Chapter 5

The Sources of Textiles and Vestments in Early Medieval Rome Maureen C. Miller In a typically stimulating contribution to a volume celebrating Donald A. Bullough’s career, Tom Noble made a number of astute observations about the conflicting views of early medieval Rome offered by textual sources, such as the Liber Pontificalis (LP), and the material evidence, mainly archeological, that has emerged in recent decades.1 Concentrating on the period 715–891—from the pontificate of Gregory II to that of Stephen V—Noble analyzed various forms of papal expenditure detailed in the LP in light of other economic evidence with the aim of understanding what appear to be new sources of affluence in the city after centuries of relative poverty and depopulation. In addition to the evidence for new construction and renovation of existing buildings, he noted the numerous papal gifts of textiles and metalwork to Roman churches. Developments in textile studies make possible a reconsideration of Noble’s observations on cloth and vestments. We will look first at the questions he raised about the possible sources of the many textiles popes donated to Roman churches in the eighth and ninth centuries, before addressing the thunderous silence in the LP that he noted concerning clerical vestments. I offer evidence here that the mix of importation and local production Noble suspected in fact constitutes the most compelling explanation of the myriad papal gifts of textiles detailed in the LP: material sources indicate both trade connections with the Byzantine and Islamic worlds and technically advanced productive capabilities within western Europe. Female patronage may account for some textiles, but local production most likely centered in workshops associated with the papal household and on the estates of the Roman Church—workshops staffed very likely by female slaves. The LP’s silence as to the source of clerical vestments, however, is more likely explained by the relatively inexpensive materials used to make them in the early Middle Ages.

1   Thomas F.X. Noble, “Paradoxes and Possibilities in the Sources for Roman Society in the Early Middle Ages,” in Julia M.H. Smith, ed., Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West: Essays in Honour of Donald A. Bullough (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 55–83.

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Where Did Popes Get Textiles? As Noble and others have remarked, the number and diverse types of textiles donated by popes to Roman churches are quite striking. For just the period of Noble’s interest, he tallied 5,232 cloths donated, an average of 291 per pope.2 The lists of donated textiles are so lengthy and detailed that Paolo Delogu conducted an economic study of them, complete with bar graphs of import rates over the ninth century!3 The LP indicates that these textiles were used as vela, “veils” hung from architraves and between columns to create spatial divisions within churches, and as vestes, altar coverings.4 Only in the twelfth century, in fact, are liturgical vestments found among the gifts made by popes to Roman churches: the Descriptio Lateranensis ecclesiae recorded that Pope Innocent II (1130–43) gave a fine cloth woven of gold to the basilica, from which altar cloths and a chasuble were made, while Anastasius IV (1153–54) donated a white chasuble hemmed all around with a precious gold embroidery.5 Noble raised the question of where all the thousands of cloths catalogued in the LP were made, and remarked that Roman sources offered no attestation for either the commerce or the local industry that might explain these quantities.6 Since his publication in 2000, however, Michael McCormick’s Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce AD 300–900 has provided compelling evidence that Rome was linked to both the Byzantine empire and the Islamic world—the two sources of silk—by several interlocking sea routes.7 His evidence for the presence in Rome of the Arab gold and silver coins, called in Latin mancosi, and more generally for correspondences between coin find sites and the routes documented by travelers, suggests commerce as well as communication. And McCormick notes that the Carolingian monk-poet 2

  Ibid., p. 73.   “L’importazione di tessuti preziosi e il sistema economico romano nel IX secolo,” in

3

Paolo Delogu, ed., Roma medievale—aggiornamenti (Florence: All’Insegno del Giglio, 1998), pp. 123–41. 4   The vestes listed in the LP are vestes altaris: see Le Liber Pontificalis, ed. Louis Duchesne, 2nd edn. in 3 vols. with additions and corrections by Cyrille Vogel (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1955–57), vol. 1, pp. 418–19, 421, 432, 435, 500; vol. 2. pp. 2–3, 8–11; John Osborne, “Textiles and Their Painted Imitations in Early Medieval Rome,” Papers of the British School at Rome 60 (1992): 312–21. 5   Roberto Valentini and Giuseppe Zucchetti, eds., Codice topografico della città di Roma, 4 vols., Fonti per la storia d’Italia 81, 88, 90, 91 (Rome: Tipografia del Senato, 1940–53), vol. 3, pp. 349, 352. 6   Noble, “Paradoxes,” p. 75. 7   Michael McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce AD 300–900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 502–69.

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Waldram looked to the “folk of Italy” as the source of “spices and fine fabrics.”8 Paolo Delogu also concluded that the precious silk textiles documented in the LP arrived through trade with the eastern Mediterranean.9 The fact that many of the silk “veils” donated to Roman churches were specifically identified in the LP as bearing images, however, does raise the question of whether local industries were involved to some extent. As Noble emphasized, several hundred of the cloths listed in the LP were decorated “with depictions of Christ, Mary, various saints, or biblical scenes.”10 Could silks with woven religious images have been imported from Byzantium? The iconoclast ban on images in the empire was discontinuous, the first period from 726 to 787 and the second from 815 to 842. In both these periods, however, popes made gifts of cloths with images to Roman churches.11 Several distinctions concerning imagery and the techniques used to produce it are useful in making sense of this evidence. First, quite numerous among the cloths with images were “cross adorned silks.” Hadrian I (772–95), for example, gave “for the various arches” of the Lateran basilica “fifty-seven silk veils, their material all fourfold-woven and cross-adorned silk.”12 He gave other “cross adorned silks” to the basilicas of St. Paul, St. Valentine, St. Lawrence in Damaso, St. Hadrian, Sts. Cosmas and Damian, and to other churches, deaconries, and monasteries within the city’s walls.13 Besides being an image associated with the emperors from the time of Constantine, the cross along with the Eucharist were acceptable representations of Christ affirmed by iconoclasts. Second, while imagery could be woven in silk, it could also be applied onto silk either by embroidering directly on the fabric or, more likely, by attaching embroidered panels. Indeed, as Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon have pointed out, the language of the LP describing cloths with New Testament imagery accords more with these techniques. They call attention to the common formula “vestem holosericam, habentem in medio tabulam de … cum historia …” (“an

8

  Ibid., pp. 322, 324, 335–6, 338, 344, 725.   Paolo Delogu, “Il passaggio dall’antichità al medioevo,” in André Vauchez, ed., Roma

9

medievale (Bari: Laterza, 2001), p. 37. 10   Noble, “Paradoxes,” p. 74. 11   One must hold open, of course, the possibility that popes kept a supply of precious textiles on hand to meet the regular need to offer gifts, and therefore that some of the textiles with images may have been acquired before the iconoclast controversy began or in the period between the two periods of opposition. 12   “… per diversos arcos vela sirica numero LVII, omnia ex palleis quadrapolis seu stauracim”: Le Liber Pontificalis, 1: 500 (97.47). 13   Ibid., 500–501.

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all-silk cloth, with a panel of … in the centre representing …”).14 The tabula would be a piece of linen or silk embroidered with figures or scenes. Other language also suggests the addition of ornament to eastern textiles. Pascal I (817–24), for example, is said to have “provided a great Alexandrian curtain, embellished and adorned with various representations,” likely meaning that an imported silk fabric had imagery added.15 The same pontiff ’s gift to St. Cecilia’s of “a gold-studded cloth representing our Lord Jesus Christ’s resurrection wonderfully embroidered and adorned” explicitly indicates embroidered addition.16 The descriptions of several gifts of Gregory IV (828–44) specify that the images were on panels in the middle of the cloth: “this venerable pope presented a cloth with griffins and gold-studding round it, with the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ in the middle.”17 Griffins, usually within roundels, were a common motif woven into Byzantine silks, so Pope Gregory’s cloth appears to have utilized an imported prestige textile as the base with the nativity scene—embroidered on a separate backing panel—added onto it. Precisely such techniques are evident in the earliest surviving textiles from medieval Europe. An ensemble of textiles known as the casula (cape, cowl or chasuble?) of Sts. Harlindis and Relindis, and another composite piece called the velamen (veil, or possibly altar cloth) of St. Harlindis provide compelling material proof of productive capabilities within western Europe. Conserved today at Maaseik in Belgium, they survived through association with two saintly Merovingian sisters, Harlindis and Relindis, who founded the abbey of Aldeneik in the early eighth century. A vita composed in the second half of the ninth century noted that the sisters were educated at the convent of “Valencina” (probably Valenciennes), where, among other things, they learned “work which is accustomed to be done by female hands in various ways and varied adornment, namely sewing and weaving, designing and working, and arranging gold and pearls on silk.”18 Several woven inscriptions, in addition to silk patterns, allow the casula and velamen to be dated to the late eighth–early ninth centuries.19 14

  Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era c. 680–850: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 337. 15   “… in ingressu iamdictae basilicae cortinam maiorem alexandrinam cum diversis stories compte decoratam”: Le Liber Pontificalis 2: 62 (100.36). 16   “… vestem de chrisoclabo, habentem storiam dominicae Resurrectionis domini nostri Iesu Christi mirifice depictam atque exornatam”: ibid. (100.38). One of the meanings of depingere is “to embroider.” 17   “… vestem cum chriphis et chrisoclabo per circuitum, habentem in medio Nativitatem domini nostri Iesu Christi”: ibid., 2: 75 (103.10). 18   Mildred Budny and Dominic Tweddle, “The Early Medieval Textiles at Maaseik, Belgium,” The Antiquaries Journal 65(2) (1985): 354. 19   Ibid., p. 353.

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The velamen illustrates how western Europeans added embellishments onto silks woven in the eastern Mediterranean and acquired through trade. The base fabric is a red and purple silk woven with a small repeat pattern of lozenges. The simplicity of the pattern makes it difficult to date more precisely than to the seventh–early ninth centuries, but the indigo dye used to produce the purple suggests origin in the eastern Mediterranean. Two cross-shaped pieces and two squares of another silk were sewn onto the base silk as adornments. The silk of these smaller appliquéd pieces has a much more complex woven pattern of pairs of tigers within medallions, comparable to a Byzantine silk from the seventh century discovered in a tomb not far from Aldeneik. In addition, silk and gold braids were sewn onto the squares of tiger-silk in geometric patterns, and another red and beige braid with a partial woven Latin inscription was added to border the squares.20 The velamen also gives evidence of another decorative technique mentioned repeatedly in the LP. The term chrisoclabo, or “gold-studded,” is used to describe numerous textiles donated by eighth- and ninth-century popes to Roman churches. Seventy-one dome-shaped metallic bosses are still attached to the velamen, but broken threads and discolorations on the base fabric matching the shape and size of the surviving bosses reveal that many more had been added to embellish it. The bosses were made of gilded copper, thus giving the appearance of gold studs.21 Pearls, also mentioned in the LP, and glass beads were additionally sewn onto the velamen and casula. The casula provides examples of the addition of separate panels of embroidered figural decoration. Indeed, the casula itself is an assortment of silks and embroideries sewn onto a rectangular panel of linen backing fabric. The eight pieces of gold and silk embroidery, moreover, are also worked upon separate pieces of linen that were then attached. The figures are of animals or birds amidst complex interlace and geometrical patterns, so not the complex narrative scenes with human forms described in the LP. But they attest a welldeveloped ability to execute complex designs in needlework. The embroidered patterns and figures, as well as appliquéd and woven inscriptions on other parts of the casula, have very close parallels with other forms of decoration (in stone, ivory, metalwork, and manuscripts) made in southern England in the late eighth and early ninth centuries. The use of animal hair as the core fiber around which gold was wrapped to produce the gold thread used in the embroideries also points to England as the most likely provenance.22 The Maaseik textiles therefore provide evidence that many of the vela and vestes that popes donated to Roman churches in the eighth and ninth 20

  Ibid.,” pp. 372–9, pls. LVII, LXVII.   Ibid., pp. 376, 379, pl. LXVIIa. 22   Ibid., pp. 359–72. 21

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centuries could have combined imported silk cloths with various forms of embellishment—gold studs, embroidered panels with imagery—added locally. More significantly, however, the casula of Sts. Harlindis and Relindis indicates that weavers within western Europe were able to produce figural designs using silk thread imported from the East. Much of the casula is composed of pieces of a compound-twill silk fabric with a repeated woven pattern of the enthroned figure of King David identified with the Latin inscription “DAV/ID” (Plate 1). The figures are within medallions arranged in rows, with geometric patterns in the interstices. As Budny and Tweddle noted, the general design scheme of repeated roundels enclosing figures with decorative fillers between the medallions “occurs on numerous early medieval silks from the eastern Mediterranean and Islamic realms.” What is unusual and “wholly out of place in an eastern context” are (1) the interlace patterns and arches in the medallion borders, (2) the highly schematic figure of the king, and (3) the Latin inscription. The letter forms in the inscription, the form of the scepter held by David, and the interstice patterns find parallels in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and metalwork. This silk fabric was evidently woven in western Europe, most likely in southern England.23 Two other early medieval textiles with Latin inscriptions suggest that complex weaving with imported silk thread was not limited to Anglo-Saxon England. The first is a white silk dalmatic discovered folded up in the bottom of the sarcophagus of St. Quiriacus (d. 769) in Taben, a small town in the Moselle region. Made of thick undyed silk, the fabric has a complex pattern woven into it of squares enclosing a narrative scene, surrounded by an identifying inscription. Two arches spring from each side of the square, those on top and bottom enclosing birds and those on either side enclosing human half-bust figures (two under the top arch and one under the bottom). Geometric designs fill in the interstices. The inscription has been deciphered as “ARC[A] NOE S E III C [ex tertio capitulo] PET[RI],” referencing 1 Peter 3:20, where those awaiting Christ’s redemption “waited for the patience of God in the Days of Noe, when the ark was being built: wherein a few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water.” Indeed, in the center of the square are two standing figures, presumably Noe and his wife, holding something aloft in the center (or pointing to it). These two figures, plus those under the flanking arches, add up to the “eight souls” who “were saved by water,” and the birds at top and bottom are the ravens and doves Noe sent forth when the rains ceased. Those at the top bear olive branches. Like the figure of David in the Maaseik silk, these human forms are also rendered in a highly schematic style.24 23

  Ibid., pp. 367–70.   Ernst Wackenroder, Heinrich Neu, and Hans Eiden, Die Kunstdenkmäler des Kreises

24

Saarburg im Auftrage des Provinzialverbandes der Rheinprovinz (Düsseldorf: L. Schwann, 1939), pp. 242–4.

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Similar in the style of its figures and inscriptions is a second early medieval survival preserved at Sens cathedral. This Merovingian brocaded linen has images of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary enclosed in elongated roundels with a Latin inscription around the rim. A doll-like female figure, presumably the Virgin, is centered in the top half of the roundel flanked by two angels, while parts of eight figures, each with an arm raised upward (pointing?), fill the lower half.25 A group of early medieval textiles, originally preserved in the Sancta Sanctorum in Rome, and now in the Vatican’s Museo Sacro, give evidence only of possible weaving with silk in the city. The seven fragmentary panels were woven of linen with yellow and white silk brocading in geometric and rosette patterns. Wolfgang Fritz Volbach, who catalogued the collection in the late 1930s, dated them roughly to the seventh and eighth centuries and thought that they may have been woven in Italy or in Rome, but mainly because of the small amount of silk utilized. Two have inscriptions—catalog number T19’s is in Greek (Ps. 109:4–5) and T20’s is in Latin (Ps. 120:7)—but both inscriptions were embroidered, not woven. While the paleography of the Greek inscription accords with the seventh–eighth-century dating of the fabric, that of the Latin inscription suggests it was added much later (eleventh century?).26 This possibly Roman evidence of weaving in silk is notably less impressive in complexity than the examples discussed above. Comparison of all these locally produced textiles with a ninth-century Byzantine figural silk imported to early medieval Rome reveals the technical and artistic superiority of Eastern weavers. Like the silk brocades just discussed, the Annunciation and Nativity silks (Plate 2) were initially preserved in the Sancta Sanctorum and today are found in the Vatican’s Museo Sacro. Both fragments bearing these scenes came from the same piece of red silk that was woven with medallions, roughly a foot in diameter, bordered with foliate motifs in cream, yellow, brown, and blue. Within the medallions are depictions of the Annunciation, with Mary enthroned on the left and the angel approaching her on the right, and the even more complex Nativity. The latter has the manger with the baby Jesus at its center flanked by seated figures of the Virgin and Joseph, and an ox and a donkey behind the manger at the top of the medallion.27 The figures in the locally produced western European textiles are extremely primitive in 25   Léon Gischia and Lucien Mazenod, Les Arts primitifs français: art mérovingien, art carolingien, art roman (Paris: Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1953), pl. 19. 26   W.F. Volbach, I Tessuti del Museo Sacro Vaticano (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1942), pp. 20–25 and pls. X–XIII. 27   Anna Muthesius, Byzantine Silk Weaving AD 400 to AD 1200 (Vienna: Fassbaender, 1997), pp. 175 and color pls. 20A–B; Brubaker and Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, pp. 341–3.

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comparison to the exquisitely detailed and naturalistic figures in this imported Byzantine silk. What Vatican textiles suggest, however, is that both imported Byzantine silks and locally woven cloths using imported silk thread were most likely among the papal gifts of textiles given to Roman churches in the eighth and ninth centuries. These material artifacts, in sum, lend some confirmation to Noble’s hypothesis that trade and local industries supplied early medieval popes with the textiles they so lavishly bestowed on the churches and monasteries of the Eternal City. Where Did the Roman Clergy Get Their Vestments? Considering the lists of textiles in the LP, Noble also remarked upon a curious absence. Beyond the fleeting reference praising Stephen II (752–57) for providing the Roman clergy with tunics and chasubles “so that they might all be found well-attired in God’s church,” the LP does not describe papal gifts of vestments until the twelfth century.28 Reflecting on this curious silence, Noble remarked: “one has to think about the liturgical needs of the army of clergy that served the patriarchal basilicas, the title churches, basilican monasteries, deaconries, xenodochia, and other major churches of the city. At any moment there were hundreds of clergy, maybe thousands, who required full complements of vestments.”29 Where did the Roman clergy get their liturgical attire? Pursuing this question also provides an opportunity to deepen our understanding of the local industries that produced some of the vela and vestes for Roman churches as well as adding embroidered and other ornament to imported textiles. Who did all this weaving and sewing? Again, we need to widen our lens to medieval Europe to begin to understand possible practices at Rome. In a now classic monograph, David Herlihy showed how the making of cloth and clothes, from antiquity into the central Middle Ages, was “women’s work” (opera muliebria). For free men, such tasks as spinning and weaving were considered demeaning and were thus inflicted as a humiliating punishment upon convicts or war captives. Women produced textiles at home or, on large estates or in elite households, in workshops called gynaeceum in classical Latin (from the Greek gynaikeion, women’s quarters) and genecium or genitium in medieval documents. These workshops were largely staffed with female slaves (ancillae, mancipiae), and they endured through the central Middle Ages.30 The 28

  Le Liber Pontificalis 1: 443.   Noble, “Paradoxes,” p. 74. 30   David Herlihy, Opera Muliebra: Women and Work in Medieval Europe (New York: 29

McGraw-Hill, 1990), pp. 1–12, 18–21, 34–9, 75–91; Susan Mosher Stuard, “Ancillary Evidence for the Decline of Medieval Slavery,” Past & Present 149 (1995): 3–28. The use of unfree female

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Church fully participated in these economic conventions, as is evident not only in charters, but also in the Carolingian estate surveys (polyptychs).31 Dioceses and monasteries usually held estates with workshops that could produce cloth and garments. We get a glimpse of these valuable assets in a gift to the cathedral clergy of Verona: in 813 Bishop Ratoldus gave them revenues from a long list of estates, among them garments that come from the ginitio.32 Female slaves toiling on estates owned by dioceses and monasteries likely provided the cloth that covered altars and the bodies of clergy and religious. Women’s monasteries seem also to have provided for some monks’ needs. The life of St. Lobin, a sixthcentury monk who later became bishop of Chartres, relates that a girl in a female monastery mended the holy man’s tunic. In the early twelfth century, Abelard’s rule for Heloise’s convent of the Paraclete dictated that the women’s house should be under the supervision of the “brothers” in a male monastery and that the nuns should “confine themselves to what can suitably be done indoors by women, such as making clothes for themselves and the brothers.”33 More problematic were the cloth and garment needs of local churches. Those in urban centers may have been able to buy or barter to fulfill their needs, but churches in rural communities had fewer options. A canon in the collection of Ansegis (827) instructed priests to exhort the women of their parishes to make linens for the altar.34 Only with the rapid commercialization of textile manufacture in western Europe from the late labor in textile production even enters imaginative literature, see E. Jane Burns, Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women’s Work in Medieval French Literature (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), pp. 23–5, 30–31. 31   Jean-Pierre Devroey, “Femmes au miroir des polyptyques: une approche des rapports du couple dans l’exploitation rurale dépendante entre Seine et Rhin au IXe siècle,” in Stéphane Lebecq, Alain Dierkens, Régine Le Jan, and Jean-Marie Sansterre, eds., Femmes et pouvoirs des femmes à Byzance et en occident (VIe–Xie siècles), Colloque international organize les 28, 29 et 30 mars 1996 à Bruxelles et Villeneuve d’Ascq (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Centre de Recherche sur l’Histoire de l’Europe du Nord-Ouest, Université Charles de Gaulle—Lille 3, 1999), pp. 227–49. Although Devroey raises some salutary cautions about assuming the servile status of all women in estate workshops (from the evidence of St. Rémi de Reims, ibid., pp. 243–4) and calls attention to diversity within the evidence, he affirms the significance of the genitium in large royal and ecclesiastical estates, and of smaller workshops as well (ibid., pp. 231–2). 32   Codice diplomatico Veronese, ed. Vittorio Fainelli, 2 vols. (Venice: Deputazione di storia patria per le Venezie, 1940–63), 1:131 (doc. no. 102): “De vestimentis quae de pisile, vel ginitio veniunt, decimam parte.” 33   Herlihy, Opera Muliebra, p. 38; Terence P. McLaughlin, “Abelard’s Rule for Religious Women,” Mediaeval Studies 18 (1956): 259–60. 34   Capitularia Regum Francorum n.s. I. Collectio Capitularium Ansegisi, ed. Gerhard Schmitz (Hanover: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1996), p. 511: “CXLVI De linteis altaribus praeparandis. Ut presbiteri per parrochias suas feminis praedicent, ut linteamina altaribus praeparent.”

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twelfth century could churches supply much of their need through purchase.35 Before then, relationships with women—as donors or slaves—were essential in procuring textiles and clothing. When our sources do explicitly identify the makers of liturgical vestments, they are women. Eustadiola of Bourges, a wealthy seventh-century widow and saintly abbess, was praised by the author of her vita for her generosity, including the “holy vestments and precious altar cloths” which she made “with her own hands with her girls [puellis].”36 The ninth-century Bishop Prudentius of Troyes extolled the contributions of his “best helper” (optimam adjutricem) and “collaborator” (collaboratricem), the unmarried woman Maura. “Who gave the altar cloths?”, he asked: Maura! Who used her own wealth to buy the priestly garments? Maura! I hold more precious than gold or topaz the linen garment she made for me with her own hands. She spun, fashioned, whitened it, and asked humbly that it be worn for the sacred solemnity of the Mass.37

As Fiona Griffiths has pointed out and this quotation underscores, liturgical textiles were a way for women to be present at the altar. The pious women named and praised for their handiwork were all elites. But the “girls” who worked with St. Eustadiola and the unnamed weavers of the linen Maura fashioned (deposuit) into a garment for Prudentius were likely slaves. What we know of how cloth was produced in early medieval Europe and who made clerical clothing, therefore, suggests that the papacy may have gotten textile work from (1) female monasteries in and around Rome, (2) female donors, and (3) workshops on their estates and/or in their households. But what do Roman sources indicate? In this brief chapter, of course I can only offer a few preliminary findings, but hope that doing so will underscore the possibilities for further research. Let us consider these possible sources of textiles and vestments in turn. 35

  The introduction of the horizontal loom to western Europe in the late eleventh century and rapid urbanization led to the emergence of complex textile industries from the twelfth century on that produced for both domestic and export markets: John H. Munro, “Medieval Woollens: Textiles, Technology and Organization,” in David Jenkins, ed., The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), vol. 1, pp. 194–7. 36   Fiona Griffiths, “‘Like the Sister of Aaron’: Medieval Religious Women and Liturgical Textiles,” in Gert Melville and Anne Müller, eds., Female vita religiosa between Late Antiquity and High Middle Ages: Structures, Norms and Developments, Vita regularis: Ordnungen und Deutungen religiosen Lebens im Mittelalter 47 (Zurich and Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2011), p. 353. I thank Fiona Griffiths for sharing her research with me before its publication. Vita Eustadiolae in AASS Jun. II ( June 8), 133, ch. 3. 37   Griffiths, “‘Like the Sister of Aaron’,” p. 351; Prudentius of Troyes, Vita S. Maurae in AASS Sep. VI (September 21), 275–6, chs. 3, 5.

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In the time of Gregory the Great, female monasteries in Rome do not appear to be producers of textiles. In a letter written in 597, Gregory thanked Theoctista, sister of the Emperor Maurice, for her gift of 30 pounds of gold. He informed her that he used half to redeem captives held by the Lombards, and with the rest purchased blankets (lectisternia) for the nuns of Rome, “because they are suffering from a terrible lack of blankets in the extremely bitter cold of this city.” He goes on to remark on how many religious women there are in Rome: “three thousand of them are found listed in the census.” Although they receive 80 pounds a year from the goods of St. Peter, the exorbitant prices of commodities in Rome leave them still wanting.38 Through the late sixth century, then, it appears that the market could supply bulk needs in Rome: was it always anomalous in this regard, or did more medieval patterns establish themselves in the economic contraction the city suffered in the seventh century? While one might leave open the possibility that religious women did sewing or embroidery, the want portrayed by Gregory suggests that materials would have to be supplied to them. In sum, before the seventh century, Roman convents appear not to have been sources of textile production for the papacy or other churches. How about female donors? Peter Brown long ago noted that the “impact of upper-class ascetic women on the Latin church was far out of proportion to their numbers.”39 In Rome, elite women patronized almost half of the city’s fourth-century basilicas, with Constantine’s mother, Helena, and his daughter, Constantina, leading the way, and the Collectio Avellana acknowledged that Roman matrons were key supporters of Pope Damasus in his struggle against his rival Ursinus. The influence of elite women on the Roman Church and its bishop was certainly much greater in the fourth–late fifth centuries when the city’s bishops were from non-aristocratic clerical families or from those of curial status. Once senatorial and provincial aristocrats were raised to the see, the patronage of elite women was less conspicuous.40 But they were still significant donors in Gregory the Great’s day, and one of his letters reveals a gift of textiles. Writing in February 601, the pope thanks the patrician lady Rusticiana for “those gifts that you sent over with your most pure and sincere heart to Saint Peter.” He records that they were received before the clergy of the basilica “and were hung up there.” While apologizing for the delay in writing to her, Gregory 38   Gregory the Great, Registrum epistularum, 2 vols., ed. Dag Norberg, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 140–140A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1982), 7.23. 39   Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 344. 40   Aneilya Barnes, “Female Patronage and Episcopal Authority in Late Antiquity,” in Sigrid Danielson and Evan A. Gatti, eds., Envisioning the Medieval Bishop (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming).

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identifies the gifts as vela—that is, precisely the type of textile hangings that popes repeatedly donated to churches over the eighth and ninth centuries.41 Rusticiana, as an elite woman, surely did not personally make the vela she donated to St. Peter’s; her gynaeceum must have. So when the LP describes popes donating vela, it seems likely that the papal household or estates had workshops either producing textiles or adding decoration to purchased fabrics. The paucity of surviving charters for Roman ecclesiastical institutions before the tenth century of course limits what we can know about papal resources. The LP reveals the foundation in the eighth century of domuscultae, rural estates near the city that were perpetually designated for the support of the Church. The term is novel in Rome in the mid-seventh century, but had been in use in the Sabina for some time. The charters of Farfa reveal some important differences between the Roman domuscultae and those in the Sabina, most significantly that the former were inalienable while the latter were clearly not.42 But the similarities and proximity of the Farfa estates warrant consultation of these sources. Indeed, an inventory of slaves belonging to the monastery (De servis huius monasterii) dating from the early ninth century reveals a likely women’s workshop or genetium. Although most of the entries list family units, the one for Salicia first names a series of “homines manuales infra casam in Forcone.” Two of the men listed have wives, but 11 others do not. One is identified as a craftsman (faber), while others are gardeners (ortulani) and bakers (pistores). Next are listed eleven infantes masculi, eight of whom are identified as (illegitimate) sons of named women. Then there are two lists of women slaves: De mancipiis que bene laborant, followed by 30 female names, and then Que mediocriter laborant, followed by 26 female names.43 The entry does not explicitly call them textile workers, but since such labor was regarded as opera muliebria, this workforce of 56 women seems a likely genecium. These are only first steps toward understanding more fully the sources of cloth and vestments in early medieval Rome. The silence in the LP concerning vestments is slightly more complicated, however, than the general opacity of Roman documentation concerning economic resources. The value of the materials used to make liturgical attire needs to be considered. Scholars have tended to assume that vestments have always been made of precious fabrics. In fact, there was considerable ambivalence in early 41

  Gregory the Great, Registrum epistularum, 11.26.   Marios Costambeys, Power and Patronage in Early Medieval Italy: Local Society, Italian

42

Politics and the Abbey of Farfa, c. 700–900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 189–95; Federico Marazzi, “Il Liber Pontificalis e la fondazione delle Domuscultae,” Mededelingen van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome 60/61 (2001–2002): 167–88. 43   Il Chronicon farfense di Gregorio di Catino, 2 vols., ed. Ugo Balzani (Rome: Forzani e c., tipografi del Senato, 1903), pp. 267–8; Costambeys, Power and Patronage, p. 208.

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Christianity about even wearing special attire for the liturgy. In his Dialogue against the Pelagians (I.30), for example, Jerome (c. 340–420) included a fairly defensive passage on the issue. He had his heretic assert that “the glory of dress and ornament is repugnant to God.” The response of the orthodox interlocutor reveals the target of Pelagian criticism: How is it repugnant to God, I ask, if I wear a cleaner tunic or if the bishop, priest, deacon, and the rest of the ecclesiastical orders go forth to administer sacrifices dressed in shining white? Clerics and monks, beware! Widows and virgins, you are in danger, unless the crowd sees you squalid and ragged.44

Once distinctive liturgical garb became generally acceptable, there was discord as to what sort of attire should be worn. Responding to concerns of the bishops of Narbonne and Vienne, Pope Celestine I wrote in 428 that priests and clerics should not officiate at church services “wrapped in a pallium and with limbs girded.”45 A century later in Rome, indeed, there seems to be an effort, at least on the part of the author of the first redaction of the LP in the 530s to depict the use of special liturgical vestments as an ancient, papally sanctioned custom. The compiler attributes to Pope Stephen I (254–57) the decree that “sacerdotes and deacons should not use the consecrated vestments for everyday purposes but only in church.” He praises Pope Silvester (314–35) for establishing “that the deacons should wear dalmatics, and that their left arms should be covered with pallia, half wool, half linen.” In what seems a concession to criticism, he further attributes to this pope the decree “that the sacrifice of the altar should not be celebrated in silk or in dyed cloth, but only in naturally produced linen, just as the body of our Lord Jesus Christ was buried in a fine linen shroud.”46 Visual sources suggest some deviance from this asserted norm. Our earliest visual evidence for Roman vestments comes in the early seventh century in the mosaics at Pope Honorius I’s (625–38) church of St. Agnes outside the walls and at the chapel of St. Venantius at the Lateran built by Pope John IV (640–42). This native of Dalmatia secured the relics of several saints from his homeland and built St. Venantius off the Constantinian baptistery to house them. The honored 44

  Dialogus adversus Pelagianos, ed. Claudio Moreschini, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 80 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1990), p. 38. The adoption of “shining white” garments is likely responding to Mark’s description of Jesus’ transfiguration when “his garments became shining and exceeding white as snow” (Mk. 9:2). 45   Epistolae romanorum pontificum, ed. Pierre Coustant (Paris: Ludovicum-Dionysium Delatour & Antonium-Urbanum Coustelier, 1721) 1: 1,066–7; for a fuller discussion of this document, see Maureen C. Miller, Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), pp. 16–18. 46   Le Liber Pontificalis 1: 154, 171.

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saints, their patron Pope John, and his successor Pope Theodore I (642–49), who completed work on the chapel, are all represented in the mosaic apse and arch. At St. Agnes, Honorius and another pope (variously identified by different scholars) flank the virgin martyr in the glittering apse. Several extensive mosaic programs from the early ninth century also include depictions of ecclesiastics. Three—St. Cecilia in Trastevere, St. Prassede, and St. Mary in Domnica—were all the work of Pope Paschal I (817–24), whose image appears in each. Roughly a decade later, Gregory IV (827–44) sponsored the renovation of St. Mark, having himself depicted, as was customary, among the patrons in the apse.47 In each of these mosaics, papal and episcopal figures are depicted in colored chasubles: at St. Agnes and St. Venantius, they are deep, dark purple, while Pope Paschal’s in all three of the churches he patronized is bright yellow. Pope Gregory IV at St. Mark’s also wears a yellow chasuble, and the chasuble of the builder of the basilica, the fourth-century Pope Mark (366), is red. These rich colors suggest that the ban on wearing dyed fabrics did not apply to popes and saintly bishops!48 But there is generally an important visual distinction made in the depiction of clerics on the one hand, and lay figures and saints on the other. Ornament indicating clothing made of precious silks or costly decoration is reserved for lay figures and saints. A good example is the apse mosaic of St. Agnes, in which the saint wears not only a jewel-encrusted loros and headdress, but also a robe decorated with a golden roundel with a bird within it and an ornamented hem. The white mantle draped over her left arm also has embroidered designs along the edge. Only a small cross on the end of the pallium, however, decorates the papal figures flanking the saint. This contrast is notable also in the early medieval frescoes surviving at St. Mary Antiqua, where the lay family members in a donor portrait in the chapel of Theodotus are depicted wearing precious silks with medallion patterns but the vestments of the ecclesiastical figures are plain. Even when clerics are venerated saints, as in the cases of St. Maurus at St. Venantius and Pope Mark at the basilica of St. Mark, their clothing is not represented as made of patterned silks or adorned with gold and jewels.49 47

  These early ninth-century projects were funded in part by the city’s new Carolingian overlords, but assiduously cultivated Roman traditions and self-consciously copied late antique models to evoke the splendor of the Constantinian Church: Richard Krautheimer, Rome, Profile of a City, 312–1308, 2nd edn. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 89–98, 109–42; Guglielmo Matthiae, Mosaici medioevali delle chiese di Roma, 2 vols. (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1967), vol. 1, pp. 169–79, 191–4, 225–35, 243, 305–13; Walter Oakeshott, The Mosaics of Rome from the Third to the Fourteenth Centuries (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1967), pp. 148, 150–52, 206–7, 212–14. 48   Bishop Maurus in the St. Venantius mosaics and Pope Mark in the apse at St. Mark’s are the only haloed priestly figures in these decorative programs. The others were living or recently deceased pontiffs. 49   For a fuller discussion, see Miller, Clothing the Clergy.

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This relatively plain depiction of ecclesiastical attire in Rome continued into the eleventh century, when artists began representing ecclesiastics in a much more ornate style of liturgical garb that had emerged in early medieval northern Europe. These conventions certainly reflect the conservatism long noted in Rome’s Christian art, and likely the attitudes of the individuals patronizing these projects, but also perhaps more broadly shared local sensibilities as to what was proper. They may not reflect what some early medieval Roman clerics were actually wearing. The fact that the first redactor of the LP asserted that Pope Silvester had banned the wearing of dyed or silk vestments suggests that some clerics were doing precisely that. Is there material evidence for early medieval Roman liturgical attire? The textile evidence is tantalizing, but inconclusive. No early medieval liturgical garments survive in Rome or its immediate environs. But the monastery of the Savior at Monte Amiata on the via Francigena in southwestern Tuscany preserves a chasuble made of crimson silk with a pearl-embroidered inscription believed to belong to the fourth-century Pope Mark. Conservation efforts and studies undertaken in the 1980s in Florence definitively ruled out the attribution to this pontiff. They yielded instead a ninth-century date for the artifact.50 The evidence supporting ninth-century dating, however, is mixed, and a later date is possible. Unquestionably, the Byzantine silk used to make the chasuble is of extraordinarily high quality. A heavy samite with the unusually wide loom width of 7½ feet (232 cm), this monochrome silk has a woven pattern of large medallions enclosing simurghs, mythical Persian beasts that are a sort of peacock with the claws of a lion and the head of a dog. Attributes of this fabric point chronologically in two directions: the large size of the medallions—each 40 cm in diameter—is most comparable to multi-colored silks with the simurgh motif dated to the seventh and eighth centuries, whereas all other surviving monochrome samites date from the eleventh century.51 Two pieces of silk 50   La casula di San Marco papa, ed. Loretta Dolcini (Florence: Opificio delle pietre dure e laboratori di restauro/SPES, 1992), pp. 40–48. 51   Dolcini acknowledges that the other monochrome silks date to the eleventh century, but found the similarities with the smaller-medallion monochrome silk shroud of St. Rémi (dated by some to the ninth century) and the connections of Pope John VIII and Monte Amiata to Emperor Charles the Bald and Reims compelling enough to sustain a ninth-century date: Dolcini, La casula di San Marco, pp. 6–16. Anna Muthesius dated both the shroud and cushion of St. Rémi to the tenth century, and more recently Marielle Martiniani-Reber provided strong evidence for an eleventh-century dating. The same monochrome samite was used for the shroud and cushion, but the cushion’s embroidered inscription—undeniably ninth-century—is on a different backing fabric and was clearly added to the cushion as it survives today. MartinianiReber points out not only that all comparable monochrome samites date to the eleventh century, but that there was a translation of St. Rémi’s relics and rebuilding of his tomb in the second quarter of the eleventh century: Muthesius, Byzantine Silk Weaving, pp. 188–9, cat.

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embroidered with pearls—one on the front in the form of a cross, and another spade-shaped piece on the back—ornamented the chasuble. The back piece featured an acrostic inscription, “IOHANNIS / EPISCOPVS,” surrounded by flowers. Although some visual parallels from the ninth century may be found for these decorative features, all comparable examples of the method and style of affixing the pearls date from the late tenth or eleventh centuries (and later).52 The identity of this “IOHANNIS / EPISCOPVS” strongly influenced the Florentine conservators’ dating of the chasuble to the ninth century. Loretta Dolcini, proposed Pope John VIII (872–82) as the prelate named in the inscription, hypothesizing that the chasuble was a gift to the pontiff from Charles the Bald. John VIII definitely had ties to the Carolingian monarch, and the pope made a significant donation to the abbey of Monte Amiata.53 This possible set of connections constitutes the strongest argument for the ninthcentury dating of the chasuble. There were, however, bishops named John in the nearby sees of Massa Marittima ( John I [c. 866], John II [c. 940], and John III [1099]), Chiusi ( John I [c. 1059]), and Siena ( John I [1037–63]). One could imagine any of these three eleventh-century bishops named John donating the precious garment to the monastery.54 Both the monochrome character of the silk and the pearl embroidery technique of its ornamentation, moreover, better support an eleventh-century dating. The evidence for early medieval popes actually having or wearing vestments made of precious materials is therefore rather slight. The representational conventions in Rome, moreover, suggest that it was not the norm for the clergy more generally to be clothed in costly vestments. If made of linen or wool, vestments were gifts more comparable in economic value to the blankets Pope Gregory the Great distributed to convents than to the vela and vestes donated to the city’s basilicas. Only if a pope like Stephen II provided vestments for every cleric in the city—as recounted in the passage from the LP quoted at the beginning of this section—did a gift of vestments demonstrate the level of generosity deemed truly notable. M77a–b; Marielle Martiniani‑Reber, “Les textiles IXe–XIIe,” in Byzance. L’art byzantine dans les collections publiques françaises, Musée du Louvre 3 novembre 1992–1 février 1993 (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musée nationaux, 1991), pp. 375–6. I thank Valerie Garver for calling this work to my attention. 52   La casula di San Marco, pp. 57–64. 53   Enciclopedia dei papi, 3 vols. (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 2000), s.v. “Giovanni VIII”; Codex Diplomaticus Amiatinus. Urkundenbuch der Abtei S. Salvatore am Montamiata von den Anfängen bis zum Refierungsantritt Papst Innozenz III. (736–1198), ed. Wilhelm Kurze, 4 vols. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1974), vol. 1: 337 (no. 160). 54   Pius Bonifatius Gams, Series episcoporum Ecclesiae catholicae (Regensburg: G.J. Manz, 1886), pp. 752–6.

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In sum, the language and omissions in the LP regarding textiles reveal that costly silks were used to drape the sacred spaces and altars of Roman churches rather than clerical bodies. Ornament called attention to consecrated spaces and objects, not fallen human beings, however dedicated to the service of God and his Church. This would change—earliest in the late Carolingian empire, and ultimately in Rome with the Gregorian reform—with important evolutions in ideas about the status of the clergy linked to reform initiatives.55 But in early medieval Rome, liturgical vestments were not costly expressions of papal generosity meriting inclusion in the LP. The descriptions of textile gifts considered in the light of surviving textile evidence also suggest that local industries wove some silk fabrics using imported thread, and added embroidered and other ornament to imported Byzantine or Islamic cloths. The location and nature of these local sources of textiles and fine needlework merit further research. Did Roman convents ever become reservoirs of textile labor for the ecclesiastical institutions of the city? Perhaps after the seventh century they supplied some local needs. But it seems more likely that women’s workshops on papal and other ecclesiastical estates in and around Rome were the major source of locally produced cloth and fine needlework. This seems to me the most likely backdrop for Peter Damian’s famous assertion that the reforming Pope Leo IX (1049–54) decreed that the “damnable women” living with priests in Rome be made slaves of the Lateran (papal) palace.56

55

  Miller, Clothing the Clergy, pp. 96–140, 177–206.   “In plenaria plane synodo sanctae memoriae Leo papa constituit, ut quaecunque

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damnabiles feminae infra Romana moenia reperirentur presbyteris prostitutae, ex tunc et deinceps Lateranensi palatio adiudicarentur ancillae”: Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. Kurt Reindel, 4 vols. (Munich: Monumenta Germaniae historica, 1983–93), MGH Briefe Kaiserzeit, 4, 3: 280.

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Chapter 6

Christening, the Kingdom of the Carolingians, and European Humanity John Van Engen In the year 892, Odo, the first Robertian king of the West Franks (888–98), won a substantial victory against Viking raiders. Many of Odo’s men were wounded in battle, and a brash marshal named Ingo was now appointed to carry the royal banner. The Viking leader was captured and led away to the bishopric of Limoges. There, he was presented with a stark choice: life if he were baptized, death if he refused. At once, he asked to be baptized. But some doubted whether he really had any faith (“Sed dubium, an fidei quicquam habuit”). The feast of Pentecost was approaching, one of two times commonly set for baptism, and at that moment, bishops were also gathering to take counsel with the king. They duly advised that this chieftain be made to undergo a three-day fast in preparation. That done, he was brought to the font, immersed three times in the name of the Triune God, and handed up from the font by King Odo acting as godfather. At that moment, Ingo leaped forward, drew his sword, and ran the Viking through so that blood gushed out over the consecrated font. The king exploded in rage, and the princes shouted for Ingo’s death. He pitched his sword and ran off to clutch the altar of St. Martial, screaming for sanctuary and a chance to be heard. The king relented. Ingo conceded that he had injured his royal majesty, even to the point of treason (regiam maiestatem me lęsisse), but all for a greater good. This Viking had sought baptism only in fear, he argued, and would have returned seeking revenge. “I turned my sword against him, he insists, for the well-being (salutem) of the king and his men.” The whole issue for Ingo, he claims, was the honor and safety of the king. These princes, amazed, puzzled over whether Ingo, having just murdered the king’s new godson, now deserved retribution, or perhaps reward. On seeing Ingo’s earlier battle wounds, they were moved to mercy and sought clemency from the king. There was no gain, they argued, in having any more of his men die. He should instead rejoice: this murdered chieftain had (eternal) life if he died a baptized believer (fidelis), but his plots were foiled if he had come to the font in guile. King Odo relented, and in gratitude rewarded Ingo with a castle and a widow.1 1

  Richer of Reims, Historiae, in MGH SS 38, ed. Hartmut Hoffmann (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2000), pp. 45–7.

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Richer of St. Rémi in Reims lived and wrote in the city where Clovis was baptized and later kings crowned, and he wrote history there. A monk by profession and a story-teller by trade (Historiae), he reveled in the lore and deeds of Frankish kings.2 His tale of a bloodied christening, told near the opening of his work, highlighted prestige, baptisms, royal godparentage, kingly honor, and much more. As Richer retold the story, whatever his source, several diverging attitudes and impulses came into play at the font. The recently elevated Ingo saw a Viking falsifying baptism and deceiving his royal godfather, while the princes saw a murdered godson and an insulted royal godfather, thus defiling kingly majesty and holy rite alike. Yet these warriors went on to argue, with success, that the baptism itself was valid if this man had received it rightly, and treason was foiled if he had not—thus a win–win. In these deliberations or arguments, as Richer recounts them, no bishops nor priests played any part. At stake here were political submission and religious integration, grandly staged at a font by way of baptism and godparentage. This was not new. In 785, Charlemagne had acted as godfather to the conquered Saxon Widukind, and in 826, Louis the Pious to the exiled Danish King Harold. Even earlier, when Charlemagne put down a Saxon rebellion in 777 and many were then baptized, he threatened each with loss of freedom and goods if from that day on they did not stick to their christianitas along with fidelitas to himself, his sons, and the Frankish people.3 Christianitas and fidelitas, Latin abstractions in form, referred in religious and social practice to christening and sworn loyalty—each a ritual act performed in public, each a rite creating a pact that opened out into a lifetime of action and obligation, fealty to the king and fidelity to God here deliberately interwoven. In the letter Charlemagne sent to his wife informing her of his victory over the Avars, he described it as the work of fideles Dei ac nostri.4 Such usages would enter the formula for written documents in Louis the Pious’s chancery as: “Be it known to all the faithful of holy church and of ourselves.”5 Fideles in the church, the baptized, and fideles to the king, subjects sworn to loyalty, were essentially one. Saxon and Salian kings would inherit the formula, their address often reading simply: “To the faithful of Christ and ourselves.” But could a rite performed mostly on infants, from time to time still on defeated peoples, be foundational to a society? Did princes and warriors really argue about whether a Viking had faith, or deserved death for undertaking 2

  Beyond Hoffmann’s introduction, see Jason Glenn, Politics and History in the Tenth Century: The Work and World of Richer of Reims (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 3   Annales regni Francorum, in MGH SS rer. Ger. 6, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz and Friedrich Kurze (Hanover, 1895), p. 48 (with variants through the annales tradition). 4   Alcuin, Epistola 20, in MGH Epp. 4, ed. Ernst Dümmler (Berlin, 1895), p. 528. 5   See Theo Kölzer, Kaiser Ludwig der Fromme (814–840) im Spiegel seiner Urkunden (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2005).

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baptism falsely, or was faithfully transported to heaven? It is not news that Carolingian elites issued considerable legislation as well as commentary on the subject of baptism—a matter scholars have noted and reflected on over the past generation and on which one of the editors of this volume is completing a major book. Nor is it news that Carolingian kings and bishops increasingly conceived of and projected their polity as “the Christian people,” even if we have as yet no definitive study of that notion. This chapter—by a colleague and friend wandering in from the high Middle Ages—attempts to capture in broader perspective some of the changing meanings of this notion of a society founded on christening. It cannot approach the in-depth study Mayke de Jong recently completed on the “penitential state” she sees arising out of the reign of Louis the Pious.6 Baptism, however, and even earlier, was repeatedly featured in concerned and even detailed legislation. Moreover, the presence of this rite in nearly everyone’s life, christening as a recurrent ritual moment and social reality, as the sacred foundation on which all was built: this reverberated in ways that historians sometimes may read past—or at least so I will suggest. Our opening scene, from the end of the ninth century, takes us deep into assumptions at the heart of Carolingian religion and politics—matters Thomas F.X. Noble has spent his life teaching and writing about. Between the fifth and the eighth centuries, baptizing infants had gradually and silently become the customary social practice in Europe.7 Christening bestowed a personal name and a guardian angel, fit each child into a network of spiritual kin, joined them to the “Christian people” (populus christianus) inhabiting Europe, opened the doors of the Church to lifelong membership and the gates of heaven to an everlasting future. Most European Christians knew only people who were christened. After the eighth century, converts on the frontier, perhaps an occasional Jew, no one else, underwent adult baptism. Images of the rite, when not of converts, treated infant baptism as normal: thus the ivory cover carved during the second quarter of the ninth century for the front of Drogo of Metz’s sacramentary (823–55). With nearly no written commentary, baptism had shifted over the centuries from the conscious choice of some adults to a sacramental seal imprinted on all infants; the baptistery itself from a separate monument erected alongside a Roman city’s Christian basilica to a font set up in baptismal churches or minsters in scattered towns 6

  Mayke de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–40 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 7   On early medieval baptism, see Peter Cramer, Baptism and Change in the Early Middle Ages, c. 200–c. 1150 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), and Owen M. Phelan, “The Formation of Christian Europe: Baptism Under the Carolingians” (PhD dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 2005), each with bibliographies. A short, but thoughtful, contribution is Michel Rubellin, “Entrée dans la vie, entrée dans la chrétienté, entrée dans la société: autour du baptême à l’époque carolingienne,” Annales de l’Est 34 (1982): 31–51.

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and settlements; catechism and the scrutinies from an extended period of testing and learning for adults to a ritual exorcism of infants; the rite from an interrogatory exchange to a priestly conferral, and godparents from spiritual mentors to guarantors entering into spiritual kinship. Historians have sometimes evoked these differences as decline.8 So far as we can see, churchmen had, for their part, continued copying and reciting the ancient ritual prescriptions designed for adults, while at the same time expecting now to christen all infants. Ninth-century Carolingians did not know when the baptism of children had become standard. Walafrid Strabo, for instance, ascribed it to doctrinal considerations anchored in the teaching of Augustine (rescuing children from original sin) more than to sociological custom.9 When Charlemagne imposed order on the conquered Saxons in the late eighth century, he (or his clerical advisers) stipulated that children be baptized by the end of their first year.10 Evidence is scant, but social practice likely extended christening in reality up to about the third year. Strabo seems to refer, as do others, to children able to talk as well as infants who cannot. So too in justifying triple immersion over against the Visigothic practice of single immersion, he speaks of “children” (infans) immersed one or three times, but likewise of “infusion” (pouring or sprinkling water over a child’s head) as “standard” (solet evenire) when those brought forward would not fit into smaller vessels (“cum provectiorum granditas corporum in minoribus vasis hominem tingui non patitur”).11 By c. 840, this suggests, baptism was spreading beyond cathedrals, maybe also beyond baptismal churches, to churches lacking fonts suitable for full or partial immersion. There, one had and used “vessels” (copper or bronze containers), with christening conferred on infants, but also on children of some size, maybe already talking. Still, beyond emergencies, the rite was restricted in principle, as in late antiquity, to the Easter vigil or Pentecost. In social practice, what loomed large for adults was the naming of their child and its formal familial incorporation into church and community together with the spiritual kinship formed by godparentage.12 When Frankish kings 8

  Thus Cramer, Baptism, explicitly.   Alice Harting-Correa, Walafrid Strabo’s Libellus de exordiis et incrementis quarundam

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in observationibus ecclesiasticis rerum. A Translation and Liturgical Commentary (New York: Brill, 1996), pp. 510–11. 10   Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae, c. 19, in MGH Capit. 1, ed. Alfred Boretius (Hanover, 1883), p. 69. 11   Walafrid Strabo, Libellus de exordiis, 512, 511. 12   On godparentage and its social and political bonds, there is now a large literature. See Arnold Angenendt, Kaiserherrschaft und Königstaufe: Kaiser, Könige und Päpste als geistliche Patrone in der abendländischen Missionsgeschichte (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1984), more generally, Joseph H. Lynch, Godparents and Kinship in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

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acted as godfathers to conquered kings or chieftains, they created a kinship bond as powerful in principle as any sprung from natural birth. Religious birth sealed ritually a reality the Frankish court grasped politically: baptism formed a people, merged a pagan gens into the populus christianus. King Odo, a pretender by Carolingian standards, was understandably outraged when a marshal, a mere horse-tender ex mediocribus, brazenly spoiled his victory rite by murdering his captured godson and desecrating the holy font. Most of the conversation around that font, at least as narrated by Richer a century later, turned on royal majesty, fidelity, treason, trust, honor. Christening’s inherent sacral powers, even at a bloodied font, were taken entirely for granted; this was indeed central to the event’s turning ultimately in a positive direction. Three centuries into this ground-level shift in ritual practice, amidst heightened attention to “fidelity” in all forms, baptism pressed itself onto the public stage, a generation into Charlemagne’s reign. Action was prompted in part, it would appear, by his queries and worries and decrees. One point was manifest: no one could serve as a godparent who could not recite the Prayer or Creed. Recently, at Epiphany, he had observed many approaching the font as godparents who, when he asked that they be examined, could not say these holy words; this a matter, he added indignantly, on which he had himself issued a capitulary. So the emperor wrote to the bishop of Liège, his bishop since Aachen lay within the diocese, asking what he was going to do about this.13 The emperor’s disgruntled query did not appear in a vacuum. Going back a few years now, some bishops had begun to issue statutes specifying what their diocesan priests had to know and do—these enjoinders sometimes read out in synodal assemblies, sometimes passed on to priests in manuscript along with other pastoral materials for reading and re-reading.14 The earliest of these several texts (and often those subsequently most widely transmitted) came from bishops close to Charlemagne’s court (Ghaerbald and Waltcaud of Liège, Theodulf of Orléans, Hatto of Basel). Ghaerbald’s began precisely with the point in question. Those unable to recite the Prayer and Creed should be made to appear before him, he stipulated, since it was a condition for serving as godparents; more, they University Press, 1986), and Bernhard Jussen, Spiritual Kinship as Social Practice: Godparenthood and Adoption in the Early Middle Ages (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2000). 13   Wilhelm A. Eckhardt, Die Kapitulariensammlung Bischof Ghaerbalds von Lüttich, Germanenrechte, Neue Folge, Deutschrechtliches Archiv 5 (Göttingen: Musterschmidt Verlag, 1955), pp. 112–14. No firm date can be fixed, some time before 809, possibly 802 or 803. 14   These may all be found now in MGH Capit. episc., ed. Peter Brommer and Rudolph Pokorny (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1984–2005), three volumes of text with the fourth volume given over to a summary study by Pokorny. Studies are now multiplying; see, for instance, Carine van Rhijn, Shepherds of the Lord: Priests and Episcopal Statutes in the Carolingian Period (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007).

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were obliged in turn to pass the Prayer and Creed on to godchildren.15 This requirement, adumbrated in older legislation, reinforced now by Carolingian bishops as well as kings and princes, wove together the baptismal rite, the laity’s right to stand as godparents, and an ability to recite Creed and Prayer into a single socio-religious fabric.16 The principle and practice would henceforward remain foundational, indeed to the end of Old Europe in the eighteenth century or later, for all local practice and pastoral care.17 But in the early ninth century, “many,” so it was said, could not recite Prayer or Creed when challenged, though virtually all wanted their children baptized and expected to serve as godparents. Near the end of his life, Charlemagne wrote (c. 812) to the metropolitans of his realm, pressing them, warning them once again (pellamus atque commoneamus) to look to the “utility” of the Church. He plied them with multiple questions about the rite and its words, so the “number of the Christian people might be multiplied.”18 Bishops meeting in council at Reims the next year (813) put it more bluntly: the whole matter of baptizing and catechizing should be “aired out” (ventilata), they said, so that “priests fully understood how with proper rites they were to make a Christian” (“qualiter condignis ordinibus efficerent christianum”).19 Making Christians was presumed. Making them rightly and effectively, with ritual correctness, a grasp of what the rites meant and entailed, could not be taken for granted. In a society conceived as a kingdom of the christened, this potentially cast a long shadow over that society’s status before Almighty God. Ninth-century churchmen produced more than sixty(!) extant letters or treatises commenting on baptism, many independently of the king’s questions. Several were owing to

15

  Ghaerbald of Liège, Ghaerbald II, c. 1–3, in MGH Capit. episc. 1, ed. Brommer, p. 26. “Ghaerbald I” is in fact not such an episcopal capitulary; see Rudolf Pokorny, MGH Capit. episc. 4, pp. 93–6; Van Rhijn, Shepherds, pp. 219–28, and n. 107 below. 16   In Romance countries, these texts ordinarily were recited in Latin. Note that Amalarius speaks of godparents “chanting” or “singing” them: “deinde prescrutamur patrinos uel matrinas, si possint cantare orationem dominicam et symbolum sicut praemonuimus …”; Amalarius of Metz, “Text 23,” in Susan A. Keefe, ed., Water and the Word: Baptism and the Education of Clergy in the Carolingian Empire (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), vol. 2, p. 346. Singing or chanting might well make memorization easier compared to reciting prose Latin. 17   Recall that the adolescent peasant girl Joan of Arc, challenged by an inquisitor in the early fifteenth century to say the Prayer and Creed, kept silent, possibly a gesture of resistance or defiance, possibly from fear of getting it wrong or misremembering under duress. The inquisitor and her enemies then turned this silence against her. 18   “Text 14,” in Water and the Word, vol. 2, pp. 261–2. 19   Concilium Remense, a. 813, c. 7, in MGH Conc. 2, ed. Albert Werminghoff (Hanover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1906), p. 254.

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episcopal initiatives from the 820s, and then especially in the West Frankish kingdom from the 850s onward.20 Nearly all explanations followed the order of the ritual. The first step, also for children, was to transform a “pagan” into a “catechumen.”21 Exorcising the demonic rivaled, or in effect replaced, an express personal renunciation of the Devil and his works, which was not possible for an infant.22 What those attending saw and heard was a cosmic drama played out over their child. In a world where, in Rhabanus Maurus’ words, “the Devil and his angels swirled round the Christian people seeking whom they might deceive with their poisonous arts,”23 the diabolic, in the words of Alcuin’s commentary, had to be driven off, permanently sealed out, to make room for God and faith to dwell within, rendering a person one of God’s, a fidelis.24 The christening of a child and the christening of a people, moreover, and notably, were conceived much the same, even of a piece. When missionaries and armies advanced on nonChristian peoples and purged them or their lands of all things Satanic, or at least were portrayed as doing so, they implemented at large what they practiced at home when they undertook to christen and “catechize” their own children. To convert the English people, Bede said, was to liberate them from the “power of Satan.”25 Those sealed in Christ at baptism, those on whose foreheads the sign of the cross left its permanent (invisible) mark, were claimed for Triune God, 20

  Basic now, with an edition of the texts, is Keefe, Water and the Word. For further interpretation, with bibliography, see Phelan, “Formation,” pp. 160–218. 21   The first words of the explanation ascribed to Alcuin: “Text 9,” in Water and the Word, vol. 2, pp. 238–45. Cf. the explanation, probably from seventh-century Rome, in the text provided by André Wilmart, “Un florilège carolingien sur le symbolisme des cérémonies du baptême, avec un Appendice sur le lettre de Jean Diacre,” in Analecta Reginensia 174, Studi e Testi 59 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1933), p. 172. For an important argument favoring Alcuin’s authorship, see Owen M. Phelan, “Textual Transmission and Authorship in Carolingian Europe: Primo paganus, Baptism, and Alcuin of York,” Revue Bénédictine 118 (2008): 262–88, also with observations on “pastoral” collections in Carolingian manuscripts. 22   Though prayers changed and usage might vary enormously, the essential rite was present already in the seventh-century Roman Ordo XI for baptism, as were the prayers in the Gelasian Sacramentary: Leo Cunibert Mohlberg and Leo Eizenhöfer, eds., Liber sacramentorum Romanae Aeclesiae ordinis anni circuli (Cod. Vat. Reg. lat. 316/Paris B.N. 7193. 41/56), 3rd edn. (Rome: Herder, 1981), no. 44ff., and the basic explanation used by Carolingians in the florilegium edited by Wilmart, “Un florilège.” 23   Rhabanus Maurus, Homilia 11, in PL 110, pp. 24–5, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1852). 24   A common teaching; for a rhetorically more elaborate version, see Theodulf ’s response to Charlemagne’s enquiry written for Archbishop Magnus of Sens: “Text 16,” in Water and the Word, vol. 2, pp. 287–8. 25   Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 122.

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liberated from the power of the Devil (who could see but not penetrate that mark), and thus “converted” by this “sacrament of conversion,” as it was also called. This “sacrament of faith,” another name for it, hereby rendered them one of the “faithful,” even if that “faith” was not yet present or active in the “will” of infant “believers.”26 By convenience and social custom, “catechizing,” central to Christian formation in the late antique Roman Church, had become transformed over the centuries into the first item in a ritual christening of infants.27 But now ninthcentury reformers demanded, following the script of the inherited Roman order, that bishops and priests carry out a set series of rites throughout Lent as specified by the ancient documents.28 In an anonymous episcopal capitulary, likely from the region of Basel, priests were enjoined to distinguish between the scrutinies and the baptism, which suggests that for some, or even many, it all had become a ritual blur. Here too, notably, christening (christianitas), that special rite of integration staged only two or three times a year, is clearly separated from baptizing the sick (baptismum ad succurendum infirmis)—as these two regularly were since they were two distinct rites, each to be memorized as such by priests.29 Intriguing in my view, and insufficiently elucidated as yet, is how these Carolingian baptismal commentaries dutifully went about reviewing and explicating all those words and rites written centuries earlier, basically for adults, while simultaneously trying to create space now, one might say anthropologically, for their being exercised upon infants: thus a “taste for the divine word” awakened by salt on the tongue and “planting the documents” (Creed and Prayer) in a “house” (body) from which the demonic was uprooted and swept clean. Sometimes one can detect the seams. Amalarius, in his response to Charlemagne, swept up in a single sentence both making the sign of the cross over infants and teaching godparents the Prayer.30 At the end of his introductory 26

  This from near the close of Amalarius’ long commentary answering Charlemagne’s enquiry: “De parvulis non intellegentibus et tamen fidem habentibus. Quamuis parvuli pro aetate non possint intelligere ipsam conversionem ad deum atque credulitatem, credimus tamen eos ad deum convertere propter conversionis sacramentum, et fidem habere propter fidei sacramentum …. Itaque parvulum, etsi nondum fides quae in credentium voluntate consistit, iam tamen ipsius fidei sacramentum fidelem facit”; Amalarius of Metz, “Text 23,” in Water and the Word, vol. 2, pp. 348–9. 27   See the Hadrianum in Jean Deshusses, ed., Le sacramentaire grégorien: ses principales formes d’après les plus anciens manuscrits, 3rd edn., Spicilegium Friburgense 16 (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires, 1992), pp. 359ff., 1,080ff. 28   Thus, for instance, Jesse of Amiens, “Text 30,” in Water and the Word, vol. 2, pp. 405–28, perhaps the most elaborate of these texts. 29   Capitula Florentina, c. 5, MGH Capit. episc. 1, ed. Brommer, p. 222. Brommer did not understand the term christianitas here; see his n. 12. 30   Amalarius of Metz, “Text 23,” in Water and the Word, vol. 2, p. 339.

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paragraph, before taking up each ritual item, he explained that in the case of infants,31 this was all being done so that darkness might be driven from the heart, the bonds of Satan broken, and these children rendered fit to know what to do and not do upon growing up.32 This seems a more sober theological and sociological gesture toward christening as actually practiced and understood. So too the telltale remark at the very end, after going through each item: when a person begins to grow in wisdom (sapere), they do not “repeat the sacrament, but understand it”, and then to conform their will to a consonant (divine) will.33 Following the late antique rite, reformers now declared that the names of children and their sponsors were to be registered on Tuesday in the third week of Lent, and the children then “catechized”—that is, the sign of the cross placed on their foreheads and salt on their tongues. In subsequent weeks, there followed an opening of the ears to hear the Gospel, a touching of the nose through which the breath of faith passed, a handing over of Prayer and Creed, a sealing of the chest with oil and cross, followed by baptism at the Easter vigil. How many ninthcentury people put their children through this in full is not known. The Fulda sacramentary of 975 (now in Göttingen) has a unique image of this registration: a church building with a bishop seated in the center, men holding boy babies to his right, women holding girl babies to his left, priests taking down in books the names of boys, deacons of girls, and all preparing for the first signing with the cross. Even more difficult to know is how many people in Carolingian Europe were able to have their infants so initiated and christened—that is, how readily they had access to a baptismal font and priest. These might well be miles and miles away at a church only occasionally visited. Work on local church foundations has advanced in the last generation, especially for Anglo-Saxon England and Lombard Italy, but the Carolingian ecclesial landscape below the episcopal level is still not easy to penetrate, or at least as yet has not been. Episcopal capitularies setting out priestly duties and rites mostly presume rather than prescribe where these were to take place, thus which churches possessed a font. Some canons 31

  In nearly all these texts, the term is consistently parvulus, which I generally translate as “infant,” though obviously it can mean “child” up to age six or seven. Churchmen appear to have expected babies to be baptized by the end of their first or second year, the normative admonition. Much depended in practice upon a family’s access to churches and their religious intensity about the matter. If infants were not “sick,” baptism appears to have been more relaxed and casual, doubtless a matter of local customs to which we have now nearly no access except by way of the odd anecdote. 32   “Super parvulos orationem facimus ut cecitas cordis ab eis expellatur, disrumpantur laquei satanae quibus fuerant conligati, et idonei efficiantur per incrementa et ministrationem membrorum ea cognoscere quae dimittenda sunt et quae tenenda”; Amalarius of Metz, “Text 23,” in Water and the Word, vol. 2, p. 339. 33   Ibid., p. 349.

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foresaw baptism taking place still at the cathedral baptistery on Easter, people then returning to a local church for mass. Bishop Haito of Basel (d. 836), as early as 806–13, expected baptism only on Easter and Pentecost, with local priests keeping a clean vessel to serve as a font (vas ad fontem baptismatis) for emergencies, thus a real font ordinarily still only at the cathedral or in recognized baptismal churches.34 Ninth-century lords were building churches on their estates or in their villages and procuring priests to say mass and the office. These lordly village churches increasingly appropriated functions once restricted to episcopally recognized baptismal churches, if under protest, especially once tithes came inextricably linked to a “mother” font.35 Many of those warrior-lords around Odo conceivably had churches in their charge and would have acted as godfathers to their people as kings did to chieftains, likely also as overseers of local priests and their activities. One may read this in two ways. Certainly, formerly “public” (baptismal) churches were falling into the hands of lords. A warning about this already issued c. 790 was repeated in the foundational synods at Mainz in 813, and again under Rhabanus Maurus in 847.36 When about the same time (799–800) stipulations were made for the Church in Bavaria, they began with such publicly authorized baptisteries (legalia baptisteria) which were to have a holy font (sacra fons ibidem aedificatur) to be set up throughout the dioceses.37 For the interpreter, it is hard at times to work out when these laws were putting institutions in place initially, as it sounds here, or trying to rein in a situation on the ground where churches were multiplying helter-skelter and local churchmen doing what local custom expected or local people demanded, including christening. So too the endless reminders throughout all these Carolingian capitularies and canons that baptism should ordinarily take place only at Easter or Pentecost and only in proper baptismal churches suggests that in social reality a very different practice 34

  Haito of Basel, Capitula, c. 7, in MGH Capit. episc. 1, ed. Brommer, p. 211. Some form of this prescription is very common; a whole list of parallels can be found in Pokorny, MGH Capit. episc. 4, n. 9. 35   Already in 803 at Salz, the specification was made that tithes were to go to the “ancient” baptismal churches, and that while bishops might grant lords the right to build churches on their land, the older churches could not be defrauded of their tithes or rights (which would include first of all the right to baptize); Capitula ecclesiastica ad Salz, c. 2–3, in MGH Capit. 1, ed. Boretius, p. 119. Cf. Susan Wood, The Proprietary Church in the Medieval West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 66ff., 519ff., 804ff. 36   Pippini Capitulare, c. 2, in MGH Capit. 1, ed. Boretius, p. 200; Concilium Mainz a. 847, c. 11, in MGH Conc. 3, ed. Wilfried Hartmann (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1984), p. 168. 37   Statuta Rhispacensia Frisingensia Salisburgensia, c. 32, in MGH Capit. 1, ed. Boretius, p. 229.

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was doubtless occurring on the ground.38 A canon from 845 had lords, and especially ladies (maxime potentes femine), compelling priests in their household to act as overseers of the godly virtues and teachers of the Prayer and Creed.39 Whether those same ladies also oversaw a church with a font staging baptisms, or were only pressing local priests to equip their people for serving as godparents wherever baptism actually took place, is not entirely clear. Contemporaries might wonder aloud—Alcuin famously about the Saxons and Avars, and some around King Odo too—about the legitimacy and efficacy of pagans baptized at sword-point. Yet in general, people had no doubt about the rite’s power if correctly performed. Infants “received the faith,” as they put it, and that Viking was headed for heaven if his purposes were genuine. To uncover all the religious energies at work in the Carolingian rite and its accompanying practices would require far more than a paragraph or two.40 But some observations are in order. Words carried the rite, words to accompany each gesture, each part of a child being blessed, these chanted in Latin, which was still intelligible in part in Romance regions, words Hincmar of Reims wanted his priests to know by heart.41 Their incantatory quality must have reassured: God of Abram, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, God who appeared to your servant Moses on Mount Sinai and led the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt … send your angel to watch over this one and lead him/her to the grace of your baptism. … Accursed Devil, see now your sentence, and show honor to the one true God. And may you never dare violate this sign of the holy cross which we make on his/her forehead.42

38

  Halitgar II, c. 15, in MGH Capit. N.S. 1, ed. Gerhard Schmitz (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1996); repeated even more sharply, for instance, in Concilium Meaux-Paris, c. 48, in MGH Conc. 3, ed. Hartmann, p. 108. 39   Concilium Meaux-Paris, c. 77, in MGH Conc. 3, ed. Hartmann, p. 124. 40   Orientation to the rites in Arnold Angenendt, “Der Taufritus im frühen Mittelalter,” in Segni e riti nella chiesa altomedievale occidentale: 11–17 aprile 1985, Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo 33 (Spoleto: Presso la sede del Centro, 1987), pp. 275–321. 41   “Exorcismos et orationes ad cathecuminos faciendum, ad fontem quoque consecrandum, et ceteras preces super masculos et feminas pluraliter atque singulariter, distincte et rationabiliter, memorię commendet …”; Hincmar I, c. 3, in MGH Capit. episc. 2, ed. Pokorny and Stratmann, p. 35. Plainly, Archbishop Hincmar was worried about local priests mumbling through rites, not even able to distinguish singular from plural, as much as reformers worried about godparents mumbling through Creed and Prayer. Notably, his first injunction here (Hincmar I, c. 1, MGH Capit. episc. 2, 34) was that priests learn these texts, then instruct people in them by way of preaching. This text addressed the suitability of mainly rural priests, gathered at Reims on November 1 (a traditional date for such), not the cathedral clergy, or perhaps the clergy in older established baptismal churches. 42   Deshusses, Sacramentaire grégorien, 377, no. 1,080.

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The font’s water was invested with powers of spiritual cleansing—a power, as the opening prayer in the blessing of these fonts said, to “give birth” (parturit) to “new people” (ad creandos novos populos).43 Mothers’ wombs gave birth to the flesh, mother-church’s font to the spirit. To make this distinction manifest, also to avoid violating sexual taboos now grown up around godparentage, mothers were barred from the baptism of their children.44 In the 840s, the noblewoman Dhuoda did not yet know the name of her second still unchristened child. Famously writing to her 16-year-old son, she “wished him vigor” from his first birth sprung from her own body, and “admonished him to perseverance” in his second arising from his christening.45 The font accordingly enjoyed a central position in ecclesiastical administration, and also in religious outlook. The cover of Drogo’s sacramentary, interestingly, depicted the blessing of a font, but not confession or last rites. Hincmar wanted priests also to know by heart the rite for blessing fonts,46 probably first of all for those smaller vessels for emergency baptisms, but also for consecrating fonts as these devolved into country churches (in my view, more commonly in the tenth and eleventh centuries). Further, then, the more Carolingians came now to regard themselves as a christened people, as a people born of the font, so too the more sharply they projected the phantom of those “pagan” peoples triumphantly overcome or still to be conquered.47 Thus, Heathens worshiped at unholy springs, the inverse of that font of life represented so often in Carolingian manuscript illumination. In the life of Willibrord written by Alcuin between 785 and 797, the Anglo-Saxon missionary encounters this stupid religion (stultam relegionem), as Alcuin put it, of the people of Helgoland in Frisia. They lived in awe of a meadow endowed with shrines and a sacred spring. Willibrord deliberately baptized three people there, presumably after blessing its waters with that prayer for spiritual fecundity, then ate the meat of animals grazing in those pastures—all without personal harm and to the amazement of locals.48 Such acts and stories obviously aimed to confirm the utterly un-sacral status of non-Christian rites or sites, but at the same time, we should remember, 43

  Mohlberg and Eizenhöfer, eds., Liber sacramentorum Romanae, no. 44.   43. “… ut sit discretio inter spiritalem generationem atque carnalem”; Walafrid Strabo,

44

Libellus de exordiis, p. 512. See Concilium Mainz a. 813, c. 55, in MGH Conc. 2, ed. Werminghoff, p. 273. This rule is documentable only from the ninth century. 45   Dhuoda, Liber manualis, ed. Pierre Riché, Sources chrétiennes 225 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1975), pp. 300–302. 46   See n. 41 above. 47   Cf. Jonathan Couser, “Inventing Paganism in Eighth-century Bavaria,” Early Medieval Europe 18 (2010): 26–42. 48   Alcuin, Vita Sancti Willibrordi, in MGH rer. Merov. 7, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison (Hanover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1920), pp. 124–5.

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the telling and re-telling of them enhanced the sacral position of the holy font in their local church or cathedral. Beyond the font, words were important too: the godparents’ Creed and Prayer, or in the case of adults, the vows they entered into at the rite. Participants were to pronounce a threefold renunciation of the Devil and to confess a Triune Godhead. Very early Frankish and Saxon versions of these texts confirm their usage on the missionary frontier, the Saxon version famous for elaborating the Devil’s work to include forsaking Thor, Wodan, Saxnote, and all un-heroic enemy gods (unholdum).49 For those already inside the christened community—, the overwhelming majority—ninth-century reformers now laid unprecedented emphasis upon adult sponsors as “faith-swearers” on behalf of infants, the Prayer and Creed said aloud and by heart. These pressures in turn reinforced the texts’ importance, likely hastening, maybe sometimes initiating, their re-working into dialects of Old High German, at the latest by the 790s.50 An “exhortation” found in Latin and Old High German (one manuscript from Boniface’s Fulda) explained that those who had received the Christian name (christânium namun) must have by heart the testamentary proof (chundida) of their christânheiti, their christening and what came with it. How, it asked indignantly, could a person who still did not “know the faith” step forward to serve as its guarantor (purgeo) or make promises for someone else? You should know as well, the admonition goes on, that if you do receive someone from baptism (taufî)—that is, hand them up from the font as a godparent—you are obliged (reus = sculdig) before God and will have to render account of your teaching at the Judgment. All who wanted to be called “Christian” or to receive people from baptism should thus hasten to learn these few words delivered by the Holy Ghost to the teachers of the Church (magistris ecclesiae), in German “masters of christening” (maistrom dere christânheiti), with, of course, all it entailed.51 In the people’s tongue, what they were entering into, and had to make their own, were the words and notions and rites that sprang from “christening,” and the obligations or way of life that was to follow from it. For the people, as we will see, “church” referred more to buildings and institutions and prelates. Inclusion in this society and culture came by way of corporate “guarantors” (fideiussores), people who “swore the faith” on behalf of infants. Amalarius clarified for Charlemagne, just before launching into his closing peroration, that “those bound by another’s sin are loosed by another’s profession.” Such a corporate vision accounted for children who could not themselves speak (de parvulis non loquentibus),52 “taken up from the font” by their “faith-swearers.” This corporate 49

    51   52   50

Wilhelm Braune, Althochdeutsches Lesebuch (Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1902), 164, no. 36. Angenendt, “Taufritus im frühen Mittelalter,” p. 291. Braune, Lesebuch, 27, no. 6. “Text 23,” in Water and the Word, vol. 2, pp. 348–9.

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understanding, often repeated, seemed all the more readily intelligible to a society where collective purgation regularly served as a way to establish guilt and innocence—in this instance, people swearing on behalf of a charged party. In the case of christening, the corporate vision went all the way back in a lineal and narrative line to the origins of the human race and the sinful stain carried since Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Paradise for yielding to Satan: now, in reverse, the cleansing of that stain came together with the child’s incorporation into and among the privileged people of Christ. Bishop Theodulf put it this way: it was right that infants held accountable for the sins of others should receive a remitting of sins by the profession of others.53 Christening grafted a child into a lineage reaching back to the first humans, a lineage renewed, wherein they also acquired a family of spiritual kin, a community of fellow members called “Christian,” and a place in this kingdom that included all the christened. But what of those who did not have or want this name? On the whole, Carolingian kings and prelates were relatively quiet about them, notwithstanding the bloody Saxon and Avar campaigns. Partly they thought the job largely done. Paschasius Radbertus, writing his Matthew commentary in the 830s in Corbie, observed that further north, a few places and peoples still remained where Christ had not been preached, but very few; in their ferocity, they mostly refused the faith. To the west, the islands (Britain, Ireland) were all evangelized. To the south and east lay the Saracens; their perversion of Jewish law and Christian Gospel had proved so great that many expected the Antichrist would arise among them.54 The world, from the vantage point of christening and northern Francia, was essentially accounted for, though there were, so to speak, the lesser christened. From Mainz on the Rhine in 852, Moravia could be characterized as such a place, at the extreme boundaries of the kingdom, where christening in that broader sense was still crude (“in rudem adhuc christianitatem gentis Maraensium”) and a person might flee with his adulterous lover.55As for Jews living among the christened, Carolingian kings appeared mostly tolerant, to the vast irritation, famously, of Bishop Agobard of Lyon. Jews, along with some Christians, held slaves from beyond the frontier, mostly non-Christian Slavs. Christian law had held since Roman times that the baptized could not be enslaved to the non-baptized. Some slaves 53   “Confessionem suam plane diximus, quia quamuis illi necdum loqui possint, pro illis et confitentur et loquuntur qui eos de lavacro fontis suscipiunt. Nec inmerito dignum est ut qui aliorum peccatis obnoxii sunt, aliorum etiam confessione per mysterium baptismatis remissionem originalium percipant peccatorum”; Theodulf of Orléans, “Text 16,” in Water and the Word, vol. 2, pp. 292–3. 54   Paschasius Radbertus, Expositio in Matheo Libri XII, in CCCM 56B, ed. Bedae Paulus (Turnhout: Brepols, 1984), p. 1,163. 55   Concilium Mainz a. 852, c. 11, in MGH Conc. 3, ed. Hartmann, pp. 248–9.

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of Jews were apparently encouraged to ask for baptism—meaning, potentially, liberty. As Agobard described it, those slaves, while housed and nourished in the Jewish community, learned “our” tongue, heard about “faith,” observed Christian rituals, and through this came to a “love for christianitas” and wished to be part of the Church body, and hence asked for baptism (baptismum postulantes).56 His description is surprisingly concrete. Their attachment, at least as described, grew beyond christening in the narrow sense to christening conceived as joining the majority religious culture. None the less, around 825 Emperor Louis found in favor of these Jews. That is to say, he accepted, or was persuaded of, the view that these slaves were seeking baptism, or being urged on to it, mainly in the hope of escaping lords, not out of any new-found faith or growing attachment to christening’s people.57 More broadly, in the culture of Carolingian Europe, “Jews” also served as intellectual foils, as attested, for instance, in those massive volumes of Carolingian biblical commentary. Some of these monks may have been writing with real Jews in mind—but whether experienced as actual interlocutors or opponents, or simply as imaginary foils, is much harder to say. “Jews” mostly served as an exegetical archetype for a people who refused to take on the name of christening or to participate in its rites and culture.58 Christening was becoming one with the social practice and cultural selfconsciousness of these peoples, and more so with Carolingian princes and prelates trying to encourage an even higher level of awareness and practice. This corporate inclusion of all infants by means of “faith-swearers” lifting them from the font, or that projection of a world of pagans, Jews and infidels outside the community of the baptistery—these moved christening into the worlds of polity and ideology, that community grasped as the populus christianus.59 Consider one well-known text. In 842, the Strasburg oaths settling fratricidal dynastic warfare would employ this term in the vernacular. Louis and Charles swore peace “in/for the love of God, and in/for this Christian people [thes christianes folches, christian poblo] and for our mutual well-being [gehaltnissi, saluament].” Embedded in this oath was a double pairing. They swore a pact, invoking their love of God, broadly on behalf of the christened people as 56   Agobard of Lyon, De baptismo mancipiorum iudaeorum, in CCCM 52, ed. Lieven van Acker (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981), p. 115. For a broader discussion and literature, see Phelan, “Formation,” pp. 84–96. 57   Louis the Pious, Formulae Imperiales, c. 30, in MGH Formulae Merowingici et Karolini aevi, ed. Karl Zeumer (Hanover, 1882), pp. 309–10. 58   See Johannes Heil, Kompilation oder Konstruktion? Die Juden in den Pauluskommentaren des. 9. Jahrhunderts (Hanover: Hahnsche, 1998). 59   Despite many references in a host of books, there is as yet no single study of the term and its multiple meanings; it is what Phelan’s “Formation” is centrally about.

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a whole, but more narrowly for the mutual upholding of the well-being or health (the Romance salus) of these kings and their courts and followers. The references here are personal and sweeping at the same time. “These Christian people” entailed christening, but was not defined by it or reducible to it. The same Latin word, christianitas, alluded to and encompassed the core rite, the religion imagined as a whole, the practices that came with the rite and the religion, and the community born of it. Later European vernaculars would make two distinct words of this single Latin abstraction (Christianity, Christendom) in an effort to distinguish at a minimum the religion from the community. Over time, these two distinct terms would render nearly invisible, even as it still utterly presumed, the rite from which it had all sprung: the naming and incorporating which embraced every European child unless they were Jewish or Muslim or otherwise not Christian. That invisibility mirrored a broader shift in the high Middle Ages. As historians of theology know, down to and through the Carolingian era baptism served as the paradigmatic sacrament in the Christian religion, a role which the Eucharist increasingly assumed from roughly the twelfth century onward. But for Carolingians—whether leaders or people, clerical or lay—the term’s sense resonated still, and in the first instance, with christening itself, even as it now acquired and sustained all those other crucial and overlapping meanings. The rite and its sacred charge, its gestures and words and obligations, opened out into bonds and communities and beliefs and assumptions, small and large, which leaders could invoke for their own purposes Here, I wish to point toward this in three broad areas: the religious, the political, and the generally human. Christening possessed foundational sacred powers and could confer extraordinary human and heavenly privileges, whence the need, even the anxiety, to get it right. However, that very sense of its power could also produce paradoxical, even ironic, outcomes. In his book on the lay estate written c. 828/29, Bishop Jonas of Orléans spent an entire chapter correcting a view—held by several, he said—that the baptismally reborn, no matter how wickedly they lived, faced only purgatorial fire at death and would never finally be lost. Indeed, many were saying this aloud. They risked, he said, deluding themselves and others with a vain sense of security. The un-baptized who do good, Jonas snapped, will be better off than the baptized who carry on in wicked ways.60 His invocation of the good pagan, uncommon in that era, took direct aim at smug “faithful” who claimed the faith, vaunted the name, and expected a blessed hereafter on the strength of their christening. These presumed powers of christening came to expression in quite another way at the upper theological end in Bishop Hincmar of Reims. One of several objections he raised to the teachings of Gottschalk on predestination was that such a sovereign choosing of the saved and the damned 60

  Jonas of Orléans, De institutione laicali, in PL 106, p. 158, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1851).

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would preclude baptism from possessing and exercising any power in the case of those accounted among the “not predestinated.”61 As opposed to christening conceived as foundational security, Bishop Jonas presented baptism as a pact (pactum), a covenant or agreement entered into with God. This was not new. It went back to early medieval catechetical and post-catechetical sermons, for instance Martin of Braga’s stinging correction of peasants. Jonas positioned it front and center. Christening was not only what they had received as infants (the faith) and had to know as godparents (Prayer and Creed), but equally what they had to do as adults to uphold their end of the pact. Specifically, they were to remember and keep two pacts: to renounce the Devil and his works, that day-to-day struggle to keep at bay the demonic spirits driven out through baptismal exorcism, and to profess the Triune God, a studious effort never to waver in allegiance or fail in fidelity in upholding the godly name they had received at christening.62 Even earlier, Bishop Theodulf, pointedly, moved directly from explaining “renouncing the Devil” into an exposition of the consequent pact. It could be rendered null, he warned, and the faith with it, if one persisted in vice or strayed into idolworship or heresy.63 An early episcopal capitulary, probably from Salzburg or Regensburg, had its bishop instructing local priests to admonish their people to “preserve the holiness of life which they assumed in baptism,” and then as its first point, to abstain from fornication.64 Christening, reformers now urgently taught and admonished, meant more than carrying around an apotropaic shield conferred by holy baptismal waters and the invisible divine marker of cross and name. They themselves had to personally protect and keep what their “faith-swearers” had pledged on their behalf if they were ever to enjoy eternally the benefits of that name. Once alerted, even a casual reader will spot this theme echoed everywhere. Perseverance to the end was key, as Dhuoda reminded her adolescent son away at court and potentially in mortal danger (“magnus est exigendus atque exercendus labor studiosus”).65 It was a language of keeping and guarding (custodire) one’s baptismal purity, ancient language in fact, the accent shifted now to keeping those vows their “faith-swearers” had made on their behalf. Thus, also early

61

  Hincmar of Reims, Epistola 37, in MGH Epp. 8.1, ed. Ernst Perels (Berlin: Weidmann, 1939), p. 14. 62   Jonas of Orléans, De institutione laicali, in PL 106, p. 128. 63   Theodulf of Orléans, “Text 16,” in Water and the Word, vol. 2, pp, 299–300. 64   “Ut a presbiteris ammoneatur plebs Christiana ut sanctitatem uitę quam in baptismo adsumit studeat omnimodis conservare; ut abstineant se a fornicationis malo …”; Capitula Bavarica, in MGH Capit. episc. 3, ed. Pokorny, p. 195. 65   Dhuoda, Liber manualis, pp. 68–70, 198.

