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Carolingian Doubt?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 June 2016
Abstract
This essay seeks to refute the idea that doubt is an essentially modern phenomenon and to show that doubt was also a feature of earlier medieval existence. It argues that in the Carolingian period, for both individuals and groups, debate, disturbance and religious doubt coexisted uneasily with religious faith and cultic community. Religious experience is examined at the level of individuals, groups, and larger social organizations. Three case studies focus on the noblewoman Dhuoda, unique in having left a detailed record of a spiritual life lived out within a family and in social and political relationships at once collaborative and conflictual; the heretic Gottschalk, whose voluminous works reveal something of his spirituality and much about the religious and political pressures that taxed his faith; and Archbishop Elipand of Toledo, a Church leader living under Muslim rule, and accused of heresy by Christian scholars themselves uncertain of their ground. Two further sections discuss particular contexts in which doubts were harboured: conversion from paganism, in a world of Christian mission; and local cults of relics which depended on the establishing of authenticity where there had been doubt, and then the forming of believer-solidarities. Finally the figure of Doubting Thomas is considered in a period when faith and cult sustained individual identities in dyadic relationships founded on oaths of fidelity and mutual trust but also on collective solidarities.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 52: DOUBTING CHRISTIANITY: THE CHURCH AND DOUBT , June 2016 , pp. 65 - 86
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2016
References
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4 Weltecke, Dorothea, ‘Doubts and the Absence of Faith’, in Arnold, John H., ed., The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity (Oxford, 2014), 357–74Google Scholar, introduces her excellent article by starting with the twelfth century. For some unfortunate consequences of conventional periodizations splitting the earlier from the high Middle Ages, see Janet L. Nelson, ‘Liturgy or Law: Misconceived Alternatives’, in Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, ed. Stephen Baxter et al. (Farnham, 2009), 433–47, at 442. See further the recent notable contributions of Raaijmakers, Janneke, Mind over Matter: Debates about Relic Veneration in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Utrecht, 2012)Google Scholar; and her website at: <http://www.uu.nl/hum/staff/JERaaijmakers/0>.
5 See, in this volume, Frances Andrews, ‘Doubting John?’, 17–49.
6 Manuel pour mon fils, edited with a still invaluable introduction, notes, and indices of Scripture references, ancient authors and rare words (but no index of names or themes), by Pierre Riché, with French translation by Bernard de Vregille and Claude Mondésert (Paris, 1975), is the edition from which I cite (giving page references for clarity); English translations are my own. Thiébaux, Marcelle's edition, Dhuoda: Handbook for her Warrior Son (Cambridge, 1998)Google Scholar, has a good English translation, as does Neel, Carol, Dhuoda. Handbook for William: A Carolingian Woman's Counsel for her Son (Lincoln, NE, 1991; repr. with ‘Addendum on Historiography’, 1999)Google Scholar. Dhuoda herself called the book Liber Manualis (hereafter: LM), literally ‘a book that can be held in the hand', as explained by Augustine, Enchiridion (PL 40, col. 951). For further bibliography, see Nelson, Janet L., ‘Dhuoda’, in Wormald, Patrick and Nelson, Janet L. eds, Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2007), 106–20Google Scholar; eadem, ‘Dhuoda on Dreams’, in Motherhood, Religion and Society: Essays presented to Henrietta Leyser, ed. Conrad Leyser and Lesley Smith (Farnham, 2011), 41–54.
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9 LM, bk 5, chs 1–9 (ed. Riché, 260–85). In ‘Dhuoda’, 112, I suggested that this was a halfway point in the work. LM is divided into chapters in all three manuscripts, but the divisions and numberings do not fully coincide; the books have been created by Riché to aid modern readers: Introduction, 53–4. Going by chapters, LM, bk 5, ch. 1 is 31 in the Nîmes and Barcelona manuscripts, 32 in the Paris copy, and this can in no way be said to be halfway in terms of chapters overall: there are 72 in the Barcelona manuscript. I would still want to argue that the chapter marked a thematic dividing point in the work as a whole, but I ought certainly to have noted the artificiality of Riché's ‘Books’. I also want to correct here a mistranslation which I carelessly copied from Thiébaux (Dhuoda, 218), of LM, bk 10, ch. 1, line 21 (ed. Riché, 340), which does not allude to chapters at all (nor indeed paragraphes, as in the translation of Riché's collaborators), but to the first letters in the versus, ‘lines’, of the acrostic poem that follows.
