SECOND DIVISION. THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE GERMAN AND ROMAN CHURCH DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.198 (continued 3)

§ 87.2. The Collection of Decretals of the Pseudo-Isidore.―In the fiftieth year of the 9th century there appeared in France under the name of Isidorus Mercator a collection of canons and decretals, which indeed completely embraced the older so-called Isidoriana, but was enlarged by the addition of a multitude of forged decretals. The surname Mercator, otherwise Peccator, is probably derived from the well known Marius Mercator (§ 47, 20), who had also occupied himself with the translation of ecclesiastical documents, which the Pseudo-Isidore used for his work. It begins with the fifty Canones Apostt., then follow fifty-nine forged decretals which are assigned to the thirty oldest popes from Clement to Melchiades (d. A.D. 314). The second part embraces, besides the original document of the Donation of Constantine, genuine synodal decrees falsified apparently only in one passage. The third part, again, contains decretals of Sylvester, the successor of Melchiades, down to Gregory II. (d. A.D. 731), of which thirty-five are not genuine. The non-genuine decretals are for the most part not altogether forgeries, but are rather based upon the literature of theology and canon law then existing, amplified or altered, and wrought up to serve the purposes of the compiler. The system of the Pseudo-Isidore is characterized by the following peculiarities: Over the Imperium is raised the Sacerdotium, ordained of Christ to be governor and judge of the world. The unity and head of the Sacerdotium is represented by the pope. Bishops are related to the pope as the other apostles were to Peter. The metropolitan is only primus inter pares. Between the pope and the bishops as an intermediate rank we have the primates or patriarchs. This rank, however, belongs only to such metropolitan sees as either were ordained to it by the apostles and their successors, or to such sees in more recently converted lands as were elevated to this position in consequence of the multitude of bishops belonging to them. Provincial Synods should be held only with the consent of the pope, their decrees become valid only after receiving his confirmation, and all causæ majores, especially all complaints against bishops, belong solely to his own judicature. Priests are the Familiares Dei, the Spirituales; the laity, on the other hand, are the Carnales. No clergyman, least of all a bishop, may be taken before a secular tribunal. A layman may not appear as an accuser against a clergyman, and the Synods are enjoined to render charges against a bishop as difficult as possible. An expelled bishop, before the charges against him can be examined, must have been fully restored (Exceptio Spolii). If the accused regards his judges as inimici or suspecti, he may appeal to be examined before the pope. For the establishing of a charge at least seventy-two witnesses are necessary, etc.