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on, Arno of Salzburg’s instructions to his clergy: have the people focus on “guarding their baptism, keeping the Christian faith.”66 Around 830, Paschasius Radbertus wrote a tractate on faith (later compiled into a book on faith, hope, and charity) in which he exhorted: “May the Christian remain inside that font of faith in which he was reborn!”67 Baptism, the “sacrament of faith,” is prominent at the beginning of his discussion of faith. He overtly compares the baptismal pactum with God to social contracts people might enter into. In those earthly arrangements, humans might deceive one another or be deceived, and also break oaths; but God could not be deceived by a human. So humans—Paschasius patently reaching here for broader language—must develop an “immense fidelity” that will befit an “immense God” if they are to keep faith with God and neighbor.68 Such keeping faith might well vary in surety at times, as it did even for St. Peter, he notes, but must be made manifest in relations with others and kept until death, thereby also enabling one to overcome fear of death.69 His closing chapter returned to the theme of perseverance, treated now as a godly gift, something received as well as wished for, or exhorted to (subjunctive): to be accounted as one of the christened or faithful (fidelis) is a gift of God—one cannot help but think socially of the “favor” of entry into a lord’s patronage or court—and then to abide in faithful deeds a gift in turn (or return), one people could wish for and be exhorted to.70 Direct comparisons to worldly compacts appeared in Jonas as well, though with a brooding sense—a preacher’s rhetoric, but also his perception of social realities—that people’s attention to worldly pacts often outranked in practice theirs to the baptismal pact. This came to expression most emphatically toward the conclusion of his first book. Many who have “received Christ’s faith” at baptism, he complained, scorn the deeds (opera), thinking the title suffices for them (“christianitatis nomen sibi sufficere putant”). They neglect their “Christian profession.”71 The law of Christ that comes with christening, he pointedly added, is not just for clergy, as some think, and cannot be ignored.72 So which deeds might embody that name, which markers manifest the pact? In some sense, it was the whole moral and religious program, that in 66

  Arno of Salzburg, Concilium Rispacense a. 798, c. 5, in MGH Conc. 2, ed. Werminghoff,

p. 198. 67

  Paschasius Radbertus, De fide, spe et caritate, in CCCM 97, ed. Bedae Paulus (Turnhout: Brepols, 1990), p. 34. This chapter is entitled “De fide baptismi non immutanda.” 68   Ibid., pp. 7–9. 69   Ibid., pp. 56–8. 70   “A quo et per quem et in quo non solum habemus quod fideles sumus, uerum etiam ut in eisdem fidei operibus permaneamus”; ibid., p. 64. 71   Jonas of Orléans, De institutione laicali, in PL 106, pp. 161–6. 72   Ibid., p. 161.

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turn was often hardly separable from the political program. Emphasis under these Carolingians might fall on Sunday observance or fidelity in marriage or disciplining oneself according to the vices and virtues, concrete items, matters of practice, visible and enforceable. Fasting, for instance—an act of both worship and discipline—was one such practice that any but the sick could undertake. Moreover, whether at court or in small villages, its keeping was in some measure public, or at least its breaking. Charlemagne’s infamous capitulary imposing Christian order upon the Saxons employed the term christianitas only once, and then with regard to fasting and with the death penalty attached. Any who ate meat during the “holy Lenten fast” to spite their christening (in despectu christianitatis) risked the death penalty. It was a concrete gesture that both sides could understand, like violating the right of sanction in churches (the preceding item) or killing a bishop or priest (the next item)—those two also enforced with capital punishment.73 Among Christians by birth, the council at Mainz in 813, foundational to the East Frankish or German Church, threatened excommunication (eternal death) if anyone arrogantly disdained the Lenten fast or refused to keep it with all other Christians.74 Pseudo-Boniface’s sermon for the Sunday before Ash Wednesday began with an exhortation to preserve the faith and grace of baptism (“fidem quam accepistis et baptisma conservare valeatis”), and to use this “most holy time,” these 36 days of fasting, to pay their annual tithe of devotion to the Lord.75 Or, as a North Italian preacher put it: even though Christians should at all times avoid cursing, quarrels and the like, they had to do so especially in these holy days when through penance the sins of a whole year got wiped away.76 He had heard, he said, from all those who protested that they could not work and fast—and he dismissed this out of hand.77 During this season, furthermore, they were to hear mass and attend matins every day if a church were near enough, otherwise matins on Sunday if it were distant.78 Lent was the time, preachers enjoined broadly, to catch up on the whole year, pay the tithes in grain or wine or fruit or commerce or the hunt not yet paid, and likewise give alms and show mercy to the poor. Alongside these injunctions, we also hear complaints: that people did not keep the fast, or kept it adequately. Rhabanus Maurus at Fulda and Mainz railed against those who spent the season hunting, especially those who treated their servants—born of the same line of Adam, praying to the same 73

    75   76  

Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae, c. 4, in MGH Capit. 1, ed. Boretius, p. 68. Concilium Mainz a. 813, c. 35, in MGH Conc. 2, ed. Werminghoff, p. 269. Ps-Boniface, Sermo 12, in PL 89, pp. 865–6, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1850). Paul Mercier, ed., XIV Homélies du IXe siècle d’un auteur inconnu de l’Italie du Nord, Sources chrétiennes 161 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1970), pp. 182, 186. 77   Ibid., p. 190. 78   Ibid., pp. 190–92. 74

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Father in heaven—worse than they did their dogs.79 Those lords, remember, probably chose the priest who also announced and led the fast. This annual tithe of devotion required abstinence from more than meat, also from hunting, marriage, and sexual intercourse. Concrete acts such as these would mark them as among those keeping their christening, upholding the pact guarantors had entered into on their behalf at the font: the outward signs reaffirmed at least once each year that they indeed belong to this society of the christened. For what came with christening, Jonas explained, was the lex Christi, precepts delivered in or derived from the Gospel and Epistles. Remember that a ritual handing over of the Gospels was one part of the full baptismal rite. As for keeping this “law of Christ,” Bishop Jonas drew distinctions, plainly from experience: some laypeople acted upon it, some merely received it, while many thought it the business of the clergy rather than all the fideles. If christening’s observances, the markers of the pact and of Christian “law,”80 were ever to become more fully enacted, Jonas and many other bishops now surmised, it would have to gain real space in public morality and common practice. This opens the curtains for us on the larger context of Jonas’s raised voice and for insistent legislation of unprecedented scope over roughly 150 years. To hear that voice in context, we must imagine a society where the laws and rights of this world were, in Jonas’s words, most avidly learned (avidissime discere) and sharply interpreted (acutissime intelligere)81 in pursuit of right and wrong, of things just and unjust, a social and material world for which our sources are somewhat thinner than all our new ecclesiastical sources in the ninth century. Those acts, however, governed most people’s lives most of the time. This enormous mass of Carolingian legislation, unprecedented in scope and volume for three centuries before and two after, must be grasped within this perspective. It was in one sense, strikingly, a beleaguered perspective: Carolingian kings and churchmen seeking to implement that law of Christ, render it present in the practices and institutions of a christened people, while that same people (including the kings and princes) was equally or more caught up much of the time in all that was mundane. Equally at work here, as historians have repeatedly pointed out, were deep rivalries, bishops and princes each clamoring for attention and space. Charlemagne especially (there were precedents) began to issue much of this “law of Christ” as royal legislation and to include laymen—our seniores again—in 79

  Rhabanus Maurus, Homilia 11–12, in PL 110, pp. 24–7, ed. Migne.   In medieval parlance, “law” (lex and its vernacular variants) routinely functioned where

80

we might say “religion”—that is to say, religious observances as the “law” that culturally defined a particular people, thus Muslim law or Jewish law or Christian law. 81   Jonas of Orléans, De institutione laicali, in PL 106, p. 161, ed. Migne—the opening sentence, in fact, of this last brooding chapter: if or since this is so, how much the more should the faithful turn to Christian law, and so on?

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Church councils. The laws abounded with detail surveying nearly all facets of life, but often they started with prescriptions or problems relating to the “sacrament of faith.” Christening’s promise and pact, with no word of explanation necessary, was mutating into foundational law, public and private, christening as religion and as legislated observances. However, it all rested religiously upon christening as cleansing and claiming, as naming and incorporating. Sometimes this clash broke into the open. In the showdown after churchmen refused to grant Lothar II a divorce, Archbishop Hincmar was thunderously explicit. Whatever precedent might be found in worldly laws for Lothar’s sexual relations, in a Christian kingdom and in Christian public law, all was to be consonant with christianitas, the laws and practices sprung from christening; by those alone each person would be judged on the Last Day. Everyone marked (insignitos) with the Christian name, every king and every queen, every Christian man and woman was governed in marriage by a single law, that of christianitas first given to Adam and Eve.82 While conceding the existence of multiple mundane laws for various “peoples,” he warned that at the End it was not by those laws that the people called “Christian” would be judged. Moreover, in a Christian kingdom, public laws also ought to be Christian and consonant with christianitas.83 His “ought” (oporteat)—in the subjunctive tending to optative—was Hincmar’s angry or frustrated concession to the actual force of mundane law and custom in a sphere the Church was trying to claim as its own—and, in time, would. From the twelfth century, if not before, marriage came under canon law, and remained so for the rest of the Middle Ages—and in some regions, well beyond. So what made laws or practices consonant with christianitas? Here the word, if anchored ritually in the sacrament of faith and its consequent pact, became a sweeping gesture toward everything that arose from christening, all the observances and claims and rites and teachings. The word was grandly vague—until it came down to concrete cases such as a king trying to shake off his queen. Citing Chrysostom via Augustine and echoing a gospel text, Hincmar could call the cross “baptism,” and then anchor penance in it, and further add a none too subtle warning that the waters of baptism were not to be trifled 82

  Hincmar of Reims, De divortio Lotharii regis et Theutbergae reginae, in MGH Conc. 4.1, ed. Letha Böhringer (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1992), p. 236. 83   “Defendunt se quantum volunt qui eiusmodi sunt, sive per leges si ullae sunt mundanas sive per consuetudines humanas. Tamen, si Christiani sunt, sciant se in die iudicii nec Romanis nec Salicis nec Gundobadis sed divinis et apostolicis legibus iudicandos, quamquam in regno Christiano etiam ipsas leges oporteat esse christianas, convenientes videlicet et consonantes christianitati”; ibid., p. 145. Hincmar used this more than once, including in De raptu viduarum, c. 12, in PL 125, p. 1,026, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1852). For this also being about shifting notions of marriage and partnerships, see now Ruth Karras, Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), pp. 38–45.

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with.84 To the infidel or unfaithful, the baptismal ritual might be mocking sport (ludificatio); to the faithful, their redemption.85 This sweeping inclusiveness, and its threat of exclusion, extended equally to the archbishop, and to his clergy as well, who were not spared here. Hincmar ended his little work on churches and chapels with a long quotation from Gregory the Great, a homiletic peroration on bishops and priests as those through whom the faithful enter into baptism, and eventually heaven. Yet the real point, for both Gregory and Hincmar, was that bad priests might well themselves go down to hell—as in baptism, where blessed water cleansed the sins of the christened and sent them on to heaven, and then itself drained down into the sewer.86 One way to catch glimpses of this lex Christi in smaller community settings is to follow up on those parochial visitations bishops were now enjoined to conduct. Ninth-century churchmen borrowed its actual legal form in part from Sendgerichte, with witnesses sworn to testify to fama or facts, first about the local clergy, then about the laity87—again, the secular model close at hand. Christianitas was invoked here too. The oath witnesses were to swear had them promise to reveal whatever they knew to be contrary to rectam fidem et christianitatem—right faith and Christianity, we may say, but more accurately, to the moral practices and obligations that arose from christening, the sacrament of faith. The formula from Cologne explained that a few were to be placed under oath, those few the “more experienced, upright, and truthful men” (maturiores, honestiores atque veraciores viros) in the community, in most cases doubtless also the more socially privileged. Put concretely, men like those around King Odo who evaluated the Viking’s baptism or who oversaw their local church were also to report under oath on violations in their community of all that christening entailed. But all parishioners, it says, noble and commoner alike, were bound by what it calls the ban of christening (per bannum christianitatis constringat) to tell what they knew about actions contrary to Christian law that might require judgment.88 Indeed, a council at Mainz in 852 spoke of people as constrained under oath or this ban of christening (iuramento seu banno christianitatis constrictus) to disclose the infamy and crimes of their priests.89 This was not that 84

  Hincmar of Reims, De divortio, pp. 154–6.   Ibid., p. 159 (with sources). 86   Hincmar of Reims, Collectio de ecclesiis et capellis, in MGH Fontes iuris 14, ed. Martina 85

Stratmann (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1990), pp, 126–7, here citing Gregory, Homilia in evangelia, I.17. 87   Still important is Albert Michael Koeniger, Die Sendgerichte in Deutschland (Munich: J.J. Lentner, 1907), together with his Quellen zur Geschichte der Sendgerichte in Deutschland (Munich: J.J. Lentner, 1910). 88   Koeniger, Sendgerichte, pp. 198–9. 89   Concilium Mainz a. 852, c. 8, in MGH Conc. 3, ed. Hartmann, p. 245. This coincidentally made it into Burchard’s influential canon law collection (II.184).

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ban or legal power possessed by secular lords, those judicial powers that ended up dominating mundane social relations. This was a jurisdictional power within the Church, a ban that came with christening. Its force—backed ultimately by a threat of excommunication, in a sense baptism’s reversal—rested upon invoking judicial claims sprung from baptism. Anchored in the oath “faith-swearers” had taken on behalf of the christened, and also the sacramental seal invisibly marking each one’s head, this new oath sworn upon their christening/Christianity drew upon its sacred powers, their own name and title, in order to require that they speak truthfully to the state of affairs in their local society of the christened. Sometimes, in what must count as a kind of public rivalry, bishops and counts called people into juridical session under threat of ban on the same day. The Council of Tribur in 895 declared that the count and people had to yield to the bishop, for his hearings watched over (invigilare) the faith, not sundry plots and fights, over the winning of souls, not the piling up of goods. At this council of Tribur the most dramatic case was the first dealt with: a priest blinded by a layman. The man refused to appear at the bishop’s synod, scorned this episcopal ban more than once, and went about openly derisive about being excommunicated. Such a man, the king ruled, so thoughtless of God and christianitas, should be pursued by secular authorities, and if killed, left to lie dead without compensation, without wergeld.90 In this case, proceeding at virtually at the same moment as our opening story, someone who flew in the face of christianitas—that is, of his own christening and of the society so named—was condemned to be left abandoned in the world, in effect a non-person, without value—no religious value, but also no juridical nor monetary value. Here we catch glimpses of a broader, silent, cultural shift crucial to European history: to be a person, and to be a person in good standing among the christened—those two becoming conceived as virtually one. This is of a piece with that stronger and more common claim: to be a “people” and to be “Christian”—a defining mark of the Carolingian kingdom, at least in its self-projection—are one. Already in the Strasburg oaths the terms were virtually coterminous. Of course, social realities were far more complex, as Hincmar frankly conceded in his tirade over law and marriage. Everywhere one could observe peoples and their laws in the usual mundane senses, as well as people virtually ignorant of christening’s required words and hardly acting on its claims. All this, bishops sometimes glumly lamented, represented how things really were too much of the time. That said, one must not miss the correlation here, instinctive or unconscious, between “person” and “christened,” “people” and “Christian.” Once alerted, we find it elsewhere. Allow me to point up several expressive pairings delivered liturgically on public occasions. In 859, bishops gathered at Metz following King Louis’s invasion of King Charles’s realm. A king truly acting as a minister of God, they 90

  Capitulare Triburiense c. 1, in MGH Capit. 2, ed. Boretius and Krause, p. 210.

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insisted, would take vengeance on those who—note these pairs—sin against God, trample down the Church, invade the kingdom, depopulate christianitas, disturb the peace, betray the fatherland. King Louis was further warned never again to tear apart the holy Church of God and ista christianitas, for he could not be baptized again.91 Churchmen were here taking aim at kings running roughshod over Church authority and property and unity, and at princes invading kingdoms; but what kings did to christianitas was plunder and kill its people (christianitatis depopulatores)—the two one. As in the oaths seventeen years earlier, the terms merge, the christened and the people. Here the term goes beyond baptism and spiritual kinship and a moral pact to encompass a collective comprised of people, christened people, subject in war to “depopulation.” Such a populus/christiantias was a reality conceived as larger than, and distinct from, churchmen or the institutional Church or princely kingdoms, which were dealt with differently in these pairings. So too when Lothar II reached agreement with his uncles in 862, he was charged with having acted not only against them and his kin (consanguinitatem), but more seriously, against God, “sacred authority” (meaning bishops or the Church) and communem christianitatem—that is, all the people who made up this society of the christened, as well as, by implication, the ethical standards that were to come with christening.92 Three years later, the bishops reminded Lothar that just as the Church and kingdom entrusted to him and them were one, so the people and the society of the christened were one (populus ac christianitas una est), the same entity.93 Again, in a kind of address or sermon given on the coronation of Charles the Bald’s queen in 866, an episcopal blessing was invoked upon his spouse as a companion-helper (sobolem). A bishop was to chant that from her—once again, the pairings—the holy Church would have solace/ support, the kingdom its needed defense, subjects (fideles) their desired aid, and this society of the christened (ista christianitas) its wished-for peace and law and justice.94 The people—all those not otherwise described as Church, kingdom, or fideles (the ruling armed elite)—were to look to the queen for peace and law and justice. In the context of a coronation, the force moves decisively toward the collective community or society—all those encompassed by christening. 91   Concilium Metz, a. 859, c. 8, in MGH Conc. 3, ed. Hartmann, 441, 440. For a similar set of parallels, this time without the term christianitas, but populus, see the pact between Louis and Charles at Tusey on the Meuse in 865: “Et ipsi ad dei voluntatem, et ad nostrum debitum honorem et vigorem et salvamentum, et ad sanctae dei ecclesiae statum, et ad regni soliditatem et defensionem, qualiter populus in regno nostro legem et iustitiam et pacem ac tranquillitatem habeat …”; Pactum Tusiacense, c. 5, in MGH Capit. 2, ed. Boretius and Krause, p. 166. Cf. n. 94 below. 92   Conventus apud Saponarias, c. 5, in MGH Capit. 2, ed. Boretius and Krause, p. 161. 93   Pactum Tusiacense, c. 6, in MGH Capit. 2, ed. Boretius and Krause, p. 167. 94   Coronatio Hermintrudis reginae, in MGH Capit. 2, ed. Boretius and Krause, p. 454. Cf. n. 92 above.

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In the course of the ninth century, this term, very interestingly, also acquired, as readers may have noted, a demonstrative serving as a nascent article (ista). This has the effect of further reifying the collective. This may well stem from vernacular usage, since we find it already in the Germanic version of the Strasburg oath (thes christianes folches). But it likewise points more decisively toward a reality beyond rite or status or name, a thing felt as collectively present: “this” Christian society. Such usage doubtless had multiple origins. One was to see the christened collective as opposed to threatening, external attack in the second half of the ninth century by non-christened peoples. When Muslim warriors attacked Rome in 846, King Lothar dramatically had it proclaimed that the caput christianitatis, the capital of the society of the christened, was being delivered to the infidel, these correspondingly labeled the “people of the pagans” (populus paganorum) said now to be prevailing within the borders of the Franks.95 In 864, faced with Viking raids, an increasingly desperate Charles the Bald made it a capital crime to deal with them in horses or arms, any such person described as exposing the society of the christened to the heathen (two abstract collectives: expositor christianitatis ad perditionem gentilitatis). The royal edict concluded with a summons to readiness in the defense of holy Church and “this society of the christened” (istius christianitatis defensionem). Once again, “Church” referred to the institution as embodied in prelates and houses, “the christened” to the people. Archbishop Hincmar is responsible for the Annales Bertiniani from 861/62, and in his notices we find the term used over against “Vikings” (Nortmanni). In 862, in a scene replaying the issues with which we began this chapter, two Vikings came seeking baptism and inclusion (christianitatem), but were suspected of “guile,” which proved to be the case. In 864, Pippin, son of King Pippin of Aquitaine, became allied with Vikings for a time, then was captured and hauled into court, and was eventually condemned to death: a betrayer of the fatherland and christianitas (ut patriae et christianitatis proditor), a pair of collectives, as fidelity was itself directed to king and God. Similarly, in 869 an apostate monk became allied with the Vikings, thus abandoning christianitas (relicta christianitate) and proving “most hostile” to Christians; he was captured and beheaded. In both notices, especially the second, ambiguity and continuity are manifest: he may have abandoned his christening, certainly his monastic vows, but most clearly this society of the christened.96 So when in 873/74 King Charles reached an agreement settling Vikings on an island in the Loire, 95

  Capitulare de expeditione contra Sarracenos facienda, in MGH Capit. 2, ed. Boretius and Krause, pp. 65–6. 96   Annales de Saint-Bertin, ed. Félix Grat (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1964), pp. 104, 113, 166.

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he subsequently ordered that any who wished to be baptized should come to him, while the others were to leave his kingdom.97 The terms “baptism” and christianitas, interwoven in the king’s mind, captured the concrete reality of moving a person from the christening rite into christening’s observances. Religion and society were at once distinguishable and indistinguishable inside his kingdom. Finally, Pope John VIII (872–82)—to conclude with a bishop of Rome and a perspective outside the Frankish kingdom—invoked this notion more often in papal letters than any pope before him, or any after until the eleventh century. In his usage, the notion bore a range of meanings, from the ritual and ethical to the societal, partly consonant with Carolingian usage, partly interestingly independent. In 876, he warned the emperor that partisans of Formosus hiding out in Spoleto and Tuscany would taint his empire and bring damage upon the entire society of the christened (“vestrum imperium coinquinabunt et omni christianitati dispendium generabunt”).98 From Rome, as Vicar of St. Peter, he frequently added the word “whole,” and appears to distinguish this whole society of the christened from the Carolingian empire. He could both distinguish and include his own Petrine lands (“pro salute scilicet ac defensione terrę sancti Petri et totius christianitatis suppliciter depręcantes”),99 but also declared it his ministry to pray assiduously for the society of all the christened (totius christianitatis).100 Again, it is people, christened people, the totality of them. This may include the Empire or the Lands of Peter, but no utter merger of “a people” and “the christened” evident in the Frankish realm. In 878, he could speak of gathering kings of this whole christened unit (regum filiis congregantes totius christianitatis) for consultation,101 the term here nearly something like “Christendom”—but by way of the christened people those kings ruled. So he also saw it as distinct from “infidels,” a threat at that moment around Rome. Consorting with Muslims, he warned ominously, would bring ruin upon all the christened people, their whole society (perditionem totius christianitatis).102 Any of the christened who made a pact with “Ishmaelites” rather than God should 97

  “… quicumque iam baptizati essent ex eis et christianitatem de cetero ueraciter tenere uellent, ad eum uenirent, et qui adhuc ex paganis christiani fieri uellent ipsius dispositione baptizarentur; ceteri uero ab illius regno discederent …; ibid., pp. 194–5. 98   John VIII, Epistola 24, in MGH Epp. 7, ed. Erich Caspar (Berlin: Weidmann, 1928), p. 23. Similarly, in a dramatic call for help to the emperor in 877: “vestrum vilescat imperium et tote christianitati nascatur dispendium”; ibid., Epistola 31, pp. 29–30. 99   Ibid., Epistola 78, p. 74. One may read it as a distinction or an elision (cf. ibid., Epistola 257, 225), there defending the “mother Roman Church” eliding into the whole of christianitatis. 100   Ibid., Epistola 74, p. 70. 101   Ibid., Epistola 153, p. 128. 102   Ibid., Epistola 279, pp. 246–7.

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break it off if they wished to remain in communion with “ourselves,” the person holding the keys of St. Peter, as well as all who participated or shared in this christened collective (participes istius christianitatis).103 But the sheer messiness of social and political reality always outruns rhetorical gestures and ideological imaginaries. This letter was, in fact, directed to Christian bishops south of Rome who were making alliances with local Muslim forces. Pope John was threatening brother bishops with separation from participation in ista christianitas. When the bishop of Naples refused to give in, Pope John cut him off from all ecclesiastical communion (that is, the sacraments), but also cursed him as an enemy of the whole society of the christened (totius christianitatis inimicum). Christianitas thus went beyond the sacraments or Church membership as such, a peopled social collective to which one could stand in opposition as an “enemy.”104 One invocation of this term returns us finally to the import of these notions for European history. Complaining to Charles the Fat that both Muslim and Christian enemies had made life around Rome unbearable, he noted that it had become nearly impossible for people to go outside the city walls safely, whether for their work or “as I might put it, to practice their christianitas as is fitting” (“qui, ut ita dixerim, christianitatem suam sicut decet observent”). Insecurity and turmoil doubtless made ordinary ritual and ethical observances more difficult. But his ut ita dixerim suggests that he was stretching the term toward something else, a usage that was more colloquial or vernacular.105 Christianitas has here become a turn of phrase for ordinary decency, the first usage I know of an idiom in European parlance where “Christian” came broadly to mean “civilized” or “decent,” and ultimately simply respectably “human,” not unlike usages earlier of Romanitas. Lord Shaftsbury still wryly observed 850 years later that “The very word Christian is, in Common Language, us’d for Man, in opposition to Brutebeast, without leaving so much as a middle place for the poor Heathen or Pagan.”106 This cultural reality could not have emerged without forceful foundations laid down in the late antique Christian Roman Empire. But it was the Carolingians, intent upon christening, who made it a pervasive and collective social reality. The “sacrament of faith” came to embrace, and stood as a cipher for, a whole way of life and a whole people.107 All the resonances—whether of the religion 103

    105   106  

Ibid., Epistola 230, p. 205. Ibid., Epistola 279, p. 246–7. Ibid., Epistola 263, p. 233. Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, vol. 3 (London, 1733), p. 88. 107   One may see that in the document once accounted the earliest of all episcopal capitularies, more likely a general reform proposal issued by bishops or a later episcopal capitulary stripped of its preface. It enjoins, as do several capitularies, that the priest “instill” (insinuet) the Prayer and Creed in his people, and zeal for religion and the worshipful practice (cultus) of 104

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(Christianity) or the polity (Christendom)—were grounded still in the basic ritual (christening) and its import. These Carolingians leaders, princes or prelates, perceived that and took it for granted, and so started there as the religious and rhetorical means for calling people to live up to the name, to keep the pact, to defend the society. At the same time, paradoxically, in social and cultural routine christening settled in to such an extent as to become interchangeable with the “people” generally, so common thus in its “peopled” reality as to risk losing its religious charge. If virtually all were so titled, its meaning could dissolve into the ordinarily “decent” or “properly human.” But alternatively, christening could be invoked as the rallying cry for correcting all that was wrong, anything that failed to live up to the name. At some level, this was the practical and public project we call Carolingian reform or “correction.”108

christianitas be shown to their minds: “ac totius religionis studium et christianitatis cultum eorum mentibus ostendant”; Ghaerbald of Liège, Ghaerbald I, c. 6, in MGH Capit. episc. 1, ed. Brommer, p. 18. Here the term is in some sense synonymous with “religion,” but linked still to ritual (cultus). 108   See Thomas F.X. Noble, “Secular Sanctity: Forging an Ethos for the Carolingian Nobility,” in Patrick Wormald and Janet L. Nelson, eds., Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 8–36.

Chapter 7

The Astronomer’s Life of Louis the Pious David Ganz In tribute to Tom Noble, a generous and loyal friend for more than thirty years, and an exemplary translator of the Astronomer’s Life of Louis the Pious, I should like to set out some of my concerns about the genre of Carolingian ruler biography, and in particular, about that Life. When a fiery comet appeared in the sky over Aachen for 25 days, a harsh and grievous portent, the emperor Louis the Pious, most studious in such matters, saw where the star had stopped. Before he went to bed, he asked me, who wrote these things and am believed to possess knowledge of this matter, what I thought. I asked for time to study, but the emperor guessed what was true, that I wanted time lest I was forced to say something grievous. Louis said, “Stand on the solarium and tell us what you see. For I know I didn’t see this star last night and you did not show it to me.” Louis knew it was a comet which we had talked about, and asked, “Say what it seems to you to portend.” He said there is one thing which you are keeping quiet about. This is to show the change of the kingdom and the death of a prince. I offered the testimony of the prophet: “Be not afraid of the signs of heaven which the heathen fear.” He answered in his wisdom: “We should not fear anyone except he who is the creator of us and of this star, but we cannot sufficiently admire and praise his clemency who has chosen to warn our inertia since we are sinners and impenitent. Since this touches me and all, we should all hasten to better things lest we are found unworthy of his mercy.” After this, he drank some wine and asked everyone to do so, and then he let everyone go home. He spent the night almost completely awake with praise and prayers to God.1 1

  “… per XXV dies … pedes igneum globum iubarumque prolixitatem deposuit, quas usquequaque porrexerat. Quod cum imperator talium studiosissimus primus, ut ea constitit, conspexisset, antequam quieti membra committeret, accitum quendam—idem me, qui haec scripsi et qui huius rei scientiam habere credebar—percunctari studuit, quid super hoc mihi videretur. Cui cum tempus peterem, quo fatiem sideris considerarem ac per hoc rei veritatem investigarem et cognitam in crastinum nuntiarem, imperator ratus – quod erat verum – tempus me redimere velle, ne cogerer triste aliquid respondere, ‘Perge,’ inquit, ‘in meniana huic domui contigua et nobis que perspexeris nuntia! Novi enim a me hanc stellam nequaquam praeterita vespera visam vel a te monstratam, sed scio hoc signum cometarum esse, de quo iam praeteritis locuti sumus diebus. Quid autem portendere tibi videatur, edicito!’ Cumque aliqua dicerem et tacuissem, ‘Unum est,’ inquit, ‘quod adhuc silentio premis: mutationem enim regni mortemque principis hoc monstrari portento dicitur.’ Cumque ego testimonium prophetae in medium protulissem, quo dicitur: A signis caeli ne timueritis, que pavent gentes, ille sola usus magnanimitate et prudentia: ‘Non alium’,

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Here is the most intimate moment of the Astronomer’s biography of Louis the Pious: a unique passage of direct speech. It reveals the author’s role in the presence of Louis, who acts as the ideal ruler in troubled times. Louis is able to understand the warning that the comet represents: he is not alarmed, he is watchful, and he knows and executes the correct remedy; and he demonstrates his concern for the Christian empire (ecclesia) and for the poor. The arrival of the comet serves to put Louis and his people in immediate contact with God, and the virtuous ruler encourages everyone to say masses. In this narrative, we see Mayke de Jong’s “penitential state” in action.2 The conversation is given authority by the references to Isidore of Seville3 and Bede,4 who had explained that comets showed the change of a kingdom, and by the quotation from Jeremiah 10:2. I can find no source for Louis’s belief that comets also foretell the death of a king, although that, of course, might be the trigger for the change of a kingdom. But the Astronomer’s text may convey knowledge of the portents of imperial death in the Historia Augusta and of portents in Orosius and Ado of Vienne. The biography shows an awareness of the importance of such heavenly signs, recording how in 827 battle scenes red with blood and fire were seen before the defeat of the army of Pippin I of Aquitaine.5 Later, in 838, a savage comet with a threatening face preceded Pippin’s death.6 Yet the point of this particular story may also be that the fiery comet did not presage the fall of a kingdom, or the death of a king, because Louis knew what to do. The story allows the Astronomer to establish his own credentials. He is an expert in the interpretation of portents, and he is close to his hero. He can quote 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’. His dictis, et ipse paulisper mero indulsit et omnibus id facere iussit et unumquemque ad sua se colligere iussit, noctemque illam, ut relatum nobis est, pene pervigilem ac Dei laudibus et obsecrationibus honeratam luci supervenienti praesentavit”: Vita Hludowici imperatoris, ed. Ernst Tremp, MGH Scriptores in usum scholarum 64 (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1995), pp. 280–554 (hereafter Astronomer). This passage is from c. 58, pp. 520–24. All translations are my own. 2   Mayke de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 3   Isidore of Seville, De natura rerum, 26, in J. Fontaine, ed., Traité de la nature, Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études Hispaniques 28 (Bordeaux: Féret, 1960), pp. 273–5. 4   “regni mutationem aut pestilentiam aut bella, vel ventos aestusve portendentes …”: Bede, De Natura rerum liber, 24, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 123A, ed. C. W. Jones (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975), p. 216. 5   Astronomer, c. 41, p. 440. 6   Ibid., c. 59, p. 528.

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Jeremiah—a verse which I have not found in sermons or widely discussed in exegesis. His conversation with the king establishes how Louis’s reign is to be understood: in terms of such biblical references, offering a powerful reminder of just how the ruler is directly responsible to God. Louis could listen to God and to his scriptures; we can only listen to the Astronomer. His decision to present the events of the reign as a secular biography deserves investigation. What had happened to Carolingian history which meant that it was best recorded not as history, not as annals, but as biography? We need to explain why Carolingians turned to biography, and why, after Louis, there were no further biographies of rulers. Heinz Lowe, who asked that question, suggested that, at least in the West Frankish kingdom, nobles and bishops sought to set limits to royal activity through coronation oaths and mirrors for princes.7 Christian historians affirmed that the deeds of rulers and peoples should be recorded. As Orosius stated: “The deeds of kings and peoples are perpetuated in words for the sake of forming an enduring record.”8 Both Einhard and Regino expressed their concern that contemporary events should not be passed over in silence.9 But the form chosen for such a record of events might change, and the reign of Louis was a turning point, for Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne introduced the option of biography, organized by topics and giving equal space to the private life of the ruler, as an alternative to narrative history or to annals. To write Carolingian history, authors had to follow and negotiate literary models. The monumenta maiorum had sought to instruct posterity about what paths princes had taken on their mortal journey, confirming that people wanted to imitate those who stood most eminent.10 Einhard had spoken of the monumenta created by the most learned men in the preface to the Vita Karoli, noting that people 7

  Heinz Lowe, “Geschichtsschreibung der ausgehenden Karolingerzeit,” Deutsches Archiv 23 (1967): 1–30, at 11. 8   “Et quoniam omnes propemodum tam apud Graecos quam apud Latinos studiosi ad scribendum uiri, qui res gestas regum populorumque ob diuturnam memoriam uerbis propagauerunt”: Orosius, Historiarum adversum paganos, libri VII, 1.1 ed. Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Zangemeister, CSEL 5 (Vienna: C. Geroldi filium, 1882), p. 5. 9   “… de nostris quamquam longe inferioribus temporibus ita perpetuum silentium sit, ut quasi in diebus nostris aut hominum actio cessaverit aut fortassis nil dignum, quod memoriae fuerit commendandum”: Regino of Prüm, Chronicon, Preface, ed. Frederich Kurze, MGH Scriptores in usum scholarum 50 (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1890), p. 1. 10   “Haec ita se habere maiorum produnt monimenta, qui relatione sua posteritatem instruere studuerunt, quisque principum quo calle mortalium iter triverit”; Astronomer, Prologue, 280. Cf. Hans-Werner Goetz, “Verschriftlichung von Geschichtskenntnissen: Die Historiographie der Karolingerzeit,” in Ursula Schaefer, ed., Schriftlichkeit im frühen Mittelalter (Tübingen: G. Narr Verlag, 1993), pp. 229–53.

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rejected them.11 The Astronomer tells us in his preface that he is following the example of those who wrote down the deeds of former times, good and bad. It is not clear whether those Carolingian authors who were concerned with style considered the annal as a form with any literary merit.12 Regino of Prüm, writing at the end of the ninth century, is explicitly hostile. At the start of Book II, he says that his source was a certain booklet composed in the language of plebeians and rustics.13 And there is evidence that the Astronomer shared such a concern with proper expression, altering and improving the language of the Royal Frankish Annals when he used them as his source.14 By the reign of Louis the Pious, annals had become inescapable. Ardo, in his biography of Benedict of Aniane, asserted that no learned man doubts that it is the most ancient practice, habitual for kings up to now, to have whatever things are done or happen written down in annals for posterity to learn about.15 The Royal Frankish Annals were the source for the events of Louis’s reign until 829, which both Thegan and the Astronomer followed. They offered an account of the irresistible rise of the Carolingians. The particular status of Einhard and of the Annals is that they could meaningfully be reused, again and again. The Royal Frankish Annals were used by Einhard and Regino, and were continued in the Annals of St. Bertin and of Fulda: they were the obvious and evident source 11

  “Qui vetera et a viris doctissimis atque disertissimis confecta monumenta fastidiunt”: Einhard, Vita Karoli, Preface, p. 1. 12   “qui sine ullis ornamentis monumenta solum temporum, hominum, locorum gestarumque rerum relinquerunt”: Cicero, De Oratore, ed. E. W. Sutton and H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), bk. 2, c. 12.53, p. 236. 13   “Haec quae supra expressa sunt, in quodam libello repperi plebeio et rusticano sermone composita”; Regino of Prüm, Chronicon, p. 73. Note that Regino calls this book De Gestis Regum Francorum. On Regino, see Stuart R. Airlie, “‘Sad Stories of the Death of Kings’: Narrative Patterns and Structures of Authority in Regino of Prüm’s Chronicon,” in Elizabeth M. Tyler and Ross Balzaretti, eds., Narrative and History in the Early Medieval West (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 105–31, and the introduction to the excellent English translation by Simon Maclean, History and Politics in Late Carolingian and Ottonian Europe: The Chronicle of Regino of Prüm and Adalbert of Magdeburg (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009). 14   Courtney Booker, Past Convictions: The Penance of Louis the Pious and the Decline of the Carolingians (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), p. 34, has suggested that the Astronomer was “an admirer of profane letters,” and that “The Astronomer’s text clearly exhibits the high literary art of a cultivated courtier.” Cf. de Jong: “a long and polished book, the work of a highly skilled author with a clear sense of the balance and construction of his narrative”; de Jong, Penitential State, p. 81. The preface to the critical edition also points out the stylistic contrast between the Astronomer and the Royal Frankish Annals when they are his source; Tremp, Preface to Astronomer, p. 112. 15   Ardo, Vita Benedicti abbatis Anianensis et Indensis auctore Ardone, Preface, ed. G. Waitz, MGH Scriptores 15.1 (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1887), p. 201.

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for Carolingian history. We urgently need a proper treatment of those annals, and how they circulated and influenced the writing of other annals.16 This was the text which shaped and secured Carolingian identity. Helmut Reimitz has reminded us of the breakdown of the Royal Frankish Annals in 829.17 Louis held an assembly in Worms in August; he went hunting in the autumn; he returned to Aachen for Martinmas, and spent Christmas there with great joy and exaltation. Then silence. Almost every copy breaks off its narrative here. After the events of 830 and 833, it was difficult to present the reign of Louis in so triumphalist a fashion. Indeed, several short annals simply record Francorum dedecus, the shame of the Franks.18 At Sens and at Trier, annalists recorded that Louis lost his kingdom.19 Agobard’s verdict was that the name of the Franks, which used to be bright in all of the world, had grown dark.20 Reimitz has concluded that the break in the tradition of the Annals represents a break in the concept of Frankish identity as advanced through the Royal Frankish Annals, but that this break was not the end of Frankish identity as much as it was the beginning of new Frankish political projects. The authority of the Annals was no longer sufficient justification for their continuation. The purportedly neutral account of events, in which any teleology was tacitly implicit, was unable to describe a society so effectively polarized that shared loyalty had become impossible. 16

  Recent work by Becher and McKitterick has pointed to the bias with which the annals, probably written in the 790s, distort the events of Pippin’s and Charlemagne’s reigns, but not the ways in which they circulated and influenced the composition of local annals; Matthias Becher, Eid und Herrschaft Untersuchungen zum Herrscherethos Karls des Grossen, (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1993), pp. 21–77; Matthias Becher, “Eine verschleierte Krise: die Nachfolge Karls Martells 741 und die Anfänge der Karolingischen Hofgeschichtsschreibung,” in J. Laudage, ed., Von Fakten und Fiktionen (Cologne: Böhlau, 2002), pp. 95–134; Rosamond McKitterick, “Constructing the Past in the Early Middle Ages: The Case of the Royal Frankish Annals,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6(7) (1997): 101–30; Rosamond McKitterick, “The Illusion of Royal Power in the Carolingian Annals,” English Historical Review 115 (2000): 1–20. I am grateful to Helmut Reimitz for many helpful discussions on the Royal Frankish Annals. 17   Helmut Reimitz, “Nomen Francorum obscuratum: Zur Krise der fränkischen Identität zwischen der kurzen und der langen Geschichte der Annales regni Francorum,” in Matthias Becher and Stefanie Dick, eds., Völker, Reiche, Namen im frühen Mittelalter (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2009), pp. 279–96. 18   Annales Alamannici, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH Scriptores 1 (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1827), 49; Annales Weingartenses, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH Scriptores 1 (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1826), p. 65. 19   “Hludowicus regnum amisit…”: Annales Floriacenses breves, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH Scriptores 13 (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1881), p. 87. 20   “… nomen Francorum obscuratum, quod actenus clarum fuerat in toto orbe”: Agobard, Liber Apologeticus I, ed. Lieven van Acker, CCCM 52 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981), 309.

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In order to understand what the Astronomer was doing, we need to recognize the genre which he had chosen. In the words of the classicist Charles Segal: “Genre is not something external to the work … [It is the] instrument for reaching the reader, organizing content and projecting thought in forms intelligible to the audience.”21 We do have one late eighth-century account of the genre of history, included in a collection of texts about the liberal arts made at Monte Cassino:22 History is the account of events worthy of memory and it covers matters of war and civil affairs, that is peace. The duties of a historian are threefold, that he expounds true matters, that he writes clearly and that he writes briefly. Matters are true if the age and obscurity of events is carefully explored and what is discovered is reported freely, that is without fear or favor or envy. History is made clear if the matter is explained as it should be according to times, places and deeds. It is brief if nothing superfluous or light is inserted, if the opinions are expressed in the individual words and if the utterance does not end in a long periphrasis. Its virtue is that it should be pleasing. The task of history is that it instructs us by the knowledge of events, its end or telos is that from them we may know what is to be followed or avoided or that we be helped to the use of eloquence.23

21   Charles Segal, “Introduction,” in G.B. Conte, Genres and Readers (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), p. xiii. Cf. A. Feldherr, The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); A.H. McDonald, “Theme and Style in Roman Historiography,” Journal of Roman Studies 65 (1975): 1–10; D. den Hengst, “Cicero and History,” reprinted in D. den Hengst, D.W.P. Burgersdijk, and J.A. van Waarden, eds., Emperors and Historiography: Collected Essays on the Literature of the Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 15–26. 22   L. Holtz, “Le Parisinus Latinus 7530: Synthèse cassinienne des arts libéraux,” Studi Medievali 3(16) (1975): 97–152, remains the fullest account of the whole compendium. 23   “Historia est rerum gestarum et dignarum memoria relatio: ea versatur aut in rebus bellicis aut in negotiis civilibus, id est pacis. Historici officii sunt tria: ut veras res, ut dilucide, ut breviter exponat. Verae res sunt, si rerum actarum vetustas et obcsuritas diligenter exploretur, si explorata libere, id est sine metu aut gratia aut invidia referatur. Lucida fit historia, si ut oportet res pro temporibus, pro locis, pro activibus structura simplici et perfecta explanetur: brevis autem, si nihil vel supervacaneum vel leve interponatur, si singulis verbis sententiae exprimantur, si non longo circuitu elocutio terminetur. Est et illa virtus ut grata sit, quod fieri solet, si varietate si translationibus, si figuris, si novis verbis, si cultu sententiarum, si concinnatiore structura concinnetur. Opus historiae est, ut nos notitia rerum instruat, finis autem, id est τό τέλος, ut ex ea sequendas aut fugiendas res cognoscamus aut ad usum eloquentiae adiuvemur”: Karl Halm, Rhetores Latini Minores (Leipzig: Teubner, 1863), p. 588. The text is discussed in J.-P. Callu, “Ecrire l’histoire à la fin de l’empire,” in Culture profane et critique des sources de l’antiquité tardive (Rome: École française de Rome, 2006), pp. 7–23, and M. Sehlmeyer, Geschichtsbilder fur Pagane und Christen Res Romanae in den spätantiken Breviarien (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), pp. 17–24.

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Here, the task of history is to teach what is to be followed and what is to be avoided, just as in the Astronomer’s preface. Such lessons constitute what is worthy of memory. It is also necessary that what history records be true, and that it be expounded clearly. Cicero noted how the most eloquent among the Greeks applied themselves to the writing of history.24 The edifice of the historian rests on the subject matter and on the diction. Cicero recommended a loose and sustained kind of diction flowing forth in level fashion with a kind of mildness.25 The past was a source of cognitive and ethical models to provide guidance and standards for the present, teaching what the duties and obligations of rulers and people comprise. Kosseleck and Rüsen have traced the development of a historicist view of history and the abandonment of this model of exemplary history.26 But it is central to our understanding of the Astronomer. The Astronomer began his biography with a statement of the twin utility of reading the deeds of former men, and especially of princes. They can produce usefulness and edification, and also serve as a caution, a claim which in its particular terminology goes back to a letter of Pope Gregory.27 In the words of the Astronomer’s preface: “For great men are set like watchtowers on high and cannot be hidden, and their fame spreads wider and the higher they stand the more people seek to imitate them.”28 Such imitation of past historical figures is made explicit in the Astronomer’s narrative of Louis’s first penance: Louis imitated Theodosius. He confessed that he himself had erred 24

  De Oratore, bk. 2, c. 13.55, p. 238.   Ibid., c. 15.64, p. 244. Einhard’s debt to Cicero has been studied by M. Kempshall, “Some

25

Ciceronian Models for Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne,” Viator 26 (1995): 11–37. 26   R. Kosseleck, “Historia Magistra Vitae: The Dissolution of the Topos into the Perspective of a Modernised Historical Process,” in Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), pp. 21–38; J. Rüsen, Konfigurationen des Historismus (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1993); J. Rüsen, History: Narration, Interpretation, Orientation (New York: Berghahn, 2005). 27   Astronomer, Preface, 280: “… alia enim eorum utilitati et aedificationi prosunt, aliae cautelae….” Cf. Gregory the Great, Epistola XI, 9, ed. L. Hartmann, MGH Epistolae II (Berlin: Weidman, 1899), p. 268: “… quia studii tui cautelam et tibi ad remunerationem et aliis ad utilitatis exemplum prodesse non dubium est.” 28   “Quia enim primi in sublimi veluti specula consistunt, et ideo latere nequeunt, eo fama eorum latius propagatur, quo et diffusius cernitur; et tanto quique illorum bono plurimi alliciuntur, quanto prominentiores se imitari gloriantur. Haec ita se habere majorum produnt monumenta, qui relatione sua posteritatem instruere studuerunt, quisque principum quo calle mortalium iter triverit”: Astronomer, p. 280. The closest parallel I have found is Jerome on Gal. 4:13: “Quae quidem et nos ad humilitatem provocant, et supercilium decutiunt episcoporum, qui velut in aliqua sublimi specula constituti, vix dignantur videre mortales, et alloqui conservos suos”: PL 26, p. 379.

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and imitating the example of the emperor Theodosius, he accepted a penance of his own volition.29 For Louis, as the Astronomer presents him, past actions can be reproduced in the present. It is hard to recapture that vision of history, in which the specificity of events is secondary, and the diachronic validity of past actions is paramount. Actions are freighted with ethical value so that they are interpreted as normative. Charlemagne’s rule of Aquitaine remained the model for how Pippin II should rule there.30 In the Life of Louis, the dynamics of exemplarity are omnipresent. Those things which were done proved that Lothar did nothing shameful.31 In the speech of the rebels to Pippin in 830, the Astronomer presents fame as a spur to action. A good son must be angry about the shame of his father and restore to him understanding and worth, and thus he will not only get fame for his virtue, but an increase in his earthly realm.32 Deeds are evaluated in ethical terms so that they become normative, capable of transmitting values or spurring imitation. The deeds of Charlemagne, which Einhard had characterized as unparalleled and inimitable, had become exemplary. The Astronomer tells us that Charlemagne was the wisest and the most farsighted king, who knew that the kingdom was like a body, vulnerable to injury and in need of counsel and fortitude, and so he bound the bishops to him and used counts and abbots and loyal vassals from the prudent and brave race of the Franks to govern Aquitaine.33 Writing more than twenty-five years after the death of Charlemagne, the Astronomer had had no evidence that Charlemagne knew this, but it was what he should have known. For the Astronomer, Thegan, and Nithard, Charlemagne was an integral part of their present: even biographies of his son had to praise Charlemagne with the superlatives that had become mandatory. Nithard explains that he had been asked to write about Charles the Bald’s struggle with his brothers, but he realized that he had to begin with Charlemagne. Charlemagne is the presiding shaper of all subsequent history. In Nithard’s words: “I intended to leave out those things which happened in the times of your pious father, but the truth of your struggles will be clearer to 29   “Se errasse confessus est, imitatus Theodosii imperatoris exemplum pentientiam spontaneam suscepit”: Astronomer, c. 35, p. 406. 30   For a concrete example, see Lupus’ letter to Charles the Bald, in which he sends him lives of Roman emperors: “Imperatorum gesta brevissime comprehensa vestrae majestati offerenda curavi, ut facile in eis inspiciatis, quae vobis vel imitanda sint vel cavenda. Maxime autem Traianum et Theodosium suggero contemplandos, quia ex eorum actibus multa utilissime poteritis ad imitandum assumere”; Lupus of Ferrières, Epistola 93, ed., E. Dümmler, MGH Epistolae 6 Karolini Aevi 4 (Berlin: Weidman, 1925), 83 (Levillain, no. 37). 31   “Probavit quae gesta erant …”: Astronomer, c. 5, p. 460. 32   “Et hec agentem non solum fama prosequertur virtutis, sed etiam amplificatio regni terrestris”: ibid., c. 44, p. 456. 33   Ibid., c. 3, p. 290.

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whoever is reading if I give a foretaste of some of those things which we know happened in his time. It also seems inappropriate to omit all honorable memory of your grandfather.”34 But neither Thegan nor the Astronomer present Einhard’s Charlemagne: both are concerned to anchor him in the world of the Christian community, the ecclesia. The Astronomer affirms that Charlemagne thought he would gain an invincible support for his salvation and prosperity if he were to care for the peace and concord of the Church, to unite the peacemakers in fraternal union, to punish rebels justly, and to support those persecuted by pagans. He even sought to make the enemies of the name of Christians recognize and confess the truth.35 This is the language of the reign of Louis, but it is not found in Einhard.36 The failure of the Annals as a narrative form and the recognition that the reign of Charlemagne had become an indispensable reference point for any account of the reign of Louis both help to explain the Astronomer’s decision to write a biography.37 Understanding of that genre must depend on Plutarch: “It is not so much histories that we are writing but lives, and there is not always in the most outstanding deeds a revelation of virtue or vice, but often a little matter like a saying or a joke hints at character more than battles where thousands die.”38 The character of the ruler, rather than any collective identity among his subjects, had become the focus of commemoration. The strategy of the imperial biographer could be learned from Suetonius and from the Historia Augusta, a work presented as a series of biographies by different authors who claim a plain style and a concern with the vita or genus and mores of the ruler. It could also, conspicuously, be learned from Einhard, 34

  “Praeterire autem ea quae temporibus pii patris vestri gesta sunt disposueram; sed facilius cuilibet legenti altercationum vestrarum veritas patebit, si quaedam que suo in tempore contigisse novimus summotenus praelibavero. Avi quoque insuper vestri venerandam memoria per omnia obmittere ratum minime videtur”: Nithard, Histoire des fils de Louis le Pieux, ed. and trans. Phillipe Lauer (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1926), Prologue, p. 2. 35   “si ecclesiae paci concordiaeque adminiculans pacificos quidem sub unione fraterna artius vinciret, rebelles autem aequa severitate percelleret, necnon et opressis a paganis opem ferret, sed et ipsos christiani nominis inimicos ad agnitionem confessionemque veritatis quoquo modo perduceret”: Astronomer, c. 1, p. 284. 36   Anton Scharer, in a paper presented in Vienna in 2012, argued that Einhard included Charlemagne’s will to show him as a generous alms-giver practicing Christian virtues and securing redemption. 37   “We may well turn back to the inventors of biography, the ancient Greeks, to ask why they never recognised that biography is history”: A.D. Momigliano, The Development of Greek Biography (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 6. 38   Plutarch, “Alexander,” in Plutarch’s Lives, vol. 7 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), c. 1, p. 224. See also the comments in T. Duff, Plutarch’s Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 13–51.

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whose decision to write royal biography still seems to me utterly remarkable. The Astronomer refers explicitly to Einhard, the most prudent man of his age, and it is worth considering the possibility that they knew each other, and even discussed biography, rather than that this is simply a literary imitation.39 But while we cannot recapture those conversations, it is possible to get some sense of the literary context behind them. The Nuremburg fragment of the Historia Augusta establishes that it was being copied at Murbach in the 840s, and it was copied at Fulda at the same time.40 The Fulda copy is now Bamberg Class 54 from the second quarter of the ninth century, and the work is also found in a manuscript from Northern Italy, Vat. Pal. Lat. 899.41 Excerpts were made at Lorsch in Vat. Pal. Lat. 88642 and by Sedulius Scottus between 850 and 859. Sedulius also used the text for passages in his Liber de rectoribus Christianis on Marcus, Maximinius, and Aurelian.43 Bischoff showed that Notker the Stammerer quoted it.44 So it is very probable that in the mid-ninth century, the Historia Augusta was better known than Suetonius, and we need to start evaluating its influence. One early reader was Einhard, for the Historia is the most probable source for the term dicaculus, garrulous, which he used of Charlemagne and which is found in the Vita Hadriani. Can we assume that the Carolingian biographers shared the view of the author of the Historia Augusta that biography was a proper alternative to the eloquence of history? The Historia Augusta contains a number of statements about the merits of biography, which have not been considered in a Carolingian context. Biography has an honesty which history lacks: it is unpretentious.45 In 39

  Astronomer, c. 41, p. 442.   The Nuremburg fragment Stadtbibliothek Frag. Lat. 7 is from the manuscript listed

40

in the Murbach catalogue, Vita cesarum vel tirannorum ab Helio Adriano us(que) ad Car(u) m. Carinum Libri VII; Wolfgang Milde, “Der Bibliothekskatalog des Klosters Murbach aus dem 9. Jahrhundert. Ausgabe und Beziehungen zu Cassidors ‘Institutiones’” (PhD diss., University of Heidelberg, 1968), p. 47. 41   J.-P. Callu, O. Desbordes, and C. Bertrand, “L’histoire auguste et l’historiographie médiévale,” Revue d’histoire des textes 14–15 (1984–85): 97–130. 42   The manuscript may be viewed online at Bibliotheca Laureshamensis—digital: Virtual Monastic Library of Lorsch, http://www.bibliotheca-laureshamensis-digital.de/ (accessed January 3, 2014). 43   A clear account of the themes covered in the Vatican florilegium and in Sedulius Scottus, Liber de Rectoribus christianis can be found in Callu et al., “L’histoire auguste et l’historiographie médiévale,” pp, 98–9. 44   Berhnard Bischoff, “Paläographie und frühmittelalterliche Klassikeruberlieferung,” in Mittelalterliche Studien, vol. III (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1981): pp. 55–72, at pp. 61–2. 45   “haec et talia non tam diserte quam vere”: Probus, in Scriptores Historia Augustae. (hereafter SHA), ed. David Magie, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921–32), vol. 3, c. 2.7, p. 338.

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the Life of Probus, the truthfulness of biographers, including Suetonius and those named as authors of the Historia Augusta, was contrasted with the eloquence of historians such as Sallust, Livy, Tacitus, or Trogus. The biographer does not promise “fluency or eloquence of style, but only the record of their deeds, which I will not suffer to die.”46 The Life of Aurelian recorded a conversation between the author and the prefect Julianus Tiberianus, who asked him to write a life of his ancestor Aurelian. Tiberianus agreed that historians, though eloquent, were false: “Well then, write as you will. You will be safe in saying whatever you wish, since you will have as comrades in falsehood those authors whom we admire for the style of their histories.”47 This offers a context for the Astronomer’s “less learned style.” The supposed authors of the Historia Augusta asserted that biography should record what was worthy to be remembered: digna cognitio.48 It is the business of the biographer to relate only those events that are worth the knowing, rather than trivial information.49 The Life of Gordian contrasts what was worthy to be remembered with the trivia about clothing, food, and drink recorded by Cordus.50 A further reference to the trivia included by Cordus is found in the Life of Macrinus: [Cordus] filled his books with gossip, whereas either nothing at all should be said of petty matters, or certainly very little, and then only when light can thereby be thrown on character. It is character, of course, that we really want to know, but only to a certain extent, that from this the rest may be inferred.51 46

  “neque ego nunc facultatem eloquentiamque polliceor sed res gestas, quas perire non pateor”; ibid., c. 1.6, p. 336. 47   “‘scribe’ inquit ‘ut libet … habiturus mendaciorum comites, quos historicae eloquentiae miramur auctores”; Aurelianus, SHA 3, ed. François Paschoud, c. 2.2, p. 196. 48   “qui vitas aliorum scribere orditur, officium est digna cognitione perscribere”: Macrinus, SHA 2, c. 1.2, p. 48. 49   “ea quidem quae memoratu digna erunt”: ibid., c. 1.1, p. 48. The expression recurs throughout the work: Heliogabalus, SHA 2, c. 18.4, p. 142; Tyranni Triginta, SHA 3, c. 2.4, p. 66 and c. 4.2, p. 72; Aurelianus, ibid., c. 1.9, p. 194; Tacitus, ibid., c. 16.5, p. 324; Quadriga Tyrannorum, ibid., c. 6.1, p. 396 and ibid., c. 13.6, p. 192; Macrinus, SHA 2, c. 1.4, p. 48; Galieni, SHA 3, c. 20.5, p. 60; Diadumenianus, SHA 2, c. 6.1, p. 92. Its origins and use by Roman historians are discussed in D. den Hengst, The Prefaces in the Historia Augusta (Amsterdam: Grüner, 1981), pp. 44–6. 50   “Haec de Gordiano iuniore digna memoratu comperimus : non enim nobis talia dicenda sunt, quae Iunius Cordus ridicule ac stulte composuit de voluptatibus domesticis ceterisque infirmis rebus”: Gordiani, SHA 2, c. 21.3, p. 416. 51   “quae ille omnia exsequendo libros mythistoriis replevit talia scribendo, cum omnino rerum vilium aut nulla scribenda sint aut nimis pauca, si tamen ex his mores possint animadverti, qui re vera sciendi sunt, sed ex parte, ut ex ea cetera colligantur”: Macrinus, SHA 2, c. 1.5, p. 50.

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The concern with imperial character or mores is found in the Astronomer, as in Einhard.52 The Historia Augusta taught what should be avoided or followed.53 There are specific references to imitation. Hadrian followed the example of Scipio.54 Marcus Aurelius visited Lucius Verus to display the purity of his moral code as worthy of imitation.55 Severus Alexander imitated the life of Alexander the Great.56 Tacitus was urged to follow the example of Nerva, Trajan, or Hadrian,57 and Probus, when young, was held up in a letter of Valerian for all to imitate. Diocletian desired to imitate Marcus Aurelius.58 The emperor Probus was praised as a ruler “the like of whom our history has never known.”59 Whether or not the Astronomer knew the Historia Augusta, its statements about the nature of imperial biography and the lack of eloquence of the authors of biography mirror his concerns. At a time when the style of annals was a matter of concern, biography was entitled to seek truth rather than eloquence. And biography could present a record of events focused on the personality of the ruler, allowing a certain distance from the collective identity which had stamped the Royal Frankish Annals. In writing another imperial biography, the Astronomer created the possibility for a Carolingian counterpart to the Historia Augusta, a series of imperial biographies by different authors, which might be very different in style, but which were concerned both with the events of a life and the mores, the way of life. Two surviving tenth-century manuscripts show that such a series was created. One, St Petersburg F v IV 4, copied in the midtenth century, combines the Continuations of Fredegar, the Royal Frankish Annals, Einhard, the Astronomer and a genealogy. It was later in Soissons. The other, Vienna ONB 529, combines Einhard, the Astronomer, and the Royal Frankish Annals. It was copied during the second or final third of the tenth 52

  From Astronomer: “ut sibi moris est” (c. 20, p. 342), “scientia et morum probitate (c. 28, p. 378), “iuxta morem suum, qua clementia semper uti consuevit (c. 39, p. 426), “secundam morem suum” (c 40, p. 430), “benignitas et clementia more” (c. 45, p. 464), “iuxta morem solitum (c. 61, p. 538). 53   “quae aut fugienda sint aut sequenda”: Gordiani, SHA 2, c. 21.4, p. 416. 54   “exemplo Scipionis Aemiliani”: Hadriani, SHA 1, c. 10.2, p. 30. 55   “Marcum rogavit, qui venit, ut fratri venerabilem morum suorum et imitandam ostenderet sanctitudinem”: Verus, SHA 1, c. 8.9, p. 224. 56   “legit et vitam Alexandri, quem praecipue imitatus est”: Severus Alexander, SHA 2, c. 30.3, p. 236. 57   “imitare Nervas, Traianos, Hadrianos”: Tacitus, SHA 3, c. 6.9, p. 306. 58   “vita et clementia tales esse cupere qualis fuit Marcus”: Marcus, SHA 1, c. 19.12, p. 180. 59   “magnum et praeclarum principe consueto et qualem historia nostra non novit principem”: Probus, SHA 3, c. 2.9, p. 340.

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century in northeastern France.60 Twelfth-century and later manuscripts of the Astronomer frequently combine the text with that of Einhard. (Of course, the best-known set of serial biographies of successful administrators was the Liber Pontificalis, and the nature of the parallel between empire and papacy which Einhard and the Astronomer were making by composing such a biography deserves further consideration.) Any evaluation of the Astronomer’s work must investigate those categories which he used to explain the course of events. Like Einhard,61 the Astronomer turns to Fortune as a means of understanding history: “The happy outcome of this successful crossing was spoiled by faithless, uncertain, and changeable fortune.”62 The Historia Augusta recorded good fortune,63 and uses Fortune to explain the change of events: “Fortune takes pleasure in nothing so much as in changing all that pertains to public affairs.”64 The reign of Louis the Pious produced discussions of Christian kingship in which the ruler is praised. The king’s ministerium, his duty, is the defense of the Church and the protection of the needy, the administration of justice and the reform of society.65 The Astronomer’s prologue praises Louis for his virtues—the very virtues which scripture tells us that holy wisdom teaches: sobriety, wisdom justice, and virtue (Sap. 8.7)—and discusses each virtue briefly. Then the Astronomer quotes Job: “The fear of the Lord is wisdom.”66 60

  The fullest account of these manuscripts is found in M. Tischler, Einhards Vita Karoli. Studien zur Entstehung, Überlieferung und Rezeption, 2 vols., MGH Schriften 48 (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2001), pp. 808–16, 1,183. For ÖNB 529, see Hartmut Hoffmann, Buchkunst und Königtum im ottonischen und frühsalischen Reich, Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica 30, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1986), p. 211, and Ernst Tremp, Die Uberlieferung der Vita Hludowici Imperatoris des Astronomus, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Studien und Texte 1 (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1991), pp. 53–5, 55–6. 61   “Falso blandienti fortunae”: Vita Karoli, c. 8, p. 11. 62   “Sed hanc felicitatem transitus, si dici fas est, foedavit infidus incertusque fortune ac vertibilis successus”: Astronomer, c. 2, p. 288. Cf. ibid., c. 49, p. 482: “de imperatoris infortunio.” 63   Valeriani, SHA 3, c. 2.2, p. 4; Septimius Severus, SHA 1, c. 2, pp. 372–4. 64   “ut appareat nihil tam gratum esse fortunae, quam ut ea quae sunt in publicis actibus eventuum varietate mutentur”: Carus et Carinus et Numerian, SHA 3, c. 3.7, p. 420. 65   “ad causas necessarias eclesiarum et pauperum aliquotiens audiendas aut examinandas propter amorem Dei assumatis laborem, quia perfectio ministerii vestri”: “Concilium in Francia habitum, a. 818/819–829,” MGH Conc. 2.2, ed. Albert Werminghoff (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1908), no. 49, c. 8, p. 595. 66   “Etenim auctoritate divini eloquii adiscimus, sanctam sapientiam docere sobrietatem et sapientiam et iustitiam et virtutem, quibus nihil est in vita hominibus [Sap. 8.7]. Quarum ille ita comitatui indivise adhesit, ut nescires potius quam in eo ammirare deberes. Quid enim eius sobrietate sobrius, que alio nomine frugalitas sive temperantia nominatur? Ita enim ea usus est, ut illud vetustissimum proverbium et ad caelum usque celebratum ei fuierit familiarissimum, quo

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Both these biblical quotations also occur together in the forth chapter of Smaragdus’ Via Regia, entitled “De Sapientia”, where he tells the king to prepare his soul to receive wisdom, for the book of Wisdom speaks especially to kings: “Wisdom is a royal virtue and the word of the prophets cries to them that they may learn wisdom.”67 The work was most probably composed for the young Louis, but it is clear that the Astronomer also knew it. It provided categories of virtue very different from those which Einhard had chosen to praise in Charlemagne. For Smaragdus the ruler was a religious figure in his own right: “God established you as king of the people of earth and ordained that you become the heir of His own Son in heaven.”68 The book of Proverbs, quoted by Smaragdus, says: “He who is inclined to mercy shall be blessed.”69 The young Louis in Aquitaine showed his prudence and his compassion by reducing dues: “The king gave continuous evidence of his wisdom and mercy so that one could see that these qualities were authentic in him.”70 Louis was described as a man of compassion; the Astronomer noted that Louis was “not unmindful of his usual mercy” when he re-called those rebels he had sent into exile and restored their lands to them in 831.71 Smaragdus, in his chapter on mercy, discusses alms-giving. Louis is praised for giving alms generously to the poor after the appearance of the comet and at times of fasting. The Astronomer’s account of Louis in 836 praises him in terms of charity, the virtue which Smaragdus had made the core of all other virtues: “He was always eager for peace, a lover of peace and a lover of unity and he sought to unite to himself in charity not only his sons, but also his enemies.”72 In Smaragdus’ words: dicitur: Ne quid nimis. Sapientia vero delectabatur ea, quam scripturae de auctoritate didicerat dicente: Ecce timor Domini, ipsa est sapientia [ Job 28:28]. Iustitiam porro quanto coluerit affectu, testes sunt, qui eius novere studium quo flagrabat …”: Astronomer, Prologue, p. 282. 67   “Sapientia virtus est regia, ad quos specialiter, ut discant sapientiam, sermo propheticus clamitat”: PL 102, pp. 943–4. On the Via Regia, see Otto Eberhardt, Via Regia. Der Fürstenspiegel Smaragds von St. Mihiel und seine literarische Gattung, Münstersche MittelalterSchriften 28 (Munich: Fink, 1977), and Alain Dubreucq, “Smaragde de Saint-Mihiel et son temps: enseignement et bibliothèques à l’époque carolingienne,” Mélanges de la Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne 7 (1986): 7–36. 68   “Constituit te regem populi terrae et proprii filii sui in coelo fieri iussit heredem”; Via Regia, PL 102, p. 933. 69   Ibid., p. 955, quoting Proverbs 22:8: “Qui pronus est ad misericordiam, benedicetur.” 70   “rex et prudentiae suae monstravit continuo documentum et misericordiae, quae sibi genuina probatur, patefecit affectum”: Astronomer, c. 7, p. 304. 71   “consuete non immemor misericordiae”: ibid., c. 46, p. 466. 72   “Qui ut paci semper studens semperque dilector pacis atque amator unitatis, querebat non modo filios, sed et inimicos sibi caritate uniri”: ibid., c. 54, p. 506.

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It seems to me that this is the true royal virtue, that he breaks the bread of delight for all in the palace, offers to all the wine of joyfulness, gives all sweet kisses, and carefully embraces all with open arms. Therefore, O most famous king, keep this bright and blessed royal virtue. Let it be with you and remain with you, rise with you, go with you, rejoice with you, and eat with you, for it is fitting that such a royal virtue be at the king’s banquets.73

Smaragdus also devoted a chapter to praise of peace.74 Like Smaragdus’ ruler, Louis came from a royal family, was anointed and ruled many kingdoms. Smaragdus enjoined the ruler to defend his regalia with works and by his way of life. His advice not to glory in riches (c. 16) and his praise of clemency (c. 19)75 may be especially relevant to Louis’s generosity, which the Astronomer acknowledged some considered excessive.76 Louis’s clemency was open to abuse, as when he stripped Hugh of Tours and Matfrid of Orléans, who had failed in the Spanish campaign of 828, of their honors: “The spirit of the emperor was most compassionate by nature and he always sought to request mercy for those who had sinned … it will be seen how they abused his mercy and repaid it with cruelty.”77 This passage should be read alongside Smaragdus: Although you shine forth in gold and purple, you should not cast aside the clemency of humility; although you are resplendent in royal honoring, you should not depart from the clemency of humility; although you are surrounded by a multitude of peoples, hold to pious clemency; it is a royal virtue and is the guardian of the goods of kings. By looking after it you will preserve its children and their throne will be strengthened, for it is written that mercy and truth preserve the king and his throne is strengthened by clemency [Prov. 20:28]. It is what makes happy those who rule and makes the countenance of the king cheerful. As Solomon says: “In the cheerfulness of the king’s countenance is life, and his clemency is like the latter rain. It is what serves everyone in the place with joy and cheerfulness. It is what increased generous gifts to 73

  “Vere enim haec, ut video, regalis est virtus, quae cunctis in palatio panem laetitiae frangit, cunctis vinum jucunditatis porrigit, dulcia cunctis oscula tribuit, et diligens omnes ulnis extensis amplectitur. Tene ergo istam, o clarissime rex, tam claram et beatam regiamque virtutem; tecum sit, tecum maneat, tecum surgat, tecum pergat, tecum laetetur et convivetur; decet enim in convivio regis tam regiam jugiter inesse virtutem”: Via Regia, PL 102, p. 937. 74   Ibid., p. 957. 75   “Clementia eius sicut imber serotinus. Ipsa est quae omnibus in palatio regis jucunditatem ministrat atque laetitiam”: ibid., p. 958. 76   “Uni tantummodo ab emulis ascribebatur subcubuisse culpae, eo quod nimis clemens erat”: ibid., p. 284. Booker, Past Convictions, p. 35, takes this sentence as “the key to undetstanding the Astronomer’s narrative.” 77   “Imperatoris animus natura misericordissimus semper peccantibus misericordiam praerogare studuit … clementia illius abusi sunt in crudelitatem”: Astronomer, c. 42, p. 444.

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the servants of the king. It is what makes children and young men and the old rejoice. It is what makes men run cheerfully in every corner of the palace and which gives kisses to some and embraces to many.” So I wish, O king, that the virtue of clemency shines forth from your face serving all in joy and love.78

The Astronomer returned to this theme: “So great was the unjust hatred under which the emperor labored, always living kindly disposed to others, and his life was painful to those who might legally and justly have lost their lives but were living through his favor.”79 Yet he affirms that for Louis to have resigned would have been a disaster: “Many people feared lest he wished to resign the governance of the kingdom.”80 Smaragdus included a passage urging the ruler to flee to God’s support: For you are my hope, a strong tower from the enemy. The rock and the tower signify Christ. He rightly says he is exalted in that rock for he does not doubt that he is based in faith in Him. And he is defended in that tower who is armed with virtues trusting in His help. For that tower is full of virtues not of swords. He fights with the Word and not in battle, but everywhere with unconquered fortitude. He protects and guards His elect.81 78

  “Quamvis ergo auro nitescas et purpura, humilitatis non debes abjicere clementiam; quamvis regali cultu resplendeas, ab humilitatis clementia non recedas; quamvis populorum sis circumdatus multitudine, tu tamen piam clementiam tene: regalis enim virtus est, et bonorum regum custos est. Illam enim custodiendo, illorum proles servabitur, et thronus illorum solidabitur. Sic enim scriptum est: Misericordia et veritas cusiodiunt regem, et roboratur clementia thronus ejus [Prov. 20:18]. Ipsa est enim quae laetos regi facit servire populos: ipsa est quae jucundissime regis facit hilarescere vultum, sicut Salomon ait: In hilaritate vultus regis, vita: clementia ejus sicut imber serotinus [Prov. 16:15]. Ipsa est quae omnibus in palatio regis jucunditatem ministrat atque laetitiam; ipsa est quae cunctis pueris regis larga dona multiplicat; ipsa est quae parvulos et juvenes senesque laetificat; ipsa est quae per cunctos palatii angulos laetos facit discurrere natos; ipsa est quae nonnullis oscula, plerisque ministrat amplexus. Volo ergo, clementissime rex, ut et in tuo jugiter vultu resplendeat clementiae virtus, quae cunctis laetitiam cunctisque ministret amorem”: Via Regia, PL 102, pp. 958–9. 79   “Tanto enim imperator, aliis benigne semper vivens, iniusto odio laborabat, ut tederet eos vitae ipsius, cuius illi nisi benefitio viverent, iuste et legaliter vita caruissent”: Astronomer, c. 44, p. 458. 80   “Timebatur enim a multis, ne regni vellet relinquere gubernacula”: ibid., c. 32, p. 392. 81   “‘quia factus es spes mea: turris fortitudinis a facie inimici’ [Ps. 60:1]. Petra enim hic et turris Christum significant: in hac enim petra recte se exaltatum pronuntiat, qui in fide illius se fundatum non dubitat. Et in hac turre ille defenditur, qui in auxilio ejus confidens virtutibus armatur. Turris enim ista virtutibus est plena, non gladiis, pugnat verbo non praelio, nec localiter defendit, sed universaliter invicta fortitudine electos suos protegit et custodit”: Via Regia, PL 102, pp. 969–70.

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David the Psalmist set up on the rock is armed with virtues; he may perhaps be compared to the lighthouses of Smaragdus’ preface. In following both the model of Einhard and of Smaragdus, the Astronomer was being fiercely contemporary. But he was also taking part in a discussion about which virtues were the most important for rulers. The Astronomer presented Louis as an athlete engaged in the daily practice of humility: This was the holy emperor’s exercise; this was his daily game; this was his struggle in the arena, seeing to it that the state might shine forth more brilliantly in holy teaching and practice, so that he who adorns himself with sublime humility by imitating Christ in humility might rise higher.82

As Hans-Werner Goetz has shown, the Astronomer used a wide vocabulary to explore concepts of government, including a sense of a public sphere.83 The state is compared to the body, which needs the remedies of advice and strength.84 He frequently referred to publica utilitas85 and to the res publica.86 Nithard saw the failure of a shared sense of the state as the cause of the crisis in the reign of Louis—“The state grew daily worse because everyone sought his own gain, led on by cupidity”87—a view which the Astronomer seems to have shared: “Perverse turn, when the public was turned into the private.”88 But, like Augustine, the Astronomer “prefers to single out the typically private virtues for special praise in Christian emperors.”89 Those virtues include 82

  “Hanc erat sancti imperatoris exercitatio, hic quotidianus ludus, haec palestrica agonia, spectante eo, quo civitas in sancta doctrina et operatione clarius eniteret: qui se pomparet cum sublimi humilitate, imitando Christum humilitate, altius emineret”: Astronomer, c. 28, p. 378. 83   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 Björn Weiler and Simon MacLean, eds., Representations of Power in Medieval Germany 800–1500 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 15–36. 84   “Consilio et fortitudine”: Astronomer, c. 3, p. 290. 85   Ibid., c. 18, p. 332; ibid., c. 43, p. 452, and ibid., c. 54, p. 504: “utilitas”; ibid., c. 7, p. 306: “gnarumqe utilitatis et honestatis regie”; ibid., c. 19, p. 340; ibid., c. 34, p. 406: “ceterisque que ultilitas poscebat explicitis.” 86   Ibid., c. 2, p. 286: “rebus tam publicis quamque privatis pro oportunitate dispositis”; ibid., c. 53, p. 498: “tam in eccesiasticis quam publicis rebus.” On the use of the term res publica in the charters and capitularies of Louis the Pious, see Yves Sassier, “L’utilisation d’un concept romain aux temps carolingiens: la res publica aux IXe et Xe siècles,” Médiévales 15 (1988): 17–29. 87   “Res autem publica, quoniam quisque cupiditate illectus sua quaerebat, cotidie deterius ibat”: Nithard, 1.4, p. 16. 88   “perversa vice, dum publica vertutur in privata”: Astronomer, c. 6, p. 302. 89   R.A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of Saint Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 149.

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faith and piety. Louis is repeatedly called piissimus.90 It is made clear that his virtues are exceptional almost beyond human nature: “[He was] most mild in his character, most generous in his fortitude and most prudent in his piety.”91 He is presented as something more than a ruler. His works proclaimed that he was not only a king, but also a priest. At his death, he is described as “the great light of mortals … the emperor of most pious memory.”92 The status of the Church was his constant concern: “Since he began to come of age, but especially at that time, the most pious spirit of the king was roused to divine worship and the exaltation of the holy Church.”93 Mayke de Jong has helpfully commented: “The expression sancta ecclesia refers not merely to ‘the church’ in the institutional sense of the word, but to those who mediate between God and mankind, and thereby guarantee God’s favour and mercy for the entire polity, provided that He is prayed to in the correct fashion.”94 Compare the theocratic preamble to the Irish Constitution: “In the name of the Most Holy Trinity, from whom is all authority and to whom, as our final end, all actions both of men, and states must be referred, We the people of Eire, Humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord Jesus Christ ….”95 The Astronomer only once uses veracissmus to introduce a biblical maxim. Truth is not a category he applied to the record of historical events. Truth is found in God’s word, which those events may exemplify:96 “The emperor put his hope in Him of whom it is most truthfully said: For Your power is at hand, Lord, when you wish” (Wis. 12:18).97 The Astronomer used the Bible to provide a justification for some of Louis’s actions, though it is not a frequent source of quotations. We learn from the authority of divine eloquence that holy wisdom teaches moderation and wisdom, justice and courage.98 2 Corinthians 12:13, 90

  Astronomer, pp. 344, 376, 420, 432, 484, 538, and 544. Note that Severus Alexander was called Pius: Severus, SHA 2, c. 4.4, p. 184. 91   “… pene ultra humanum modum natura mitissimus, fortitudine magnanimus, pietate cautissimus”: Astronomer, c. 62, p. 540. 92   “maximum lumen mortalium…. piisime recordationis imperatorem dico”: ibid., c. 62, p. 544. 93   “Et regis quidem ab ineunti etate, sed tunc quam maximae, circa divinum cultum et sanctae ecclesiae exaltationem piissimus incitabatur animus”: ibid., c. 19, p. 334. 94   De Jong, Pentiential State, p. 83. 95   F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), p. 538. 96   I know of no discussion of how far early medieval authors regarded historical events as potentially allegorical as well as historical, though some recent treatments of Bede assume that such a viewpoint shaped his presentation and understanding of the history of England. 97   “Imperator in eum spem posuit, cui veracissime dicitur: Subest enim tibi, Domine, cum volueris, posse”: Astronomer, c. 56, p. 514. 98   “Auctoritate divini eloquii adiscimus, sanctam sapientiam docere sobrietatem et sapientiam et iustitiam et virtutem” [Wis. 8:7]: ibid., Prologue, p. 282.

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“Dimittite illi [rather than ‘Donate mihi’] hanc iniuriam,” is quoted with the reading in a variant form as reaction to the charge that Louis was too merciful (nimis clemens).99 The succession of Louis recalls a verse of scripture and shows its truth: “The just man is dead and yet he is not dead, for he has left behind a son like himself as an heir.”100 The death of so many noble Franks in 834 calls to mind Jeremiah 9:23: “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom.”101 But, for the Astronomer, the rule of Louis is explicitly a part of a greater cosmic harmony At Louis’s restoration in 834, the very elements seemed to suffer with him and to wish him well when he was restored, for the great force of the storms and downpours threatened floods, but when he was absolved, the elements seemed to be allied so that the savage winds grew gentle and “the face of heaven was restored to its former, and for a long time unseen, serenity.”102 In the introduction to his translation of the Astronomer, Tom Noble wisely wrote: “Bearing in mind that secular biography was an innovative genre when the Astronomer wrote, one can still see that he tried to do something new.”103 I have tried to suggest why the Astronomer might have chosen biography, how the genre was perceived, but also how Louis’s virtues bring a new element to secular biography, because they are not the virtues Einhard detected in Charlemagne, but rather the virtues which Smaragdus had commended to the young Louis. Confronted with the task of describing a ruler whose remarriage had ended in disaster, and who had twice faced rebellion and done public penance for his sins, the Astronomer’s best hope was to present Louis as an example of proper piety.104As a cleric, the Astronomer was conscious that Louis’s virtues brought him closer to priests than to past emperors, and was prepared to say so. The dramatic deathbed scene, in which Louis confronts the devil and puts him to flight, was much closer to the struggle of a Christian saint than to the political maneuvering of a ruler with his nobles. Writing during the civil war which followed Louis’s death, the Astronomer defended his hero for his piety.105 We do 99

  Ibid., p. 284. The verse is treated by Sedulius Scottus, On Paul’s Epistles, PL 103, p. 180. Haimo of Auxerre as an instance of irony, On Paul’s Epistles, PL 117, p. 667. 100   Astronomer, c. 20, p. 344, quoting Ecclesiasticus 30:4. 101   Astronomer, c. 56, p. 514. 102   “Celi facies in antiquam et multo tempore invisam serentiatem”: ibid., c. 51, p. 490. 103   Thomas F.X. Noble, ed. and trans., Charlemagne and Louis the Pious: Lives by Notker, Ermoldus, Thegan, and the Astronomer (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), p. 224. 104   “… der Versuch, mit Hilfe vorgebener hagiographischer Elemente eine neue Form zu finden”; Tremp, Preface to the Astronomer, p. 103. Tremp recognizes the role of these crises: ibid., pp. 104–7. 105   For an attempt to argue that piety was the crucial virtue in the Astronomer’s biography, see Alexander Weihs, Pietas und Herrschaft. Das Bild Ludwigs des Frommen in den “Vitae Hludowici” (Münster: Lit, 2004).

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not know how Lothar or Louis or Charles responded to the Astronomer’s life of their father. But we do have the verdict of the royal son of another famous father, Frederick II, the friend of Voltaire: “The follies of the fathers are lost upon their children, and it is necessary that each generation commit its own.”106 Appendix: The Identity of the Astronomer The Astronomer was a cleric, as is shown by his references to nostra lex (“our law”) in chapter 49 and his knowledge of rule for canons, obvious to anyone who looks at a copy.107 He was well informed about events in Aquitaine, but his hostility to Aquitanians suggests that he was not a native. He was a courtier, as he states in the prologue,108 and he took part in a conversation with Louis about the comet on April 10, 837. He was the friend of Archbishop Drogo of Metz and of Bishop Ebroin of Poitiers. Buchner suggested that he was the younger Hilduin,109 Tischler has suggested that he was Bishop Jonas of Orleans,110 Booker that he was Walahfrid Strabo.111 Tom Noble has shrewdly stated: “I consider speculation pointless.”112 The Astronomer’s preface includes the phrase “nolumus esse praesentibus inoffitiosi,” suggesting he was responding to an officium or a command. In that context, it would be worth revisiting Meyer von Knonau’s argument that the Astronomer knew the work of Nithard and was reacting to it.113 His biography seems to have been composed as a partisan account written in part to influence events in 841, but it is presumptuous to assume that we know enough about those events to identify the Astronomer.

106

  Frederick II, Oeuvres (Berlin: Imprimerie royale, 1846), vol. 5, p. 233, as quoted in Reinhardt Kosselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 280, n. 28. 107   “sicut recultus ipse fatetur”: Astronomer, c. 28, p. 374. 108   “Ego rebus interfui palatinis”: ibid., Prologue, p. 284. 109   Max Buchner, “Entstehungszeit und Verfasser der Vita Hludowici des ‘Astronomus,’” Historisches Jahrbuch 60 (1940): 14–45. 110   Tischler, Einhard’s Vita Karoli, pp. 1,109–11. 111   Booker, Past Convictions, p. 293, n. 129. 112   Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, p. 219. 113   Gerold Meyer von Knonau, Über Nithards vier Bücher Geschichten. Der Bruderkrieg der Söhne Ludwigs des Frommen und sein Geschichtschreiber (Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel, 1866), pp. 17–18, 135–6. Buchner accepted this suggestion, though Tremp preferred to assume a common source.

Chapter 8

Paschasius Radbertus and Pseudo-Isidore: The Evidence of the Epitaphium Arsenii Mayke de Jong The Field of Lies and Pseudo-Isidore In June 833, the conflict between Louis the Pious and his three eldest sons that had been building for the past year came to a head. Armies converged upon the Rotfelt near Colmar, in Alsace, a place that would become known as “the Field of Lies,” because Louis’s supporters went over in droves to the camp of his eldest son Lothar and his brothers. Those on the side of the rebel sons, however, interpreted this massive desertion as a divine judgment which justified the public penance that had been imposed on Louis in the autumn of 833. God had obviously withdrawn his favor from this mighty emperor.1 One of those who continued to advocate this view, long after the event, was Paschasius Radbertus, a monk of Corbie and a highly accomplished biblical scholar, who was the abbot of this monastery between 843/44 and 849/53.2 In retirement, having relinquished his abbacy, he embarked on the second book of his Epitaphium Arsenii. Radbert had already completed the first book of this funeral eulogy in the years immediately after his abbot Wala’s death in 836. A cousin of Charlemagne, Wala had been a powerful secular magnate until 814, when, denied the favor of the new emperor, he left the political arena, was tonsured, and entered Corbie, where he none the 1

  Mayke de Jong, The Penitential State. Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious (814–840) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 224–49; Courtney M. Booker, Past Convictions: The Penance of Louis de Pious and the Decline of the Carolingians (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), pp. 140–82. 2   On Paschasius Radbertus’ biography, see Ludwig Traube, Prooemium, MGH Poetae 3, pp. 39–40 (hereafter, Traube, Prooemium); Henri Peltier, Pascase Radbert, abbé de Corbie. Contribution à l’étude de la vie monastique et de la pensée chrétienne aux temps carolingiens (Amiens: L.-H. Duthoit, Editeurs, 1938); David Ganz, Corbie in the Carolingian Renaissance, Beihefte der Francia 20 (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1990), pp. 29–33; Henry MayrHarting, “Two Abbots in Politics: Wala of Corbie and Bernard of Clairvaux”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5(40) (1989): 217–37; Mayke de Jong, “Familiarity Lost: On the Context of the Second Book of the Epitaphium Arsenii,” in Martin Gravel and Sören Kaschke, eds., Politische Theologie und Geschichte unter Ludwig dem Frommen/Histoire et théologie politiques sous Louis le Pieux, Relectio, Karolingische Perspektiven/Perspectives carolingiennes/Carolingian Perspectives 2 (Ostfildern: Thorbecke Verlag, forthcoming).