10 Nearly all the relevant passages of bk 5, ch. 1 survive uniquely in MS Barcelona Biblioteca Central 569, a fourteenth-century copy recently rehabilitated as exceptionally valuable because of its Catalan origin and its inclusion of other Carolingian works: see Chandler, Cullen J., ‘Barcelona BC 569 and a Carolingian Programme on the Virtues’, EME 18 (2010), 265–91Google Scholar. The chapter's 160 lines are headed in the Barcelona MS tribulationibus temperamenta, but in the seventeenth-century paper copy in Paris, BN, no. 12.293, fol. 260, De diversarum tribulationum temperamentis; in Riché's translation, ‘Les diverses formes d'épreuves’, 261 (cf. Riché's comments on the manuscript in Introduction, 45–6); in Thiébaux, Dhuoda, 165, ‘On observing self-control under various hardships’; and in Neel, Handbook, 65, ‘On being tested in various troubles’. See Nelson, ‘Dhuoda on Dreams’, 44, where I thought Thiébaux's reading ‘attractive’, but I now consider ‘tests’ or ‘trials’ nearer the mark. Cf. Alcuin, De virtutibus et vitiis 33 (PL 101, col. 635): ‘Tristitia salutaris est, quando de peccatis suis animus contristatur peccatoris . . . ut confessionem et paenitentiam quaerat . . . Alia est tristitia huius saeculi . . . Ex ipsa nascitur malitia, rancor, animi pusillanimitas, amaritudo, desperatio’.
11 Nelson, Janet L., ‘Making Ends Meet: Wealth and Poverty in the Carolingian Church’, in Sheils, W. J. and Wood, Diana, eds, The Church and Wealth, SCH 24 (Oxford, 1987), 25–36Google Scholar, repr. in eadem, The Frankish World (London, 1996), 145–54; eadem, ‘Religion in the Reign of Charlemagne’, in Arnold, ed, Oxford History of Medieval Christianity, 497–8.
12 ‘Tristitia namque quae impeditur resecanda est; illa vero quae ad utilitatem proficit animae adhibenda est et firmiter tenenda. Nobilior tamen est spiritalis quam carnalis, et, licet pro aliquibus certis ex causa tristitia in corde accedat humano, oblivioni censura peritissimi praeponenda esse fatentur’: LM, bk 5, ch. 1, lines 17–22 (ed. Riché, 260).
13 ‘Cutis namque aruit mea et contracta est. . . . dies mei velocius transierunt quam a texente tela succiditur, et consumpti sunt absque ullo termino spei’ (citing Job 7: 5–6) and Dhuoda's comment: ‘In tantum est felicitas humanae conditionis fragilis et a peritissimis in brevi usque perducta, ut etiam mille annorum tempora volvens, extrema illius dies ad instar telae computatur araneae’: LM, bk 5, ch. 1, lines 68–71 (ed. Riché, 264).
14 ‘Videntes enim et in illo fiduciam habentes certam, conparantur ligno almifico, quod transplantatur iuxta decursus aquarum. Qui cum ad humorem alte et profunde fixerunt radices, non arescent tempore aestatis. Eruntque folia eorum semper virida et fecunda, nec aliquando desinent facere fructum.’ Here Dhuoda draws on Ps. 1: 3 and also Jer. 17: 8: LM, bk 5, ch. 1, line 141 (ed. Riché, 270).
15 ‘Tu ergo, fili, cum in tribulationem veneris, clama ut merearis audiri. Exauditus autem valeas fiducialiter laudare et dicere: “In tribulatione invocavi Dominum et exaudivit me in latitudine”’ (Ps. 117: 5): LM, bk 5, ch. 4 (ed. Riché, 276). Riché points out (ibid. n. 5) that none of these citations occurs in a work which Dhuoda certainly knew, Defensor of Ligugé, Liber scintillarum 50 (SC 86, 114), ‘De tribulatione’. She commented on Scripture directly, then, not via Defensor.
16 LM, bk 3, ch. 11 (ed. Riché, 196); cf. Riché, Introduction, 30. In discussing ‘the Manual and Carolingian spirituality’, Riché makes no reference to Book 5's lengthy treatment of tribulations: ibid. 27–32.
17 LM, bk 2, ch. 3 (ed. Riché, 126, 128–30, 126).
18 Still fundamental are Vielhaber, Klaus, Gottschalk der Sachse (Bonn, 1956)Google Scholar; Ganz, David, ‘The Debate on Predestination’, in Gibson, Margaret T. and Nelson, J. L., eds, Charles the Bald: Court and Kingdom, 2nd edn (London, 1990), 283–302Google Scholar; see also idem, ‘Theology and the Organisation of Thought’, in Rosamond McKitterick, ed., The New Cambridge Medieval History, 2: c.700–c.900 (Cambridge, 1995), 758–85, at 767–73; Nineham, D. E., ‘Gottschalk of Orbais: Reactionary or Precursor of the Reformation?’, JEH 40 (1989), 1–18Google Scholar; Paul Kershaw, ‘Eberhard of Friuli, a Carolingian Lay Intellectual', in Wormald and Nelson, eds, Lay Intellectuals, 77–105, especially 91–7. For Gottschalk's service in Croatia, see Lambot, Cyrille, ed., Œuvres théologiques et grammaticales de Godescalc d'Orbais (Louvain, 1945), 169, 325Google Scholar.