§ 87.3. The forgery originated in France, where it had been in existence for some years before it was known in Rome, as appears from the process against Rothad of Soissons (§ 83, 2). Rothad first brought it to Rome in A.D. 864. Blondel and Kunst regard Benedict Levita as its author. He first gave currency to the forgery in his Collection of Capitularies. and so arouses the suspicion that he is himself the forger. Philipps fathers it upon Rothad of Soissons; Wasserschleben ascribes it to archbishop Otgar of Mainz, who, as a prominent head of the clerical conspiracy against Louis the Pious (§ 82, 4), would have reason to defend himself against the judgment which would befall conspirators. But this doom did not in any very special manner threaten Otgar. On Louis’ restoration he was not sentenced or deposed by any synod, but was without more ado received into favour by the emperor. The Pseudo-Isidore’s hostile attitude toward the chorepiscopi (§ 84), while gaining no footing in Germany, certainly prevailed in France; and France, not Germany, was the place where this collection first appeared between A.D. 853 and 864. Since now, moreover, the prominence given by the Pseudo-Isidore to the rank of primate may be regarded as equally favourable to the see of Rheims as to that of Mainz, Weizsäcker and v. Noorden have sought the original home of the forgery in the diocese of Rheims, and point to Ebo, archbishop of Rheims, Hincmar’s predecessor, as the forger. And Ebo certainly stood in the front rank of the revolt referred to. Before him Louis had specially to humble himself. He was therefore taken prisoner immediately upon the emperor’s restoration, and deprived of his office at the Synod of Didenhofen in A.D. 835 (§ 82, 4). The emperor Lothair, indeed, restored him in A.D. 840, but his position was still very insecure, as he had before a year passed to save himself by flight on the approach of Charles the Bald, and never again saw Rheims, which till Hincmar’s elevation remained in the hands of chorepiscopi. The composition of the collection, according to v. Noorden, belongs to the period immediately preceding and lasting through his restitution. Finally Hinschius regards Rheims as undoubtedly the scene of the composition of these forgeries, but he cannot ascribe them to Ebo because, according to his demonstration, Benedict’s Pseudo-Isidore used as his authority only a collection completed after A.D. 847, and by that time Ebo could not have the shadow of a hope of restoration. But he also advances other weighty considerations. Ebo himself had never attempted to make good the claims which the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals would have afforded him. If his own affairs had first led him to think of forging decretals he must have foreseen that the extensive studies necessary for such a work would have demanded many years of laborious effort, and would be concluded much too late to serve his purpose. It would, therefore, seem to him safer to confine himself to what his immediately present circumstances urgently required; whereas the actual Pseudo-Isidore, on the contrary, puts in the mouths of the early popes, with no little zeal and emphasis, a vast array of other exhortations and decrees that seemed to him useful amid the troubles of that age for the well being of the church and its ministers. Thus the whole work assumes more of the character of a pia fraus of a somewhat high church cleric of that time than of a forgery devised in the selfish interests of an individual. This much, however, must be admitted, that the directions quoted about judicial procedure against accused bishops exactly fit the case of Ebo. As the first attempt to use the non-genuine decretals only found in Pseudo-Isidore was made at the Synod of Soissons in A.D. 853, by those clerics who had been ordained by Ebo after his deposition but rejected by Hincmar, the final redaction and publication must fall between A.D. 847 and 853. Langen fixes the date at A.D. 850, and refers its authorship to Servatus Lupus (§ 90, 5). Nobody then doubted their genuineness. Even Hincmar seems for a long time to have had no doubts. But he decidedly repudiated their legal authority in the Frankish church, and energetically opposed them when they were sought to be enforced against the independence of the church. Thus he could always refer to them where their contentions agreed with his own, or, as in the case against his nephew, where they supported his rights as primate, in order to defeat his opponents with their own weapons. Subsequently however, in A.D. 872, in a letter written in the name of his king to pope Hadrian, he characterized them in contrast with the genuine and valid decretals as secus a quoquam compilata sive conficta. The Magdeburg Centuriators were the first conclusively to prove them spurious. The Jesuit Turrianus, however, entered the lists once more on their behalf. But the reformed theologian, David Blondel, castigated so sharply and thoroughly this theological unprincipledness, that even in the Roman Catholic church their non-genuineness has been now since admitted.245