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less continued to be a force to be reckoned with; in 821–22, he and his halfbrother Adalhard were reconciled with the emperor; in 826, Wala succeeded Adalhard as abbot of Corbie.3 His monastic name was Arsenius. The Epitaphium is a sophisticated literary work, constructed as a dialogue between three monks of Corbie, of which Radbert himself (as “Pascasius”) was the narrator.4 Whereas the first book concentrated on Wala’s role as an abbot, the second explained and justified his conduct during the two rebellions against Louis the Pious of 830 and 833. The main thrust of Radbert’s argument was that, despite his involvement in these uprisings, Wala had been a model of loyalty to his emperor. This second book has greatly influenced the modern concept of the uprising of 830 as a “loyal palace rebellion,” carried out by those committed to defending the unity of the Christian empire.5 It is also one of the central sources 3   Karl Heinz Krüger, “Zur Nachfolgereglung von 826 in den Klöstern Corbie und Corvey,” in Norbert Kamp and Joachim Wollasch, eds., Tradition als historische Kraft: Festschrift Karl Hauck (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1982), pp. 181–96. See also Brigitte Kasten, Adalhard von Corbie. Die Biographie eines karolingischen Politikers und Klostervorstehers, Studia humaniora 3 (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1986); Lorenz Weinrich, Wala, Graf, Mönch und Rebell: Die Biographie eines Karolingers, Historische Studien 386 (Lübeck and Hamburg: Matthiessen Verlag,1963), pp. 53–9. 4   On the Epitaphium Arsenii, see: Peter von Moos, Consolatio. Studien zur mittellateinischen Trostliteratur über den Tod und zum Problem der christlichen Trauer, 4 vols., Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften 3 (Munich: Fink, 1971–72), vol. 1, pp. 140–42, and vol. 2, pp. 100–101; Walter Berschin, Biographie und Epochenstil im lateinischen Mittelalter, vol. 3, Karolingische Biographie, 770–920 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1991), pp. 318–25; David Ganz, “The Epitaphium Arsenii and Opposition to Louis the Pious,” in Peter Godman and Roger Collins, eds., Charlemagne’s Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814–840) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 537–50; David Ganz, Corbie in the Carolingian Renaissance, 112–20; Chiara Verri, “Il libro primo dell’Epitaphium Arsenii di Pascasio Radberto,” Bulletino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo 103 (2001/2002): 33–131; Booker, Past Convictions, pp. 42–50; De Jong, Penitential State, pp. 102–11; Mayke de Jong, “Becoming Jeremiah: Radbert on Wala, Himself and Others,” in Richard Corradini et al., eds., Ego Trouble: Authors and their Identities in the Early Middle Ages, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mitttelalters 15 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), pp. 185–96.; Mayke de Jong, “‘Heed That Saying of Terence’: On the Use of Terence in Radbert’s Epitaphium Arsenii,” in Carolingian Scholarship and Martianus Capella: Ninth-century Commentary Traditions on Martianus’s De nuptiis in Context, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (CELAMA) 12, ed. Mariken Teeuwen and Sinéad O’Sullivan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 273–300; Matthew Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), pp. 196–208. I am currently writing a book-length study of the text: Epitaph for an Era: Paschasius Radbertus and His Lament for Wala (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). 5   For a pertinent critique of this concept, and an extensive bibliography of the relevant German historiography, see Steffen Patzold, “Eine ‘loyale Palastrebellion’ der ‘Reichseinheitspartei’? Zur ‘Divisio imperii’ von 817 und zu den Ursachen des Aufstandes gegen Ludwig den Frommen im Jahre 830,” Frümittelalterliche Studien 40 (2006): 43–77.

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of information on the controversial intervention of Pope Gregory IV in the conflict between Louis and his rebellious sons in 833, a topic discussed in Tom Noble’s doctoral dissertation.6 Radbert presented the pope’s appearance north of the Alps as a genuine attempt at mediation, and Louis’s rejection of it as the beginning of the road to his de facto deposition at Soissons. Radbert’s is a partisan view, but this is precisely what interests me here. Central in his vivid narrative is the story of Wala and himself traveling, with precious textual baggage, to Lothar’s camp near Colmar. There, they met a despondent pontiff who had been threatened with deposition by bishops loyal to Louis. They supported Gregory by presenting him with authoritative texts: We therefore gave him some writings confirmed by the authority of the holy fathers and his predecessors, on the basis of which nobody could contradict that his was the power, or rather, God’s and the Apostle Peter’s, and his the authority to go to and adjudicate all peoples,7 for the fidelity to Christ and the peace of the churches, for the preaching of the Gospel and the proclamation of the truth, and that in him rested all the exalted authority and living power of the blessed Peter, by whom all mankind ought to be judged, so that he himself should be judged by nobody. He accepted gratefully and took much courage from these writings.8

Recently, the idea has been revived that the “some writings” mentioned here were an early or even more advanced stage of the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals.9 This 6

  Thomas F.X. Noble, Louis the Pious and the Papacy: Law, Politics and the Theory of Empire in the Early Ninth Century (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1979; diss., Michigan State University, 1974), pp. 321–52. 7   Acts 15:17: “ut requirant ceteri hominum Dominum et omnes gentes super quas invocatum est nomen meum dicit Dominus faciens haec”; Acts 15:22: “tunc placuit apostolis et senioribus cum omni ecclesia eligere viros ex eis et mittere Antiochiam cum Paulo et Barnaba Iudam qui cognominatur Barsabban et Silam viros primos in fratribus.” 8   Paschasius Radbertus, Epitaphium Arsenii, ed. E. Dümmler, in Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Phil.-Historische Abhandlungen 2 (1900), c. 16, p. 84 (hereafter EA): “Quibus auditis, pontifex plurimum mirabatur, ac verebatur. Unde et ei dedimus nonnulla sanctorum patrum auctoritate firmata praedecessorumque suorum conscripta, quibus nullus contradicere possit quod eius esset potestas, immo Dei et beati Petri apostoli, suaque auctoritas, ire, mittere ad omnes gentes pro fide Christi et pace ecclesiarum, pro praedicatione evangelii et assertione veritatis, et in eo esset omnis auctoritas beati Petri excellens et potestas viva, a quo oporteret universos iudicari, ita ut ipse a nemine iudicandus esset. Quibus profecto scriptis, gratanter accepit, et valde confortatus est.” 9   Johannes Fried, Donation of Constantine and Constitutio Constantini: The Misinterpretation of a Fiction and its Original Meaning, with a Contribution by Wolfram Brandes: “The Satraps of Constantine”, Millennium-Studien zu Kultur und Geschichte des ersten Jahrtausends

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was once a widespread view, but it had already been rejected in 1863 when Paul Hinschius published his edition of the decretals.10 In 1905, Emil Seckel warned that Radbert’s “anecdotes” should be kept out of any serious investigation of the famous forgery.11 Most scholars have heeded this ever since, and the view that the false decretals were the product of the late 840s and early 850s has gained a wide consensus.12 Accordingly, whether thought of as anecdotal or not, Radbert’s Epitaphium has been left out of account as a relevant witness to the history of the false decretals, on the grounds that it was concerned with the events of the 830s. Since the beginning of the new millennium, however, this consensus established by Seckel and others has been challenged, to begin with by the influential work of the late Klaus Zechiel-Eckes.13 It is now argued that Pseudo-Isidore was already created in the 830s, and that the forgers were located in Corbie. This historiographical revolution has had paradoxical consequences. Not only was the genius behind the false decretals and its precursors recognized as Radbert, or perhaps Wala himself, but Radbert’s Epitaphium came back into view with a vengeance as a possible witness to this process. There is a problem, however, of which scholarship on Pseudo-Isidore, old and new, seems to be largely unaware: namely, that only the second book of the Epitaphium deals with the rebellions against Louis the Pious, and that it dates from the mid-850s. It was written after Radbert had been deposed as the abbot of Corbie. Inevitably, the author’s own experiences, including his removal as abbot of Corbie in 849/853, helped to shape his narrative of the rebellions, to the extent that it is often difficult, if not impossible, to separate the author n. Chr. 3 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007), pp. 99–103; Eric Knibbs, “Pseudo-Isidore on the Field of Lies: ‘Divinis praeceptis’ ( JE †2579) as an Authentic Decretal,” Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law, n.s. 29 (2011): 1–34; Eric Knibbs, “The Interpolated Hispana and the Origins of Pseudo-Isidore,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: kanonistische Abteilung 99 (forthcoming). 10   Paul Hinschius, ed., Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae et Capitula Angilramni (Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1863), p. cxcvi. 11   Emil Seckel, “Pseudoisidor,” in J.J. Herzog, Albert Hauck, and Hermann Caselmann, eds., Realenenzyklopedie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, 3rd edn. (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1905), p. 276: “Auf alle Fälle empfiehlt es sich somit, das Histörchen des Paschasius aus der Geschichte der falschen Dekretalen auszuschalten.” 12   Horst Fuhrmann, Einfluss und Verbreitung der Pseudo-Isidorischen Fälschungen. Von ihrem Auftauchen bis in die neuere Zeit, 3 vols., Schriften der MGH 24(1–3) (Stuttgart, 1972–74); for a clear and convenient English summary, see Detlev Jasper and Horst Furhrmann, Papal Letters in the Early Middle Ages (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 2001), pp. 138–95. The most recent update is Horst Fuhrmann, “Stand, Aufgaben und Perspektiven der Pseudoisidorforschung,” in W. Hartmann and G. Schmitz, eds., Fortschritt durch Fälschungen? Ursprung, Gestalt und Wirkungen der pseudoisidorischen Fälschungen, MGH Studien und Texte 31 (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2002). Seckel, “Pseudoisidor,” remains a valuable overview. 13   Jasper and Fuhrmann, Papal Letters, p. 142.

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and his subject.14 In other ways as well, this is not a source of factual information on the rebellions, but it has much to say on how much alive these controversial years of revolt still were in the minds of Radbert and his audience two decades later. Taken as a source of the 850s, as it should, this text can be valuable for Pseudo-Isidorian scholarship in various ways, but not if it is used—in a circular argument—as conclusive evidence for the origins and development of this forgery, or for Wala and Radbert being the geniuses behind this enterprise. This is not to say that their participation is out of the question, but any hypothesis would have to be substantiated by other sources, such as Radbert’s vast corpus of biblical commentary. It should be kept in mind that virtually all that we know of Wala’s own views on the rebellions comes from the Epitaphium’s second book. Furthermore, this text certainly vaunts papal authority, as does Pseudo-Isidore, but the latter’s alleged central purpose, the strengthening and protection of the position of bishops, is conspicuously absent in Radbert’s narrative. In fact, bishops do not play any role of importance in the Epitaphium. Given the attempts to identify Wala and/or Radbert as the forger(s) in question, the central issue in this tribute to Tom Noble is the question of whether the Epitaphium’s second book sheds any direct light on the genesis of Pseudo-Isidore. I very much doubt it, but Radbert’s account of the actions of Gregory IV on and around the Field of Lies is certainly relevant to the wider context of the decretals; so is a letter ascribed to this pope, dated to 833, which addresses the bishops loyal to Louis in no uncertain terms. Together with Pseudo-Isidore, these texts are important witnesses to the Frankish clergy’s increasing reliance on and identification with papal authority. This gradual process was perhaps kick-started, and certainly accelerated, by Gregory’s presence north of the Alps in 833. Pseudo-Isidore On the Move Although I refer to “Pseudo-Isidore” for the sake of brevity, the forgeries include four main collections: the Collectio Hispana Gallica Augustodunensis, Capitula Angilramni, the Capitularies of Benedict Levita, and the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. In what follows, I am mainly concerned with the false decretals. These contain a mixture of genuine and forged papal letters and conciliar acts from Anacletus I (c. 79–90) until Gregory I (590–604), followed by the Roman synod of Gregory II in 721.15 The consensus that largely prevailed 14

  This topic is explored in De Jong, “Becoming Jeremiah,” and De Jong, “Familiarity Lost.”   For an informative discussion of the separate collections, see Fuhrmann, Einfluss

15

und Verbreitung, vol. I, pp. 151–91; see also ibid., pp. 137–49, and the summary in ibid., vol. II, pp. 588–95; on the forgeries in general, see also Jasper and Furhrmann, Papal Letters, pp. 138–95, with a detailed survey of the structure of the decretals and their sources on ibid.,

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until end of the end of the last century was that this compilation was only completed between 847 and 852 in the circle of clerics who had been ordained by Archbishop Ebo of Rheims during the brief period (840–842) when he had managed to regain his see. Ebo’s successor Hincmar (845–82) refused to recognize their consecration, and deposed them.16 This would explain why the decretals tried to protect suffragan bishops from the might of their archbishops. By appealing to papal authority to render the procedure of deposing bishops so complicated as to be nearly impossible, Pseudo-Isidore attempted to curtail the might of metropolitans, provincial synods, and, to a lesser extent, secular power. In the process, papal power was enhanced, but not as a goal in itself. Its main purpose was to protect bishops against arbitrary accusations and depositions.17 This general aim is not contested, but the date and context of the decretals’ origins are. Klaus Zechiel-Eckes has made a forceful case for the monastery of Corbie as Pseudo-Isidore’s primary “workshop,” and suggested that Radbert may well have been the main intellectual force behind the entire enterprise. He also argued that the decretals’ defense of bishops against judicial arbitrariness should be understood in the context of Louis’s restoration in the years 834/36. Relentlessly cracking down on those who had imposed a public penance on him in 833, the emperor had driven these churchmen to defend themselves by forgery.18 pp. 161–9. Furthermore, see Eric Knibbs, Introduction to Pseudo-Isidore: A Brief Introduction to the Pseudo-Isidorian Forgeries, https://sites.google.com/a/yale.edu/decretumgratiani/introductionto-pseudo-isidore (accessed March 26, 2013), with extensive references to older literature. For current research on Benedictus Levita, see Edition der falschen Kapitularien des Benedictus Levita, http://www.benedictus.mgh.de/haupt.htm (accessed April 2, 2013). 16   Seckel, “Pseudo-Isidor,” 190, pp. 274–5; the terminus post quem is the completion of the capitularies of Benedict Levita after April 21, 847, when the decretals were not yet completed; the terminus ante quem is Hincmar’s use of the collection in his Capitula de presbyteris of November 1, 852; Fuhrmann, Einfluss und Verbreitung, vol. I, pp. 191–4; Jasper and Fuhrmann, Papal Letters, pp. 170–73. 17   Ibid., pp. 142–2. 18   The main argument is developed in Klaus Zechiel-Eckes, “Zwei Arbeitshandschriften Pseudoisidors,” Francia 27(1) (2000): 205–10; Klaus Zechiel-Eckes, “Verecundus oder Pseudoisidor? Zur Genese der Excerptiones de gestis Chalcedonensis concilii,” Deutsches Archiv 50 (2000): 413–46; Klaus Zechiel-Eckes, “Ein Blick in Pseudo-Isidors Werkstatt. Studien zum Entstehungsprozess der falschen Dekretalen. Mit einen exemplarischen Editorischen Anhang,” Francia 28(1) (2001): 37–90; Klaus Zechiel-Eckes, “Auf Pseudoisidors Spur: Oder, Versuch, einen dichten Schleier zu lüften,” in Wilfried Hartmann and Gerhard Schmitz, eds., Fortschritt durch Fälschungen? Ursprung, Gestalt und Wirkungen der pseudoisidorischen Fälschungen, MGH Studien und Texte 31 (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2002), pp. 1–28, and Klaus Zechiel-Eckes, “Eine ‘unbeugsame’ Exterminator? Isidorus Mercator und der Kampf gegen das Chorepiskopat,” in Oliver Münch and Thomas Zotz, eds., Scientia veritatis. Festschrift für Hubert Mordek zum 65. Geburtstag (Ostfildern: Thorbecke Verlag, 2004), pp. 173–90.

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A rather traditional kind of political history runs through most of ZechielEckes’s argument, but at its heart are three manuscripts used by the forger or forgers; all three bear marks and annotations of passages that ended up in the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals. Among these manuscripts is the oldest copy of the Historia ecclesiastica tripartita, the Latin translation by Cassiodorus-Epiphanus of a fifth-century compilation of three Church histories, originally written in Greek.19 Given that two of these manuscripts have Corbie as their provenance, and the third was annotated in this monastery, Zechiel-Eckes identified Corbie as the “workshop” in which the celebrated forgery originated, and Radbert, the monastery’s top scholar, as the likely genius behind it. These views have met with a generally favorable reception, although there have also been reservations.20 That Corbie had been central to the forgery was readily accepted, but there remained the question of why a monastery had produced a collection that tried to defend bishops against judicial arbitrariness on the part of their archbishops. Furthermore, given that the earliest complete manuscripts of the decretals date to c. 860, arguments for an earlier date must remain circumstantial by definition. For Zechiel-Eckes, the connection with Corbie, a known center of opposition against Louis the Pious, meant that the forgery’s obvious context was the restoration of Louis the Pious in 834–36, when rebellious bishops were relentlessly pursued by a vengeful emperor out to punish those who submitted him to this humiliating penance. Hitting back, these reform-minded clerics gathered texts, genuine and forged, which would bolster their authority in the 19   St. Petersburg Codex F.v.I. 11 (a copy of the Historia ecclesiastica tripartita of Cassiodorus-Epiphanus dating from the period 814–21, transmitted in Corbie); Paris BN lat. 11611, a copy of the acts of the Council of Chalcedon in the version of Rusticus; first quarter of ninth century, probably written in Corbie; BAV Pal. Lat. 1719, early ninth century. All these manuscripts have passages marked that have been incorporated in the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. See Steffen Patzold, Episcopus. Wissen über Bischöfe im Frankenreich des späten 8. bis frühen 10. Jahrhundert, Mittelalter-Forschungen 25 (Ostfildern: Thorbecke Verlag, 2008), pp. 221–6, for a succinct survey, with an informative footnote 254 on the manuscripts; Zechiel-Eckes, “Zwei Arbeitshandschriften Pseudoisidors”; Zechiel-Eckes, “Ein Blick in Pseudo-Isidors Werkstätt”; Zechiel-Eckes, “Auf Pseudoisidors Spur.” 20   In favor: Karl-Georg Schon, Die Capitula Angilramni. Eine prozessrechtliche Fälschung Pseudoisidors, MGH Studien und Texte 39 (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2006); Karl Ubl, “De Mehrwert der päpstlichen Schlüsselgewalt und die Tradition des heiligen Klemens,” in Andreas Pecar and Kai Trampedach, eds., Die Bibel als politisches Argument. Voraussetzungen und Folgen biblizistischer Herrschaftslegitimation in der Vormoderne, Historische Zeitschrift, Beihefte 43 (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2007), pp. 189–217; Johannes Fried, “Der lange Schatten eines schwachen Herrschers. Ludwig der Fromme, die Kaiserin Judith, Pseudoisidor und andere Personen in der Perspektive neuer Fragen, Methoden und Erkentnisse,” Historische Zeitschrift 284 (2007): 103–36; Fried, Donation of Constantine, pp. 99–103. Reservations were voiced by Fuhrmann, “Stand, Aufgaben und Perspektiven,” Episcopus, pp. 221–6, and De Jong, Penitential State, pp. 262–3.

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face of the onslaught of secular rulers. This background strengthened the case for Radbert’s important role in this undertaking, for together with Wala, he had been a prominent member of the group of churchmen who had rebelled against Louis in 830 and 833. In Zechiel-Eckes’s view, Louis’s crackdown on these men in 834–36 was a backlash of the most vicious kind.21 Four archbishops and “countless” bishops were duped by Louis and driven off to Italy, where in 836 they died in an epidemic.22 Yet this image of Louis’s restoration as a fierce backlash against rebellious bishops makes little sense in the light of contemporary sources, and neither does the notion, still subscribed to by Zechiel-Eckes, that the rebellions of the 830s represented a struggle between a “party for the unity of the empire” (Reichseinheitspartei) on the one hand and Louis as the incorporation of an imperial Staatskirche on the other.23 There was no strict and inflexible divide between two “parties,” and even more relevant here, there was no such thing as a terrible crackdown on Louis’s part against the bishops that sided with Lothar.24 Archbishop Ebo of Rheims became the scapegoat, left by the others to bear the brunt of the emperor’s wrath.25 The other high-profile prelate who played a central role in the emperor’s public penance, Agobard of Lyon, failed to appear at the assembly in Diedenhofen in 835, where he should have accounted for himself. He was deposed, but finally restored to his archiepiscopal see in 839.26 Four or possibly five bishops followed Lothar to Italy, as did Abbot Wala.27 The latter succumbed to the great epidemic of 836, as did the bishops Elias of Troyes, Jesse of Amiens, and a number of secular magnates,28 but unless one credits Louis with creating an epidemic, not much is left of the imperial revenge of 834–36. 21   Zechiel-Eckes, “Ein Blick in Pseudo-Isidors Werkstatt,” p. 55, calls Louis’s reaction a “Vergeltungsaktion oder Revanchefoul”; see also Zechiel-Eckes, “Auf Pseudoisidors Spur,” p. 19, for a head-count of bishops that fled, avoiding a confrontation with Louis. To call bishops to account at a synod (Diedenhofen, 835) is not the same thing as Fahndungsmassnahmen; ibid. 22   Zechiel-Eckes, “Ein Blick in Pseudo-Isidors Werkstatt,” p. 56. 23   Zechiel-Eckes, “Auf Pseudoisidors Spur,” pp. 15–18; but see Zechiel-Eckes, “Ein Blick in Pseudo-Isidors Werkstatt,” p. 56, n. 61, where the author concedes that the ideal of the “unity of the empire” was not part of Pseudo-Isidore’s ideology. 24   Patzold, “Eine ‘loyale Palastrebellion’”; Patzold, Episcopus, p. 222, n. 255; De Jong, Penitential State, pp. 10–12, 112–14. 25   See ibid., pp. 249–59; Patzold, Episcopus, pp. 193–8, 315–46, and Booker, Past Convictions, pp. 186–209. The only other prominent churchman never reconciled with Louis was Archbishop Bartholomew of Narbonne; cf. Egon Boshof, Erzbischof Agobard von Lyon: Leben und Werk, Kölner historische Abhandlungen 17 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1969), p. 261. 26   Ibid., p. 305. 27   De Jong, Penitential State, pp. 261–2. 28   Astronomer, Vita Hludowici imperatoris, ed. Ernst Tremp, MGH SRG 64 (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1995), c. 56, p. 512.

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Had Elias and Jesse lived, they might have been restored to their respective sees, as happened in the case of Herebold of Auxerre.29 As for Wala, it seems that by 836 he was sufficiently reconciled with Louis to serve as a mediator between the emperor and his eldest son.30 In fact, it is Louis’s lack of retaliation that needs to be explained, not his terrible revenge. Zechiel-Eckes made little use of the Epitaphium, except to point out that the fictional late antique context in which the work was situated reminded him of the fictional early popes of the false decretals.31 In more recent work that builds on his discoveries, this has changed. In his study of the Consitutum Constantini, Johannes Fried argues that this celebrated forgery was not a product of late eighth-century Rome, as had been thought hitherto, but a concoction that originated in the West Frankish circles opposed to Louis the Pious.32 Since the Constitutum was transmitted through the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals, the latter receive a fair amount of attention as well, as does the question of their authorship. Fried concludes that Pseudo-Isidore’s real auctor intellectualis was Wala himself, while Radbert and other monks from Corbie merely coordinated and completed their abbot’s legacy, assisted by like-minded forgers in St. Denis and Rheims.33 The decretals brought by Wala and Radbert to their meeting with Pope Gregory “probably included the first elaborate creation from the forger’s workshop, if indeed it wasn’t the entire product.”34 In Fried’s view, the Epitaphium’s second book was something like a running commentary on the genesis of Pseudo-Isidore, and an important instrument to determine its date. In a similar vein, Eric Knibbs has taken Radbert’s narrative about Pope Gregory as evidence for Pseudo-Isidore’s early origins in the 830s, arguing that the pope in 833 took “legal advice from monks from Pseudo-Isidore’s home monastery” who, on the Field of Lies, provided him with an appropriate collection of laws.35 29   Philippe Depreux, Prosopographie de l’entourage de Louis le Pieux (781–840). Instrumenta 1 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke Verlag, 1997), pp. 241–2. 30   Astronomer, Vita Hludowici , c. 55, p. 506. 31   Zechiel-Eckes, “Ein Blick in Pseudo-Isidors Werkstatt,” p. 59. 32   Fried, Donation of Constantine; see the review by Caroline J. Goodson and Janet L. Nelson, “The Roman Context of the ‘Donation of Constantine,’” Early Medieval Europe 18 (2010): 446–67. On Wala, Radbert, and Pseudo-Isidore, see Fried, Donation of Constantine, pp. 91–100. 33   Ibid., p. 93. 34   Ibid., p. 99. 35   Knibbs, “Pseudo-Isidore on the Field of Lies,” p. 21. This concerns a letter from Gregory IV to Bishop Alderic of Le Mans (ed. Karl Hampe, MGH Epp. 5, pp. 72–81 [ JE †2579]). It has generally been considered a Pseudo-Isidorian concoction, but Knibbs thinks it is an authentic decretal, issued when the pope was in the rebel camp at the Field of Lies. For an earlier defense of this letter as genuine, see Walter A. Goffart, “Gregory IV for Aldric of Le Mans (833): A Genuine or Spurious Decretal?”, Mediaeval Studies 28 (1966): 22–38.

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Meanwhile, the origins of Pseudo-Isidore are being looked for even further back in time. Recently, Steffen Patzold suggested that the aftermath of the first rebellion against Louis (830–31) may be a more likely context for this forgery than the second. Not only was Wala exiled, but Bishop Jesse of Amiens, in whose diocese Corbie was located, was deposed by Archbishop Ebo of Rheims, which would explain why monks attempted to protect bishops against judicial arbitrariness on the part of their archbishop. As Patzold suggests, Wala’s involvement in Pseudo-Isidore is all the more likely because he participated in the synod of Paris (829), which produced the first manifesto of the new kind of episcopal self-confidence of Carolingian bishops that also inspired the PseudoIsidorian collection.36 My objection to this in itself attractive hypothesis is that it belongs to a long and venerable tradition in Pseudo-Isidorian studies, namely the search for a narrow window of plausible circumstances that might explain why the forgery was begun in the first place. Such a window then consists of a specific threat to the authority and position of bishops, which required legal defense and especially the prevention of arbitrary deposition—the very subjects of Pseudo-Isidore. As Patzold points out, for Radbert, the rebellion of 830 was a turning point, and the exile of Abbot Wala, Bishop Jesse, and others in the winter of 830/31 caused great resentment. But should we perceive the origins of this huge collection as a sudden and immediate reaction to highly specific circumstances? I find this difficult to imagine; a gradual and long-term process of episcopal emancipation seems a more likely context.37 In any case, the second book of Epitaphium Arsenii has much to say on the rebellion of 830, but nothing whatsoever on bishops suffering in its aftermath. Besides, the recent early dating of Pseudo-Isidore means that Radbert’s narrative should be handled with extra care, for it was written well over two decades later. More recent events of the 850s threw their shadow over Radbert’s polemical defense of Wala. With Hindsight: The Second Book of the Epitaphium Arsenii Radbert lost his abbacy between the spring of 849 and April 853; by then, Odo of Beauvais had succeeded him, while he himself had retired to St. Riquier 36

  Karl Ubl and Daniel Ziemann, “Fälschung als Mittel der Politik? Pseudoisidor im Licht der neuen Forschung,” March 12, 2013, http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu–berlin.de/ tagungsberichte/id=4721 (accessed March 28, 2013). I am grateful to Steffen Patzold for sending me his conference paper. On Pseudo-Isidore’s genesis and its connection with the ideas propagated by the synod of Paris (829), see Patzold, Episcopus, pp. 221–3. 37   Cf. Fuhrmann, Einfluss und Verbreitung, vol. I, pp. 141–5, and Patzold’s own reflections in Episcopus, pp. 221–6.

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to devote himself to completing his huge commentary on Matthew.38 It was during these years that the second book of the Epitaphium was written, with the benefit of much hindsight. That this work only survives in one manuscript should not lead to the automatic conclusion that this text was only meant for an internal audience of monks in Corbie.39 Perhaps this could be argued for the first book, with its strong emphasis on Wala fulfilling his role as abbot to perfection, but not for the second. This text broaches many issues which exercised the great and good outside the monastery as well, such as the question of whether Wala had maintained the loyalty (fides) due to his emperor. Although Radbert’s focus in this second book is on Wala’s stance during the crisis years of 828–34, it is also clear that the text owes much to his own experience as abbot of Corbie, and especially as the ex-abbot of this monastery. Radbert’s vivid and polemical narrative about the rebellions against Louis also aimed to justify his own actions in the tumultuous years in which he was abbot of Corbie, and therefore a significant actor in the corridors of power of Charles the Bald’s kingdom. Wala had been “another Jeremiah” who had tried to warn his people that divine wrath was impending, but had then suffered incarceration and exile, sharing the disasters inflicted by a vengeful deity with sinners who had refused to heed his warnings.40 Like Jeremiah before him, writing in exile, Radbert now looked back at the origins of his own disastrous day and age. His second book is a lament for a world that was inexorably destroyed by human blindness and greed, and above all, by the former and current leadership’s inveterate disobedience to divine precepts. This retrospective prophecy allowed the author to develop his narrative within the framework of inevitable decline. Because Wala’s admonitions had not been heeded in the early 830s, everything had gone wrong: “This is why, up 38   Cf. De Jong, “Familiarity Lost,” with a new reconstruction of Radbert’s biography. In his prolegomena to Radbert’s work, Mabillon maintained that the latter lost his abbacy in 851, but the first mention of Odo as abbot only dates to April 853; cf. Philip Grierson, “Etudes Ier Évêque de Beauvais,” Le Moyen Age 45 (1935): 161–98, while Radbert still attended the synod of Quierzy (Spring 849). 39   Paris B.N. lat. 13909; see Ganz, Corbie in the Carolingian Renaissance, p. 145, with references to other literature. This is a copy executed by at least three ninth-century hands. It has been carefully corrected by a contemporary hand, possibly by the author himself. 40   De Jong, “Becoming Jeremiah.” Radbert had Jeremiah on his mind since the 840s, judging by his commentary on Lamentations. This was written not long after the Vikings plundered the Seine valley in 845, an event which Radbert described as both deeply shocking and quite recent: “not so long ago,” he said, “no earthly king, nor any inhabitant of this earth, could have imagined that the enemy would invade our Paris [Parisius noster]”; Paschasius Radbertus, Expositio in lamentationes Hieremiae libri quinque, IV, c. 14, ed. Beda Paulus, CCCM 85 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1988), 282, ll. 1,218–221; E. Ann Matter, “The Lamentations Commentaries of Hrabanus Maurus and Paschasius Radbertus,” Traditio 38 (198): 137–63.

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to the present day, none of the rulers can turn the ways of the commonwealth toward justice.”41 All this makes it difficult, if not impossible, to extricate the historical Wala from Radbert’s narrative. The default option, therefore, is to treat the second book as a text from the first half of the 850s, which primarily expresses Radbert’s own ideas at the time. This holds true, for example, for Radbert’s discussion of the integrity of Church property, in the context of the fiery speeches delivered by Wala at the winter assembly at Aachen (828–29). This bears the clear imprint of the problems Radbert wrestled with in the late 840s, as an abbot and a participant in the reform synods in Charles the Bald’s kingdoms in the difficult first years after the partition of Verdun. Although the beginning of Wala’s speech to the winter assembly at Aachen (828–29) is consistent with the views of the synod of Paris (829) on the complementary authority of the ruler and his bishops,42 this is then followed by a strongly articulated challenge to the ruler’s right to harness Church property to his military needs by bestowing it as beneficia on his lay followers.43 During the 820s and 830s, there had already been a subcurrent of resistance to this use of property vowed to God (res sacrata), but Louis’s rights in this respect remained largely accepted. It only became a real bone of contention during the West Frankish synods of the 840s, when the strife and competition between Louis’s three sons necessitated the royal use of ecclesiastical resources, and episcopal awareness and self-confidence, at least in Charles’s kingdom, had grown.44

41

  EA, II, c. 6, p. 66, Adeodatus: “Inde est quod adhuc hodie nemo principum explicare potest reipublicę vias at iustitiam.” This theme is then developed in Pascasius’ reply. On the loss of the via recta as a theme in contemporary writing, see De Jong, Penitential State, pp. 101–2. 42   EA II, c. 2, p. 62: “Interea nostis, inquit, quibus ordinibus Christi constat Ecclesia. Certum quippe quod secundum singulorum officia requirendus est ordo disciplinae, et status reipublicae. Unde primum considerari oportet intus divina, tum exterius humana: quia procul dubio his duobus totius ecclesiae status administratur ordinibus.” On the ideology of the synod of Paris, see Patzold, Episcopus, pp. 149–68; De Jong, Penitential State, pp. 170–84. 43   EA II, c. 2, p. 63: “Habeat igitur rex rempublicam libere in usibus militiae suae ad dispensandum: habeat et Christus res ecclesiarum, quasi alteram rempublicam, omnium indigentium et sibi servientium usibus, suis commissam ministris fidelibus: et hoc sit regis officium, ut talibus committatur, qui et fideliter dispensent, et sapienter provideant: quatenus omnes glorificent Deum et gaudeant in Christo, non minus ex futurorum promissis, quam et ex praesentiarum consolationibus.” The section on Church property starts halfway through c. 2 with the words “acrioria sunt, frater, quae tunc prolata sunt,” and continues throughout c. 3–4; clearly this was the issue that was most seriously contested. 44   Franz J. Felten, Äbte und Laienäbte im Frankenreich: Studie zum Verhältnis von Staat und Kirche im früheren Mittelalter, MMS 20 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1980), pp. 292–304. More extensively on this topic, see De Jong, “Familiarity Lost.”

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As for Wala’s own participation in the synod of Paris in 829, the evidence of the Epitaphium—the only source for this—is problematic at best. For the crisis meeting in the winter of 828–29, Wala drafted a memorandum (scedula) on the way in which the churches had been robbed. He did so merely for his own use, as Radbert pointed out, as an aide-mémoire—a defensive remark which probably means that the text had circulated and caused offense.45 That Wala was one of the main spokesmen during that winter meeting in Aachen is clear, but did he play the same role at the synod of Paris in the summer of 829? Radbert did not see fit to say anything about this, and his verdict on this synod and the others convened as a follow-up to the winter meeting was scathing: When this had thus been revealed to all, from beginning to end, with none of them being able to deny it, they came up with the idea that synods should be held in three places,46 where they would most diligently investigate this, not because (as the outcome proved) they wished to emend these matters, but so they would meanwhile keep the king happy; for already then the human schemes were set in motion that have later been revealed; for this reason divine affairs were less well taken care of.47

With hindsight, the synods of 829 are presented as a feeble compromise that spelled the beginning of the end; in disgust, Wala left Aachen early in 829, gripped by a violent bout of diarrhea.48 Quite possibly Radbert’s narrative compressed the various crisis meetings in 828 and 829, but if this is the case, the message remains the same: Wala’s views were ignored, at everyone’s peril. Radbert then plunged straight into one of the central sections of his narrative, namely how the “wild boar” Bernard of Septimania took control of the palace in Aachen, and Wala was implored to come to the rescue. The intervening synod of Paris in June 829 was passed over in silence. Did Radbert ever mention the deposition of bishops, or other threats to their authority? If one thinks that the Epitaphium’s second book should be read as a commentary on the genesis of Pseudo-Isidore, this is an obvious question to ask. The presence of bishops is most marked in Wala’s speeches at the beginning of Radbert’s narrative about the crisis. Bishops are in charge of the sacred domain, 45

  EA II, c. 1, p. 61.   Actually four synods, in Paris, Mainz, Toulouse and Lyon; Patzold, Episcopus, pp. 151–2.

46

De Jong, Penitential State, pp. 176–7; Charlemagne’s four synods convened in 813 probably served as an example. 47   EA II, c. 4, p. 65: “Quibus itaque omnibus ita hinc inde ostensis, cum nullus eorum negare posset, quod ordo ecclesiasticus in omnibus corruptus non esset, excogitaverunt ut tribus in locis synodi fierent, in quibus de hoc diligentius quaererent, non quod (quantum exitus probavit) emendare talia vellent; sed ut regi interdum faverent, quoniam iam tunc ea quae postea monstrata sunt, moliebantur humana; idcirco minus procurata sunt divina.” 48   Ibid., c. 6, p. 67.

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including Church property; kings should not venture onto this territory, presuming to dispense benedictions;49 everyone should remember that they had the power of the keys.50 There is also a brief comment to the extent that “then and now”—that is, in Wala’s day and age, and in the authorial present—bishops were usually appointed in an uncanonical fashion.51 In the one instance in which bishops were depicted as victims, they shared this fate with the magnates of the palace. All were driven out, exiled and humiliated, by “that one impudent man,” Bernard of Septimania, and they turned to Wala for help.52 But bishops also shared part of the burden of guilt in the drama of the 830s, for they took liberties with the res sacrata. According to Radbert, the key issue addressed by Wala in his scedula and speeches was the “robbing of churches”—that is, the use of ecclesiastical, and especially monastic, property for military purposes. There is nothing that our rulers (principes) like doing so much as this, commented the forthright monk Theofrastus in the Epitaphium, so you may well wonder whether any of them will ever be saved.53 This provoked an angry outburst on the part of Pascasius, Radbert’s alter ego and the Epitaphium’s narrator: It is true, my brother, and thus God’s wrath has descended upon our rulers whom He has caused to go astray on an impassable track, and not on a road,54 while secular men also rushed in to despoil unduly what is divine. However, God’s bishops and ministers of the altar [also] expel themselves from the sacred domain towards the outside world, together with what belongs to God, and, which is even worse, they transfer this without shame, although we read in Scripture that no man, being a soldier to God, entangleth himself with secular businesses (II Tim. 2:4).55

This created the worst kind of confusion between the sacred and the secular spheres: greed drove ministers of Christ toward riches that were not 49

  Ibid., c. 2–3, pp. 62–3.   Ibid., c. 3, p. 64: “Quod si secundum sententiam veritatis [Mt. 16:18] quaecunque

50

ligaverint isti sancti pontifices super terram ligata erunt et in coelis, timendi sunt tot anathematismi sanctorum Patrum qui leguntur pro talibus prolati in sacris canonibus: quoniam non minus eorum viget auctoritas, quantum aestimo, qui iam cum Deo regnant.” 51   Ibid., c. 4, p. 65. 52   Ibid., c. 8, p. 69. 53   Ibid., c. 2, p. 63. 54   Word play: “in invio, et non in via.” Cf. Ps. 106:40: “et effundet despectionem super principes et errare eos faciet in solitudine de via.” 55   EA II, c. 2, pp. 63–4. Pascasius: “Verum, mi frater, et ideo ira Dei effusa est super principes nostros, qui errare facit eos in invio, et non in via, dum et saeculares ad divina diripienda indebite se ingerunt. Sacerdotes vero Christi et ministri altaris una cum divinis ad exteriora de intimis se eiciunt, iam quod peius est sine pudore et transfundunt, quamvis scriptum legant, quod nemo militans Deo implicat se negotiis saecularibus.”

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appropriate for them, while laymen, apparently backed up by royal authority, appropriated property that belonged to God and “the churches.” Theofrastus stood corrected: not only rulers and the greed of their secular fideles were accountable, but also the sacerdotes, the leading churchmen, and the priests and other clerics they governed. This notion of a shared responsibility of the two orders, one led by the ruler and the other by the bishops, is entirely in keeping with the central tenets of the synod of Paris (829),56 but Radbert’s perspective is also a monastic one: the “churches” that were being robbed were monasteries first and foremost. From this point of view, it was not so much that bishops were powerful men who were under threat, but that they spelled danger for monastic communities. Gregory IV on the Field of Lies The immediate background to Radbert’s account of his and Wala’s encounter with the pope is the dangerous voyage undertaken by the two monks from Corbie, where Wala had just returned from two years of exile, to Alsace.57 Here, the troops of Louis and his rebellious sons’ troops had concentrated. Radbert and Wala traveled secretly, through enemy territory, for “Justina” ( Judith) held sway once more; had they been discovered by Louis’s men, they would have been locked up and kept in the strictest custody. But with God’s help, they managed to reach the rebel camp, which also harbored a flustered and fearful Pope Gregory, who had been threatened with deposition by Louis and his men, and even by bishops loyal to the emperor, because allegedly he had come uninvited. Here, Wala and Radbert presented the pontiff with some writings that confirmed that the pope had the right to mediate and adjudicate in the conflict between Louis and his sons. What were these (con)scripta? It used to be thought that this referred to an older canonical collection such as the Symmachian forgeries, produced in the early sixth century. These include the well-known pronouncement, ascribed to Pope Innocent I (401–17), that nobody shall judge the apostolic see. This collection soon became known in Francia, so it seemed likely that this was the text offered to Gregory.58 Yet, as we have seen, there is a growing consensus that Wala and Radbert supplied Gregory with the Pseudo-Isidorian collection, 56

  De Jong, Penitential State, pp. 176–84.   See the appendix to this chapter for my translation of the relevant passage: EA II, c. 16,

57

p. 84.

58

  Fuhrmann, Einfluss und Verbreitung 2, pp. 41–242, n. 13; Harald Zimmermann, Papstabsetzungen des Mittelalters (Graz: Hermann Böhlau Nachf., 1968), pp. 2–3; see also Wilhelm Pohlkamp, “Memoria Sylvestri. Zur frühen Erinnerungs- und Verehrungsgeschichte des Tagesheilige vom 31. Dezember,” in Uwe Ludwig and Thomas Schilp, eds., Nomen et fraternitas (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), p. 284.

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either in its entirety, as Fried argued, or, according to Knibbs, at an early stage, such as the interpolated Hispana.59 Yet the text of the Epitaphium does not offer any certainty in this respect, and perhaps deliberately so. All Radbert said was that the nonnulla … conscripta had the authority of the holy fathers and the pope’s own predecessors; they effectively proved Gregory’s right to judge anyone in Christendom and forbade the Frankish bishops to judge the pope. It did not take Pseudo-Isidore to come up with a relevant collection of texts; older ones in circulation would indeed have served this purpose. The episode becomes more interesting within the wider context of Radbert’s narrative about Pope Gregory’s role in the rebellion of 833. This was absolutely central, to the extent that Wala’s controversial involvement was presented as the result of a written papal command. More importantly, Louis’s refusal to submit to the pope’s mediation was the turning point, and the actual prelude to his downfall. Once the pope’s intervention had been rejected, God’s wrath struck, and in one night everyone left their emperor, flocking to Lothar like chicks to their mother’s wings. At daybreak, Wala and Radbert went to the pope “because of the miracle that happened, and behold, one of the Romans cried out, singing: the hand of the Lord has wrought strength, and so on [Ps. 117:16].”60 It took nothing less than papal authority to verify that this massive desertion had indeed been a divine judgment.61 The pope’s sudden presence north of the Alps, apparently in league with Lothar, shook up the Frankish bishops in a way that still reverberated in the 840s and 850s, when, respectively, the Astronomer wrote his Vita Hludowici and Radbert his sequel to the Epitaphium. Their positions in this affair were diametrically opposite.62 While the Astronomer viewed the pope’s mediation as unwarranted meddling on behalf of Louis’s enemies, Radbert claimed that a submission to papal authority had offered the only solution to the emperor, 59

  Knibbs, “Pseudo-Isidore on the Field of Lies”; Knibbs, “The Interpolated Hispanana.”   EA II, c. 19, p. 89: “… et ad filium, contra quem venerant, et firmarant, circumcirca,

60

quasi pulli sub alas, tota in nocte convolarent; et mane castra metati, unus populus appareret. Unde valde diluculo ad eumdem pontificem venimus pro miraculo, quod acciderat: et ecce in medio unus Romanorum exclamans, ait voce canentis: Dextera Domini fecit virtutem, et caetera quae sequuntur.” 61   The relevant texts can be found in the appendix to this chapter. 62   Astronomer, Vita Hludowici, c. 48, pp. 474–8; on the different attitudes of the sources towards Gregory on the Field of Lies, see Noble, Louis the Pious and the Papacy, pp. 321–69; De Jong, Penitential State, pp. 214–24. See also Johannes Fried, “Ludwig der Fromme, das Papsttum und die fränkishe Kirche,” in Peter Godman and Roger Collins, eds., Charlemagne’s Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814–840) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 231–74. The best account of Louis’s relations with the papacy remains Thomas F.X. Noble, The Republic of St. Peter: The Birth of the Papal State, 680–825 (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984).

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but he rejected it. In both cases, the controversy was defined in terms of a serious breach of protocol. Had Gregory come north without a proper imperial invitation, or had Louis failed to give the pope the formal welcome (adventus) he deserved? It would be hard to exaggerate the shock of the pope’s appearance: the last papal visit north of the Alps had been in 816, when Stephen IV had come to crown Louis in Rheims, with all proprieties punctiliously observed.63 None of this was the case in 833. According to the Astronomer, Louis rightly blamed the pope for “not coming to him” (non sibi occurendo), while Radbert made the most of the emperor’s failure to receive Gregory with the required reverence, also in the narrative about Wala’s and his meeting with the pontiff. There was much more to it than a quarrel about protocol and precedence, however. The real issue was the extent to which high-ranking clerics owed their primary loyalty to papal authority rather than to their emperor. There was a widespread rumor that Gregory had come to excommunicate Louis and his bishops, so the latter decided that if the pope dared to do this, they would repay him in kind. As the Astronomer commented, this was not according to the canones,64 but that such threats were rumored to have been made also emerges from Radbert’s version of events. In his narrative, however, it was the emperor’s bishops who took the initiative in threatening to depose the pope, and all this merely because he “had come uninvited.” The controversial nature of this visit also becomes clear from an acrimonious letter sent in the name of Pope Gregory IV to the Frankish bishops. The text only survives partially, without an exordium or conclusion, in a late ninth- or early tenth-century manuscript (BnF lat. 2853) that contains most of Agobard’s work. Here, it figures as part of a small dossier of documents pertaining to the year 833.65 There has been much debate about its authenticity; its transmission as part of Agobard’s work has made the archbishop of Lyon the main suspect of a potential forgery. Recent scholarship tends to follow Egon Boshof, who argued that the epistle was genuine.66 Presumably, this was Pope Gregory’s own 63

  Astronomer, Vita Hludowici, c. 26, p. 366; De Jong, Penitential State, pp. 216–19.   Astronomer, Vita Hludowici, c. 48, p. 474: “… cum aliter se habeat antiquorum

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auctoritas canonum.” 65   BN lat. 2853 (s. ix/x); on this manuscript, cf. Agobard of Lyon, Opera omnia, ed. Lieven Van Acker, CCCM 52 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981), pp. li–lii. The papal letter is on fols. 192–6v; it is followed by the first Liber apologeticum (fols. 197r–200r), and preceded by nos. 15 (fols. 187–90) and 16 (fols. 190–92); on this dossier, see also Booker, Past Convictions, p. 133. Dümmler edited it among Agobard’s letters—see Agobardi Lugdunensis archiepiscopi epistolae 17, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH Epistolae 5, Karol. Aevi 3 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1889), pp. 228-32.—but it is omitted in the standard edition of Agobard’s work: cf. Van den Acker, introduction to Agobard’s Opera omnia, pp. xxi–xxii. 66   Egon Boshof, Erzbischof Agobard von Lyon. Leben und Werk (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1969), pp. 220–28, with a survey of the earlier discussion about the letter’s authenticity.

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response to the Frankish bishops’ accusation that he had come to excommunicate them, undermining their authority and dishonoring imperial power. This is not the place for an extensive discussion about the letter’s authenticity, but the offensive tone is unlike anything known from genuine papal correspondence with Frankish bishops at the time; the latter are called deceivers of truth (veri deceptores), presumptuous, exceedingly stupid, and nauseating.67 The pope’s own voice, if it existed, is drowned in this deafening chorus. The rhetorical strategy of this epistle reveals an author who was aware of the possibilities of frank speech, and who knew and used Gregory of Nazianzen in this context. Both Agobard and Radbert qualified, and no doubt other Frankish clerics, but there is no sign that such knowledge was current in Rome.68 Even if this was a case where Gregory availed himself of a Frankish ghost-writer, the letter should be thought of as originating from an internal Frankish dispute that was sparked by the unexpected and unnerving papal presence in the summer of 833. As far as I can see now, it was produced during that tense period when Gregory was known to be approaching, prior to his actual meeting with Louis on the Field of Lies. Rumors were rife, and this letter was a pre-emptive strike on the part of Frankish clerics who supported the pope’s intervention. The reason to mention this document here is that there are considerable similarities between Radbert’s view of the papal visit in 833 and the one presented in this allegedly papal attack on the Frankish bishops. “Gregory” declared his displeasure about the way the bishops had addressed him in their earlier letter, as well as their lack of a proper occursus because “sacred imperial command” had taken precedence.69 Against this, the pope objected that “the governance of souls [regimen animarum] is greater than imperial rule, for the former is pontifical, whereas the latter is temporal.” It is worth noting that Cf. Booker, Past Convictions, pp. 135–6, and De Jong, Penitential State, pp. 220–21, who hedges her bets. 67   According to Boshof, Agobard, p. 227, the abrasive tone was set by the Frankish clergy, and then adopted by the pope. I give a sample in translation, MGH Epistolae 5, pp. 230–31: “Then something you maintain with great arrogance: that if I will approach the emperor reverently, I will learn from him the entire truth of the matter, [namely] why the division has been opportunely and advantageously altered; the magnitude of your arrogance forces you to speak like this, thinking that that you are the only ones who can know the cause of events. Truly, I tell you, not only stupid but also unfortunate is he who does not understand how many and what kind of evils your obstinacy has brought forth, and from the malignant treasure of whose heart this has proceeded, and for this reason you are the eulogists and defenders of this wickedness.” 68   Cf. Irene van Renswoude, “License to Speak: The Rhetoric of Free Speech in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages” (PhD, Utrecht University, 2011), pp. 337–50. A book version is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press; she and I intend to return to this letter. 69   Agobard, Epistolae, no. 17, p. 228: “… occursum vestrum nobis non negandum, nisi sacra iussio imperialis pręvenit.”

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pontificale within a ninth-century context may not have referred exclusively to the papacy, but also could include bishops.70 As the letter suggests, the Frankish episcopate had believed that Gregory intended to excommunicate not only the emperor, but also the bishops loyal to him; they had then retaliated, threatening to excommunicate the pope, claiming that this only regarded his person and would not impair the authority of the see of St. Peter, which of course it did. Furthermore, these bishops had accused the pope of perjury, for he had failed to honor his oath to the emperor.71 The letter refuted this accusation by pointing out that all that Gregory’s so-called perjury consisted of was his having admonished Louis about his sins—a pastoral duty these loyal bishops themselves had failed to perform. In other words, they were the real perjurers, for they had neglected to do their utmost to secure the emperor’s salvation. If only he would approach him reverently, the emperor would explain to Gregory all the reasons why the original division of Louis’s realm (that is, the Ordinatio of 817) was no longer opportune; were he to refuse to do so, however, any authority in the Frankish bishoprics would be denied to him.72 In its staunch defense of the supreme authority of St. Peter’s successor and his right to impose a solution to the conflict of 833, the letter largely tallies with Radbert’s views on the matter as outlined in the Epitaphium Arsenii, yet they seem to represent different stages in a process of growing awareness. Both attempt to enhance papal authority, but there are also differences; for example, the letter could have settled the matter by declaring that the apostolic see (prima sedes) judged others but could not be judged, as Radbert did, but it refrained from doing so.73 Gregory’s visit in 833 seems to have been a catalyst that concentrated the minds of Frankish leading clerics on their relation to the papacy, for decades to come. It served both as a lieu de mémoire and as a convenient context for later forgeries in which a plausible papal presence needed to be evoked.74 It should be noted, however, that belonging to the rebel camp and supporting Lothar’s rights did not necessarily imply any such recognition of the pope’s supreme jurisdiction. This clearly transpires from the Relatio episcoporum of 833, the document by which the bishops who imposed a 70

  Ibid, p. 228: “Non ignorare debueratis maius esse regimen animarum, quod est pontificale, quam imperiale, quod est temporale.” 71   On the oath required from popes since the Constitutio Romana of 824, see Noble, Republic of St Peter, pp. 308–22, esp. p. 313. 72   Agobard, Epistolae, no. 17, pp. 228–32. 73   Boshof, Agobard, p, 224. 74   As is the case, in my view, in the letter Divinis praeceptis ( JE †2579) discussed by Knibbs in “Pseudo-Isidore on the Field of Lies.”

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public penance on Louis publicized and defended their actions.75 Here, also in support of Lothar’s immediate succession, they presented themselves as the vicars of Christ who collectively wielded the power of the keys and who, as “watchmen of Israel” (Ez. 3:18) had to act in order to prevent others from sinning, lest the sin in question be on their own heads. Interestingly, failing to exercise these pastoral duties was precisely what “Gregory” accused the proLouis bishops of, but when it came to the bishop of Rome, the Relatio took a radically different position from the alleged papal letter. Within the larger contingent of the rebels of 833, the band of Frankish clerics who propagated papal primacy was but a small one; Agobard of Lyon is the only contemporary author whose views on the papacy came close to that of the letter ascribed to Gregory IV. Radbert was even more outspoken on this point, but the problem is that he wrote two decades later, when Pseudo-Isidore was already circulating in the West Frankish kingdom. It is from this vantage point, the mid-850s, that one needs to make sense of Radbert’s story about his encounter with Pope Gregory on the Field of Lies. Radbert, Rome, and Pseudo-Isidore As we have seen, the more literal-minded interpretations of this narrative have been mainly used to support the thesis of Pseudo-Isidore’s origins in the early 830s on the assumption that the documents offered to Pope Gregory were a version of the false decretals. Understandably, the consequences of Zechiel-Eckes’s discoveries have dominated recent scholarship, and the search for the identity of the forger(s) is continuing. But if one treats the second book of the Epitaphium as a source of the 850s, this text yields different yet equally interesting information on Pseudo-Isidore. Writing with the hindsight of two decades, Radbert may well have intended to enhance the status of Corbie as a supplier of such documents that were in circulation at the time, including Pseudo-Isidorian ones. Corbie would produce ancient and authoritative precepts of impeccable canonicity, fit to support the pope in his predicament—this is part of the message conveyed by Radbert. These precepts, moreover, were to defend a notion of papal primacy that is much older than Pseudo-Isidore, but that is entirely compatible with the elevated status of Roman pontiff as propagated by the great forgery. 75

  Episcoporum de poenitentia, quam Hludowicus imperator professus est, relatio Compendiensis, ed. A. Boretius, MGH Capit. II/2, pp. 51–5. Translations of the text and commentary can be found in De Jong, Penitential State, pp. 228–41, 271–9; Booker, Past Convictions, pp. 257–64; Courtney M. Booker, “The Public Penance of Louis the Pious: A New Edition of the Episcoporum de poenitentia, quam Hludowicus imperator professus est, relatio Compendiensis (833),” Viator 39(2) (2008): 1–19. See also Patzold, Episcopus, pp. 188–91.

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This is less obvious than it seems, for the central tenet of modern PseudoIsidorian scholarship is that, at least until the middle of the eleventh century, the strengthening of papal authority was merely a means to the forgery’s actual end—namely, the protection of bishops against judicial jeopardy inflicted by archbishops and, to a lesser extent, secular rulers. Already in early 1870s, amid fierce debates about the recently proclaimed doctrine of papal infallibility, for which Pseudo-Isidore was blamed, well-informed discussants such as Ignaz von Döllinger knew that “the first object of Isidore was to secure the impunity of bishops.”76 Whatever its ideological background, this “episcopalism” has prevailed until the present day, and so has the inclination to downplay the role of the papacy in the first phase of Pseudo-Isidore’s history. But there may be good reasons to observe, as Karl Ubl did recently, that the idea of papal primacy has been rather more central to Pseudo-Isidore than it has been made out to be.77 Even if the protection of bishops against deposition was the purpose of the false decretals, the fact that the Roman pontiff ’s supreme jurisdiction served as the chosen instrument did count for something. More generally, the bishops of Rome are omnipresent in this collection, both through repeated affirmation of the exalted position of St. Peter and his successors, and through the central place of the forged letters of early popes, which both implicitly and explicitly highlight the pontiff ’s authority. It is generally accepted that bishops rather lost their taste for Pseudo-Isidore after Hincmar of Laon’s dismal fate in 871, and that there is no evidence that a powerful pope such as Nicholas I (858–67) needed the false decretals to impose his authority.78 But this means detaching the false decretals from a more general historical development, namely the increasing participation of various popes, from the late 840s onwards, in a series of highly public conflicts that usually involved at least Charles the Bald, Hincmar of Rheims, and various bishops. The fact that of the approximately 200 papal letters to Frankish clerics, 50 went to Hincmar certainly reflects an uneven distribution of the evidence,79 but it is worth asking whether—Hincmar’s superior archival skills apart—this also reflects a growing demand for papal intervention on the part of the elite in the 76

  Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger, The Pope and the Council (Boston, MA: Roberts Brothers, 1870), p. 85, an English translation of Der Pabst und das Konzil (1869), a collection of articles published under the pen name of “Janus.” 77   Ubl, ‘Der Mehrwert’, pp. 202–6, citing (at p. 204, n. 62) Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae, ed. Hinschius, p. 712. Ubl shifts the entire evidence, including Radbert’s, to the 830s, but apart from this, his observations are pertinent. During the conference in Cologne in February 2013, Clara Harder argued along similar lines: see Ubl and Ziemann, “Fälschung als Mittel der Politik?” 78   A convenient summary of this position is found in Jasper and Fuhrmann, Papal Letters, pp. 177–81, 186–95. 79   Thomas F.X. Noble, “Morbidity and Vitality in the History of the Early Medieval Papacy,” The Catholic Historical Review 81 (1995): 513.

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kingdom of Charles the Bald. His father, Louis the Pious, had no need to ask for papal permission when he appointed or deposed a bishop, but by 866–67 it was obvious that Nicholas I should endorse Charles’s plan to make his court cleric Wulfad archbishop of Troyes.80 At a very different level, there were a significant number of priests from Hincmar’s archdiocese who appealed to Rome in order to overturn the verdict of their local superiors.81 Admittedly, none of them can be proven to have done so with the false decretals in hand, but they are part of a history of Frankish rapprochement to Rome, as is Pseudo-Isidore. The false decretals may not have been widely cited in the intellectual discourse of last three decades of the ninth century, but the number of manuscripts from this period has been called “explosive.”82 The precise implications of these numbers—some 30 manuscripts, complete and partial, up to c. 900—still need to be investigated, but it seems safe to say that there was a continued interest in what for many must have been a perfectly useful collection of canonical texts. Rather than joining the search for the culprit who created Pseudo-Isidore (early, earlier, earliest), I would like to understand how articulate Frankish clerics appropriated authoritative texts and deemed them “canonical.” Behind this process, there is a discovery of a familiar yet alien world of pristine Christianity. This necessitated a process of translation, for ancient concepts and terms were not readily understood within the context of contemporary practice and meanings. Frankish canonical collections, genuine or not, all pose this challenge: if a late antique text has sacerdotes or testes, did the ninth-century readership read priests and witnesses, or bishops and oath helpers? At a more abstract level, there is an entire world of pristine and authentic Christianity that is conveyed by such canonical texts. It is the demand for this, fueled by genuine collections, that produced the false decretals and related Pseudo-Isidorian texts. Surely if there were no early papal letters, beginning with St. Peter’s successor, Clement, such documents should be invented, with all the contemporary connotations of inventio—which did not mean forgery, but, after Cicero, the discovery of plausible arguments in order to make a case convincing and probable.83 80   Wilfried Hartmann, Die Synoden der Karolingerzeit im Frankenreich und Italien (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1989), pp. 316–20. 81   Carine van Rhijn, Shepherds of the Lord: Priests and Episcopal Statutes in the Carolingian Period (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 200–209; Mayke de Jong, “Hincmar, Priests and PseudoIsidore: The Case of Trising in Context,” in Rachel Stone and Charles West, eds., Hincmar: Life and Work (Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming). 82   Jasper and Fuhrmann, Papal Letters, pp. 184–6. 83   Matthew Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), p. 266; see Kempshall’s big and highly informative chapter on invention and narrative, ibid., pp. 266–349.

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It is within this context, rather than that of a literal-minded reading of the text, that the Epitaphium’s second book is important for Pseudo-Isidorian scholarship. Like the false decretals he may have helped to produce, Radbert’s narrative evoked an authoritative world of ancient Christianity. By using aliases for his political protagonists, such as Justina ( Judith), Justinus (Louis), and Honorius (Lothar), Radbert created an eclectic historical fiction that I refer to as “the world of Ambrose.” Wala, the victim of Justina’s wiles, is an Ambrose-like figure, and Ambrose’s funeral oration for his brother Satyricus provided the overall structure of Epitaphium, including its division into two books.84 As Zechiel-Eckes has noted, this imaginative projection into the ancient world is reminiscent of the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals,85 but the same holds true for the entire and massive operation of integrating past canonical texts into the ninth-century present. This did not just include canon law compilations, but also narrative sources that evoked a world of early imperial Christianity. A case in point is the Historia ecclesiastica tripartita, drawn upon by both Pseudo-Isidore and Radbert.86 This fifth-century Greek Church history, translated into Latin by Epiphanius at Cassiodorus’ behest, contains the most elaborate narratives about intrepid churchmen standing up to emperors. Ambrose’s confrontation with Theodosius, and the latter’s public penance, is merely the best-known example.87 Significantly, the Historia tripartita was one of the “working manuscripts” from Corbie that provided textual ammunition for the false decretals.88 Is it a coincidence that in the Epitaphium, Wala figured as the embodiment of the fearless prophet who spoke truth to power, and that the letter ascribed to Gregory IV berated the bishops loyal to Louis of neglecting their duty of confronting the emperor with his sins?89 At this less literal-minded level, and treated as a source for the 850s, the Epitaphium Arsenii can be used as a highly informative source of information 84

  See Ganz, “The Epitaphium Arsenii,” with references to earlier literature.   Zechiel-Eckes, ““Ein Blick in Pseudo-Isidors Werkstatt,” p.

85

59: “eine antikisierende Rückprojektion.” 86   Fuhrmann, “Stand, Aufgaben und Perspektiven der Pseudoisidorforschung,” p. 257: “Manches, was der Liber Pontificalis als Entscheidung früheren Päpste berichtet, goss Pseudoisidor in die bündige Form einer Dekretale.” 87   Epiphanius, Cassiodorus, Historia ecclesiastica triparita, ed. Walter Jacob and Rudolf Hanslik, CSEL 71 (Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1952); Walter Jacob and Rudolf Hanslik, Die handschriftliche Überlieferung der sogenannten Historia Tripartita des Epiphanius-Cassiodor, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 54 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1954); De Jong, Penitential State, pp. 129–30; Van Renswoude, “Licence to Speak,” pp. 275–8. 88   See above, n. 18. 89   This will be further explored in my forthcoming book, Epitaph for an Era (see above, n. 4).

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for the genesis and development of Pseudo-Isidore. Radbert lived and wrote in an age of Frankish history that was busily rediscovering and redefining an authoritative Christian past, and the place of the Roman pontiff within it. The Pseudo-Isidorian decretals sprang from the same fertile soil. To call this infamous collection of documents a forgery, with all the criminal implications of this term, is missing the point. A minority of Frankish churchmen began to look toward Rome as a source of support against local powers, quite possibly as early as the early 830s. Apart from Scripture, the papacy was the most obvious connection to a normative Christian past—the world of the Church fathers in which the dignity of the sacerdotal ministry had been self-evident, as well as their right to admonish. Pseudo-Isidore resulted from the enthusiastic discovery of the resources of this past, which were then deployed in order to guarantee the independence of what Radbert called “the churches”: local religious communities, including the ones controlled by bishops. Even though protecting bishops may have been the primary purpose of the false decretals, by definition, these also did much to propagate papal authority. Provided that it is treated as a source for the 850s rather than the 830s, the second book of the Epitaphium Arsenii can be a rich source of information with regard to the mindset of an author who may very well have been involved in the creation of Pseudo-Isidore, even though it is not yet quite clear when and how. Acknowledgments I am most grateful to Eric Knibbs, Rosamond McKitterick, Rob Meens, Jinty Nelson, Steffen Patzold, Irene van Renswoude, and Giorgia Vocino for their comments on earlier versions of this chapter. In the normal run of things I would have sent a version to Tom Noble as well, but this, alas, was impossible.

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Appendix: Paschasius Radbertus, Epitaphium Arsenii II, ed. E. Dümmler (Berlin, 1900), 83–4 Translated by Mayke de Jong90 c. 15 ADEODATUS: Not surprising, then, that exhausted by so many exiles and soiled by so much infamy he resisted at first, because as we have seen and learned, if he had not been vehemently urged by us all, and if that great authority of the highest pontiff had not swayed him, he would not have assented any further to anything of this kind. But now, urged on by the brethren, summoned by the highest pontiff with oaths, implored by the sons of Augustus, entreated by the people and the prelates with whom, once upon a time, he had been responsible for the beginning of this [affair], in aid of concord and peace he decided, finally convinced, to go there and obey the highest prelate, and to join forces with him [Gregory] who had taken upon himself such hardship for the entire people of God, [to see] whether he could perchance restore the peace in the realm with him and to remove the discord. Therefore there was no room for withdrawal; all the more would be the blame if he would desert the command of such great authority because of the danger of any crisis of this present life, because it is more praiseworthy to die well or to be put to the test with the good and the best, than to live badly and to consent with the worst. The punishment of judgment is one thing, the increase of sin another [p. 84]. And therefore it was not recklessly, as they say, nor against the profession of true religion that he exposed himself once more to moral danger, but he offered his most dutiful self in a praiseworthy manner, and also as a mediator for both parties, provided that he would receive an equally fair treatment for everyone; and he could not be deterred by his own dangers, who had so many times exerted himself on behalf of others. Let us therefore pay attention to Pascasius, who was the companion in distant places of him, whom no hazard in this present life could deter from following him whom he loved in Christ, whom he had declared to imitate; with whom he also, fully aware of this, wished to die for fidelity to Christ, if the time of mortal danger were imminent.

90   This is the working translation I produced in 2009–12. As of September 2014, Justin Lake will become my collaborator in this project. Together we will offer a new edition and English translation to the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Latin Library.

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c. 16 PASCASIUS: Regardless of the mood in which you say what you say, I completely acknowledge that it is as you say. This fully proves the voyage which we undertook through the midst of clusters of ambushes, among armies of men running hither and thither who were against us; among them we advanced, in a most dangerous situation, with dread and trembling, fearing that it would not be granted to us to reach or destination, because in any case if he [Louis] would have discovered [us], he would have taken us in altogether stricter custody than had previously been inflicted upon him [Wala]; for at that time with Augustus there was Justina, who once more wielded the scepter of the entire monarchy (monarchia), roused the rivers and seas, whipped up the winds and turned the hearts of men to all that she wished, because in the place from where they had driven [that] most scandalous man of whom we have spoken [Bernard], others even more utterly criminal rendered service. Yet we who could not diverge from our route, except so we would go through their armed forces, propitiously reached the centre, with God protecting us. When we had arrived there, we were received with the greatest joy by the kings, the magnates (principes) and the entire people. When subsequently we presented ourselves to the most holy pontiff, he received us with great alacrity, with plenty of honor, because he suffered torments, especially in his mind, because of what that he had discovered, things of a kind that before he would never have believed possible. Moreover, he was threatened (which is most regrettable) by Augustus and by all the latter’s men, even by bishops, who before we had come had pledged by their right hands that they would be unanimous in resisting those who were in opposition: the royal sons, the magnates (principes) and the people; on top of this they conspired under oath, oh grief, that that they should depose the apostolic, because he had come uninvited. Phasur91 was there, and others agreeing with the very same Justina. When he had listened to them, the pontiff was much astounded and afraid. We therefore gave him many writings confirmed by the authority of the holy fathers and of his predecessors, on the basis of which nobody could contradict that his was the power, or rather, God’s and the Apostle Peter’s, and his the authority to go and send out to all peoples for the fidelity to Christ and the peace of the churches, for the preaching of the gospel and the proclamation of the truth, and that in him rested all the exalted authority and living power of the blessed Peter, by whom all mankind ought to be judged, meaning that he himself should be judged by nobody. Indeed, once these documents had been copied, he accepted them gratefully and was much encouraged. 91

  Jer. 20; this must be Ebo, Judith’s old ally and confidant, who only went over to the other side on the Field of Lies; cf. De Jong, Penitential State, p. 253.

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Ibid., c. 16, p. 88 This indeed was their alternating altercation,92 this their mutual dispute, this the case (propositio) of the father and the refutation (responsio) of the sons. When thus they could not attain any assent to forgiveness, the holy and highest pontiff, the vicar of blessed Peter, was sent as an intercessor/mediator. When he came he was not received with any appropriate honor, yet having given the blessing according to his custom he declared for whom he had come. Says the emperor to him: “We have not received you according to the custom of the kings of yore, holy pontiff, with hymns and lauds and the honor of your rank and religion, because you have not come summoned, in the way in which your predecessors used to come to us.” Says that one [the pope] to him: “You should know that we have come in the right manner, because we have come for the peace and concord which the maker of our salvation has bequeathed us; and I have been commissioned to preach this to the whole world and to proclaim this to all men. Thus, emperor, if you receive us and the peace of Christ in a worthy manner, let this give peace to you and also your kingdom; if not, the peace of Christ will return to us, as you read in the Gospel, and be with us.”93 TEOFRASTUS: Oh grief ! What happened, that such a most religious and faithful emperor, more than any of his predecessors acted so foolishly and rashly, and gave honor neither to God nor to the blessed apostle Peter? I say, evil and utterly bad obstinacy of mind and hardness of heart, and the wicked feminine persuasion that deceived our original father [Adam]. This, as one knows, also cast an evil spell right here, from which we suffer. And therefore we bewail a man of such authority and sanctity [Louis], much oppressed by [moral] darkness, who did not remember what Truth says: he, who receives you, receives me; and he who hears you, hears me.94 Woe, how great was then the bewitching and blinding of the mind that so deceived a man of such greatness, amidst so many tribulations and dangers, amongst so many scandals that he could never be recalled95 nor be healed by any counsel from sacred scripture! He seemed to meditate daily on God’s law, and how far did he withdraw from the law of true love by his hardened heart. Otherwise he would never have provoked his sons so obstinately to anger, 92

  Please note the legal connotations of altercatio and querela (see Niermeyer): we are in the domain of forensic rhetoric here. 93   Lk. 10:6. 94   Mt. 10:40: “qui recipit vos me recipit et qui me recipit recipit eum qui me misit; Luke 10.16: qui vos audit me audit et qui vos spernit me spernit qui autem me spernit spernit eum qui me misit.” 95   Penitential language: “paenitentia quae … in gratiam nos Domino revocat.”

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against God’s commandment and would never have pursued them, disinherited, so frequently and cruelly with a hostile sword, while they themselves wished nothing evil upon him, except that those [arrangements] remained unshaken, which he himself and the entire people96 had ordained and confirmed by oath.97 That is, if he had cherished and taken care of the people, or of the Church of Christ committed to him by God, or, surely, of the republic (respublica), he would never have allowed so many evils in the kingdom, because of the will or wiles of one woman. These will perhaps never ever cease, not by ingenuity, nor by human virtue, nor by counsel, nor by anyone’s might. While we much deplore this, we implore that you expound on what the highest pontiff transacted with him and what he managed. c. 18 PASCASIUS: What you often read is that legates, not having obtained peace, return where they came from. So this one [the pope] as well returned without success, without honor, and without reward for such a great effort. All the same, after the day when he returned, the night thereafter, the hand of God was upon the entire people by a just divine judgment, and the minds of every one of them were shaken with fear of God and all were made to tremble. Hence, in that night they left their Augustus without any (as far as I can remember) persuasion or exhortation; [p. 89]; they all went, from the smallest to the greatest, they went over to Honorius, and in the morning all around there appeared the erected tents of everyone, as if every one of them said, on the part of the sons and the pontiff: by His hand, which means, this is it.98 To all whose who did not fully comprehend that this seemed most miraculous: that those who one day before were so strong and steadfast, relying on the multitude, on what everyone promised, of everyone, on the counsel of the bishops (pontificum) and magnates (senatorum), on paternal authority, on manifold promises, have been found to be so fickle and weak, that without anyone’s advice or counsel they left Caesar alone with his Justina and during all that night flocked to the son against whom they had advanced and sworn, all around [him] like chickens under [his] wings; in the morning, when the camp was pitched, it appeared to be one people. And then at first daybreak we went to the said pontiff because of the miracle that happened, and behold, one of the Romans cried out, singing: the hand of the Lord has wrought strength,99 and the rest that follows. Then, by the very 96

    98   99   97

Populus in the sense of the fideles. Ordinatio imperii of 817. Ex. 16:15. Ps. 117:16.

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same holy man and by all who had gathered there, it has been judged that the so illustrious and glorious imperial rule (imperium) fell from the father’s hand, so that the August Honorius, who was the heir and had already been made and created consors by his father and by all, would relieve him and receive it. Anyway, if he had not done this, all said that they for themselves would elect unanimously the one who had would bring them aid and protection. When this had been said Honorius consented and accepted the sole rule of the empire should be the command of the entire realm (totius monarchiae imperium), taking his father with him on the basis of some verdict I am not sure of. When I had observed this, I interceded with Arsenius on their behalf and held forth that it seemed a bad thing to me that such an accidental event would, without any counsel from elders and more careful ordination, suddenly overthrow such a great reign (imperium), [and] that he who had been made coemperor (consors) by means of fidelity would accidentally claim for himself his father’s royal authority (monarchiam). To which he said: “It was up to us to come here, labor for all with good will, give counsel of peace and soothe the internal war which was imminent; but now, just as nobody listens to us, so there is nobody who heeds what we said, because all, as you read, either feared, or desired, or rejoiced, or grieved.100 Previously they feared what would happen, lest once more what had been done would be avenged. Yet [now] all and everyone of them is eager, while there is time, to enlarge what they already possess all the more, or to acquire what they did not yet have. They greedily rejoice in their honors and exult, for they all pursue their own [interests], [yet] very few [pursued] what belongs to God and to public use (utilia). The others, then, grieve, they fear to lose—they by whose great audacity and counsel Caesar Augustus did these things against his sons.”

100   Aen. VI, p. 733; Paschasius Radbertus, Exposition in Lamentationes Hieremiae III, ed. B. Paulus, CCCM 85 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1988), p. 159, ll. 591–3: “Habent enim scelera et peccata quadratum suam sicut quidam poetice ait: Hi metuunt cupiunt gaudentque dolentque.”

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Chapter 9

Care of Relics in Early Medieval Rome Julia M.H. Smith Hidden in a dark corner of St. Peter’s shrine, Pope Sergius I (687–701) found a silver box so blackened with age that he was at first unsure whether it was indeed made of silver. Having said a prayer over it, he broke its seal and opened it. Inside, resting on a silken cushion, he discovered a jeweled reliquary of the True Cross and, according to the Liber Pontificalis, introduced into Rome the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross in its honor.1 Some decades later, Pope Zacharias (741–52) made a similar find, this time in the Lateran: a reliquary containing the head of St. George, identified by a label in Greek. Accompanied by the assembled populace of the city, a solemn liturgical procession carried the head to the church dedicated to S. Giorgio in Velabro. After Gregory had enshrined it there, many miracles and benefits followed.2 Rome was—and remains—full of surprising discoveries. In recent years, its history has become one of the hottest of hotspots of medieval scholarship. Beneficiary of skepticism towards grand narratives that is now almost universal among academic historians, beneficiary too of the maturation of postclassical archeology and of medievalists’ ability to expose the sophisticated discursive strategies of superficially straightforward texts and images, Rome is a “happening place.”3 Its medieval history has been recovered for the mainstream of European history: among Anglophone historians, no one knows this better than Tom Noble. Over the span of his career, he has responded to its changing historiographical parameters with a gimlet eye for historical precision and the specificity of context and meaning, and has turned his unrivaled knowledge of papal sources to the themes and problems which energize historians of early

1

  Louis Duchesne, Le Liber Pontificalis. Texte, introduction et commentaire, 3 vols. (Paris: Thorin-Boccard, 1886–1957), vol. I, p. 375. 2   Ibid., p. 434. 3   For overviews of recent scholarship, see Claudia Bolgia, “Introduction: Rome Across Time and Space, c. 500–1400: Cultural Transmission and the Exchange of Ideas,” in Claudia Bolgia, Rosamond McKitterick, and John Osborne, eds., Rome Across Time and Space, c. 5001400: Cultural Transmission and the Exchange of Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 1–15, and Caroline Goodson, “Roman Archaeology in Medieval Rome,” in Dorigen Caldwell and Lesley Caldwell, eds., Rome: Continuing Encounters between Past and Present (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 17–34.

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medieval Europe as a whole, such as literacy, economy, ritual, and elites.4 His scholarship on Rome has said little about one such subject, however: the cults of saints and relics. I offer this contribution in gratitude for his scholarship, support, and camaraderie over many decades. Fundamentally, relics are a form of highly portable sacrality. Particles of animal, vegetable, or mineral matter that are resistant to decay, they mediate emotional and associative values that are independent of their physical properties. They typically evoke or recall locations and persons that are remote in time (past or future) and place (terrestrial or heavenly), and commonly have a powerful religious charge, or at least an ideological one. Resistant to precise definition, they are both fragment and whole, and slide uneasily between singular, plural, and collective forms. Small in size but great in significance, of minimal material worth but immense symbolic value, relics are material triggers for affective engagement with cosmological and scriptural truths.5 Neither identity nor meaning inhere in objects such as these: it takes effort to make them stick. Labels, seals, silken wrappers, and jeweled containers guided Sergius I and Zacharias in interpreting what they had found, and their discoveries suggest that we need to pay close attention to how the identity of sacred particles such as these was established, whether in Rome or anywhere else. This chapter uses relics in the care of the early medieval papacy as a case study of how they were identified and preserved. It then traces long-term shifts in their significance and interrogates the contribution of the papacy to the task of affirming identity, meaning, and value. From this, there emerges an appreciation of both the work needed to maintain relics’ identity, and the ease with which their importance might be altered or compromised. I thus demonstrate how relics combine objective durability with subjective meaning. Central to the enquiry is a close analysis of the tags and wrappers originally attached to assorted early relics that fell into neglect during the later Middle Ages and were only rediscovered during the twentieth century. Whereas previous studies of relics’ symbolic role in the city’s religious life have relied on extrapolations from selected hagiographic, liturgical, architectural, and art historical evidence, this chapter works with material that lacks any esthetic or iconographic claim to attention. In presenting evidence which is mundane, but neither trivial nor secular, it points to the challenges involved in caring 4

  For his own assessment of the historiographical landscape, see Thomas F.X. Noble, “Morbidity and Vitality in the History of the Early Medieval Papacy,” Catholic Historical Review 80 (1995): 505–40. 5   See Julia M.H. Smith, “Portable Christianity: Relics in the Medieval West (c. 700–1200),” Proceedings of the British Academy 181 (2012): 143–67, and more broadly, Alexandra Walsham, “Introduction: Relics and Remains,” in Alexandra Walsham, ed., Relics and Remains, Past and Present Supplements 5 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 9–36.

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for relics in the early Middle Ages, as well as those involved in studying them. Its other purpose is thus to present a more contextualized, dynamic, and nuanced interpretation of papal involvement with relics than has hitherto been achieved. It also offers a model for the analysis of any relic collection which has remained substantially intact and in situ. The most important evidence is also the most intractable. It comes from “one of the most sensational archaeological discoveries of the last century”: the contents of a wooden chest (92 × 70 × 70 cm) made on the express order of Leo III (795–16).6 Leo’s purpose in commissioning it has been much debated, as has its possible typological role, but its original contents and function cannot be determined, and it is prudent to keep an open mind.7 Its location is documented from the late eleventh century, when it was one of the three altars in the pope’s private oratory, the early medieval chapel of St. Lawrence in the palace adjacent to the Lateran basilica, the Basilica Salvatoris. By the thirteenth century, it had become the sole altar there, and from the pontificate of Innocent III (1198–1216), it was concealed behind bolted bronze doors and marble panels. By the middle of the twelfth century, the chapel had acquired the by-name “Holy of Holies” (Sancta Sanctorum), but was destroyed by an earthquake in the thirteenth century. Nicholas III (1277–80) built the extant Sancta Sanctorum in its place, and moved the entire ensemble there. He was probably also responsible for replacing an earlier plaque on Leo’s chest with a new gold one which bears the legend “S(AN)C(T)A S(AN)C(T)ORU(M).” Between an inspection by Leo X (1513–21) and the removal of one relic in 1903, the altar remained locked. Then, in 1905, it was unsealed to make 6

  A succinct overview of the history of the Sancta Sanctorum and its relics is available in Guido Cordini, “‘Non est in Toto Sanctior Orbe Locus’: Collecting Relics in Early Medieval Rome,” in Martina Bagnoli et al., eds., Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 69–78, quotation at p. 70. 7   The chest has an incised inscription which states, “LEO INDIGNUS TERTIUS EPISCOPUS D(E)I FAMULUS FECIT,” arranged to the sides of a framed space into which the thirteenth-century gold foil label is inserted. The original use of this framed space is unknown, and the inscription raises as many questions as answers, especially concerning who Leo envisaged being in a position to see and read it. Its dimensions were recorded when Philippe Lauer examined it in 1905: Philippe Lauer, Le trésor du Sancta Sanctorum (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1906), p. 38. Discussions of its purpose include Erik Thunø, Image and Relic: Mediating the Sacred in Early Medieval Rome, Analecta Romana Instituti Danici Supplementum 32 (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2002), pp. 160–70; Franz Alto Bauer, Das Bild des Stadt Rom im Frühmittelalter. Papststiftungen im Spiegel des Liber Pontificalis von Gregor dem Dritten bis zu Leo dem Dritten, Palilia 14 (Wiesbaden: Dr Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2004), pp. 75–80; Sible de Blaauw, Cultus et decor: liturgia e architettura nella Roma tardoantica e medievale. Basilica Salvatoris, Sanctae Mariae, Sancti Petri, 2 vols., Studi e Testi 355–6 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1994), vol. I, pp. 166–7.

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the chest and all its contents available for study.8 Many of the relics still had their medieval wrappers and labels attached, but it took a century before these were properly edited and published. Now, thanks to Bruno Galland’s work, it is possible to bring them into discussions of the role of the papacy in the care of relics in early medieval Rome. Not all of these approximately 130 pieces of papyrus, cloth, and parchment bear even roughly datable text; I shall work with those for which Galland can suggest a date on paleographical criteria, and make reference to others as appropriate.9 Notes from the 1905 investigation indicate that the relics themselves comprised pebbles, dust, splinters of wood, lumps of wax or sponge, phials of oil, scraps of cloth, and fragments of bone.10 Singly or in groups, these were found inside many different containers and wrappers, some of which are examples of elite patronage and craftsmanship, now justly famous for their iconography and artistry, such as a wooden Holy Land reliquary box with painted scenes of virtual pilgrimage from c. 600, and two great cross reliquaries commissioned by Paschal I (817–24), one of cloisonné enamel inside a gilded staurotheca, the other a silver-gilt cruciform carrying box for an older jeweled relic.11 The majority, however, consisted of an eclectic assortment of modest 8

  For the 1903 opening, see below, p. 203. The circumstances of the 1905 opening and ensuing rival scholarly publications are discussed in Kirstin Noreen, “Opening the Holy of Holies: Early Twentieth-century Explorations of the Sancta Sanctorum (Rome),” Church History 80 (2011): 520–46. 9   Bruno Galland, Les authentiques de reliques du Sancta Sanctorum, Studi e Testi 421 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2004). Galland only publishes those which he terms authentiques—that is, they identified the relics they accompanied, and for these his edition supersedes the descriptions of Lauer, Trésor du Sancta Sanctorum, pp. 125–35, and of Hartmann Grisar, Die römische Kapelle Sancta Sanctorum und ihr Schatz. Meine Entdeckungen und Studien in der Palastkapelle der mittelalterlichen Päpste (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1908), pp. 137–41. Other publications will be referred to as appropriate for the papyri and parchments which do not name relics. Cataloguing of the labels by the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana was slow and inconsistent: for details of how Galland’s numbering system relates to the shelfmarks, see Galland, Les authentiques, pp. 41–4. Curatorial decisions placed the cloths bearing writing together with all the papyri and parchments in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, but the linen and silk wrappers without text in the Museo Sacro Vaticano; see below, n. 12. 10   Details can be found in Galland’s catalogue entries. 11   Conveniently illustrated in Bagnoli et al., Treasures of Heaven, cat. nos. 13, 36, pp. 36, 81, and fig. 31, p. 72. Other well-known items are noted by Cordini, “‘Non est in Toto Sanctior Orbe Locus,’” p. 71, with additional bibliography. For the former, see also Derek Krueger, “Liturgical Time and Holy Land Reliquaries in Early Byzantium,” in Cynthia Hahn and Holger Klein, eds., Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, forthcoming), and for Paschal I’s gifts, Thunø, Image and Relic.

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pouches, boxes, silk and linen wrappers or parchment envelopes spanning the centuries during which the collection was formed.12 In three important respects, the Sancta Sanctorum assemblage has a distinctive profile. Firstly, 48 percent of the datable labels represent sites in the Holy Land or pertain to the life and passion of Jesus—an exceptionally high proportion in comparison with other relic collections; 3 percent designate relics of Mary, while 11 percent refer to apostles, evangelists, and other New Testament persons; 15 percent pertain to Rome’s own martyrs, ranging from the famous (Peter, Lawrence) to the obscure (Domninus, Sisinnius); 11 percent of the tags mention martyrs from elsewhere, and a mere 4 percent mention post-persecution saints—an unusually low proportion (see the appendix to this chapter). Secondly, apart from Rome’s own martyrs, it is an overwhelmingly eastern Mediterranean assortment. There are only six outliers, of which four reference cults originating elsewhere in the western Mediterranean and two shrines north of the Alps.13 As will be seen below, however, these simple categorizations are inadequate to represent fully the complexities of the collection, for relics were liable to travel via circuitous routes and intermediate cult centers. Thirdly, and most importantly, it is an accumulation of predominantly early medieval relics. Some of the evidence for this can be found in the labels themselves: more than 75 percent of the labels date from the ninth century or earlier, and indeed, over 50 percent pre-date c. 800. Of the remainder, 8 percent are in tenth- to eleventh-century hands, a further 11 percent are twelfth-century, and 4 percent are thirteenth-century, while the remainder are undatable.14 Bearing in mind that an unknown proportion of the relics probably arrived at the Lateran with identification already attached, but that some were certainly relabeled there long after their acquisition, a paleographically derived chronology is not a secure guide to the collection’s formation.15 Rather, it only indicates the most recent date at which any particular relic last underwent any significant intervention. The main clue to these relics’ whereabouts is the earliest version of the Descriptio Lateranensis ecclesiae, redacted in the late eleventh century. This indicates that by then, a significant proportion was either in Leo III’s container, 12   For the textiles, see W.F. Volbach, I tessuti del Museo sacro Vaticano (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1942), and Anna Muthesius, Byzantine Silk Weaving AD 400–AD 1200 (Vienna: Verlag Fassbaender, 1997). 13   Outliers: Carthage (Cyprian), Merida (Eulalia), Lérins (“various relics”), Syracuse (Lucy); plus, north of the Alps, Maubeuge (Aldegund) and Paris (Denis). Cautions about several of these relics are expressed below. 14   Galland, Les authentiques, p. 48. Throughout, I will cite the dates of labels suggested by Galland, but am aware that some paleographers might not share his conclusions. 15   Ibid., p. 55.