19 Archbishop Hrabanus Maurus of Mainz to Marquis Eberhard, MGH Epp. 5, 481–2 (no. 42); cf. also Hrabanus to Noting, bishop-elect of Verona, ibid. 428 (no. 22).
20 Augustine, Confessions 8.9.10, ed. with commentary James J. O’Donnell, 3 vols (Oxford, 1992), 1: 187: ‘ponderibus suis aguntur, loca sua petunt. oleam infra aquam fusum super aquam attollitur, aqua supra oleum fusa infra oleum demergitur: . . . . pondus meum amor meus; eo feror, quocumque feror. dono tuo accendimur et sursum ferimur; inardescimus et imus’; for commentary, ibid. 3: 356–9. The English translation is from St Augustine: Confessions, transl. Henry Chadwick (Oxford, 1991), 278. This passage is quoted by Gottschalk: Lambot, ed., Œuvres théologiques, 156.
21 Lambot, ed., Œuvres théologiques, 375.
22 Ganz, ‘Predestination’, 288.
23 Lambot, ed., Œuvres théologiques, 284.
24 Hincmar, Ad simplices, ed. Gundlach, Wilhelm, ‘Zwei Schriften des Erzbischofs Hinkmar von Reims’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 10 (1889), 92–145Google Scholar, 258–309, at 92–3, 269–70.
25 Whether Gottschalk's teachings persisted in Croatia is an interesting but unanswerable question. On Gottschalk and his teachings, see now Gillis, M. B., ‘Heresy in the Flesh: Gottschalk of Orbais and the Predestination Controversy in the Archdiocese of Rheims’, in Stone, Rachel and West, Charles, eds, Hincmar of Rheims: Life and Work (Manchester, 2015), 247–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 Cavadini, John C., The Last Christology of the West: Adoptionism in Spain and Gaul, 785–820 (Philadelphia, PA, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; David Ganz, ‘Theology and the Organisation of Thought’, 762–6.
27 Pope Hadrian I to the bishops of Spain, MGH Conc. 1, 127 (no. 19C, Concilium Francofurtense),
28 Elipand to Alcuin, MGH Epp. Karolini Aevi 2, 300–7, at 303, 307 (no. 182).
29 The Vulgate reads: ‘qui cum in forma Dei esset, non rapinam arbitratus est esse se aequalem Deo; sed semetipsum exinanivit, formam servi accipiens’. The English translation is taken from the Douai-Rheims version.
30 Cavadini, Last Christology, 88.
31 ‘Credimus eum factum ex muliere, factum sub lege, non genere esse filium Dei set adobtione [sic] neque natura set gratia’: Letter from the bishops of Spain to the bishops of Francia (MGH Conc. Aevi Karolini 1, 112).
32 Frank Riess, ‘From Aachen to Al-Andalus: The Journey of the Deacon Bodo (823–76)’, EME 13 (2005), 131–57. Alcuin, writing to Charlemagne in 799, reported his efforts to acquire the text of a disputation between the Adoptionist Felix, bishop of Urgel, and a ‘Saracen’, and also recalled that when he was young, he had heard at Pavia a disputation between a Jew named Lull and Peter of Pisa ‘who was famed for teaching grammar in your palace’: MGH Epp. Karolini Aevi 2, 285 (Ep. 172).
33 See Chandler, Cullen C., ‘Heresy and Empire: The Role of the Adoptionist Controversy in Charlemagne's Conquest of the Spanish March’, International History Review 24 (2002), 505–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar, raising interesting questions; cf. Hen, Yitzhak, ‘Charlemagne's Jihad’, Viator 37 (2006), 33–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the online response of Jonathan Jarrett at: <https://tenthmedieval.wordpress.com/2007/01/14/charlemagnes-jihad>, last accessed 26 February 2016; and the reservations of Nelson, Janet L., ‘Religion and Politics in the Reign of Charlemagne’, in Körntgen, Ludger and Waßenhoven, Dominik, eds, Religion and Politics in the Middle Ages (Berlin, 2013), 17–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 22.
34 See Vita Vulframni (MGH SRM 5, 657–73); and, for excellent comment, Wood, Ian N., The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe 400–1050 (London, 2001), 92–4Google Scholar.
35 See Wood, Missionary Life, 92–4.
36 The problem was set in a wider context by Gurevič, Aaron, ‘Au Moyen Âge: Conscience individuelle et image de l'au-delà’, Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 37 (1982), 265–72Google Scholar.