§ 87.4. Among the many spurious documents which the Pseudo-Isidore included in his collection of ecclesiastical laws, we find an Edictum Constantini Imperatoris. In the first part of it, the so-called Confessio, Constantine makes a confession of his faith, and relates in detail in what a wonderful way he was converted to Christianity by pope Sylvester, and cured of leprosy (§ 42, 1). Then in the second part, the so-called Donatio, he confers upon the chair of Peter, with recognition of its absolute primacy over all patriarchates of the empire, imperial power, rank, honour, and insignia, as all privileges and claims of imperial senators upon its clergy. In order that the possessor of this gift may be able to all time to maintain the dignity of his position, he gives him the Lateran palace, transfers to him independent dominion over “Romanam urbem et omnes Italiæ seu (in Frankish Latin of the 8th and 9th centuries this means ‘as well as’) occidentalium regionum provincias, loca et civitates” (therefore not merely Italy but the whole West Roman empire); he removes his own imperial residence to Byzantium, “quoniam ubi principates Sacerdotum et Christ. religionis Caput ab Imperatore cœlesti constitutum est, justum non est, ut illic Imperator terrerum habeat potestatem.” In a letter of Hadrian I. to Charlemagne in A.D. 788, in which he salutes the emperor as a second Constantine who is called upon by God not only to restore to the apostolic chair the “potestas in his Hesperiæ partibus,” which had been already assigned it by the first Constantine, but also all later legacies and donations “of various patricians and other God-fearing men,” which the godless race of the Longobards in course of time tore from it, we have the first hint at the idea of a Donatio Constantini. The same pope, too, according to the Vita Hadriani in the Romish Pontifical, on the occasion of Charles’ visit to Rome in A.D. 774 is said to have reclaimed from him an enormous grant of land (§ 82, 2). It seemed therefore an extremely probable supposition that assigned Rome as the place where this document originated, and the period of the overthrow of the Longobard empire, whether actually accomplished or on the eve of taking place, as the date of its fabrication (§ 82, 1, 2). Against this view, almost universally prevalent, quite recently Grauert has advanced a vast array of powerful arguments, e.g., the limitation of the Donatio of Constantine to Italy which is here suggested contradicts its own express statement. The words of the letter of Hadrian referred to speak not of a dominion over Italy, and which they could have read, “in has H. partes,” but of a dominion in Italy which was founded upon Constantine’s munificence and enlarged by many subsequent presents. They do not, therefore, refer like the words of the Donatio to sovereign territorial authority, but to the exceedingly wide-spread and rich property included in the Patrimonium Petri (§ 46, 10). The “potestas,” said to have been assigned by Constantine to the Roman see, does not exceed the authority which even according to the Vita Sylvestri of the Pontifical had been given by Constantine to that pope.―Thus the donation document is met with first in the Pseudo-Isidore. It was often afterwards referred to by the Frankish government. By Rome, on the other hand, although even Nicholas I. was made acquainted with the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals by Rothad, and referred to them in A.D. 865, they are never used, either against the Franks or against the Byzantines until, in A.D. 1053, we meet an allusion to them in a letter from Leo IX. to the patriarch Michael Cærularius (§ 67, 3). Grauert accounts for this by saying that there were two recensions of Pseudo-Isidore, a shorter, which had only the first part of the document, the so-called Confessio; and a longer, which had also the Donatio, and that Rothad took probably only the shorter one to Rome. From these and other data adduced by Grauert it seems more than probable that the foundry in which the document was forged was not in Rome, but rather in France among the high church party there, from which also the full-fledged forgery proceeded. It would also seem that a double purpose was served by its composition. On the one hand, over against the Greeks it represented the chair of Peter as raised above all the patriarchates of the empire, and the Western empire as a thoroughly legitimate one transferred by Constantine the Great to the pope, and then by him to the kings of the Franks. And, on the other hand, it also made it clear to the Frankish princes that all temporal power in the West essentially, and from of old, belonged to the pope, and is bestowed upon them by means of their coronation by the pope’s hands.―That from the time when they met with the document unto the 11th century the Byzantines did not contest its genuineness, need not surprise us when we consider the uncritical character of the age. They would also be the less disposed to do so as they could only thereby hope to win that perfect equality in spiritual authority as well as in secular rank with the Roman bishop which the fourth œcumenical council had assigned to their patriarchal see. But while the Byzantines may be regarded as inconsiderately incorporating this donation of Constantine into their historical and legal books, blotting out indeed the passages which seemed to them to favour the pretensions of the pope to universal sovereignty, it is a more difficult task to secure for it acceptance among Western diplomatists. Even in A.D. 999 a state paper of Otto III. describes it as a pure fiction. High church tendencies, however, raised their standard also in the West during the 11th century (§ 96, 4, 5). Indeed, even in A.D. 1152, an Arnoldist (§ 108, 7), named Wetzel, wrote to the Emperor Frederick I.: “Their lies and heretical fables are now so completely exploded that even day-labourers and cow-men could prove to scholars their emptiness, and the pope with his cardinals ventures not for shame to show himself in the city of Rome.” The victory, however, of the papacy over the Hohenstaufen gained currency for it again, and it was the treatise of Laurentius Valla, “De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione declamatio,” which Ulrich von Hutten issued in multitude from the press, gave it the death blow (§ 120, 1). When, thereafter, even Baronius admitted the spuriousness of the document, though assigning its fabrication to the Greeks, who wished by it to prove that the Roman primacy was not of Christ but from Constantine, it found no longer a vindicator even in the Roman Catholic church.

III. THE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE.

§ 88. Public Worship and Art.

The German Arians undoubtedly used the language of the people in their services. The adoption of Catholicism, however, led to the introduction of the Latin tongue. The last trace of acquaintance with Ulfilas’ translation of the Bible is found in the 9th century. The nations converted directly to Catholicism had from the first the Latin language in public worship. Only the Slavs still retained the use of their mother tongue (§ 79, 2). The Roman liturgy, as well as the Roman language, was adopted in all churches with the exception of those of Milan and Spain. After Pepin had entered into closer relations with the popes, he endeavoured, in A.D. 754, at their desire, to bring about a uniformity between the Frankish ritual and the Roman pattern; and Charlemagne, whom Hadrian I. presented with a Roman Sacramentarium, carried it out with relentless energy. The slightness of the liturgical contributions of the Germans is to be accounted for partly by the fact that the Roman liturgy was already presented to them in a richly developed and essentially complete form, but also partly by the exclusion of the national languages and the refusal to give the people a share in the liturgical services. Under the constraint of a foreign tongue the Germans could not put the impress of their national character on a department in which language plays so important a part.