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denoted as an arca cypressina, or elsewhere in the chapel of St. Lawrence.16 Yet by this time, tastes in the safeguarding and display of relics were evolving; so too were papal aspirations.17 As will be seen, active interest in these relics waned from c. 1100 onward. Locked behind Innocent III’s bronze doors, they were left alone as the Lateran’s cult of the head relics of Rome’s two apostles overtook them. The contents of Leo III’s chest are thus an important witness to the care of relics during the early Middle Ages, and to the fate of early medieval relics in later centuries. This chapter will sketch the broader context, then establish what can be learned from them. *** Tom Noble has rightly noted the “intensity” of the cult of saints in Rome.18 The city’s “dense and bewildering profusion” of relics and shrines (as of ecclesiastical personnel of all sorts) was marked by a superfluity of local martyrs, but a dearth of the kinds of saints common elsewhere in the early Middle Ages—ascetics, founding abbots, missionaries, and reforming bishops—and of the types of hagiographical evidence which document their cults.19 To be sure, Gregory the Great is an honorable exception, although even in Rome his cult did not develop as it did elsewhere.20 In general, the deficit is part of the city’s distinctive religious culture. 16

  Ibid., pp. 31–3, 58–70. Anonymi descriptio basilicae Lateranensis, ed. Domenico Giorgi, De liturgia Romani pontificis in solemni celebratione missarum liber quartus, 3 vols. (Rome: Typis Nicolai et Marci Palearini, 1731–44; single-vol. repr. Farnborough: Gregg, 1970), pp. 542–55 at pp. 545–7. Cyrille Vogel, “La Descriptio ecclesiae Lateranensis du diacre Jean,” in Mélanges en l’honneur de Monseigneur Michel Andrieu, Revue des sciences religieuses, volume hors série (Strasbourg: Palais universitaire, 1956), dated this to the last quarter of the eleventh century, but the relevant passage is somewhat garbled and may well be a maladroit reworking of an earlier account, as pointed out by Sible de Blaauw, “Il patriarchio, la basilica lateranense e la liturgia,” Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome. Antiquité 116 (2004): 161–71, at p. 165. 17   Cynthia Hahn, Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400–circa 1204 (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania State Press, 2012); Christof L. Diedrichs, Vom Glauben zum Sehen: die Sichtbarkeit der Reliquie im Reliquiare. Ein Beitrag zur Gechichte des Sehens (Berlin: Weissensee, 2001). 18   Thomas F.X. Noble, Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), pp. 133–4. 19   Quotation from Marios Costambeys and Conrad Leyser, “To Be the Neighbour of St Stephen: Patronage, Martyr Cults and Roman Monasteries, c. 600–c. 900,” in Kate Cooper and Julia Hillner, eds., Religion, Dynasty and Patronage in Early Christian Rome, 300–900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 262–87, at p. 269. For a general overview of early medieval saints’ cults, see Julia M.H. Smith, “Saints and Their Cults,” in Thomas F.X. Noble and Julia M.H. Smith, eds., Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. III, AD 600–1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 581–605. 20   Alan Thacker, “Memorializing Gregory the Great: The Origin and Transmission of a Papal Cult in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries,” Early Medieval Europe 7 (1998): 59–84. See also

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Discussions of relics here nevertheless need to take Gregory into account, but for a different reason: most scholars have hitherto taken their cue from a letter he wrote in 594 to the Byzantine empress Constantina. His missive parried her demand for the head of St. Paul with horror stories about what happened to those who tried to tamper with the bodies of Rome’s apostles and martyrs. He was emphatic: “May the most tranquil Lady know that, when the Romans distribute the relics of saints, it is not their custom to presume to touch any part of the body.” Instead, he sent her a piece of cloth which had been placed on the saint’s tomb for consecration, and then inserted into a small box for transportation and safe keeping. To describe it, he improvised by coining a Latin form of a Greek word: brandeum. Constantina had also demanded the head’s winding-sheet, and in its place Gregory promised to send filings from the chains which had shackled St. Paul.21 This letter has attracted divergent interpretations: as a statement of a general principle which persisted in Rome until the middle decades of the eighth century, or as a defensive response to heavy political pressure in specific circumstances.22 Gregory may well have taken the views of his predecessors into consideration in reaching his own decision, for there was to hand in the collectio Avellana an earlier letter on a similar topic. In 519, the papal representatives in Constantinople had written to Pope Hormisdas about Justinian’s request for relics of St. Lawrence, stating that they had explained the differences between Greek custom and the practices of the apostolic see, and suggesting a compromise gift of relics that were not body parts.23 In all Chris Wickham, Roma medievale: Crisi e stabilità di una città, 950–1150 (Rome: Viella, 2013), pp. 246–7, 399, n. 63, 485. 21   Gregory the Great, Registrum epistularum, ed. Dag Norberg, Corpus christianorum series latina 140–140A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1982), IV.30, pp. 248–50. 22   Hippolyte Delehaye, Les origines du culte des martyrs, Subsidia hagiographica 20 (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1912), pp. 60–64, cf. Michel Andrieu, Les Ordines Romani du haut moyen âge, 5 vols., Spicilegium sacrum Lovaniense: études et documents 11, 23, 24, 28, 29 (Louvain: Spicilegium sacrum Lovaniense, 1931–61), vol. IV, pp. 378–84. The argument of principled opposition has been restated by John McCulloch, “From Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Continuity and Change in Papal Relic Policy from the 6th to the 8th Century,” in Ernst Dassmann and K. Suso Frank, eds., Pietas. Festschrift für Bernhard Kötting, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum Ergängzungsband 8 (Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1980), pp. 313–24, and John McCulloh, “The Cult of Relics in the Letters and ‘Dialogues’ of Pope Gregory the Great: A Lexicographical Study,” Traditio, 32 (1976): 145–84. For a recent more nuanced examination, see Alan Thacker, “Martyr Cult Within the Walls: Saints and Relics in the Roman Tituli Churches of the Fourth to Seventh Centuries,” in Alistair Minnis and Jane Roberts, eds., Text, Image, Interpretation: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature and its Insular Context (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 31–70. 23   Otto Guenther, ed., Epistulae imperatorum pontificorum aliorum inde ab a. CCCLXVII usque ad a. DLIII datae Avellana quae dicitur collectio, 2 vols., Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum

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likelihood, Gregory echoed (without acknowledgment) their wording while simultaneously ratcheting up the rhetorical effect by using his hagiographical skill to narrate terrifying happenings in support of his refusal. But that is not to say that he was slavishly following precedent, and certainly not that he was formulating a policy, let alone a principle. Rather, it was left to his biographer, John the Deacon, who wrote at the command of John VIII (872–82), to transform Gregory’s firm private letter to the empress into a canonical pronouncement of general applicability.24 His interpretation is an instance of the Carolingian rethinking of Gregory the Great’s legacy, and is a valuable indication of late ninth-century papal views, not those of Gregory himself.25 The correspondence with Constantina only tells us that in 594, Gregory declined to part with the head of St. Paul. Many of Gregory’s other letters are witness to his interest in relics. He enthusiastically distributed them to his correspondents in and beyond Italy, and was far from the first pope to do so; he also called for them to be sent to him from elsewhere.26 His gifts were commonly small cloths sanctified at a shrine and then sealed into a reliquary: a notably restricted selection of martyrs featured, as Conrad Leyser has emphasized.27 On other occasions, he sent filings from the latinorum et (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1895–98), nos. 218, 212, vol. 2, pp. 679–280. The legates reported: “habuit quidem petitio praedicti viri [ Justinian] secundum morem Graecorum et nos e contra consuetudinem sedis apostolicae exposuimus.” On the collectio Avellana, see Detlev Jasper and Horst Furhmann, Papal Letters in the Early Middle Ages (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), pp. 83–5. 24   John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii magni III.56–8, PL 75, pp. 166–8. Note the comments of Noble, “Morbidity and Vitality,” esp. at cols. 514 and 522. 25   I am grateful to Conrad Leyser for pointing out to me that the letter to Constantina also appears in canon law collections from the late ninth century onwards. During the middle decades of the ninth century, corporeal relics had been exported from Rome in large numbers, sometimes with express papal permission, but the exodus appears to have dried up by 875, resuming briefly when Arnulf of Carinthia seized Rome in 896: perhaps John VIII had made a concerted effort to stem the outflow. See Julia M.H. Smith, “Old Saints, New Cults: Roman Relics in Carolingian Francia,” in Julia M.H. Smith, ed., Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West: Essays in Honour of Donald A. Bullough (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 317–39. 26   Conrad Leyser, “The Temptations of Cult: Roman Martyr Piety in the Age of Gregory the Great,” Early Medieval Europe 9 (2000): 289–307; Achim Thomas Hack, Codex Carolinus. Päpstlishe Epistolographie im 8. Jahrhundert, Päpste und Papsttum 35 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 2007), pp. 786–91. For earlier papal gifts of relics by Symmachus, Hormisdas, and Pelagius I see, respectively, Andreas Thiel, ed., Epistolae Romanorum pontificum genuinae (Olms: Hildesheim, 1974), nos. 11, 17, pp. 708–9, 730–31; Guenther, Collectio Avellana, nos. 187, 190, 218, pp. 644–5, 647–8, 679–80; Pius M. Gasso, ed. Pelagii I Papae epistulae quae supersunt, 556–561, Scripta et Documenta 8 (Barcelona: Abbatia Montisserrati, 1956), nos. 3–4 and 20, pp. 6–10, 62–23. 27   Leyser, “The Temptations of Cult,” p. 301.

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chains of St. Peter enclosed in a key-shaped container, but he sometimes named other tokens, including, on one occasion, the hair of John the Baptist.28 More commonly, Gregory was non-specific about their material substance, and it is unwise to over-interpret his words. The same lack of precision characterizes all but one of the pro forma letters collected in the Liber Diurnus. These indicate that it was common practice to request relics from the pope for new churches; the exception is explicit that the relics in question are small cloths (palliola) from the shrine of the apostles.29 A Roman ordo for depositing relics (nature unspecified) in an altar gives an indication of the ritual which had evolved by the middle of the eighth century for exactly this circumstance, and John the Deacon reports having seen it performed during the pontificate of Hadrian II (867–72); on that occasion, the relic in question turned out to be from the tunic of St. John.30 In the context of mission, Gregory recommended the installation of relics when a pagan temple was converted into a Christian church, and certainly kept his missionaries in England supplied.31 Seventh- and eighth-century missionaries likewise received—or collected—relics from Rome, and visitors and pilgrims such as Wilfred of Ripon and Benedict Biscop included them among the objects they brought home.32 All these instances of the export of relics from Rome refer 28

  Gregory the Great, Registrum epistularum, IX.229, pp. 805–11, at p. 810.   Theodor E. von Sickel, Liber diurnus romanorum pontificum, 2nd edn. (Aalen: Scientia

29

Verlag, 1966), nos. x–xiv, xvi–xvii, xxi–xxii, pp. 9–12, 13–14, 16. The palliola are mentioned in no. xxii. 30   Andrieu, Ordines Romani, no. xlii, vol. 4, pp. 397–401; Vita Gregorii magni, III.58, PL 75, col. 168. On the Liber Diurnus, see Thomas F.X. Noble, “Literacy and Papal Government in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages,” in Rosamond McKitterick, ed., The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 82–108, at pp. 95–6. 31   Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors, eds., Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), I.29–30, pp. 104–7, and for the reference to the relics of St. Sixtus which Gregory also sent, see Margaret Deanesly and Paul Grosjean, “The Canterbury Edition of the Answers of Pope Gregory,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 10 (1959): 1–49, at 28–9, with the essential comments of Richard Sharpe, “Martyrs and Local Saints in Late Antique Britain,” in Alan Thacker and Richard Sharpe, eds., Local Saints and Local Churches in the Early Medieval West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 75–154, at pp. 123–4, n. 204. 32   Alan Thacker, “In Search of Saints: The English Church and the Cult of Roman Apostles and Martyrs in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries,” in Julia M.H. Smith, ed., Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West: Essays in Honour of Donald A. Bullough (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 247–77, collects the evidence (at pp. 259–63) from Anglo-Saxon England. For Amandus, see the letter of Pope Martin to Amandus in Milo of St.-Amand, Vita Amandi episcopi, ch. 2, MGH SSRM 5, p. 456. For Willibrord, see Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, V.11, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 484–5, and Alcuin, Vita Willibrordi, ch. 7, MGH SSRM 7, p. 122. For Boniface, see Willibald, Vita Bonifatii, ed. W. Levison, chs. 5, 6, 7, MGH SSRG.i.u.s. (Hanover, 1905), pp. 22, 35, 37.

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to objects easily transportable in travelers’ baggage, but are described in such generic terms that we do not know what they comprised. Their likely size and physical appearance will be discussed below, but it is important to note here that the assumption that these were not body part relics remains just that—an unproven assumption. Any reluctance to touch or move martyr remains needs to be put firmly in context. Gregory had protested to Constantina that, from a Roman perspective—indeed, in the view of all Westerners—the Greek custom of elevating the bones of saints seemed scarcely credible, so sacrilegious was the deed. His words were designed to halt her importuning, and in effect, took considerable liberties with the truth. Strictures against moving the bodies of saints certainly applied to those whose graves lay in papal basilicas, but whether they applied elsewhere is another matter.33 In practice, “the custom of the Romans” probably only referred to the clergy who tended the martyr tombs under papal control. Analysis of relics in titulus churches during c. 400–c. 700 strongly suggests that there was no single, consistent Roman attitude to corporeal relics. Imported body part relics may well have been installed in intramural churches under papal control from at least the time of Innocent I (401–17). This was certainly happening by the middle decades of the sixth century, although it did not catch the attention of the compiler of the Liber Pontificalis until the middle of the seventh century.34 Furthermore, martyr remains may have been moved extramurally, from the catacombs to the Vatican, as early as the pontificate of Symmachus (502–6), even if the precedent was not followed for a while.35 33

  Hence, Gregory I had no objections to the transfer of Donatus’ body from Euria to Corcyra in 603: Registrum epistularum, XIV.7, pp. 1,074–5. For the suggestion that, in the Theodosian era, imperial attitudes to corporeal relics of Rome’s apostles may have been significantly different, see Alan Thacker, “Patrons of Rome: The Cult of Sts Peter and Paul at Court and in the City in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries,” Early Medieval Europe 20 (2012): 380–406, at 398–9. 34   Thacker, “Martyr Cult Within the Walls.” The archeological evidence pertaining to corporeal relics in S. Pietro in Vincoli, SS. Apostoli, the Lateran chapel of S. Venanzio, and S. Stefano Rotondo is summarized in Caroline Goodson, “Building for Bodies: The Architecture of Saint Veneration in Early Medieval Rome,” in Éamonn Ó Carragain and Carol Neuman de Vegvar, eds., Roma Felix: Formation and Reflections of Medieval Rome (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 51–79, at pp. 62–6, 69–72. The Liber Pontificalis reports that John IV (640–42), Theodore (642–49), and Leo II (682–83) all oversaw the installation of corporeal relics in intramural churches; Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, I: 330, 332, 360. The identity and nature of the relics translated from Dalmatia by John IV are discussed in detail in Gillian Mackie, Early Christian Chapels in the West: Decoration, Function and Patronage (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), pp. 212–230, who reports (at p. 226) on the findings of the 1962 recognitio of the contents of the reliquary: a modest quantity of small bones, both human and animal, dust, and two Byzantine coins. 35   Thacker, “Martyr Cult Within the Walls.”

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The papacy did not monopolize the cult of relics in the city, however. Thacker’s conclusion that popes exercised little direct control over most of the catacomb sites frequented by seventh- and eighth-century Anglo-Saxon and Frankish pilgrims raises the possibility that the guardians of these martyrial tombs did not fully align themselves with papal behavior. This may be the context for Boniface V’s insistence that only priests “raise the relics” of martyrs.36 We know, too, that immigrant communities brought their own saints’ cults with them, including relics.37 Exceptionally well documented among these were the Palestinian monks who rescued the head of St. Anastasius the Persian when Jerusalem fell to the Muslims and brought it to Rome, where it was venerated at the Greek-speaking monastery ad Aquas Salvias possibly as early as 645, and for which oil lamps bearing his name were manufactured.38 In effect, Rome’s own martyrs were but a proportion—albeit a very large one—of the city’s sacred capital, and were in the care of various groups of clergy.39 In this context, it would not be surprising if competing vested interests manifested themselves in divergent views on whether to move and subdivide martyrs’ bodies. We should envisage a spectrum of attitudes, not a consistent, uniform, or principled opposition to bodily relics per se. There thus emerges a dynamic picture of relics of various types flowing in and out of early medieval Rome, as well as being moved around within the city from one church or altar to another. Before this could happen, oil, dust, bone, or stone had to be extracted or selected, and then placed in a suitable container for safe keeping, transportation, or deposit. The famous Monza collection of glass perfume bottles indicates one common way of transporting sacred substances: they once functioned as reliquary containers for oil collected at the suburban cemetery shrines of Rome’s martyrs.40 These complement receptacles found in 36

  Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, vol. I, p. 321. The Gregorian Sacramentary contains a prayer for the raising of relics, oratio quando levantur reliquiae, which recurs in OR xlii: Andrieu, Ordines Romani, IV: 385–86, 397, apparently applicable to both the elevation of buried corporeal remains and picking up the palliola placed on a tomb to consecrate them. 37   Jean-Marie Sansterre, Les moines grecs et orientaux à Rome aux époques byzantine et carolingienne: milieu du VIe s.-fin du IXe s., 2 vols. (Brussels: Académie royale de Belgique, 1982), vol. I, pp. 147–9, 157. 38   Carmela Vircillo Franklin, The Latin Dossier of Anastasius the Persian: Hagiographic Translations and Transformations, Studies and Texts 147 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2004), pp. 11, 14. 39   A point forcefully argued in Costambeys and Leyser, “To Be the Neighbour of St Stephen.” 40   They contained “holy oils [which] in the times of the pope, lord Gregory, John, unworthy sinner, brought to the ruler, Theodelinda, queen, from Rome”; Jan-Olof Tjäder, ed., Die nichtliterarischen lateinischen Papyri Italiens, 3 vols., Acta Instituti Romani Regni Sueciae 19 (Lund: Gleerup, 1954–82), vol. 2, pp. 205–22. The papyrus labels remained attached to the

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Rome’s churches, which indicate that the means by which relics were transferred around the city were local reflexes of common late antique Mediterranean practices.41 Two sets of excavations are of particular note in this context. In the 1940s, explorations under the confessio of St. Peter’s identified an early medieval altar block whose cavity yielded a marble urn, inside which were found two cylindrical silver capsules, each only 3 cm tall. They were wrapped in white cloths marked with a note of the contents, and the capsules were also inscribed directly in an uncial hand of possibly seventh/eighth-century date. The exterior of one read “sancti Petri et sancti Pauli,” the other “Salvatori et sanctae Mariae.” One contained two scraps of fine cloth, each about 3 mm square, the other three slightly larger pieces.42 A somewhat different procedure was followed in a church dedicated to the apostles Philip and James which Pelagius I (556–61) had commenced but his successor, John III (561–74), completed. Here, building activity in 1873 discovered the original relic deposit, which consisted of pieces of purple linen cloth in an undecorated oval silver casket, along with a silver phial of oil. These were placed in a stone-lined cavity underneath the confessio of the marble chest altar, while a monumental inscription was erected to record the consecration of the church and identify the relics.43 The contents of the Sancta Sanctorum are consistent with this picture. A uncial label in an eighth-century hand declared that a small ampulla contained Christ’s blood; a miniature wooden capsule full of white powder and wrapped in a linen cloth, also labeled in uncial, was stated to hold relics of the Savior, St. Martha, and St. Michael, and an oil lamp held oil from the Lord’s tomb.44 A wooden box with internal subdivisions and Greek inscriptions (possibly ninthbottles until the nineteenth century. I concur with Dennis Trout that these are unlikely to have been a gift from Gregory: Dennis Trout, “Theodelinda’s Rome: Ampullae, Pittacia and the Image of the City,” Memoirs of the American Academy, Rome 50 (2005): 131–50, at pp. 133–4; I follow Trout’s translation of the notitia at p. 132. 41   For a recent overview, see Ann Marie Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean: Architecture, Cult, and Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), ch. 4; for an older one, see Joseph Braun, Der christliche Altar in seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung, 2 vols. (Munich: Alte Meister Guenther Koch, 1924), vol. 1, pp. 635–40. 42   B.M. Apollonj Ghetti et al., Esplorazioni sotto la confessione di San Pietro in Vaticano eseguite negli anni 1940-1949, 2 vols. (Vatican City: s.n., 1951), vol. 1, pp. 188–91, with a photograph of the capsules at p. 190. 43   Ippolito Mazzucco, Filippo e Giacomo apostoli nel loro santuario romano (Rome: L’Apostoleion, 1972), with a photograph of the silver casket at p. 47; Braun, Der christliche Altar, vol. 1, pp. 194–6, no. 261, p. 638, no. 199. Inscription in Richard Krautheimer, Corpus basilicarum christianarum Romae: The Early Christian Basilicas of Rome (IV–IX Cent.), 5 vols. (Vatican City: Pontificio istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1937–77), vol. 1, p. 79. 44   Galland, Les authentiques, nos. 14, 96, 111, pp. 198, 130, 142. These are visible in the photographs from 1906: Lauer, Trésor du Sancta Sanctorum, figs. 10, 15, 20, pp. 53, 91, 120.

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century) had had its contents changed, and on discovery, held relics from the Holy Land in the form of little phials and pebbles, folded inside parchment.45 Circular pieces of cloth had been twisted and tied around other tiny Holy Land relics.46 When martyrs’ bodies were to be moved from the catacombs, however, different means of transport and packaging were needed. The three sets of human bones found when an altar in the church of S. Agata dei Goti was opened in 1932 had only demonstrably been in that church since at least 1054, but scrawled on the bags and winding-sheets which held them together, in hands of the eighth or ninth century, were the names of two groups of saints, one of whom early medieval sources report was buried in the cemetery of Callistus, the other in the cemetery of the Jordani.47 They would have been moved on a bier or cart rather than in a pocket or saddlebag. *** Overall, then, the early medieval evidence suggests a pragmatic and deliberately flexible approach to caring for relics in early medieval Rome. So how did the papal administration facilitate the movement of relics, to the extent that popes were involved in it? There are three points to consider. The first is the production of the relics and reliquaries themselves. Thanks to later miracle tales which elaborated upon the custom of Gregory the Great’s day, the consecration of small pieces of cloth (panna, palliola) at the shrine of St. Peter (and elsewhere) is particularly well known, although the practice was by no means new at the time.48 This was evidently coordinated by clergy given access to the saint’s confessio, and involved saying mass or prayers while the cloths rested on, above, or near the apostle’s tomb. Similarly, the manufacture of filings from the apostles’ chains—normally Peter’s, but explicitly on one occasion Paul’s—required a priest to stand at the chains, rasp in hand.49 45

  Lauer, Trésor du Sancta Sanctorum, pp. 99–100, and Galland, Les authentiques, p. 29 (N.XIII). 46   Ibid., nos. 69, 72, 95, pp. 118, 120, 129. 47   Albert Bruckner and Robert Marichal, eds., Chartae Latinae antiquiores: Facsimile Edition of the Latin Charters Prior to the Ninth Century, 49 vols. (Zurich: Urs Graf, 1954–98) (hereafter ChLA), vol. 22, pp. 68–70, no. 729; P. Franchi de’Cavalieri, “Le reliquie dei martiri greci nella chiesa di S. Agata alla Suburra,” Rivista di archeologia cristiana 10 (1933): 235–60. 48   Thacker, “Memorializing Gregory the Great,” pp. 63–7. Earlier accounts of placing something on the apostle’s tomb to be sanctified before being given as a gift vary in points of detail, but reflect an analogous relic-making procedure; Guenther, Collectio Avellana, no. 218, pp. 679–80: sanctuaria of Sts. Peter and Paul placed at the shrine’s second (that is, inner) grille; Gasso, Pelagii I Papae epistulae, no. 20 pp. 62–3: a tunic is placed in interiori parte sepulchri beati Petri for three days, which Eutychius can either use as a relic or wear when he says mass. 49   Gregory the Great, Registrum epistularum, IV.30, p. 250.

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Less is known about the boxes in which Gregory’s staff placed the cloths. Were they tiny wood or metal canisters, or were they rather larger, similar to the one found in the altar of Sts. Philip and James? Were they perhaps elaborately wrought silver caskets, similar to the so-called capsella Vaticana, dating from the reign of Heraclius (610–41) and found inside the altar of the Sancta Sanctorum?50 Whatever they were like, someone must have organized their supply in quantities adequate to meet demand. Indeed, Justinian assumed that Hormisdas could produce or procure reliquary boxes to order, for when he requested relics of Sts. Peter, Paul, and Lawrence, his first thought was to have silver caskets made and sent to Rome, but he changed his mind, so the papal legates reported, and instead requested that the pope have the boxes made.51 As for the key-shaped reliquaries in which Gregory frequently dispatched the filings from the chains of St. Peter, their distinctive shape surely implies a workshop working to commission, and capable, when requested, of making one in gold.52 This production seems to have been long-lived, for keys of St. Peter were available for dispatch as late as the pontificate of Gregory III (731–41), who sent one to Charles Martel.53 A second observation concerns the selection of relics for dispatch abroad. The few details available are suggestive. Pelagius II gave Gregory of Tours’s deacon “relics of the saints whose sacred feet the Lord had washed with his hands [that is, the apostles], together with relics of Paul, Lawrence and Pancras, Chrysanthus and the virgin Daria, and John with the other Paul, his brother,” while in 667, Pope Vitalian sent the Northumbrian ruler Oswy “relics of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul and of the holy martyrs Lawrence, John and 50

  Galit Noga-Banai, The Trophies of the Martyrs: An Art Historical Study of Early Christian Silver Reliquaries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 162–3; Ruth E. Leader-Newby, Silver and Society in Late Antiquity: Functions and Meanings of Silver Plate in the Fourth to Seventh Centuries (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 97–110. 51   Collectio Avellana, no. 218, ed. Guenther, pp. 679–80. 52   See Gregory the Great, Registrum epistularum, VII.23, pp. 474–8, for a golden key of St. Peter desecrated by a non-Catholic Lombard and the production of an analogue by King Authari, which he sent to Pelagius II. Gregory of Tours reports that gold keys were common, claiming that “many people” made them: Liber in gloria martyrum, ch. 27, MGH SSRM I/ii, p. 54. 53   Codex Carolinus, ep. 2, MGH Epp. 3, pp. 478–9. They may have been available prior to Gregory I’s pontificate, for Pelagius I sent filings from Peter’s chains to Eutychius, patriarch of Constantinople in 558–9, but without mentioning their container; Gasso, Pelagii I Papae epistulae, no. 20, pp. 62–3. On the production of fine metalwork, see Antonio Iacobini, “‘Aurea Roma’—Le arti preziose da Costantino all’età carolingia: committenza, produzione, circulazione,” in Roma fra oriente e occidente, Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 49 (Spoleto: Presso la sede del centro, 2002), pp. 651–93. See also Thomas F.X. Noble, “Paradoxes and Possibilities in the Sources for Roman Society in the Early Middle Ages,” in Julia M.H. Smith, ed., Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West: Essays in Honour of Donald A. Bullough (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 55–83, at pp. 76–9.

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Paul, as well as Gregory and Pancras.”54 Both shipments had been assembled from across several of the main papal intra- and extramural churches. Relics of Gregory apart, both overlap with Gregory the Great’s preferred choice of relics to send to petitioners.55 The pattern of fairly settled relic-gathering habits among the papal entourage over many decades may well hint at some sort of relic dispatch office with a limited range of stock, but in ample supply. Certainly, several centuries later, the Lateran seems to have acted as the papacy’s relic depot, sending out consignments in response to incoming requests.56 Lastly, we turn to the ways in which literate habits interacted with relics. Calendrical lists and inscriptions confirm that naming the martyrs in writing had been integral to their commemoration since at least the fourth century, although no evidence for labeling individual relics survives from such an early date.57 Among the oldest extant relic labels are the tiny gold foil plaques discovered in 1873 inside a reliquary under the main altar of the cathedral at Grado, in all probability already venerable when placed there by the episcopal community of Aquileia after its flight to the island in 578. The papyrus tags formerly attached to the Monza oil flasks are also notably early, and, like the accompanying inventory, are written in new Roman cursive script. Indeed, Tjäder was prepared to date them to the time of Gregory’s pontificate, although his views have not fully displaced previous suggestions of a date in the second half of the seventh century.58 Papyrus certainly remained in common use in Italy for labeling relics, as for other documentary purposes, into at least the eighth century, albeit gradually supplemented, and finally supplanted, by parchment.59 The relics sent to England by Gregory I and Vitalian are thus very 54

  Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, ch. 82, p. 94; Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, III.29, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 320–21. 55   Thacker, “Martyr Cult Within the Walls,” p. 68, notes the correlation between cults favored by Gregory and Vitalian’s gifts to Oswy. 56   For the deposition at Maiella of relics “que venerunt nobis de Lateranensis palatio” c. 1020, see Enrico Carusi, “Intorno al Commemoratorium dell’abate Teobaldo (a. 1019–22),” Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano e archivio muratoriano 47 (1932): 173–90, at p. 187. For a notice of the deposition of relics sent by Innocent II in 1142 to the Aquitainian church of SaintAvit-Sénieur, see Robert Favreau, “Epigraphie médiévale et hagiographie,” in Robert Favreau, ed., Le culte des saints aux IXe–XIIIe siècles (Poitiers: 1995), pp. 63–83, at p. 78, n. 102. 57   See the overview of Paola Supino, “Scrivere le reliquie a Roma nel medioevo,” in Luisa Miglio and Paola Supino, eds., Segni per Armando Petrucci (Rome: Bagatto Libri, 2002), pp. 250–64. 58   For Grado, see Ezio Marocco, Il tesoro del duomo di Grado (Trieste: B. Fachini, 2001), pp. 12–15, and Cynthia Hahn, “The  Meaning  of  Early Medieval  Treasuries,”  in Bruno  Reudenbach and Gia Toussaint, eds., Reliquiare im Mittelalter (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2005), pp. 1–20, at pp. 4–9. For Monza, see Tjäder, Die nichtliterarischen lateinischen Papyri Italiens, vol. 2, pp. 206, 209–10, with comments on dating controversies of Trout, “Theodelinda’s Rome,” p. 131, n. 1. 59   Seven papyrus labels survive from Cantù (Tjäder, Die nichtliterarischen lateinischen Papyri Italiens, vol 2, pp. 222–5 [= ChLA, vol. 29, pp. 2–3, no. 862]), one from Saint-Maurice d’Agaune

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likely either to have borne papyrus tags or to have been marked with the saints’ names on their linen wrappings. We can also speculate on how the relics brought back by pilgrims themselves may have been identified. When Wilfred went around the saints’ shrines on his visit to Rome in 680, he obtained a great number and, so his biographer Stephen of Ripon tells us, took care to write down “what each of the relics was and to which saint it belonged,” perhaps in an inventory akin to the one which listed the contents of all the Monza ampullae.60 In view of the heavy pilgrim traffic to Rome’s many martyrs by this date, it is possible that shrines themselves made supplies of papyrus available for pilgrims to use for listing or labeling the sacred tokens they collected. More plausibly perhaps, churches may have maintained a supply of pre-prepared relics (whether in glass phials, cloth packages, metal pots, or other containers) available to satisfy the demand, in the manner of the eastern Mediterranean shrines which manufactured metal or terracotta ampullae for pilgrims, each with its own distinctive iconography and/or legend.61 In general, it is almost impossible to tell whether pilgrims, Wilfred included, labeled relics themselves, and if so, whether they did so when they first acquired them, or rather later, perhaps on arrival back home. In all likelihood, practices varied. Whatever the case, once relics had entered ecclesiastical collections, clergy sifted through them from time to time, whether to move them from one reliquary or altar to another or to inventory them. In the process, they commonly replaced degraded or illegible labels as required.62 Emphatically, then, the script of a label is no guide to the date when a pilgrim acquired a relic or the date when the church in which it came to rest took ownership of it.63 Like medieval book collections, most relic collections were heterogeneous (Rudolf Schnyder, “Das Kopfreliquiar des heiligen Candidus in Saint-Maurice,” Zeitschrift für schweizerische Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte, 24 [1965–66]: 65–127, at p. 123), inventoried as B.II.133, and seven from the Sancta Sanctorum, two of which are blanks, two in Latin, and three in an unidentified script and language (Galland, Les authentiques, nos. 55, 98, 116, 117, pp. 113, 131, 143, 144 [= ChLA, vol. 22, pp. 57–9, nos. 724–6). I am grateful to Bryan Kraemer for his expert opinion that these are not in Demotic; cf. Galland’s hypothesis. 60   Bertram Colgrave, The Life of Bishop Wilfred by Eddius Stephanus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927), ch. 33, pp. 66–7; Tjäder, Die nichtliterarischen lateinischen Papyri Italiens, vol. 2, pp. 216–22. 61   Chiara Lambert and Paula Pedemonte Demeglio, “Ampolle devozionali ed itinerari di pellegrinaggio tra IV e VII secolo,” Antiquité tardive 2 (1994): 205–231; William Anderson, “The Archaeology of Late Antique Pilgrim Flasks,” Anatolian Studies 54 (2004): 79–93. 62   I discuss this in Smith, “Portable Christianity.” 63   For a contrasting methodology for working with relic labels, see Michael McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, AD 300–900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 283–318.

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and accumulated gradually, the history of the whole distinguishable from the story of each constituent part. *** With this in mind, it becomes possible to focus on the assemblage found inside Leo III’s chest. There are two ways to explore its composition: the geographical mobility of cults, and the techniques used to wrap and label relics. Taken together, they reveal something of the complexity of the history of the papal relic hoard. In suggesting how the papacy cared for its relics, they also yield more surprises. In the first place, not all relics reached the Lateran directly from a saint’s first or founding cult site. This can easily be demonstrated in two cases. In one, an uncial hand noted that a cloth wrapper contained “various relics” which came from the monastery of Lérins, including a piece of Mary’s black cloak.64 The other concerns an eleventh-century label for a relic of St. Denis (the Areopagite had been conflated with the martyr of Paris since at least the ninth century). This had been acquired from Regensburg, whose (fraudulent) claim to the saint’s remains was upheld when Leo IX visited the Bavarian town 1052.65 Although these are the only items that can be proven not to have originated from a saint’s primary cult site, they are unlikely to be the only ones. Pursuing this theme sheds light on the circulation of relics in and around Rome itself. I have selected three types of relic for this purpose: non-indigenous saints, Rome’s own martyrs, and Christ’s nativity. Using the brief information on the Sancta Sanctorum relic labels to deduce unrecorded patterns of relic circulation is, necessarily, something of an exercise in educated guesswork. Nevertheless, two of them—Cyprian of Carthage and the apostle Bartholomew—may shed light on how non-local saints became appropriated into Roman traditions. Relics of the former had been venerated in the Catacomb of Callixtus since at least 354, and perhaps this, rather than Carthage, was the proximate source of the relic of Cyprian that was labeled in a seventh- or eighth-century uncial hand.66 Similarly, it is reasonable to posit a local origin for the piece of the beard of St. Bartholomew recorded on a twelfth-century label.67 In 983, this apostle’s cult was introduced by Otto III to the church on Tiber Island which now bears 64   Galland, Les authentiques, no. 97, p. 130: “Reliquias diuersas de Lirino monasterio id est pallium sanctae Mariae nigro colore.” 65   Ibid., no. 126, pp. 153–4, a gloriously spurious pseudo-diploma, complete with three monograms. See also Andeas Kraus, “Saint-Denis und Regensburg: zu den Motiven und zur Wirkung hochmittelalterlicher Fälschungen,” in Wolfram Setz, ed., Fälschungen im Mittelalter. Internationaler Kongress der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, München, 16.–19. September 1986, Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica 33 (Hanover: Hahn, 1988), pp. 535–49. 66   Galland, Les authentiques, no. 22, p. 101. 67   Ibid., no. 17, p. 99.

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his name; this may be a more probable provenance than this wandering apostle’s other western Mediterranean resting places, Benevento and Lipari, let alone the various eastern cities claiming his body. There are, then, clear signs that saints’ relics of external origin were moved around within Rome, acquiring new local affinities and identities in the process. The handful of composite labels in the Sancta Sanctorum allows us to extend the insight to the remains of Rome’s own martyrs. These composite tags all date from the eleventh—thirteenth centuries: each names multiple saints whose cults had not, as far as is known, hitherto shared either feast day or resting place until they came together in a single bundle or reliquary. A straightforward example is an eleventh- or twelfth-century tag naming Sebastian along with the well-known pair Processus and Martinianus. The cult of this duo originated in a different cemetery from that of Sebastian, but Paschal I moved their relics to an oratory dedicated to them in St. Peter’s.68 Sebastian soon followed, one of three martyrs moved to the Vatican and each enshrined in a separate altar by Gregory IV.69 In all probability, then, relics derived from these shrines made their way into the same reliquary, and perhaps with further subdivision, were later moved to the Lateran. More tendentious is a label which asserts that in 1018, Benedict VIII had found relics of Sts. Primus and Felicianus and also Gorgonius in the cemetery of Helen (that is, ad duas lauras on the via Labicana). This prolix tag acknowledges that other relics of these three saints were deposited in S. Stefano Rotondo.70 These claims are implausible, for several reasons. They contradict earlier evidence that only Gorgonius had originally lain in the cemetery of Helen, and that Primus and Felicianus had been translated to S. Stefano Rotondo by Pope Theodore.71 It may therefore be more sensible to regard this eleventh-century note as formulating a plausible backstory in support of a cult which had recently arrived at the Lateran from nearby S. Stefano Rotondo.72 In both cases, then, these labels represent conjoined cults in which one saint had a different trajectory around the city from the other pair of saints in the same 68   Agostino Amore, I martiri di Roma, Spicilegium pontificii athenaei antoniani (Rome: Antonianum, 1975), pp. 255–7, summarizes the evidence; for the reasons why Paschal I selected them, see Caroline Goodson, The Rome of Paschal I: Papal Power, Urban Renovation, Church Building and Relic Translation, 817–824 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 277. 69   Amore, Martiri, pp. 184–5; Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, vol. 2, p. 74. 70   Galland, Les authentiques, no. 62, p. 115. 71   Amore, Martiri, pp. 86–8, 113–14. For Theodore, see above, n. 34. 72   Pierre Jounel, Le culte des saints dans les basiliques du Latran et du Vatican au douzième siècle, Collection de L’Ecole française de Rome 26 (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1977), pp. 244, 286. Primus and Felicianus (but not Gorgonius) are mentioned among the relics in the earliest extant recension of the Descriptio basilicae Lateranensis, ed. Giorgi, De liturgia Romani pontificis, p. 546.

1

St. Catherine at Maaseik, Belgium, casula of Sts. Harlindis and Relindis, pattern of the “David silk” reconstructed, eighth–early ninth century (Mildred Budny)

2

Vatican City, Museo Sacro of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Annunciation, compound twill silk from Constantinople, eighth–early ninth century (Scala/Art Resource, NY)

3

Vienna Coronation Gospels, front cover, early sixteenth century (Weltliche Schatzkammer der Hofburg, Kunsthistorisches Museum, s.n.) (Photo Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien)

4

Vienna Coronation Gospels, Evangelist John and opening of his Gospel, first quarter ninth century (Weltliche Schatzkammer der Hofburg, Kunsthistorisches Museum, s.n., fols. 178v–179r) (Photo Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien)

5

Alfred Rethel, fresco in the Krönungsfestsaal of the Rathaus in Aachen, showing Otto III kneeling before the enthroned corpse of Charlemagne, 1847 (Photo Peter Cürlis, 1943, © Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte)

6

Adhémar of Chabannes, drawing of Charlemagne’s tomb and palace chapel at Aachen, before 1033 (Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, cod. Reg. lat. 263, fol. 235r) (Photo Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)

7

Adhémar of Chabannes, drawing of the head of Charlemagne, before 1033 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, cod. Lat. 5943A, fol. 5r) (Photo Bibliothèque nationale de France)

8

Adhémar of Chabannes, drawing of St. Eparchius of Angoulême with self-portrait, before 1033 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, cod. lat. 3784, fol. 99v) (Photo Bibliothèque nationale de France)

9

Vienna Coronation Gospels, Evangelist Matthew miniature, first quarter ninth century (Weltliche Schatzkammer der Hofburg, Kunsthistorisches Museum, s.n., fol. 15r) (Photo Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien)

10 Gospels from Reims, Evangelist Matthew miniature, c. 820s–830s (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, cod. lat. 265, fol. 11v) (Photo Bibliothèque nationale de France)

11

Image (Bildnis) for the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy from Johann Christoph Weigel, Biblia Ectypa. Bildnussen aus Heiliger Schrifft dess Alt- und Neuen Testaments in welchen alle Geschichte under Erscheinungen deutlich und schrifftmassig zu Gottes Ehre und andachtiger Seelen erbaulicher Beschauung vorgestellet werden (Augsburg: Christoph Weigel, 1695), n. p. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Image Source: Art Resource, NY)

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bundle. The Sancta Sanctorum labels thus hint at the dissemination around the city’s churches of tiny particles of its holy dead in ways too routine to catch the attention of other sources. Finally, it is useful to consider relics of the crib of the nativity (praesepium) in this context, as an example of biblical relics whose laconic labels provide only part of their story. Leo III’s chest contained six of them, none dating later than the ninth century. Only two, both in uncial hands, explicitly came from Bethlehem.73 What of the others, all relics de praesepio?74 Sta. Maria Maggiore was styled ad praesepe from the 640s, and had a distinct chapel of the praesepium by the reign of Gregory III (731–41). Might this have been the source of some of the other crib relics in the Sancta Sanctorum?75 The possibility cannot be excluded. In turning to techniques of wrapping and labeling, Galland’s paleographical analysis offers some initial parameters. In his judgment, none of the following were penned by papal scribes: the eight Latin labels written in eighth-century Frankish so-called “Luxeuil” minuscule, nine labels in Greek, and a set of seven Holy Land relic wrappers in poor Latin and crude lettering.76 On the other hand, the four parchment “envelopes” making use of the blank verso sides of letters (datable to 1118) eliminated by the papal chancery certainly were, and so were the seven written in an eighth- or ninth-century curial hand.77 To these should be added another archival discard, a letter sent to Urban II in 1096 which had been cut in half vertically, the surviving half being found enclosing a relic of Pope Damasus.78 Furthermore, some relics were demonstrably relabeled by Lateran clerics, presumably to replace old abraded (papyrus?) ones.79 But the 73

  Galland, Les authentiques, nos. 11 and 13, pp. 96–7.   Ibid., nos. 4, 69, 106, 120, pp. 94, 118, 138, 148. On nos. 106 and 120, see also below,

74

pp. 199–200. 75   Dale Kinney, “The Praesepia in Santa Maria in Trastevere and Santa Maria Maggiore,” in Marmoribus vestita. Miscellanea in onore di Federico Guidobaldi (Vatican City: Pontificio istituto di archeologia cristiana, 2011), pp. 777–95. 76   Galland, Les authentiques, pp. 44, 49–50, 58 (I have added to Galland’s totals one label which mixes Latin and Greek). Cf. Thomas F.X. Noble, “The Declining Knowledge of Greek in Eighth- and Ninth-century Papal Rome,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 78 (1985): 56–62. 77   Galland, Les authentiques, pp. 52–3, 58. For recycled letters, see Raffaello Volpini, “Documenti nel Sancta Sanctorum del Laterano: i resti dell’‘archivio’ di Gelasio II,” Lateranum 52 (1986): 215–64. 78   Galland, Les authentiques, no. 105, p. 137. The letter is edited and dated in Bernard de Vregille, “Mariage aristocratique et droit grégorien: un document du Sancta Sanctorum intéressant Besançon et Montbéliard,” Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des chartres 158 (2000): 547–55. 79   See Galland, Les authentiques, no. 85, p. 125, and the comments (at p. 155) on the thirteenth-century label of relics of Sts. Agnes and Euphemia. On these relics, see further below, pp. 202–3.

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script of the majority of the labels cannot be located, and the handful of blank or illegible labels seems not to have troubled anyone.80 As Galland has shown, there are several sets of labels in the same hand that were cut from a single piece of parchment, but he was unable to attribute more than one of these to activity within the Lateran palace.81 However, by turning from purely paleographical criteria to the historical and geographical coherence of each group of relics, it is possible to nuance some of his conclusions. A group of relics all labeled in the same northern Frankish hand reflect a distinctive pilgrimage itinerary through the Holy Land, and might have been brought by a western pilgrim returning home through Rome.82 By contrast, the four objects from as far apart as the Low Countries and the Holy Land that were labeled by another eighth-century minuscule hand must have been brought together and relabeled somewhere central.83 Should we envisage these as the work of a pilgrim who settled at the Schola Francorum? Alternatively, did the Lateran sometimes absorb into its collections relics from other churches when it took control of them, as happened frequently elsewhere?84 For the most part, though, the care of relics seems to have been associated with the maintenance of the Lateran palace archive and books, at least its liturgical ones.85 As well as the relics protected by envelopes made out of documents discarded as unsuitable for permanent archiving, leaves of old books could be pressed into service. One relic was protected by a fragment of an eleventh-century Beneventan prayer book, another a leaf from a twelfthcentury psalter, and a third from a rectangle of parchment with part of a pentrial alphabet on it.86 Three scrappy twelfth-century tags were cut from a small piece of parchment bearing traces of an erased text that cannot be identified.87 80

    82   83  

For a list, see Galland, Les authentiques, pp. 43–4. Ibid., pp. 49–54. Ibid., nos. 65, 66, 77, 78, 79, pp. 50, 117, 122–3. This is Galland’s Group C, consisting of relics of Sts. Aldegund (Low Countries), Isaac (Holy Land), Cosmas and Damian (Constantinople? Rome?), and Michael (Monte Gargano); ibid., nos. 28–31, pp. 103–4. 84   Early medieval examples of grants of churches, including their relics and other liturgical furnishings, can be found in Janneke Raaijmakers, The Making of the Monastic Community of Fulda, c.744–c.900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 192, n. 180, and Susan Wood, The Proprietary Church in the Medieval West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 104–6, 126, 455–7. 85   For the Lateran scrinium and library in the early Middle Ages, see Noble, “Literacy and Papal Government in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.” 86   Galland, Les authentiques, pp. 42, 139. Galland does not catalogue the first two of these; that they were found inside reliquaries is clear from Lauer, Trésor du Sancta Sanctorum, p. 131. The third is Galland, Les authentiques, no. 108, p. 139. 87   This is Galland’s Group O, labels 15, 16 and 17; Galland, Les authentiques, pp. 53, 98–9. 81

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For the most part, though, wrappers and labels were made out of blank pieces of papyrus or parchment. The need for a supply of one or other medium confirms an association with the writing office, and although some tags may have been trimmings, others were demonstrably cut as a set from large sheets of membrane.88 By the twelfth century, this link may have been long-standing. The presence of a fragmentary Carolingian-era imperial diploma on papyrus among the documents inside the arca cypressina certainly suggests as much, although whether this was placed there for safe keeping or was another instance of a discarded document recycled as a wrapper cannot now be determined.89 In view of the proximity of the papal writing office, the scrinium, to the chapel of St. Lawrence, these interchanges might readily have been very informal: at the very least, they give a glimpse of documentary habits at the heart of the Lateran palace, where a frugal economy of recycling prevailed.90 In this context, one final group of relics deserves particular mention. It comprises: a stone from Christ’s crib, soil from the cave where Elizabeth fled with her infant son John the Baptist, a stone from the river Jordan, a piece of the sponge used at the crucifixion, a stone from Calvary, earth from the Holy Sepulcher, and finally, wax from a candle there, which presumably came from the candles lit at the Easter vigil. The selection is a narrative sequence from baptism to resurrection, analogous to the sixth-century wooden reliquary box also found inside Leo’s chest, and to the iconography of the ampullae from Monza and Bobbio.91 Its coherence as a single set of relics is provided by the 88

  Ibid., pp. 49–54.   Ibid., p. 42; ChLA, vol. 55, pp. 81–3, no. 8. The text is that of a lost pact between

89

emperor and papacy, possibly dating from 892: see Angelo Mercati, “Frammenti in papiro di un diploma imperiale a favore della Chiesa romana,” in Albert Brackmann, ed., Papsttum und Kaisertum. Forschungen zur politischen Geschichte und Geisteskultur des Mittelalters Paul Kehr zum 65. Geburtstag dargebracht (Munich: Verlag der Münchner Drucke, 1926), pp. 163–7, and for the general context, Thomas F.X. Noble, The Republic of St. Peter: The Birth of the Papal State, 680–825 (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), p. 315. 90   On the layout of the early medieval Lateran, see Manfred Luchterhandt, “Päpstlicher Palastbau und höfisches Zeremoniell unter Leo III.,” in Christoph Stiegemann and Matthias Wemhoff, eds., 799. Kunst und Kultur der Karolingerzeit: Karl der Grosse und Papst Leo III. in Paderborn, 3 vols. (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1999), vol. 3, pp. 108–22. There are instances of relics wrapped in reused parchment elsewhere, but only the Lateran seems to have made something of a habit of it. Other examples known to me are: Jean-Pierre Laporte, Le trésor des saints de Chelles (Chelles: Société archéologique et historique de Chelles, 1988), pp. 163–9 (fragment of a twelfthcentury charter), and Maurice Prou and E. Chartraire, “Authentiques de reliques conservées au trésor de la cathédrale de Sens,” Mémoires de la Société nationale des antiquaires de France sér. 6, 59 (1900): 129–72, at 145, no. 118 (fragment of an uncial sacramentary). 91   See above, p. 182 and n. 11; André Grabar, Ampoules de Terre Sainte (Monza-Bobbio) (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1958), pp. 50–61.

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wrappers: squares of parchment cut from two consecutive leaves of a fourthor fifth-century uncial manuscript of the fourth decade of Livy.92 Its generous margins left ample room on which someone scrawled a note of the contents of each packet in a poor late seventh- or eighth-century hand in a Latin that is more vernacular than correct. Where was this done? Why was a volume of Livy discarded for use as scrap parchment? In Galland’s view, both script and Latinity were too poor for this to have been executed in Rome, but there are no solid benchmarks against which to assess this value judgment.93 Wherever the set was wrapped, it was certainly in the Lateran not long afterwards, where six of the seven pieces were subdivided. Of the two almost identical sets of relics, one was returned to its original envelopes, and the other placed in newly cut parchment squares. The identifications were copied and the Latin corrected: this is the set of labels written in a curial hand.94 It nevertheless raises more questions. In what circumstances were these relics acquired, and why were they then divided? Why did the Lateran persist in enclosing relics inside parchment packaging? Was anyone curious enough to stop and read the text on the old wrappers? What had happened to the rest of the Livy manuscript? *** The care of relics in early medieval Rome has led to the “fortuitous transmission” of a few paragraphs of Livy.95 Whether Leo III himself ever saw and handled these or any of the relics discovered inside his chest remains an open question, as does the original purpose of the chest itself. None of the relics was demonstrably in Rome by Leo’s pontificate. The assortment nevertheless has a predominantly early medieval character: either it was formed at an early date, or from the ninth century onwards old relics venerable for their antiquity were sought out and assembled, irrespective of the legibility of their cloth, papyrus, or parchment wrappers and tags, or even of the language in which they were written. Perhaps relics assembled elsewhere did not find a convenient repository in the arca 92

  Codices Latini Antiquiores: A Paleographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts prior to the Ninth Century, ed. E. A. Lowe, 12 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934–71), vol. 1, p. 18, no. 57; Galland, Les authentiques, pp. 49, 55, no. 46, pp. 146–51, nos. 118–24; Marco Vattasso, Frammenti d’un Livio del V secolo recentemente scoperti. Codice vaticano latino 10696, Studi e Testi 18 (Vatican City: Biblioteca apostolica Vaticana, 1906); Galland, Les authentiques, nos. 118–24, pp. 49, 55–6, 146–51. 93   Cf. ChLA, vol. 22, p. 61, no. 728. Influenced by the find-spot, Petrucci considers the hand to be a Roman one, and assumes that it dates from the pontificate of Leo III. Similarly, see Supino, “Scrivere le reliquie,” p. 254. 94   Galland, Les authentiques, nos. 99–103, 106, 109, 111, pp. 52, 55–6, 131–5, 138, 140, 142. Two further relics from the Holy Sepulcher were added to the second set. 95   Leonard Boyle, Medieval Latin Palaeography: A Bibliographical Introduction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), p. 84, no. 571.

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cypressina in St. Lawrence’s chapel until long after Leo III’s pontificate. These questions, however, challenge interpretations of the Sancta Sanctorum based on iconographic and liturgical evidence alone. My analysis suggests four conclusions about papal relic collecting. First, the majority of the relics which the 1905 investigation found inside the altar of the Sancta Sanctorum had been somewhere in the Lateran complex from an early date, whether in one of the altars in the chapel of St. Lawrence or an adjacent chapel, or in the basilica. Whether any of these altars had ever had a founding relic deposit at the time of its consecration remains unknown, but the gradual accumulation of relics within the Lateran nevertheless meant that it was well endowed with them as early as 700. Second, the Sancta Sanctorum assemblage bears witness to an undocumented flow of modest relics from one church to another around the city, for which liturgical, administrative and personal motives presumably varied from one instance to another. Nevertheless, with the single exception of Benedict VIII, no reigning pope is mentioned on any of these labels, leaving us primarily reliant on external narrative sources to gauge the extent of direct papal involvement in this. Third, the collection must be understood as dynamic and fluid, for during the early Middle Ages, relics were as frequently shifted around as in later centuries. Finally, it is extremely improbable that the early medieval stratum was offerings carried by western pilgrims from their local shrines. How, then, had the collection found inside Leo III’s chest been formed? It is best understood in the context of early medieval Rome’s medial position between East and West. In all likelihood, it included tokens carried by many different messengers: those passing through Rome en route to other destinations, representatives of the papacy who undertook diplomatic exchanges with Constantinople or Jerusalem, envoys arriving from distant places, and Romans who went on pilgrimage to other Mediterranean shrines. In addition, it surely also included tokens brought by eastern Christians on pilgrimage to Rome, along with others left by western pilgrims when they stopped over in Rome on their way home from the Holy Land.96 Each individual piece, or set of pieces, will have had its own, now irrecoverable, back story. Moreover, because the Lateran relic collection was not secured in a sealed altar, but was subject to frequent interventions, we may suppose that its formation involved removal as well as accumulation. By analogy with the relics assembled in the Pharos chapel of the imperial palace in Constantinople, or 96

  McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, pp. 129–236; Michael McCormick, Charlemagne’s Survey of the Holy Land (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2011), pp. 78, 167–72. Note also the presence in Rome at the 649 Lateran council of the papal legate in Palestine, Stephen, Bishop of Dor: Rudolf Riedinger, Concilium Lateranense a.649 celebratum (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1984), p. 37.

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the relic-laden treasuries of early medieval rulers in the early medieval West, it is highly probable that the Lateran assortment reflects the exchange of gifts and favors that accompanied intense political maneuvering and ecclesiastical diplomacy.97 After all, this was the context in which Gregory the Great declined to grant the head of St. Paul to Constantina, sending her instead a scrap of fabric inside a little box. Similarly, it was in politically sensitive circumstances that Hadrian I and Leo III gave gifts of relics to Charlemagne and his trusted agent in Italy, Angilbert.98 The early medieval contents of Leo III’s chest can thus be understood as the residue of several centuries of undocumented toand-fro of offerings, gifts, negotiations, and redistributions that mapped both the Lateran’s place in the city and Rome’s place in the world. Unfortunately, given the present state of knowledge, it remains impossible to assess whether the Lateran redistributed incoming relics of non-Roman origin to its beneficiaries, and especially the extent to which Holy Land relics reached western churches by this indirect means. It is clear, however, that as Rome’s economic and political role altered, and as the papacy’s representation of itself to the wider world acquired an ever greater focus on St. Peter, so the spiritual, ideological, symbolic, and historical values encoded in the Sancta Sanctorum relics changed. An overview of interventions from the eleventh century indicates that high and late medieval popes had little interest in this early medieval heritage. On the one hand, paleographical analysis shows that all clerical interventions from the eleventh century onward only concerned the remains of saints: without exception, the relics representing the Holy Land, Christ, and Mary bore tags written in the seventh, eighth, or ninth century. On the other hand, there is no extant early medieval evidence that the chapel of St. Lawrence contained any head relics, yet by the end of the eleventh century, the Descriptio Lateranensis ecclesiae claims that one of the two side altars held four: those of Sts. Peter, Paul, Agnes, and Euphemia.99 Prior to, or during, the removal of the side altars, these were placed inside the main altar, Leo III’s arca, where they were to be found by the end of the twelfth century.100 Honorius III (1216–27) commissioned a simple silver box (16 × 21 × 18 cm) for the head of St. Agnes, into which he also placed the particles of 97   Julia M.H. Smith, “Rulers and Relics, c.750–950: ‘Treasure on Earth, Treasure in Heaven,’” in Alexandra Walsham, ed., Relics and Remains, Past & Present Supplement 5 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 73–96; Paul Magdalino, “L’église du Phare et les reliques de la Passion à Constantinople,” in Jannic Durand and Bernard Flusin, eds., Byzance et les reliques du Christ (Paris: Association des Amis du Centre d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance, 2004), pp. 15–30. 98   Angilbert of Saint-Riquier, De ecclesia Centulensi libellus, ch. 2, MGH SS XV/i, p. 175. 99   Giorgi, De liturgia Romani pontificis, p. 547. 100   De Blaauw, “Il patriarchio,” pp. 167–8.

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Euphemia; this was then returned to the altar, and was the sole object retrieved in 1903.101 Nicholas III sealed relics of the head of St. Praxedes into a casket of similar shape and size (18.5 × 23.5 × 19.7 cm) which had been assembled out of older byzantine elements, and then placed it in the arca.102 Later, in 1367, as part of his restoration of papal authority in Rome after the return from Avignon, Urban V (1362–70) extracted the heads of Sts. Peter and Paul and enshrined them in the Lateran basilica, where their cult rapidly rose to predominance.103 In effect, the investigators in 1905 found a collection that had fossilized in the thirteenth century, but which had very largely been formed by the ninth century. Its paleographical “stratigraphy” is indirect but eloquent testimony to the material contribution of relics to the gradual assimilation of the late antique Lateran Basilica Salvatoris into the high medieval Petrine papacy. *** The oldest items in the altar of the Sancta Sanctorum take us back to the age of Gregory the Great and his immediate successors. Although many practical questions about the care of relics in early medieval Rome remain—with many more about their liturgical roles, ideological significance, and historical values—Gregory’s letters confirm that the cult of relics in the city was already in full flood. By the same token, they reflect a specific moment in a dynamic encounter between the papacy and the material heritage of Christian sanctity. Affected by shifting preferences in the accumulation and display of relics as much as by the interests of other stakeholders in and beyond Rome, the care of relics responded to papal officials’ changing political priorities and ideological aspirations. Likewise, the city’s monumental environment and liturgical ceremonials provided a continuously evolving backdrop and rationale. While the earliest phases of the papal relic assemblage will always remain speculative, its history from the eleventh century onward suggests that it also refracted these changing parameters. As a labeled relic hoard whose find spot is known with certainty and which benefits from supporting documentation, the Sancta Sanctorum collection is unusual, but not unique. Similarly, other major medieval churches besides the Lateran acted as centers for the redistribution of relics while also accumulating them. Elsewhere too, an overlay of newer interpretations sometimes overwrote 101

  See Galland, Les authentiques, no. 85, p. 125, and for the reliquary, Carlo Bertelli, Restituzioni 2004: tesori d’arte restaurati (Vicenza: Banca Intesa: Terra ferma, 2004), no. 23, pp. 136–8. 102   Lauer, Trésor du Sancta Sanctorum, pp. 73–8; Cordini, “‘Non est in Toto Sanctior Orbe Locus,’” p. 71 and figs. 33a–b; Bertelli, Restituzioni 2004, no. 15, pp. 102–6. 103   Noreen, “Opening the Holy of Holies,” p. 525; Daniela Mondini, “Reliquie incarnarte. Le ‘sacre teste’ di Pietro e Paolo a San Giovanni in Laterano a Roma,” in Davide Scotto, ed., Del visibile credere: pellegrinaggi, santuari, miracoli, reliquie (Florence: Leo S. Olscki Editore, 2011), pp. 265–96.

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relics’ previous importance, for relics characteristically had fragile identities and a labile symbolic meaning. That this particular assemblage has been amenable to such a detailed analysis depends, however, on two other features, both of which are without parallel. One of them is the exemplary quality of Galland’s edition of an entire corpus of labels, which sets a new benchmark of best practice. The other is inherent in this collection’s specific location, where, over the centuries, the heavy pressure of papal ownership shaped its profile in a distinctive way. Thanks to these unique circumstances, it has proven possible to tease out the implications of the care of relics in early medieval Rome and uncover a material ideology at the very heart of the papacy. Acknowledgments I am grateful to Sible de Blaauw for inviting me to discuss some of the ideas in this chapter at a workshop in Nijmegen, to the editors of this volume for their comments, and to Nick Camerlenghi, Richard Gameson, and Caroline Goodson for advice and bibliography.

Appendix: Relic Labels in the Sancta Sanctorum The table below uses the dating offered by Galland for the 113 labels bearing relic-related writing, but omits blanks, parchments with unrelated text, and the five Greek labels for which Galland offers no date. Composite labels (those bearing the name of more than one saint or relic) are counted only once.

Century (as suggested by Galland)

7–8th 8th

8–9th 9th

OT places and prophets

3

2

Life of Christ and associated places

19

15

Mary

3

Other NT ( John the Baptist, apostles, evangelists, angels)

2

2

1

Rome’s martyrs

1

1

1

2

Other martyrs

3

4

1

1

Post-persecution saints

1

2

Unidentified

1

5

1

Totals

33

31

6

2

10th

11th

11-12th

Totals No.

%

5

4

50

44

3

3

12

10.5

17

15

1

12

10.5

1

5

4

1

10

9

4

113

100

12th

13th

14

2 2

5 1

1

2

1

5

1 18

5

3

1

12

3

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Chapter 10

Rome and the Popes in the Construction of Institutional History and Identity in the Early Middle Ages: The Case of Leiden Universiteitsbibliotheek Scaliger MS 49 Rosamond McKitterick In the last chapter of Book X of his Historiae, Gregory of Tours included an account of the bishops of Tours. It started with the record of Gatian, the first bishop of Tours, who was sent to Gaul by the pope in the time of the Decian persecutions. This episcopal catalogue culminated in Gregory’s own career, a list of his writings, and directions for his works’ subsequent preservation and dissemination. The entries for the earliest bishops in Gregory’s list also note the emperor with whom the bishop’s career coincided. Thus, Litorius was bishop in the time of Constantine, St. Martin in the time of Valens and Valentinian, and Brictius in the time of Arcadius and Honorius. This altered from the incumbency of Volusianus onwards, for Gregory recorded his holding of the see as bishop during the reign of Clovis, and it is the Merovingian kings who provide the chronological marker thereafter. Gregory included brief details about the careers of each of his predecessors, namely the building activities of each bishop, his promotion of cults of particular saints, or the introduction of liturgical observance, as in the case of Perpetuus. In almost every case, the brief biography ends with a note that the bishop was buried in the basilica of St. Martin.1 In all these respects, both in detail and in presenting a short history of the see of Tours in the form of serial biography, Gregory of Tours obviously, and as is well known, modeled this part of his text on the Liber Pontificalis.2 He was probably the earliest historian in the Middle Ages to do so, and his text provides a valuable witness to the dissemination of the Liber Pontificalis to Merovingian Frankish Gaul by the end of the sixth century—that is, within half a century of the text’s initial composition.3 The link with Rome signaled by the pope’s 1

  Gregory of Tours, Historiae, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 1, 1 (Hanover, 1951), X, p. 31.   L. Pietri, “La succession des premiers évêques tourangeaux: essai sur la chronologie de

2

Grégoire de Tours,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome 94 (1982): 560. 3   See Liber Pontificalis, ed. L. Duchesne, Le Liber Pontificalis. Texte, Introduction et Commentaire (Paris, 1896), and also T. Mommsen, ed., Gestorum Pontificum Romanorum I Libri

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sending of Bishop Litorius to Tours is echoed by the imitative format of the text itself.4 Yet Gregory’s text is also one of the earliest indications of the way papal and Roman history could be integrated into the history of another Christian institution far, both geographically and chronologically, from early Christian Rome itself. The specific and limited degree to which Rome and the fortunes of the bishop in Rome are integrated into Gregory’s Historiae as a whole, succinctly summarized by Tom Noble nearly twenty years ago, moreover, provides a telling indication of how a particular ecclesiastical institution could associate itself with Christian Rome in a way that contributed to the formation and expression of its own identity.5 This chapter will therefore explore two instances of distinctive early medieval historical compilations—one from Tours and the other from Fulda, but both in codices now in Leiden Universiteitsbibliotheek in the Netherlands—that appear to reflect ninth-century and later attempts to draw on the Liber Pontificalis in their articulation of institutional identities. These compilations provide an opportunity to explore some important themes that have become the focus of attention in recent years, namely the methods of early medieval compilers of historical texts, especially in distinctive codices and as assemblages of what are effectively fragments.6 Whether manifestations of particular preoccupations with the past can be discerned in the minds of individual manuscript and texts compilers in the early Middle Ages will also be Pontificalis Pars Prior, MGH (Berlin, 1898). I follow the adjustment of Duchesne’s preferred dating by H. Geertman, “La genesi del Liber pontificalis romano: un processo di organizzazione della memoria,” in F. Bougard and M. Sot, eds., Liber, gesta, histoire. Écrire l’Histoire des Évêques et des Papes, de l’Antiquité au XXIe Siècle (Turnhout, 2009), pp. 5–19. See also K. Blair-Dixon, “Memory and Authority in Sixth-century Rome: The Liber Pontificalis and the Collectio Avellana,” in K. Cooper and J. Hillner, eds., Religion, Dynasty and Patronage in Early Christian Rome, 300–900 (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 59–76, esp. pp. 65–6. 4   The Liber Pontificalis itself was also an imitative text, modeling its account on the serial biographies of Roman emperors from later antiquity: see R. McKitterick, “Roman Texts and Roman History in the Early Middle Ages,” in C. Bolgia, R. McKitterick and J. Osborne, eds., Rome Across Time and Space: Cultural Transmission and the Exchange of Ideas, c. 500–1400 (Cambridge, 2011), 19–34. 5   See T.F.X. Noble, “Gregory of Tours and the Roman Church,” in K. Mitchell and I. Wood, eds., The World of Gregory of Tours (Leiden, 2002), pp. 145–62, and cf. O. Chadwick, “Gregory of Tours and Gregory the Great,” Journal of Theological Studies (1949): 38–49. 6   W. Pohl, “History in Fragments: Montecassino’s Politics of Memory,” Early Medieval Europe 10 (2001): 343–74, H. Reimitz, “Ein fränkisches Geschichtsbuch aus Saint-Amand und der Codex Vindobonensis palat. 473,” in C. Egger and H. Weigl, eds., Text-SchriftCodex. Quellenkundliche Arbeiten aus dem Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, MIÖG Ergänzungsband 35 (Vienna and Munich, 290), pp. 34–90, R. Corradini, Die Wiener Handschrift Cvp 430*. Ein Beitrag zur Historiographie in Fulda im frühen 9. Jahrhundert, Fuldaer Hochschulschriften 37 (Frankfurt am Main, 2000).

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explored. The texts may also reveal the degree to which scribes and compilers were able to make cross-references between the ecclesiastical histories of late antiquity to which they had access. The wider conceptualization of such compilations is also pertinent, not least for the degree to which Rome and the papacy may or may not have played a role in the representation of an otherwise predominantly local, or at best regional, past. Lastly, the manuscripts themselves have the potential to throw light on such fundamental matters as the development of script in a particular center in relation to dating particular examples. Consideration of these issues is offered in this chapter as a small token of appreciation for the enormous contribution Tom Noble has made to our understanding of the early Middle Ages, especially of the history of the papacy and of Christianity in the early Middle Ages. Furthermore, and on a more personal note, they are simply a gift to dear Tom in celebration of our friendship over the past thirty years. Even before the Republic of St Peter was published, back in the early 1970s when I was still a graduate student, Tom had made quite an international name for himself, not just with his early articles, but with his perceptive and attentive reviews. I am still grateful for the judicious appraisal my first book, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms 789–895 (published in 1977), received in Speculum at his hands! Let me first consider the links between any one place and papal Rome, whether in terms of reception of the Liber Pontificalis, independent links created by papal communication and embassies, or the acquisition of Roman relics; these are not always as obvious nor as circumscribed as is indicated in Gregory’s history.7 The dissemination of the full text of the Liber Pontificalis in its various redactions is still being assessed.8 More often, associations can be signaled first of all by the inclusion of a minimal amount of information about popes either clearly derived from the Liber Pontificalis, or even independent of this text, as in the manuscripts containing catalogues or lists of popes collectively categorized as “Index” by Mommsen,9 or the use made of the Liber Pontificalis by such 7

  Various perspectives are offered in J.M.H. Smith, ed., Rome in the Early Medieval West (Leiden, 2000). 8   See, for example, H. Geertman, “Documenti, redattori e la formazione del testo del Liber pontificalis,” in H. Geertman, ed., Il Liber pontificalis e la storia materiale, Mededelingen van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome 60–61 (Assen, 2003), pp. 267–84, reprinted in H. Geertman, Hic fecit basilicam. Studi sull Liber pontificalis e gli edifice ecclesiastici di Roma da Silverstro a Silverio (Leuven, 2004), pp. 149–68. 9   Mommsen. ed., Gestorum pontificum romanorum I, XLXLIII–XLVII. For one of these independent accounts of papal history, probably from northern Italy in the seventh century, and identified by Luciana Cuppo, see L. Cuppo, “The Other Book of Pontiffs: A View from Lombard Italy (MS. BAV, Vat. Lat. 1348),” in L. Cuppo, ed., Vivarium in context, Centre for Medieval Studies Leonard Boyle (Vicenza, 2010), pp. 55–76.

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authors as Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People,10 or Flodoard in his epic historical poem De triumphis Christi sanctorumque Palaestinae.11 Secondly, there is the juxtaposition of local, regional, and papal history in one compilation or miscellany, as in the case of Vienna Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Cod. 473, where the Liber Pontificalis is placed in a compilation comprising the Liber historiae francorum, the Continuations of the Chronicle of Fredegar, the Annales regni francorum, an extract from Einhard’s Vita Karoli, and a version of the Genealogica domus carolingicae, compiled c. 869 at St. Amand;12 or the famous codex in Lucca, Biblioteca capitolare 490, compiled at Lucca at the turn of the eighth century, in which the text is juxtaposed with the Chronicle of Eusebius-Jerome and canon law.13 Thirdly, the composition of epitomes of the Liber Pontificalis places papal history in relation to another institution’s history and creates the potential for that institution to proclaim a more complicated sense of identity. It is with some early medieval manifestations of such associations, of both papal lists and of epitomes of the Liber Pontificalis produced at Tours and Fulda, with a transcription of an epitome of the Liber Pontificalis from Fulda,14 that this chapter is concerned. Use of the Liber Pontificalis at Tours Given the early evidence of the reception of the Liber Pontificalis at Tours indicated by Gregory of Tours’s emulation of it cited at the beginning of this chapter, it comes as no surprise that a Tours copy is among the earliest extant full copies of the Liber Pontificalis. Paris Bibliothèque nationale de France lat. 5516 was written before 871. It is usually more highly regarded by modern 10

  Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969). 11   Now receiving expert attention from Edward Roberts in his PhD dissertation from the University of St. Andrews on “Flodoard of Rheims and His World” (2013). The text is published in PL 135, cols. 491–886, and see also P.C. Jacobsen, Flodoard von Reims: sein Leben und siene Dichtung “De trumphis Christi”, Mittellateinische Studien und Texte 10 (Leiden, 1978), and M. Sot, Un historien et son église au Xe siècle: Flodoard de Reims (Paris, 1993), pp. 87–101. 12   R. McKitterick, “L’idéologie politique dans l’historiographie carolingienne,” in R. Le Jan, ed., La Royauté et les Élites dans l’Europe Carolingienne (du début du IXe aux environs de 920) (Lille, 1998), pp. 59–70; Reimitz, “Ein fränkisches Geschichtsbuch.” 13   F. Mores and F. Lo Monaco, eds., Il Liber pontificalis e Lucca, Biblioteca capitolare 490, special issue of Rivista di storia del cristianesimo 10 (2013); C. Gantner, “The Eighth-century Papacy as Cultural Broker between East and West,” in C. Gantner, R. McKitterick, and S. Meeder, eds., The Resources of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge: forthcoming). 14   Cf. Duchesne, ed., Le Liber pontificalis, CCIV, and Mommsen, ed., Libri pontificalis Pars Prior, CIV.

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scholars because of its preservation of the texts of Lives 98–104 (Leo III [795–816]–Sergius II [844–47]) than because it may represent a descendant of a sixth-century copy of the text once at Tours and available to Gregory. Another Tours manuscript, moreover, witnesses independently to the possible earlier exemplar for the full text in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France lat. 5516. This is the fragment now bound into Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek Voss. Lat. Q 12, a miscellany in four parts of different dates.15 Parts III and IV form one quire, with Part IV, fols. 73–7 inserted between fols. 72 and 78. Both these groups of leaves appear to have been written in a Tours hand, though that of fols. 69–72 and 77–81, once Quire XVIIII in a far more substantial book, dates from the second quarter of the ninth century, and that of fols. 73–7 to the turn of the tenth century.16 The ninth-century section includes a list of popes on fols. 71r–72v. After the first entry, written across the top line, recording Peter’s first sojourn at Antioch before coming to Rome, the later entries simply have the name and number of the pope in the simple formula: name of the pope, years of his reign, and when he was buried (quando sepulti sunt). The only variant is the record of which popes were regarded as martyrs. Of the first 29 popes, only Anacletus, Ugenus (Hyginus), Urbanus, and Dionysius were believed to be martyrs. After Liberius (no. 37), the only popes described as martyrs are John II, John III, and Silverius. In addition, those popes whose elections were contested by antipopes are mentioned, namely Damasus, Bonifacius (I), Symmachus, Bonifacius (II), Pelagius, Conon, and Sergius. The list would appear to have been adapted from a Liber Pontificalis manuscript that stopped at Life 92 (Gregory III), the only pope for whom the burial is not recorded. Whoever compiled this list also provided a short note of the number of popes with the same name: Xysti III, Felices IIII, Anastasii II, Bonefacii V, Leones II, Benedicti II, Johanes VII, Pelagii II, and Gregorii III. Subsequently, the list of popes was extended in a small marked-off column on the same page with names from Zacharias to Gregory IV (d. 844) (Life 103). Attention to papal history is then reinforced by another scribe who noted the popes mentioned in the Historia ecclesiastica of Eusebius-Rufinus. This was 15

  See K. de Meyier, Codices Vossiani latini, 4 vols. (Leiden, 1973–84), vol. II, p. 33. Parts I and II contain letters, sermons and carmina of Fulbert of Chartres from the eleventh century and the sermons of Ivo of Chartres in a twelfth-century copy respectively. The latter, in one quire, fols. 56–68, also contains on fols. 65v–68r various notarial records of abbatial promises of obedience to the Bishop of Sens, ranging in date from the late twelfth to the fifteenth century, most of which have additional and apparently autograph subscriptions in the form of a cross: E. Chartraire, ed., “Une nouvelle liste des professions épiscopales et abbatiales faites à l’église métropolitaine de Sens,” Bulletin de la Société Archéologique de Sens 23 (1908): 11–18. 16   B. Bischoff, Katalog der festländischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts (mit Ausnahme der wisigotischen), Teil II: Laon–Paderborn (Wiesbaden, 2004), no. 2,213, p. 57.

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augmented by a list of emperors from Gratian to Maurice. Into this setting, the late tenth- or early eleventh-century transcription of Chapter 31 of Book X of Gregory’s Historiae, with the heading “De episcopis turonicis,” was inserted, together with an account of the seven bishops, including Gatian, Bishop of Tours, sent into Gaul in the early Christian period. At what stage these leaves were inserted in the original Tours assembly of information about the popes is not clear, and it may have been the person responsible for the compilation as whole in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, when the four parts appear to have been bound together. But the association of ideas, and the combination of the local history of the bishops of Tours with that of the popes and emperors, as well as the clear use of the Liber Pontificalis and Eusebius-Rufinus’ Historia ecclesiastica, are very striking. This incorporation of local Church history into the history of the papacy and universal history is far from an uncommon association. Another manifestation of it is in Amsterdam, Universiteitsbibliotheek HS VI E II, a ninth-century (last third) copy of Eusebius-Rufinus’ Historia ecclesiastica, from northeast Francia,17 into which the twelfth-century corrector, whose hand occurs on most pages of the ninth-century original, then added on fols. 220v–221r a short list of the Frankish and Saxon rulers from Charles Martel to Henry V, in whose reigns particular bishops of Mainz, from Boniface to Adelbertus (d. 1117), occupied the see. This catalogue was augmented on three further occasions to extend the sequence Adalbert the younger of Mainz (d. 1141), and a further sequence of bishops to Archbishop Conrad I, presumably during the first period of his episcopate from 1161 to 1165. It would be possible to multiply these instances of cross-referencing between the various historical accounts of the development of the Church in the early Middle Ages and the communication across the centuries evident in so many manuscript compilations of the early and central medieval period. Each individual compilation offers the opportunity to pursue the implications of the association of ideas and perceptions of the past they reveal, and whether or not Rome and the popes play a role. Even the fact of epitomizing the Liber Pontificalis and presenting a particular summary can be significant in terms of the selection and omission of detail and of themes. The papal catalogues so clearly independent of the Liber Pontificalis, such as that in Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Vat. lat. 1348, or the more extended epitome composed by Abbo of Fleury are cases in point. The selection in Vat. lat. 1348 stresses orthodoxy above all, and apostolic succession serves to ensure the unity of commitment to the Catholic faith for the good of the Church.18 Abbo made his selection according to what 17

  B. Bischoff, Katalog der festländischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts (mit Ausnahme der wisigotischen), Teil I: Aachen–Lambach (Wiesbaden, 1998), no. 45, p. 15. 18   See Cuppo, “The Other Book of Pontiffs.”

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he judged to be “useful for posterity.” His entries for the earliest popes are only a little shorter than the originals in the Liber Pontificalis, with occasional notes of organization of cemeteries, his burial, whether or not he was a martyr, and the length of the vacancy between each pope. Abbo’s summaries of the careers of the later popes largely omit the exhaustive details of gifts and embellishment to the buildings of Rome, the construction of new basilicas, and notes of the estates and wealth. Abbo focuses more on the political role of the popes, their diplomacy, and their dealings with secular rulers, even though he retains the structure of name, origin, career, burial, and vacancy.19 Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek Scaliger 49 One other such manuscript, with rather different emphases, is the epitome from Mainz now in Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek MS Scaliger 49. Currently in a modern quarter leather oak board binding, this Mainz manuscript contains a martyrology, a necrology of Fulda and Mainz, and Easter tables, as well as an epitome of the Liber Pontificalis. At least four scribes can be identified. The necrology was used to provide information about the abbots of Fulda by Georg Pertz for the third volume of the MGH Scriptores in 1834, and redone with the addition of one extra name in 1881 by Georg Waitz.20 The martyrology, fols. 1–48v, was written by Hand A, who possibly started work at the end of the tenth century, but added material in the early eleventh century. The entries are set out across the openings (verso–recto) in the codex, and appear to act as a comparative calendar from January to December for the insertion of the names in the right-hand margin of secular and ecclesiastical people relating to the history of Fulda and Mainz: abbots of Fulda, archbishops of Mainz, priests, deacons, laymen, emperors, queens, dukes, and counts. The first batch of names added to the martyrology but still in the original hand (A) of the main text, such as Otto imperator III (d. 1004) (fol. 4r) indicates a compilation at the end of the tenth century or early eleventh century, with additions made in the early eleventh century. Further names were added by Hand B, and later again by Hand C. Hand C’s insertion of the obits for Conradus pius imperator (d. 1039) (fol. 23r), his daughter-in-law Gunhildis regina (d. 1039) (fol. 29r), and daughter, Beatrix filia Konradi imperatori (d. 1036) (fol. 38r), suggest a date no earlier than 1039. This continuous updating of the death records in the 19   L.-M. Gantier, ed., L’abrégé du Liber pontificalis d’Abbon de Fleury (vers 950–1004): une histoire des papes en l’an mil (Louvain la Neuve, Leuven and Brussels, 2004), pp. 19–70. 20   MGH SS III, p. 117, and MGH SS XIII, pp. 72–3. See E. Dümmler, “Aus einer Fuldischen Handschrift,” Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte 16 (1875): 168–77. The necrology was added to a martyrology on fols. 1–47, Analecta Bollandiana I (1882), pp. 3–44.

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eleventh and twelfth centuries in the necrology is an eloquent witness not only to the preservation of the Carolingian past of Fulda, but also the maintenance of its institutional memory.21 The theme is continued in the Dionysian Easter tables that start on fol. 49r, at the beginning of a new quire, written by a scribe similar but slightly later in character (therefore possibly a younger scribe) than Hand A, and with later additions by Hands B and C as well as more copious notes in a ragged hand which may be as late as the thirteenth century. These Easter tables begin with the year of the Incarnation and the Annunciation, with red headings to set out all the cycles in a 19-year sequence. In these tables, the latest hand, certainly twelfth-century, has inserted the information about emperors and popes from the Liber Pontificalis and other specified texts. On fol. 51rb, for example, under 352, the notes about the years of reign of Constantine and Constantius are noted as drawn from Orosius. Additional information about the composition of particular texts is included, most of it clearly derived from the Liber Pontificalis, such as Arator’s composition of the poem De actibus apostolorum under 560 (fol. 52va), the ordering of Litanies under Pope Gregory under 593, Gregory’s composition of the Dialogues under 597, the sending of Augustine and Mellitus to convert the English under 598 (fol. 52vb), and the consecration of the Pantheon under Pope Boniface (IV) in 610 (sic!). From fol. 54v, the notes are very much sparser, recording the incursion of the Magyars under 910 and the death of Louis the Child and succession of Conrad in 911, followed by the sequence of Ottonian rulers, and the death of Bruno, Archbishop of Cologne under the year 965. From fol. 55v onwards, the format changes so that all details of AD, Indiction, epact, day of incarnation, and dates of Easter in a sequence start with dccclxxxviii (988). If we surmise that the compiler wished to record the present cycle of 19 years he was still in, this might give us the date 988–1007 for the initial compilation of the table, which is consistent with the paleography of this section. There is a gap in the sequence of 154 years. Fol. 59v starts at MCCCXXVIII, and fol. 60r starts at MCCCCL These leaves are now in a central opening, so it is conceivable that some leaves have been lost, equivalent to the nine cycles on four lost leaves. Fol. 61r then finishes with the year 1595. In addition to material described by the twentieth-century Leiden cataloguer as Variae chronologica, fols. 74–9 contain the epitome of the Liber Pontificalis to Life 94 (Stephen II). The epitomizer concentrated on the origin and length of reign of each pope, with occasional notes about contributions to the liturgy, the creation of ecclesiastical grades, or the titular churches and ordinations. Sometimes a particular pope is accorded more detail. Thus, Peter’s 21

  See J. Raaijmakers, The Making of the Monastic Community of Fulda, c. 744–c.900 (Cambridge, 2012).

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own writings are listed, as are those of Gregory I. The fact that Cornelius transferred the bodies of Peter and Paul from the catacombs is noted, and so are the disputed elections of Symmachus and Laurentius and intervention of Theodoric the Great, and the disputed election of Boniface II and Dioscorus. Gregory I’s conversion of the English and Gregory II’s knowledge of Greek are also included. Two different hands add notes after Stephen: the first lists popes up to John VIII (d. 882), and the second the succession of popes up to Gregory VII (1073–85) and the names of the abbots of Fulda from Sturm to Ruothard (d. 1096) (including Sturmi abbas … Ruothardus felicis memoria).22 For the most part, the compiler’s method was simply to omit large chunks of the original text. The extracts are so short, and the epitomizing so drastically single-minded, that it is difficult to be certain from which family of texts the Fulda scribe was working, though it appears to be closest to the text of Group B of the Liber Pontificalis manuscripts. As can be seen from a comparison between the epitome and the original in Duchesne’s edition, only very occasionally, such as in the Life of Siricius, does the compiler attempt to summarize a section by substituting a different verb or short phrase. The sequence of texts in Scaliger 49 as a whole is complex in terms of the layers of additions that have been made to the manuscript. The character of the scripts, moreover, is such that dating in comparison with the specimens incorporated into the Manuscrits datés volumes, located to Germany and dated from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, indicates that the hands in this codex show many of the distinctively conservative features of scripts from this region. What may seem at first sight to be tenth- and eleventh-century hands (as indeed this manuscript was first judged to be) nevertheless betray here and there what might seem at first sight to be certain small indications of later practice. On fol. 77, line 14, for instance, there is the characteristic German “z” of the twelfth century and use of the tironian “7” form for “et.” But the Fulda origins of this book complicate matters further, given the insular traits detectable in so many codices from this monastery well into the ninth century. Insular influence on the script beyond that should be explored further, not least a persistence in the use of the insular tironian “7” form for “et.” The elegant rustic capitals of the headings and Easter tables offer further clues about the development of script at Fulda. Certainly, the development of the upper ranks of the hierarchy of script—that is, the square and rustic capitals and the uncial script, as well as the minuscule—need further detailed comparative investigation in the light of Erik Kwakkel’s pioneering analysis of aspects of script development in relation to dating. The fruits of his current project, Turning over a New Leaf, promise to add much-needed precision 22

  G. Pertz, ed., MGH SS III, p. 117.

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to the dating of manuscripts from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries.23 These may make more precise dating, identification, and location possible. A tentative conclusion in the light of the indications offered in the manuscript is that the four main hands evident on so many of its pages can be assigned to the late tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. Fol. 62v, for example, is particularly useful in this respect, for the neat, compact, and elegant Hand A was responsible for lines 1–25, Hand B for lines 25–32, and Hand C for lines 33–41. In the later eleventh, perhaps early twelfth, century, Hand D made his contribution. He started in mid-quire on fol. 74r, and added the epitome of the Liber Pontificalis, presumably abbreviated from the same copy of the text that had already supplied information for the notes entered into the Easter table necrology. That there was some form of collaboration in the content of the manuscript is suggested by Hand C’s addition of the names of the abbots of Fulda to Ruothard (d. 1096) on fol. 79r to complement the catalogue of the eighth- and ninth-century popes (then extended subsequently by a different and later hand from Marinus to Gregory VII). Conclusion It has only been possible to provide a sketch of the contents of this codex. It offers a concentrated and concerted statement of a perception of the place of Fulda and Mainz in the Christian history of the West. The presentation of the past by the group of scribes responsible for the compilation of the various texts in this manuscript is both consistent and continuous over a long period. It delineates an important aspect of the institutional identities of Mainz and Fulda in the earlier Middle Ages—that is, the compilers understood their own histories as running parallel with those of the popes in Rome and the secular rulers of Francia and Germany. The assignment of particular (and not always the correct) dates to specific events in Rome, as well as dates of the popes’ deaths, effectively transform the Easter tables of Scaliger 49 into a papal necrology. But the necrology is combined with local history to complement the Fulda- and Mainz-dominated martyrology that precedes it in the codex. Papal history is woven here into the history of Fulda and Mainz, for from 688 there is also an abundance of historical information included about the early development of the English mission in Frisia and Germany, not least the consecration of Burchard of 23

  E. Kwakkel, ‘Biting, Kissing, and the Treatment of Feet: The Transitional Script of the Long Twelfth Century,” in E. Kwakkel, R. McKitterick, and R. Thomson, Turning Over a New Leaf: Change and Development in the Medieval Book, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Book Culture (Leiden 2012), pp. 79–126. I am also very grateful to Erik Kwakkel for discussing the characteristics of the scripts of Scaliger 49 with me in Leiden in March 2012.

