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Church council under control of the Carolingians declared that monks and handmaids of God should strive to order their specific way of life iuxta regulam sancti Benedicti.2 The Regula Benedicti had been produced for ascetic enthusiasts finding their place in a world of fading Romanitas. It had little to do with Francia at the verge of the Carolingian takeover or with the ambitious plans of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious to shape an ideal God-pleasing society. Mayke de Jong has provided by far the best attempt to capture the spirit of monastic reform in the
. de Jong, ‘The empire as ecclesia: Hrabanus Maurus and biblical historia for rulers’, in Y. Hen and M. Innes (eds), The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2000), 191–226; M. de Jong, ‘Exegesis for an empress’, in E. Cohen and M. de Jong (eds), Medieval Transformations: Texts, Power, and Gifts in Context (Leiden, 2001), 69–100; M. de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–840 (Cambridge, 2009); M. de Jong, ‘Sacrum palatium et 1 438 Julia M. H. Smith between textual and material forms of historical
18 Bishops in the mirror: from self-representation to episcopal model. The case of the eloquent bishops Ambrose of Milan and Gregory the Great Giorgia Vocino Around the year 877, the priest Andrew of Bergamo was busy abbreviating and updating his version of Paul the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum. When dealing with the rebellion of the three elder sons of Emperor Louis the Pious (814–40) in 833, Andrew recalled how Lothar I tried to make excuses for himself by shifting the blame onto Angilbert II (824–59), the Frankish archbishop of Milan. Brought into the
a crucial role all over the Frankish empire shortly afterwards. M. de Jong, The Penitential State. Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–840 (Cambridge, 2009), p. 113. I would like to thank Francesco Borri, Andreas Fischer, Marios Costambeys, Giorgia Vocino and Graeme Ward for comments on the text. All errors that remain are of course my own. 2 Paulus Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum VI, c. 40, ed. L. Bethmann and G. Waitz, MGH Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum saec. VI–IX, 12–219, p. 179. 1 The sermon De cupiditate by
Louis the Pious.46 Only after the double ritual of penance and baptism can Clovis return to the exercise of power. The concept of election behind the passage therefore does not mean that the Franks were ‘the’ true Israel, the one chosen people among the many gentes of the period. They had become a gens sancta by their conversion. The cumulative act of baptism was a special display of God’s grace. The circumstances also mattered, involving divine intervention by granting victory to the gens Francorum and its king, and featuring two holy men who had guaranteed that
the concept of sacerdotes and the many layers of meaning connected to that concept in the Carolingian age, see M. de Jong, The Penitential State. Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–840 (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 178–83; S. Patzold, Episcopus. Wissen über Bischöfe im Frankenreich des späten 8. bis frühen 10. Jahrhunderts, Mittelalter-Forschungen 25 (Ostfildern, 2008), pp. 135–84. 48 J. Nelson, ‘Kingship and empire’, in J. Burns (ed.), The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought: c. 350–c. 1450 (Cambridge, 1988), 211–51, pp. 211–12. 49
. de Jong, C. van Rhijn and F. Theuws (eds), Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages (Leiden/Boston, MA/Cologne, 2001), 291–328; and, in general, M. de Jong, The Penitential State. Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–840 (Cambridge, 2009). 26 Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, c. 20, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH SRG 25, p. 25. A further example is that of Notker the Stammerer; see C. Hammer, ‘ “Pipinus rex”; Pippin’s Plot of 792 and Bavaria’, Traditio 63 (2008), 235–76; and C. Hammer, From Ducatus to Regnum. Ruling Bavaria under the Merovingians and
uniformity through its preference for the Rule of St Benedict. After Charlemagne’s death in 814, his empire steadily fell apart during the reign of his son, Louis the Pious, resulting in the creation of three separate entities by 843: the west Frankish, east Frankish and middle kingdoms. The ninth- and tenth-century invasions by the Muslims, Vikings, Magyars and Slavs had contributed to this fragmentation, though historians now speculate about the extent to which the empire crumbled from internal weaknesses rather than from external pressure and incursion. 4 Nevertheless
. Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814 – 840 (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 166–8; M. Innes, ‘Charlemagne, Justice and Written Law’, in A. Rio (ed.), Law, Custom and Justice (London, 2011), 155–203, p. 168. 37 362 Jinty Nelson no one doing service for God involve himself in secular affairs’; 2 Tim. 2.4). Eventually Charlemagne would ask bishops acutissime how their duties to God and the earthly kingdom could be reconciled.40 In the big book of capitularies, the next big text after Herstal is the Admonitio generalis of March 789. It opened in the form of a
rivers. Following negotiation with the rulers, these merchants settled with their families. There are extant documents of privilege granted to the Jews as early as the reign of Emperor Louis the Pious between 814 and 825, and thereafter, during the period of the emperors Otto. Otto I (962–73), and Otto II (973–83), developed the cities along the length of the River Rhine, placing at their heads bishops whom they made branches of their rule.15 Thus, by the end of the eleventh century, Magdeburg and Merseburg on the Elbe, Mainz, Cologne, Worms, and Speyer on the Rhine