§ 88.1. Liturgy and Preaching.―Alongside of the Roman or Gregorian Liturgy many others also were in use. The people and clergy of Milan so determinedly adhered to their old Ambrosian liturgy, that even Charlemagne could not dislodge it, and down to the present day Milan has preserved this treasure. No less energetically did the Spaniards hold by their national liturgy, the so-called Mozarabic (§ 81, 1). It has a strong resemblance to the oriental liturgies, but was further elaborated by bishops Leander and Isidore of Seville (§ 80, 2), and was recognised by the National Synod of Toledo in A.D. 633 as valid for the whole of Spain. The Gallican liturgies too of the Carolingian times betrayed a certain dependence upon the oriental rituals. Preaching, in the services of the Western churches was always subordinate to the liturgy, and the relapse into savagery occasioned by the migrations of the peoples drove it almost completely out of the field. The missionary fervour in the Western church during the 7th century was the first thing to re-awaken a sense of its importance. But then very few priests could compose a sermon. Charlemagne, therefore, about A.D. 780, had a Latin Homiliarium compiled by Paulus Diaconus [Paul Warnefrid] (§ 90, 3) from the fathers for all the Sundays and Festivals of the year, as a model for their own composition, or, where that was too much to be expected, for reading in the original or in a translation. During the whole Middle Ages and beyond the Reformation it continued to be one of the most read and most diligently used books in the Roman Catholic church. Missionaries naturally preached themselves or through interpreters in the language of the people; even in constituted churches preaching was generally conducted in the speech of the country. Charlemagne and the Synods of his time insisted at least upon German or Romanic preaching.

§ 88.2. Church Music (§ 59, 4, 5).―After Gregory’s ordinance church music continued to be restricted to the clergy. Charlemagne indeed insisted, but unsuccessfully, that all the people should take part in singing the Gloria and the Sanctus. In the 7th-9th cent. a number of Latin hymn-writers flourished, of whom the most distinguished were Bede, Paul Warnefrid, Theodulf of Orleans, Alcuin, Rabanus Maurus, and Walafrid Strabo. The beautiful Pentecost hymn Veni creator Spiritus is ascribed to Charlemagne. The old classical form and colouring were more and more lost, but all the more the essentially Christian and Germanic character of simplicity and spirituality became prominent. Toward the end of our period the composition of Latin hymns obtained a new and fruitful impetus from the adoption of the so-called Sequences or Proses in the Mass. Under the long series of notes, hitherto without words attached, which were appended to the Alleluia to express inarticulate jubilation, hence called jubilationes, were now placed appropriate rhythmical words in Latin prose, which, however, soon assumed the form of metre, rhyme and strophes. The first famous writer of Sequences was the monk Notker Balbulus of St. Gall, who died in A.D. 912. Connected in form with the Latin Sequences were the more recently introduced Old Frankish Lais (Celtic=verse, song) and the Old German Leiche (=melody, song), to simple airs that had been used for popular songs. The only one which the church allowed to the people, and that only in services outside of the church, in processions, rogations and pilgrimages, in going to the church, at translations of relics, funerals, consecrations of churches, popular religious festivals, etc., was the singing or rather reciting of the Kyrie eleison from the great Litany. The fondness of the Germans for singing and composing hymns led, in the second half of the 9th century, to the attaching to these words short rhyming sacred verses in their mother tongue, and this in such a manner that the Kyrie eleison always formed the refrain of a strophe, so that they were called Leisons. This was the beginning of German church music. Of the Leisons only one hymn to St. Peter in the Old High-German dialect has come down to our day.―The Gregorian Music, Cantus firmus or choralis, won a most complete victory over the Ambrosian (§ 59, 5). In A.D. 754 Pepin at the request of Stephen II. ordered that in France only the Roman singing should be allowed, and Charlemagne secured for it complete and exclusive ascendency in all the West by violently extirpating the already very degenerate Ambrosian music, by establishing the celebrated singing schools of Metz, Soissons, Orleans, Paris, Lyons, etc., at the head of which he placed teachers brought from Rome, and by introducing instruction in singing in all the higher and lower schools. The first Organ came to France in A.D. 757 as a present to Pepin the Short from the Greek emperor Constantinus Copronymus; the second to Aachen with an embassy from the emperor Michael I. in Charlemagne’s time. From that time they became more common. They were still as instruments very imperfect. They had only from 9 to 12 notes, and the keys were so stiff that they had to be beaten down with the fist.246―Continuation, § 104, 10, 11.