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Würzburg (set under the year 750), the foundation of the basilica of St. Boniface at Fulda (set under the year 790), the death years of Abbots Sturm, Baugulf, and Eigil, and the contributions of the Carolingian mayors of the palace and kings. The martyrology at the beginning of the book provides a universal Christian context of witnesses to the faith and the local and regional map supplied by the obit records. Then, as if the integration of papal history into the Easter tables necrology were not enough, the whole codex is made into a statement about the connection of the history of Mainz and Fulda with that of the popes in Rome by the addition of the epitome of the Liber Pontificalis. In singling out Leiden Universiteitsbibliotheek Scaliger 49 and Voss lat. Q 12 from Duchesne’s list of “Abrégés” for closer scrutiny,24 moreover, I have argued that the context in which these texts are to be found has much to tell us about perceptions of the past in general, and of Rome and the pope in particular. But these epitomes are far more immediate and specific than that. A striking feature of the distillation of information and selection that these abridgments achieve is the emphasis on succession achieved by the ordination and creation of the priests and bishops who will perform the ministry over the centuries from Christ through Peter, the rock on whom Christ built the Church, to his many and various successors.25 This is, of course, something the closing formula of every life in the Liber Pontificalis expressed, but its importance is enhanced by the highlighting and reiteration of this essential episcopal act in the Mainz/ Fulda epitome, both within Rome and through the sending of missionary bishops to England and Germany. The cultural memory of episcopal succession incorporated the ritual of the laying on of hands as well as the consciousness of names and the passing of years. The Mainz/Fulda epitome, distilling a major textual resource for such cultural memory, therefore served as an essential reminder of the source of episcopal office, and thus of an essential element in the consolidation of the Church as an institution. That it also reflects an essentially positive attitude toward the papacy and the succession of St. Peter, at a time when there was a mounting body of criticism, is more closely comparable to texts such as that of Lucian of Chester’s Liber luciani de laude Cestrie.26 The Fulda epitome thus serves as a further reminder of the great range of possible attitudes to the history of Rome 24

  Duchesne, ed., Le Liber pontificalis, CCIII–CCVI.   For the background, see G.D. Dunn, “Canonical Legislation on the Ordination of

25

Bishops: Innocent I’s Letter to Victricius of Rouen,” in J. Leemans, P. van Nuffelen, S.W.J. Keogh, and C. Nicolaye, eds., Episcopal Elections in Late Antiquity, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 119 (Berlin, 2011), pp. 145–67, and P. Norton, Episcopal Elections 250–600: Hierarchy and Popular Will in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2007). 26   J. Doran, “Authority and Care: The Significance of Rome in Twelfth-century Chester,” in E. Ó Carragáin and C. Neuman de Vegvar, eds., Roma Felix: Formations and Reflections of Medieval Rome (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 307–32.

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and of the popes, and how the Liber Pontificalis could play an essential role, both as a source of information and as a particular representation of the Roman past.27 The later manuscripts in the transmission history of the Liber Pontificalis, as well as these epitomes, therefore merit further consideration in the light of the historical contexts in which the codices themselves were produced.28 Appendix Diplomatic Transcription of the Mainz/Fulda Epitome of the Liber Pontificalis in Leiden UB Scaliger 49, fols. 74r–79r In the following diplomatic transcription, abbreviations have been expanded in parentheses save for “7,” the insular/tironian symbol for “et,” which has been retained throughout, and the original lineation, capitalization, spelling, and punctuation have been preserved. The layout in the original manuscript is as follows. Headings are in silver on top of red, some of which has worn away to reveal the red underneath, but in the same minuscule as the rest of the text. It starts mid-line; the number of each pope is set out in the margin in red (omitted in this transcription). Those popes’ names on the verso side which also coincide with the beginning of a line have the first letter of their names in the margin, in red and enlarged. Otherwise, the text is written out continuously, with a medial point serving as the medial pause and full stop. Where appropriate, divergences from Duchesne’s edition have been footnoted in the format LP followed by the page number and the alternative phrasing. fol. 74r, line 6 Incipiunt nomina episcopor(um) qui fuerunt urbis romæ.I. Beatus petrus ap(osto)l(u)s 7 p(ri)nceps ap(osto)lor(um) antiochenus. fili(us) iohannis. p(ro)vincie galileæ.vico Bethsaida.fra ter andreæ p(ri)mu(m) sedit cathedra(m) episcopatus in antiochia.an 27

  For consideration of other emphases in the representation of the Roman past, see M. Campanelli, “Monuments and Histores: Ideas and Images of Antiquity in Some Descriptions of Rome,” in C. Bolgia, R. McKitterick, and J. Osborne, eds., Rome Across Time and Space: Cultural Transmission and the Exchange of Ideas, c. 500–1400 (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 35–51 28   For example, Leiden Univeristeitsbibliotheek Vulcan 58, Bourges Bibliothèque Municipale 97, BAV Vat. Lat. 3764, and the later recensions: see Duchesne, ed., Le Liber pontificalis. On the wider context see, for example, J.H. Pelzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest: Episcopal Elections in Normandy and Greater Anjou, c. 1140–c. 1230 (Cambridge, 2008), and J. Eldevik, Episcopal Power and Ecclesiastical Reform in the German Empire: Tithes, Lordship, and Community, 950–1150 (Cambridge, 2012).

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nos.vii.Et in roma(m) ingressus sub nerone cesare.ibiq(ue) sedit29 ann(os).xxv.menses.ii.dies iii. Hic scripsit duas epistolas quæ canonice30 nominant(ur). Et evangeliu(m) marci. Et ordinauit ep(iscop)os iii.linu(m) 7 cletu(m) 7 clemente(m).7 prespiteros.x.7 diaconos.vii. Linus natione italus regionis tuschiæ patre erculano sedit annos.x.menses.iii.dies.xii. Hic ordinauit.31 ep(iscop)os.xv.pr(esbyter)os. xviiii. Cletus natione roman(us).de regione uico patricii. patre emiliano sedit ann(os) xii.mensem.i.dies.xi.hic ex beati petri p(rae)cepto .xxv pr(esbyter)os ordinauit in roma. Clemens natione romanus.de regione celio monte.ex patre fau stino.sedit. annos viiii.menses.ii.dies x. Hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os .xv.pr(esbyter)os.x.diacon(os).ii. Anacletus natione grecus.de athe nis ex patre antiocho.sedit.ann(os)viiii.menses.ii.dies.x. Hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os.vi.pr(esbyter)os.v. diaconos.iii. Evaristus nati one grecus ex patre iudeo nomine iuda.de ciuitate be thleem sed(it) ann(os).viiii.menses.x.dies.ii. Hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os.v.pr(esbyter)os v. diaconos .ii. Alexander natione roman(us) ex patre alexandro.de regione caput tauri.sedit.ann(os) x m(en)ses.vii.dies.ii.hic c(on)stituit aqua(m) sparsionis cu(m) sale be nedici.hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os.v.pr(esbyter)os.vi.diaconos.ii. fol.74v Xystus natione roman(us).ex patre pastore.de regione via lata. sedit ann(os).x.m(en)ses ii.die(m).i.hic (con32) stituit ut ministeria sacrata n(on) tangerent(ur) nisi a ministris.hic ordinavit ep(iscop)os.iiii.pr(esbyter)os.xi. diaconos.iiii. Thelisphorus.natione.grecus.ex anachorita sedit ann(os).xxi33.m(en)ses.iii.hic c(on)stituit ut.vii.hebdomadas ante pascha ieiuniu(m) celebraret(ur). Et in natale d(omi)ni in nocte ut mis sæ celebrarent(ur). Et gl(ori)a in excelsis d(e)o canaret. hic ordinauit pr(esbyter)os.xii.diacon(os).viii. Yginus.natione grecus.ex philoso pho de athenis.cui(us) genealogia n(on) inueni. sedit.annos.iiii. m(en)ses.iii.dies.iiii.hic cleru(m) c(on)posuit 7 distribuit gradus ecclesi asticos.hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os.vi.pr(esbyter)os.xv.diaconos.v. Pius natione italus ex patre rufino.frater.pastoris de ciuitate aquilegia sedit annos.xviiii.m(en)ses.iiii.dies.iii.hic.ang(e)lo admonente p(rae)cepit pascha die dominico celebrari.hic ordi 29

    31   32   33   30

LP, p. 118: “sedit cathedra episcopatus.” Ibid.: “catholice.” Ibid., p. 121: “hic fecit ordinationes.” Backwards “c” = insular/tironian symbol for “con.” First “x” possibly erased.

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nauit ep(isco)os.xii.pr(esbyter)os.xviiii.diacon(os).xxi Anicitus natione sy rus ex patre iohanne de uico umisa, sed(it) ann(os).xi.m(en)ses.iiii.dies.iii hic (con)stituit ut clericus coma(m) n(on) nutriret.hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os viiii.pr(esbyter)os.xvii.diacon(os).iiii. Sother.natione.ca(m)panus.ex pa tre concordio de ciuitate fundis.sedit. ann(os) viiii.m(en)ses .vi.dies xxi.hic (con)stituit.ut nulla monacha34 palla(m) sacrata(m) n(on) tangeret nec incensu(m) poneret in s(an)c(t)am ec(c)l(es)iam.hic ordinauit ep(iscop) os.xi pr(esbyter)os .viii. diaconos.viiii. Eleuther(ius) natione grecus ex patre habun dio de opido nicopoli.sed(it) ann(os) xv.m(en)ses .iii.dies.ii.hic (con)stituit ut nulla esca a (christ)ianis repudiaret(ur) que rationabilis35 7 huma na e(st) hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os.xv.pr(esbyter)os.xii.diaconos.viii. Victor.natione afer ex patre felice sed(it) ann(os).x.menses.ii. dies.x.hic (con)stituit ut pascha die dominico celebraret(ur) sicut 7 pius hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os.xii.pr(esbyter)os.iiii.diaconos.vii fol. 75r Zepherinus natione romanus ex patre habundio sedit annos viii m(en)ses vii dies.x. hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os.xiii. pr(esbyter)os.iiii. diacon(os).vii Calistus natione roman(us) ex patre domicio de regione urbe ra uennantiu(m) sedit ann(os) vi m(en)ses.ii. dies.x.hic.ordinauit ep(iscop(os).viii pr(esbyter)os xvi. diacon(os) iiii. Urbanus natione roman(us) ex patre Pontiano sed(it) ann(os) iiii m(en)ses x. dies xi. hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os. Viii pr(esbyter)os viiii diac(onos) v. Pontianus natione roman(us) ex patre cal purnio sed(it) ann(os) viiii m(enses) v dies ii hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os vi pr(esbyter)os vi diacon(os) v. Antherus natione grecus ex patre romu lo sed(it) ann(os) xii mense(m) .i.dies xii. hic gestas martyru(m) diligenter exquisiuit hic ordinauit ep(iscopu)m 1. Fabianus natione roma nus ex patre Fabio sed(it) ann(os) xiiii. m(en)ses xi. dies xi.hic ordina uit ep(iscop)os.xi.pr(esbyter)os xxi.diaco(onos) vii. Cornelius natione romanus ex patre castino sed(it) ann(os) ii m(en)ses.ii.dies.ii.hic.leuauit corpora ap(osto)l(o)r(um) petri 7 pauli de catacumbas.hic.ordinauit.ep(iscop)os .vii pr(esbyter)os.iiii.diac(onos).iiii. Lucius natione roman(us) ex patre porfirio sed(it) ann(os) iii.m(en)ses iii.dies.iii.hic p(rae)cepit ut duo pr(es)b(yter)i 7 tres dia coni ep(iscopu)m in om(n)i loco n(on) desererent. Hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os vii pr(esbyter)os iiii.diac(onos) iiii. Stephanus natione roman(us) ex patre iobio sed(it) ann(os) vii m(en)ses v. dies ii hic (con)stituit sacerdotes 7 le 34

  LP, p. 135: “nullum monachum.”   Ibid., p. 136: “rationalis.”

35

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vitas ut vestes sacratas in usu cotidiano n(on) uti nisi in ec(cles)ia tantu(m) hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os. iii pr(esbyter)os. vi diac(onos) v. Xistus natione grecus ex philosofo sed(it) ann(um) .i. m(en)ses x. dies xxiii. hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os ii pr(esbyter)os iiii diac(onos) vii. Dionisius ex monacho cui(us) generatione(m) n(on) potuimus repperire sed(it) annos vi m(en)ses ii dies.iiii.hic pr(es)biter(is) ec(cles)ias dedit 7 parrochias 736 dioceses (con)stituit hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os viiii. pr(es)byter(os) xii diac(onos) vi. Felix natione romanus ex patre (con)stantio sedit ann(os)iiii.m(en)ses iii fol. 75v dies xxv.hic (con)stituit sup(ra) memorias martyru(m) missas celebrari.37 hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os v.pr(esbyter)os viiii.diac(onos) v. Eutianus natione tuscus ex patre marino de ciuitate lunis38 sedit annu(m) i m(en)sem. i die(m) i. hic (con)stituit in39 fruges sup(er) altare faue 7 uue benedici hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os viiii pr(esbyter)os.xiiii diac(onos).v. Gaius natione dalmata ex genere diocliciani ex patre gaio sed(it) ann(os).xi m(en)ses iiii. dies xii. hic ordines ecclesiasticos disposuit.hic or dinauit ep(iscop)os v pr(esbyter)os xxvi diac(onos) viii. Marcellinus na tione roman(us) ex patre p(ro)iecto sed(it) ann(os) viiii m(en)ses iiii.dies.vi. hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os.v.pr(esbyter)os.iiii.diac.ii. Marcellus nati one roman(us) ex patre benedicto de regione via lata. sedit annos v.m(en)ses vii.dies xxi hic (con)stituit titulos in urbe roma p(ro)pt(er) baptismu(m) 7 penitentia(m) hic ordinauit p(resbyter)os xxv diac(onos) ii Eusebius natione grecus ex medico sed(it) ann(os) vi. mense(m) i.dies iii.hui temporis40 inuenta e(st) crux d(omi)ni n(ost)ri ih(es)u (christ)i 7 iudas bap tizatus e(st). hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os.xiiii.pr(esbyter)os xiii.diaconos.iii Melciadis41 natione afer.sed(it) ann(os) iiii hic (con)stituit ut nulla ratione dominico die aut v feria ieiuniu(m) q(ui)s de fidelibus ageret42 hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xii pr(esbyter)os vii.diaconos.v. Silvester natione roman(us) ex patre rufino sed(it) ann(os) xxiii m(en)ses x.dies.xi.hic (con)gregavit ep(iscop)os cccxviii 7 exposue runt fide(m) catholica(m) 7 chrisma ab ep(iscop)o confici.7 baptiza tu(m) (con)firmari hic dalmaticas p(rae)cepit indui; hic sacrificiu(m) 36

    38   39   40   41   42   37

Ibid., p. 157, omits reference to “cymiteria.” Ibid., p. 158: “celebrare.” Ibid., p. 159: “Lunae.” Ibid.: “ut.” Ibid., p. 167: “huius temporibus.” Ibid., p. 168: “Miltiades.” Ibid.: “agere.”

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tant(um) in lineu(m) pannu(m) inuolui.hic ordinauit ep(iscopo)s lxv pr(esbyter)os xlii.diac(onos) xxvi. Marcus natione roman(us) ex pa tri prisco sed(it) ann(os) ii m(en)ses viii.dies xxi hic (con)stituit ut ep(iscop)os ciuitatis q(u)i hostiæ (con)secrat palliu(m) uteret(ur).43 Hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xxvii.pr(esbyter)os xxv.diac(onos) vi. Iulius natione roman(us) ex fol. 76r patre rustico sed(it) ann(os) xv m(en)ses ii dies.vi hic (con)stituit ut nul lus clericus causa(m) in publico ageret nisi in eccl(esi)a.hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os viiii pr(esbyter)os xviii.diac(onos) iiii. Liberius natione roman(us) ex patre augusto sed(it) ann(os) vi m(en)ses.iii.dies iiii hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xviiii pr(esbiter)os xviii diac(onos) v. Felix natione romanus ex patre anastasio sedit annu(m).i. m(en)ses iii.dies.ii hic ordinauit episcop(os) xviiii.pr(esbiter)os xxi.diac(onos)v. Damasus natione spanus ex patre Antonio sed(it) ann(os) xviii m(en)ses iii dies xi hic accusatus inuidiose de adulterio 7 purgatus e(st) a xliiii ep(iscop)is hic (con)stituit ut psalmi44 die noctuq(ue) in eccl(esi)a canarent(ur) hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os lxii. pr(esbyter) os xxxi di aconos xi. Siricius natione roman(us) ex patre tiburtio sed(it) ann(os) xv.hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xxxii pr(esbyter)os xxxi.diac(onos) xvi .hic p(rae) cepit penitentib(us) in ultimu(m) viaticu(m) n(on) negare.45 Anastasius natione roman(us) ex patre maximo sed(it) ann(os) iii dies.x.hic (con) stituit ut q(ua)ndo evangeliu(m) recitat(us) ut sacerdotes n(on) se erigerent46 s(ed) curui starent. Hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xi pr(esbiter)os viiii diac(onos) v. Innocentius natione albanense ex patre innocentio sed(it) ann(os) xv m(en)ses ii. dies.xxi. Hic (con)stituit ut q(ui) natus fuerit de (christ) iana denuo nasci p(er) baptis mu(m)47 hic (con)stituit sabbatu(m) ieiunare q(ui)a d(omi)n(u)s sabbato in sepulchro iacuit 7 discipuli sabbato ieiunarent. hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os liiii pr(esbyter)os xxx diac(onos) xi. Zosimus natione grecus ex patre ebra mio sedit annu(m) i. m(en)ses iii dies xi hic multa (con)stituit in eccl(es)ia hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os viii pr(esbyter)os x. diac(on)os iii. Bonifacius natione ro manus ex patre iocundio pr(es)b(iter)o sedit ann(os) iii m(en)ses viii dies vii.hic (con)stituit ut nulla mulier aut monacha palla(m) sacrata(m) 43

  Ibid., p. 202: “Hic constituit ut episcopus Hostiae qui consecrat episcopum palleum uteretur et ab eodem episcopus urbis Romae consecraretur.” 44   Ibid., p. 213: “psalmos.” 45   Cf. ibid., p. 217, n. 34. 46   Ibid., p. 218: “ut quoteinscumque evangelia sancta recitantur, sacerdotes non sederent.” 47   Here the epitomizer omits the crucial words “hoc est baptizari quod Pelagius damnabat.”

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lavaret aut incensu(m) in eccl(esi)ia poneret nisi minister .hic ep(iscop)os ordinauit xxxvi. p(resbyter)os xiii diac(onos) iii. Celestinus natione fol. 76v romanus ex patre prisco sed(it) ann(os) viii m(en)ses x dies xvii hic con stituit ut antiphona ante sacrificiu(m) caneret(ur) q(uo)d ante n(on) fiebat nisi tantu(m) ep(isto)la beati pauli recitabat(ur) 7 s(an)c(tu)m evangeliu(m) hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xlvi. pr(esbiter(os) xxxii. diac(onos) xii. Xystus natione romanus ex patre xysto sed(it) ann(os) viii. dies xviiii. hic incri minatur p(ost) annu(m) 7 mensib(us) viii a quoda(m) basso 7 cu(m) lvi ep(iscop) os purgauit se.7 bassus (con)demnat(ur) hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os lii. pr(esbyter)os xviii diac(onos)xii. Leo natione tuscus ex patre q(ui)ntiano se dit ann(os) xxi m(en)se(m).i dies xiii hic (con) gregauit ep(iscop)os mille ducentos q(u)i exposuerunt fide(m) catholica(m) duas naturas uno in (Christ)o d(eu)m 7 homine(m) hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os clxxxv. pr(esbyter) os lxxxi Hilarius natione sardus ex patre crispino sedit [diac(onos) xxxi annos vi. m(en)ses iii. dies x. hic sparsit epistolas de fide catho lica p(er) orbe(m) orientalem 7 (con)firmauit tres sinodos nicheni ephesini 7 chalcidonense .hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xxii pr(esbyter)os xxv.diac(onos) vi. Simplicius natione tiburtinus ex patre castino sed(it) ann(os) xv m(en)sem i. dies xviii.hic (con)stituit ut ad s(an)c(tu)m petru(m) 7 s(an)c(tu)m paulu(m) 7 s(an)c(tu)m laurentiu(m) pr(esbyter) i manerent p(ro)pt(er) penitentes 7 baptismu(m) hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xxxvi pr(esbyter)os lviii.diac(onos) xi. Felix natione roman(us) ex patre felice pr(esbyter)o de titulo fasciolo48 sed(it) ann(os) viii m(en)ses xi.dies xviii hic ordi nauit ep(iscop)os xxxi pr(esbyter)os xxviii diac(onos) v. Gelasius natione afer ex patre valerio sed(it) ann(os) iiii.m(en)ses viii dies.xviiii hic liberauit a periculo 7 famem ciuitate(m) romana(m).49 hic fecit tractatos 7 hymnos sicut beatus ambrosius50 hic ordi navit e(iscop)os lxvii pr(esbyter)os xxxii. diac(onos) ii. Anastasius nati one romanus ex patre petro de regione quinta caput fol. 77r tauri sedit annu(m).i. m(en)ses xi. dies.xxiiii hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os 48

  Ibid.,. p. 252: “Fasciolae.”   Ibid., p. 255: “Hic liberavit a periculo famis civitatem Romanam.” 50   The epitomizer reproduces an early gloss, see ibid., n. 17. 49

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xvi pr(esbyter)os xii. Symmachus natione sardus ex patre fortunato sedit annos xv m(en)ses vii dies xxvii. Hic 7 laurentius sub intentione uno die ordinati sunt. Symmachus in lateranis51 lau rentius eccl(es)ia beatæ mariæ & symmachus (con)firmatus e(st) in sede. s(e)c(un)du(m) iudiciu(m) Theodorici regis 7 symmachus p(ost)ea incriminatus cu(m) cxv ep(iscop)is se purgauit. Hic (con)stituit ut om(n)i die dominico vel natalicia s(an)c(t)oru(m) gl(ori)a in excelsis d(e)o cantaret(ur).52 hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os cxvii pr(esbyter)os xcii. diac(onos) xvi. Hormisdas natione campanus ex patre iusto de ciuitate frisinone sed(it)ann(os) viiii dies xiiii hic (con)stituit cleru(m) 7 psalmis erudiuit. Hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os lv pr(esbyter)os.xxi. Iohannes natione tuscus ex patre (con) stantio sed(it) ann(os)ii m(en)ses viiii dies xvi. hic in custodia adflictus mo riens.hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xv. Felix natione Samnium ex patre castorio sed(it) ann(os) iiii m(en)ses ii dies xiiii ipse ordina tus e(st) in quietem. Hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xxviiii pr(esbyter)os lv. diac(onos) iiii Bonifacius natione romanus ex patre sigiboldo sed(it) ann(os) ii dies xxvi. hic 7 dioscoros sub intentione ordinati sunt. s(ed)dioscorus eode(m) tempore defunctus. Bonifacius sede(m) tenuit. Mercurius53 natione romanus ex patre p(rae)iecto de celio monte sed(it) ann(os) ii m(en)ses iiii. dies i hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xxi pr(esbyter) os xv Agapitus natione romanus ex patre gordiano pr(esbiter)o sed(it) m(en)ses xi dies xviiii hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xi .diaconos iiii. Siluerius natione campanus ex patre hormisda ep(iscop)o romæ sed(it) annu(m) i m(en)ses v. dies xi. Hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xviii. pr(esbyter) os xiiii.Vigilius natione romanus ex patre iohanne consule sedit annos xvii.m(en)ses vi dies xxvi hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os lxxxi. pr(esbyter)os xlvi. diac(onos) xvi. Pelagius natione romanus de pa ter iohanne uicariano sed(it) ann(os) xi m(en)ses x. dies xviii hic e(st) ordinatus ab duob(us) ep(iscop)is 7 ad uno pr(esbiter)o hic ordinauit fol. 77v ep(iscop)o viiii pr(esbyter)os xxvi diac(onos) viiii. Iohannes natione roma nus de patre anastasio sedit ann(os) xii m(en)ses xi dies xxvi hic amauit 7 restaurauit cymiteria s(an)c(t)orum martyru(m) 7 (con)stituit p(er) singulas dominicas oblationes 7 luminaria ibide(m) agere. 51

  Ibid., p. 260: “in basilica Constantiniana.”   Ibid., p. 263: “ut omne die dominicum vel natalicia martyrum Gloria in excelsis

52

ymnus diceretur.” 53   Johannes (II, 533–35), ibid., p. 285.

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Hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os lxi pr(esbyter(os) xxviii.diac(onos) xiii. Benedictus natione roman(us) de patre bonifacio sed(it) ann(os) iiii mensem.i. dies xxviiii hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xxi pr(esbyter)os xv diaconos iii Pelagius natione roman(us) de patre unigildo sed(it) ann(os) x m(en)ses ii dies x eode(m) tempore tante pluuiæ fuerunt ut om(ne)s dicerent q(u)ia aquæ diluuii sup(er) inundarent. 7 talis glades qua lis aselo54 nullus meminit fuisse hic ordinauit ep(icop)os xlviii pr(esbyter)os. xxviii diac(onos) viii. Gregorius natione roman(us) de pa ter gordiano sed(it) ann(os) xii .m(en)ses vi dies x .hic exposuit ome lias xl 7 moralia in iob 7 sup(er) ezechiele(m) 7 pastorale(m) 7 dialogo ru(m) 7 multa alia fecit. Hic augmentauit in canone diesq(ue) n(ost)ros usq(ue) in fine(m) missæ.anglosq: convertit ad (christu)m d(omi)n(u) m n(ostrum). Hic fecit ut missa sup(er) corpus beati petri caneret(ur)55 hic ordi nauit ep(iscop)os lxii. pr(esbiter)os xxxviiii diac(onos) v. Sabinianus natione tuscus de civitate blera de patre bono sed(it) annu(m) .i. m(en)ses v. dies viiii hic addidit luminaria in eccl(es)ia beati pe tri hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xxvi. Bonifacius natione ro manus ex patre ioh(annis) sedit menses viii dies xxii. Hic ordi nauit ep(iscop)os xxi. Bonifacius natione marsoru(m) de ciui tate ualeria ex patre iohanne medico sed(it) ann(os) vi m(en)ses viii dies xiii. Hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xxxvi diaconos viii Deusdedit natione roman(us) ex patre stephano sub dia cono sed(it) ann(os) iii dies xxxiii hic dilexit cleru(m) multu(m) hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xxviiii pr(esbyter)os xiiii diaconos.v. Bonifacius natione campanus de civitate neapolim ex patre iohanne sed(it) ann(os) v hic (con)stituit ut nullus traheret56 de eccl(es)ia hic ordinauit xxviiii pr(esbyter)os xxvi dia   [conos iiii fol. 78r Honorius natione campanus ex patre petronio consule sed(it) ann(os) xii m(en)ses .xi.dies.xviii.huius temporib(us) levate sunt trabes in eccl(es)ia beati petri. Hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os lxxxi pr(esbyter)os xiiii.diac(onos) xi. Severinus natione roman(us) ex pa tre abieno sed(it) m(en)ses ii. dies.iiii.hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os iiii. Iohannes natione dalmatia ex patre venantio sedit annu(m) .i.m(en)ses viiii dies xviii.hic p(er) omne(m) dalmaciam et 54

  Ibid., p. 309: “a seculo.”   Ibid., p. 312: “celebrarentur.” 56   Ibid., p. 321: “trahatur.” 55

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instria(m) multas pecunias misit ad redemptione(m) captivor(um) q(u)i p(rae)dati57 erant .hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os iiii. Theodorus natio ne grecus ex patre theodoro ep(isco)po de ciuitate hierusale(m) sed(it) ann(os) vi.m(en)ses .v.dies.xviii hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xlvi pr(esbyter)os xxi.diac(onos) iiii. Martinus de civitate tudertina p(ro)vinciæ tusciæ.sed(it) ann(os) vi mense(m)i. dies.xxvi. hic con gregauit synodu(m) ep(iscop)os) cv.7 condampnauit Cyrru(m) alexan drinu(m) 7 sergiu(m) pyrru(m) 7 paulu(m) patriarcha(s) (con)stantinopolitanu(m)58 q(u) i (con)tra immaculata(m)59 fide(m) nouitates innectere p(rae) sumpserunt. 7 sextu(m) synodu(m) (con)scribens (con)firmavit. Hic ordinauit pr(esbyter)os xi. ep(iscop)os xxxiii. Eugenius natione romanus ex patre rufiniano. sed(it) ann(os) ii. m(en)ses viiii. dies.xxxiii60 hic ordinavit ep(iscop)os xxi. Vitalianus nati one signensis p(ro)vinciæ Campania. de patre anastasio. sedit annos.xiiii.m(en)ses.vi.hic regula(m) ecclesiastica(m) atq(ue) vigore(m) ut mos erat omnino (con)seruauit hic ordinauit episcop(os) xcvii. pr(esbsyter)os xxii. diaconu(m) i. Adeodatus natione romanus ex monachis de patre iobiniano.61 sed(it) ann(os) iiii m(en)ses ii.dies v. hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xlvii.presbyter(os) xiiii.diac(onos) ii. Donus natione romanus ex patre Mauricio. sed(it) annu(m) i. m(en)ses v dies.x. hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os vi pr(esbyter)os x. diaconos.v. Agatho natione sicula. sed(it) ann(os)ii.m(en)ses vi.dies.iiii.hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xviii.pr(esbyter)os.x.diac(onos).iii. Leo iunior na tione sicula de patre Paulo .sed(it) m(en)ses.x.dies xvii. hic con stitu(m) fecit ut q(u)i ordinatus fuerit archi ep(iscopu)s ab archiuo fol. 78v eccl(esi)æ consuetudine p(ro) usu pallii aut diversis officiis e(c)cl(es)iæ p(er)soluere debeat.62 Hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xxi.pr(esbyter)os viiii. Benedictus iunior natione romanus sedit.      [diac(onos) iii m(en)ses .x.dies xii.hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xii. Iohannes nati one syrus de p(ro)vincia antiochia ex patre cyriaco sedit annu(m).i.dies viiii. ordinauit ep(iscop)os .xiii. Conon ori 57

    59   60   61   62  

Ibid., p. 330: “depraedati.” Ibid., p. 357: “Constantinopolitanos.” Ibid.: “immaculata.” Ibid., p. 341: “XXIIII.” Ibid., p. 346, “Iobiano.” Ibid., p. 360: “Hic fecit constitutum qui archivo ecclesiae continetur ut qui ordinatus fuerit archiepiscopus nulla consuetudine pro usu pallii aut diversis officiis ecclesiae persolvere debeat.” 58

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undus patre traceseo edocatus aput siciliam. Hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os Sergius natione syrus antiochiæ regionis ortus [xvi ex patre tiberio in parnormo siciliæ hic (con)stituit ut tem pore (con)fractionis dominici corporis agnus d(e)i a clero 7 po pulo decantetur. Hic (con)stituit ut dieb(us) adnuntiationis d(omi)ni 7 s(an)c(t)æ mariæ 7 s(an)c(t)i symeonis. q(uo)d ypipanti grece dicit(ur) letaniæ exeant. Hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xcvii pr(esbyter)os xviii.diac(onos) iiii.sed(it) ann(os) xiii.m(en)ses vii.dies.xxiii. Iohannes natione grecus sed(it) ann(os).iii menses ii. dies.xii. hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xv.pr(esbyter)os viii.diac(onos) ii. Iohannes natione grecus de patre platone sed(it) ann(os) ii. mense sex. dies xvii.hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xviiii. Sisinnus natione syrus ex patre iohanne sed(it) dies.xx.hic ordinauit ep(iscopu)m i. Constantinus.natione syrus de pa tre iohanne sedit ann(os) vii.dies xv. Hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os lxiiii.pr(esbyter)os x. diac(onos) ii. Gregorius natione romanus ex patre Marcello sedit ann(os) xvi m(en)ses viiii.dies xi. Hic (con)stituit ut in quadragesimalis tempore quinta feria ie iuniu(m) atq(ue) missaru(m) celebratas fierint q(uo)d ante n(on) agebat(ur) hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os cl.pr(esbyter(os) xxv.diac(onos) iiii. Gregorius natione syrus ex patre iohanne sed(it) ann(os) x. menses viii. dies.xxv. hic greca latinaq; lingua eruditus. Psalmos om(ne)s p(er) ordine(m) memoriter retinens. 7 in eoru(m) sensibus subtilis sima exercitatione limatus. Hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os.lxxx. p(resbyter)os.xxiiii.diac(onos) iii. Zacharias natione grecus ex pa tre policronio sed(it) ann(os) x.m(en)ses iii.dies xiiii.hic ordina uit ep(iscop)os.lxxxv.pr(esbyter)os xxx.diac(onos) v. Stephanus natio fol. 79r ne romanus ex patre constantino sed(it) ann(os) v. dies xxviiii Hic ordinauit ep(iscop)os xv.prebyter(os) ii. diaconos ii. The rest of fol. 79r goes into four columns, listing on the left-hand side dates for the start of the papal reign, the name of the pope, and for the first six on the list, the length of reign. Thereafter, the scribe merely writes “pp.” This list runs to “mill.xcv Alexander ob.” (“Alexander died 1073”), “Gregorius (Hildibrant) suc(cedit)” (Gregory, 1073–85). In the right-hand column is a list of abbots of Fulda, from Sturm (774–79) to “Ruothardus felicis memoriae” (1075–96). Scaliger 49 Liber Pontificalis Epitome For convenience, ease of comparison and identification of omitted portions, this translation follows as closely as possible that of Raymond Davis, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis). The ancient biographies of the first 90 Roman

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bishops to AD 715 (Liverpool, 2000) and The Lives of the Eighth-century Popes (Liber Pontificalis) (Liverpool, 1992). Here begin the names of the bishops of Rome. Blessed Peter the apostle and prince of apostles, an Antiochene, the son of John, from the village of Bethsaida in the province of Galilee, the brother of Andrew, first occupied the episcopal cathedra at Antioch for seven years. He went to Rome in the time of Nero Caesar and there he occupied […] 25 years, 2 months, 3 days. He wrote two epistles called canonical and the gospel of Mark. He ordained three bishops Linus and Cletus and Clement, and 10 priests and 7 deacons. Linus born in Italy, from the region of Etruria, son of Herculanus held the see 10 years 3 months 12 days. He ordained 15 bishops, 18 priests. Cletus a Roman from the region of Vicus Patricius, son of Aemilianus, held the see 12 years, 1 month 11 days. On St Peter’s instruction he ordained 25 priests in Rome. Clement a Roman, from the region of the Caelian Hill, son of Faustinus, held the see 9 years 2 months 19 days. He ordained 15 bishops, 19 priests 2 deacons. Anacletus a Greek from Athens, son of Antiochos. He held the see 9 years 2 months 10 days. He ordained 6 bishops 5 priests 3 deacons. Evaristus born in Greece, son of a Jew named Judas from the city of Bethlehem. He held the see 9 years 10 months 2 days. He ordained 5 bishops, 5 priests 2 deacons. Alexander a Roman, son of Alexander from the region of Caput Tauri, held the see 10 years 7 months 2 days. He decreed that water should be blessed with salt for sprinkling. He ordained 5 bishops 6 priests 2 deacons. Xystus a Roman, son of Pastor from the region of Via Lata, held the see 10 years 2 months 1 day. He decreed that objects consecrated for the ministry should be touched by ministers only. He ordained 4 bishops 11 priests. 4 deacons. Telesphorus a Greek, a former anchorite, held the see 21[!] years 3 months. He decreed that a fast of 7 weeks should be observed before Easter and that mass should be celebrated at night on the Lord’s birthday. The Gloria in excelsis (= angelic hymn) should be sung. He ordained 12 priests 7 deacons. Yginus a Greek a former philosopher from Athens whose ancestry I have not traced. He held the see 4 years 3 months four days. He organized the clergy and allotted the ecclesiastical grades. He ordained 6 bishops, 15 priests and 5 deacons. Pius an Italian, son of Rufinus brother of Pastor from the city of Aquileia. He held the see 19 years 3 months 3 days. An angel instructed him that Easter be celebrated on a Lord’s day. He ordained 12 bishops, 19 priests and 21 deacons. Anicitus a Syrian, son of John from the village of Umisa, held the see 11 years, 4 months three days. He decreed that a cleric should not groom his hair. He ordained 9 bishops 17 priests 4 deacons.

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Sother a Campanian, son of Concordius from the city of Fundi, held the see 9 years 6 months 21 days. He decreed that no nun should touch the consecrated pall or place incense in the holy church. He ordained 11 bishops 8 priests and 9 deacons. Eleutherius a Greek, son of Habundio from the town of Nicopolis, held the see 15 years 3 months and 2 days. He decreed that no food should be shunned by a Christian which is reasonable and merciful. He ordained 15 bishops 12 priests and 8 deacons. Victor an African, son of Felix held the see 10 years 2 months 10 days. He decreed like Pius that Easter should be celebrated on the Lord’s day. He ordained 12 bishops 4 priests 7 deacons. fol. 75r Zephirinus a Roman, son of Habundius, held the see 8 years 7 months 10 days. He ordained 13 bishops 4 priests 7 deacons. Callistus a Roman, son of Domicius from the region Urbs Ravennatius, held the see 6 years 2 months 10 days. He ordained 8 bishops 16 priests 4 deacons. Urbanus a Roman, son of Pontianus, held the see 4 years 10 months 11 days. He ordained 8 bishops 9 priests 5 deacons. Pontianus a Roman son of Calpurnius, held the see 9 years 5 months 2 days. He ordained 6 bishops, 6 priests 5 deacons. Antherus a Greek, son of Romulus, held the see 12 years 1 month 12 days. He carefully sought out the acts of the martyrs. He ordained 1 bishop. Fabianus a Roman son of Fabius, held the see 14 years 11 months 11 days. He ordained 11 bishops 21 priests 7 deacons. Cornelius a Roman, son of Castinus, held the see 2 years 2 months 2 days. He took up the bodies of the apostles Peter and Paul from the catacombs. He ordained 7 bishops 4 priests 4 deacons. Lucius a Roman, son of Porfirius, held the see 3 years 3 months 3 days. He laid down that 2 priests and 3 deacons should not leave the bishop, wherever he was. He ordained 7 bishops 4 priests 4 deacons. Stephen a Roman, son of Iobius, held the see 7 years 5 months 2 days. He decreed that sacerdotes and deacons should not use the consecrated vestments for everyday purposes but only in church. He ordained 3 bishops 6 priests 5 deacons. Xistus a Greek, formerly a philosopher. He held the see 1 year 10 months 23 days. He ordained 2 bishops 4 priests 7 deacons. Dionisius a former monk, whose ancestry we have been unable to trace, held the see 6 years 2 months 4 days. He gave the churches to the priests and organized the parishes and dioceses. He ordained 9 bishops 12 priests and 6 deacons. Felix a Roman, son of Constantine, held the see 4 years 3 months

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fol. 75v 25 days. He decreed that masses should be celebrated over the memoria of the martyrs. He ordained 5 bishops 8 priests 5 deacons. Eutatianus a Tuscan, son of Marinus from the city of Luna, held the see 1 year 1 month and 1 day. He decreed that the produce to be blessed should be beans and grapes. He ordained 9 bishops 14 priests 5 deacons. Gaius a Dalmatian from the family of [emperor] Diocletian son of Gaius held the see 11 years 4 months 12 days. He organized the ecclesiastical grades and ordained 5 bishops 3 priests 2 deacons. Marcellinus a Roman, son of Projectus, held the see 9 years 4 months 6 days. He ordained 5 bishops 4 priests 2 deacons. Marcellus a Roman, son of Benedict from the Via Lata region. He held the see 5 years 7 months 21 days. He organized the tituli in the city of Rome for baptism and penitence. He ordained 25 priests 2 deacons. Eusebius a Greek, formerly a doctor, held the see 6 years 1 month 3 days. In his time the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ was discovered and Judas was baptized. He ordained 14 bishops, 13 priests 3 deacons. Melciades[!] an African, held the see 4 years. He decreed that none of the faithful should on any account fast on Sunday or Thursday. He ordained 12 bishops 7 priest 5 deacons. Silvester a Roman, son of Rufinus, held the see 23 years 10 months 11 days. In his time 318 bishops gathered and expounded the catholic faith and that the chrism should be consecrated by the bishop and that the baptized should be confirmed. He decreed that dalmatics should be worn and that the sacrifice should be wrapped in linen cloth. He ordained 65 bishops 42 priests 26 deacons. Marcus a Roman son of Priscus held the see 2 years 8 months 21 days. He decreed that the [bishop of ] Ostia who consecrates [the bishops of the city i.e. Rome] should use the pallium. He ordained 27 bishops 25 priests 6 deacons. Iulius a Roman fol. 76r son of Rusticus, held the see 15 years 2 months 6 days. He decreed that no cleric should take part in any lawsuit in a public court but only in a church. He ordained 9 bishops 18 priests 4 deacons. Liberius a Roman, son of Augustus, held the see 6 years 3 months 4 days. He ordained 19 bishops 18 priests, 5 deacons. Felix a Roman, son of Anastasius, held the see 1 year 3 months 2 days. He ordained 19 bishops 21 priests 5 deacons. Damasus a Spaniard, son of Antonius, held the see 18 years 3 months 11 days. He was maliciously accused of adultery and was cleared [of the charge] by 44 bishops. He decreed that in all the churches the psalms should be sung by day and night. He ordained 62 bishops 31 priests 11 deacons.

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Siricius a Roman, son of Tibutius, held the see 15 years. He ordained 32 bishops 31 priests 16 deacons. He decreed that no penitent should be denied the last rites. Anastasius a Roman, son of Maximus, held the see 3 years 10 days. He decreed that whenever the holy Gospels are recited sacerdotes should not[!] rise but stand bowing. Innocent from Albanum, son of Innocent, held the see 15 year 2 months 21 days. He determined that one born of a Christian mother must be born again by baptism. He decreed that a fast should be observed on Saturdays, since the Lord lay for a Saturday in the tomb and the disciples fasted on Saturday. He ordained 54 bishops 30 priests 11 deacons. Zosimus a Greek, son of Abraham, held the see 1 year 3 months 11 days. He decreed many things for the church. He ordained 8 bishops 10 priests 3 deacons. Bonifacius a Roman, son of the priest Jocundus, held the see 3 years 8 months 7 days. He decreed that no woman or nun should touch the consecrated pall or wash it or place the incense; this should be done only by a minister. He ordained 36 bishops 13 priests 3 deacons. Celestinus a Roman, son of Priscus, held the see 8 years 10 months 17 days. He decreed that the antiphon should be sung before the sacrifice of mass; this used not to be done but only St Paul’s epistle and the holy Gospel were recited. He ordained 46 bishops 32 priests 12 deacons. Xyxtus a Roman, son of Xystus, held the see 8 years 19 days. After 1 year 7 months he was arraigned on a charge by one Bassus and was cleared by 56 bishops and Bassus was condemned. He ordained 52 bishops 18 priests 12 deacons. Leo a Tuscan, son of Quintianus, held the see 21 years 1 month 13 days. 1200 bishops gathered together who expounded the catholic faith that in one Christ there are two natures God and Man. He ordained 185 bishops 81 priests 31 deacons. Hilarius of Sardinia, son of Crispinus, held the see 6 years 3 months 10 days. He broadcast letters on the catholic faith through the whole of the East and confirmed the three synods of Nicaea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon. He ordained 22 bishops 25 priests 6 deacons. Simplicius of the Tiburtine region, son of Castinus, held the see 15 years 1 month 18 days. He decreed that at St Peter’s, St Paul’s and St Laurence’s the priests should remain there for penitents and for baptism. He ordained 36 bishops 58 priests 11 deacons. Felix a Roman, son of the priest Felix of the titulus of Fasciola, held the see 8 years 11 months 18 days. He ordained 31 bishops 28 priests 5 deacons. Gelasius an African, son of Valerius, held the see 4 years 8 months 18 days. He freed the city of Rome from danger and famine. He produced [tracts and] hymns in the manner of blessed Ambrosius. He ordained 67 bishops 32 priests 2 deacons.

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Anastasius a Roman, son of Peter of the fifth region Caput Tauri, held the see 1 year 11 months 24 days. He ordained 16 bishops 12 priests. Symmachus of Sardinia son of Fortunatus held the see 15 years 7 months 26 days. He and Laurentius were ordained in rivalry the same day, Symmachus in the Lateran, Laurentius in the church of St Mary, and Symmachus was confirmed in the see according to the judgment of King Theodoric and afterwards the accused Symmachus was acquitted by 115 bishops. He decreed that every Sunday and saint’s day Glory be to God on high should be sung. He ordained 117 bishops 92 priests 16 deacons. Hormisdas from Campania, son of Iustus of the city of Frusino, held the see 9 years 14 days. He settled the clergy and taught them the psalms. He ordained 55 bishops 21 priests. John a Tuscan, son of Constantius, held the see 2 years 8 months 16 days. Maltreated in prison he died. He ordained 15 bishops. Felix a Samnite, son of Castorius, held the see 4 years 2 months 14 days. He was ordained peacefully. He ordained 29 bishops 55 priests 4 deacons. Boniface a Roman, son of Sigibold, held the see 2 years 26 days. He and Dioscorus were ordained in rivalry but Dioscorus died at that time. Boniface held the see. Mercurius a Roman, son of Praeiectus from the Celian hill, held the see 2 years 4 months 1 day. He ordained 21 bishops 15 priests. Agapitus a Roman, son of the priest Gordianus, held the see 11 months 19 days. He ordained 11 bishops 4 deacons. Silverius a Campanian, son of Hormisdas bishop of Rome, held the see 1 year 5 months 11 days. He ordained 18 bishops 14 priests. Vigilius a Roman, son of the consul John, held the see 17 years 6 months 26 days. He ordained 81 bishops 46 priests 16 deacons. Pelagius a Roman, son of John the Vicarianus, held the see 11 years 10 months 18 days. He was ordained by two bishops and one priest. He ordained fol. 77v 9 bishops 26 priests 9 deacons. John a Roman son of Anastasius held the see 12 years 11 months 2 days. He loved and restored the cemeteries of the holy martyrs and decreed that every Sunday the offerings and lights should be brought there. He ordained 61 bishops 28 priests 13 deacons. Benedict a Roman son of Boniface, held the see 4 years 1 month 29 days. He ordained 21 bishops 15 priests 3 deacons. Pelagius a Roman, son of Unigildus, held the see 10 years 2 months 10 days. At that time the rains were so great that everyone said the waters of the Flood had overflowed and so great was the disaster that no one could remember anything like it. He ordained 48 bishops 28 priests 8 deacons.

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Gregorius a Roman, son of Gordianus, held the see 12 years 6 months 10 days. He produced 40 homilies and the Moralia in Job and [the work on] Ezekiel and the Pastoral [care] and the Dialogues and many others. He added to the canon and dispose our days in thy peace. He converted the English to the Lord Jesus Christ. He brought it about that mass could be sung above St Peter’s body. He ordained 62 bishops 39 priests 5 deacons. Sabinian a Tuscan of the city of Blera, son of Bonus, held the see 1 year 5 months 9 days. He added luminaria to the church of St. Peter. He ordained 26 bishops. Boniface a Roman, son of John, held the see 8 months 22 days. He ordained 21 bishops. Boniface born among the Marsi of the city of Valeria, son of the doctor John, held the see 6 years 8 months 13 days. He ordained 36 bishops 8 deacons. Deusdedit a Roman, son of the subdeacon Stephen, held the see 3 years 33 days. He greatly loved the clergy. He ordained 39 bishops 14 priests 5 deacons. Boniface a Campanian of the city of Naples, son of John, held the see 5 years. He decreed that no one should be dragged from a church. He ordained 29 priests 26 deacons fol. 78r Honorius a Campanian, son of the consul Petronius, held the see 12 years 11 months 18 days. In his time he renewed all the sacred equipment in St Peter’s. He ordained 81 bishops 14 priests 11 deacons. Severinus a Roman, son of Abienus, held the see 2 months 4 days. He ordained 4 bishops. John a Dalmatian, son of Venantius, held the see 1 year 9 months 18 days. He sent much money to redeem captives in Dalmatia and Istria who had been despoiled. He ordained 4 bishops. Theodore a Greek, son of Theodore bishop of Jerusalem, held the see 6 years 5 months 18 days. He ordained 46 bishops 21 priests 4 deacons. Martin of the city of Tuder in the province of Tuscany, held the see 6 years 1 month 26 days. He assembled a synod of 105 bishops and condemned Cyrus of Alexandria, Sergius, Pyrrhus, and Paul, patriarchs of Constantinople, for daring to contrive novelties against the unsullied faith and confirmed the writings of the sixth synod. He ordained 11 priests 33 bishops. Eugenius a Roman, son of Rufinianus, held the see 2 years 9 months 33[!] days, He ordained 21 bishops. Vitalianus of Signia a province of Campania, son of Anastasius, held the see 14 years 6 months. He maintained the customary ecclesiastical discipline and authority. He ordained 97 bishops 22 priests 1 deacon. Adeodatus a Roman, formerly a monk and son of Iovinianus, held the see 4 years 2 months 5 days. He ordained 47 bishops 14 priests 2 deacons.

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Donus a Roman, son of Mauricius held the see 1 year 5 months 10 days. He ordained 6 bishops 10 priests 5 deacons. Agatho a Sicilian held the see 2 years 6 months 4 days. He ordained 18 bishops 10 priests 3 deacons. Leo the Younger a Sicilian son of Paul held the see 10 months 17 days. He issued a decree which is kept in the church archive fol. 78v that the one ordained archbishop should not follow any custom of paying for the use of the pallium or the various church offices. He ordained 21 bishops 9 priests 3 deacons. Benedict the younger, a Roman, held the see 10 months 12 days. He ordained 12 bishops. John a Syrian from the province of Antioch, son of Cyriacus, held the see 1 year 8 days. He ordained 13 bishops. Conon born to a father who was a Thracian was educated in Sicily. He ordained 16 bishops. Sergius of Syrian descent from the region of Antioch, born to his father Tiberius in Panormus in Sicily, decreed that at the time of the breaking of the Lord’s body the clergy and people should sing O Lamb of God. He decreed that on the days of the Lord’s Annunciation, and of St. Mary and St. Symeon which the Greeks call Hypapante a litany should go out. He ordained 15 bishops 8 priests 2 deacons. John a Greek, son of Plato, held the see 2 years 6 months 17 days. He ordained 19 bishops. Sisinnius a Syrian, son of John, held the see 20 days. He ordained 1 bishop. Constantine a Syrian, son of John, held the see 7 years 15 days. He ordained 64 bishops 10 priests 2 deacons. Gregory a Roman, son of Marcellus, held the see 16 years 9 months 11 days. He established that on Thursdays in Lent there should fasting and masses should be celebrated which used not to occur. He ordained 150 bishops 25 priests 4 deacons. Gregory a Syrian, son of John, held the see 10 years 8 months 25 days. He was learned in both the Greek and Latin languages, knowing by heart all the Psalms in order and interpreting them elegantly and with the most sensitive and subtle touches. He ordained 80 bishops 24 priests 3 deacons. Zacharias a Greek, son of Policronius, held the see 10 years 3 months 14 days. He ordained 85 bishops 30 priests 5 deacons. Stephen a Roman son of Constantine held the see 5 years 29 days. He ordained 15 bishops 2 priests 2 deacons.

Chapter 11

What’s in a Psalm? British Library, MS Arundel 60 and the Stuff of Prayer Rachel Fulton Brown The key to a Christian conception of studies is the realization that prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God. The quality of the attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it. The highest part of the attention only makes contact with God, when prayer is intense and pure enough for such a contact to be established; but the whole attention is turned toward God. Simone Weil (d. 1943)1

What is prayer? This is a question scholars, myself included, have been asking a lot of late, with what success—at least to my mind—it is not yet clear.2 Whether prayer, historically or in practice, is best understood as something primarily (or ideally) mental or vocal, liturgical or private, scripted or spontaneous, dutiful or devout, instrumental or contemplative: all are tensions that have regularly 1   Simone Weil, “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God,” in Waiting for God, trans. Emma Craufurd (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1951; reprint edn. New York: Perennial Classics, 2001), p. 57. I would like to thank Barbara Newman for drawing my attention to Weil’s wonderful description of prayer. 2   See Rachel Fulton Brown, “Praying with Anselm at Admont: A Meditation on Practice,” Speculum 81(3) (2006): 700–33; Rachel Fulton Brown, “My Psalter, My Self; or How to Get a Grip on the Office According to Jan Mombaer (d. c. 1501): An Exercise in Training the Attention for Prayer,” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 12(1) (2012): 75–105, and Rachel Fulton Brown, “Oratio,” in Patricia Z. Beckman and Amy Hollywood, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 167–77. For more extended efforts at definition, see Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, Prayer: A History (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2005); Steven Chase, The Tree of Life: Models of Christian Prayer (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005); Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd edn., Part 4, ch. 3, paras. 2,558–865 (New York: Doubleday, 1995), pp. 711–56; Adrienne von Speyr, The World of Prayer, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1985); Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1986), and Friedrich Heiler, Prayer: A Study in the History and Psychology of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932). On the history of ancient and medieval prayer generally, see Roy Hammerling, ed., A History of Prayer: The First to the Fifteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2008), and Jean-François Cottier, ed., La Prière en latin, de l’antiquité au XVIe siècle. Formes, évolutions, significations (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006).

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been brought into the debate. Some scholars have even gone so far as to suggest that for the monks and nuns of the great medieval “powerhouses of prayer” (to borrow a phrase from Mayke de Jong), prayer was simply an elaborate ruse, a self-consciously performative way of manipulating the secular lords and ladies upon whom the monasteries depended for funding and justice.3 Perhaps—in which case, it hardly matters whether prayer was sincere, as St. Benedict (d. 547) himself at least seems to have hoped it might be.4 These are important questions, difficult to resolve without reference to one’s own understanding of the purpose or efficacy of prayer. But it occurs to me that much of the difficulty recent scholars have been having in disentangling these interpretive knots has to do with the fact that when we talk about prayer, we are more often than not referring simultaneously to two rather different things: on the one hand, an experience or a practice intended to produce that experience, and on the other, the material substrate of that experience, if you will, the artifacts or tools resulting from or necessary to the production of such experience. Indeed, within the tradition with which our sources as medievalists are principally concerned, that of Christian monasticism, this ambiguity is intrinsic to the very naming of prayer. In Latin, oratio means both a speaking—a use of speech—and a particular speech, an oration or an address to a deity.5 In Old English, the dual sense is carried by the noun bed or gebed, as in the Paris Psalter at Psalm 54:1 (Vulgate numbering), “Gehyr min gebed, halig drihten,” or in Aelfric’s (d. c. 1010) description of the widow Oswyn, who was accustomed to spend her time in fasting and prayer (on gebedum) at the tomb of St. Edmund.6 The semantic doubling persists in modern English (and so, in our scholarship), 3   Mayke de Jong, “Carolingian Monasticism: The Power of Prayer,” in Rosamond McKitterick, ed., The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 622–53. For the claim that monks used prayer “to gain their end through ruse,” see Fulton, “Praying with Anselm,” n. 24, citing one of my reviewers for Speculum who insisted that this was the case. 4   Regula Benedicti 19.7, ed. and trans. Timothy Fry et al., RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English with Notes (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1981), pp. 216–17: “Let us stand to sing the psalms in such a way that our minds are in harmony with our voices.” On this concern more generally, see Giles Constable, “The Concern for Sincerity and Understanding in Liturgical Prayer, especially in the Twelfth Century,” in Irene Vaslef and Helmut Buschhausen, eds., Classica et mediaevalia: Studies in Honor of Joseph Szövérffy, Medieval Classics: Texts and Studies 20 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1986), pp. 17–30. 5   On this rhetorical aspect of prayer, see Barbara H. Jaye, Artes Orandi, Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental 61 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992). 6   Bertram Colgrave, ed., The Paris Psalter: Ms. Bibliothèque nationale fonds Latin 8824, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimiles 8 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1958), fol. 65v; Aelfric, “Life of St. Edmund,” in Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson, A Guide to Old English, 6th edn. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), p. 201.

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where, according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English (1990), “prayer” means both “a formula or form of words used in praying” and “the act of praying” itself.7 “Perhaps,” the reader may say, “but what’s in a name?” But this is precisely my point. Prayer, at least in the monastic tradition, would seem at once to be an act (a process) and a thing—a form of words either spoken or read.8 The question for those of us who would write a history of prayer is what relationship the one—the thing, say, a prayer to Christ or a psalm as written in a psalter like British Library, MS Arundel 60—has to do with the other—an experience which, by most monastic accounts, is characterized above all by an absence of things, whether objects (such as books) or words. The great monastic father John Cassian (d. 435) is perhaps our best witness here, recommended as he was by Benedict himself as one of two of the most important authorities for “goodliving and obedient monks” and having a great deal to say about the practice of prayer.9 As Abba Isaac cautioned Cassian and Germanus in the first of his two conferences on prayer (de oratione): “Prayer, if it is to be fervent and pure, demands that the following be observed. First, there must be a complete removal of all concern for bodily things.” In Cassian’s (alias Isaac’s) account, such “bodily things” include not only worries about worldly affairs, but also memories thereof—the “deeds, words, and fastings that rise up in [the] imagination” as the praying spirit sets itself to pray.10 They also, as Isaac made clear in his next conference, include images (imagines), whether physical or mental, of demons or the incarnate Christ. “Only those of purest eye,” Isaac insisted, “can look upon 7

  S.v. “prayer”. Additional definitions include “a solemn request or thanksgiving to God or an object of worship,” “a religious service consisting largely of prayers,” “an entreaty to a person,” and “a thing entreated or prayed for.” 8   On the act of prayer in the lives of the monastic saints, see Patrick Henriet, La parole et la prière au Moyen Âge: Le Verbe efficace dans l’hagiographie monastique des XIe et XIIe siècles (Brussels: De Boeck & Larcier, 2000). On the texts of their prayers, see Jean-François Cottier, Anima mea: Prières privées et texts de devotion du Moyen Age latin: Autour des Prières ou Méditations attribuées à saint Anselme de Cantorbéry (XIe–XIIe siècle) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001). 9   The other authority is St. Basil of Caesarea (d. 379). Regula Benedicti, 73.5–6, cited in Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel, Commentary on the Rule of Saint Benedict, trans. David Barry, Cistercian Studies Series 212 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2007), pp. 535–6: “‘And also the Conferences of the Fathers, their Institutes and their Lives [all by Cassian], as well as the Rule of our holy father Basil, what else are they but instruments of the virtues for good-living and obedient monks?’ On this account our blessed Isidore says: ‘… Now the fullness of a holy way of life and the perfect teaching of a spiritual life is daily read aloud to us in the rules of those holy Fathers, whose proven life and teaching authority was bestowed by a divine gift.’“ On Cassian’s own practice of and teaching about prayer, see Columba Stewart, Cassian the Monk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 85–130. 10   Cassian, Conferences, 9.3, trans. Colm Luibheid (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), p. 102.

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[Christ’s] divinity, those who have risen up beyond lowly works and earthly thoughts and have gone off with Him to the high mountain of solitude.”11 Clearly, it would seem, monks should not use images to pray.12 Does this mean that they should use nothing else—no tools, no technical supports of any sort? Not exactly. As Mary Carruthers has reminded us, even as he warned Cassian and Germanus against the use of such images, Isaac was more than willing to acknowledge the utility of certain other tools for the making of prayer, most particularly those verbal models or formulae which they and other monks might draw from the psalms.13 To be sure, psalmody itself was not prayer, nor, from this perspective, were psalms or psalm verses such as “Deus, in adjutorium meum intende; Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina” (Ps. 69:2) prayers. Rather, psalms and psalm verses were strictly speaking only preparations for prayer, devices for training the spirit. Nevertheless, if used properly, such formulae would (according to Isaac) both protect and fortify the soul (mens) of the one praying, until such time as it had “the strength to reject and refuse all the abundant riches and substances of thought”—that is, to dispense with words and their attendant structures altogether.14 What is the proper metaphor for what is happening here? Cassian (still in the persona of Isaac) invokes the familiar one of writing. Inscribed on the “threshold and gateway of [the] mouth” and placed upon “the inner sanctum of [the] heart,” 11

  Ibid., 10.5–6, pp. 127–8.   At least not according to Isaac. For the use and importance of (mental) images in

12

later medieval devotion, see Michelle Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011). For the early medieval defense of physical images, see Thomas F.X. Noble, Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). 13   Cassian, Conferences, 10.10, pp. 132–6. On Isaac’s method, see Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 69–77. On the ways in which monks prayed the psalms generally, see Joseph Dyer, “The Psalms in Monastic Prayer,” in Nancy Van Deusen, ed., The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1999), pp. 59–89. On the use of the psalms in the early monastic liturgy, see James W. McKinnon, “The Book of Psalms, Monasticism, and the Western Liturgy,” in Nancy Van Deusen, ed., The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1999), pp. 43–58; Joseph Dyer, “Monastic Psalmody in the Middle Ages,” Revue bénédictine 99 (1989): 41–74, and Joseph Dyer, “The Singing of Psalms in the Early-Medieval Office,” Speculum 64(3) (1989): 535–78. For the larger liturgical context, see Susan Boynton, “The Bible and the Liturgy,” in Susan Boynton and Diane J. Reilly, eds., The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages: Production, Reception, and Performance in Western Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), pp. 10–33, and John Harper, The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century: A Historical Introduction and Guide for Students and Musicians (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 67–108. 14   Cassian, Conferences, 10.11, p. 136.

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the verses of the psalms are to serve as models for the praying soul much as the letter forms drawn for them by their teachers in wax serve children in learning to write.15 But—if we may be permitted to draw out the entailments of the metaphor a bit further—what is it exactly that the child-souls are expected to learn from this inscriptional discipline? More particularly, what is it that they are expected to produce? More letter-forms on their own wax tablets—that is, more psalms? But would not this be simply to perpetuate the participation in “bodily things,” in the manufacture, as it were, of more “stuff,” not prayer? Perhaps, instead, the child-souls are to learn how and how not to move—the muscular extensions and contractions necessary to shape the letter-forms—without actually making new marks on their tablets. This, after all, is the way many critics of monasticism have described the practice of regular psalmody, as repetition for the sake of repetition rather than the production of content.16 But this cannot be it, since otherwise, why use the psalms rather than, say, the Aeneid or some other work of poetry? Clearly, substance matters, not just performance. Why? Because, it would seem, the practice of tracing the psalmodic letterforms affords the monk access to a particular kind of experience: the feeling of what it means to give shape to an “A” or to spell out the word “Deus.” In Isaac’s (or, rather, Cassian’s) words: Nourished by this food [the texts of the psalms], which [the monk] continually eats, he penetrates so deeply into the thinking of the psalms that he sings them not as though they had been composed by the prophet but as if he himself had written them, as if this were his own private prayer uttered amid the deepest compunction of the heart.17

“Seized of the identical feelings in which the psalm was composed or sung,” the monk becomes, as it were, the author of the psalm. He anticipates through his own experience what it is that the psalms were intended to convey, and finds 15

  Ibid., 10.10, pp. 132–6.   Most famously, Martin Luther, Table Talk, trans. William Hazlitt (Philadelphia,

16

PA: United Lutheran Publication House, 1904), pp. 192–3: “Prayer in popedom is mere tonguethreshing; not prayer, but a work of obedience. Thence a confused sea of Horae Canonicae, the howling and babbling in cells and monasteries, where they read and sing the psalms and collects, without any spiritual devotion, understanding neither the words, sentences, nor meaning.” More recent scholars have tended to a similar, if more muted, skepticism, averring simply their difficulty believing that monastic psalmody as such could be spiritually fulfilling, particularly when practiced chorally. See R.F. Taft, “Christian Liturgical Psalmody: Origins, Development, Decomposition, Collapse,” in Harold W. Attridge and Margot E. Fassler, eds., Psalms in Community: Jewish and Christian Textual, Liturgical, and Artistic Traditions, Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series 25 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 7–32. 17   Cassian, Conferences, 10.11, p. 137.

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himself entering into their meaning, “not because of what [he has] read, but because of what [he] experienced earlier.”18 At this point, in Cassian’s words: Then indeed the Scriptures lie ever more clearly open to us. They are revealed, heart and sinew. Our experience not only brings us to know them but actually anticipates what they convey …. We see very clearly, as in a mirror, what is being said to us and we have a deeper understanding of it. Instructed by our own experiences we are not really learning through hearsay but have a feeling for these sentiments as things that we have already seen.19

It is in this way, as Cassian would have it, that the monk comes, by way of the psalms, to the possibility, if not the certainty, of experiencing prayer, that “fiery outbreak [of the soul]” which “centers on no contemplation of some image or other” and “is masked by no attendant sounds or words.”20 But, again, why? What is prayer if not the practice of inscribing the psalms on the heart? Conversely, what is the purpose of this inscriptional practice if its principal product is not in fact prayer (as it seems it is not), but rather a feeling for experiences that the monks themselves have already had? What, after all, do the psalms as texts—scripted orationes—have to do with the experience of prayer? Let us try coming at these questions from another direction. In 1666, Henry Howard gifted a number of manuscripts collected by his grandfather, Thomas Howard (d. 1646), the 2nd Earl of Arundel, to the Royal Society, which manuscripts the British Library acquired in 1831. The appendix to this chapter gives a description of one of the more striking items from this collection, the so-called Arundel Psalter, or MS 60. There are a couple of features to note about this manuscript. The first is its size. In its present condition, the manuscript contains 149 folios measuring 30.2 × 20 cm each. This makes it about the size of a medium-sized coffee table book or a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica—not exactly a modest book, but not an unmanageable or particularly pretentious one either. 21 Next, there are its contents. As one would expect from its name, its principal contents are the psalms (fols. 13r–119r), here in the so-called Gallicanum version as adopted throughout Francia in the ninth century and taken up in England following the monastic reforms instituted under King Edgar in the latter part of the 18

    20   21  

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid, p. 138. For the codicology of the manuscript, see Phillip Pulsiano, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile. Volume 2. Psalter I, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 137 (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1994), pp. 13–18. 19

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tenth.22 The psalms themselves are prefaced by various tables and diagrams for calculating the liturgical calendar and the phases of the moon (fols. 1r–12r) and followed by certain other pieces germane to the practice of liturgical prayer (fols. 119r–132v). These pieces include the Old Testament canticles, the Te deum, the Nunc dimittis, the Gloria, the Pater noster, the apostolic Credo, the Athanasian Quicumque vult, and a litany of some 147 saints, including such locally significant luminaries as Eadburga, abbess of St. Mary’s at Winchester, and Sts. Judoc and Grimbald, both enshrined from the tenth century, likewise at Winchester, in the nearby New Minster. All of the above is copied in what is generally agreed to be a mid- to late eleventh-century hand, and all of the Latin texts, with the exception of the calendars and the litany, are accompanied by a continuous, interlinear Old English gloss (more on this in a moment). Two further quires (fols. 133r–142v) complete the litany, and contain a series of what are generally described as private or devotional, as opposed to liturgical, prayers. These quires were added some time in the twelfth century (possibly within its first few decades, probably at Christ Church), and their texts are not glossed.23 How might one use such a manuscript? What was it for? On the face of it, one might say, “What else, but to pray?”, but to judge from the scholarship on MS Arundel 60 and others like it, matters are not necessarily all that straightforward. Arguably, MS Arundel 60 is a monastic book. The saints of 22   On this transition, see Joseph Dyer, “Latin Psalters, Old Roman and Gregorian Chants,” Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch 68 (1986): 11–30; George H. Brown, “The Psalms as the Foundation of Anglo-Saxon Learning,” in Nancy Van Deusen, ed., The Place of the Psalms s in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1999), pp. 1–24; Mechthild Gretsch, The Intellectual Foundations of the English Benedictine Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 21–7, and Mechthild Gretsch, “The Roman Psalter, its Old English Glosses and the English Benedictine Reform,” in Helen Gittos and M. Bradford Bedingfield, eds., The Liturgy of the Late Anglo-Saxon Church, , Henry Bradshaw Society, Subsidia 5 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), pp. 13–28. 23   For the psalter, canticles, and other liturgical texts (fols. 13r–130r), see Guido Oess, Der altenglische Arundel-Psalter: Eine Interlinearversion in der Handschrift Arundel 60 des Britischen Museums, Anglistische Forschungen 30 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1910). For the litany (fols. 130r–133r), see Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints, Henry Bradshaw Society 106 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1991), pp. 142–47, and Francis Wormald, “The English Saints in the Litany in Arundel MS 60,” Analecta Bollandiana 64 (1946): 72–86. For the prayers (fols. 133r–142v), see Thomas H. Bestul, “British Library, MS Arundel 60, and the Anselmian Apocrypha,” Scriptorium 35 (1981): 271–5. For descriptions of the manuscript, see Neil R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), no. 134; Janet Backhouse, D.H. Turner, and Leslie Webster, eds., The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art, 966–1066 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984), no. 67, and Thomas Ohlgren, ed., Insular and Anglo-Saxon Illuminated Manuscripts: An Iconographic Catalogue, c. A.D. 625 to 1100 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1986), no. 208.

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the litany point to one of the Benedictine communities at Winchester, and Peter Kidd has recently argued, on the basis of a curious red cross inscribed in the Easter table, for a dating of c. 1072, when Riwallon of Mont Saint-Michel was installed as abbot of New Minster.24 Yet why would a monk, particularly a monk as senior as Riwallon (if, indeed, he was the original owner of the book), need a psalter, particularly a glossed one? MS Arundel 60 is not the only book that presents us with this problem. What of the other fifteen or so extant Anglo-Saxon glossed psalters, not to mention the other thirty-some (at least) unglossed that we know about?25 Many of these, too, are known or suspected to have been intended for monastic use, including two of the books whose psalm glosses served as a source for those in MS Arundel 60: London, British Library, MS Royal 2. B. V (the so-called “Regius Psalter”), the glosses of which Mechthild Gretsch has shown to have been closely associated with Aethelwold of Winchester’s translation of the Benedictine Rule, and British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian A.i (the so-called “Vespasian Psalter”), best-known for its sumptuous illuminations, but, like the Regius Psalter, glossed for what would appear to be monastic use, quite possibly at St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, where the Vespasian Psalter was most probably made.26 Again, like the Regius Psalter, the Vespasian Psalter follows Jerome’s first, so-called Romanum version of the psalms—that is, the version used in monasteries throughout England prior to the tenth-century reform. What’s in a psalter that so many monks would want or need one? For those who have made the most extensive study of these psalters, the obvious answer would appear to lie in the fact of the gloss.27 Psalters were school texts, useful because

24   Peter Kidd, “A Re-examination of the Date of an Eleventh-century Psalter from Winchester (British Library, MS Arundel 60),” in Brendan Cassidy and Rosemary Muir Wright, eds., Studies in the Illustration of the Psalter, ed. (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 2000), pp. 42–53. 25   On these manuscripts, see M.J. Toswell, “Anglo-Saxon Psalter Manuscripts,” Old English Newsletter 27(4) (1995 for 1994): A.23–31; M.J. Toswell, “The Late Anglo-Saxon Psalter: Ancestor of the Book of Hours?,” Florilegium 14 (1995–96): 1–24; Phillip Pulsiano, “Psalters,” in Richard W. Pfaff, ed., The Liturgical Books of Anglo-Saxon England, Old English Newsletter, Subsidia 23 (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 1995), pp. 60–85; and Brown, “Psalms as the Foundation,” pp. 5–18. 26   On the relationships between the various versions of the gloss, see Gretsch, Intellectual Foundations, pp. 6–41, 261–331. For the Royal or Regius Psalter, see Fritz Roeder, Der Altenglische Regius-Psalter: Eine Interlinearversion in Hs. Royal 2.B.5 des Brit. Mus., Studien zur Englischen Philologie 18 (Halle a.S.: M. Niemeyer, 1904). For the Vespasian Psalter, see David H. Wright, ed., The Vespasian Psalter: British Museum, Cotton Vespasian A.i, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile 14 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1967). 27   For the most extensive study of these glosses, see Phillip Pulsiano, Old English Glossed Psalters: Psalms 1–50, Toronto Old English Series 11 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001).

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monks needed to learn to read.28 The glosses in Old English are evidence that learning the psalter (as all monks were required to do) involved more than simply memorizing the Latin words of the psalms; the text should also be understood. In George Brown’s words: “The vernacular [glosses] assisted in making the text [of the psalms] not only performative [as they must be for the liturgy] but also informative [as they might be in school].”29 In Kenneth Sisam’s estimate, the 15 glossed psalters extant today are the fortunate survivors of what must have been hundreds of similarly glossed books.30 The problem, as both Brown and others have pointed out, is that although some clearly were (for example, MS Royal 2. B. V), not all of the extant glossed psalters (including MS Arundel 60) seem, in fact, to have been intended primarily (if at all) for educational use. Consider our list of contents, particularly the items on fols. 133r–148v. Some of these prayers are fairly easy to identify. The prayer to the Virgin Mary, for example, “Singularis meriti sola sine exemplo mater et uirgo,” appears regularly in collections of devotional prayers from as early as the eighth century.31 Others are somewhat harder to trace. Thomas Bestul has noted that MS Arundel 60 contains not only the oldest, but also one of only two known manuscript instances of the long version of a prayer (“Tibi ago laudes et gratias”) that would be subsumed into the great Anselmian corpus of prayers published by Théophile Raynaud in 1630 and Gabriel Gerberon in 1675, and thence by Jacques-Paul Migne in volume 158 of the Patrologia Latina in 1853.32 The point is that these are prayers, or rather orationes, and that a glossed psalter was considered an appropriate place in which to copy them. In fact, to judge from 28   Cf. Isabelle Cochelin, “When the Monks Were the Book: The Bible and Monasticism (6th–11th Centuries),” in Susan Boynton and Diane J. Reilly, eds., The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages: Production, Reception, and Performance in Western Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), pp. 61–83, at p. 66: “The apprenticeship of reading was based for the most part on the Psalter, which was the medieval reading primer.” 29   George H. Brown, “The Dynamics of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 77(1) (1995): 109–42, at 125. For discussion of the ways in which one such psalter may have been used in the classroom, see Patrick P. O’Neill, “Latin Learning at Winchester in the Early Eleventh Century: The Evidence of the Lambeth Psalter,” Anglo-Saxon England 20 (1991): 143–66. 30   Kenneth Sisam and Celia Sisam, eds., The Salisbury Psalter, Early English Text Society 242 (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), pp. 74–5. 31   Henri Barré, Prières anciennes de l’occident à la Mère du Sauveur: Des origins à saint Anselme (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1963), pp. 73–6, 121, 140, 145, 182–3, 188, 195–6, 224, 240, 250, 256, 263, and 270; and Cottier, Anima mea, pp. 113–19. 32   Thomas Bestul, “British Library, MS Arundel 60, and the Anselmian Apocrypha,” Scriptorium 35 (1981): 271–5. On the history of the Anselmian collection as published by Migne, see Cottier, Anima mea, pp. LXXIII–CXX. For the prayer as it appears in this tradition, see ibid., pp. 219–27.

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the list of prayer collections published some years ago by Pierre Salmon, psalters were the usual place to keep such compilations well into the twelfth century, by which time self-standing assemblages of devotional pieces, including Anselm of Canterbury’s genuine prayers, had become somewhat more common.33 Indeed, of the extant Anglo-Saxon glossed psalters, over half, including both MS Cotton Vespasian A.i and MS Royal 2.B.V, preserve significant collections of prayers, most, like those in MS Arundel 60, added after the original production of the manuscript.34 MS Royal 2.B.V is the further noteworthy for the office of the Virgin Mary appended at the front of the text block (fols. 1r–6r) some time in the eleventh century.35 What we have here, it would seem, is a category problem. The question is, whose? If psalters when accompanied by glosses are educational books, and when heavily ornamented—like MS Cotton Vespasian A.i, which was kept on the altar at Canterbury and so, arguably, only rarely used as a book—are primarily symbols of the texts that the monks were supposed to have already learned, what are psalters to which hodgepodges of prayers have been attached which, presumably, the monks would have never used in the choir? Put this way, the category problem is almost certainly ours, but not (in case you were worrying) because psalters as books could not be all of these things: textbooks, display books, books for private study, books for devotion, books for the performance of the Office, sometimes even all of the above. Rather, the problem has to do with the way we (and here I include myself ) as scholars have typically defined the psalms. The confusion goes back at least as far as the great monastic educator Cassiodorus (d. c. 585), if not all the way to Cassian. The psalms as texts collected together into a book are problematic because they are texts of a particular kind—“Scripture”—and so require interpretation, not only (as with all texts) according to the identity of their authors and the workings of their 33   Pierre Salmon, “Libelli precum du VIIIe au XIIe siècle,” in Analecta liturgica: Extraits des manuscrits liturgiques de la Bibliothèque Vaticane: Contribution à l’histoire de la prière chrètienne, Studi e testi 273 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1974), pp. 123–94; Pierre Salmon, “Livrets de prières de l’époque carolingienne,” Revue bénédictine 86 (1976): 218–34, and Pierre Salmon, “Livrets de prières de l’époque carolingienne: Nouvelle liste de manuscrits,” Revue bénédictine 90 (1980): 147–49. For examples of the prayers in these so-called “libelli precum,” see Susan Boynton, “Prayer and Liturgical Performance in Eleventh- and Twelfth-century Monastic Psalters,” Speculum 82 (2007): 896–931, and Susan Boynton, “Libelli Precum in the Central Middle Ages,” in Roy Hammerling, ed., A History of Prayer: The First to the Fifteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 255–318. 34   Salmon, “Livrets de prières de l’époque carolingienne,” pp. 224–34; Salmon, “Nouvelle liste,” pp. 148–9. Cf. the lists of contents given in Pulsiano, “Psalters,” pp. 61–70 (nos. 2, 5, 6, 7, 10, 14, 16, and 19). 35   E.S. Dewick, ed., Facsimiles of Horae de Beata Maria Virgine from English MSS. of the Eleventh Century, Henry Bradshaw Society 21 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1902).

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various tropes and modes of expression, but also according to their various levels of meaning (literal, historical, allegorical, tropological, anagogical, spiritual, mystical, Christological, ecclesiological, and moral).36 Notice what happens as soon as we begin to think of the psalms this way, as Scriptures. Do they not seem somehow immediately more fixed, or given the variations in translations available to the Anglo-Saxon scribes, if not more fixed, simply more authoritative—different in kind from the other texts with which they are copied in manuscripts such as MS Arundel 60? How is it that it seems right to ask, for example, who is speaking in Psalm 54:1–2 (“Exaudi Deus orationem meam et ne despexeris deprecationem meam, intende mihi et exaudi me” [“Hear my prayer, O God, and do not look down upon my imprecation; attend to me and hear me”]), and answer, with Cassiodorus, “Christ,” when we do not ask the same question of the prayer “Tibi ago laudes et gratias, Deus meus, misericordia mea”?37 Think about what this says about the position we 36   As Cassiodorus explained in his Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning, bk. 1.8, trans. James W. Halporn, with an introduction by Mark Vessey, Translated Texts for Historians 42 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004), pp. 108–9: “Although all Divine Scripture shines with heavenly brilliance and the excellence of the Holy Spirit appears clearly in it, I have dedicated my efforts to the Psalter, the Prophets, and the Apostolic Letters, since they seem to me to stir deeper profundities, and to contain, as it were, the glorious citadel and summit of the whole Divine Scripture.” For the various levels of meaning medieval Christian exegetes discerned in the Scriptures, see Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis. Volume 2: The Four Senses of Scripture, trans. E.M. Macierowski (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2000); Friedrich Ohly, Sensus Spiritualis: Studies in Medieval Significs and the Philology of Culture, ed. Samuel P. Jaffe, trans. Kenneth J. Northcott (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005), and G.R. Evans, The Language and Logic of the Bible: The Earlier Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). On the medieval exegesis of the psalms more particularly, see Bruce K. Waltke and James M. Houston, with Erika Moore, The Psalms as Christian Worship: A Historical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2010); Theresa Gross-Diaz, The Psalms Commentary of Gilbert of Poitiers: From Lectio Divina to the Lecture Room (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), and Michael P. Kuczynski, Prophetic Songs: The Psalms as Moral Discourse in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). On the psalms as prayer in their Scriptural context, see Patrick D. Miller, They Cried to the Lord: The Form and Theology of Biblical Prayer (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994). 37   Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms, Commentary on Psalm 54, trans. P.G. Walsh, Ancient Christian Writers 51–3 (New York: Paulist Press, 1990–91), vol. 2, pp. 26–8: “Hear, o God, my prayer, and despise not my supplication. Christ the Lord, who has come to save us with devoted pity and grants us a fashioning of life and salvation according to the dispensation by which He suffered after willingly being set amidst the world’s troubles, asks in the first phrase that His prayer be heard; then He requests that His supplication be not despised. All this is uttered because, through God, He has deigned to become man. He asks first that his prayer be heard, then that His supplication be not despised, for He could have been first heard and then despised; this happens to those who long for the goods of this world, obtain what they pray for,

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as readers or the monks as singers would take with respect to the text, and then recall what position authorities like Cassiodorus and Cassian (well known to Benedictines like Abbot Riwallon, not to mention the compilers of the psalters) suggested the monks should take with respect to the psalms.38 As Athanasius (as cited by Cassiodorus) explained, the psalms are such that: whoever recites the words of a psalm seems to be repeating his own words, to be singing in solitude words composed by himself; it does not seem to be another speaking or explaining what he takes up and reads. It is as though he were speaking from his own person, such is the nature of the words he utters. He seems to be expressing the kind of language used as if spoken from the heart. He seems to offer words to God.39

It is time to put what we have learned from Cassian and our examination of MS Arundel 60 together and see what it tells us about the nature of monastic—and so, arguably, medieval Christian—prayer. One thing should be immediately clear. Whatever else monastic readers might have seen in the psalms—texts for singing, prophecies to be interpreted, scripts for learning to read—they were, above all, prayers to be said from the heart and experienced as if they were one’s own. This, almost certainly, is why they were glossed: to enable the Anglo-Saxon monks to understand what they were required by their rule to be able to read, or at the very least recite from memory, and not simply because in their liturgical ubiquity the psalms offered a convenient Latinate primer. So much is obvious. But what about that experience? Are we any closer for attending to the existence of MS Arundel 60 as an artifact to appreciating what it was like? Did monks need books in order to pray? “Apparently,” we might say, “yes. Otherwise, why make so many of them?” But surely this is simply to beg the question yet again. What is it about having a book of prayers—for this is clearly what a psalter is—that makes saying the prayers more effective (or at least feel that way) than would saying the same words directly from memory? Abbot Riwallon did not need MS Arundel 60, although it is interesting to speculate, if in fact the book was originally his, why a former prior of the Norman abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel might want an Old English gloss. (Perhaps in order to learn the vernacular of his new community? But surely this is simply to beg the question yet again about and yet are subsequently despised because they have wholly failed to seek eternal rewards.” For the tradition of titles assigning the psalms to the “voice of Christ” (vox Christi), see Pierre Salmon, Les “Tituli psalmorum” des manuscrits latins, Collectanea biblica latina 12 (Rome: Abbaye SaintJérome, 1959). 38   For the availability of Cassiodorus’ commentary to the compilers of the Anglo-Saxon psalters, see James W. Halporn, “The Manuscripts of Cassiodorus’ ‘Expositio Psalmorum,’” Traditio 37 (1981): 388–96, and the prayer copied into the Vespasian psalter (see above, n. 26), fol. 141v, taken from Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms, trans. Walsh, vol. 3, pp. 468–9. 39   Ibid., Preface, vol. 1, p. 41.

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how important it was for monks to understand the psalms as they prayed.) Nor did he—whoever the original owner of MS Arundel 60 may have been—need the beautiful images of the Crucifixion that appear on fols. 12v (following the calendar) and 52v (before Psalm 51), if what he really wanted the psalter for was simply to learn the psalms.40 Think about it. What difference does it make praying with a book in front of you as opposed to praying the same words from memory without one? This is what I would suggest. Recall the reason that Isaac, after warning Germanus and Cassian in such uncompromising terms against the use of images in prayer, pointed them to the use of the psalms in their stead. Because, as Germanus himself explained in making his request for a method (materia) to follow in their practice of prayer, otherwise the monks found it so very difficult “to think of God and to hold incessantly to that thought.” More particularly, without such a formula or verbal model as that which Isaac suggested might be found in the psalms, the monks (in Germanus’ words) found their minds “forever wandering,” “tossed in all directions, like a drunk,” “[powerless] if by chance—and not because of any effort of [their] own—[they came] into direct encounter with something spiritual … to hold onto it firmly and for a long time.” Rather, they found that “one thought follows another, arriving, coming into being, ending and going away—all without the mind noticing.”41 More prosaically, they found it hard to pay constant attention to God. Now think about what it is that the monks prayed for as they concentrated their attention on God by clinging to the formulae of the psalms: Come to my help, O God [Deus in adiutorium meum intende; OE god on fultum mine beheald]; Lord, make haste to help me [domine ad adiuuandum me festina; OE drihten to gefultumigenne me aefest] [Ps. 69:2]. Hear my prayer, O God [Exaudi deus orationem meam; OE gehyr god gebed min]; and do not look down upon my imprecation [et ne despexeris deprecationem meam; OE 7 na forseah bene mine]; attend to me and hear me [intende in me et exaudi me; OE beheald on me 7 gehyr me] [Ps. 54:1–2).

The petition is a recurrent one: Listen to the sound of my prayer [Intende uoci orationis meae; OE beeald staefne gebedes mines] [Ps. 5:2; cf. Ps. 85:6]; Hear my prayer [intende deprecationem meam; OE beheald bene mine] [Ps. 16:1; cf. Ps. 141:7]; Come to my aid, Lord of my salvation 40   For the former image (fol. 12v), see Rachel Fulton, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), frontispiece. For the latter image (fol. 52v), see Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting in the British Library (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), no. 19. 41   Cassian, Conferences, 10.8, p. 131.

