LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 2

      Manifestos of Carolingian Power

      Among the precepts of God, caritas obtains the first place … neither martyrdom nor contempt of the secular world, nor generosity of alms, could accomplish anything without the duty of caritas.

      —Alcuin of York to Count Wido of Brittany, De virtutibus et vitiis 3

      In March of the year 789, King Charlemagne of the Franks (not yet emperor of the Romans) convened a select group of counselors from throughout his realm to discuss matters of concern. No contemporary annalist ever recorded the event, and it may not have been considered an “official” assembly at all, yet scholars of the Carolingian era typically rank this royal conference among the more important moments in the early developmental history of European society and culture. It produced a capitulary document known as Admonitio generalis (the “Common Reminder” or, as it is often more woodenly translated, the “General Admonition”)—a listing of eighty-two social and moral decrees for the Frankish aristocracy to follow, pronounced from on high in the voice of Charlemagne himself.¹

      This was perhaps the most complete articulation of the program of renovatio and correctio that would transform Frankish culture over the course of the next century.² After Admonitio generalis, Christianity became conversatio—a “way of life,” to quote an early summation by Rosamond McKitterick—for the Frankish people as a whole.³ Christian rituals and ideologies would gradually bind the diverse regions of Charlemagne’s empire together. Frankish and Christian identity would effectively merge into one. And the deep structural foundations for the pan-European Latin Christendom of the High Middle Ages and beyond would begin to appear.

      This chapter examines the ideology of Frankish aristocratic power that undergirded and naturalized this broad social and cultural transformation. Adapted directly from the ideological associations discussed in Chapter 1, it framed caritas not simply as an ideal that Frankish men were encouraged to enact but quite literally as the foundation of Frankish authority. After an initial section that explores in further detail the contents and expressed purposes of Admonitio generalis, two Carolingian writers take center stage: Paulinus of Aquileia and Alcuin of York. Both men served Charlemagne as trusted courtiers and likely played guiding roles at the council of 789.⁴ Both men ended their careers in prestigious positions of spiritual leadership—Paulinus as patriarch of Aquileia and Alcuin as Abbot of Marmoutier at Tours, the ancient monastic house founded by none other than St. Martin, whose cloak had now become a sacred relic kept in the possession of the Frankish royal line.⁵ Finally, both men composed, at the direct request of powerful Carolingian lay magnates, treatises in which they articulated and defined the ideal life of the Christian layman.

      In separate but complementary ways, the treatises written by Paulinus and Alcuin each drew upon the traditional ideological links between caritas and ascetic male power to grant nonroyal laymen direct and explicit access to divine authority. They defined lay and “professional” religious men as separate but fundamentally equal parts of the same collective whole, their power deriving from the same source, their duties of heavenly and earthly service the same, their separate identities purely a worldly distinction, completely irrelevant in the eyes of God. Far more than simple manuals of pragmatic moral advice, which until now has been the primary lens through which these texts have been read, Paulinus and Alcuin wrote nothing less than ideological manifestos for the Frankish aristocracy. Their meditations on the ideal lay Christian life explained and made normative the notion that earthly society was “naturally” the domain of the Frankish aristocracy to command and to protect as a unified family of souls.

      Social Prophylaxis and the Aristocratic Male

      Charlemagne had just entered his third decade as king when he called upon his counselors in that early European spring of 789. He had thus far achieved more worldly success than anyone else he knew or about whom he had ever heard. His armies had swept across virtually the whole of the continent, fighting victorious campaigns in Aquitania, Gascony, Brittany, Bavaria, and Lombardy and effectively restoring centralized control to the territories once governed by his Merovingian predecessors. He had assembled a royal court that was beginning to rival not only the material splendor but also the intellectual and artistic floridity of the Byzantines at Constantinople, the Abbasids at Baghdad, and the Umayyads at Cordoba.

      Despite these considerable accomplishments, Charlemagne still had significant reason for concern. At the age of forty-seven, he had far outlived the average life expectancy of a Frankish warlord.⁶ He was old enough to have been easily among the eldest of his entourage and could never have realistically guessed that he would rule for another twenty-five years and die quietly, surrounded by loved ones, in his own luxurious bed.⁷ His reign had also not been exclusively a success. A decade earlier, a band of recalcitrant Basques had ambushed and decimated the Frankish rear guard in the infamous Pyrenees mountain pass at Roncesvalles.⁸ And a particularly violent revolt had taken place only months before, when Duke Tassilo of Bavaria had led an armed rebellion against his king. The chronicles tell us that all ended well for Charlemagne—Tassilo was captured and the insurrection extinguished—but it could just as easily have gone badly.⁹ These military and political challenges would certainly have lingered at the forefront of Charlemagne’s mind, for during the same time in which he and his court were composing Admonitio generalis, they were also in the process of planning a campaign against the Slavic lands to the east and south for that very summer.¹⁰

      Worldly stresses would have been compounded further by spiritual uncertainties. In calling for correctio, Charlemagne followed an ancient tradition of Roman emperors and Frankish kings, who saw it as their duty to eradicate scelus—sin and crime—in order to ensure the continued health and prosperity of society. In Admonitio generalis, he famously compares himself to the Old Testament King Josiah, who had been responsible for restoring his people to the correct faith and for decreeing the commandments of Moses as law for his people.¹¹ The moral reforms of Admonitio generalis cast this traditional duty in a distinctly millenarian hue, however. As leader of the Franks who dreamed of his people as the new Israel, it was Charlemagne’s solemn responsibility not simply to root out sin but also to ready the world for the end of days. Admonitio generalis suggests a degree of urgency on this issue, describing how a certain “letter from heaven” with an apocalyptic message had apparently circulated throughout the land but was not to be believed; “in the last days” (presumably very much at hand), Admonitio generalis warns, “there will appear false teachers, as the Lord himself foretold in the gospel.”¹²

      The broad social and cultural ramifications that we now attribute to Admonitio generalis were thus most certainly beyond even Charlemagne’s considerable ambitions. To be sure, he and his court were interested in social renewal and correction, but their aim would have been to address far more immediate concerns. We must recognize Admonitio generalis and the entire program of Carolingian correctio itself as a prophylactic, designed to shield Charlemagne and, by extension, the Frankish people under his dominion against an unknown future.¹³ The document is a pledge from the Franks to redouble their efforts to enact righteous behavior in exchange for the continued favor and protection of the divine. This was indeed its expressed purpose. Its preface declares that God had shown more favor to the Franks than to any other civilization in history. Simple thanks would not suffice. Bishops and parish priests needed to work harder in their efforts to lead souls to salvation while also corralling “the erring sheep”—men who did

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