§ 88.3. The Sacrifice of the Mass.―As the idea of sacrifice gained place there sprang up in addition to the masses for the souls of the departed (§ 58, 3) private masses for various other purposes, for the success of some undertaking, for the recovery of a sick person, for good weather and a good harvest, etc. To some extent the multiplication of masses was limited by the ordinance that celebration should be made at the same altar and by the same priest only once in the day. From the wish to secure that as many masses as possible should be said for their souls after death, churches and monasteries were formed into fraternities with a stipulated obligation to celebrate a certain number of masses for each deceased member of the fraternity in all the churches and monasteries belonging thereto. Fraternities of this kind, into which as a special favour princes and nobles were received, were called Confederacies for the Dead.

§ 88.4. The Worship of Saints (§ 57).―This practice found a very ready response from the Germans. It afforded some compensation for the abandoned worship of their ancestors. But over all other saints towered the mother of God, the meek and gentle queen of heaven. In her the old German reverence for woman found its ideal and full satisfaction. In respect of Image Worship (§ 57, 4) the Germans lagged behind, partly from the scarcity of images, partly from national aversion to them. The Frankish church of the Carolingian age protested formally against them (§ 92, 1). But all the greater was the zeal shown in the Worship of Relics (§ 57, 5) in which the worshipper had the saint concretely and bodily. The relics of the West were innumerable. Rome was an inexhaustible storehouse; and from the successive missionaries, from the deserts and solitudes, from the monasteries and bishops’ seats, there went forth crowds of new saints whose bones were venerated with enthusiasm. The gaining of a new relic for a church or monastery was regarded as a piece of good fortune for the whole land, and amid thousands assembled from far and near the translation was carried out, accompanied with liberal gifts of money. The Frankish monastery of Centula could show in the 9th century an immensely long list of the relics which it possessed, from the grave of the Innocents, the milk of the Holy Virgin, the beard of Peter, his cloak, the Oratorium of Paul, and even from the wood of the three tabernacles that Peter wished to build on Tabor. The custom of making Pilgrimages (§ 57, 6) also found great favour among the travel-loving Germans, especially among the Anglo-Saxons. The places most frequented by pilgrims were the tomb of the chief Apostles at Rome, then the tomb of Martin of Tours, and, toward the end of our period, that of St. James of Compostella, Jacobus Apostolus the elder, the supposed founder of the Spanish church, whose bones were discovered there by Alfonso the Chaste. The immoralities consequent upon pilgrimages, about which even the ancient church complained, were also only too apparent in this later age. On account of them Boniface urges that his countrywomen should be forbidden to go on pilgrimages, since this only served to supply the cities of Gaul and Italy with prostitutes. The idea of Guardian Angels (§ 57, 3) was eagerly adopted by the Germans. They were specially drawn to the warlike Archangel Michael, the conqueror of the great dragon (Dan. xii. 1; Jude 9; Rev. xii. 7 ff.).―Continuation, § 104, 8.

§ 88.5. Times and Places for Public Worship.―The beginning of the church year was changed from Easter to Christmas. All Saints’ Day (§ 57, 1), originally a Roman local festival, was made a universal ordinance by Gregory IV. who, in A.D. 835, fixed its date at 1st Nov. The abundance of relics and the multitude of masses that were said made it necessary to increase the number of altars in the churches beyond what Charlemagne had enjoined. Afterwards they were usually limited to three. The high altar stood out by itself in the middle of the choir recess. The side altars leant on pillars or on the chief altar. A relic shrine generally from the 8th century formed the back of the altar. No trace of a chancel is found, not even of a confessional chair. In churches which had the right of baptizing (§ 84, 2) there were as a rule separate baptistries. In place of these, after the right of baptizing was conferred on all churches, the baptismal font was introduced, either on the left side of the main entrance or at the point where the transepts crossed the nave. This change required the substitution of sprinkling for immersion. Clocks and towers became always more common. The latter, at first separate from the buildings, were from Charlemagne’s time attached to the church edifice. The baptism of bells, their consecration with water, oil and chrism, with the bestowing on them of some saint’s name, was forbidden by Charlemagne, but it was nevertheless continued, and is common to this day in the Roman Catholic church.