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[Intende in adiutorium meum, domine deus salutis meae; OE beheald on fultum minne drihten god haelo minre] [Ps. 37:23]; Hear my prayer, O God, listen to my prayer [Exaudi deus deprecationem meam, intende orationi meae; OE gehir god halsunga mine beheald gebede mine] [Ps. 60:1]; Lord, I call upon you; hear me. Listen to my voice when I call to you [Domine clamaui ad te exaudi me, intende uoci orationis meae cum clamauero ad te; OE drihten ic clipode to the gehir me beheald staefne gebedes mines mid ic clipige to the] [Ps. 140:1].42

These were the petitions that the monks would repeat over and over again as they cycled through the psalms in the daily and weekly course of their prayers. Now think about what Athanasius, Isaac, Cassian, and Cassiodorus all averred to be the proper experiential state for the monks to be in while reciting the psalms: seeing themselves “as in a mirror” (velut in speculo) as the very authors of the psalms, “seized of the identical feelings in which the psalm was composed or sung”43—effectively, crying out to God, “Pay attention to me!” Again, the choice of metaphors here is a telling one. Why should reciting the psalms from one’s heart be experientially akin (as Cassian put it) to looking at oneself in a mirror? Surely, the whole point of experiencing the psalms from within, as if speaking “from the heart,” would preclude such a vision, since our hearts—our interiors, as much as our bodily selves—are the very things we cannot see as we experience them, whereas mirrors show us ourselves not as we experience them, but (albeit in reverse) as others see us. But this (or so I would argue) is precisely why the metaphor works so very well as an explanation for the experience of prayer, whether Cassian intended it this way or not. Mirrors give us the sensation not only of looking at ourselves (and arguably recognizing our selves as such), but also of being looked at, paid attention to. What does this sensation have to do with prayer? Think again about what it was the monks prayed as they repeated their oratorical formula “Intende mihi et exaudi me.” “Pay attention to me. Listen to me. After all,” they would insist, “I am paying attention to you.” Prayer, it would seem, contrary to most dictionary definitions, is more than simply an effort at communication with the divine—a speaking to God. Rather, it is also, and perhaps even more fundamentally, an attempt to capture the attention of the divine, to have the sense of being attended to, and not only attended to, but regarded with (ideally) interested concern. Mirrors are not the only things that afford this experience. Artifacts like pictures and books can do it, too. So, too, can psalms, and depending on one’s theological convictions, images of God. Why should this be? It rather depends 42

  Oess, Der altenglische Arundel-Psalter, pp. 119–20 (Ps. 69), 98 (Ps. 54), 29 (Ps. 5), 42 (Ps. 16), 78 (Ps. 37), 106 (Ps. 60), and 221 (Ps. 140). 43   Cassian, Conferences, 10.11, p. 137.

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upon how we think about things, particularly the “bodily things” into which we have put our interestedness and the energy of our making, like books, pictures, or psalms. Such things (if we follow here Cassian’s inscriptional as well as his specular metaphor for the experience of prayer) carry with them not only worries and memories of the physical world—distractions, as Abba Isaac and others would have it, from thinking about spiritual things—but also, if we think about it, a sensation of presence, the feeling of what it meant to give shape to them, of there being a scribe who gave form to their letters, of an author who gave structure to their words. Things like books and psalms carry a trace of the experience of their making, and so of there having been a maker by whom they were attended to. They are, in Elaine Scarry’s words, a “making sentient of the external world,” projections of our imaginations by way of our bodies out into the world that, by virtue of existing in the external world, are then capable of acting back on us, of becoming our own makers as they affect us.44 This, as I read it, is why things like books and psalms work not only as mirrors, but also as formulae for prayer. We see ourselves in them only in so far as we perceive the action of their making—”seized of the identical feelings in which the psalm was composed or sung”—and yet, because they are made things, external to us, we likewise experience the action of being made by them as they guide our thoughts and sensations to participate in their world. We experience them, in other words, as both being self-aware and paying attention to us. The sensation is particularly strong, as Scarry has noted, when we are no longer historically or culturally conscious of there having been a human maker for the objects in our exterior world, so that, like Scripture, they seem somehow divine, Maker-less, except in so far as they are projections of God. Thus, it would seem, the appeal of anonymous, “unauthored,” collections of prayer, like the psalter, where “David’s” words stand in for the vox Dei or the voice of Christ. This is also why, it would seem, it is so very hard in the end to tell the difference between the experience (being attended to) and the stimulus—a book or other physical artifact, a psalm or other set formula of words. Both the practice of speaking and the particular words said participate in the creation of an artifact (a prayer) that reflects back on the one making it. As (arguably) every reader knows, this reflection is only further intensified when the words spoken are present, exterior to the one speaking, in the form of a scripted, material text. Can we—could monks—pray without books, images, or psalms? Possibly, if we (or they) were exceptionally practiced, but I am not actually so sure. Prayer, as Germanus realized in making his request of Isaac for some method (materia), 44

  Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 281.

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requires “stuff,” not simply as a focus for, but also as a reflection of the thoughts that one brings to the making of God. What is important is that these materiae are made things—bodily, physical, exteriorized expressions of our most intimate interiors, projections of ourselves as makers and users into the world, which we can then use to look back on ourselves as we pray, anticipating, as it were, their making and remaking as if the experience were our own. What’s in a psalm? Arguably, much the same thing that’s in a psalter or any other book of prayers: a set of tools (formulae) for capturing the attention of the divine by focusing one’s own attention on the divine. Why would a monk need a psalter, and not just a memory of the psalms, in order to pray? Because it is easier to focus one’s attention on something that one can hold in one’s hands or set at not too great a distance from one’s face (thus the size of MS Arundel 60) and to concentrate on things one can see. Why would this work as a stimulus for prayer? Because, it would seem, somehow, in the presence of things—even inanimate ones like books—we tend, as we ourselves pay attention to them, to feel ourselves less alone, more attended to, and so at long last experience that sensation for which the monks set themselves in the first place to pray. In the words of the psalms: “Come to my help, O God; Lord, pay attention to me.” Happily, with a little help from their psalters, monks like those who copied MS Arundel 60 could be confident that He would. As Abbot Smaragdus of St.-Mihiel (d. c. 840) put it in his popular commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict, citing Cassiodorus and Cassian: Let the verse “O God, incline to my aid; O Lord, make haste to help me” be said. Glory. And so Cassiodorus says: “We ask for aid when subject to dangers, so that supported by some remedy we may be able to conquer various disasters and sufferings. Incline means look kindly; because the Lord is aware of everything, even when he is not asked. He says: ‘O Lord, make haste,’ because he was in a hurry to be set free from this world’s disaster.” In his tenth Conference the eloquent Cassian discourses extensively and in great detail about this particular versicle and its usefulness; he praises it so highly that [he says] whatever the monks undertake they do not begin without saying this versicle three times. He repeats and praises it again and again, showing how exceedingly useful is its remembrance.45 45

  Smaragdus, Commentary on the Rule of Saint Benedict, 18.1, pp. 329–30. Cf. Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms, 69:2, vol. 2, p. 171: “We ask for assistance when we are prostrate before dangers, so that once we are raised by some remedy we can overcome the calamities of different sufferings. Give thought to means ‘Look kindly on,’ for the Lord witnesses all things, even when He is not besought. But people in danger tend to believe that they are delivered if they know that they can be observed by the Lord. So that the blessing which they knew would come would not be postponed further, they added: O Lord, make haste to help me. Make haste is uttered as though the divine mercy were tarrying, and the tortures were becoming more grievous owing to its delayed arrival. So in their haste to be delivered from the calamity of this world, they say to the Lord: Make

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Let us pray: Deus, in adjutorium meum intende; Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina. O God, incline to my aid; O Lord, make haste to help me. Read, remember—and attend. Amen.

Acknowledgments An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the 39th International Congress on Medieval Studies (2004). I would like to thank my audience then for (what else?) their very welcome attention. Appendix: London, British Library, Arundel 60, “Arundel Psalter” Leaves measure 30.2 × 20 cm. Modern flyleaves. Rebound in modern oak boards. Quires I–XVI (fols. 1r–132v) date to c. 1072. Quires XVII–XVIII (fols. 133r–142v) date to the late eleventh (Wormald) or first half of the twelfth century (Ker, Bestul). The last leaf of quire XIX was written in 1099. I  Prefatory matter (fols. 1r–12v). Table of good and bad moons (fol. 1r); diagram for calculation of the calendar (fol. 1v); calendar (fols. 2r–7v); lunar tables (fols. 8r–9r); tables for calculating limits of Septuagesima, Quadragesima, Easter, Rogationtide, and Pentecost (fol. 9v); verses for the limits of Quadragesima and Easter (fol. 10r); lunar tables (fols. 10v–11r); tables (fols. 11v–12r); fullpage illumination of Christ on the Cross, with Mary and John, Sol and Luna, in green, blue, and red (fol. 12v). II–XV Psalter: Gallicanum, with continuous interlinear Old English gloss (fols. 13r–119r). Latin paraphrase (unglossed) of Psalm 50 (fols. 46v–52r). Fullpage illumination of Christ on the Cross with Trees of Paradise (fol. 52v, before Psalm 51). Large decorated initials at Psalm 1 (fol. 13r), Psalm 51 (fol. 53r), and Psalm 101 (fol. 85r). XV–XVI  Canticles and hymns, with continuous interlinear Old English gloss (fols. 119r–130r). Isaiah 12 [Isaiah] (fol. 119r–v); Isaiah 38:10–20 [Hezekiah] (fols. 119v–120r); 1 Samuel 2:1–10 [Anna] (fol. 120r–120v); haste.” For the copies of Smaragdus available in Anglo-Saxon England, see Wulfstan of Winchester, The Life of St. Aethelwold, ed. and trans. Michael Lapidge and Michael Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. liii, and Joyce Hill, “Aelfric and Smaragdus,” in Michael Lapidge, ed., Anglo-Saxon England 21 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 203–37, at p. 203.

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Exodus15:1–19[Moses](fols.121r–122r);Habakkuk3[Habakkuk](fols.122r–123r); Deuteronomy 32:1–43 [Moses] (fols. 123r–125v); Daniel 3:57–88 [Three Boys] (fols. 125v–126r); Luke 1:46–55 [Mary] (fol. 126r–v); Luke 1:68–79 [Zachariah] (fols. 126v–127r); “Te deum laudamus” (fol. 127r–127v); Luke 2:29–32 [Simeon] (fols. 127v–128r); “Gloria in excelsis deo” (fol. 128r); “Pater noster” (fol. 128r–v); “Credo in deum” (fol. 128v); “Quicumque uult” (fols. 128v–130r). XVI  Litany (fols. 130r–132v, with continuation on fol. 133r). XVII–XVIII  Prayers (fols. 133r–142r). To God [13 prayers] (fols. 133r–135r). Of St. Augustine to God (fol. 135r–135v). To Mary (fol. 136r). To St. Michael (fol. 136r–v). To St. Peter (fol. 136v). To God [4 prayers] (fols. 136v–141r). To St. Nicholas (fols. 141r–142r). To Mary (fol. 142r–v). XIX  Prayers to God the Father, God the Spirit, Mary, Christ, God Omnipotent, and Christ (fols. 143r–148v). Calculation of the age of the world from the Nativity to the present [1099] (fol. 149r). List of the bishops of the West Saxons (Winchester) from Birinus to Walkelin (fol. 149v). Thirteenth-century hand (fol. 149v; cf. Kidd, n. 51): “Istud salterium est domini Iohannes ….”

Chapter 12

Prolegomenon to a Study of the Vienna Coronation Gospels: Common Knowledge, Scholarship, Tradition, Legend, Myth Lawrence Nees Teachers know how difficult it can be to challenge what students believe they already know. Conveying new information may not always be easy, but the resistance of “Why should I care?/How is this relevant to my life?” is nothing compared to that entailed in questioning the knowledge already stored safely away in memory. It seems human nature to prefer validation of what is already known to cleaning the slate so as to make room for something different. What everyone knows, few might think to question. This has always been a problem, and to challenge received wisdom can be unrewarding, but scholarship does—sometimes, to be sure, in fits and starts—move, and knowledge changes. As Tom Noble wrote recently in his introduction to an extraordinarily useful and thoughtful translation of the five extant lives of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, even well-known “facts” can be challenged, especially by careful source criticism that takes into account the purposes and audiences and transmission of apparently historical reports.1 Tom Noble is a teacher, and by all accounts a truly great one, and I offer this attempt to challenge what everyone seems to think they “know” about a famous Carolingian manuscript as a grateful tribute to his inspiring example. He is the most art-historical of historians, and his great book Images, Iconoclasm and the Carolingians provides a fundamental basis for anyone interested in what he aptly termed “art talk” of the period. The task remains to address the art of the period with these new insights.2 Tom’s scholarship is always precise, wonderfully clearly and concisely presented, and based on the sources. What do we know, and how do we think we know it? 1

  Thomas F.X. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious: The Lives by Einhard, Notker, Ermoldus, Thegan, and the Astronomer (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), pp. 1–2, with examples and literature, and characteristically judicious but also sympathetic and generous appraisal. The nineteenth-century print of Charlemagne holding orb and sword on the volume’s dust jacket does not associate him with a book. 2   Thomas F.X. Noble, Images, Iconoclasm and the Carolingians (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).

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Like much of Tom Noble’s work, this essay addresses questions, not all of which may be satisfactorily answered, but which ought none the less to be posed. Underlying these questions is an issue of methodology, attempting to address sources freed as far as possible from the accretion of traditions of scholarly and other narratives, often containing paradigms and assumptions. As it happens, Charlemagne’s imperial title survived and played a gigantic role in later European history, but this does not necessarily mean that it was so regarded in his own time. Indeed, Rosamond McKitterick has recently called attention to the phenomenon that Einhard and other early contemporary sources devote greater attention to the coronation in 813 at Aachen of Louis the Pious as Charlemagne’s successor in the imperial title than to the coronation in 800 at Rome of Charlemagne.3 Matthias Becher opened his fine book on Charlemagne with the event of 800 as the “high point” of Charlemagne’s reign.4 The massive biography by Dieter Hägermann signals a central concern with the subsequent impact of whatever Charlemagne did by having the subtitle “Ruler of the West,” and by placing Charlemagne in the company of Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Caesar and Napoleon as having had the greatest impact on Europe’s “collective historical consciousness.”5 Even without quibbling about the historical importance of Hannibal, the foregrounding of the distant future in writing about Charlemagne is something that an art historian cannot avoid seeing also in the visual presentation of these books, for both Becher and Hägermann put the fourteenth-century reliquary head of Charlemagne on the cover, and McKitterick has a fourteenth-century fresco on the front cover of the English paperback edition, with a beautiful manuscript actually produced during his reign relegated to a small image on the back. To be sure, I have learned that authors often do not control such issues as the images on book covers, or even book titles, but that is really the point. Even fine books may be presented 3   Rosamond McKitterick. Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 13. The volume was first published in German as Karl der Grosse (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2008). 4   See Matthias Becher, Karl der Grosse (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1999), pp. 13–22, and the English Charlemagne, trans. David S. Bachrach (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 7–17. Anne A. Latowsky, Emperor of the World: Charlemagne and the Construction of Imperial Authority, 800–1229 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), became available too late to be considered in this chapter. 5   Dieter Hägermann, Karl der Grosse. Herrscher des Abendlandes. Biographie (Munich: Propyläen Verlag, 2000), p. 9 (my translation). He quotes Arno Borst as having recently written that Charlemagne laid the foundations on which rest modern European history. Another recent biography echoes Hägermann’s subtitle and shows that this conception is by no means limited to German historiography: Carlo Magno, un Padre dell’Europa (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 2000), published in English as Charlemagne: Father of a Continent, trans. Allan Cameron (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004).

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in a manner that takes later traditions as a privileged point of reference. Indeed, the very name Charlemagne is an imposition from the future upon the past, a habitual and misleading honorific nomenclature. The name ill accords with the sources from Karl’s reign, but I have not yet brought myself to abandon it, as I ought. It may be that the future shows Charlemagne’s contemporaries to have been “wrong” in their focus, missing what would be the main event for those who followed, but we may also wish to understand those contemporaries’ priorities as well as our own. It is dangerous to start with the Big Picture and interpret the details in its bright light, making our understanding tidy, disregarding the little bits that awkwardly decline to fit within the frame. Connecting the dots, and drawing together intriguing and important objects with intriguing and important events and people is a beguiling quest, but the sirens’ call may lead to the rocks. What follows is a case study of the disconnect between modern traditions and medieval sources. The manuscript of the four Gospels commonly known in English scholarship concerning Carolingian art as the Vienna Coronation Gospels, is officially Die Krönungs-Evangeliar der deutschen Reichsinsignien, and has been preserved since 1801 among the imperial regalia in the Weltliche Schatzkammer der Hofburg in Vienna. It keeps exalted company among imperial crowns, robes, orbs, gloves, shoes, and even the Holy Lance—objects resplendent with gold, jewels, pearls, ermine, and other luxury materials. The collection formed over many centuries, and from heterogeneous sources. The great mantle with lions attacking camels has an inscription making clear that it was made in Palermo for King Roger II in 1133–34, but from an early date there was a tendency to associate that mantle and other objects with the man regarded as the empire’s founder, whom we generally term Charlemagne, who took the title of Roman Emperor in 800.6 In 1513–14, Albrecht Dürer made a series of drawings and eventually a painting of Charlemagne wreathed in Roger’s mantle and wearing Otto’s crown—an impressive but altogether imaginary portrait, probably associated with the annual “Feast of the Imperial Insignia” or Heiltumfest celebrated annually in his native Nuremberg.7 6

  On the treasure, see Hermann Fillitz, Die Insignien und Kleinodien des Heiligen Römischen Reiches (Vienna: Anton Schroll, 1954), and more recently, Jan Keupp, Peter Pohlit, Hans Reither, Katharina Schober, and Stefan Weinfurter, Die Reichskleinodien. Herrschaftszeichen des Heiligen Römischen Reiches (Regensburg: Schnell Steiner, 2009). 7   The drawing, signed with the artist’s monogram and dated 1514, is reproduced in Hermann Fillitz, Die Insignien und Kleinodien des Heiligen Römischen Reiches (Vienna: Anton Schroll, 1954), pp. 8, 9–10, and 64–6. Dürer later made a well-known painting, now in the National-Museum in Nuremberg, which added a beard to the figure, and this painting often figures on the covers of books about Charlemagne. The painting, one of a pair with the Emperor Sigismund, is based on a drawing of 1510; see Erwin Panofsky, The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer, 4th edn. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955), pp. 132–3, for discussion and figs. 177 and 176 respectively.

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At approximately the same time, in the early sixteenth century, the Vienna Coronation Gospels received a magnificent new front cover (Plate 3), made by Hans von Reutlingen, the official imperial seal-maker for both Maximilian and Charles V, and a resident of Aachen. This new cover provides our earliest knowledge of the whereabouts of the book, in Aachen, a location for which the earliest written document is a letter from the Aachen chapter dated 1534,8 although neither of these documents, visual or textual, makes any allusion to a connection between the book and Charlemagne. On that cover, a bearded figure is shown enthroned among the symbols of the four Evangelists—a version of the common Maiestas Domini composition—and the figure must be identified as Christ (although sometimes identified as God the Father). However, those who have mistakenly identified the central figure as Charlemagne, in what would be a striking, albeit impious, composition,9 deserve some sympathetic understanding, for their erroneous interpretation probably reflects two great objects preserved in Aachen: the famous Ottonian Gospel manuscript then in the Aachen Domschatz along with our Coronation Gospels, showing Otto III in a mandorla, as if in heaven, and surrounded by the four Evangelist Symbols,10 and the Karlsschrein, the reliquary dedicated in 1215 in the presence of Emperor Frederick II that had been made for the translated relics of Charlemagne, whose sanctity and cult had been declared in 1162.11 In the scholarship of the last half-century, the Vienna Coronation Gospels has continued to be in exalted company, albeit of a different kind, a different sort of enshrinement. It has become part of the “canon” of key works in the 8

  Keupp et al., Reichskleinodien, p. 52, and illustration at p. 53.   For example, Christoph Gottlieb von Murr, Beschreibung der ehemals zu Aachen aufbewahrten

9

drei Kaiserlichen Krönings-Zierden des lateinischen Evangelienbuches, des arabischen Säbels Karls des Grossen, and der Capsul mit der Erde, worauf das Blut des Heiligen Stephans soll geflossen seyn (Nuremberg and Altdorf: Monath and Kussler, 1801), pp. 10–22, and Ernst Aus’m Weerth, Kunstdenkmäler des christlichen Mittelalters in den Rheinlanden, 1. Abt. Bildnerei, 2. Band (Leipzig: Weigel, 1860), p. 94. This blasphemous, albeit revealing, notion had already been rebutted by Franz Bock, Der Reliquienschatz des Liebfrauen-Münsters zu Aachen in seinen kunstreichen Behältern, zum Andenken an die Heiligthumsfahrt von 1860 (Aachen: Selbstverlag des Verfassers, 1860), p. 8. 10   Robert Deshman, “Christus Rex and Magi Reges: Kingship and Christology in Ottonian and Anglo-Saxon Art,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 10 (1976): 367–405, reprinted in Adam S. Cohen, ed., Eye and Mind: Collected Essays in Anglo-Saxon and Early Medieval Art by Robert Deshman (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2010), no. 8, pp. 137–71, and Percy Ernst Schramm and Florentine Mütherich, Denkmale der deutschen Könige und Kaiser Ein Beitrag zur Herrschergeschichte von Karl dem Grossen bis Friedrich II. 768–1250 (Munich: Prestel, 1962), p. 154 and no. 103. 11   Ernst Günter Grimme, Der Karlsschrein und der Marienschrein im Aachener Dom (Aachen: Einhard, 2002), and Hans Müllejans, ed., Karl der Grosse und sein Schreine in Aachen. Eine Festschrift (Aachen: Einhard and B. Kühlen, 1988).

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history of art, and appears in all the textbooks, and Wikipedia—which, for all its problems, is a wonderful index of current received opinion—dispenses the same information online. In almost every case, a miniature from the Vienna Coronation Gospels, sometimes the Evangelist John (Plate 4), although more frequently the Evangelist Matthew (Plate 9), is paired with one from the later Gospels manuscript made, according to its dedication, for Archbishop Ebo of Reims. Basically the same story is presented placing the Vienna book at the heart of the master narrative, often using remarkably similar phraseology.12 The gist is that the Vienna Coronation Gospels was made in the late eighth or early ninth century, the date often given as c. 800, at and for the court of Charlemagne. Its style of painting is described as distinctly “antique” or Roman, and it is said to have been executed under strong influence from contemporary Byzantium, and likely by an immigrant Byzantine painter. In this textbook wisdom, according to “tradition” or “legend,” it was found in Charlemagne’s tomb when that was opened by Otto III in 1000. It is then presented as the point of departure for the artist of the Ebo Gospels, who copied it closely, but rendered it in a new and exciting “expressionistic” style that was the hallmark of the Reims School of painters, including the great Utrecht Psalter, and thus a hallmark in the development of medieval art. Detailed examination of the two miniatures certainly suggests some close relationship is likely, but direct copying by the Ebo artist is problematic, for it would have been selective copying, and it is not the style alone that has changed. In the case of the Matthew miniature in the two books, the Vienna image was “copied”—except for the seat, the footstool, the form of the garment worn, the absence of a nimbus, and the presence of the Evangelist’s symbol, to list only the most obvious changes. It is not a simple relationship, especially when the textbooks tell us that the shift from ancient to medieval and implicitly modern art hangs in the balance. It perhaps should be said that this formulation is not an exclusively Anglophone phenomenon, for even recent works by important specialists on Carolingian art writing in German, French, and Italian present the same essential ideas.13 12

  To take just one example among many, because it is fairly recent and very widely read, Marilyn Stokstad, Art History, 3rd edn. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2008), p. 456 and figs. 14–16. 13   In German: Irmgard Siede, “Die Ausstattung der Liturgie. Bücher, Geräte and Textilien,” in Bruno Reudenbach, ed., Karolingische und Ottonische Kunst, Geschichte der bildenden Kunst in Deutschland 1 (Munich: Prestel; Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2009), pp. 438 and 460, pl. 42, no. 209; in French: Jean-Pierre Caillet, L’art carolingien (Paris: Flammarion, 2005), pp. 206–7 and fig. 133; in Italian: Fabrizio Crivello, “‘… grecus constantinopoleos Orfanos et peregrines ….’ Artisti bizantini in ambito librario a nord delle Alpi nell’alto Medioevo,” in Michele Bacci, ed., L’artista a Bisanzio e nel mondo cristiano-orientale, Seminare e convegni 12 (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2007), pp. 255–68, in this case, unlike the others, with no mention of the legend of

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All of these textbook assertions rest on the shakiest of foundations, or none at all in some respects, and before quickly reviewing some of the problems, it is fair to say a few words about the remarkable historiography. The most venerable American art history textbook, remarkably still in print albeit much altered by later editors, was originally published by Helen Gardner in 1926 as Art through the Ages, and does not mention the Vienna Coronation Gospels.14 The fourth edition of the textbook, edited by Sumner Crosby, a medievalist at Yale, appeared in 1948, revised in 1959,15 still makes no reference to the Vienna manuscript, which first appears only in the fifth edition of 1970.16 Its universal canonicity likely stems from its appearance in the first edition of H.W. Janson’s History of Art, published in 1962, a sensational best-seller that added a Pompeiian portrait of Menander to the Vienna and Ebo Gospels pair, to show the roots of such figure style in “classical” art.17 Why, then, in the 1960s? It is not an altogether new idea, for in his 1950 Story of Art, Ernst Gombrich had made the Vienna–Ebo comparison, and focused on the accurate copying of the former and intense excitement of the latter, which made it the beginning of Western art: In pictures like these we see the emergence of a new medieval style which made it possible for art to do something that neither ancient Oriental nor classical art had done: the Egyptians had largely drawn what they knew to exist, the Greeks what they saw; in the Middle Ages the artists also learned to express in his picture what he felt.18

High praise, but there is nothing in Gombrich about Charlemagne’s tomb, or indeed any direct association of the manuscript with him, and nothing about Byzantium in any way. That comes in the 1960s. The notion of Byzantine influence on the West was boiling hot in the 1960s. Dumbarton Oaks hosted a conference on Byzantine Art and the West in 1965, with famous and hugely influential papers by Kurt Weitzmann and Ernst burial with Charlemagne, the dating to the end of the eighth century depending only on Wilhelm Koehler’s analysis of texts and script and decoration. 14   Helen Gardner, Art through the Ages: An Introduction to its History and Significance (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1926). 15   Sumner Mcnight Crosby, ed., Helen Gardner’s Art through the Ages, 4th edn. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1948; rev. edn. 1959). 16   Richard G, Tansey and Horst de la Croix, eds., Helen Gardner’s art through the Ages, 5th edn. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1970). 17   Horst W. Janson, History of Art: A Survey of the Major Visual Arts from the Dawn of History to the Present Day (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1962), pp. 202–3 and figs. 324–6. 18   Ernst H. Gombrich, The Story of Art (New York: Phaidon, distributed by Oxford University Press, 1950), pp. 114–15 and figs. 106–7, pairing the Matthew miniatures of the Vienna Coronation Gospels and Ebo Gospels.

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Kitzinger,19 and Otto Demus published his still fundamental book Byzantine Art and the West in 1970.20 The particular impact of the Vienna manuscript also reflects Wilhelm Koehler’s publication in 1960 of the third volume in his great and still ongoing corpus Die karolingischen Miniaturen, dedicated to “Die Gruppe der Krönungs-Evangeliar” and to manuscripts from Metz,21 and one should consider the impact of the two great Council of Europe exhibitions, Byzantine Art, An European Art in Athens in 1964, and Karl der Grosse/ Charlemagne in Aachen in 1965, the latter accompanied by an enormous and still fundamental four-volume collection of studies devoted to Charlemagne.22 Other important publications about Charlemagne were closely associated with these exhibitions and appeared at this time, notably Donald Bullough’s splendid Age of Charlemagne, and all include the Vienna Coronation Gospels, all conveying essentially the same information.23 Kenneth Clark’s 1969 book accompanying his wildly popular BBC television series Civilisation put Charlemagne on 19   Ernst Kitzinger, “The Byzantine Contribution to Western Art of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 20 (1966): 25–47; Kurt Weitzmann, “Various Aspects of Byzantine Influence on the Latin Countries from the Sixth to the Twelfth Century,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 20 (1966): 1–24. 20   Otto Demus, Byzantine Art and the West. The Wrightsman Lecture, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (New York: New York University Press, 1970). 21   Wilhelm Koehler, Die Gruppe des Wiener Krönungs-Evangeliars. Metzer Handschriften, Die karolingischen Miniaturen 3 (Berlin: Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, 1960). 22   Byzantine Art, an European Art (Athens: 1964), and Karl der Grosse. Werk und Wirkung (exhibition catalogue, Aachen, Rathaus, 1965; Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1965), also published in French as Charlemagne. Oeuvre, rayonnement et survivances. See Wolfgang Braunfels, Karl der Grosse. Lebenswerk und Nachleben, 4 vols. (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1965). 23   See Donald Bullough, The Age of Charlemagne (London: Paul Elek, 1965; 2nd edn., London: Ferndale, 1980), p. 159, praising the high quality of the paintings and accepting the “plausibility” that the artist was a refugee from Byzantium and/or Italy, but ignoring altogether the legend connecting the book with Charlemagne’s tomb. Other major publications dealing even more extensively with Carolingian art produced in these years were Wolfgang Braunfels, Die Welt der Karolinger und ihre Kunst (Munich: Georg D.W. Callwey, 1968), p. 369 and pl. XXXI, who never exactly endorses the tradition of Otto III finding the book in Charlemagne’s tomb as historically based, but says that the tradition shows the high regard in which it was held “seit seiner Entstehung,” which amounts to an endorsement. Jean Hubert, Jean Porcher, and Wolfgang Fritz Volbach, The Carolingian Renaissance, trans. James Emmons, Stuart Gilbert, and Robert Allen (New York: George Braziller, 1970), pp. 92–8, figs. 79–81, accept the “standard model” of Hellenistic artists and the legend of the book’s entombment with Charlemagne. Schramm and Mütherich, Denkmale der deutschen Könige und Kaiser, p. 117, no. 13, repeat the “tradition” of the discovery in Charlemagne’s tomb, and claim that it was probably an early inclusion among the Reichskleinodien, despite the lack of evidence for such a claim.

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its cover, albeit only in the form of a late medieval reliquary24—dare I say “master narrative”? The evocation of the “tradition” or “legend,” or simply using the horridly vague passive “it is said that”25 the Vienna Coronation Gospels was found in the tomb of Charlemagne is almost never accompanied by any indication of just what the source being cited might be.26 One scholar refers to the alleged tradition, but associates the opening of the tomb not with Otto III in 1000, but with Frederick II in 1215!27 That connection is not an altogether unreasonable, albeit false, inference, especially since the 1215 event was associated with the translation of Charlemagne’s relics, and clearly points to the hagiographical, not historical, thrust of the legend, a point to which I shall return. Reasonable, and false, inference has bedeviled the study of this manuscript. Christoph Gottlieb von Murr, writing in 1801, brought forward an argument for the fact that the manuscript must have been removed (my emphasis) from Charlemagne’s tomb by Otto III in 1000, on the remarkable basis that there is no evidence that it was in Charlemagne’s tomb when opened by Frederick I in 1165!28 Recounting the tradition or legend without further comment, either endorsing or rejecting the alleged tradition, implies that it has some bearing on the history of the manuscript. Most scholars are careful to make no such claim explicitly. In his fundamental study, Wilhelm Koehler does not include any reference to the tradition in his section on the history and origin of the manuscript, or its provenance, which begins as has already been stated with its presence in the Aachen Treasury in the early modern period. Koehler does not challenge the legend of burial with Charlemagne, but he neither endorses 24

  Kenneth Clark, Civilisation: A Personal View (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), front cover. 25   David Diringer, The Illuminated Book: Its History and Production (New York: Philosophical Library, 1958), p. 163: “the Charlemagne Gospel-book which is said to have been found in the tomb of this emperor.” 26   One of the few to provide a source is Charles Rufus Morey, Mediaeval Art (New York: W.W. Norton, 1942), p. 201, who attributes the story to Amadée Boinet, which seems to be incorrect; the only portion of Boinet’s La miniature carolingienne: Ses origines, Son développement (Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1913) to be published was the volume of plates, with pls. LVIII–LIX devoted to the Vienna manuscript, and it contains no statement like that reported by Morey. 27   Ludwig Christian Stacke, Deutsche Geschichte (Bielefeld and Leipzig: Velhagen and Klasing, 1888), p. 188. 28   Christoph Gottlieb von Murr, Beschreibung der ehemals zu Aachen aufbewahrten drei Kaiserlichen Krönings-Zierden des lateinischen Evangelienbuches, des arabischen Säbels Karls des Grossen, and der Capsul mit der Erde, worauf das Blut des Heiligen Stephans soll geflossen seyn (Nuremberg and Altdorf: Monath and Kussler, 1801), pp. 10–22, at pp. 21–2.

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nor indeed mentions it.29 Bernhard Bischoff, even in the context of the great Karl der Grosse exhibition at Aachen in 1965, and in a volume that he himself edited for that occasion, in his article on manuscripts produced in the time of Charlemagne, does not include any mention of the legend or tradition, and indeed has no discussion of the manuscript at all. He relegates it to a footnote that says, in unusually contorted and murky phrases, that the other manuscripts of the group ought not to be considered to date from before 810, but stops short of an explicit dating of the Vienna Coronation Gospels after 810.30 That this later date, after 810 and indeed after 814, was his own view is clear from his later and much fuller discussion of the manuscript, its paleography, and affiliations, in a subsequent article on the manuscripts associated with Charlemagne’s successor Louis the Pious.31 Rosamond McKitterick is one 29   Koehler, Karolingischen Miniaturen, vol. III, pp. 57–8. He does not mention the burial in the text, but on p. 71 he cites for the legend (Legende) of the burial with Charlemagne. Johannes Ramackers, “Das Grab Karls d. Gr. und die Frage nach dem Ursprung des Aachener Oktogons,” Historisches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft 75(1956): 123–53; this article really only addresses the issue of the location of the tomb, which it sees as dug into the ground immediately beside the altar dedicated to the Virgin Mary (and analogous to Charles the Bald’s tomb beside the main reliquary altar at St. Denis), and not the association of the book with the burial. According to Koehler, the decorated cover is the earliest evidence for the presence of the book in Aachen, and the inventories of Reichsinsignien that survive from 1246, 1350, and 1423 do not mention it unless one chooses to imagine that it is one of four books mentioned in 1246 (on this point, see F. Frensdorff, “Aus der Geschichte der deutschen Reichsinsignien,” Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Phil.-Hist. Klasse [1897], pp. 43ff.). There is no reference to the burial legend in his collected notes: Wilhelm Koehler, Buchmalerei des frühen Mittelalters. Fragmente und Entwürfe aus dem Nachlass, ed. Ernst Kitzinger and Florentine Mütherich (Munich: Prestel, 1972). These include what must be taken as his last words on the manuscript. His first words appeared as Wilhelm Köhler, “2. Abteilung: Die karolingischen Miniaturen. I. Bericht über das Jahr 1909,” in Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft. Erster Bericht über die Tätigkeit des Deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft in den Jahren 1909 und 1910 (Berlin: Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, 1911), p. 38, and “Nachtrag” at p. 80. 30   Bernhard Bischoff, “Panorama der Handschriftenüberlieferung aus der Zeit Karls des Grossen,” in Bernhard Bischoff, ed., Das geistige Leben, Karl der Grosse. Lebenswerk und Nachleben 2 (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1965), pp. 233–54, at p. 234 and n. 4, reprinted as “Manuscripts in the Age of Charlemagne,” in Bernhard Bischoff, Manuscripts and Libraries in the Age of Charlemagne, trans. Michael Gorman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 20–55, at p. 21 and n. 4: “Wie gross die Kluft zwischen der Stilrichtung des Wiener Krönungsevangeliars und der Hofschule (AdaGruppe) auch ist, so scheint mir die betonte Kontrastierung ihrer Unzialschriften durch Koehler (3, 49ff.) nicht gerechtfertig. Wie ich an anderer Stelle ausführen werde, muss ich die Enststehung der Evangeliare von Aachen, Brescia und Brüssel vor 810 (Koehler 3, 53), ja, überhaupt in Karls Regierungszeit, bezweifeln.” 31   Bernhard Bischoff, “Die Hofbibliothek unter Ludwig dem Frommen,” in J.J.G. Alexander and Margaret T. Gibson, eds., Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays Presented to Richard William

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of the few scholars who have paid serious attention to Bischoff ’s views, and she too excludes the Vienna Coronation Gospels from her book devoted to Charlemagne, which has a laudably full and sensitive discussion of book production associated with him.32 Some scholars made explicit what most leave implicit, namely that in their view, the legend provides reliable evidence that the manuscript was produced during the reign of Charlemagne and in close association with him and his court. Koehler and Bischoff avoided doing so, but others were not so circumspect. Carl Nordenfalk wrote that “Otto III found it on the knees of the dead Charlemagne when in the year 1000 he had the imperial sepulcher at Aachen opened, and in fact we are justified in assuming it was made in the last years of the emperor’s life.”33 David Robb also makes the legend of discovery in Charlemagne’s tomb a terminus ante quem for the production of the manuscript before 814: it is said to have been found on the knees of the dead Charlemagne when his sepulchre was opened in 1000 by Otto III. If it were, as seems to be the case, a personal volume of the emperor, it could not have been executed after his death in 814.34

Robb seems to follow Nordenfalk so closely here (both helpfully point out that the corpse of Charlemagne in his tomb was in fact “dead”), with slight alteration of words, and in a strange but common way, the details become more certain and expansive in the re-telling. See the remarks on this phenomenon in a book on the Pisa Tower by Nicholas Shrady discussing the extraordinary popularity of the myth that Galileo Galilei dropped differently sized objects from the Pisa campanile in order to test gravity, elaborated with increasingly persuasive details in later re-telling.35 Most scholars have dropped the Galileo legend now as a baseless, albeit charming, myth, and it is time and past time to do the same with the legend of the Vienna Coronation Gospels having been discovered in Charlemagne’s tomb. Doing so clears the way for an examination of what scholarship can usefully say about an undeniably interesting manuscript. But Hunt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 3–22, reprinted as “The Court Library under Louis the Pious,” in Bernhard Bischoff, Manuscripts and Libraries in the Age of Charlemagne, pp. 76–92, at pp. 79–86. 32   McKitterick, Charlemagne, pp. 350–51. 33   Carl Nordenfalk, Early Medieval Book Illumination (the separate publication extracted from Early Medieval Painting with A. Grabar) (Geneva: Skira and New York: Rizzoli, 1988 [after the 1957 original publication]), p. 60. 34   David M. Robb, The Art of the Illuminated Manuscript (London: Thomas Yoseloff, and South Brunswick and New York: A.S. Barnes, 1973), p. 111. 35   Nicholas Shrady, Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa (New York: Penguin, 2003), esp. pp. 95–114.

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one must first consider how so implausible a legend can have developed in the first place, and become enshrined in modern scholarship. Having spent much time looking into the many scholarly references to the book,36 I have found only one scholar who cites the “tradition” and gives a specific reference noting whence it stems: Samuel Berger. In his 1893 study of early manuscripts of the Vulgate, Berger wrote that this is the “livre d’évangiles que l’on prétend avoir été trouvé sur les genoux de Charlemagne, lorsque Othon III ouvrit son tombeau,” and gives in a footnote as his source, Barthémy Fisen’s 1696 history of the church of Liège.37 Fisen’s history is revealing, for it links the notion of a book found on Charlemagne’s knees when his tomb was opened with Charlemagne’s alleged work on correcting the text of the Gospels shortly before his death early in 814. The latter story stems from a misreading of Thegan’s Life of Louis the Pious, recently translated and annotated by Tom Noble, who rightly observed that “nothing is known about the biblical scholarship [by Charlemagne] mentioned here.” Noble plausibly suggests that this claim might stem from confusion or amalgamation with the editorial work carried out by Alcuin and Theodulf in the preceding decades, around, if not necessarily for, Charlemagne. Charlemagne’s death is narrated in the subsequent paragraph of Thegan, ending with an account similar to that of Einhard, stating that Charlemagne was buried on the day of his death in the chapel Charlemagne had built at Aachen.38 As Noble notes, although no manuscript of Thegan’s work is earlier than the eleventh century, it survives in 17 manuscripts, and is often circulated together with Einhard’s well-known work, so it could have exerted some influence on later writers. Thegan’s work had been printed already by 36

  The bibliography cited by Koehler is very much incomplete, and gives little sense of the numerous citations in earlier literature, for which one should consult Odilo (recte, not Otto as in Koehler) Gatzweiler, “Die liturgischen Handschriften des Aachener Münsterstiftes,” Zeitschrift des Aachener Geshichtsvereins 46 (1926): 26–31. 37   Samuel Berger, Histoire de la Vulgate pendant les premiers siècles du moyen age (Paris: Hachette, 1893), pp. 275–77, at p. 275. Barthémy Fisen, Sancta legia Romanae Ecclesiae filia, sive historiarum ecclesiae Leodiensis partes duae (Liège: Guilielmum Henricum Streel, 1696), p. 157: “Manibus evangeliorum tenebat codicem laminis aureis contectum et ia caeruleo papyro aureis exaratum litteris. Ipsius Caroli emendates opera studioque fertur, atque ille ipse in ecclesia hodieque servatur, quo coatacto solemne est Caesares dum inauguratur, suo jurejurando fidem confirmare.” 38   For the passage quoted and summarized here, see Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, pp. 194–218, at p. 198. For the text, see Georg Heinrich Pertz, ed., “Thegani vita Hludowici imperatoris,” in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptorum 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1829; reprint Stuttgart and New York: Anton Hiersemann and Kraus, 1963), pp. 585–603, at p. 592, ch. 7, and Thegan, “Gesta Hludowici imperatoris, “ in Ernst Tremp, Thegan, Die Taten Kaiser Ludwigs (Gesta Hludowici imperatoris). Astronomus, Das Leben Kaiser Ludwigs (Vita Hludowici Imperatoris), MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatism editi 64 (Hanover: Hahn, 1995), pp. 184–7, ch. 7.

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Pierre Pithou in 1594, and was reprinted twice in the seventeenth century, and it is likely that one of these printed editions was the source for that portion of the statement by Fisen in 1696.39 This does not explain the other portion of Fisen’s statement, the one that most concerns us, that Charlemagne was found by Otto III with a golden Gospels manuscript in his hand and on his knees, a Gospels that was written in golden letters on caerulian (blue) papyrus (paper? parchment?). Where did Fisen get this idea? As many scholars have recently discussed, we have four eleventh-century sources for Otto III opening the tomb of Charlemagne in 1000. None of the four mentions a book having been found in the tomb, and they vary widely among themselves and are of varyingly dubious historical value. John Moffitt recently studied the question, providing also convenient translations of the important textual passages into English.40 In an important study with the original sources and German translations of them by Knut Görich, a compelling case is made that the stories are all using hagiographic topoi to describe not only the tomb arrangements, but also the discovery itself (its location was unknown, for example, as well as the incorrupt body, and so on).41 Despite the absence of any mention of a book in connection with Charlemagne’s tomb when opened in 1000, images of the “discovery” of 1000 in the nineteenth century showed a manuscript on the lap of 39   For the transmission of the text, see Ernst Tremp, Studien zu den Gesta Hludowici imperatoris des Trierer Chorbischofs Thegan, MCH Schriften 32 (Hanover: Hahn, 1988), esp. pp. 172–3 on the early printed editions. The editio princeps is Pierre Pithou, “Opus Thegani chorespiscopi Trevirensis de gestis domini Lodewici imperatoris,” in Annalium et historiae Francorum ab anno Christi DCVIII ad annum DCCCCXC, Scriptores Coaetanei XII (Paris, 1588), pp. 93–136, and Frankfurt am Main (1594), pp. 291–321. This edition was reprinted in André Duchesne, Historiae Francorum scriptores coaetanei (Paris, 1636), vol. 2, 273–85, and again in Johann Heinrich Boeckler, Aeneae Silvii Historia rerum Friderici tertii imperatoris … Subiuncti sunt praeterea alii ad Germanicarum historiam pertinentes scriptores (Strasbourg, 1685), pp. 69–81. 40   John F. Moffitt, The Enthroned Corpse of Charlemagne: The Lord-in-Majesty Theme in Early Medieval Art and Life ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), esp. pp. 80–98. 41   Knut Görich, “Otto III. öffnet das Karlsgrab in Aachen. Überlegungen zu Heiligenverehrung, Heiligsprechung und Traditionsbildung,” in Gerd Althoff and Ernst Schubert, eds., Herrschaftsrepräsentation im Ottonischen Sachsen, Vorträge und Forschungen XLVI (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1998), pp. 381–430. This view is endorsed by Gerd Althoff, Otto III, trans. Phyllis G. Jestice (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), pp. 104–7, who finds this essentially hagiographic reading of the story preferable to the older political reading. See also Eliza Garrison, “Otto III at Aachen,” Peregrinations 3(1) (Summer 2010), pp. 83–137, esp. pp. 114–16 on the tomb at Aachen, with the interesting observation that certainly the sources describing Otto’s opening of the tomb of Charlemagne, and perhaps Otto himself in doing so, were using as a “template” Suetonius’ Life of Augustus, one of Einhard’s important sources for his Vita Karoli, with Augustus opening the tomb of Alexander at Alexandria. See the discussion of the same issues in Eliza Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art and Portraiture: The Artistic Patronage of Otto III and Henry II (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 63–4.

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the emperor. The best-known of these is the 1847 fresco by Alfred Rethel in the Krönungsfestsaal of the Rathaus in Aachen, showing Otto III kneeling before the enthroned corpse of Charlemagne, which presents Charlemagne holding a scepter in his right hand and an orb in his left, and with a large book open on his knees (Plate 5).42The presence of this heroic image in so prominent a location may well have played a role in the widespread adoption of this legend as historical, but again, one must wonder whence stemmed this idea, which is absent from all the medieval narrative sources. The best and best-known and earliest source for the burial of Charlemagne is in Einhard’s Vita Karoli. In Einhard, we are fortunate to have a source who had been closely associated with Charlemagne during the latter’s lifetime, and whose widely circulated life was written within at most two decades of the latter’s death. Einhard knows nothing of burial with a book, or of burial seated upright.43 According to Einhard, Charlemagne “had provided no instructions on the matter” of where and how he might be buried, but “everyone [unspecified, but apparently a large number of people] agreed” that he should be buried in the basilica (sic) dedicated to Christ and the Virgin, and “he was buried there on the same day he died, and a gilded image and inscription was erected over the tomb,” an inscription which Einhard transcribes. If we take Einhard literally, we must assume that the arch with image (of whom or what?!—surely not of the king. How one wishes Einhard would have specified!) and inscription were added later, after the king’s death but before Einhard wrote his biography, whenever that was, within a few years, or at most a few decades, of the event.44 It is difficult to imagine that Einhard is here inventing such details of the burial, since at least some, and the most important, of his readers would know Aachen and would instantly know whether the report of an inscribed arch over Charlemagne’s tomb was inaccurate. It would be difficult to “lose” such a burial place, as some of the later legends about Otto III’s rediscovery appear to suggest. Moreover, recent studies make clear that the kind of burial suggested by Einhard, and so different from that envisaged by the legends associated with Otto III, was characteristic of Frankish and other Western royal burials of the period, without developed ritual or elaborate preparation of the corpse and without insignia, precisely 42

  Illustrated and discussed in Moffitt, Enthroned Corpse, pp. 8–10 and fig. 2. For a monograph on Rethel and his frescoes, see D. Hoffmann, Die Karlsfresken Alfred Rethel (Augsburg: Blasaditsch, 1968). For a color reproduction, see Ernst Günther Grimme, Der Karlsschrein und der Marienschrein im Aachener Dom (Aachen: Einhard, 2002), p. 11 and fig. 2. According to Grimme, Rethel’s fresco is based on the sagenhaften Bericht of Thietmar von Merseburg about Otto II opening the tomb, although Grimme does not mention that although Rethel depicted a book on the knees of the corpse, Thietmar said nothing upon which this might have been based. 43   See Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, pp. 46–50. 44   See ibid., pp. 9–11, for a succinct and judicious summary of the various opinions, ranging from 817 to 830 or thereabouts.

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those aspects that are presupposed by the much later legendary sources.45 Early medieval burials with books are unknown to me beyond a single example, which may be the apparent exception that proves the rule. I refer to the small copy of the Gospel according to John found in the tomb of St. Cuthbert when it was opened in 1827. It was most likely placed in the tomb not when Cuthbert died in 687, but when his body was translated to the church at Lindisfarne in 698, so it is not a burial with book, but a subsequent deposit of a book in a tomb, in the tomb of a recognized saint. Its presence is mentioned in accounts of the translation of Cuthbert and his relics at Durham in 1104, and accounts of that event might have played some role in the development of the “legend” that Charlemagne’s tomb also contained a book.46 One account of the burial of Charlemagne does accord with the later legend rather than with Einhard, however, and it is this account that is probably the chief culprit in the development of the story of Charlemagne’s burial with a book open on his knees. Adhémar of Chabannes is one of the four eleventhcentury sources for Otto’s opening of the tomb in 1000, and it is true that he does not there, in Book III, ch. 31 of his Chronicle, mention a book.47 However, in an earlier passage, in Book II, ch. 25, in which he describes the death and burial of Charlemagne, he wrote that Charlemagne’s body was incensed (aromatizatum) and placed upright on a golden throne with a golden Gospels manuscript (evangelium) in his hands and on his knees (in manibus et genibus).48 This is by far the earliest iteration of the “legend” of such a book-equipped burial for Charlemagne, and likely among the sources for Fisen’s statement in 1696. Like Thegan’s Life of Louis the Pious, the source for Charlemagne as Gospel text corrector at the end of his life, Adhémar’s work was printed several times before 1696, the earliest edition, again by Pierre Pithou, limited to Book II (containing the crucial passage on Charlemagne’s burial with a book), from 1588, and the first (nearly) complete edition, containing both passages 45

  See Janet L. Nelson, “Carolingian Royal Funerals,” in Mayke de Jong and Frans Theuws with Carine van Rhijn, eds., Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 131–84, esp. pp. 145–53 on Charlemagne’s burial, based in part on Alain Dierkens, “Le tombeau de Charlemagne,” Byzantion 61 (1991): 156–80. 46   London, British Library, Add. MS 89,000 (until 2011, it was owned by the English Province of the Society of Jesus at Stonyhurst College, then on extended loan to the British Library as Loan MS 74). The most recent study is by Martin Werner, “The Binding of the Stonyhurst Gospel of St. John and St. John,” in Colum Hourihane, ed., Insular and Anglo-Saxon Art and Thought in the Early Medieval Period (Princeton, NJ: Index of Christian Art, in association with Penn State University Press, 2011), pp. 286–311. 47   Pierre Bourgain with Richard Landes and Georges Pon, eds., Ademari Cabannensis Chronicon, Corpus Christianorum 129 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), p. 153. 48   Ibid., p. 111.

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bearing on Charlemagne’s tomb, in 1657.49 Fisen’s 1696 statement that when Otto III opened Charlemagne’s tomb he found a luxury Gospels manuscript on Charlemagne’s knees, the earliest such statement known to me, could stem from Fisen having conflated the two separate stories presented by Thegan and Adhémar. Support for such a reconstruction of the development of the legend is provided by von Murr’s 1801 description of the Vienna Coronation Gospels, which gives the “text-correcting story” explicitly derived from Thegan and the book-on-knees story explicitly cited from the “monk of Angoulême,” Adhémar of Chabannes.50 Where did Adhémar find a source for his account of Charlemagne’s burial and tomb? He probably had some oral sources from Germany, who would have told him that the tomb had been opened, and provided some other accounts of events to the east.51 Adhémar exhibited great interest indeed in Charlemagne and his tomb at Aachen, and even inserted a drawing of the Palace Chapel with Charlemagne’s tomb in one of the texts he copied, and illustrated, in his own hand, in his rescript of Einhard’s Vita Karoli (Plate 6). As its discoverer, Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, noted, the drawing shows no sign of familiarity with Aachen, which Adhémar had never visited, beyond the vague presence of a tall rotunda. The drawing of the tomb has nothing to do with either of Adhémar’s two textual descriptions of it, and seems little more than a frame for the inscription identifying Charlemagne’s place of burial. Gaborit-Chopin concluded that the drawing tells us nothing about Aachen, but gives a striking indication of the intense interest in Charlemagne at the beginning of the eleventh century.52 It 49

  See ibid., pp. LVIII–LX. Pierre Pithou, “Caroli magni Francorum regis vita,” in Annalium et Historiae Francorum ab anno DCCVIII ad annum DCCCXC scriptores coetanei XII (Paris: Claude Chapellet, 1588), vol. II, pp. 6–81 (bk. II of Adémar only), and Philippe Labbe, Nova bibliotheca manusriptorum librorum (Paris: S. Cramoisy, 1657), pp. 151–85 (bk. III only), chs. 1 and 16–70. 50   Von Murr, Beschreibung, pp. 16 and 21 respectively. On ibid., p. 16, he says that according to Thegan, “Der fromme Karl sah selbst in seinen letzten Lebensjahren vergleichen Codices durch, und corrigirte sie,” and then quotes the passage from Thegan’s chapter. Later, he quotes the “Monachus Egolismensis” (Adhemar of Chabanne): “Corpus eius aromatizatum est, et in sede aurea sedens positum est, in curuatura sepulchri, ense aureo accinctus, Euangelium aureum tenens in manibus et genibus, reclinatis humeris in cathedra, et capite honeste erecto ligato aure datena da diadema, et in diademate lignum s. crucis positum est.” 51   As suggested by Bourgain et al., eds., Ademari Chronicon, p. LXIX. 52   Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, cod. Reg. lat. 263, fol. 235r. See Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, “Un dessin de l’église d’Aix-la-Chapelle par Adémar de Chabannes dans un manuscrit de la Bibliothèque Vaticane,” Cahiers Archéologiques 14 (1964): 233–5, fig. 1. For discussion of Adhémar’s drawings, the fundamental study remains Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, “Les dessins d’Adhémar de Chabannes,” Bulletin archéologique du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques n.s. 3 (1967): 163–225, this drawing at 218 and fig. 38.

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does indeed, but it still does not explain the motif of a book’s presence in the tomb of Charlemagne, asserted by Adhémar. With Adhémar, one need not always reckon with a source, for he is one of the most inventive writers of the medieval period, finding and inventing being much the same for him, and allowing considerable scope for his own embroidered enrichment of his sources. Some years ago, Stephen Nichols studied Adhémar’s treatment of Charlemagne’s tomb in a chapter entitled “Charlemagne Redivivus,” and is clear that Adhémar’s accounts are “invention-as-story.” Nichols describes how the invented story relates to another of Adhémar’s many obsessions, Jerusalem, where the monk went on pilgrimage in 1033, hoping to be there for the end of the world, and where he died.53 Whatever one thinks of his pious motivations, in relation to less pious causes, he made things up, including the dossier of texts designed to prove the apostolicity of the patron saint of Limoges, St. Martial.54 It is difficult to imagine a less reliable source than Adhémar, especially when his account in one place differs form his own accounts (and his own drawings!) elsewhere, and from all the other sources, as well as being wildly implausible, and patently serving his own interest in Charlemagne as a cult figure.55 It is Adhémar alone who introduces the hagiographic motif into the Otto III legend that that emperor’s search for Charlemagne’s tomb was prompted by a dream, and that its location was unknown.56 Still, Adhémar must have had something in mind when he made up the story of an enthroned Charlemagne holding a book, and here the pictorial, iconographic, evidence may be very significant. Richard Landes published one of the drawings by Adhémar, presenting Charlemagne as a frontal head, within a medallion set at the beginning of Einhard’s Vita Karoli, inscribed “Karolus,” and showing a figure with long hair and beard (Plate 7).57 In Landes’s view, the pose of Charlemagne, full-face, is normally reserved for Christ. That statement seems to me more sweeping than justified by the evidence, 53

  Stephen G. Nichols, Jr., Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983),pp. 66–94. 54   See, in general, Richard Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History: Ademar of Chabennes, 989–1034 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), esp. pp. 269–84. 55   For Adhémar’s presentation of Otto III opening Charlemagne’s tomb, see Daniel F. Callahan, “Al-Hākim, Charlemagne and Ademar,” in Matthew Gabriele and Jace Stuckey, eds., The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages: Power, Faith, and Crusade (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 41–7, at p. 47. 56   Bourgain et al., eds., Ademari Chronicon, p. 153: “Oto imperator per somnum monitus est ut leveret corpus Caoli Magni imperatoris, quod Aquis humatus erat; sed vetustate obliterante, ignorabatur locus certus ubi quiescabat.” 57   Paris, BnF, cod. lat. 5943A, fol. 5r. See Landes, Relics, pp. 366–8 and fig. 14, and GaboritChopin, “Dessins,” pp. 217–18 and fig. 37.

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but Landes’s basic point, that Adhémar’s image of Charlemagne links him with Christ, seems just. That this type is used elsewhere for Christ by Adhémar is clear from other drawings, for example two pages with the Crucifixion and Kiss of Judas, and the Deposition and Nativity respectively.58 Most interesting is another of Adhémar’s drawings, an image of his patron saint, Bishop Eparchius of Angoulême, opening a set of texts dedicated to Eparchius taken from Gregory of Tours’s Historia francorum or composed afresh by Adhémar himself (Plate 8).59 The image depicts Eparchius enthroned at half-length, holding an open book in his left hand resting on his left knee. The figure is identified by inscription, as is the small figure peering in from beside the saint’s right hand and crozier, inscribed with Adhémar’s own name, a kind of self-portrait. The facial features of the saint, with long hair and long, pointed beard, is the same type used for the images of Charlemagne and also of Christ in Adhémar’s drawings. Granted, Adhémar was not a highly skilled draftsman, but this coincidence of types cannot be dismissed as merely representing Adhémar’s only facial type, for Adhémar himself is depicted quite differently, as are most of the other figures. Clearly, the type is Adhémar’s scheme for a highly important religious figure, his patron Eparchius, Christ, and Charlemagne, and the pose he invented for Charlemagne’s burial, upright and enthroned with book in hand and on knee, is exactly what he used for his image of Eparchius. Is Eparchius’ image made to look like Charlemagne’s actual manner of internment, or the converse? Clearly, the latter alternative should be preferred. Adhémar’s description of Charlemagne’s burial and re-discovery is full of hagiographical motifs, and no medieval evidence supports its accuracy. It is certainly true that images of enthroned Carolingian kings—not Charlemagne himself, in fact, but Charles the Bald and other successors—presented frontally enthroned figures, and these might have played some role in Adhémar’s invention of the upright burial of Charlemagne, as indeed they have played a role in modern scholarly attempts to picture the burial described by Adhémar and other texts relating to the tomb’s discovery,60 but to the best of my knowledge none of these images show the king 58

  Leiden, University Library, cod. Voss. 8o 15, fols. 3v and 2v respectively. See Landes,

Relics, pp. 359–360 and figs. 10–11, and for a broader discussion, Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, La decoration des manuscrits à Saint-Martial de Limoges et en Limousin du IXe au XIIe siècle (Paris and Geneva: Droz, 1969), pp. 52–3 and fig. 51. 59   Paris, BnF cod. Lat. 3784, fol. 99v. See Landes, Relics, pp. 107, 116, and frontispiece illustration, and Gaborit-Chopin, “Dessins,” p. 209 and fig. 33. 60   Mario Kramp, Kirche, Kunst und Königsbild. Zum Zusammenhang von Politik und Kirchenbau im capetingischen Frankreich des 12. Jahrhunderts am Beispiel der drei Abteien Saint-Denis, Saint-Germain-des-Prés und Saint-Remi/Reims (Weimar: Verlag und Datenbank fur Geisteswissenschaften, 1995), esp. pp. 331–2 and figs. 77–8. On this conception, and for a twelfth-century example of scholarly confusion between throne and tomb derived from a garbled

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holding a book.61 It is likely that Adhémar’s use of the enthroned figure with book motif derives from Carolingian images of Christ, whether alone, as in the Godescalc Evangelistary, or surrounded by images of the Evangelists, as in the composition in the Aachen Treasury Gospels closely associated with the Vienna Coronation Gospels and in many other examples,62 as noted already by Nichols and by Moffitt,63 or images of enthroned saints, of which that of St. Foy from Conques is the best-known example.64 How did early modern scholars come to believe in the “legend”? There was a source, Adhémar, for Charlemagne having been buried with a book, indeed a luxurious Gospels book, with golden letters on blue pages. There was a Gospel book used for the coronation rites of the (then Holy) Roman Empire, of which Charlemagne was regarded as the founder, with golden letters on colored pages. That book was first “discovered” at Aachen, and although the other coronation regalia were kept in Nuremberg, the book was still kept at Aachen until its removal in 1798 and transfer to Vienna after a brief stop in Paderborn.65 On its cover was an image that was thought by many to represent Charlemagne. The book seemed to date from the early medieval—indeed, from the Carolingian—period, and was in every respect a likely candidate for the book that they “knew,” from Thegan, that Charlemagne had been working on at the time of his death. It was a splendid manuscript, with purple leaves and golden letters, which they associated with royal patronage (as is often, but by no means uniformly, the case). The description of the alleged burial seemed perhaps more like that of a saint than that of a ruler, but then, after all, Charlemagne was a saint, albeit only recognized as such a few centuries later. It was a “tradition” accepted by everyone and challenged by no one, so was deemed to be probably reliable. Finally, it provided a good story, vivid and dramatic, and connected the and misleading tradition leading to a few royal upright tomb figures in the twelfth century, see Lawrence Nees, “The Fastigium of Saint-Remi (‘The Tomb of Archbishop Hincmar’),” in Robert A. Maxwell, ed., Representing History, 1000–1300: Art, Music, History (University Park, PA: Penn State, 2010), pp. 31–52 and 211–22. 61   See Percy Ernst Schramm, Die deutschen Kaiser und Könige in Bildern ihrer Zeit 751–1190, ed. Florentine Mütherich (rev. edn., Munich: Prestel, 1983). 62   Marie-Pierre Laffitte, Charlotte Denoël, and Patricia Roger, “L’évangeliaire de Charlemagne,” Art de l’enluminure 20 (March–April–May 2007), and Lawrence Nees, “Godescalc’s Career and the Problems of ‘Influence,’” in John Lowden and Alixe Bovey, eds., Under the Influence: The Concept of Influence and the Study of Illuminated Manuscripts (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 21–43. On Christ in Majesty, see Anne-Orange Poilpré, Maiestas Domini. Une image de l’Église en Occident Ve–IXe siècle (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2005), with the extensive earlier literature. 63   Nichols, Romanesque Signs, p. 82, and Moffitt, Enthroned Corpse, p. 93. 64   Ibid., fig. 37. 65   Koehler, Kar. Min., vol. III, p. 57.

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medieval and modern worlds, a story perhaps too good to be true, but also too good to resist. This essay is intended, as the title says, as a prolegomenon to a study of the Vienna Coronation Gospels—a prelude to a study,66 not a proper study itself. The Vienna Coronation Gospels is an interesting manuscript, and deserves to be studied in detail. It is surprising that no one has ever published a book or even an article devoted to this famous manuscript,67 but less surprising when one realizes that for half a century or more no one has seen it, and there is no digital facsimile or even microfilm of the entire manuscript. We have long desperately needed a full-scale facsimile project, ideally involving a team of scholars including specialists in script, text, and conservation as well as history and art history. For what we actually can know about the Vienna manuscript, we still must depend upon Koehler’s description, and his illustrations, all of which, sadly, are in black and white. For color illustrations, we depend on a few made available from earlier publications, going back to the remarkable colored lithographs published as early as 1856,68 for to the best of my knowledge there is no facsimile, indeed no microfilm, no original set of digital images. Few have been permitted to examine the manuscript since Koehler, who manifestly made a detailed study from the original, although when this was carried out is not known, at least to me. I believe that Otto Demus had also examined it, having access because after 1946, for several decades he was the president of the Austrian Bundesdenkmalamt.69 It was with great pleasure, therefore, that I recently learned that Faksimile Verlag Luzern has announced plans for a full-color facsimile of the Vienna Coronation Gospels, as Das Krönungsevangeliar des Heiligen Römischen Reiches, to be published initially with a reprint of Wilhelm Koehler’s description and analysis published in 1960, edited by Fabrizio Crivello, and eventually to be followed by a commentary volume by a team of scholars under the direction of Franz Kirchweger, with Florentine Mütherich, Hermann Fillitz, Fabrizio 66

  The choice of chapter title is a nod of respect to Otto Brendel, Prolegomena to a Study of Roman Art, ed. Jerome J. Pollitt (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979), but also an example of something that looks like an antique survival but is in fact a modern neologic invention. See Oxford English Dictionary for the first usage in English, in 1682. 67   A Google search turned up one that I thought I had somehow missed, but Lambert M. Surhone, Mariam T. Tennoe, and Susan F. Henssonow, eds., Vienna Coronation Gospels: Gospel Book, Illuminated Manuscript, Charlemagne, Otto III (Beau Bassin, Mauritius: VDM Publishing, 2010), is simply a reprint of the listed Wikipedia articles! 68   Joseph Ritter von Arneth, “Über das Evangeliarium Karls des Grossen in der K. K. Schatzkammer,” Denkschriften der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Classe 13 (Vienna: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1864), pp. 85–134, pls. I–V. 69   An esteemed colleague, Judson Emerick, has related to me that Demus showed him the manuscript during a visit to Vienna, but he made no study of it.

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Crivello, and Matthias Exner.70 At the time of writing (Summer 2013), the facsimile itself had just appeared, but since it is extremely expensive and rare, I have not had an opportunity to examine it, and the commentary volume was expected to appear in late 2013. The website announcing the publication repeats, and if anything intensifies, the received communis opinio, suggesting that the manuscript can be firmly dated to c. 795, that it was made for Charlemagne’s personal use and was buried with him in 814, was discovered when his tomb was opened by Otto III in 1000, and was used as the Schwurbibel for the imperial oath-taking during the coronation ritual since the twelfth century at the latest. Such views may well not be shared by the authors participating in the commentary volume, which can only be eagerly awaited by all interested in the manuscript and its many aspects and problems. It is devoutly to be wished that with this facsimile publication, some of the many issues and problems concerning the Vienna Coronation Gospels can begin to be addressed on the basis of adequate information. For example, as part of his extended discussion of the possible role of “strangers” from the Greek East in the production of the Vienna Coronation Gospels, Otto Demus wrote at length about the technique used in the paintings of the book, which he related to that employed in Byzantine manuscripts, which showed a similar tendency for the pigment to separate from the book in flakes.71 Only a detailed and literally microscopic study by specialists can ascertain what materials were used and how they were used, and then perhaps make comparisons to Greek manuscripts. Is this phenomenon truly related to a special technique, or merely a statement of the manuscript’s condition? Lots of Western manuscripts of the period have flaking pigment, including, among many others, the Abbeville Gospels from the so-called “Court School” (also know as the “Ada Group”) associated with Charlemagne.72 What pigment was used to make the leaves purple? It is commonly assumed that all such purple comes from the murex whelk, “Tyrian purple,” but the few manuscripts that have been examined appear, with one notable exception, to show no trace of a pigment produced by shellfish.73 Where 70

  See http://www.faksimile.de/ (accessed October 24, 2012). The facsimile has now been published: Franz Kirchweger, Florentine Mütherich, Hermann Fillitz, Fabrizio Crivello and Mathias Exner, eds., Krönungsevangeliar des Heiligen Römischen Reiches (Munich: Faksimile Verlag, 2012). 71   Demus, Byzantine Art and the West, pp. 64–5. 72   Abbeville, Bibliothèque municipale, cod. 4. Some of the pages are in better condition than others, but even the most commonly reproduced, the Matthew miniature, shows substantial flaking on the drapery, and especially clearly on the platform beneath the evangelist’s feet; see, for example, Hubert, Porcher and Volbach, Carolingian Renaissance, pl. 77. The flaking is much more evident on the miniatures showing Mark and Luke, which to the best of my knowledge have not been reproduced in color. 73   See Cheryl Porter, “The Identification of Purple in Manuscripts,” in Jo Kirby, ed., Dyes in History and Archaeology 21, Including Papers Presented at the 21st Meeting, Held at Avignon and

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does the Vienna Coronation Gospels fit? What is its relationship to the group of luxury manuscripts identified by Koehler as the Court School, the Hofschule, of Charlemagne? What is the nature of the connection with the manuscripts of Reims, since there is clearly some basis for the connection made in recent textbooks? Koehler himself believed that an important Gospels manuscript made in Reims probably not before the later 820s (now in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, cod. lat. 265, and sometimes known as the Hurault Gospels) was directly modeled on the Vienna Coronation Gospels.74 He does not address the issue of how this could have been the case had the Vienna manuscript been after 814 in Charlemagne’s tomb, but more recently, Marie Hélène Tesnière has drawn the obvious conclusion that such cannot have been the fate of the Vienna manuscript.75 The strong relationship with this slightly later manuscript from Reims led such important scholars as Georg Swarzenski to suggest that the Vienna Coronation Gospels was itself a product of the Reims writing center.76 Comparison of the miniatures depicting the Evangelist Matthew in the two manuscripts (Plates 9 and 10) supports Koehler’s statement that the relationship between the two, extending even to details in the treatment of the drapery and of the seat and lectern and inkhorn and the illegible gibberish written on the open book where many contemporary manuscripts have legible texts, is so close that a direct dependence of one upon the other must be considered far more likely than either coincidence or some intermediary—the infamous “lost model” often invoked by art historians. Indeed, there are changes, most obviously in the colors used, and the Paris manuscript, probably the later in date, is no slavish imitator, correcting the Vienna Evangelist’s five fingers (without visible thumb) to the usual Lauris, France, 10–13 October 2002 (London: Archetype Productions, 2008), pp. 59–64. For a brief discussion of some larger issues, see also Lawrence Nees, “Blue behind Gold: The Inscription of the Dome of the Rock and its Relatives,” in Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair, eds., “And Diverse are Their Hues”: Color in Islamic Art and Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), pp. 152–73. 74   Koehler, Buchmalerei, p. 140. On the manuscript, see Wilhelm Koehler and Florentine Mütherich, Die Schule von Reims. Erster Teil von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des 9. Jahrhunderts, Die karolingischen Miniaturen 6(1) (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 1994), esp. pp. 159–66 and pls. 105–12, and Marie-Pierre Laffitte and Charlotte Denoël, eds., Trésors carolingiens. Livres manuscrits de Charlemagne à Charles le Chauve (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2007), no. 43, pp. 175–77, which notes the relationship and also observes that the notion of the Vienna Coronation Gospels having been found on the knees of Charlemagne by Otto III is “une tradition infondée.” This is one of the very few publications that explicitly doubts the reliability of the legendary account. 75   Marie Hélène Tesnière, ed., Trésors de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, vol. I, Mémoires et merveilles VIIIe–XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1996), p. 61. 76   Georg Swarzenski, “Die karolingische Malerei und Plastik in Reims,” Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen 23 (1902): 81–100.

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four found on human beings.77 The implications of this relationship and many other issues concerning the famous and fascinating manuscript known as the Vienna Coronation Gospels await and deserve renewed consideration without the clutter of a tradition of modern scholarship that should be recognized as a modern myth.

77

  This awkward detail in the Vienna page, usually effusively praised for its complete mastery of Hellenistic and/or classical style, was previously noted, as far as I have found, only by Alfred Woltmann, “Die Malerei des Mittelalters,” in Alfred Woltmann and Karl Woermann, Geschichte der Malerei (Leipzig: E.A. Seemann, 1878), vol. I, pp. 203–5, at p. 204. Although the classical style of the painting is highly praised, here there is no mention of the discovery in Charlemagne’s tomb, and no certainty that the manuscript dates from his time.

Chapter 13

Toward Evolution: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and the Receptions of the Libri Carolini in the Seventeenth Century1 Karl F. Morrison Gigantic, shapeless, and dimensionless though it is, a mentalité is a work of art. Thomas Kuhn’s (1922–1996) achievement was to demonstrate that mentalités, or “world-views,” were based on presuppositions and assumptions—beliefs that communities, or a majority of their members, took for granted as facts.2 That underlying, patterning framework, or paradigm, could be changed, but only at the risk, or cost, of shattering the coherence of the world as society or culture had known it, and throwing the shards of the old paradigm into the melting-pot. Kuhn’s task was to provide a way to understand that the price of abandoning an old paradigm was far too great to be borne until a new paradigm had been invented, repeatedly tested, and found far superior to the old in solving lifechallenging problems without throwing up a new set of deadly riddles. Not only did it have to be tried and proven, it also had to be widely disseminated, indeed 1

  Thomas F.X. Noble has written a number of splendid publications in which he has set his mark on research concerning the Libri/Opus and its putative author, Charlemagne, both living and legendary. Weightiest of all is Thomas F.X. Noble, Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), pp. 158–74, esp. pp. 162–9 (composition of the Libri/Opus), pp. 208–9 (Theodulf of Orléans’s historical sense), pp. 236–40 (first beginnings of the idealization of Charlemagne), and pp. 158–74 and 178–206 (contesting Byzantine orthodoxy). An earlier article is directly germane to the Libri/Opus nomenclature: “From the Libri Carolini to the Opus Caroli Regis,” Journal of Medieval Latin 9 (1999): 131–47. On the refabrication of Charlemagne the man into Charlemagne the legend, see Thomas F.X. Noble, “Greatness Contested and Confirmed: The Raw Materials of the Charlemagne Legend,” in Matthew Gabriele and Jace Stuckey, eds., The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 3–22. 2   Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 4th edn. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012). Thomas S. Kuhn, The Road Since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970–1993, with an Autobiographical Interview, ed. James Conant and John Haugeland (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000); John Preston, Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”: A Reader’s Guide (New York, NY: Continuum, 2008).

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popularized, and to win general consensus. He demonstrated that, behind one of the most earth-shaking revolutions of world-views—the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—there could be traced a concisely definable creative process by society as a whole, admittedly a collective movement of very long duration and many paths, which replaced a paradigm of nature inherited from classical Antiquity with the paradigm of what Vico christened, in one department, scienza nuova. Kuhn’s structure has many scientific virtues, but it is also easily recognizable as a narrative script, the outline of a story. In this article, I wish to test what can be learned by applying Kuhn’s template, with modifications, to the unlikely story of how a weighty theological book from the “Dark Ages” became a fulcrum for paradigm change in the era of the Scientific Revolution. After a brief orientation to the text (the Libri Carolini, also known as the Opus Caroli Regis contra Synodum, 794, hereafter LC/ OC) and the hurdles of assimilation it encountered nearly a thousand years after it was written, I analyze the subject in five sections: (1) identification of key terms (“assimilation” and “indigenization”), (2) conditions for indigenization by four seventeenth-century critics,3 (3) the role of suffering in indigenization, (4) indigenization, globalization, and paradigm shift from image towards evolution, and (5) a summary. The great question at issue in the LC/OC and in the religious wars of the early Enlightenment was Christian identity, both individual and collective. The dominant paradigm of identity delivered by Christian traditions was the image, as declared by Scripture (Gen. 1:26: “God said: ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.”). Simple, declarative statement though it was, this sentence could only be understood through paradoxes of representational art—for example, the image was what it was not; it made present what was absent—and so it was perennially debated. *** The LC/OC provides a distinct case study for testing the mechanics of Kuhn’s model of paradigm change outside the natural sciences. A unique document for 3   The four authors, and the books under consideration in this article, are: Jean Daillé (1594–1670), De la créance des pères sur fait des images (Geneva: Jean de Tournes, 1641 [written 1634]); Louis Maimbourg SJ (1610–1686), Histoire de l’hérésie des iconoclastes et de la translation de l’empire aux François (Paris: Sébastien Mabre-Cramoissy, 1674); Christian Nifanius (1629–1689), Ostensio Historico-theologica quod Gloriosissimus Imperator Carolus M. in quamplurimis fidei articulis formaliter non fuerit papista (Frankfurt: Wilhelm Reichard Stock, 1670) (I am grateful to Dr. Susan Reed, Curator of Germanic Studies in the British Library, for identifying Nifanius’ publisher), and Nicolaus Schaten SJ (1608–1676), Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator et Francorum Rex Romano-Catholicus libris IV explicatus et vindicatus adversus Christianum Nifanium Lutheranum Bilfeldiae Praedicantem et Superintend. caeterosque horum temporum heterodoxos. Accessit Labyrinthus Praedicantum oppositus libello ejusdem Nifanii de veritate Lutheranae ecclesiae (Neuhaus: Johannes Todt, 1674). See below, n. 20.

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its own day, the LC/OC was a treatise on the cult of religious images. It was an improbable masterpiece, massive, learned, and meticulously crafted. It was a wholly gratuitous attack from the barbarian West on all parties to a Byzantine controversy from which Charlemagne and his people were so distant, and in which they had so small a practical stake that they did not even know the Greek language. Yet Charlemagne and his advisers knew that the subject of the controversy—the use of images in public and private devotion, breaking into a long, savage civil war—had put the keystone of Christian identity in jeopardy. For the entire history of what it meant to be a Christian hinged on a paradox of art: the image. Claiming to come from Charlemagne (768–814), universally acknowledged as a founder of Western Christendom, polemicists of all parties to the wars of religion during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seized upon his name to justify themselves. When we consider the strange history of the LC/OC’s receptions, a singular document in a society quite different from its own, what we encounter is a slow, many-tracked history of paradigm change between the still-continuing “Christianization” of Europe under Charlemagne and its socalled “re-Christianization” in the age of the early Enlightenment. Grasping Identity: Assimilation and Indigenization Assimilation The seventeenth-century receptors of the LC/OC were entirely aware that, at least in its signature, the image, their crises of religious identity continued a crisis that went back to the age of the Apostles. From beginning to end, crises of Christian identity moved in a prehensile action. In Jesus’ dealings with his closest disciples, and at every stage of the Christian movements, the one grip was understanding the Master’s teachings—often hidden in parables and prophecies—and the other was taking them to heart and living them. Projecting themselves into the Gospel narratives, believers in every age imagined Jesus asking them as he asked the 12 disciples, “Little children, have you understood all this,” seeing that they had not, even when they answered “Yes.” Neither grip could bite without the other. In the gospels, Jesus repeatedly insisted that hearing the word was sterile without understanding, and understanding was sterile without keeping the word in action—that is, without having “the word abiding in them.” How the two pincers worked together found its most precise summary in the Epistle of James (1:22–3). How did blessedness come? The writer of the Epistle declared: Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face

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The two key terms in Scripture for the prehensile grip in reception are “hearing” and “doing.” In modern vocabularies, these correspond with “assimilation” and “indigenization.” The seventeenth-century receptors of the LC/OC realized that their task of fitting teachings of Scripture to their daily lives was ancient and ever new. They also realized with great force that the environments in which they had to live out the gospel were unprecedented. For they had left the enclosed world of pre-modern Europe and entered a new universe apparently without fixed dimensions and of infinitely changing religious multiplicity. Near at hand, they saw one abyss opening: the fragmentation of European religious unity, and the repeated splintering and re-splintering of churches, confessions, and sects. On and beyond their earlier horizons, they discovered another and far vaster abyss: the greater part of the world, not mentioned in the history of Creation as rendered in Scripture, and ignorant of Scripture’s teachings. Into these unmapped and turbulent oceans of disbelief and ignorance they felt called, in Europe, to convert the world, by evangelistic re-Christianization at home and by globalization of the Gospel beyond. Grasping: The Buddha’s Elephantine Parable The first grip, assimilation, required ingesting the Word by hearing. Above all, it required breaking the immensely difficult life-and-death riddle of what it meant to be made by God in God’s own image and likeness. The crucial verses—Genesis 1:26–8—became the mirror, the “glass,” in which, according to the Epistle of James, believers could see themselves as they were. And yet the solution offered by tradition piled puzzles on top of puzzles by using paradoxes of art to decode the oracular verses in Genesis. An uncertainty principle was built into the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity, for all three depended on confidence in what was unseen, unverifiable, and beyond understanding. Confidence came, not from any human power or agency, not from nature, but from God. For all time, the Apostle Paul identified it as the Spirit, or Christ, or the Spirit of Christ “poured into our hearts.” Commentators connected this doctrine of co-inherence with Christ’s promise, in the Gospel of John, that he would live in the disciples if they lived in him, and they would bear much fruit. “Those who love me will keep my word,” he added, “and my Father will love them and we will come and make our home with them” ( Jn. 4:23). Still, in this world, the knowledge they had of divine truth through co-inherence remained partial and fallible; truth was always mixed with error and finitude. Consequently, the poetics of reading and indigenizing Charlemagne in the LC/OC or elsewhere comes within the penumbra of a parable about pattern

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recognition originally attributed to the Buddha and subsequently revised in many variations. In the version ascribed to the Buddha, a king commanded that the blind in his territories be assembled and divided into teams. To test their powers of extrapolation, each team was instructed to examine one part of an elephant’s anatomy and, reasoning from those perceptions, to project the shape of the whole creature, picturing the whole from what they could tell about the fragment. Each team imagined, not an animal, but a farming implement. No two hit upon the same object. Convinced that its surmise was true, each team fell into a heated argument with all the others. They were working by pattern recognition in the dark, reasoning blindly from known to unknown, each team moving in a different direction.4 The Buddha’s analogue of blindness has pungent relevance to the receptions of the LC/OC when connected to Christianity’s three vision-impaired theological virtues.5 Partial blindness as ignorance also characterizes teachings on the eschatological destiny of believers: “It has not yet been revealed what we shall be. What we do know is this: we will be like him for we will see him as he is” (I Jn. 3:2). The telling fact was that, as in the Buddha’s parable, blindness did not entail a loss of confidence. In the long, convoluted LC/OC, receptors saw in effect that the entire history of redemption was a series of conflicts over assimilation, right and wrong. Indeed, the focus in the LC/OC’s polemic on the Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversy led its authors to describe a series of episodes which recapitulated the same scenario, moving at ascending levels through the ages towards fulfillment. A constant refrain can be traced in searches for Christian identity through the ages: the sense of ignorance experienced in turning from the image of oneself seen in the mirror of Scripture, toward the self-image formed in daily life. Augustine (357–430) wrote that he could confess to God only what he knew about himself, not what he did not know and what was hidden from himself (but not from God) in his mind’s cavernous abysses of ignorance. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) wrote more concisely: “I often wonder who I really am.”6 4

  Damien Keown, Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 1. 5   On faith, see Heb. 11:1; on hope, Rom. 5:1–5, 8:24–5; on charity, Mt. 5:43, I Cor. 8:1, 13:7–10, 13, Eph. 3:19, I Pet. 1:8. All three virtues supply confidence beyond what direct empirical knowledge can supply: “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face” (I Cor. 13:12). 6   Augustine, Confessions, ed. James J. O’Donnell, vol. 1 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1992), X.1.1, 2.2, 5.7, 8.13–15, 10.17, 11.18, 16.24–5, 18.27; 119. 121. 126, 128–30. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, letter to Eberhard Bethge, December 15, 1943, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge, enlarged edn. (New York: Collier Books, 1972), p. 162.

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At the first step of assimilation—hearing the Scriptures—the authors of the LC/OC and its seventeenth-century receptors met a barrier between hearing the words and understanding the meaning. In the Carolingian text itself and in the ancient authorities it cited, the receptors were conscious of finding traces of several levels of identity construction by establishing deeper meanings implied, encoded, or symbolized in the literal sense. They knew enough to allow for the possibility of creative misunderstanding. For the moment, we shall be content merely to identify four strata. Each marks a paradigm shift in identity construction. Together, as a conscious sequence or tradition, they constitute one very long continual transformation of the initial paradigm: the paradoxical image of God. The first paradigm-setting episode came in the giving of the Law to Moses. A fateful ambiguity entered at the beginning of the story. For, on the one hand, God forbade idolatry, the making and worship of images, and on the other, God commanded the making and employment of images for a variety of specific uses, such as healing (Moses’s brazen serpent), and ornamentation of some objects dedicated to religious uses. The prohibition of idolatry was part of the Mosaic Law separating God’s chosen people from the Gentiles, a separation that included a prohibition against exogamy. But the same instinct for assimilation that led the Israelites to demand a king “such as all the Gentiles have” (I Sam. 8:4–5) led them, under stress of their long exodus in the Sinai desert, to demand the Golden Calf—a god such as the Egyptians had (Ex. 32:1–4). Ambivalence continued in the history of Israel’s violent alternations, led by its kings, between iconoclasm and idolatry, most ironically in the idolatrous worship rendered, long after Moses’s death, to the bronze serpent he had made at God’s command, and ultimately destroyed by King Hezekiah in one of many iconoclastic revivals. The Old Testament legacy left the template of struggle over images as one, not only between the people of God and aliens, but also between faithful and apostate kindred. For seventeenth-century readers of the LC/OC, a second episode of assimilation opened with the Apostle Paul’s identification of Jesus as “the image of the invisible God.”7 Paul’s further identification of Jesus as “the firstborn of all Creation” marked a second line in this level of assimilation between Jewish Christianity and pagan antecedents, above all with pre-Christian Greek philosophy. The Carolingian authors did not pursue the philosophical antecedents, but they did connect the Byzantine cult of images with an assimilation of pagan superstition in the patristic age, a connection followed also by Protestant critics in the seventeenth century. Seventeenth-century critics had the option of deciding whether the LC/ OC itself was what it purported to be, the record of one recapitulation of the 7

  See Rom. 8:29, I Cor. 11:7, 15:49, II Cor. 4:4, Col. 1:15.

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biblical conflict of identities, and the artifact of another—that is, the record of a harmonization of two alien wisdoms, Judaic iconoclasm and Greek philosophy, in the theology of St. Paul, and the artifact of a conflict between two ethnic divisions of the Greek people, carried to another level in a related conflict, both ethnic and doctrinal, between the Franks and the Greeks. For our four seventeenth-century receptors, it was of the highest importance that the declared author of the Frankish attack was Charlemagne, one of their own. It was clear to them that they themselves lived at a fourth (or fifth) stage of assimilating the Bible as a rule of life. The first grip in the prehensile action of reception was assimilation, but reception, the grasping, required the second: indigenization, taking to heart and living what was understood, and thus making it part of one’s self. Establishing religious identity required finding a deeply personal, kindred resonance in what had been understood, a story that was somehow the readers’ story of themselves. Our four receptors acknowledged indigenization at work in proportion to the degree to which each found narratives of their own identity in the LC/ OC, stories of “our nation,” “our fathers (or “ancestors”), “our kings.” To be sure, a more restrictive distinction, confessional rather than ethnic, also came into play. Nifanius, the Lutheran, added “our side” to the glossary of affines, along with “our orthodoxy,” and wrote that the spiritual ancestors of Lutherans in Saxony were early Saxon Christians not adhering to the “papist” religion. Correspondingly, Maimbourg, a Jesuit, drew a sharp confessional line when he wrote that Protestants invoked the Synod of Frankfurt “against us,” though he praised them faintly when he wrote that they were more moderate than “their ancestors [or ‘fathers’],” the generation of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin.8 If our two Protestants accepted the LC/OC as genuine while the two Jesuits rejected it as a forgery, the reason for the parting of their ways has much to do with the uncertainty principle in Christianity, or rather with one particular aspect of that principle having to do with the indigenization of the Charlemagne of legend as well as of Scripture’s precepts. As mentioned above, the three vision-impaired theological virtues—faith, hope, and charity—taught that truth and falsity were blended in confidence that here we could know what really was, though only in part. Quite apart from the many varieties of adoption known to anthropology, the practice entered the earliest teachings of Christianity by way of believers’ rebirth as children of God, not by nature, but by adoption. Yet, unlike legal adoption, completed by one statutory act, adoption in Christianity was a transformative process of maturation during which believers lived against the grain of their surviving, original natures. It followed from the blind, or vision-impaired, but confidence8

  Nifanius, Ostensio Historico-theologica, 25, p. 793. Maimbourg, Histoire de l’hérésie des iconoclastes, 341, pp. 558–9.

