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21 From Justinian to Louis the Pious: inalienability of church property and the sovereignty of a ruler in the ninth century Stefan Esders and Steffen Patzold Mayke de Jong has vastly transformed our picture of the Carolingian period in the course of surveying the relationship between politics and religion anew. She has shown how misleading the dichotomy between ‘Church’ and ‘State’ is, which has structured numerous historical works on ninth-century Francia since at least the nineteenth century. The ecclesia was, in the discourse of the time, far more than just
20 The Penance of Attigny (822) and the leadership of the bishops in amending Carolingian society Philippe Depreux Penance is a main topic in Louis the Pious’s reign, as Mayke de Jong’s book on the crisis of the late 820s and early 830s brilliantly shows.1 The most dramatic moment is the emperor’s deposition in 833, which led to vivid discussion among the political elite.2 This was not the first time Louis publicly acknowledged his errors, since he had already done so in 822 at Attigny, one of the most important palaces, which was associated with political
22 Incest, penance and a murdered bishop: the legend of Frederic of Utrecht Bram van den Hoven van Genderen The title of this contribution refers to the early-eleventh-century Passio Friderici.1 In this saint’s life bishop Frederic of Utrecht (fl. c. 822/26–34) is murdered by a couple of minions of Empress Judith, wife of Emperor Louis the Pious, out of revenge for the bishop’s accusations of incest and adultery against her. Moreover, incest was involved in a double sense. Judith’s presumed lover, Count Bernard of Septimania, was, according to the Passio, also
This book, written in honour of Mayke De Jong, offers twenty-five essays focused upon the importance of religion to Frankish politics. It deals with religious discourse and political polemic in studies that take up the themes of identity, and the creative deployment of the language of the Old Testament within Frankish society. The book explores how the use of ethnic rhetoric in a Christian context shaped medieval perceptions of community. It shows that the Carolingian way of dealing with the Adoptionist challenge was to allow a conversation between the Spanish bishops and their Frankish opponents to take place. Charlemagne's role in the Vita Alcuini as a guardian of orthodoxy who sought to settle a controversy by organising and supervising a theological debate was striking. The book also discusses the admonition of an abbot of Frankish origin who came from southern France and made his monastic career in southern Italy. It showcases three letter manuscripts that share certain features but are different in other aspects. The first manuscript is a collection of the Moral Letters from Seneca to his pupil Lucilius , Paris , BnF, lat. 8658A. The book demonstrates that the lists of amici, viventes et defuncti reflected how the royal monastery was interacting with ruling elites, at different levels, and how such interactions were an essential part of its identity. It also examines the context of Monte Cassino's fading into the background, in the conviction that both political and religious concerns were at play.
of Louis the Pious, The Penitential State, amply illustrates the intricate relationship between politics and religion.4 Throughout her professional career Mayke de Jong has staunchly maintained that all historians, and especially early medievalists, must take religion seriously as integral to politics. Further, all historians should take early medieval Christianity seriously; it was no mere shadow of ‘real Christianity’; nor was it only a dim outline obscured by the notion, now thoroughly discredited, of ‘Germanic paganism’. Some of Mayke’s thinking about this was
Louis the Pious, 814–840 (Cambridge, 2009); and in her ‘Sacrum palatium et ecclesia: l’autorité religieuse royale sous les Carolingiens (790–840)’, Annales: histoire, sciences sociales 58:6 (2003), 1243–69. 2 See K. Schmid and J. Wollasch (eds), Memoria. Das Geschichtliche Zeugniswert des liturgischen Gedenkens im Mittelalter (Münster, 1984); O. Oexle (ed.), Memoria als Kultur (Göttingen, 1995). J. Autenrieth, D. Geuenich and K. Schmid (eds), Das Verbrüderungsbuch der Abtei Reichenau (Einleitung, Register, Faksimile), MGH Libri memoriales et necrologia, n.s. 1
resistence to heresies and affirming the correct faith.8 Moreover, the acts of the council mention that Hildebald, like his predecessor Angilram before him, had received papal permission to be absent from his diocese in order to be able to fulfil his position as court chaplain.9 In the council’s acts there are no passages that hint at such a use of the letters in the Codex Carolinus specifically, but the eighth chapter does state that, as authoritative Charlemagne. Empire and Society (Manchester/New York, 2005), 103–35, passim; and, for this notion in Louis the Pious
successor, Hincmar of Reims.6 This new dating, around 850, rests mainly on her interpretation of the illustration of the so-called Athanasian Creed on the Trinity (which begins with Quicumque vult) as found in the Utrecht Psalter (fol. 90v). However, mainly from the illustration of Psalm 88 (fol. 51v), Dominique Alibert concluded that the Utrecht Psalter was made under Ebo c. 823 for Louis the Pious to commemorate the Viking embassy at Soissons at which Ebo assisted. Additionally, the manuscript also contains echoes from the voluntary penance of Louis at Attigny (to the
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