§ 88.6. Most attention was paid to ecclesiastical architecture and painting, south of the Alps during the Ostro-gothic period, north of the Alps during the Carolingian period. The Anglo-Saxons, however, in their island home also developed a taste for art. During the 9th century it received special attention in the German monasteries of St. Gall and Fulda. The monk Tutilo of St. Gall, d. A.D. 912, was pre-eminently distinguished both as a master in architecture, painting and sculpture, and in poetry and scholarship. The old Roman basilica style still maintained the front rank in church building. Yet at Ravenna, the Byzantium of Italy, during the Gothic domination there were several beautiful churches in the Byzantine cupola style. Einhard received from Charlemagne the rank of a court architect. Of all the churches built in Charlemagne’s time the most important was the cathedral of Aachen. It was built in the cupola style after the pattern of the cathedral church of Ravenna. Intended as a royal chapel, it was connected by a pillared passage with the palace. It was therefore also of only moderate dimensions. Its being appropriated as the coronation church led subsequently to its enlargement by the addition to it in A.D. 1355 of a large choir in the Gothic style. The church afforded abundant scope for the use of the art of the statuary. Costly shrines for relics were required, crucifixes, lamps, ciboria, incense vessels, etc., on which might be lavished all the refinements of artistic skill. The church books had artistically carved covers. Church doors, episcopal thrones, reading desks, baptismal fonts, afforded room for practice in relievo work. Among the various kinds of pictorial representations miniature painting was most diligently practised upon copies of the church books.―Continuation, § 104, 12, 14.

§ 89. National Customs, Social Life and Church Discipline.

The remains of Christian popular poetry of this period afford a convincing proof of the powerful and profound manner in which the truths of Christianity (§ 75, 1) had been grasped by the German races. The great mass of the people indeed had adopted the new faith in a purely historical fashion. Only gradually did it make its way into the inner spiritual life, and meanwhile out of the not fully conquered paganism there grew up a rich crop of superstitions in connection with the Christian life. It must be confessed that the state of morality among the Germans had fallen very low as compared with that which prevailed before Germany’s conversion to Christianity. A sadder contrast is scarcely conceivable than that presented by a comparison of the description in Tacitus of the old German customs and discipline and the account of Gregory of Tours of colossal criminality and brutish sensuality in the Merovingian Age. But never more than here does the fallacy: Post hoc ergo propter hoc, require to be guarded against. The moral deterioration of the German peoples was carried out independently of their contemporaneous, merely external, Christianization. The cause of it lies only in the overturning of the foundations of German life by the migration of the peoples. Severed from their original home, the most powerful guardian of ancestral customs, and set down as conquerors in the midst of rich countries with morally base surroundings, which had a poisonous effect upon them, with that eagerness and tenacity which characterize children of nature, they seized upon the seductive treasures and enjoyments, and their unfettered passion broke through all restraints of discipline and morality. The clearest proof of this view lies in the fact that the moral decay appeared in so remarkable a degree only among such peoples as settled in the corrupt Roman world and became amalgamated with it, most conspicuously among the Franks in Gaul and the Longobards in Italy, whereas among the Anglo-Saxons and the inhabitants of Germany the moral development was more normal.

§ 89.1. Superstition.―A powerful impulse was given to superstition on the one hand by the church, according to the educational method recommended by Gregory the Great (§ 75, 3), refusing recklessly to root out every element of paganism and rather endeavouring to give Christian applications to heathen institutions and views and to fill pagan forms with Christian contents, and on the other hand, by the representatives of the church not regarding belief in the existence of heathen deities as a delusion but counting the gods and goddesses as demons. The popular belief therefore saw in them a set of dethroned deities who in certain realms of nature maintain their ancient sway, whom therefore they dare not venture altogether to disoblige. The fanciful poetic view of nature prevailing among the Germans contributed also to this result, with its love of the mysterious and supernatural, its fondness for subtle enquiries and intellectual investigations. Thus, in the worship of the saints as well as in the church’s belief in angels and devils, new rich worlds opened themselves up before the Christianized Germans, which the popular belief soon improved upon. The pious man is exposed on all sides to the vexations of demons, but he is also on all sides surrounded by the protecting care of saints and angels. The popular belief made a great deal of the devil, but the relation of men to the prince of darkness and his attendant spirits seemed much too earnest and real to be as yet the subject of the humour which characterized the devil legends of the later Middle Ages, in which the cheated, “stupid” devil is represented as at last possessed only of impotent rage and sneaking off in disgrace.