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inspiring virtues of faith, hope, and charity. The theology of adoption served the uncertainty principle, urging both self-doubt and confidence, guided by the three steadfast and grace-given, if bleary-eyed, virtues. Its consequence of acceptance of living “as if ” we were what we were not was sanctified in many institutions through the poetics of reading Scripture. Gospel praise of celibacy, even for those not equipped by nature for it, is a case in point.9 In other words, the paradigm set forth a serious variant of what Diderot called the paradox of the comedian (or actor), assuming a character one was not, or, in a deeper sense, “putting on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 13:14). This counterfactual “as if ” doubleness of life as part of Christian adoption, being what one was and pretending to be what one was not, entered into the main body of Christian tradition, as Julian the Apostate (331/332–363, r. 361–63) witnessed when, with a knowledgeable eye, he ridiculed Christians for saying that while they were not Jews, they were Israelites, thus anticipating by many centuries the Frankish claim to be a new Israel.10 Incorporated early in monasticism and in allegorical methods of reading Scripture, it experienced development through various techniques of identity construction. The literary locus classicus for this technique was Cicero’s report of eclecticism by the Greek painter Zeuxis of Crotona, which inspired at least two exalted imitators in Charlemagne’s own family. According to Cicero, Zeuxis, realizing that the perfect beauty was not to be found in any one living person, composed an ideal portrait of Helen of Troy by combining individual features of surpassing beauty he found in several women. Charlemagne’s cousin, Abbot Adalhard of Corbie, formed in himself one living effigy of Christ by combining in himself virtues he had observed in various people, and Adalhard’s brother and successor at Corbie followed his example.11 The indigenizing assumption of a secondary ethnic identity by adoption had been practiced by Adalhard and Wala’s cousin, Charlemagne himself, and his entourage twice over, first in identifying the Franks as a “new Israel” and Charlemagne as “David,” and second, in Romanization beginning with the imposition of Roman faith, liturgy, and discipline, and later, more spectacularly, by renewing the Roman Empire in Francia. Einhard made a point of recording that Charlemagne wore Frankish costume regularly, but the vestments of his Roman office only once. 9

  See Mt. 19:10–12; I Cor. 7:25–38; Gal. 3:9, 3:14, 4:21–5:1.   Julian the Apostate, Against the Galileans, 253A–B, in Wilmer Cave Wright, ed., The

10

Works of the Emperor Julian, vol. 3 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 392. 11   Cicero, De inventione rhetorica, II.1, trans. H.M. Hubbell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 166, 168. Paschasius Radbertus, Vita Adalhardi, 20.1–22. Migne, PL 120, pp. 1,513–14; Epitaphium Arsenii (= Vita Walae), I.10, in Ernst Dümmler, ed., Radberts Epitaphium Arsenii, Abhandlungen der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, phil.hist. Kl. 2 (1899–1900), p. 20.

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Recent studies on the formations of Charlemagne the legend have accented how multifarious the legend became after the eighth century, how inventively each age and its disputatious authors remade—indigenized—Charlemagne into their own image (or images). The multiple levels of discourse in epics and romances display the adoption of Frankish identity as a secondary affiliation by peoples who were not Franks in regions of Europe a long way from Normandy through France and Saxony and on into Italy, though, as in Saxony, they might retain the claim of Charlemagne as apostle—a counterfactual enhancement of identities that had, and has, many analogies in the records of anthropology.12 Evidently, some had greater staying power than others. Intensive research has displayed Charlemagne as a “hero with a thousand faces not his own.” “Every age,” as one critic noted, “has found a Charlemagne to suit its needs,” and not only one per epoch, since “there is a Charlemagne for every age and political expediency.”13 What birds’ nests of narratives they reveal, spiraling around one another and intersecting! There are the (few) narratives of Charlemagne’s own day, followed by those cobbling together his posthumous reputation in the reigns of his son and grandsons.14 From the golden age of rendering Charlemagne into 12

  See Gabriele, Empire of Memory, pp. 134–6.   The first quotation conflates the title of Joseph Campbell’s celebrated book with verses

13

by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 3rd edn. (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008). Gerard Manley Hopkins, “As kingfishers catch fire,” ll. 9–14, in Gerard Manley Hopkins, Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Catherine Phillips (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 127–8. The second and third quotations come from Joanna Story, “Charlemagne’s Reputation,” in Joanna Story, ed., Charlemagne: Empire and Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. 2. 14   On the fabrications and re-fabrications of Charlemagne’s reputation in his day and the next two generations, see Paul Fouracre, “The Long Shadow of the Merovingians,” in Joanna Story, ed., Charlemagne: Empire and Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 6–19; Noble, Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians, pp. 236–40, and Noble, “Greatness Contested and Confirmed,” pp. 4–15; Karl F. Morrison, “Anthropology and the Use of Religious Images in the Opus Caroli Regis (Libri Carolini), in Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Anne-Mari Bouché, eds., The Mind’s Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University and Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 32–45; Rosamond McKitterick, “Representations of Charlemagne,” in Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 1–56, general outlines at pp. 5–6; Courtney Booker, Past Convictions: The Penance of Louis the Pious and the Decline of the Carolingians (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). See also the surveys of scholarly literature on the early eras of fabricating Charlemagne as legend in Matthew Gabriele, An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks, and Jerusalem Before the First Crusade (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 1–40 and Anne A. Latowsky, Emperor of the World: Charlemagne and the Construction of Imperial Authority, 800–1229 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), pp. 4–5. I am very much obliged to Prof. Latowsky for permitting me to read proofs of her book before publication. At the time of writing, the publication of Janet

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myths—the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries—there is a little library of materials by writers of history, genres of heroic poetry, and documents of political thought and action, capturing witnesses to imaginative reconstructions.15 From modernity, there are the Charlemagnes of art and Realpolitik (generally omitting Heinrich Himmler’s unpleasant, though heroic, “Karl der Sachsenschlächter”).16 And enfolding the ensemble and giving it shape, as books enfold bibliographies and critical apparatus, there are the Charlemagnes our own contemporaries have mined from the striating veins of epochs of collective remembrance, people framing stories about people framing stories. Rarely, a discerning eye spots the residue of forgotten Charlemagnes in the often-sifted shards and ashes of the eighth and ninth centuries: for example, Charlemagnes not written openly, but whispered, whether by low or high, by those who knew, or thought they did, or pretended so, and could not speak for the record.17 Bearing the Buddha’s parable in mind, we can see that the cognitive equipment of the blind elephant inspectors in the ninth century was quite different from that of inspectors in the seventeenth. The poetics of reading and indigenizing Charlemagne changed markedly by the seventeenth century—which is to say that the rules of the game, and perhaps even the game itself, were changed. Some products of medieval mythmaking “as if ” do appear in our seventeenthcentury treatises. These include a preoccupation with orthodox Scriptural interpretation, the legacy of contested political conflicts, transmogrifying the legendary Charlemagne’s translation of sacred relics from Byzantium to the West into a translation of the Empire (for example, France’s claims against Austria for the Empire), a sense of decline from the “Golden Age” of righteous dominance established by Charlemagne to be reversed into recovery, the importance assigned to ethnic lineage in tandem with religion as defining L. Nelson’s greatly awaited book Charlemagne (London: Allen Lane/Penguin) is scheduled for late Summer 2014. 15   See Gabriele, An Empire of Memory, and Latowsky, Emperor of the World. 16   See the expert concise outlines in Karl Ferdinand Werner, Karl der Grosse oder Charlemagne? Von der Acktualität einer überholten Fragestellung (Munich: Bavarian Academy of Sciences, 1995), and Latowsky, Emperor of the World, pp. 4–5. Himmler quickly found that his unsavory representation of Charlemagne ran contrary to Hitler’s more conventional idealization. 17   Paul Edward Dutton, “KAROLVS MAGNVS or KAROLVS FELIX: The Making of Charlemagne’s Reputation and Legend,” in Matthew Gabriele and Jace Stuckey, eds., The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 23–40, esp. p. 35. See also the subtle, incisive, and extremely valuable essays in Paul Edward Dutton, Charlemagne’s Mustache and Other Cultural Clusters of a Dark Age, esp. “Whispering Secrets to a Dark Age,” pp. 129–50, notably p. 130: Some whisperers may have wanted “not to be heard,” but others were making gestures calculated to convey secrets while hiding them in plain sight, possibly for memory’s sake.

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personal identity, and an ominous division between eager appropriation of Charlemagne legends by anti-papalist mythographers, especially in the Empire, and aspirations of a papal imperium. The legend that the decline of the Franks after Charlemagne’s Golden Age would be reversed by a great pilgrimage to the East embracing all peoples of Europe, Franks by adoption, and apocalyptic glorification was not retained in that form. However, in the First Crusade, the legendary Charlemagne, pilgrim and crusader to the East, also permanently stood as a sanction of inflicting programmatic violence for Christ on others that entwined with the long-established ascetic sanctions of enduring violence for Christ, thus joining one’s own sacrificial suffering to his.18 Different as they were, the collective, indigenizing memories of our four authors did not retain other characteristics of mythic Charlemagnes, the pilgrim fixated on Jerusalem and the apocalyptic last Emperor. They did not retain the multiple levels of discourse in epics and romances which allowed non-Franks imaginatively to enter into the lineages of the Franks. Yet, as some features of earlier indigenizations were left aside, others were added. The entire history of the LC/OC’s recovery and indigenizing receptions is inseparable from the print revolution.19 To an immeasurable degree, printing presses provided fuel for the Reformations as world-changing conflicts. Thanks to print culture, the receptions of the LC/OC entailed a widespread change of mentalités beyond theological elites. Consequently, in our four seventeenth-century critics, we find strong and instructive analogies between Kuhn’s analysis of scientific revolutions as social movements centered in professional echelons of scientists and, equally, requiring popular consensus for fundamental change in pattern recognition, or paradigm shift. The Elephant in the Dark: Feeling Out Blind Something Really Big Introduction The Buddha’s parable accents the fact that preconceptions dominated identity construction, above all when new experiences were being grafted onto wellestablished identities. It is hard to overestimate the distinctive conditions under 18

  Gabriele, Empire of Memory, p. 159: “invocation of Frankish identity became a call to sanctified violence.” 19   A fine example of confusion introduced by printing methods in the period of concern in this chapter is discussed by John J. Contreni, “‘Old Orthodoxies Die Hard’: Herwagen’s Bridferti Ramesiensis Glossae,” Peritia 22–3 (2011–2012): 15–52. Contreni demonstrates how an apparently unsubstantiated attribution of a medieval text, edited in 1563, has created critical predicaments and resulting disputes in twentieth- and twenty-first-century scholarship.

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which our four receptors indigenized, or refused to indigenize, the LC/OC. Our sampling of commentators on the LC/OC consists of two pairs: the first French, the second German, Saxon to be exact.20 The first pair consists of Jean Daillé (1594–1670), a celebrated Huguenot minister, theologian, and apologist, and Louis Maimbourg (1610–1686), an immensely prolific Jesuit historian. Through connections between French Huguenots and England, Daillé’s books exerted considerable authority on the development of controversy and doctrine across the Channel. The effect was particularly strong in the elegantly argued scorn he heaped upon the Church Fathers as interpreters and contorters of Scripture.21 As a writer for a wide French public, Maimbourg won, through his partisan defense of Gallican privileges, dismissal by papal order from the Society of Jesus toward the end of his life and a comfortable refuge under the patronage of Louis XIV. In their mature years, Daillé and Maimbourg lived and worked as near neighbors, Daillé at Charenton and Maimbourg at Versailles (thirteen miles away) and Paris (four miles from Charenton). Our second pair of commentators on the LC/OC lived in a little triangle of Westfalia and Saxony angled at Paderborn, Bielefeld, and Münster—cities between forty and fifty miles apart. Like Daillé 20

  See above, n. 3. The controversy between Nifanius and Schaten had other episodes. In a short treatise published in 1673, the indefatigable Nifanius attacked Schaten’s deceased brother Jesuit Jedocus Kedd (1597–1657), a resolute and prolific polemicist against Lutherans. Christian Nifanius, Ecclesiae ac doctrinae Lutheranae veritas ab impugnationibus novissimorum papistarum praecipue Iodoci Keddii necnon Viti Ebermanni vindicata (Bielefeld: Justus Tränkener, 1673). With his book Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator ready for the printer, or possibly in press, Schaten took advantage of the opportunity to add a refutation of Nifanius’ attack on Kedd, no longer able to defend himself, by way of an appendix at the end of the book (pp. 703–26) entitled “Labyrinthus Praedicantum, oppositus libello ejusdem Nifanii de veritate Lutheranae ecclesiae,” duly noted on the title page. Nifanius gathered his strength and responded to Schaten in 1679 with a gargantuan volume (1,547 pages), Gloriosissimus Romanorum Imperator, Carolus Magnus, exhibitus confessor veritatis evangelicae Augustana Confessione repetitae. Iterata vice juxta seriem controversiarum lib. prim. Man. Martini Becani, Jesuitae repraesentatus, suffragiis Romano-Catholicorum maximum partem illustratus atque ab impugnationibus novissimis Nicolai Schaten Societ. Jesu sacerdote vindicatus (Frankfurt: David Zunner, 1679). I have not consulted Nifanius’ return to the fray in 1679. 21   Jean-Louis Quintin, The Church of England and Christian Antiquity: The Construction of a Confessional Identity in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 228–32. Daillé’s early book Traité de l’emploi des saints pères pour le jugement des différents qui son aujourd’hui en la religion (Geneva: Pierre Aubert, 1632) won an especially wide and influential readership in England, where it was eventually translated. Daillé’s international celebrity had reached such a height that he decided to write in Latin, the international language, a translation of Traité (1655). After his death, Anglican theologians began a critical revision of his critiques of the Fathers, and the refutation of Daillé’s stance on patristic authority continued into the nineteenth century; Quintin, The Church of England, pp. 215, 238, 247, 249, 331–4, 339–41. On the possible devaluation of Scripture and the Fathers, see also ibid., pp. 346–52, 403, 409.

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and Maimbourg, our second pair consisted of affinal neighbors divided by religion, the one, Christian Nifanius (1629–1689), a Lutheran pastor, and the other, Nicolas Schaten (1608–1676), like Maimbourg, a Jesuit.22 Our sample includes representatives of three major religious confessions in seventeenth-century Europe: Roman Catholic, Calvinist, and Lutheran. The survival of the episcopal office under other names in Lutheranism (“Intendent” or “Superintendent”) created a special field of conflict between the Lutheran Nifanius and the Jesuit Schaten that did not exist between the Calvinist minister Daillé, and his Jesuit neighbor Maimbourg. Schaten’s attack on the book in which Nifanius claimed Charlemagne and the LC/OC for Lutheran Saxony had an up-to-date political edge thanks to the episcopal equivalences. Schaten’s attack was a barrage against Nifanius on behalf of Schaten’s bishop and patron, the prince-bishop Ferdinand von Fürstenberg of Paderborn (r. 1661–83). Schaten charged that in his various ecclesiastical offices—especially Rector in Korbach (1652) and Superintendent in Eisenberg (1661) and then as Pastor in Bielefeld (1664) and Superintendent in the County of Ravensburg (1664)—Nifanius had opportunistically set himself up as “pseudo-bishop” in a city where there had never been a bishop, following no one in the apostolic succession. Schaten ridiculed and denounced Nifanius for perverting the order established by Charlemagne, the conqueror of Saxony and the architect of his episcopal dioceses, the order that passed by inheritance through the generations until the heresy of Luther had cast it into disarray. Though Nifanius was outside the Catholic Church, Schaten wrote, he had intruded and set himself up as “pastor and idol” inside the legal jurisdiction of the Church of Paderborn.23 Every aspect of his book, including its physical layout, was calculated to contrast the splendor of Schaten’s patron with Nifanius’ inadequacies, beginning with the pompous, crowded trumpeting of Nifanius’ titles on his title page, and the arrangement on Schaten’s, which visually contrasts Nifanius’ pomp with the serene, majestic restraint of Schaten’s self-presentation simply as Jesuit and priest. Certainly, by comparison, the Pastor of Bielefeld’s large, ill-proportioned book deserved Schaten’s contrast of his own controlled and organized treatise with Nifanius’ “disorderly and hastily thrown-together” compound of materials, which, Schaten commented, did not always demonstrate intelligent reading

22

  On the Lutheran campaign against the Jesuits, see Thomas Kaufmann, Konfession und Kultur: Lutherischer Protestantismus in der zweiten Hälfte des Reformationsjahrhunderts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), pp. 210–19, 222–36, esp. p. 223 (on the example of the early Church, dissent was not an inevitable sign of the absence of truth). 23   Schaten, Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, pp. 9–10, 667. As Schaten indicates, Ferdinand had established Charlemagne’s role in creating the Saxon Church order in his own massive compilation and narrative (wherein Schaten had a major part), the Monumenta Paderbornensia.

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and discernment.24 Comparison of the printers’ handiwork also demonstrates the advantage bestowed on books by knowledgeable editing and design. The elegance of Paderborn’s court printer is immediately thrown into high relief by the artless typesetting of Nifanius’ title page, and an awkward misprint in the name of one of the Counts of Waldeck—patrons he wished to honor—on the dedicatory page. Finally disparity in real power is magnified by the fact that the Bishop of Paderborn, a sovereign in his territories, delegated his cause to a courtier and received the dedication of the book as patron, while Nifanius, the pastor in Bielefeld and superintendent in Ravensburg, spoke for himself, and dedicated his book to his temporal superiors, the Counts of Waldeck and the lay magistrates of his district. As a nod to the part Denmark had played in Protestant devastations of Lower Saxony, Schaten made a point of remembering that behind his claims to Saxon ancestry, Nifanius was “a Dane by nation” (gente Danus).25 Our four books therefore present two variations on the same theme: the theme of a house divided. For Daillé and Maimbourg, the house was France— “our Gaules,” “our nation,” “our fathers” (nos pères). For Nifanius and Schaten, the house divided was the Saxons, the lineage of “our ancestors.” All four writers were concerned with descent groups. Significantly for their theme of religious identity, the Frenchmen made no reference to Charlemagne’s Saxon War, nor did the Saxons raise their eyes to include France on their horizon. The narratives they wove all claimed Charlemagne as a founder, but while the Protestants also embraced the LC/OC as what it claimed to be—the work of Charlemagne—the Catholics, both Jesuits, repudiated it as a forgery, celebrated, if not actually fabricated, by Protestants in their revival of ancient heresies. There is no reason to think that our four authors valued intrinsic merits of the LC/OC—its historical content, Scriptural exegesis, style, or structure—or indeed that, except for Daillé, they read it, or read in it, extensively.26 They did not record much about images or art—an absence notable in the period of early Baroque masterpieces of the Catholic Reformation.27 They valued the LC/ 24

  Schaten, Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, pp. 146, 151, 156, 657–8.   Ibid., preface, n.p. See also Schaten, “Labyrinthus Praedicantum,” in ibid.,

25

pp. 723, 725. On confessional conflict in Saxony during the sixteenth century, leading to dominance by an anti-Calvinist Lutheran faction, see Thomas A. Brady Jr., German Histories in the Age of Reformations, 1400–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 239–45. 26   On Theodulf ’s “historical senses” as central to his argument and the LC/OC as “a history book,” see Noble, Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians, pp. 208–9, 231. 27   In his classic Tractates on sacred art in the age of Michelangelo, Cardinal Gabrielle Paleotti (1522–1597) seemed oblivious to the innovations of his own day. His conception of the best in avant-garde religious art was exemplified by Dürer. See Christian Hecht, Katholische Bildertheologie im Zeitalter von Gegenreformation und Barock: Studien zu Traktaten von Johannes Molanus, Gabrielle Paleotti und anderen Autoren (Berlin: Mann Verlag, 1997), pp. 321–31: “Das

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OC because they were able, or unable, to associate it with Charlemagne, the founder of a golden age in the history of their specific peoples, French or Saxon.28 They valued it most of all for the authority that association gave it in religious polemics of their own day, and thus for patternings where they could deploy it to best effect in their own literary equivalent of martial arts—a form of violence called, in my rendering, “the bloodlust” (Streitlust) of “confessional xenophobia” (konfessionelle Xenophobie).29 These four works were part of a brotherly feud over collective memory. By the time the earliest book in our sample of four—Daillé’s De la créance des pères sur fait des images—was published, the LC/OC had been in print and under heated discussion for nearly a century, though newly available in the republication by Daillé’s fellow Calvinist Melchior Goldast in 1608, reissued in 1628. Daillé and members of his generation were able to draw on a rich and savagely polemical scholarly bibliography, particularly Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist. Collective recovery and reception of the LC/OC mattered for the book’s strategic or tactical usefulness in sallies by individuals or local authorities into the wider quasi-military campaigns of religious warfare. The literary achievements of individuals, in addition to Baronius, invoked as authorities by our four writers—for example, Laurentius Surius (1522–1578), Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621), Jacques Sirmond (1559–1651), and JacquesDavy Du Perron (1566–1618)—entered the general conflict in the authors’ lifetimes. But their continuing vigor in the ramifying controversies came from vigilant promotion, refurbishment, and deployment by the undying corporations to which they belonged and which they served. For Protestants, confessional Churches provided corporate immortality beyond lifetimes of individual authors. Many Roman Catholics had the additional solidarity of religious orders—Surius of the Carthusians, Bellarmine and Sirmond of the Jesuits, and Baronius of the Oratorians. The evangelical militancy of all parties to regain lost souls by re-conversion made doctrinal battle lines extremely fluid. Multiple conversions were common, both for individuals and for cities.30 In an age when religious dissent was an act of treason, punishable by death or exile, a Neue der Barockkunst kann in den Traktaten nicht gefunden werden …. Die Traktate stellen keine stilistischen Vorgaben auf ….” On Paleotti’s distinction between the veneration of holy images and pagan and heretical idolatry, see Hecht, Katholische Bildertheologie, p. 255. 28   See Schaten, Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, p. 133: “our ancestors” gratefully remember Charlemagne’s as a golden age. 29   Heinz D. Kittsteiner, Die Entstehung des modernen Gewissens (Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1991), pp. 124–5. Prof. Martin Mulsow kindly directed me to Kittsteiner’s study. 30   On the long view of rival Catholic and Lutheran reconversion movements, see Brady, German Histories in the Age of Reformations, pp. 314–18. In the late sixteenth century, Lutherans took special satisfaction in the celebrated conversion of three Jesuits, one of whom was an Englishman, Edward Thorne; Kaufmann, Konfession und Kultur, pp. 268–84.

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crime particularly despised out of fear of sedition, it was anomalous that princes who adhered to confessions other than the established religions of their realms were allowed to preserve their own chapels for household worship. This was the case in England (under Henrietta Maria, Charles I’s queen) and James II, in Saxony, Württemberg, and after the elector became Calvinist, in Brandenburg.31 Still, an immense watershed divided the writers with whom we are concerned, their cohorts, and their whole societies from the antecedents they claimed. Between the Religious Peace of Augsburg (1555) and the conclusion of the Council of Trent (1563), at the beginning, and the Peace of Westfalia (1648) at the end, almost a century of religious warfare shifted the coordinates defining Christianity. The legacies of previous generations and centuries continued in literature, transplanted into disquieted minds and hearts. Politics ignored religious boundaries in bizarre configurations and re-configurations. The lifetimes of our four authors overlapped the most titanic of these, which included the intricate negotiations and understandings of the Ottoman Empire with various European rulers, the harlequin ententes by which the Netherlands assisted both the Huguenots and Louis XIV during the Huguenot Rebellions in France (1620–28), and in its campaigns against the Hapsburgs in Spain and the Empire, France supported both the Danish invasions (1625–29) and the Swedish (1625–29) before sending its own armies into the long, last stages of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48). The lifetimes of our four authors bridged these conflicts and the narratives into which they fitted the LC/OC reflected their earth-shifting effects. Each of our four authors therefore fitted the LC/OC into a different narrative. While the paradigm in all was Scriptural—the Christian narrative of Creation, Fall, and Redemption—each writer knew that paradigm from a different social perspective. Like the blind men in the Buddha’s parable, they interpreted what they found in the same object according to templates in their memories. Those preconceptions in memory, woven around the core of the paradigm, came to them from their Churches or confession and their nations. A third dimension of narrative wrapped around the whole fabric and held it together. Cohesion came from this dimension: the author’s narrative of himself. The kinds of divisions wrenching our four critics apart were captured much later by an English Jesuit, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889). In one poem, invoking the doctrine that Christ lived in each believer, Hopkins wrote that each man, doing righteous works: Acts in God’s eyes what in God’s eye he is— Christ—for Christ plays in ten thousand places, 31

  Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 123, 186–7, 337–8.

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Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

In another poem, Hopkins wrote of the tendency of believers to see from a perspective very different from God’s. While God found Christ in human faces, human beings, contrary to what they intended, found their own faces in Christ: Hope holds to Christ the mind’s own mirror out To take His lovely likeness more and more. … Her glass is blest but she as good as blind … sees herself not Him.32

Let us now see how each author used patterns from these three dimensions of self-identity—Scripture, life experience, and social narrative—to recognize patterns in the LC/OC Christ Playing in a Thousand Faces Not His Own One hallmark of indigenization in our sample quartet is in the plot-lines of their narratives. How did the present crisis of faith arise, with its signature conflict to the death over the veneration of sacred images? Even in their broad outlines, four highly regionalized plots come to light, all recasting Charlemagne’s role as a hero in the story of Christianity in their homelands. Three gave him the role of a re-creator, imposing right order on a structure fallen into shambles. The fourth characterized him as articulating a new departure which had been gestating and taking form organically within the status quo. All had their own ideas about what had gone wrong and how Charlemagne set faith and order to rights. Daillé All four authors worked within the narrative pattern of a people, one by descent and dismembered by religion. Each found a reflection of himself mirrored by a savage dispute in a distant land—Byzantium convulsed over the cult of images, cursed and cast out by some and restored by others. The Byzantine wars, like theirs, lasted generations—roughly a century—and the reflections in a longlost civilization of the social turmoil embroiling their own world brought them to weave Charlemagne and the LC/OC into their stories of themselves. But the stories they told and the portraits they painted of Charlemagne and his contemporaries might as well have represented different subjects altogether. 32   Gerard Manley Hopkins, “As kingfishers catch fire,” ll. 9–14; “Hope holds to Christ,” ll. 1–2, 7, 11, in Gerard Manley Hopkins, Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Catherine Phillips (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 127–8, 129.

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Daillé contended that the cult of images was a gigantic anomaly, “one of the strangest abuses in the Christian religion, and one of the most contrary both to right reason of human beings and to God’s holy Scriptures.”33 France, notre nation—or, rather, a right-minded clerical segment (nos pères)—was long the center of resistance. Daillé recounts that there were no sacred images in the first three centuries of the Church.34 Born among the Greeks, the use of devotional images was introduced in the fourth century, and the papacy spread and rendered the cult permanent in its pursuit of monarchical power. Charlemagne and the LC/OC and the decrees of the Synod of Frankfurt (794)—two monuments of Charlemagne’s title to be “the glory of our Gauls, the pillar of Christendom, the scourge of infidelity and heresy”—marked a high moment in French resistance to what later became papalism, a moment of harmony when Charlemagne and Pope Hadrian wisely negotiated the divergences then taking shape.35 Daillé’s book witnessed to the continuity of the struggle in his own day, long after papalism became dominant. It was absurd, Daillé wrote, to deny Charlemagne’s responsibility for the LC/ OC because it refuted the cult of images. He acted in friendship and loyalty toward the Pope, whose own doctrines were not the ones preached and enforced after the time of Pope Gregory VII. Daillé reviewed what his close research could garner about surviving manuscripts of the LC/OC. He weighed the evidence of the treatise’s style, content, and method of argumentation. He recognized that in the late ninth century, Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims, one of the greatest prelates of his day, had consulted and quoted from a manuscript that had been carefully preserved in the court archives of the Frankish rulers.36 The arguments Catholic scholars, above all Cardinal Bellarmine, invented to discredit the LC/ OC were farcical, a comedy, Daillé concluded. The objections they raised against it could easily be raised against the Church Fathers, whom they championed, and would just as easily stigmatize them, as they dishonored the author (or authors) of the LC/OC, for the same barbaric, ignorant, and trifling errors.37 33

  Daillé, De la créance des pères, p. 3.   On Daillé’s view that pre-Nicene documents of the faith had been lost because the post-

34

Nicene Fathers reversed or suppressed beliefs and practices that early Christians had sanctioned and enacted others that they had forbidden, see Quintin, The Church of England, p. 249. 35   On the failure of the Franks to grasp Pope Hadrian’s known conceptions of art and sacred images, which rendered the writing of the LC/OC a “dialogue of the deaf,” see Noble, Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians, pp. 216–17. Daillé’s account carries the story of Frankish engagement in the Byzantine Iconoclastic dispute into the ninth century. For the history of that engagement, see ibid., pp. 260–86, esp. Noble’s extensive analysis in ch. 7 (“Art and Argument in the Age of Louis the Pious), pp. 287–365. 36   Daillé, De la créance des pères, p. 430. 37   Ibid., pp. 422, 426.

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It was not enough that in an early manuscript the author declared that he, Charlemagne, had enunciated the LC/OC. Personal allusions to Charlemagne and his father, Pippin, and minute observations about their reigns pointed to the “great prince’s” direct part in its composition. Doctrines changed with time. The doctrines held in apostolic times had been corrupted by the Church Fathers with apocryphal texts, forgeries, contaminations of genuine texts, deliberately evasive, obscure, and arbitrary interpretations and misinterpretations, and always, the heat of factional controversy. Many apostolic writings had been abandoned and lost because they did not conform with changing judgments. Thus, Daillé reasoned, what “we” hold was corrupted by the hands of men through the false opinions they cooked up little by little.38 The internal and external evidence of the LC/OC left no doubt, philological or otherwise, that the treatise was written in Charlemagne’s day rather than the Reformation era, and that it could not have been written by an adherent of “our religion,” as Catholic detractors maintained. It could not have been written by heretics in any age.39 How could detractors think that the difference between the darkness of Charlemagne’s day and the enlightenment of the present was reason enough to dismiss, not only the authenticity, but even the force and veracity of the treatise? It was written by Charlemagne’s prelates, the flower of the West, probably at the Synod of Frankfurt.40 Its whole conception and execution was worthy of the most cultivated minds of the century, and worthy of Charlemagne, that “incomparable monarch,” that “saintly, catholic prince,” “the king of France and afterwards emperor of the whole West.”41 There were always ésprits who rejected the Roman abuse. It was plain that, despite their denials, ceux de Rome did adore images as though they were gods. Weak as they were, opponents were foible voix de la liberté, recognizing that papal excesses had gone beyond the assertion of the Second Council of Nicaea (787), which precipitated the LC/OC and decrees of Frankfurt, estrange as Nicaea’s decrees were to the Church and nos pères.42 Now, Daillé wrote, the resisters were Protestants whom ceux de Rome usually called Lutherans and Calvinists. They 38

    40   41   42  

Ibid., pp. 437, 575. Ibid., p. 413. Ibid., pp. 399, 419, 495–6. Ibid., pp. 399, 413, 434–5. On the two Byzantine Church councils whose decrees were confusedly known to the Carolingians and attacked in the LC/OC as though they came from the same source, see Noble, Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians, pp. 61–4, 94–9, 180 (the iconoclastic Synod of Hiereia, 754), and 72–84, 99–108 (the iconodule Second Council of Nicaea, 787). On the likelihood that Theodulf could not have understood the Greek texts he was reading in Latin translation, see ibid., pp. 181–2, 211. Maimbourg found the clue to how the Franks could reject Byzantine doctrines in their ignorance of Greek and dependence on a (faulty) translation, exemplified by the action of the Synod of Frankfurt in condemning, not the Second Council 39

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were the advocates of liberté because they had no other master and teacher of the faith than Jesus Christ, their sovereign Lord. In defense of their deviation from the ways of Christ and the Apostles, and in an effort to recover souls lost to the Protestants, ceux de Rome had invented a method of interpreting and debating Scripture, called the New Method (Nova Methodus), so pernicious and effectively deceptive to the simple that, at the same time as he wrote De la créance, Daillé wrote a second book, a companion volume to unmask the wrongmindedness and chicanery of the technique.43 The New Method was invented by one of the most celebrated Catholic evangelists of his day, François Véron (1575–1648), a Jesuit whose calling and greatest triumphs were in the re-conversion of Protestants. (The name Nova Methodus was taken from a middle-of-the-road school of Galenic medicine and reflected Véron’s calculated blending of Catholic methods of exegesis with literalist Protestant readings of the Bible.) In time, he was released from his vows as a Jesuit to pursue evangelism freely, under royal license, and, as we shall see, he became a bête noire of Daillé and his dangerous neighbor in Charenton. Many Catholic evangelists followed in Véron’s footsteps. In fact, Véron serves as a small link, by way of conflict, between our two sets of rivals, French and Saxon. For, like Daillé, Nifanius had witnessed inroads into Protestant populations by three energetic and powerful practitioners of the New Method, missioners in the service of the Johann Philipp von Schönborn, Archbishop of Mainz: the brothers, Adrian (1609–1669) and Peter van Walenburch (1610–1675), born in Rotterdam, and Adoph Gottfried Volusius (1617–1679), a Hessian. All were converts from Calvinism, and all eventually became suffragan bishops of Mainz. The Walenburch brothers were “especially feared” as diplomats and as “hunters of converts.”44 In their re-conversion campaigns, they proved to be compelling in their use of the New Method to convince Protestants of their error on the evidence of Scripture, and Nifanius devoted by far the longest section in his book to a gigantic declamation against of Nicaea, but the false version it had of Nicaea’s canons; Maimbourg, Histoire de l’hérésie des iconoclastes, pp. 334–5. 43   Daillé, De la créance des pères, pp. 576–9, 592, 596. The second book written by Daillé in 1634 was La foi fondée sur les Saintes Escritures, contre les nouveaux méthodistes (Charenton: Louis Perrier, 1634). As indicated above its specific target was François Véron. In maneuvers of interdenominational strategic warfare, Véron was sent to serve the Catholic congregation in Charenton (1638–1648), where Daillé was serving one of the largest Huguenot congregations in France (1626–1670). 44   Georg Mentz, Johann Philipp von Schönborn, Kurfürst von Mainz, Bishop von Würzburg und Worms, 1605–1673, Teil 2 ( Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1899), pp. 302–8. On the special hostility between Lutherans and Calvinists (as well as the Jesuits), and fear of “crypto-Calvinism,” see Kaufmann, Konfession und Kultur, pp. 254–61, 284. On Nifanius as a possible crypto-Calvinist, see below, n. 63.

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what he considered their abuse of this method, with engaging persuasiveness, to adulterate and deform the meaning of Scripture. Maimbourg Daillé, the vulnerable Calvinist, conceived “our nation” as separate religious confessions and communions within the civil union of one kingdom. However, Maimbourg, the Jesuit to whom Protestants in general and Huguenots in particular were public enemies, championed the more delicate Gallican balance of a national Church within the Catholic communion. While Daillé wrote as a member of a religious minority always in jeopardy, Maimbourg wrote as a member of a secure majority who, indeed, dedicated his book to King Louis XIV. In Histoire de l’hérésie des iconoclastes et de la translation de l’empire aux françois, he referred readers to his earlier book on the fourth-century Arian heresy as though the histories of two late Roman heresies—the little family of Arian denials of the physical Incarnation and the iconoclasts’ denial of worship through (but not of ) material images—were continuous sequential runs of the same movement.45 He presented The History of the Heresy of the Iconoclasts in particular as an object lesson for his age and people. According to the narrative he constructed, the heresy of iconoclasm engendered civil war in Byzantium, which in turn prepared for divine chastisement of an unworthy people, the transfer of the Roman Empire from the Byzantines to Charlemagne and, through him, to the royal house of France.46 He preached that Protestant iconoclasm in his day revived the ancient scenario of civil discord, and likewise threatened a recapitulation in France of the heavenly punishment that had fallen upon the Greeks. By its subject alone—the history of the Byzantine Iconoclast Controversy—Maimbourg’s critique of the LC/OC appears to stand as the odd book out in our sample of four receptions. For the others give little, if any, attention to the primary focus of the LC/OC itself: its repudiation of Greek theologies of sacred images, both pro and contra. And yet, even in making his entire book an account of the Byzantine struggle, Maimbourg not only excluded the Greeks from the narrative of Christian identity construction, but also enthroned, as the centerpiece of his story, the defense of French Catholic dominance in seventeenth-century religious warfare. His dedicatory letter to 45

  Maimbourg, Histoire de l’hérésie des iconoclastes, “Avertissement,” n. p., pp. 556–9.   Ibid., “Au Roi,” n.p. The depraved and barbarous cruelty of Byzantine rulers began with

46

a woman, the Empress Irene, and ended with a woman, the Empress Theodora. Despite its end, and despite the fact that both Irene and Theodora venerated images, the horrors of the Byzantine regimes, orthodox and heretical, and the “madness” of iconoclasm brought divine judgment upon the Greeks and led to the translation of the Empire to the West. See ibid., pp. 327, 347–51, 510–56.

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Louis XIV, headed by the two simple lapidary words “Au Roi” in large black letters and embellished with a flamboyant visual rendering of the King’s crest supported by two angels with trumpets, actually puts his book in a category of political tracts. Like the books by Nifanius and Schaten, also dedicated to their temporal and co-religionist rulers, Maimbourg’s was a pawn on the gameboard of regional power. Schaten’s master, the Prince-Bishop of Paderborn, had commanded him to write his attack on Nifanius, which was published by the court printer, as Maimbourg’s was by the imprimeur du Roi. Maimbourg addressed a loftier and more cultivated audience than squabbling theologians, far more exalted than our other three receptors, and he wrote with a more detached and worldly-wise passionlessness than did they. In his avertissement to readers, Maimbourg struck a Saturnine attitude, not particularly Christian. He stressed the care of his research. Unlike others who had written on the subject, including the great Catholic historian Cesare Baronius (1538–1607), who was deceived by the trust he placed in his copyist, Maimbourg had read all the original historical documents himself, and—under constraint of his poverty—he was able to engage only one copyist, a man of tried and proven accuracy. He avoided the errors and infidelities of recent editors and authors, “punishable crimes in the Republic of Letters.” Beyond the judgment of that Republic—interlocking transnational networks of scholar-authors (and learned academies)—he submitted to the judgment of people of taste, especially courtiers around the King, who spoke and wrote in a pure and elevated style. His own preference, he wrote, ran to an earlier time. He had no use for the contemporary public who read ancient authors in more or less free translations, rather than in the very words and languages of original sources, and so peremptorily insulted authors dignified by great age. He himself preferred ancient writers, he wrote, and the more stately grace and harmony of Rome’s golden age. Tellingly, he concluded his confession of nostalgia for a lost antiquity by quoting “the witness of the Holy Spirit in Scripture: ‘There is nothing new under the sun’ [Eccles. 1:9]. That is as true in our time,” he wrote, “as it was in centuries past.”47 What link could there have been between this detachment from modernity and the urgency that impelled him to indigenize the Byzantine Iconoclast Conflict to his own day, the age of Louis XIV? It lies in the sly humility with which he also expressed the hope that his portrait of Charlemagne in the History of the Iconoclasts would serve as a preliminary sketch for a portrait of Louis XIV which, perhaps, another historian would complete at a later time in that great monarch’s reign. Thus, his portrait of Charlemagne included object lessons for imitation by the Grand Monarch. 47

  Ibid., “Avertissement,” n. p.

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Contrary to the conceptions such as Daillé’s of Charlemagne and the early French clergy as opposed to the cult of images, Maimbourg took pains, perhaps for Louis’s edification, to elaborate on Charlemagne’s filial devotion to Pope Hadrian I in that and all other matters. Noting his prolific archival research with no resources other than his own skills and industry and the assistance of one copyist (paid for by himself ), he claimed that, for the first time, he had established the true judgment of the Synod of Frankfurt, which the Protestants invoked “against us,” but which conformed entirely with Hadrian’s direction.48 Charlemagne, “le plus grand roi du monde,” had put his royal powers at the service of the papacy and lavished his generosity on Hadrian and Rome, setting the standard by which the prodigal liberality of “our kings” had far exceeded the munificence of ancient emperors to their City.49 So great was Charlemagne’s devotion to Hadrian that Protestants revealed nothing but their inanity, their rootedness in ancient heresies, and their inveterate deceptiveness in arguing that he had differed from Hadrian on the veneration of images and inscribed the aberrant, execrable doctrines of the iconoclasts into the LC/OC. The authors of the Caroline Books perpetrated a fraud, for they “lacked the esprit of the Prince, who never wrote in this fashion.” The Fathers at the Synod of Frankfurt did not let themselves be fooled by the forgery.50 To be sure, Maimbourg acknowledged that for a long time “esprits,” indeed “our Fathers,” in France were not disposed to recognize the canons of the Second Council of Nicaea, which Hadrian had approved, so divided were their positions.51 One purpose of his book, Maimbourg wrote, was to reveal their shame and madness to the Protestants. They were beginning to realize, Maimbourg wrote, how heinous the doctrines and actions of their ancestors had been and to repent of the errors into which their credulity had cast them. They had begun to wish, for the sake of their own honor, that their fathers’ deeds had never been done and to condemn their ancestors for a “malign and despicable imposture.”52 His story had a more pointed lesson for Louis XIV and his advisers—a lesson tactfully veiled in the distance of long-past history. Habitual argument by analogy made it easy to connect Byzantium’s descent into civil war because of the “heresy” of iconoclasm with the religious wars in France, above all the Huguenot Rebellions (1620–28). His theory that events moved in cycles pointed beyond the recurrence of an ancient heresy in modern France to other analogies to be avoided: the God-sent punishments and miserable deaths of iconoclast rulers 48

    50   51   52   49

Ibid., p. 341. Ibid., pp. 329–32, 341–2. Ibid., pp. 326–7, 332–3, 343. Ibid., pp. 326, 338–40. Ibid., pp. 556–9.

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in Byzantium. He wrapped other possible analogies in the transit of the Empire from the Greeks to Charlemagne and “the house of France.” Perhaps hoping that Louis would be edified by the exemplary dealings of Charlemagne with the popes of his day, Maimbourg could have foreseen how gratified Louis XIV would be to read the analogy of “Empire” with the house of France, which had lost the imperial title to its current arch-rivals, the Hapsburgs in Vienna and Madrid, and aspired to regain the precedence Charlemagne, “le plus grand roi du monde,” had achieved in dealings with the savage and heretical Empire of the Greeks, rejected by God. While Daillé had argued that notre nation withstood the papal monarchy and its sanctions of the cult of images, Maimbourg declared that notre nation had faithfully upheld the cult. He crowned his book with a panegyric on Charlemagne’s wholehearted defense of and obedience to papal dignity and his affection and bounty to Pope Hadrian I, munificence dazzling across the ages.53 In his narrative, everything converged on the same conclusion: that the LC/OC could only be a forgery masquerading under Charlemagne’s name, an ancient heresy perhaps, but also perfectly compatible with the record of Protestants in Maimbourg’s time, attempting to subvert right belief with their malicious falsifications of texts and history. Daillé and Maimbourg judged the LC/OC according to the quite different narrative plots they accepted as telling the history of Christianity’s indigenization in France. Those narratives set the contexts by which the two authors judged the orthodoxy of the signature conflict dividing Calvinist from Catholic over the cult of images, and therefore the authenticity of the LC/OC. Both recognized assimilation and indigenization as key impulses in forming this centuries-old make-or-break dilemma over which they were fighting, no quarter asked or given. For distinguishing orthodox from heretical, they were alike in reading wrong assimilation and indigenization as the forbidden sin that plunged believers into error and conflict, but they differed on the crux of catastrophe. To Daillé’s eyes, the Church Fathers plunged the Church into error in the fourth century and after by adopting the pagan cult of images, and this fall from the imagelessness of apostolic and post-apostolic practice was still later compounded and made obligatory under what he called papal monarchy or tyranny. On the contrary, Maimbourg laid responsibility on the fall from the cult of images into iconoclasm, engineered by a faction of the Greeks initially corrupted by Jews and Muslims in the eighth century—a catastrophe overcome with the restoration of images, but recapitulated in Protestant iconoclasms. Their decisions to accept or reject the LC/OC followed from whether they regarded Charlemagne as true to origins in upholding embedded French opposition to the cult (Daillé), or in upholding the cult and papal supremacy (Maimbourg). 53

  Ibid., pp. 341–3.

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We now turn to the two Saxon enemies, where we shall find indigenization a key marker of a movement away from the tyranny of origins toward historical process. Saxon Rivals: Nifanius and Schaten The treatises of Nifanius and Schaten are more intimately paired than those of Daillé and Maimbourg; for the Prince-Bishop of Paderborn had commissioned Schaten specifically to refute Nifanius’ ponderous volume, indeed to compose a counter-barrage retaliating with exquisite precision against dangerous calumnies of a Protestant, a usurper “pseudo-bishop” in, but not of, his diocese.54 By comparison with the France of Daillé and Maimbourg, the multitude of German states composed a mare’s nest of kaleidoscopically shifting unfinished business left in the wake of the Peace of Westfalia (1648). Where were the continuities when old names were used but given to subjects quite different from their original ones? Nifanius asserted that the people called Saxons were the same people who had always been called Saxons.55 But the perceived cohesion of lineage, of “our ancestors,” palpably contrasted with the experienced anarchy of the present. Nifanius and Schaten agreed on their common Saxon descent, though Schaten recalled that his Lutheran adversary was “a Dane by nation” (gente Danus). How did the disagreement over Christ’s one gospel arise between them and the political communities that gave them anchorage in a storm-tossed world? One question split apart the narratives into which they made sense of the LC/OC: Was Boniface or Luther the apostle of Germany?56 Schaten’s riposte is the simpler narrative. Christianity came to Saxony by stages, he wrote, beginning with “apostolic men” from Saxon England, including Willibrord, Suitbert, and, above all, Boniface, whose evangelism began under Charlemagne’s grandfather, Charles Martel, and continued under his father, Pippin, and Charlemagne himself. Thus, Saxon agents of the Roman Church initiated ennoblement of the barbarian peoples of the Germanic regions by Christianity. Charlemagne expanded and gave permanence to what they accomplished by his adherence to Roman faith and practices. The story moved to a higher level after he conquered Saxony and expelled idolatrous superstition; for he established an enduring, ineradicable institution when he divided Saxony into ten episcopal dioceses, installed bishops, and planted monasteries. The bishops he originally installed and their successors professed and defended the faith they had received—the faith of the universal Church—for centuries until 54

  Schaten, Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, pp. 10–11, 667.   Nifanius, Ostensio Historico-theologica, p. 34. 56   Schaten, Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, pp. 162–9. 55

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Luther, followed by Calvin and others, precipitated the chaos of sects, each claiming Charlemagne for itself.57 Luther, Calvin, and those who came after them were innovators (novatores), whose multiplicity and disarray contrasted with the abiding “one Church ruled by one Spirit.”58 Schaten’s narrative therefore divided the conversion of Saxony into two stages: first, the conversion itself by Saxon evangelists obedient to Rome, and second, the hierarchic institutionalization of Roman Christianity in Saxony by Charlemagne which endured until, as Schaten wrote, “the heritage of our ancestors was attacked, perverted, and overturned by the heresy of this age.”59 Like his brother Jesuits Bellarmine and Maimbourg, Schaten stressed Charlemagne’s obedient devotion to the Papacy and resolved the apparent anomaly of the LC/OC’s case against the cult of images by dismissing the treatise as a fabrication. Charlemagne had always consulted Hadrian as an “oracle of the apostolic see,” and deferred to him in every way. Far from witnessing to divergences between the King and the Pope, the LC/OC was, he wrote, a confection by heretics in Charlemagne’s time, dragged out of its lair by Melchior Goldast, the “most fraudulent” Calvinist editor, and adulterated by Protestants “in our days” as they revived a mélange of ancient heresies, including iconoclasm. Nifanius, the “iconomach,” followed where the Byzantine iconoclasts had led, and condemned Catholics for idolatry. The pastiche of errors and absurdities revealed what it was by ignorant mistakes, by its impious and blasphemous interpretations of Christ’s gospels and miracles, and by its attacks on hallowed institutions other than the cult of images, such as the veneration of relics.60 Nifanius’ allegations that, as represented by the LC/OC, Charlemagne had eradicated idolatry was one example among many of how the novatores had abandoned the pure font of truth to wallow in filthy waters and fled from the healing powers of the Church to dwell among gangrenous heretics—indeed, among Jews, Mohammedans, perfidious Christians, and other imagesmashers.61 To judge from his own argument, Nifanius seemed to hold that Charlemagne and the faith he spread were an impossible cross-breed, a mixed religious body, partly Lutheran and partly Catholic as a mule was part horse, part ass. He made the Emperor of the same ilk as an animal on all fours.62 Was Nifanius himself Calvinist or Lutheran? Perhaps, by innuendo, Schaten 57

    59   60   61  

Ibid., p. 11. Ibid., p. 199. Ibid., pp. 9–11. Ibid., pp. 10, 193–4, 603, 653, 657–8. Ibid., p. 605. Referring to the iconoclastic emperor Constantine Copronymus, Schaten wrote that the novatores derived their image-breaking doctrines from ancient feces of heretics, rather than from the pure font of the Catholic Church; ibid., p. 599. 62   Ibid., pp. 3–4, 10–11. 58

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intended to suggest that Nifanius was a person most feared in Denmark and in Saxony, a crypto-Calvinist.63 Calvinists broke images of Christ and the holy Cross and ground them into dust. By contrast, Lutherans kept images, as Catholics did, and employed them in worship.64 Schaten had known many princes of the Augsburg Confession, he wrote, sincere men who offered their prayers to God every day in their bedchambers before the image of the Crucified, mindful of their redemption.65 In the pectoral cross recovered from his tomb, and in the crosses he erected still to be seen in churches throughout Westfalia, there was powerful evidence of how greatly Charlemagne revered the Cross himself. Schaten had no doubt that he used pictura to empower the crude Saxons to grasp the mysteries of Christ and impress the deeds of the saints on their minds, as writings empowered others to do. Moreover, he was confident that, in this regard, the great Emperor’s actions served as precedents for his son, Louis the Pious’s, strong fostering of the cult of images.66 63

  Schaten, “Labyrinthus Praedicantum,” in Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, p. 723: “Ecce qualem superintendentem et episcopum animarum vestrarum et quam fidum ministrum vos Bildeldiensis Lutherani sortiti estis ex Dania, qui ex una religione transformat vos in aliam.” See above, n. 44. 64   Schaten, Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, p. 599. For other passages in which Schaten compared religious practices of Protestants, see ibid., pp. 608–9, 612. A concise account of how the framework of Lutheran doctrines concerning sacred art was formed by combining Luther’s moderate dread of idolatry, Cranach’s knowledge of iconography, and commercial motives (that is, Cranach’s acceptance and execution of commissions from Catholics and Lutherans); see Steven Ozment, The Serpent and the Lamb: Cranach, Luther and the Making of the Reformation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), pp. 143–7, 148–52, 250, 264–79. On the sense among Catholics that the sacred art of the day was infected with paganism and idolatrously employed, see Hecht, Katholische Bildertheologie, pp. 55–78, 178–85, 266–95. 65   Schaten, Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, pp. 599, 605. On the consolidation of Lutheran doctrines on sacred images, see esp. Kaufmann, Konfession und Kultur, pp. 157–204. A helpful tabulation of Kaufmann’s chief arguments appears at ibid., pp. 199–201. He finds that the Lutheran acceptance of images was a via media, differing both from extreme Protestant positions and from the cult practices of Roman Catholics. Images as such were doctrinally indifferent matters, and they could have practical value in Christian formation. They served the teaching, interpretation, and application of Scripture, and they were sanctioned for these purposes by Scripture and by teachers in succession to prophets and apostles. Moreover, the pictorial arts conformed with and reinforced natural human needs and capacities. Above all, they strengthened the natural faculty of memory and advanced the moral formation of reason, will (or desires), and emotion. Interestingly, Besançon’s brief account of early modern European iconoclasm draws entirely on the Calvinist tradition as passing from Calvin to two very different interpreters, Pascal and Kant; Alain Besançon, The Forbidden Image: An Intellectual History of Iconoclasm, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000), pp. 185–203. 66   Schaten, Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, pp. 603–5.

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Schaten found irony in the fact that Nifanius laughed and poured scorn on Catholics for their “manifest idolatry” in adoring the Cross, particularly in the Good Friday liturgy, when they bowed before, and knelt, and kissed it, and chanted, “Behold the wood of the Cross on which hung the salvation of the world.” Schaten held that the Scholastics, including Thomas Aquinas and more recent scholars, had established this common fraud and fallacy of sectaries with the doctrine that honor paid to the effigy of Christ passed from the effigy to him whom it represented and whom the worshiper adored.67 Calvinists, enemies of the Cross of Christ, ridiculed the ritual of veneration, but there were testimonies to the veneration of the Cross among early Christians. If that ritual were idolatrous, Schaten asked, didn’t Nifanius make all the Lutherans idolatrous when they knelt in adoration before they received the Eucharist as though, in receiving it, they recognized Christ as present? Through all their deceits, frauds, and slanders, were not Nifanius and his fellow Lutherans defaming Catholics for idolatry while they covertly used the Catholic religion to draw the nooses of their heresy more tightly around their people?68 Nifanius, Schaten jibed, certainly had no scruples about installing statues of himself and his wife on the altar for honors in the civil cult.69 By contrast, Nifanius’ narrative paints a story of gradual change, with a general silence on the subject of images beyond dismissal and a slanted reading of LC/OC. He repeats a compendium of arguments “our side” (nostri) had made for the treatise’s authenticity. The most convincing of all, for him, was that of Georg Cassander (1513–1566), a Catholic theologian whose criticisms of papal primacy and proposals for doctrinal compromise and reunion between Catholics and Protestants brought condemnation on his head from both sides. Novelty, Nifanius observed, was in the nature of advancement. It often hid under the mask of antiquity.70 The visible Church was by no means always the true 67

  Ibid., p. 681.   Ibid., p. 661. 69   Ibid., pp. 617–8, 661–2. See Koerner’s subtle and important case that Cranach’s art, 68

including the Crucifix in Cranach’s Wittenberg Altarpiece, was self-negating, and therefore iconoclastic, extracting transcendency from sacred art; Joseph Leo Koerner, The Reformation of the Image (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 73–80. See the further elucidation at ibid., p. 208, of “the negativity of Reformation art” called forth by Luther’s theology, a transition from the ontological (the problem of being) to the existential (actual experience). “Theologians of the Cross …,” Koerner wrote, “know that God became visible only in the way he did, and that in that revelation he was concealed. In the Cross, God hid himself in suffering.” Thus, “before any attempt to paint it, the crucifix was already an image and an iconoclasm, a face and its defacement, the epiphany as total eclipse”; ibid., pp. 208–9. 70   Nifanius, Ostensio Historico-theologica, pp. 5–6, 88–95 (on Cassander). Nifanius also invoked the examples of Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) and Georg Witzel (1501–1573), two other Roman Catholic theologians whose proposals for reuniting Christian communions

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Church. For it could happen that all pastors, the entire hierarchy, could become spiritually deaf and dumb. They could all become wolves to their flocks. Roman Catholicism gloried in antiquity and censured novelty; but often in sacred history, the new had been holy, and the old dyed in error and superstition.71 In this way, the Jewish Church was the true Church in the days of Moses and the prophets. Yet Christ abandoned its errors and raised up again, in purity, the most ancient religion of Moses and the prophets, purged of Pharisaic traditions.72 Likewise, the papist Church in Luther’s time was the true Church in so far as the divine Word was preached in her and the sacraments administered. It was not the true Church in so far as it taught and advanced human and hierarchic traditions fundamentally opposed to the Word it preached. The means of salvation always came from divine providence, not from the papacy. Luther was baptized with Spirit and water in the Roman Church. There was no need to fear that ancestors of Lutherans were damned because they lived and died in papal error. For many had died in the papal flock knowing nothing about its corrupt and depraved practices, including the cult of images.73 Nifanius dated the beginning of Christianity in Saxony to the apostolic or post-apostolic age, long before Charlemagne, with a series of conversions running from the second to the eighth centuries. Boniface, with his Romanisms, was a latecomer and a spoiler. His evangelism began progressive corruption which widened after the Second Council of Nicaea (787) with papal approval of the adoration of images.74 Despite a certain looseness of chronology, Nifanius was able to argue that the indigenization of Roman order after Charlemagne’s conquest of Saxony was, in fact, conversion from one idolatry (paganism) to another (Romanism). The LC/OC was an artifact in a long history of resistance to papal monarchy, including the ever-darkening turn toward tyranny and Antichrist which culminated in Pope Gregory VII’s (1073–1085) declaration of papal power over kings and princes.75 made them suspect. Because he elaborated on the errors of the communion he was leaving as he solemnized the double-reversal of his formal conversion from Catholicism to Lutheranism, and his re-conversion to Catholicism, Witzel’s proposals for Christian harmony made him particularly suspect on all sides. On Nifanius’ appeal to Cassander, Schaten commented that sincere people could err and be insincere Catholics while being neither Catholic nor Lutheran. Erasmus, Witzel, and Cassander were amphibians, unsteady vagrant stars; Schaten, Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, p. 194. 71   Nifanius, Ostensio Historico-theologica, p. 18. 72   Ibid., pp. 18–19. 73   Ibid., pp. 3–7. Schaten, Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, pp. 18–19. 74   Nifanius, Ostensio Historico-theologica, pp. 56–82. 75   Ibid., pp. 10–11, 56–82, 905–20, 909, 966–77, 985 (“callido artificio”). See also Daillé’s assertion that France had been resolute in the struggle for liberté against tyranny.

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Thereafter, the ascent of papal monarchy continued against resistance, some dissent arising within the papal curia itself.76 The constancy of opposition was a sign that the true Church had survived, hidden though it was within the shell of institutional Christianity. Thus, by his protests (1517), Luther, the Saxon of Saxons, aspired, not to found a new Church, but rather to cleanse the old one, befouled with filth. “Our Church” reflowered with him.77 The Romanists were deceivers in their argument that the faith of the Saxons had always been that of the Roman Church and in denouncing Luther as an innovator. Even so, they also deceived themselves in maintaining that they held to the unchanging faith. Was there a single person in the world, Nifanius asked, in the whole period of 1,500 years from the beginning of Christ’s Church, who accepted all the articles of faith established under anathema by the Council of Trent?78 There were Lutherans before Luther, not in name, but in faith and doctrine.79 “Our ancestors,” he wrote, were not converted to the papist faith which, in its present form, is not catholic. To be sure, the papist religion and “Romans” are called Catholic, but this is a mere name without a real subject. Once, the Roman faith was Catholic and apostolic. Now, only the empty name remains. Instead of the most ancient and genuine Roman and apostolic faith, the Romanists thrust forward a new Tridentine-Roman one. Those converted from paganism under Charlemagne were converted to the faith confessed by Lutherans, perhaps even then infected with some errors, but not yet buried under that heap of errors and superstitions which, Nifanius wrote, constituted papalism in his own day.80 Rome was no more the Roman Church of early centuries than people called “Jews” in his day were the Jews of biblical record. Likewise, the iconolatria of the Greeks and the papists accorded with the false claims of the Second Council of Nicaea (787) to be “universal,” but none of them accorded with the teachings of the primitive and genuinely universal Church, as did “our orthodoxy,” Lutheran teachings.81 Nifanius conceded that, from the “Romanists’” point of view, contemporary documents, including the decrees of the Synod of Frankfurt would have confirmed the LC/OC as heretical in so far as some of its propositions fought in direct opposition against doctrines and practices proclaimed by papists in centuries after Charlemagne. Yet, for him, the very words of the LC/OC confirmed that it was written by Charlemagne, a holy prince venerated as a saint (though not in the Roman martyrology), or under his direction, and its authenticity was 76

    78   79   80   81   77

Ibid., pp. 10–11. Schaten, Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, p. 12. Nifanius, Ostensio Historico-theologica, p. 10. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid., pp. 25, 26, 83, 85, 97. Ibid., pp. 352, 793, 1,253.

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sustained by the collateral evidence of manuscripts and associated documents, including decrees of the Synod of Frankfurt.82 A German, he had extended his power over the entire West, restoring the glory of the Empire—supreme evidence of his sacred calling. For Nifanius, the dissonance between papalism as it was in his own day and the LC/OC witnessed plainly that “our ancestors were not converted to the papist faith as such,” and that the LC/OC was authentically orthodox in harmony with early Christian doctrine. Charlemagne lived at peace with the popes of his day, notably Hadrian I, who himself wrote that he found Charles everywhere in the pages of the LC/OC.83 As for Hadrian’s approval of Nicaea II’s decrees, Nifanius stood, somewhat uncomfortably, with the Lutheran panel known as the Magdeburg Centuriators who read Frankfurt as condemning that council for impious adherence to pagan superstition.84 The teaching of the popes then was not that of Gregory VII or Trent. At the parting of the ways, the Pope abandoned Luther, rather than Luther the Pope.85 Since then, “our side” (nostri) had not condemned the Catholic Church. They had defended orthodoxy against the papist curse. They had defended it with the authority of Scripture. They had defended it by enduring prison and exile, and by subscribing to the truth with their own blood. They had not condemned; they had been condemned.86 For many centuries, Christian writers had struggled to find God’s will in the contradiction between the biblical paradigm for the unity of all believers and the ferocious conflicts that tore them apart. The actual disarray of multiple creeds and institutions gave little credence to the gospel of “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all,” and correspondingly, to a common call of believers to “one body and one Spirit” (Eph. 4:4–5). There was no obvious key to pattern recognition between the paradigm and the actuality. Yet had not the Apostle Paul himself allowed for multiplicity, at least by way of creative misunderstanding? For he witnessed to his own experience of believers who heard and followed him according to their own lights. His resolution of 82

  Ibid., pp. 35, 87–8, 354.   Ibid., pp. 97, 354–6. On the tendentious historiographical argument that the Synod of

83

Frankfurt was intended as one of several statements of Charlemagne’s dominance of the Church and the papacy, scorning claims to papal monarchy, see Noble, Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians, p. 173. 84   Nifanius, Ostensio Historico-theologica, p. 353. 85   Nifanius alluded to a classic sentence in which St. Cyprian affirmed that, in the rupture between those who refused to honor imperial orders to conform with the pagan cult and those who complied directly or by some subterfuge, “non enim nos ab illis sed illi a nobis recesserunt … et veritatis caput adque originem reliquerunt”; Cyprian, De Ecclesiae Catholicae Unitate, c. 12, ed. M. Bévenot, Sancti Cypriani Episcopi Opera, Pars I, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1972), p. 253. 86   Nifanius, Ostensio Historico-theologica, pp. 997–1,000, 1,005.

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the contradiction between the paradigm of unity and actual multiplicity was that God gave grace, not uniformly to all, but by measure to each (Eph. 4:7; Rom. 12:6). Indeed, Paul wrote, it was necessary that there be factions (haereses) so that genuine believers could be told from counterfeit (I Cor. 11:19). Suffering, the Elephant in the Room: Hidden in Full Sight Suffering as the Universal Language: Enduring Pain with Christ; Inflicting Pain for Christ Our survey thus far has repeatedly turned to suffering as part of indigenization, and therefore of adoptive Christian identity. Where does passion, where does pain, mesh with the “as if ” narrative patterns we have sketched out? Movements of spiritual revival commonly abound in celebrations of suffering, or dying, for love, but I found no such theme either in the LC/OC or in the four critical projects devoted to re-Christianization with which we are concerned. We must turn to a second level of pattern recognition, one that was kept under wraps but known by all: visceral emotion. In their fiery arguments for and against the cult of images, as Baroque art approached its supreme stages of magnificence and illusionist skill, there is as little evidence in our four treatises as there is in the LC/OC itself of the power of art viscerally to change the heart.87 As a text, I turned to a major Catholic work in seventeenth-century revivalism, Paolo Segneri’s (1624–1694) The Christian Man.88 Unable to pursue a calling he felt to foreign missions, Segneri, a Jesuit, became a celebrated preacher in the cathedrals of Italy. Eventually, he devoted himself to evangelical missions in many regions of Italy. His spellbinding oratory drew enormous crowds for nearly thirty years. My search for visceral emotion in The Christian Man was not well rewarded, but I found much of importance in the prefatory reminiscence of him by Fr. Giovanpetro Pinamonti, his companion throughout the years of his missions. Probably in 1662, and not later than 1663, Pinamonti wrote that when Segneri had withdrawn into an eight-day retreat, he heard the voice of God inwardly, with the ears of his heart. His soul melted as he absorbed the injunction from the divine Beloved: “I want us to love one another” (volo ut amemus invicem). From that moment, Segneri was changed into another man. He had been a religious of praiseworthy life. He became a saint, embracing total poverty, 87

  See Noble, Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians, pp. 230, 365.   Paulo Segneri SJ (1624–1694), Homo Christianus in Sua Lege Institutus sive Discursus

88

Morales Quibus Totum Hominis Christiani Officium Explicatur, 2nd Latin edn., enlarged in three parts (Augsburg and Dillingen an der Donau: Johann Kaspar Benkhardt, 1695).

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devoting himself to prayer and meditation on Scripture which he could elucidate with extraordinary power for the world to hear and read. To hold himself in obedience to that injunction—“I want us to love one another”—he ransacked accounts of the saints for mortifications. He began to torture himself with a great many very bitter agonies. His will for self-torture, Pinamonti wrote with a connoisseur’s eye, was singular and ingenious. He kept adding new methods to his repertory tirelessly, down to his last days. Constructing an “as if ” identity by the imitation of Christ, it was not enough for him to scourge himself with his own hand or with so weak an arm as his own. If there were a place where he could be alone, he offered himself naked to be cruelly beaten by some trusted companion. He would be bound to a bedpost, imitating Christ the Servant in his torments, or he would have his hands tied behind his back, as Christ was condemned to be punished by scourging with rods. On his missions, Segneri taught some of his mortifications to followers. He chose scourging as a cure for men who were driven by unrestrainable desire for revenge. He would offer his shoulders to such a man, saying that he, Segneri, wanted to pay the price of retribution the man demanded. It rarely happened, Pinamonti recorded, that, after raging against him with cruel butchery, a man’s anger was not defeated by the sight of his torn and blood-drenched flesh.89 Segneri’s personal discipline exemplifies that even on oneself, believing yet prone to err, one imposed a twofold suffering, ways of enduring pain in imitation of Christ: the first, following in the blood-stained footsteps of the Savior, the Christ of Passion and Crucifixion, and the second, inflicting pain upon oneself in punishment, avenging the innocent sufferings and death of Christ to atone for human sin. Segnieri’s complex submission to torture also indicates another reason for imposing suffering on others in brotherly love—that is, to recall the lost. Thus, suffering pain with Christ and imposing pain for Christ went hand in hand. Paul, after all, authorized handing over carnal offenders “to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that [their] spirit[s] may be saved in the day of the Lord” (I Cor. 5:5). Was such sanctified passion hiding modestly in our four texts about reChristianization, perhaps in full sight? Segneri’s missions generally were to recover, not souls lost through wrong belief, but souls fallen away through ignorance, indifference, irreverence toward the Church, the sacraments, and priests, not to mention flagrant profanations of the sacred. High among the causes of ignorance, he set priests who had rather preach to the perfidious Turks than to Christians. Segneri also combated sensual passions which transformed human beings into beasts.90 89

  “Exemplar Litterarum, quas de virtutibus P. Pauli Segneri ad P. Rectorem Collegii Florentini dedit P. Joannes Petrus Pinamontius …,” in Segneri, Homo Christianus, P. I, n.p. 90   Ibid., d.1.10, p. 5; ibid., P. II.d.12.14, 17, 154–5, 156–7; ibid., P. III.d.4.9–12, 51–3.

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Daillé The conflicts with which we are concerned were of different orders, though they engaged related passions as believers lived, by suffering, into their “as if ” lives, becoming what they were not, becoming like Christ when they should see him as he is. Many episodes in Daillé’s life reveal a piercing, ambient fear paired with confidence. One event in particular discloses fear on both sides of the always-fermenting warfare between the Catholic majority and the Huguenot minority. The provocateur of this event was François Véron, the inventor of the “New Method” of Scriptural exegesis, the great weapon in his campaign for re-converting Protestants. As mentioned earlier, Véron became an international celebrity through his spellbinding rhetoric, the fervor regularly blazing through revivalist assemblies that drew thousands, and the compelling power of his Method to strip away Protestants’ claims to Scriptural authority. Véron’s remorseless militancy and shrewd strategic operations made Charenton, the center of Parisian Protestantism, and Daillé, minister of the Huguenot congregation at Charenton (since 1626), principal objects of attack.91 In 1636, Véron had not yet taken up residence in Charenton himself as he did two years later when he became curé of the Catholic congregation. But he launched a preliminary pamphlet bombardment which Daillé recognized as dangerous in itself, coming as it did under the royal license given Véron to preach, and if not forestalled, calculated to destroy him and his people. Writing as “a minister of the Holy Gospel,” Daillé quickly prepared an extensive and detailed refutation of Véron’s allegations “against us in general, and against me in particular.” The general charges were: (1) that in their French translation of the Psalms, the Huguenots, “we,” had excised a prayer for the King, and (2) that “we” had abused the freedom (liberté) that the King had given “us” by his edicts. Véron’s particular charges against Daillé were: (1) that he had constructed a new religion in which he combined all kinds of heresies, and (2) that he had abandoned various established articles of Huguenot faith as royal authority had recognized that faith. Daillé wrote that Véron had issued little pamphlets for some time earlier, stirring up hatred of “us,” but Daillé at first thought that Véron’s public and undying warfare against reason, highlighted by the preposterous nature (extravagance) of his allegations, would discredit them as gross fiction.

91

  In areas of established religions, where public worship was generally denied them, accommodation was sometimes offered by way of designating centers in catchment areas where dissenters could gather for worship. Charenton was one such center. This led to the practice of “Sunday commuting,” still used by Goethe in Strassbourg, and exercised also in Saxony; Kaplan, Divided by Faith, pp. 165–6.

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On the contrary, Véron’s pamphlet warfare had inflamed hostile passions very widely, and in the highest places in the land, stirred up against Daillé and his people “the sacred powers which govern us and to which we owe after God a sovereign and inviolable reverence.” Consequently, Daillé wrote, “we have to raise our voices and write against so atrocious a calumny to vindicate our innocence and to sweeten, so far as we can, the minds [esprits] of those who have mounted this disquiet against us.” At best, he recognized, human reasonings are uncertain and doubtful, fantaizies et imaginations, but given the real and present dangers, he proceeded to refute the charges and their specious grounds.92 In addressing the charges against him, he expressed astonishment at the wretched chicanery with which Véron, “the Father of the New Methodists,” had perpetrated so gross and so colossal a fallacy (paralogism) in repeating a charge that he had made in a book two years earlier: that in his reconstruction of Protestantism, Daillé built a new Babylon in which he promiscuously received all the sects there were or that had ever been in the world.93 His great fault in Véron’s eyes was his denial that the Son of God had ever “ordained or approved the despotic right [droit] that the Bishop of Rome pretends to have.” Addressing the anger Véron had aroused against him and his people in the highest orders of France, Daillé concluded his tract with a statement of profound reverence and obedience to the King, gratitude for the freedom (liberté) his edicts had given his innocent subjects, and reliance on the wisdom of so great a monarch to distinguish truth from slander and to safeguard his subjects form the hatred of one man. The subjects under the King’s protection would, Daillé ended, joyfully shed their blood for his glory and recognize no power other than the Creator’s higher than his crown.94 The fears raised by Véron’s attacks in 1636 had great cogency because they resonated with experiences, or threats, of suffering steadfastly for religious convictions throughout Daillé’s life. His father had “suffered greatly for his religion” in “the unhappiness of our civil wars.”95 As a young man, Daillé entered the service of Philippe Du Plessis Mornay (1549–1623), a close adviser of Henry of Navarre until Henry decided that Paris was well worth a mass, converted to Catholicism, and became King of France (1593). Du Plessis Mornay, who had survived the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day (1572), sent Daillé along with his two grandsons as their tutor when, as young gentlemen, they went to see a bit of the world. Yet when one of the boys fell ill at Mantua, the party moved to 92

  Jean Daillé, Lettre de Jean Daillé, Ministre du Saint Evangile, à un sien ami, sur les plaintes faîtes contre lui & ses collegues (no publ.: et se vendent à Charenton, 1636), pp. 1–5. 93   Ibid., p. 19. 94   Ibid., pp. 36, 37–8. 95   Adrien Daillé, “Abrégé de sa Vie,” in Jean Daillé, Les deux derniers sermons de Mr Daillé prononcez à Charenton le jour de Pasques, sixième Avril 1678, et le Ieudy suivant (Geneva: Jean Antoine et Samuel De Tournes, 1671), p. 1.

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Padua, “where liberty was greater for those of our communion,” and when the end came, the boy died with his religion untroubled “in a region of contrary religion.” Nor, as we have seen, could a friendly environment be assumed in France. When Daillé and the surviving grandson returned, Du Plessis Mornay provided them the services of “a French physician of our religion.” Soon after—in the Huguenot Rebellions, which began at Saumur, Du Plessis Mornay’s stronghold—hard times increased the afflictions of “our poor churches in France.”96 In fact, the church Daillé was called to serve at Charenton was a monument to those afflictions. The original Huguenot church had been built in 1606 under a special exemption which forbade Protestant churches closer than five leagues from Paris. As a major center for Huguenot society in the capital, it was destroyed in anti-Protestant riots in 1621. Three years before Daillé’s call to ministry there, the Huguenot “Temple” had been conspicuously rebuilt, large enough to seat 4,000 persons. Daillé had occasion much later, toward the end of his life (1669), to experience the hostility of his neighbors when a prison officer arrived at his doorstep to call him to the execution of “a wretch of our religion,” condemned for a crime against the State (crime d’État). The condemned was already on the scaffold, his arms and legs bound to the frame on which he was to be torn apart. As Daillé made his way through the gigantic, unruly, and hostile rabble, he had much to remind him that that many-headed multitude “assuredly did not love us,” and that “for them it was a complete novelty to see a minister.” Yet, Daillé’s son Adrien piously recorded, God gave him grace to comfort the sufferer and to fortify him with his discourse and prayers.97 Events of that moment on the scaffold anticipated the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), “certainly the greatest single act of official persecution suffered by Christian dissenters in early modern Europe.”98 Maimbourg Maimbourg’s text offers little but silence in regard to suffering. His decision to write his history of the iconoclasts and the divine transfer of the Empire from Byzantium to France allowed him to end his narrative six centuries before his own day. Yet, with a certain archness, he allowed his mask of Saturnine detachment to fall when he offered his book as a parable for the struggle between Catholic venerators of images and Protestant iconoclasts of his day, and invited readers to project themselves into his narrative. To be sure, his desire for approval by readers of exalted, classicist taste required the pose of a certain restrained sang froid on his part, but in the 1670s, after a century of religious warfare and continuing 96

  Ibid., pp. 8–11.   Ibid., pp. 50–53. 98   Kaplan, Divided by Faith, p. 340. 97

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turmoil not always repressed in French society, his nightmarish portrayals of Byzantine rulers, iconoclasts and icon-venerators alike, were designed to awaken living memories, disgust, and haunting dread with vivid portrayals of barbaric atrocities mixing insanity with savagery. Maimbourg’s co-religionists could have matched, with chilling symmetry, the suffering that Daillé experienced from them. Nifanius and Schaten The duel Schaten created between himself and Nifanius likewise interlaced present sufferings with past; but in its ethnicity and complex political fragmentation, it presented a completely different clash of “as if ” identities from the disputes between Protestant and Catholic which shaped the narratives of Daillé and Maimbourg. The foci of suffering for religion exhibited in Schaten’s confrontation with Nifanius were, in the past, Charlemagne’s Saxon War, and in the present, the intrusion of Nifanius, as a Lutheran “bishop,” into the Catholic diocese of Paderborn. Preoccupied with their own homeland, France, Daillé and Maimbourg left the Saxon War unmentioned. For the narratives of Nifanius and Sachatten, Charlemagne’s thirty-year war against the Saxons presented a delicate problem. In the LC/OC, Theodulf—evidently with Charlemagne’s approval—suppressed all reference to that massive undertaking which occupied the equivalent of more than one generation. He remembered it allusively, with three words, amid an effusive celebration of Charlemagne as the champion of Christian orthodoxy and the munificent patron of churches, a ruler who achieved and embodied the kingly virtues which the Byzantine rulers betrayed, and a faithful disciple intimate with Jesus in daily prayer. In this encomium, Theodulf mentioned in passing “and also the Saxons” (sed etiam Saxones) as one of the peoples in Germany, Italy, and the North Sea coastal regions to which he had introduced the rudiments of the faith.99 By coincidence, Nifanius and Schaten lived during a thirty years’ war of their own, and its aftermath. They knew at first hand the costs of re-settling a region desolated by scorched-earth military campaigns and depopulated by military carnage, plague, and deliberate displacement of populations. Every day of their lives, and indeed their debate, allowed no escape from the permanent, manysided religious fragmentation the Thirty Years’ War brought about. Schaten graphically captured the ramifying warfare among sects, and sects divided against themselves. Apart from the hope for reconciliation, he asked, what could keep the world from falling quickly into chaos? He stretched the age of 99

  Ann Freeman with the collaboration of Paul Meyvaert, eds., Opus Caroli Regis contra Synodum (Libri Carolini) (Hannover: Hahn, 1998. MGH, Conc. 2, suppl. 1), I.6, p. 136.

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fragmentation back, not thirty, but a hundred years. Even so, holding to the vision of unity in the Catholic Church, he could not absorb the proposition advanced by Nifanius, that the warring chaos had originated within the papal monarchy, as Luther was baptized within the Catholic Church. The novatores, Schaten wrote, had overthrown the “first principle of religion” by which conflicts could be resolved, and they had brought about a multitude of religious sunderings and bloody wars.100 Reconstructing narratives of their own people and homeland, both Nifanius and Schaten devised ways in which to work the Saxon War into their portrayals of Charlemagne. Their differences came about first, because they had different estimates of Charlemagne’s objectives and achievements in the War, and second, because, as an experienced debater, Schaten cast his counter-blast as a point-bypoint critique of Nifanius’ basic premises. Nifanius divided the Saxon War’s long course into stages. At first, he wrote, Charlemagne had tried peaceful dealings. Later, when the Saxons repeatedly demonstrated their deceitfulness and lapsed into their former superstitions, the zeal of some bishops persuaded him to resort to war. Afterward, however, on Alcuin’s counsel, he tried again to subdue the Saxons without applying force; for, as theologians taught, faith should come by persuasion, not duress. By flagrant betrayals, the Saxons had taught him how limited were the gains he could achieve through violence. The clemency (humanitas) and bounty he dispensed softened the Saxons’ temperaments and dispositions, and created the workspaces where devotion and sacraments could take shape. Thus, through obedience, the ferocious Saxons were subdued, not to Charlemagne, but to Christ.101 Without mentioning massacres, depopulations, and resettlements, Nifanius wrote that conquest and pacification went hand-in-hand. To eradicate errors and abuses and to keep the Saxons from sliding back into their idolatrous ethnic manias (ethnicas idolomanias), Charlemagne established episcopal sees and monasteries and provided abundant support for colleges of priests and for bishops so that they could teach and propagate languages and arts necessary to Church and civil community (respublica). Under Charlemagne and his offspring, literature revived, but soon barbarism overwhelmed it. Ages of iron and lead began. There were many wars among the Saxons, he wrote, before they were brought to the papist faith.102 His opponent, Schaten, had a debater’s skill in restating opponents’ arguments more clearly than they had done, and recasting them to advantage, not quite as they originally intended or stated them. He regularly outmatched Nifanius. This was notably so when he came to the Saxon War. There, as ever, his general task 100

  Schaten, Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, pp. 188–90.   Nifanius, Ostensio Historico-theologica, pp. 40–41. 102   Ibid., pp. 42–5, 52–5, 82. 101

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was to refute the Protestant denial of papal primacy. His particular means to that end was to ride roughshod over what he called Nifanius’ “calumnies” of Charlemagne and the “apostolic men” by whom Saxony was drawn to Christ. For Schaten, Boniface stood foremost among those apostolic evangelists. Boniface and Charlemagne, Schaten wrote, had served Christ’s original and enduring commission from Christ to St. Peter to evangelize the world. It was typical of Nifanius, he sniffed, that his chronology overlapped Boniface’s labors with Charlemagne’s reign.103 Though his comments on the two men are intertwined, I shall concentrate here on his estimate of Charlemagne. Against Nifanius’ portrayal of Charlemagne as a latecomer to the conversion of Saxony, Schaten stood with those who considered him the “apostle” of Saxony, its converter from pagan superstition to knowledge of the true God, and in fact more learned in sacred things and in wisdom than Nifanius or any of his fellow writers and teachers of heresy.104 Schaten’s depiction of Charlemagne’s apostolate was appreciably more severe in extent and intensity of military violence than Nifanius’; for, as Schaten wrote, conversion came after thirty years of warfare and spilling the blood of many priests persecuted by the Saxon duke Widukind. Only then, Charlemagne, the founder of a golden age, subdued Saxony, threw down its idols, closed the shrines of its gods, and baptized thousands of pagans and barbarians.105 No war was longer, more savage, or more laborious for the Franks, but Charlemagne, always magnanimous in adversity and courteous in well-being, bestowed the hierarchic structure of ten bishoprics upon the conquered for their spiritual formation. Schaten read Nifanius’ estimate of Charlemagne as a calumny quite other than Nifanius’ actual defense—namely, as we have seen, that at the urging of bishops, Charlemagne resorted to war only after the Saxons’ perfidy had mocked his peaceful overtures, and even though the Christian faith should be received freely, not under coercion. Schaten’s corrective was the doctrine of just war. Charlemagne, Schaten held, waged war by legitimate authority and with 103

  Schaten’s rehabilitation of Boniface against Nifanius’ characterization belongs to the same passage as an encomium of Charlemagne; see Schaten, Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, pp. 150–61. See also ibid., pp. 142, 156. 104   Schaten, Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, pp. 133, 150. On earlier portrayals of Charlemagne as the apostle of Saxony, see Noble, “Greatness Contested and Confirmed,” pp. 14–15 (the ninth-century Saxon Poet [Poeta Saxo]); Gabriele, An Empire of Memory, p. 30, and McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity, esp. pp. 22–4, 28–9 (Poeta Saxo; Charlemagne as the apostle of the Saxons, and the peace ending the Saxon Wars as the beginning of a growing together by Franks and Saxons into one people), pp. 28–9 (Annales Regni Francorum, a “neutral” way of recording the wars). On parallel assimilations of Charlemagne into ethnic pantheons of other peoples not his own over the longue durée, including the Normans, see Gabriele, An Empire of Memory, pp. 132–9. 105   Schaten, Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, pp. 133, 137.

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righteous intentions. He took up arms only after a period when the Saxons had repeatedly displayed their treachery and savagery, often breaking their alliances. Theologians, Schatten admitted, were divided over whether the Saxons themselves could have waged a just war in defense of their idolatry. Yet he had no doubt that right came from the power of Christ himself, especially when war was necessary to protect and save believers who had been converted to Christ and received by baptism. Often crossing the Rhine, the Saxons had barbarously killed many Christian priests beyond the borders of Saxony, in Frisia and on Frankish soil. They had inflicted turmoil on Christian communities, sparing neither sex nor age, destroying churches, profaning sacred objects.106 Against a second “calumny” by Nifanius—that the Saxons converted out of dread more than purity of intent—Schaten countered that Charlemagne used violence, not to convert the Saxons, but to force them to keep their agreements. Certainly, he forbade idolatry, requiring Saxons to give the Creator what was due him, and to abstain from human sacrifice and other crimes against nature. Still, having removed the works of superstition, Charlemagne allowed them to keep their own laws, accommodated to the laws of the Franks. For the rest, the biographies of apostolic men proved what great credit “our” barbaric Saxons ascribed to their teachings and holiness of life, and to miracles which God worked through them. Indeed, the conversion of Saxony was brought about by the power of the Gospel manifested in signs, prodigies, and miracles, the like of which could not have attended the spread of a false gospel. Nifanius, Schaten concluded, was cobbling dreams and fantasies together into a mishmash where everything was crass, confused, foolish, wild, and hastily thrown together. His argument posed a choice: either the world was insane in Charlemagne’s day, or it had gone mad in Nifanius’ and his own.107 In his rebuttal to Nifanius’ “calumnies” against Boniface and Charlemagne, the longest section by far is his defense of Boniface, so great a man, among the most chaste and holy bishops, teacher of many peoples, who labored for fifty or seventy years, led many barbarians to baptism and the faith of Christ, and closed his labors with a glorious martyrdom. Boniface was radiant in his sayings, deeds, writings, and miracles. How far has the insanity of the age gone, Schaten exclaimed, that such a man should be openly slandered?108 Where would it all end—the constant multiplication of heresies and their breaking into rival factions, the propagation of the fragments and their indigenization of this Babel into every region of Europe from England to Hungary? Luther and other heretics argue, Schaten continued, that the kingdom of Antichrist was introduced in the time of Pope Gregory the Great 106

  Ibid., p. 142.   Ibid., pp. 143–5, 151. 108   Ibid., pp. 151, 156. 107

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(590–604), and that the Church declined from that time one. If that is so, it must necessarily follow that the Gospel of Christ was never handed on pure and whole to peoples and nations converted subsequently, but only, as Nifanius says, “the yeast, mire, dross, dregs, and filth of human tradition,” until, finally, Luther arrived, the deserter and renegade monk mated with a nun, the rebuilder, restorer, and purifier of gospel devotion, “until,” as Nifanius says with delighted irony, “Luther came, sent down by God. O the madness of our age!”109 In the treatises with which we are concerned, the greatest unacknowledged visceral emotion of all could lie in the sense of impending chaos. This too was the most devastating antithesis to the “as if ” destinations in their narratives, the crown for those who, despite all suffering, kept the faith and ran the great race. Schaten’s intimations, not merely of present chaos, but of total blankness, the world reduced again to the primal nothingness out of which God brought it, came couched in a strange biblical analogy. Diversity of opinion, he wrote, was typical of heretics, but all opinions, however discordant among themselves, were bound together by one and the same vanity. The biblical account of Samson’s revenge gave him an analogy. Samson cunningly attacked the Philistines, catching 300 foxes, turning them tail to tail and fastening one torch between each pair of tails. He set fire to the torches, and released the foxes into the Philistine’s ripe grain fields, vineyards, and olive groves, consuming everything in one fire ( Jgs. 15:3). Even so, as the foxes’ heads could turn hither and yon in mutual opposition, their tails were tied together so that all the frenzied struggling pairs would make one fiery mass, one colossal bonfire, of themselves and the whole Catholic harvest.110 Between the Gospel paradigm of unity and the actuality of religious multiplicity tending to meltdown, another paradigm was taking shape. Indigenization, Globalization, and Paradigm Shift from Image toward Evolution Globalization without Indigenization Our four receptors worked out of quite different critical perspectives. Still, the inescapable pincer movement of assimilation and indigenization has brought us repeatedly to the realization shared by all four receptors, that reception of a paradigm of community depended on the community. A great unconscious irony pervades all four treatises in our sample. As we shall see, this irony was the hinge of paradigm change. Between the fifteenth and the eighteenth century, globalization shattered the horizons of the known world. 109

  Ibid., pp. 140–41.   Ibid., Preface, n.p.