37 Vita Vulframni 9 (MGH SRM 5, 668).
38 See MGH Capit. 1, 69 (no. 26, chs 7, 22).
39 See Effros, Bonnie, ‘De partibus Saxoniae and the Regulation of Mortuary Custom: A Carolingian Campaign of Christianization or the Suppression of Saxon Identity?’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire 75 (1997), 270–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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41 Chazelle, Celia, The Crucified God in the Carolingian Era: Theology and Art of Christ's Passion (Cambridge, 2001), 52–74Google Scholar, with comment on the doubting St Thomas at 58–9.
42 Almannus of Hautvillers, Historia translationis sanctae Helenae (ActaSS Aug. 3, 668–9). See Geary, Patrick, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics (Princeton, NJ, 1978), 54, 152Google Scholar; Pohlsander, Hans A., Helena: Empress and Saint (Chicago, IL, 1995), 157–9Google Scholar; Almannus of Hautvilliers, Lebensbeschreibung oder eher Predigt von der heiligen Helena, ed. Dräger, Paul (Trier, 2007), 260–1Google Scholar; Flodoard, Historia Remensis ecclesiae 2.8 (MGH SS 46, 150–2, with n. 2, ‘in ziemlich freier Bearbeitung’ / ‘rather free reworking’ of Almannus's text). See more generally, Smith, Julia M. H., ‘Portable Christianity: Relics in the Medieval West, c.700–1200’, PBA 181 (2012), 143–67Google Scholar.
43 Einhard, Translatio et miracula sanctorum Marcellini et Petri auctore Einhardo (MGH SS 15/1, 239–64); ET in Dutton, Paul Edward, Charlemagne's Courtier: The Complete Einhard (Peterborough, ON, 1998), 69–130Google Scholar.
44 Hartmut Atsma et al., eds, Authentiques de Chelles et Faremoutiers, Chartae Latinae Antiquiores 18 (Dietikon, 1985), 84–108 (no. 669); Laporte, Jean-Pierre, Le trésor des saints de Chelles (Chelles, 1988)Google Scholar, especially 124–30.
45 ‘[U]tilitas dubietatis innascitur pectoribus plurimorum; quomodo posset fieri in femina tantae sanctitatis in Deo, ut etiam lignum sanctae crucis meruerit invenire, et tam magnae altitudinis et nobilitatis in saeculo ut fieret mater imperii et domina orbis, tam exigui presbyteri manibus tractaretur? Ergo in huismodi dubitationis altercationisque conflictu persistentibus multis, causa multae necessitatis, ne populus hujus erroris naevo deluderetur, fit conventus Remensis ecclesiae, revolvuntur historiae, profertur in medium mappa Romanae Urbis, sciscitantur ad invicem, interrogant, quaerunt, consulunt et veritatis auxilio perducuntur ad certitudinem omnimodam’. [They took the relics to Hautvilliers where] . . . nascebatur inde facilis invidentia quod debebatur tantum pignus potius urbi excellentissimae quam monasterio, ut dicebant, parvulo: . . . infidelis contentio’: Almannus, Historia translationis (Acta SS Aug. 3, 668–9). The English translation is mine.
46 Gisela and Rotrud to Alcuin (MGH Epp. Karolini Aevi 2, 323–5, at 324 [no. 196]).
47 ‘Venit iterum Dominus, et non credenti . . . discipulo latus palpandum praebuit, manus ostendit, et ostensa suorum vulnerum cicatrice, infidelitatis illius vulnus sanavit. . . . Numquid casu gestum creditis ut electus ille discipulus tunc deesset, post haec venit ut audiret, audiens dubitaret, dubitans palparet, palpans crederet? Non hoc casu, sed divina dispensatione gestum est. Egit namque miro modo superna clementia, ut discipulus dubitans, dum in magistro suo vulnera palparet carnis, in nobis vulnera sanaret infidelitatis. Plus enim nobis Thomae infidelitas ad fidem, quam fides credentium discipulorum profuit: quia dum ille ad fidem palpando reducitur, nostra mens omni dubitatione postposita in fide solidatur. Sic quippe discipulum post resurrectionem suam dubitare permisit, nec tamen in dubitatione deseruit. . . . Nam ita factus est discipulus dubitans et palpans testis verae resurrectionis’: Alcuin, Commentary on John 20: 24 (PL 100, cols 993–4), drawing on Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Evangelia 26.7–9 (CChr.SL 141, 224–5).
48 In his polemic against the Adoptionist Felix of about the same time, Alcuin, Adversus Felicem (PL 101, col. 144), cited John 20: 28–9 as elaborated by Cassian, De incarnatione Domini: ‘God is the Jesus whom I touched, God whose limbs I felt . . . I touch my Lord's body, I felt flesh and bones, I put my fingers in the wound'.
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51 Ibid. 91.
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