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At the same time, in the previously known world, the always elusive paradigm of one universal Church withdrew to a height of abstraction astronomically distant from earthly reality. And from within its fractures, Europe could offer no blueprint for realizing any visionary paradigm of universality in the newly discovered lands and continents. On the contrary, zeal for indigenization, which we have found as a method of Christianization and re-Christianization in all four treatises, balked at such expansion. There was no inclination among Europeans to cede their separatist indigenist programs to a pan-European nativism; there was no inclination either to allow the latitude and the dignity of indigenization to non-European peoples. While infectious and powerful zeal for spreading the Gospel swept through Europe, and indeed opened a golden age of missionization, it grew, flowered, and bore fruit as an offshoot of colonial imperialism. Nifanius’ reference to “our [Lutheran] orthodoxy” was a sign, not only that segmentations dividing confessions were becoming permanent, but also that divisions between branches and factions of individual confessions were hardening into orthodoxies, as they were between magisterial Lutheranism and Pietism and between Anglicanism and Puritanism. Evangelism at home and overseas became the proprietary concern of separate institutions, and those overseas colonial missions were also divided according to politically and militarily defined spheres of influence. There too the call was to convert other peoples to the ways of Western civilization, rather than, as had been done in much earlier centuries, to adapt Christianity to indigenous ways. As we have noticed, the Jesuits had won intimidating successes in evangelistic campaigns of Christianization and re-Christianization at home, partly by such devices as the “New Method,” modifying their doctrines to accommodate Protestant beliefs. When they transplanted this strategy to foreign missions, notably in Asia, they encountered resistance, both from Protestant rivals and from within the Catholic communion. Their accommodationism eventually contributed to the papal suppression of their Order (1773, restored 1814). It is hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the irony. While applied widely to partisan evangelism in Europe, the argument for indigenization was withheld from evangelism abroad at the very moment when the universality of the planet was realized, largely a world to which the Bible was unknown, together with sacred history and its eschatological promises. In the world beyond Europe, Europeans applied the diametric opposite of indigenization, in fact a transfer of the splintered groundplan of Europe, adapted for colonization. As a result of this reductive thinking, the factional conflict of orthodoxies we have encountered was transplanted from the European homeland around the world as a hallmark of what came to be called Christian civilization. The blind eyes Daillé and Maimbourg turned to the globalization of Christianities may or may not give evidence of reductionist indigenization. But it is certainly present in the almost parenthetic allusions of Nifanius and

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Schaten to the religious reconfiguration of the world. Among his other rebukes against Catholicism, Nifanius remembered to mention that, in accommodating the Gospel to Chinese ways, Schaten’s fellow Jesuits had “by cunning artifice” slipped in the cult of images under Christ’s tunic.111 In his habitual expansiveness, Nifanius moved smoothly from Charlemagne’s experiments with benign conversion techniques in Saxony to recent and current experiments with conversion through cruelty and deceit, primarily by Spaniards in the West Indies and Jesuits in Japan and India, where, he wrote, Goa was converted not so much by preaching as by the fire and iron of the Portuguese.112 Schaten rose to Nifanius’ excursus into comparative modern evangelisms, but with a triumphalist vision. The greater part of Saxony had departed from its ancestral religion, he wrote, abandoning Charlemagne, the unifier, and going over to Luther and Calvin. His one prayer was that the peoples (gentes) whom the Holy Spirit had once gathered into unity of faith it would call back to the one Church of Christ and the concord of one religion, outside of which no salvation had been promised.113 Luther and other unheard-of heretics had brought on such religious turmoil that no one nation was worthy to receive the kingdom of God. The kingdom was therefore transferred to other nations able to bear fruit worthy of their calling. In other times, when the Eastern Empire, torn by schisms and manifold heresies, fell away from the Church, the Western Empire arose under the King of the Franks, Charlemagne’s forebears. Under one man, Charlemagne himself, it acquired as much in the West as had been lost in the East. Again, when the Catholic faith was cast aside by the heresies of Luther and the others, the Christian religion migrated under God’s protection from “our” world to distant islands, as the prophet Isaiah says, to lands at the uttermost ends of the world. The point of contention between Nifanius and Schaten was whether those distant peoples were ever converted through the pure doctrine of the Apostles, and whether in the two Indies, East and West, they were still being converted by apostolic men and so many martyrs. Catholics had a righteous cause for asking Lutherans what peoples they converted by the gospel that Luther promulgated—what barbarian peoples were ever, anywhere, converted to Christ by Lutheran preachers. As a Jesuit, Schaten particularly noted Nifanius’ disparagement of Jesuit missions, despite their extraordinary efforts and victories in tilling Christ’s vineyard in China and the two Indies. He did not neglect to return to the celibacy of Boniface, obedient to the see of Peter, in order to pose this question to Nifanius, a married Lutheran who claimed the dignity of “Superintendent” or bishop. Reviling Nifanius as a 111

  Nifanius, Ostensio Historico-theologica, p. 985.   Ibid., pp. 42–5, 52–5, 82. 113   Schaten, Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, pp. 669–70. 112

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fornicator and his wife as a whore in their marriage, Schaten plainly included him among followers of those would-be propagators of the Gospel whom even Luther denounced as merciless in their greed and worse than any papist; for Nifanius had invaded the ecclesiastical scene in the county of Waldeck, snatching at the spoils of bishoprics like a dowry hunter.114 Luther had proclaimed his Gospel only through apostate priests, clerics, and monks.115 With Nifanius in mind, Schaten contrasted the self-denial of Catholic celibates with the self-indulgence of Protestants who were ensnared in many chains of their carnal gospel—ensnared by the delights of wives and children and by at least dreams of gold and riches, none of which they had found among barbarian peoples. For even when they paid the price of tearing themselves from the bosoms and embraces of their wives, they could not find what they sought in distant lands. The ancestors of Nifanius and the other Protestants were celibate priests and bishops who first transmitted the Word of God in Saxony. Which of them—Boniface or any other—had come to convert the heathen dragging a family in tow?116 Schaten’s response to Nifanius’ reflections on evangelism placed Boniface and the other evangelists of Saxony in the same age-old evangelical movement as the Jesuits. The conversion of the Gentiles, he wrote, was the property and home of the Catholic Church and the task of celibates seeking, not their own fleshly delights, but spiritual children and delights of Christ’s household, and finding them among the Gentiles and in martyrdom.117 The Elephant and the Anthill: The Power of the Species In this reductionist irony of carrying transposing feuds of indigenization in Europe into mission fields outside of Europe, there is a key to a change from paradigms of patristic and European tradition to evolution. The key was present in the argument for indigenization itself, which was nothing but an argument for the formation of a people’s character by collective adaptation and practice over centuries and embodied by general consent in its social network of custom, polity, and language. This conception found one classic formulation in England, with Richard Hooker’s (1533–1600) defense of the national Church consolidated, he thought, in his day by the Elizabethan settlement.118 Hooker counted atheists among dissenters from his convictions, along with Catholics with their authoritarianism, and most threatening of all, Puritans (or 114

    116   117   118  

Ibid., pp. 158–9, 614. Ibid., p. 160. Ibid., pp. 159–61. Ibid., p. 159. Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, ed. Georges Edelen, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977). 115

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Presbyterians) with their doctrine that all readers of Scripture could interpret God’s Word for themselves—mere pretense, Hooker judged, since they insisted that all true believers agreed with themselves. Similar notes to those we have heard from the debate between Nifanius and Schaten sound in Hooker’s report that, with their doctrine of sola Scriptura, Puritans made bonfires of books other than the Bible, and took for divine inspiration “when they and their Bibles were alone together, what strange phantasticall opinion soever at any time entered into their heads.” Their ambition to overturn the royal and episcopal order that collective assent had established in England over the centuries and to establish a new Covenant order according to what they called God’s commandments in Scripture was nothing other than an all-too-human maneuver “to force God to harken unto them.”119 We have found that, in the welter of ideas between the dynamic staffage of internecine descent groups and that of another patterning, visceral emotion, components of another, new force field were taking shape: evolution. To be sure, in his mission of re-Christianization, Segneri discovered the exact key to the argument for indigenization and to the change toward a paradigm of evolution, and he expressed it in a kind of parable. He saw that the great masses of unrefined people (rudis populus) absorbed his teaching, not at first blush, but by repetition. Truth did not sink early into their minds: “The huge bulk of an elephant leaves no mark on stones it walks over only once. And yet, even ants, by constantly rubbing over a rock as they go and come, wear it away.”120 The epochal gap between the writing and the long-delayed reception of the LC/OC makes sense only by analogy with the collective effect of ant colonies marching back and forth repeatedly over the same ground, rather than with one act of a towering individual. I cannot resist extending Segneri’s analogy to include, in our account, intimations of the Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins’s captivating term for what he considered the deliberate, creative misunderstanding with which some of us have insisted on reading a Great Design—the work of an unseen power—in Charles Darwin’s blind processes of evolution: that is, on natural selection.121 119

  Ibid., vol. 1, Preface, 8.7, p. 44.   Pinamonti, “Exemplar Litterarum,” in Segneri, Homo Christianus, n.p.: “Quamlibet

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vasta elephanti moles in saxis per quae semel duntaxat ambulatit sui vestigia non relinquit; at quem saepe terunt, tandem etiam formicae euntes redeuntesque lapidem atterunt.” 121   Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), esp. pp. 7–9. See the caution against using biological evolution as a “putative explanation for all human behaviors,” including moral or amoral beliefs and conduct, in Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), pp. 79–80. Here, I am pointing toward antecedents of theological positions which have been used in attempts to harmonize Christian theology with evolution through the theory of a Great Design.

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In our exploration of pattern recognition, we have no need to look further back than the awe-inspiring edition of the LC/OC by Ann Freeman, with Paul Meyvaert’s assistance, to perceive that in origin, execution, and career the LC/ OC was a social artifact. The editors acknowledged the social context of their work in Ann Freeman’s introduction, in the scientific techniques (including photographic recordings and analyses) employed, and in the continuing scholarly discourse recorded in the apparatus criticus. Moreover, the entire project of interrogating the text was compelling and justifiable because of inherent imponderables and mysteries whose study, and possibly whose clarification or resolution, were recognized by learned communities as having social value. The social aspect of pattern recognition has also characterized our quartet of seventeenth-century arguments. It is what we have called examining the elephant in the dark. In our seventeenth-century writings, we have found that social consensus acted in the receptions of the LC/OC, but not in valuing what the text itself affirmed about the making and veneration of religious images. What mattered for all four authors was the authority the text’s association with Charlemagne could give the collective identities, ethnic or religious, claimed by a given writer. They judged its authenticity by whether it sanctioned the hypothetical narrative they lived by, an “as if ” narrative of what was and what was to be which was read in different ways by the imperfect eyes of faith, hope, and love. Not all our authors appear to have read the text itself with the eyes of the body. We have found that our second point of pattern recognition (or awareness) is the elephant in the room: the overwhelming presence which frames the whole interrogation. It is hidden in plain sight, since no one mentions it. Here, we have found visceral emotion, tied to suffering by our treatises, the obvious presence absent from the discourse which it shaped. Suffering figured in two modes. The first “as if ” mimetic existence was imitation of Christ the sinless victim, enduring with him the pain of suffering or dying for religious love, joining one’s sufferings with those of Christ and becoming a collaborator with him in atonement with him. The second was inflicting pain in punishment upon the wicked and unbelieving to avenge Christ, or in duress upon the slack and wandering to force them to be saved. And we have found that when it came to pain, the master narratives became stories of houses divided against themselves, warring descent groups of common ancestors willing to suffer with Christ, or to inflict suffering for Christ. The almost intuitive ethnicity of the internecine conflict which made “us” what we are in the “as if ” narratives under review is particularly striking in our comparison of two authors who divided the world into “us” (or “ours”), meaning France, and “them” outside “our nation,” and two others who applied the “us”/“them” division to themselves as religious factions within the Saxon people.

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Neither did divisions among Saxons matter to the French, nor did those among the French enter into the narratives of the Saxons. The peculiarities of the genetic paradigm of internecine warfare came into sharp relief regarding Charlemagne’s Saxon War, omitted by Daillé and Maimbourg, but brought to the fore by the two Saxons, Nifanius and Schaten, for as Saxon Christians, they were obliged to defend the bloody and protracted sufferings Charlemagne, the founder of a golden age, inflicted on their ancestors. Most glaringly, regarding spiritual descent groups, the paradigm of genetic rivalry was always present in the contrast between Catholics’ celibate priesthood and Protestants’ married clergy—a contrast which leapt out at us in Schaten’s sardonic challenge to Nifanius over the relative harvests of their Churches’ foreign missions. Inscribed in the Gospel and in the letters of Paul, voluntary celibacy was one of the primary instances of living “as if ” one were what one was not for the kingdom of God. Indeed, hostility among kindred entered into thinking about the LC/ OC itself. For Cardinal Bellarmine’s denunciation of the text as a forgery, basely attributed to Charlemagne as its author, included the slur that it was Charlemagne’s “bastard and illegitimate,” which Daillé carefully refuted with what he considered evidence that “the book is truly what it says it is: namely, the child of Charles the Great.”122 Yet to devout readers of Scripture, even the stigma of bastardy acknowledged descent, not quite in the same way as Isaac and Ishmael were both children of Abraham: Isaac, by the free woman, and Ishmael, by the slave; Isaac, the forefather of Abraham’s lineage that would enter into his inheritance, Ishmael, of Abraham’s lineage that would be driven out (Gal. 4:21–5:1). Descent in the female line was what distinguished the chosen people, Israelites, from other peoples descended from Abraham, but it was still descent. The task of recognizing patterns in society and in suffering as part of the construction of Christian identities has led us to a third level of pattern recognition: elephants leaving no footprints, ants wearing stone away. Paradigm change, in this case, was won by the ants. We are at the point in Kuhn’s model where, if a new paradigm designed by scientists were to replace a deficient old one, popularization would need to re-educate the articulate members of society and produce a changed social consensus. Parties agreed that the great dividing question was “Where is the Church?” with its promised unities—a question ramifying ever more widely through confessions, sects, and the factions into which they multiplied. In the interrogations of texts, Scripture held unchallenged and universal supremacy. But the objective of salvation seen imperfectly and from afar by eyes of faith, hope, and love made getting the right meaning both 122

  Daillé, De la créance des pères, p. 429 (“bastard et illegitime”), 432 (“ce liure est vrayement ce qu’il se dit estre, c’est à dire enfant de Charles Magne”).

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urgent and imperative, an objective beyond human understanding, obstructed by the many and inscrutable difficulties in Scripture and the multiplicity of conflicting methods to read and disclose meaning in it. The axiom, so favored by Protestants, that Scripture was its own interpreter was both an admission of the inadequacy of means to end and a statement of biblical interpreters’ reliance on divine inspiration which was by no means uniform, the promise of an indefinitely ramifying tree of life. It was one connection among several that Daillé, who took no notice of Saxony, and Nifanius, for whom France lay outside the field of vision, were drawn into the same network of disputation by the work and followers of François Véron SJ, the inventor of the terrifying instrument for reconverting lapsed Catholics, the New Method. The purpose of savage polemics and irenic apologies was to change humanity by changing minds. But one essential step toward a concept of evolution was still to be made. For, in the materials we have reviewed, there was no reflection that by the combined energies of the whole human colony—even though an incessant clash of consciousness against consciousness—humanity could also be changed. Conscious reflection on competition and rivalry in the struggle for survival could alter consciousness as well as conscience by unrecognized and silent adaptations. It could thereby transform the paradigm of humanity itself, and how humanity came to be the way it was. Units of Selection: A Landscape of Labyrinths In the age of globalization, explorations of Scripture as a rule of life sharpened the visceral pain with which intra-specific rivalry pervaded, not only the institutions, but even more, the “as if ” ethos of community: in other words, collective religious identities. A decisive turning point had been reached when Schaten framed his question, “What kind of man are you, Lutheran or Calvinist?” His omission of “Roman” or “our sort” is conspicuous. Indeed, his formulation is markedly different from the early Christian conception that authentic faith raised souls from animality to humanity—a proposition so profound that the denial of humanity by sect or confession divided the burial of the dead.123 It long survived, and the theologian Heinrich Fries (1911–1998) restated it with the connotations of his own time: “The Christian is the authentically human and the authentically human is Christian,” or in other words, “What is Christian is human and what is human is Christian, and the roots of one are deep in the 123

  Schaten, Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, p. 599. The refusal to bury the dead in consecrated ground continued early prohibitions against the burial of the unbaptized, excommunicates, heretics, and other outcasts. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was accompanied by desecrations of corpses and attacks on mourners in France and Germany; Kaplan, Divided by Faith, pp. 94–6.

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other and how great [is] the mutual illumination.”124 Does being Christian mean holding to the ethos of one institutional Church, sect, or communion rather than any other? Who decides? In the context of seventeenth-century Saxony, Schaten’s question made humanity a variable of religious identity, and religious identity itself a political denominator. Early modern Europe’s craze for mazes and labyrinths gave a pervasive emblem for spiritual deathtraps into which all religious factions judged their rivals had fallen through erroneous readings of Scripture. In symbolic asymmetry, the altar of Truth counterbalanced the labyrinth of error (see Plate 11). Indeed, the labyrinth was pressed into service as an emblem of love, or rather of the hopeless entanglement, deception, and pain that made love sweet agony and tender death. The Hussite and international framer of Protestant education John Amos Comenius (1592–1670) counterbalanced the labyrinth of the world, full of vain delusions, with the life-renewing paradise of the heart, open to the eyes of faith, which saw, not death, but glory. Significantly, Comenius’ particularly intricate labyrinth of the world contained separate but interconnecting chambers. Pagans, Jews, Muslims, and Christians were segregated by their mutually exclusive creeds into separate temples of disease, madness, and contention. Divided by their restrictive interpretations of the Gospel, Christian sects likewise had their own chapels, conspicuous for moral depravity, hypocrisy, cynical disbelief among the clergy, and lethal in-fighting.125 In the Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536), John Calvin (1509–1564) held a fundamental sense of the labyrinth as emblem of self-imprisonment. Behind the moralisms (the world as labyrinth) and invectives (for example, the papacy as labyrinth and seat of Antichrist; the labyrinths of scholastic theology), the essential fact was that every human mind was labyrinthine. Seeking to know things beyond their powers, individuals strained to invade the sacred precincts of divine wisdom. Unwilling or unable to restrain their curiosity, they fell into labyrinths of their own convoluted intricacies from which they could find no exit, and whole nations were drawn inextricably into falsehood, idolatry, and superstition.126 From Antiquity, the seventeenth century knew two main categories of labyrinth: the circular path of the Cretan maze, and the vast structure of 124   Heinrich Fries, Bultmann-Barth and Catholic Theology, trans. Leonard Swidler (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1967), pp. 78–84. 125   John Comenius, The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart, trans. Howard Loutham and Andrea Sterk (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), pp. 122–34. 126   John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960), I.5.12, I.13.21, III.2.2–3, III.6.2, III.19.7, III.21.1, IV.7.22, 24–5; vol. I, 64–5, 146, 544–5, 685; vol II, 839, 923, 1,142, 1,144–5.

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intersecting labyrinths believed to have been seen by Herodotus in Egypt. However, terminology could be loose. Comenius compared his labyrinth of the world with the Cretan paradigm, but only to say that the world was the infinitely more complex of the two. Mocking Nifanius for having fallen into all heresies, whether of early or of modern times, including multitudes of sects throughout Europe, Schaten assured him that he had entered the Egyptian, not the Cretan, labyrinth. In so far as Nifanius had entered a new labyrinth, Schaten continued, it was one he had put together with dreams and deliriums of his own mind, an argument of phantasms in which he walled himself up and through whose circuitous paths he wandered leading his untutored people.127 Without saying so, we have encountered in the labyrinthine confrontations of Catholics and Protestants some traces of the changes in the “as if ” reading of Scripture which made German Lutheran exegesis a decisive force in modern Christianity.128 It was in fact the point at which the many Reformation controversies converged: the challenge by Protestant Reformers to papal monopoly over the truth of Scripture. Schaten put his finger on this exact point when he condemned Nifanius, other Lutherans, and “all the novatores of these times” for claiming to recognize the authority of Scripture alone, whereas they manifestly exercised their own authority over Scripture. They had challenged or rejected the authority of many books in the biblical canon, as the Lutherans set aside, apart from the so-called Apocrypha, the letters of James and Jude, the letter to the Hebrews, and Revelation. To be sure, the need for some adjudicating authority could not be avoided. The Bible, Schaten continued, was obscure and hard to understand in many places. Passages most crucial to salvation were open to many irreconcilably conflicting interpretations. What, for example, did Jesus’ words mean when he said, “This is my body” (1 Cor. 11:24), the words with which he instituted the Eucharist? Schaten knew that he was only hinting at the cacophony of interpretations when he alluded to divergent Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist theologies. The novatores’s fallacy, Schaten wrote, lay in arguing that Scripture was the judge of itself. By analogy, the civil law is not judge of itself. The law does not decide a case; a judge decides it. So eminent an authority as St. Augustine had said that he would not believe the Gospel itself unless the authority of the Catholic Church verified it. And the judgment of the Church is formed 127

  Schaten, “Labyrinthus Praedicantum”, in Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, pp. 708–11, 721. 128   Brad S. Gregory stresses “the significance of the principle of sola scriptura for contemporary hyperpluralism” and the need to study “radical and magisterial Protestants … together”; Gregory, The Unintended Reformation, pp. 93–6. In view of the wide influence of Lutheran theology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, one wonders whether some attention could also be given to Catholic exegesis, including the limited modification of sola scriptura in the Nova Methodus. On “the secularization of knowledge”, see also ibid., pp. 306–7, 354–7.

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from consensus of the Fathers and tradition in the Roman See where the Catholic Church has ruled by one Spirit under one authority from the age of the Apostles “to this day.” In Rome, the Fathers had acknowledged immutable and final judgment from which there was no appeal. There, Schaten added, the issues vexing the Synod of Frankfurt, including Byzantine doctrines on sacred images and Spanish heresies, had been laid before Pope Hadrian. The novatores, he concluded, have overthrown this “first principle of religion,” and thus precipitated countless religious factions and bloody wars. Among Protestant sects, everyone appeals to Scripture as though it were its own judge. Schaten brushed these appeals aside as mere verbiage. In fact, he wrote, every person wants his own private spirit to be left as the judge of Scripture for himself.129 Stiffened by illusions of his own sanctity, Schaten wrote, Nifanius walked around and around in circles with the ungodly in the labyrinth of his mind.130 In his rebuttal to the Walenburchs, the Archbishop of Mainz’s much-feared re-Christianizers, Nifanius had taken up their accusation that Lutherans practiced and sanctioned “the private interpretation of Scripture.”131 “Private,” he argued, did not mean eccentric or idiosyncratic. The truthfulness of “private” interpretation had little to do with intuition and ingenuity. It depended on divine inspiration, which Nifanius referred to as “divine faith poured into us,” and “the light of Jesus Christ” rising in the heart, dispelling shadows, and enabling the dawn of Gospel truth to rise among believers.132 One has to distinguish, he wrote, between (1) the interpretation of a private person, and (2) a private interpretation. The second sense—“private interpretation”—is a meaning which individual persons frame for their own purposes and foist upon Scripture. This circularity, in which a person is the source of the meaning he or she finds, is forbidden by Scripture (2 Pt. 20–21). But the first sense of “private interpretation” is an abstract method of examination, divinely enlightened, rather than a desired solution. Everyone knows that you can apply correct mathematical methods of computation to a problem and come up with a wrong answer. Far from being condemned, as was the second meaning, the first meaning of “private interpretation” is commanded by Christ himself ( Jn. 5:39), 129   Schaten, Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, pp. xiii–xiv, 183–90: “Nimirum verbo solam scripturam judicem faciunt, et re ipsa nullum judicem agnoscunt: quando quisque propriam interpretationem, et privatum spiritum sibi judicem relinqui vult.” Augustine’s famous statement occurs in Contra epistolam Manichaei quam vocant fundamenti, Migne PL 42, p. 176: “Ego vero evangelio non crederem, nisi me catholicae ecclesiae commoveret auctoritas.” 130   Schaten, “Labyrinthus Praedicantum,” Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, pp. 644, 720–21: “hic cum impiis denuo in circuitu ambules.” 131   Nifanius, Ostensio Historico-theologica, p. 1,053. 132   Ibid., pp. 804, 1,054–5, 1,253–5.

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and the Apostle Paul also permits private discretionary judgment, not only to pastors of churches, but also to any faithful person (1 Thess. 5:22).133 Scripture is said to be elucidated by Scripture when the principles of elucidation are drawn out of Scripture and not from other sources, and/or when the meaning we ascertain is implicitly or explicitly contained in Scripture. Consequently, readers should not bring their personal inclinations and opinions to the task. Exegesis is hard work. Facile self-reflection would have been a trap if interpretation were simply a matter of reading the words, or even one of the familiar devotional practices of rumination (lectio divina, “chewing on divine revelation”). For the Holy Spirit could move with its gifts in a way other than the direction taken in rumination.134 Meaning had to be extracted by carefully collating a passage in Scripture with its context, passages before and after it, and by meticulous comparative study of why the words in a passage being examined were chosen as appropriate for that text, and of parallel texts in Scripture. Left to his own devices, even in such earnest and constant disciplines, every man was a liar. But through the gift of infused faith, the light of Jesus Christ could push aside preconceptions, the shadows of your heart, and enable the radiance of Gospel truth to rise.135 In this way, each person studies according to the measure of faith given to him or her by God (analogia fidei), and as study advances, each is strengthened by an increase in heavenly wisdom. In this way, believers do not fabricate interpretations of their own brains and intuitions, but apprehend what is given in Scripture and opened by the individual gifts of the Holy Spirit. They were not sinking into the quicksand of subjectivity, for, as Nifanius wrote, the center of salvation lay, not in the vicious circles in their own minds, but outside themselves, only in the merit of Christ.136 Seizing his own escape from vicious circularity by affirming divine infusion of faith and the spirit of Christ, Nifanius praised the freedom of this method and the certainty it offered interpreters that they had the true sense of Scripture. By contrast, he wrote ironically, echoing Schaten’s charge against him, papists were caught in a logical circularity that would bring them to ruin. Christ had given a singular commission to the Apostle Peter—that he would found his Church on Peter and that the gates of hell would not prevail against it (Mt. 1:16). But to extract the doctrine that the popes and the Roman Church were infallible from his words to Peter entailed beginning with the assumption that Christ intended what he said to Peter for the popes, and what he said of the Church for the Roman Church. Neither, Nifanius believed, could be demonstrated from Scripture. Any were destroyed 133

    135   136   134

Ibid., 1,054, 1,059–60, 1,061, 1,063. Ibid., pp. 1,056, 1,074. Ibid., pp. 804, 1,056, 1,059, 1,063, 1,254–5. Ibid., pp. 1,002, 1,054–5.

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who hung on the say-so of one man and were bound under the thunderbolt of anathema to receive his words without independent verification as though they came from a divine oracle.137 A momentous change in religious identities is at work in this “dialogue of the deaf ” between Schaten and Nifanius, and it is particularly clear in Nifanius’ arguments. That change was “the secularization of the Bible.”138 One of its results was historical criticism, which took seriously what seventeenth-century critics had dismissed as human preconceptions, dreams, and fantasies. We have seen several landmarks which marked the early modern period as a watershed, both in Christian and in general European history. Those landmarks are: the Protestant attack upon the canon of Scripture, which was more profoundly an attack upon Scriptural canonicity—that is the process by which the canon was established; the insistence on thought (or reason) without presuppositions, and stress on the power of the Bible to interpret itself to individual interpreters through their reflections on their own experiences. Lutheran doctrine took one decisive step toward the complete secularization of the Bible in textual criticism as it advanced through the eighteenth century. That decisive step was placing the fulcrum of biblical interpretation in the historical situation of the individual believer, shifting through the ages and across cultures, enabled by spiritual gifts and relying on the merit of Christ. At first glance, the connection between historical perspectivism in reading the Bible and the deep, incommunicable inwardness of mysticism is clear. There was an impenetrable privacy in the spiritual marriage of the soul with God, an intimacy of such unspeakable ecstasy that the soul in human society took every means to keep it as it were a secret place for mutual delight where the soul could be solitary with God “in the desert or in the midst of the throng.”139 The exegesis advocated by Nifanius and decried by Schaten was not private in any sense of withdrawal from society. As Nifanius clearly stated, it was interpretation emerging historically from personal experience controlled by the letter of Scripture. Language located it in human society, and therefore not in the world of unchanging dogma and propositions, but in the world of historical change. Tradition was inescapably under history’s judgment. The course of historically grounded private scriptural exegesis represented by Nifanius leads through early historical criticism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to the Tübingen School, and further to the framing of a Christianity 137

  Ibid., pp. 1,055, 1,057.   For an excellent general review of this change, see Maurizio Ferraris, History of

138

Hermeneutics, trans. Luca Somigli (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996), esp. pp. 28, 35–7, 52. 139   For example, William of St. Thierry, Exposition on the Song of Songs, trans. Mother Columba Hart (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1970), song 1, stanza 8.106, pp. 84–5.

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without Christ (Bultmann) and the ideal of a religionless Christianity (that is, Christianity without Church) that came to Bonhoeffer in prison. The essence of a historical perspectivism, with all its relativism, is already present in Nifanius’ conception of the new masking itself with antiquity, and in his sneer that Rome’s claim to autocracy enabled it to update the meaning of Scripture when tradition faltered (a sneer that applied to Nifanius’ own methods),140 not to mention also in Schaten’s lament that contrary to apostolic order, philologists, not bishops, had become recognized as authoritative interpreters of Scripture. With the relativism of historical perspectives, “latent disbelief ” became a powerful current in confessional spiritualities from the seventeenth century onward. Old paradigms still failed to resolve old problems, much less those posed by the world that was straining to be born. Casuistry entered a golden age with its power to resolve dilemmas between contrary imperatives of conscience by evasion, “respect[ing] borders even as it violated them,” and in art and in politics, “dissimulation was a chief method of ideological settlement during the confessional period … but war still raged among religions.”141 What anchor could hold in this boiling fecundity of religious pluralism, threatening, as Schaten wrote, to implode into primal chaos? Schaten felt a particularly intimate suffering in his polemic against Nifanius, Saxon against Saxon: self-mistrust. He derided Nifanius, the married Lutheran pseudo-bishop, as a mocker, one of the prevaricators who made a joke of eternal salvation. But what, he asked, if the mockers were right, and “our ancestors,” in converting from paganism to Christianity, were only exchanging one idolatry for another? What’s the difference, he wondered, whether I adore bread instead of God with Christians in the sacrifice of the Mass, or the Sun with the Persians, or the goddess Hertamelia instead of the Virgin Mary or Mars and Mercury with the early Saxons instead of the Apostles Peter and Paul?142 Summary: Theodicy and Religious Hyperpluralism We are now able to detect analogies between Kuhn’s scenario for scientific revolutions and our four arguments about the LC/OC. We have seen that his point of departure was a set of assumptions, taken for primordial facts by a society, and particularly used as unchallenged operating assumptions by a subset of specialists. Around this core, experience and research built a world-view from which members of society were able to make sense of the world around 140

  Nifanius, Ostensio Historico-theologica, 1,056.   Kittsteiner, Die Entstehung des modernen Gewissens, p. 132. Kaplan, Divided by Faith,

141

p. 170. Koerner, The Reformation of the Image, p. 68. 142   Schaten, Carolus M. Romanorum Imperator, pp. 3, 579, 614.

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them. From time to time, anomalies arose between the world-view and actual experience, and ways of explaining anomalies had to be found, patching cracks in the structure while protecting the paradigm and the overarching coherence it provided. The cost of abandoning an established paradigm was vast; it jeopardized both the master narrative of everything the society held in common and the very essentials of social coherence, including logic, political order, and religion. However, if anomalies accumulated and the old paradigm continued to be unable to set even old quandaries to rest, a massive and protracted crisis could precipitate the search for a new paradigm. New theories would arise, while conservatives continued to defend or recast the old world-view and paradigm, denounced by innovators as tautological and disconnected from the actual nature of things. A breakdown of commonality would occur, and with the invention of multiple alternatives, their advocates would pursue campaigns of popularization seeking public consensus for contending theories. Consensus might indeed form around a new paradigm, which would, for many, replace the old one, but the old paradigm and other new alternatives might keep their sway over partisans. The process of paradigm shift could be very slow and ramify in exotic ways, progressive, lateral, or retrograde. We have found these steps in the adventures of our four treatises. The primordial paradigm came in the Gospel of the unity of faith. The acute, worldshattering crisis came in the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the breakdown of commonality in the fragmentation of European Christianities; the invention of alternative new paradigms in the confessions of faith and the rules of order visualized as the intersecting chambers of an Egyptian labyrinth. Adversaries cheerfully brought to light the universal weakness of their enemies’ paradigms, namely tautology expressed in the self-recapitulating paths of the labyrinth. What were the prospects for a transition from combat to peace by way of a paradigm shift? From time to time, we have found Schaten a supplier of prospects, none particularly hopeful. Once, he cast his eyes beyond the horizon of Europe. When modern heresies cast aside the Catholic faith, he once wrote, the Christian religion migrated from “our” world to the outermost reaches of the world, meaning Asia, where it could revive. Again, he anticipated complete destruction of heretics and the “Catholic harvest” together, in a great bonfire like the one Samson engineered for the Philistines. What would happen to the Egyptian labyrinth the world had turned into? We now find that he asked what it all mattered. What if Nifanius and the other innovators were right and “our ancestors,” in converting from paganism to Catholic Christianity, had only swapped one idolatry for another? All these prospects were tendentious ways of dispensing with the paradigm of Christian unity and the disequilibrium between it and the reality of religious multiplicity—hypothetical ways, for

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argument’s sake, of voiding entirely the old questions which the old paradigm had been inadequate to solve. The seventeenth century inherited even harder questions than this from earlier ruminators on the Bible, questions open for centuries and never adequately resolved. One of them, which originated almost with Scripture itself in the late Roman world, was taken up by Julian of Norwich (1342–c. 1416), and even earlier by Franciscans who asked Angela of Foligno (c. 1248–1309) to ask Christ, her spouse, the answers. Angela’s devotees had wanted details. She asked Jesus why he created humanity in the first place and then allowed us to sin, and why, in the end, he took the pain for our sins on his own shoulders. Without any such distress, he could, after all, have made everything turn out as it had done.143 Having seen in a shattering revelation the unspeakable pain of Christ’s passion, Julian could not see that sin had any substantial existence in the world—it was nothing at all. And she could see no trace of sin in the world except the pain it caused. How, because of sin and its agonies, could one think and believe that compassion reigned among Christians, and that, as Christ promised her, all would be well with Christ’s creatures?144 Calvin had wrestled with the equally thorny and recalcitrant question of why the Gospel of life was not preached to all people, and why it was not accepted in the same way or degree by all those to whom it was preached. His answer was that such things belonged to the divine mystery of predestination, a sacred region that human curiosity should not presume to invade. But this response was no answer at all. It merely confirmed theodiceal questions, those raised long before by Julian and Angela’s disciples. If God’s mysterious judgment portioned out the Gospel, as Calvin wrote, why did God permit people to destroy themselves by pursuing their curiosity into divine mysteries? Why did he allow each to be pleased by their own opinions and dispute all challengers gleefully and endlessly? Why did God allow the papacy to decay into a “horrid apostasy,” dismembering the Church from Christ its head, and making it the see of Antichrist, flooding the world with impious doctrines, superstitions, and idolatry?145 Writing in his own days of disgrace, privation, and danger, the Anglican Bishop Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) brushed aside all such questions, together with the multiplicity of interpretations of Scripture, with his observation that how people read Scripture depended on the preconceptions they brought to the reading. Taylor anticipated Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poetic statement that 143

  Angela of Foligno, The Book of Blessed Angela (Memorial), trans. Paul Lachance (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), c. 4, fourth supplementary step, pp. 176–8. 144   Julian of Norwich, A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, Part One, ed. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978), ch 13, pp. 244–5; ch. 15, pp. 249–50, ch. 16, p. 252. 145   Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III.21.1, trans. Battles, vol. 2, pp. 920–23.

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people saw, not Christ, but themselves in the mirrors of their minds. Readers of Scripture were like a room of people looking at a portrait which gave each onlooker the sense of being looked at by the subject in the picture. This, he added, is how “what was intended for a remedy becomes the promoter of our disease.” The real remedy, Taylor concluded, was indifference, leaving all free to frame their own interpretations.146 Taylor’s quietus on all Scriptural disputes, including those over the theodiceal questions, may have anticipated the emergence of a new and secularized paradigm replacing the primordial one of Christian unity. In a far more rarefied and articulated fashion, the basic, puzzling assumption behind questions about evil in the world confronted another seventeenth-century Saxon, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716). As Leibniz framed the assumption, God had not chosen the best because he made a world in which there is evil, though the world need not have been made with evil. Indeed, the creation could have been avoided altogether. Leibniz resolved the puzzle, and the auxiliary propositions he derived from it—for example, “God is the cause of sin”—with the celebrated formula that beyond the premise that a world with evil is better than one without sin, the universe, as it is, is better than any other possible universe. With Leibniz, we have come close to Jonathan Swift’s (1667–1745) historical perspectivism in Gulliver’s Travels (1726), notably the episode of Gulliver’s insolent ritual trampling on a crucifix before the Emperor of Japan—a sacrilege punishable by death in France—and the amazing and magnificent debut of the comparative study of global religion through the collaborative work of two French Protestants safely in Amsterdam: Bernard Picart and JeanFrédéric Bernard’s Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (1723–43). The catastrophic Great Lisbon Earthquake (1755), occurring on the major religious feast of All Saints’ Day at the very hour when the whole city was in the act of celebrating the principal religious services of the day and the city, gave Voltaire (1694–1778) what he needed to bury all theodicies under satire (Candide, 1759). In the seventeenth century, the social capacity for connecting religious pluralism with moral evolution did not yet exist. Whether or not questions about religion and social evolution have ever become the “right” ones is not now our subject, nor are they likely to be considered “right” when religion is considered a web of deeply personal emotions. However, some elements for recognizing evolutionary patterns have entered our discussion of seventeenthcentury episodes in the reception of the LC/OC. These include: the primacy of species, descent groups with common ancestors, extreme biodiversity, and the 146   Jeremy Taylor, Theologia Eklectike, or A Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying Shewing the Unreasonableness of Prescribing to Other Men’s Faith; and the Iniquity of Persecuting Differing Opinions (London: John Hatchard and Son, 1834), 4.6,7, pp. 110–12.

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struggle for survival among individuals and groups, modification of the species through functional adaptation of individuals to environment and hybridization of old and new changing through an indefinite series of genetic adaptations toward an unknown finale which might be extinction. Evidence of the geological age of the Earth was yet to be discovered and evaluated, and with it previously inconceivable phenomena abandoning the fixity of species. Segneri’s parable of the elephant and the ants pointed toward the power of the species to alter its environment, but there was as yet no conception that the ants themselves could be changed with the environment, or by whatever change of mentalité might come from reflecting on what they were doing together. Without knowing so, the change of mentalité by altering the collective consciousness was what the receptors of the LC/OC were working toward in their hostile exchanges, consciously, deliberately, and relentlessly. Voluminous and long-protracted debates were yet needed to raise the conception that the violence of articulating consciousness among rivals was an engine of changing humanity as powerful in its way as the violence of armed warfare. Yet we have seen the primacy of species in the primacy assigned to humanity, descent groups in “our ancestors” and lineages, extreme biodiversity and the struggle for survival in religious and social fragmentation, the modification of species through conversion, both voluntary and coerced, hybridization through the silent borrowings among sects and confessions, through serial conversions of individuals and groups from one religious grouping to another, and through adaptations of teaching and practice made by missioners to “indigenize” Christianity to local populations in Europe, though not regularly overseas. Schaten’s various unhopeful prospects for religious discourse, Taylor’s indifferentism, Leibniz’s recasting of theodicy, together with the ingrafting of historical perspectivism in theology, point toward the invention of a new paradigm for pattern recognition into which collective wisdom could refashion these elements. Theodicy reminds us how much old business associated with the paradigm of humanity as made in the image of God there was still left to dispose of in the seventeenth century. Globalization revives in the backs of our minds, Dante’s (c. 1265–1321) query. Suppose a man born on the banks of the Indus dies. There is no one to tell him about Christ, no one either to read or write about him. The man dies without sin, but also without faith or baptism. Is his lack of faith his fault? Is it just that he be condemned forever? Now who are you to set yourself up To judge of matters a thousand miles away With eyes that can hardly see nine inches?147 147

  Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. C.H. Sisson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), Paradiso XIX, ll. 76–81, p. 434.

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The discoveries of early modern Europe made it possible to ask also whether the origins, nature, and destinies of humanity could be held in monopoly by one among all human families, whether the image of God might not consist in an everlasting play of lights. Our moral anthropology changes in the alembic of experience, even when experience is called “sacred history.” For Christians, while the transmutation is going on, theodicy—a thing of faith, or hypotheses—saves the phenomena while it also makes it possible to get from day to day. Before Leibniz, our four authors had a choice of one theodiceal clincher: for reasons best known to himself, Jesus sometimes sleeps below deck while his friends are in peril on the sea. But our authors had, somewhere in the backs of their minds, where the eyes of faith could not see and conscience feared to go, patternings that others salvaged later on and wrote into scripts for narratives of a blind watchmaker. Acknowledgments I am very grateful for the privilege of using the Princeton Theological Seminary Library (and the assistance of Ms. Kate Skrebutenas) and Dr. Williams’s Library (and the assistance of Ms. Alice Ford-Smith) in preparing this chapter. I also thank Dr. Ulrich Groetsch for advice on several matters. Evidently, anyone who writes on this subject owes much to the learning and generosity of Professor Thomas F. X. Noble. Deep as my scholarly obligations are, I delight to acknowledge, with a tip of the hat, as graceful as can be, a debt of gratitude for kindnesses through many years. In his lectures, particularly one entitled “Charlemagnia: Writing the Life of Charlemagne,” Professor Noble has anticipated a study of Charlemagne in legend and history over a much longer durée—a study that is receiving, as it deserves, the touch of a master.

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Index of Manuscripts Amsterdam, Universiteitsbibliotheek HS VI E II (NE Francia, s. IX 3/3), 212 Bamberg, Class 54 (Fulda, s. IX 2/4), 138 Bern, Burgerbibliothek 167 (Bretagne s. IX 3/3), 33n Bern, Burgerbibliothek 172 (near Paris [St.Denis?], s. IX 2/3), 33n Bourges, Bibliothèque Municipale 97, 218n28 (s. XIII) Épernay, Bibliothèque Municipale, Ms. 1 (Reims, s. IX 2/4) (Ebo Gospels), 257-8 Gottingen, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. theol. 231 (Fulda, s. X) (Fulda Sacramentary), 109 Laon, Bibliothèque Suzanne Martinet, 468 (Laon, s. IX 3/4), 26–8, 32–3 Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek Voss. Q 12 (Tours, s. IX 2/4, X in.), 211–13, 217 Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek Voss. 8o 15 (Limoges, before 1033) 269n Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek Vulcan 58 (France?, s. XI), 218n Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek Scaliger 49 (Mainz, s. X/XI), 213–17; scripts of 215 London, British Library, Add. MS 89,000, until 2011 London, British Library, Loan MS 74 (Wearmouth-Jarrow, s. VII 4/4) (Cuthbert Gospel), 266 London, British Library, MS Arundel 60 (Winchester?, 1099) (Arundel Psalter), 235–52

London, British Library, MS Royal 2.B.V (Winchester?, s. XI med) (Regius Psalter), 242-4 London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian A.i (Canterbury?, s. VIII) (Vespasian Psalter), 242, 244 Lucca, Biblioteca capitolare 490 (Lucca, s. VIII in), 210 Nuremburg, Stadtbibliothek Frag. Lat. 7 (Murbach, 840s), 138n Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 265 (Reims, s. IX 2/4) (Hurault Gospels), 273 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 1203 (imperial palace, Worms? 781-783) (Godescalc Evangelistary), 270 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 2853 (Lyon?, s. IX/X), 165 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 3784 (Limoges, before 1033), 269n Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 5516 (Tours, before 871), 210 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 5943A (Limoges, before 1033), 268n Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 7925 (Limoges, s. IX), 36n Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 9428 (Metz, 845-855) (Drogo Sacramentary), 112 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 10307 (probaby Laon, s. late IX), 35n Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 11611 (Corbie?, IX 1/4), 155n Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 13909 (Corbie, after 845), 159n

336

Rome and Religion in the Medieval World

St. Petersburg, F v I 11 (Corbie, 814-821), 155n St. Petersburg, F v IV 4 (s. X med), 140 Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS Bibl. Rhenotraiectinae I Nr 32 (Reims, 820-830) (Utrecht Psalter), 257 Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Lat. 1348 (Italy (Tuscany?), c. 1083–1085), 209n, 212 Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Lat. 3764 (s. XI-XII), 218n Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Pal. lat. 886 (Lorsch, 850-859), 138 Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Pal. lat. 899 (N Italy, s. IX 1/2), 138 Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Pal. lat. 1719 (Corbie, s. IX in), 155n

Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Reg. lat. 263 (Limoges, before 1033), 267n Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Reg. lat. 1669, (s. X) 36n Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Cod. 473 (St. Amand, c. 869), 210 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek 529 (NE France, s. X 2/3 or 3/3), 140 Vienna, Weltliche Schatzkammer der Hofburg, Die Krönungs–Evangeliar der deutschen Reichsinsignien (s. IX 1/4) (Vienna Coronation Gospels), 253–74 Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibl., cod. Guelf. 70 Gud. lat. 20 (4374) (s. IX), 33

General Index Aachen, 78, 80, 105, 129, 133, 161, 254, 256, 259–67, 270; winter assembly of 828–829, 160–61 Abbo of Fleury, 212–13 Abraham, patriarch, 321 accessus ad auctores, 24–6 Actium, battle of, 30, 32, 44 Acts of the Apostles, 1, 10, 12 Adalhard, abbot, 52–3, 150, 282 Adhémar of Chabannes, 266–70 Admonitio generalis (789), 27n, 69n, 74, 80 adoption (see also rebirth), 281–5 Aelfric, 236 affines, 281 Agnes, saint, relics of, 202 Agobard, archbishop of Lyon, 61, 69–71, 114–15, 133, 156, 165–8 Alcuin, 57–8, 68, 79, 107, 111–12, 263, 312 Aldegund, saint, relics of, 183n, 198n Amalarius of Metz, 106n, 108–109, 113 Ambrose of Milan, bishop, 13n, 15, 56, 171 Analogia fidei (see also faith), 326 Anastasius the Persian, saint, relics of, 189 ancestors, 30, 68, 139, 281, 288, 297, 299–300, 303–305, 318, 320–21, 328–9, 331–2 Angela of Foligno, 330 anger, 307, 309 Angilbert of St. Riquier, 202 animality (see also beasts, humanity), 322 Annales regni francorum, 210 Anselm of Canterbury, 243–4 Antichrist, 114, 303, 314, 323, 330 Antony, 30–32, 36, 41–4 ants, 321, 332 anthropology, 281, 283, 333 apocalyptic, 285 apostasy, 330 apostles, 1, 3, 7, 10, 11, 12, 21, 50, 71, 73, 75, 78, 277, 283, 294, 299, 313,

317, 324; relics of 183–5, 187, 191–2, 195–6, 220, 228, 229 Aquinas, Thomas, 302 Arator, 1–19, 214 Ardo, monk at Aniane, 132 Arianism, 295 Arno of Salzburg, bishop, 118 Artavasdes, king, 30–31, 43 assimilation, 276, 277–81, 298, 315 Astronomer, Life of Louis the Pious, 129–48, 164–5 Athanasius, 246, 248 attention, prayerful, 235, 247–50 Augsburg Confession, 301 Augsburg, Religious Peace of, 290 Augustine of Canterbury, 214 Augustine of Hippo, 4, 5n, 10–11, 14n, 15, 28, 55, 56n, 68, 104, 121, 145, 252, 279, 324, 325n; City of God, 68 Augustus, C. Octavius (see also Octavian), 30–31, 34, 36, 41–5 Bachelard, Gaston, 6–7 Ballista, 30 Balthild, queen, saint, 53 baptism, 4–7, 10, 12–19, 61, 101–126, 199, 230–31, 305, 314, 332 Easter and Pentecost as times for, 5, 101, 109–10, 199 faith/fidelity, 12–16, 19, 105, 117–19, 314, 332 figures/models of, 6, 13–19 font, 6, 109, 111 godparents/spiritual kinship, 102, 111–13, 124 Holy Spirit, 6, 13–18, 113 infant, 5, 104, 112, 117 oath/pact, 117–18, 122–3 rebirth, 14, 281 barbarians, 50, 55, 299, 313–14, 317–18 Baronius, Cesare, 289, 296

338

Rome and Religion in the Medieval World

Bartholomew, saint, relics of, 195 St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, 309 beasts, 127, 307; mythical, 97 (see also animality, humanity) Becher, Matthias, 254 Bede, 14n, 28, 56, 130, 146n; Ecclesiastical History of the English People, 107, 210 Belisarius, general, 5 Bellarmine, Robert, 289, 292, 300, 321 Benedict of Aniane, 132 Benedict Biscop, 187 Benedict of Nursia, 79, 236–7 Berger, Samuel, 263 Bernard, Jean-Frédéric, 331 Bernard of Septimania, 161–2, 174 Bertrada, mother of Charlemagne, 51–3 Bible (see also canon, Scripture), 8, 15, 28, 54, 146, 281, 294, 317, 319, 324, 330; historical criticism, 327; secularization of, 327 Bischoff, Bernhard, 138, 261–2 blindness (see also sight), physical, 51, 123; as metaphorical unseeing, 159, 175, 279, 281, 284–285, 290–91, 316, 319, 333 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 279, 328 Boniface of Mainz, archbishop, 75, 212, 299, 303, 313–14, 317–18; basilica at Fulda, 217 Boshof, Egon, 165, 166n Brown, Peter, 9, 66–7, 93 Brunhild, queen, 53–4 Buddha, 278–9, 284–5, 290 Bullough, Donald, 83, 259 Bultmann, Rudolf, 327 Burchard, bishop of Würzburg, 216–17 Bureau, Bruno, 4–5 Burton, Danny Ethus, 27–8 Byzantine Art, An European Art, exhibition (1964), 259 Byzantine Empire, 70, 83–4; court, 53; textiles from, 86–7, 89–90, 97, 99

Byzantium, 59, 81, 85, 257–8, 259n, 284, 291, 295, 297–8, 310 Caesarius of Arles, 17n calf, golden, 280 Calvin, John, 281, 300–301, 317, 323, 330 Calvinism (see also Crypto-Calvinism), 287, 289–90, 293–5, 298, 300, 302, 322, 324 canon, biblical (see also Bible, Scripture), 228, 324, 327 canon law, 69, 74–75, 78, 91, 109–111, 121–122, 163, 165, 168, 170–171, 186, 210, 294, 297 Caroloman, king, brother of Charlemagne, 47, 49, 51 Cassander, Georg, 302 Cassian (see John Cassian) Cassiodorus, 155, 171, 244–6, 248, 250 casuistry, 328 celibacy, 282, 317–18, 321 chaos, impending, 300, 311–12, 315, 328 Charlemagne, 47, 51, 53, 57–9, 62, 65–82, 102, 104–6, 108, 113, 119–20, 131, 136–8, 142, 147, 149, 202, 253–74, 277–8, 281–5, 287–9, 291–3, 295–301, 303–5, 311–14, 317, 320–21, 333 Charles Martel, 192, 212, 299 Charles, son of Charlemagne, 69 Charles the Bald, emperor, 97n, 98, 115, 123–5, 136, 148, 159–60, 169–70, 261n Charles the Fat, 127 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, 256 Chlothild (Clotild), queen, 53 Christ (see also Jesus of Nazareth), 6, 9–15, 18–19, 21n, 54, 56, 67, 71–2, 85–6, 88, 95, 102, 107, 114, 118, 120, 144–6, 151, 173, 174–6, 217, 223, 225, 230–31, 233, 237–8, 245, 252, 278, 282, 285, 290–91, 294, 299–303, 306–308, 312–15, 317, 320, 325–7, 330, 332; relics of, 190, 195, 199, 202;

General Index voice of, 249; depictions of, 251, 256, 268–70 christening (see baptism) Christianization, 277, 316; re-christianization, 277–8, 306–307, 316, 319 Christophorus, primicerius, 51–3, 57 Chrysanthus, saint, relics of, 192 Church of Rome, 1, 51, 83, 93, 108, 126n, 209, 299, 303–304, 324, 326 church property, 124, 160, 162–3 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 22, 132n, 135, 170, 282 civil war, Carolingian, 147 civil war, Roman, 28, 30 Clark, Kenneth, Civilisation, 259 classics, Roman, 22 Claudius of Turin, bishop, 69, 71 Cleopatra VII, queen, 28, 30–31, 32, 36, 39, 44 Codex Carolinus, 47–9, 53, 57, 192n co-inherence, 278 coins, coinage, 80, 82, 84, 188n Colish, Marcia, 10 Collectio Avellana, 93, 185 colonialism, 316 Comenius, John Amos, 323 Constantina, daughter of Constantine I, 93 Constantina, empress, 185–6, 188, 202 Constantine I the Great, emperor, 85, 93, 207, 214 Constantine V, emperor, 50 Constantine VII Copronymus, emperor, 300n Constantinople, 3, 5, 185, 201 Constitutum Constantini, 157 convents, 81, 86, 91, 93, 98–9 conversion, 332; to Christianity, 7, 13, 55, 108, 215, 300, 303, 313–14, 317–18; to the monastic life, 52; during the early modern era, 289, 317–18 Corbie, monastery of, 114, 150, 152, 154–5, 157–9, 163, 168, 171, 282

339

Cornelius, centurion, 13 Cornificius, Lucius, 30, 40, 44 Cosmas, saint, relics of, 198n Cranach, Lucas, the Elder, 301n, 302n Crassus, Marcus Licinius, 41 Creation, 10, 278, 280, 290 Cremona, 28n, 38, 42 Crosby, Sumner, editor of Art through the Ages, 258 Crusade, First, 285 Crypto-Calvinism (see also Calvinism), 294n, 301 Culex, 34 cultural memory, 217 Cuthbert, saint, 266 Cuthbert of Canterbury, archbishop, 75 Cyprian, saint, Bishop of Carthage, relics of, 183n, 195 Daillé, Jean, 286–9, 291–9, 308–11, 316, 321–2 Damian, saint, relics of, 198n Dante Alighieri, 332 Daria, saint, relics of, 192 Demus, Otto, Byzantine Art and the West, 259, 272 Denis, saint, relics of, 195 Denmark, 288, 301 Deproost, Paul-Augustin, 1, 4n, 10n Descriptio Lateranensis ecclesiae, 84, 183, 202 Desiderius, king, 47–8, 50–53, 62 Dhuoda, 112, 117 Diderot, Denis, 282 Döllinger, Ignaz von, 169 Domninus, saint, relics, of, 183 domuscultae, 94 Donatus (4th century), 26, 34–5 Dorsilla (Bible), 28n Dürer, Albrecht, 255 dynamism, dynamisme psychique, dynamic pattern (of feeling), 6–7, 18–19 earthquake, Lisbon, 331 Easter tables, 213–17, 242

340

Rome and Religion in the Medieval World

Ebo, archbishop of Rheims, 154, 156, 158, 257 Egeria, nun, 67 Einhard, 22, 24, 49, 52, 68, 131–2, 136–8, 140–42, 145, 147, 210, 254, 263, 265–8, 282 elephants, 279, 284–5, 306, 318–21, 332 Elias, bishop of Troyes, 156–7 emotions (see anger, fear, hatred, love, pain, self-torture, suffering) Ennises (Bible), 28n Epidius, Marcus, 34, 41 Epigrammata Bobensia, 18n Epiphanus, 155, 171 Erasmus, Desiderius, 302n, 303n Eriugena (see John Scottus Eriugena) Ermoldus Nigellus, 25n Eucharist, 6n, 19, 85, 116, 302, 324 Eusebius Rufinus, Ecclesiastical History, 211; Historia ecclesiastica, 212 Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicle, 210 Euphemia, saint, relics of, 202–203 exogamy, 280 faith, personal, 3, 9, 11, 16, 19, 56, 101–102, 107, 146, 312, 322–3, 326 falsity, 281 Farfa, 94 fear, 101, 118, 129, 134, 163, 177, 290, 294, 301, 303, 308, 309, 325, 333 fecundity, fertility (spiritual), 9–10, 12, 14, 112 Felicianus, saint, relics of, 196 ‘figure’, figura (see also ‘mystery’), 2, 6–9, 13, 15–16 fire, imagery of, 6, 8–9, 12–19 Fisen, Barthémy, 263–4, 266–7 Flabellum of Tournus, 21–2 Flodoard of Rheims, De triumphis Christi sanctorumque Palestinae, 210 forgery, 152–8, 165, 168–72, 281, 288, 297–8, 321 fountain, imagery of, 14–19

fragmentation (see also labyrinths), 278, 311, 329, 332 France, 141, 283–4, 288, 290, 292–9, 309–11, 320, 322, 331 Frankfurt, Synod of (794), 281, 292–3, 297, 304–305, 325 Fredegar, Continuations of Chronicle of, 140, 210 Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, 256, 260 Frederick II the Great, king of Prussia, 148 Fried, Johannes, 157, 164 Fries, Heinrich, 322 Fulda, 61, 113, 119, 138, 208, 210, 213–14, 216; abbots, 215; Annals of, 132; necrology, 213 Fürstenberg, Ferdinand von, bishop of Paderborn, 287–8, 296, 299 Gardner, Helen, Art through the Ages, 358 Gatian of Tours, bishop, 207, 212 Geary, Patrick, 81 Genealogica domus carolingicae, 210 Gentiles, 280, 318 George of Ostia, bishop, 57 Ghaerbald of Liège, bishop, 105 Gisela, abbess of Chelles, 50 globalization, 276, 278, 315–16, 322, 332 God, 10–12, 15–16, 18, 49, 54–5, 58, 62, 71, 73–4, 79, 88, 90, 95, 99, 101, 102, 106–107, 111–13, 115, 117–18, 123–6, 129–31, 142, 144, 146, 149, 151, 160, 162–4, 173–7, 231–2, 234, 235, 245–52, 256, 276, 278–81, 290–93, 297–8, 301, 305–306, 309–10, 313–5, 317–19, 326–8, 330–33; church of, 56; kingdom of, 16, 50, 321 godparentage, 102, 104–6, 108, 110–13, 117 Goldast, Melchior, 289, 300 Gombrich, Ernst, Story of Art, 258

General Index Gorgonius, saint, relics of, 196 Görich, Knut, 264 Gospel(s), 71, 109, 114, 120–21, 151, 174, 175, 231, 277–8, 282, 299–300, 314–18, 321, 323–6, 329–30; of John, 15, 266, 278; of Mark, 49, 228; Vienna Coronation, 253–74 Gottschalk of Orbais, 61, 116 Grado relic collection, 193 Greek (see also Byzantium/Byzantine), 3, 29, 89, 90, 155, 171, 179, 185, 188–90, 197, 205, 215, 228–31, 233–4, 272, 277, 292, 293n, 295, 298, 304; ancient Greeks, 30, 43n, 44–45, 135, 137n, 258, 280–82; ancient Greek works, 29, 42 Gregory of Nyssa, 18n Gregory, bishop of Tours, 192, 207, 210; Historiae, 208, 212, 269 Green, Roger, 5 gynaeceum, 90, 94 Hadrian (emperor), 140 Hägermann, Dieter, 254 Haimo of Auxerre, 147n Hammer, Carl, 57 Hannibal, 254 Harold, Danish king, 102 hatred, 144, 308–309 Hatto of Basel, bishop, 105, 110 hear/hearing, 10–11, 48, 67, 78, 101, 107, 109, 115, 119–20, 123, 175, 245–58, 277–80, 305–307, 319 heaven, 2–3, 18n, 70, 74, 103, 111, 120, 122, 129, 142, 147, 256 Hebrews, 16 Helen of Troy, 282 Helena, mother of Constantine I, 93 Henrietta Maria, queen, 290 Henry IV of Navarre and France, king, 309 Heraclitus, philosopher, 19 Heraclius, emperor, 192 Herebold, bishop of Auxerre, 157

341

heretic/heresy, 49–50, 69–72, 95, 117, 287–89, 292–300, 302, 304, 308, 313–15, 317, 322n, 324–5, 329 Hesiod, 28, 39, 43 Hezekiah, King, 251, 280 Hiereia, Iconoclast Synod of, 293n Hilary of Poitiers, 17 Hillier, Richard, 4–5 Himmler, Heinrich, 284 Hincmar of Laon, bishop, 169 Hincmar of Rheims, archbishop, 61, 111–12, 116–17, 121–3, 125, 154, 169–70, 270, 292 Hinschius, Paul, 152, 169n Historia Augusta, 130, 137–141 Historia ecclesiastica tripartita, 155, 171 Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit, 6, 8, 12–18, 113, 296, 317, 326 Holy Land, 54, 81; pilgrimage to, 67, 198; relics from, 183, 191, 197–8, 201–2; reliquary box from, 182 Holy Sepulcher, church of, 81, 199, 200n Homer, 28, 30, 39, 40, 43, 44 Hooker, Richard, 318–19 Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 283n, 290–91, 330 Horace, 79 Hrabanus (Rhabanus) Maurus, 61–2, 107, 110, 119–20, 159n Hugh of Tours, 143 Huguenot(s), 286, 290, 294–5, 308, 310; rebellions, 290, 297 humanity (see also animality), 9, 35, 322–3, 330, 332–3 humility, 143, 145, 296 Iconoclasm/iconoclasts, 70, 85, 253, 279–81, 292n, 295–8, 300, 301n, 302n, 310–11 identity, institutional, 208, 216 idol (see also idolatry), 71n, 287, 313 idolatry (see also calf, golden, idol), 117, 280, 289n, 300–303, 312, 314, 323, 328–30

342

Rome and Religion in the Medieval World

image (see also recapitulation), 2–19, 21, 49, 70, 71, 85, 86, 89, 96, 103, 109, 156, 179, 237–8, 240, 247–9, 254, 257, 264–5, 268–71, 276–80, 283, 288–303, 306, 310, 317, 320, 325, 332–3; verbal, 6, 12 incest, 57, 61–2, 76 indigenation, 276, 278, 281–6, 291, 296, 298–9, 303, 306, 314–19, 332 Indus River, 332 Irene, empress, 295n Israelites, 54–5, 280, 282, 321 Isaac, patriarch, 111, 198n, 321 Isaiah, 317 Ishmael, banished son of Abraham, 321 Isidore of Seville, 27–8, 49, 55, 56n, 62n, 70n, 130, 237n Jacob, patriarch, 7, 111 James, Epistle of, 277–8, 324 James II, king of England, 290 Janson, H.W., History of Art, 258 Japan, 317, 331 Jeremiah, 8, 130–31, 147, 159 Jerome, exegete, 10, 12n, 16, 23, 26, 28, 67–8, 70–71, 77–9, 95, 135, 242, 271 Jerusalem, 67, 70–71, 78, 81, 189, 201, 233, 268, 285 Jesse of Amiens, bishop, 108n, 156–8 Jesuits, 281, 286–90, 294–5, 300, 306, 317, 318 Jesus (see also Christ), 15, 17, 21, 28n, 54, 56, 86, 89, 95, 146, 183, 230, 277, 280, 282, 294, 311, 324–6, 330, 333 Jews (see also Hebrews, Israelites, Moses), 5, 7–9, 13, 56, 103 114–16, 282, 298, 300, 304, 323 John, saint, relics of, 187, 192 John the Baptist, 15, 199, 205; relic of 187 John Calvin, 281, 300, 317, 323, 330 John Cassian, 237–40, 244, 246–50 John Chrysostom, 121

John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii magni, 186–7 John Scottus Eriugena, 25 Jonas of Orléans, 116–18, 120, 148 Josephus, 30 Judith, queen, 54, 163, 171, 174n Julian “the Apostate,” emperor, 282 Julian of Norwich, saint, 330 Justinian, emperor, 3, 5, 185, 192 Karl der Grosse/Charlemagne, exhibition (1965), 259 Kitzinger, Ernst, 258–9 Knibbs, Eric, 152n, 154n, 157, 164, 167n, 172 Koehler, Wilhelm, 258n, 259, 260, 261n, 271, 273 Kuhn, Thomas, 275–6, 285, 321, 328 Kwakkel, Erik, 215–16 labyrinth/labyrinthus (see also fragmentation), 276n, 286, 288n, 301n, 322–5, 329 Landes, Richard, 268 Lateran (see Rome) Lawrence, saint, relics of, 183, 185, 192 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 331–3 Lérins, monastery of, 195 Letters, Republic of, 296 Libri Carolini (see Opus Caroli regis) Liber Diurnus, 187 Liber historiae francorum 210 Liber Pontificalis, 51–2, 83–99, 141, 179, 188, 207–34; epitome 210–34; at Tours 210–13 Litorius, bishop of Tours, 207, 208 Livy, 139; Periochae, 30; Histories, 200 Lombards, Longobards, 3, 47–53, 56, 59, 93, 109, 192n Lothar I, emperor, 125, 136, 148, 149, 151, 156, 164, 167–8; as Honorius, 171 Lothar II, emperor, 61, 121, 124 Louis the Child, king, 214 Louis the German, king, 115, 123–4, 148

General Index Louis the Pious, emperor, 24, 54, 59, 102–3, 115, 253–4, 261, 301; Astronomer’s biography of, 129–48; Thegan’s biography of, 132, 136–7, 263, 266–7, 270; coronation in Rheims, 165; rebellions against, 149–51; penance in 833, 151, 154, 156, 168; Field of Lies, 157, 166, 168; as Justinus, 171 Louis XIV, king, 286, 290, 295–8 love, 14, 42, 44, 49, 54, 115, 144, 175, 278, 306, 310, 320, 321, 323; brotherly, 307; divine, 19; panerotic, 36 Lucian of Chester, 217 Lupus of Ferrières, 136n Luther, Martin, 72, 281, 287, 299–305, 312–18 Lutheran, 281, 287–9, 293, 300–305, 311, 316–17, 322–8 Macer, Aemilius, 29–30, 40, 44 Maecenas, Gaius, 29n, 30, 43, 44 Magdeburg Centuriators, 305 Magyars, 214 Maimbourg, Louis, S.J., 276, 281, 286–8, 293n, 294–300, 310–11, 316, 321 Mainz, 114, 119, 213, 216–18, 325; (arch)bishops of, 212–13, 294; council of (813), 110, 112n, 119; synod of (829), 61n; synod of (847), 110; council of (852), 122 Mantua, 29–30, 36–44, 309 Marcus Antonius (see Antony) Marculf, Formulary of, 69n, 75, 81n Martha, saint, relics of, 190 Martin Hiberniensis, 28, 33, 37 Martin of Tours, 65, 207; church of, 67, 69, 79 martyr popes, 211 martyrology, 81, 213, 216–17, 304 Mary, mother of Christ, 10, 21, 85, 89, 328;

343

relics of, 183, 195, 202, 205; prayers to, 243, 252; liturgical celebration of, 244; depictions of 251 Matfrid of Orléans, 143 Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, 256 McCormick, Michael, 81, 84, 194n McKitterick, Rosamond, 58, 254, 261 medicine, Galenic, 294 Mellitus, 214 mentalité, 275, 285, 332 Metz, Council of, 124n Michael, saint, relics of, 190 miracles, 2, 8, 10–12, 66, 68, 81, 164, 176, 179, 191, 300, 314 Moffitt, John, 264, 270 Mohammedans (see Muslims) Mommsen, Theodor, 207n, 209, 210n Monte Amiata, monastery of the Savior, 97–8 Monza relic collection, 189, 193–4, 199 Mornay, Philippe du Plessis, 309–10 Morrison, Karl F., 7, 19, 46n, 283n mortifications, 307 Moses, patriarch, 16, 58, 111, 252, 280, 303 Murr, Christoph Gottlieb von, 260 Muslims, 69, 83–4, 88–9, 116, 120n, 125–7, 189, 273, 300, 323 ‘mystery’ (see also ‘figure’), 2, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 301, 320, 330 mysticism, 327 Mythmaking, Game of, 284 Nantes, Edict of, 310 Napoleon Bonaparte, 80, 254 Narses, general, 3 Nelson, Janet L., 52, 172 Nero, emperor, 228 New Method (Nova Methodus) of Scriptural Interpretation, 294, 316, 322 Nicaea, First Council of, 75, 231 Nicaea, Second Council of, 70, 293–4, 297, 303–305 Nichols, Stephen, 268

344

Rome and Religion in the Medieval World

Nithard, 136–7, 145, 148 Noah, patriarch, 7, 48 Noble, Thomas F.X., 1, 45, 48, 51, 66, 83–5, 90, 103, 129, 147–8, 151, 153, 172, 179, 184, 208–209, 253–4, 263, 333 Nordenfalk, Carl, 262 Novatores (term of opprobrium for Lutherans, see also New Method), 300, 312, 324–5 Octavia the Younger, 39, 43 Octavian (see also Augustus, C. Octavius), 28–32, 39–40, 43–4 Odo of Beauvais, 158, 159n Odo, king of the West Franks, 101, 105, 110–11, 122 Offa, king of Mercia, 58 Opus Caroli regis (aka Libri Carolini), 275n, 276–81, 285–9, 291–3, 295–300, 302–306, 311, 319–20, 328, 331–2 Ordinatio imperii (817), 59, 62, 167, 176n Orosius, Paulus, 31–2, 34–5, 37, 130–31, 214 Ostrogoths, 1, 3, 5; cultural revival of, 3, 4 Otto III, emperor, 257, 259n, 260, 262, 263, 264–5, 267, 268n, 272 Ottoman Empire, 290 pact, 102, 115–21, 124–8, 199 Paderborn, 270, 286–8, 296, 299, 311 pagan/paganism/heathen, 5, 18, 21, 50, 55–7, 62, 70, 79, 105, 107, 111–12, 115–16, 125, 127, 129, 137, 187, 280, 289n, 298, 301n, 303–305, 313, 318, 323, 328, 329 pain (see also suffering) 306–307, 320–23, 330 Pancras, saint, relics of, 192–3 Pantheon, 214 Papacy (see also popes), 80, 92–3, 141, 167–9, 172, 180, 182, 189, 193, 195, 199n, 201–204, 209, 212, 217, 292, 297, 300, 303, 305n, 323, 330 papal authority/papal primacy, 151, 153–4, 164–5, 168–72, 203, 302, 312

“papist”/”papism,” 281, 303–305, 312, 318, 326 paradox, 14–18, 79, 276–8, 282 Paris, Synod of (829), 158, 160–63 Parras, Cécile, 27n Paschasius Radbertus, 50, 52n, 114, 118, 149–77, 282n pattern recognition, 279, 285, 289, 291, 305–306, 319–21, 332–3 silk, 86–9, 96–7 transformational [see also: dynamism), 6–8, 10, 12, 19 Patzold, Steffen, 158, 172 Paul, apostle, 7, 11, 14, 56, 71, 223, 229, 231, 278, 280–81, 305, 306–307, 321, 325, 328; relics of 185–6, 190–93, 202–203, 215, 220, 229 Paul the Deacon, 68 Paulinus of Nola, 2, 7, 67 Paulinus of Périgueux, poet, 67 periochae, 25 Perron, Jacques-Davy du, cardinal, 289 perspectivism, historical, 327–8, 331–2 Peter, apostle, 1, 3, 6–9, 14, 18, 50, 118, 151, 169, 174–5, 202, 211, 214, 217–18, 228, 313, 326, 328; epistle to 88; relics of, 183, 187, 191–2, 202–203, 215, 225, 229, 233; prayers to, 69, 252 Peter Damian, 99 Philargyrius, 26, 27n Philip, apostle, 10 Phocas, 26 Picart, Bernard, 331 pictura (see also image), 301 pilgrim/pilgrimage, 65–82, 182, 187, 189, 194, 198, 201, 268, 285 Pinamonti, Giovanpietro, S. J., 306–307, 319n Pippin the Hunchback, 49 Pippin I of Aquitaine, 125, 130 Pippin II of Aquitaine, 125, 136

General Index Pippin the Short, king of Francia, 50, 53, 73, 133n, 293, 299 Pippin of Italy (né Carloman), 58, 69 Pithou, Pierre, 264, 266 pluralism/hyperpluralism, 328, 331 Plutarch, 30, 137 Polimia, 38, 42 Pollio, Gaius Asinius, 40, 43, 44 Pompeius, Gnaeus, 41 Popes as Bishop of Rome, 168 Adeodatus, 225, 233 Agapetus I, 224, 232 Agatho, 226, 234 Alexander I, 219, 228 Anacletus I, 153, 211, 219, 228 Anastasius I, 222, 231 Anastasius II, 211, 223, 232 Anastasius IV, 84 Anicetus, 220, 228 Anterus, 220, 229 Benedict I, 224, 232 Benedict II, 211, 226, 234 Benedict VIII, 196, 201 Boniface I, 211, 214, 222, 231 Boniface II, 211, 215, 224, 232 Boniface III, 225, 233 Boniface IV, 214, 225, 233 Boniface V, 189, 211, 225, 233 Caius (Gaius), 221, 230 Callistus, 220, 229 Celestine I, 95, 223, 231 Clement I, 219, 228 Cletus, 219, 228 Constantine II (disputed), 51 Cornelius, 215, 220, 229 Conon, 211, 227, 234 Constantine, 227, 234 Damasus, 93, 197, 211, 222, 230 Deusdedit, 225, 233 Dionysius, 211, 221, 229 Dioscorus (disputed), 215 Donus, 226, 234 Eleutherius, 220, 229 Eugene I, 226, 233

345

Eusebius, 221, 230 Eutychian, 221, 230 Evaristus, 219, 228 Fabian, 220, 229 Felix I, 221, 229 Felix II (disputed), 222 Felix III (II), 211, 223, 230 Felix IV (III), 224, 231, 232 Gelasius I, 223, 231 Gregory I the Great, 56, 93, 98, 122, 135, 153, 185-6, 189n, 193, 202–203, 214–15, 225, 233, 314; cult of, 184 Gregory II, 83, 153, 215, 227, 234 Gregory III, 192, 197, 211, 227, 234 Gregory IV, 86, 96, 151, 153, 157, 1638, 171, 179, 196, 211 Gregory VII, 215–16, 292, 303, 305 Hadrian I, 52, 57, 85, 202, 292, 297–300, 305, 325 Hadrian II, 187 Hilarius, 223, 231 Honorius I, 95–6, 225, 233 Honorius III, 202 Hormisdas, 185, 186n, 192, 224, 232 Hyginus (Ugenus), 211, 219, 228 Innocent I, 163, 188, 222, 231 Innocent II, 84 Innocent III, 181, 184, 202 John I, 95, 224, 232 John II (Mercurius), 211, 224, 232 John III, 190, 211, 224, 232 John IV, 95–6, 188n, 225, 233 John V, 226, 234 John VI, 227, 234 John VII, 211, 227, 234 John VIII, 59, 62, 97n, 98, 126–7, 186, 215 Julius I, 222, 230 Laurentius (disputed), 215, 224, 232 Leo I the Great, 3n, 223, 231 Leo II, 188n, 211, 226, 234 Leo III, 68, 181, 183–4, 195, 197, 199–202, 211 Leo IX, 99, 195

346

Rome and Religion in the Medieval World Leo X, 181, 202 Liberius, 211, 222, 230 Linus, 219, 228 Lucius I, 220, 229 Marcellinus, 221, 230 Marcellus, 221, 230 Marcus, 96–7, 222, 230 Marinus I, 216 Martin I, 226, 233 Miltiades, 221, 230 Nicholas I, 169–70 Nicholas III, 181, 202–203 Paschal I, 86, 96, 182, 196 Paul I, 51 Pelagius I, 186n, 190, 192n, 211, 224, 232 Pelagius II, 192, 211, 225, 232 Peter, 218, 228 Pius I, 219, 220, 228 Pontain, 220, 229 Sabinian, 225, 233 Sergius I, 179–80, 211, 227, 234 Sergius II, 211 Severinus, 225, 233 Silverius, 211, 224, 232 Silvester I, 95, 97, 221, 230 Simplicius, 223, 231 Siricius, 215, 222, 231 Sisinnius, 227, 234 Sixtus I (Xistus), 219, 228 Sixtus II (Xistus), 221, 229 Sixtus III (Xyxtus), 211, 223, 231 Soter, 220, 229 Stephen I, 95, 220, 229 Stephen II, 90, 98, 214–15 Stephen III, 47, 49, 51–3, 56, 58, 62, 227, 234 Stephen IV, 52, 165 Stephen V, 83 Symmachus, 188, 211, 215, 224, 232 Telesphorus, 219, 228 Theodore I, 96, 188n, 196, 226, 233 Urban I, 211, 220, 229 Urban II, 197 Urban V, 203

Victor I, 220, 229 Vigilius, 1, 3n, 5, 17, 224, 232 Vitalian, 192–3, 226, 233 Zacharias, 179-180, 211, 227, 234 Zephirinus, 220, 229 Zosimus, 222, 231 Praxedes, saint, relics of, 203 prayer, 75–8, 112, 129, 179, 191, 235–52, 301, 307–308, 310–11, 317; Alcuin’s book of, for Charlemagne, 79; Lord’s, 105–106, 108–109, 111, 113, 117; monastic, 237–40, 244, 246–8; images for, 247 Primasius of Hadrumetum, bishop, 17–18 Primus, saint, relics of, 196 prince-bishop of Paderborn (see Ferdinand von Fürstenberg) Probus, Marcus Valerius (grammarian), 26 Probus, Marcus Aurelius (emperor), 139–40 Processus and Martianus, saints, relics of, 196 Protestants/Protestantism, 280–81, 288–9, 293–302, 308–12, 316–27, 331 Prudentius, poet, 18–19, 28 Psalms, 15, 17, 222, 224, 227, 230, 232, 234, 235–51, 308 psalmody, 238–9 psalter, 27, 198, 236–7, 240–52; glossed 242–4, 246; as mirror, 240, 248–9 Pseudo-Bishop, 287, 299, 328 Psylli, 31n, 44 Puritan/Puritanism, 316–19 Putnam, Michael C. J., 24 Ravenna, 1, 8, 229 Radbertus (see Paschasius Radbertus) Radegund, queen, saint, 53 rebirth (see baptism) recapitulation (see also image), 280, 295 reform, 62, 79, 99, 127n, 128, 141, 160, 240, 242 Relatio episcoporum (833), 167–8

General Index relics, 1, 66–71, 95, 97n, 180–205, 209, 256, 260, 266, 284, 300; circulation, 195; labels for, 179–80, 182–3, 191, 193–201, 204; material nature of 187; Roman 208; (for relics of specific individuals see individual names) reliquaries, 179, 182, 186, 189, 191–4, 196, 199, 254, 256, 260 Rethel, Alfred, 265 revolution historiographical, 152 print, 285 scientific, 276, 328 Richer of St. Rémi, Historiae, 102, 105 Riwallon of Mont Saint-Michel, 242, 246 Robb, David, 262 Roger II, king, 255 Romanists, 304 Rome, 207–208 catacombs, 188–9, 191, 215, 229; Catacomb of Callixtus, 195 cemeteries, 189, 196, 213, 232; cemetery of Callistus, 191; cemetery of Helen, 196; cemetery of the Jordani, 191 churches, 87, 90, 188; S. Agata dei Goti, 191; St. Agnes outside the walls, 95–6; St. Cecilia in Trastevere, 86, 96; Sts. Cosmas and Damian, 85; S. Giorgio in Velabro, 179; Sts. James and Philip/Holy Apostles, 188n, 190, 192; St. Hadrian, 85; St. Lawrence in Damaso, 85; Sta. Maria Maggiore, 181n, 197; St. Mark’s Basilica, 96; St. Mary Antiqua, 96; St. Mary in Domnica, 96; St. Paul outside the walls, 85; St. Peter’s, 1, 79, 93–4, 179, 190191, 196, 231, 233;

347

St. Peter in chains, 1, 188n; St. Prassede, 96; S. Stephano Rotondo, 188n, 196; St. Valentine, 85 Lateran palace (papal palace), 99, 179, 181, 183–4, 193, 195–6, 198–200, 202, 232; basilica Salvatoris, 84–5, 203; chapel of Lawrence/Sancta Sanctorum, 95, 181–3, 190–99, 201–203, 205; chapel of Venantius, 89, 95-6, 188n; clerics at, 197 Roncesvaux/Roncesvalles, 72 Royal Frankish Annals, 132–3, 140 Rule of St. Benedict, 75, 79, 236–7, 242, 250 Ruth, 54 sacrament, 108–109, 116, 118, 121–2, 127, 303, 307, 312 sacrifice, 6, 9, 18n, 95, 230–31, 328 human, 314 St. Amand, monastery, 210 St. Denis, abbey, 157 St. Martial, abbey, 268 St. Philibert, monastery, 21 St. Riquier, 69, 158, 202n Satan, 76, 107, 109, 114, 307 Saxons, 60–62, 102, 104, 111–114, 119, 212, 281, 286–289, 294, 299–301, 304, 311–314, 320–321, 328, 331 Saxony, 72n, 281, 283, 286–288, 290, 299–301, 303, 308, 313–314, 317–318, 322–323 Scarry, Elaine, 249 school, 22, 24, 27, 35, 242n, 243, 272, 273, 294, 327 school authors, 22 Scipio, 140 script, insular, 215 Schaten, Nicolaus, S. J., 276n, 286n, 287–9, 296, 299–304, 311–29, 332 Schönborn, Johann Philipp von, Archbishop of Mainz, 294 Sebastian, saint, relics of, 196

348

Rome and Religion in the Medieval World

Seckel, Emil, 152, 154n Sedulius, Coelius (fl. early 5th C), 4, 6n, 8n, 9–10, 11n, 26–8, 33 Sedulius Scottus (fl. mid-9th C), 138, 147n Servius, 26, 28–9, 31, 34–5, 37 Schwind, Johannes, 4 Scripture (see also Bible; canon), 48, 67, 131, 141, 147, 162, 172, 175, 240, 244–5, 249, 276, 278–82, 286, 291–2, 294–6, 301n, 305, 307, 318–19, 321–8, 330 secularization of knowledge (see also Bible, secularization of ), 324n, 327 Segnieri, Paolo, S. J., 307 self-torture, 307 serpent, brazen, 280 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 19 Shrady, Nicholas, 262 sight (see also blindness), 284n, 306–307, 320 Sirmond, Jacques, 289 Sisinnius, 183 Slavs, 114 slaves, slavery, 75, 83, 90–92, 94, 99, 114–15, 321 Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel, 142–7, 237n, 250–51 Soissons, 33n, 140, 151 Solomon, 54–5, 61–2, 143 Stephen of Ripon, 194 Story, Joanna, 57 Strasbourg oaths, 115, 123, 125 Suetonius, 22, 25, 36, 31n, 34, 41n, 44n, 137–9, 264n suffering (see also pain, self-torture), 93, 147, 158, 175, 276, 285, 302, 306–11, 315, 320–21, 328 Sulpicius Severus, 55 superstition, 280, 299, 303, 305, 313–14, 323 Symmachian forgeries, 163 Szerwiniack, Olivier, 37n Tacitus, 140 textiles, 83–99, 183;

Maaseik embroideries, 86–8; Sens Assumption linen, 89; Sancta Sanctorum fragments, 182–3; silk, 84–90, 98–9 Thegan, 132n, 136–7, 147n, 253n, 263–4, 266–7, 270 Theocritus of Syracuse, 28, 43 Theodoric, Ostrogothic king, 4, 215, 224, 232 Theodosius, Emperor, 135–6, 171 Theodulf of Orléans, 17n85, 65n, 69–70, 78, 105, 107n, 114, 117, 263, 275n, 288n, 293n, 311 Theofrastus, 162–3 Theutmir, abbot of Psalmody (Nîmes), 71 Thomas à Kempis, 18–19 Tironian notes, 36, 215, 218, 219n Tours, 65, 77, 208, 210; bishops of, 207; church of St. Martin at, 67, 69, 79 Traube, Ludwig, 24 Tribur, Council of (895), 60, 62, 123 Troy, 30, 45 Turmius, 28n Tyconius Afer, exegete, 16–18 Ubl, Karl, 61n, 155n, 169 Varus, Publius Quinctilius, 29, 40, 44 Véron, François, S.J., 294, 308–309, 322 vestments, 83–99, 229; Taben dalmatic, 88; chasubles depicted in St. Mark’s Basilica, Rome, 96; “chasuble of Pope Mark” at the monastery of the Savior at Monte Amiata, 97–8; silk, 88, 95–8 Vico, Giambattista, 276 Victorinus of Pettau, exegete, 16–18 Virgil, 21–45; Aen. 1.1, 36; Bucolics, 35; Eclogues, 21; Ecl. 10.69, 36;

General Index

349

manuscripts, 22–4, 36; vitae, 23 Virtues, 111, 119, 134–7, 141–7, 176, 237n, 249, 278–9, 281–2, 331 Vita Bernensis I, 29, 32–5 Vita Gudiana III, 29 Vita Leidensis, 29 Vita Monacensis, 29 Vita Noricensis, 24, 29 Vita Publii Virgilii, 21–45 Vita Servii, 29 Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana, 25–6; 29–30; 34; 42n Vitae Virgilianae, 23–6 Vita Vossiana, 29 Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), 148, 331 Volusius, Adolph Gottfried, 294

Walenburch, Peter van, 294, 325 Waltcaud of Liège, bishop, 105 war, just, 313–14 Weil, Simone, 236 Weitzmann, Kurt, 258 wergeld, 123 Westfalia, Peace of, 290, 299 Wheelwright, Philip, 19 Widukind, Saxon duke, 102, 313 Wilfred of Ripon, 187n, 194 Willibrord, bishop of Utrecht, 112n, 187n, 299 Winchester, 241–2 Wisigarda, queen, 53 Witzel, Georg, 302n, 303n word, divine, 8–12, 108, 146, 278 Wulfad, archbishop of Troyes, 170

Wala, saint, abbot (aka Arsenius), 150, 158–60, 177; Scedula 161 Walafrid Strabo, 104 Waldeck, counts of, 288 Walenburch, Adrian van, 294, 325

Zechiel-Eckes, Klaus, 69n, 152, 154–7, 168, 171 Zeuxis of Crotona, 282 Ziolkowski, Jan M., 24, 34 Zwingli, Ulrich, 281