§ 89.2. Popular Education.―The idea of a general system of education for the people was already present to the mind of Charlemagne. Yet as we may suppose only beginnings were made toward its realization. Bishop Theodulf of Orleans was specially active in founding schools for the people in all the villages and country towns of his diocese. The religious instruction of the youth was restricted as a rule to the teaching of the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed. Whatever grown up man or woman did not know these two was at Charles’ command to be subjected to flogging and fasting and to be made to learn them besides. As evidence of the extent of a religious consciousness among the people may be adduced the German forms of adjuration, belief, confession and prayer, of the 8th and 9th centuries which are still preserved. Further means of advancing the religious education of the people were afforded by the attempts to make the biblical and patristic books accessible to the people by translations in their own language. Among the Germans the monastery of St. Gall was famous for its zeal in originating a national literature. Among the Anglo-Saxons this effort was made and carried out by Alfred the Great, who died in A.D. 901 (§ 90, 10).

§ 89.3. Christian Popular Poetry.―It makes its first appearance at the end of the 7th century and continued far down into the 9th century. It flourished chiefly in England and Germany. Under the name of the Northumbrian Cædmon, who died in A.D. 680, there has been preserved a whole series of biblical poems of no small poetic merit, which range over the whole of the Old and New Testament history. The most important Anglo-Saxon poet after him was his countryman Cynewulf living about a century later. His poems are less homely and simple, but more elaborate than those of Cædmon, and as full of poetic enthusiasm as these. He too paints for us in his “Christ” the picture of the Redeemer as that of a manly victorious prince among his true “champions and earls” with such clear-cut features that “whoever once beholds them will never again forget them.” His poetically wrought up legends bear more of the Romish stamp with traces of saint worship and the doctrine of merit.247 Still higher than these two Anglo-Saxon productions stands the German-Saxon epic the Heliand, of the time of Louis of France, a song of the Messiah worthy of its august subject, truly national, perfect in form, simple, lively and majestic in style, transposing into German blood and life a genuine deep Christianity. In poetic value scarcely less significant is the “Krist” of Otfried, a monk of Weissenberg about A.D. 860. Near to his heart as well as to that of the Anglo-Saxon singers lay the thought: thaz wir Kriste sungun in unsere Zungun. It is, however, no longer popular but artistic poetry, in which the old German letter rhyme or alliteration gives place to the softer and more delicate final rhyme. To this class belongs also the so-called Wessobrunner Prayer, of which the first poetical half is probably a fragment of a larger hymn of the creation, and a poem in High German on the end of the world and the last judgment, known by the name of Muspilli, extant only as a fragment which is, however, almost unsurpassable in dignity and grandeur of description.

§ 89.4. Social Condition.―From the point of view of German law the contract of betrothal had the validity of marriage and the subsequent nuptial ceremony or surrender of the bride to the bridegroom in a public legal manner by her father or legal guardian was held to be only the carrying out of that contract. The bridal ceremony with the ecclesiastical benediction of the marriage bond already legally tied, was frequently celebrated only on the day following the marriage, therefore after its consummation. The Capitulary of Charlemagne of A.D. 802 came to the support of the claims of the church (§ 61, 2), ordaining that without previous careful enquiry as to the relationship of the parties by the priest, and the elders of the people, and also without the priestly benediction, no marriage could be concluded. The Pseudo-Isidorian decretals ascribed this demand to the popes of the 4th and 5th centuries. But the right to perform marriages was not thereby committed to the church; it was only that the religious consecration of the civil ordinance of marriage was now made obligatory. It seemed best of all when sooner or later the spouses voluntarily renounced marital intercourse; but this was strictly forbidden during Lent (§ 56, 4, 5), on all festivals and on the station days of the week (Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday). Second marriages were branded with the reproach of incontinence and called forth a lengthened penance. There was on the other hand as yet no prohibition of divorce, and the marrying again of those separated was only unconditionally forbidden in particular cases. The church was not willing to tolerate mixed marriages with heathens, Jews and Arians. The Germans found it most difficult to reconcile themselves to the strict requirements of the church in regard to the prohibited degrees of relationship. National customs had regarded many such marriages, especially with a brother’s widow, as even a pious duty.248―Continuation, § 104, 6.―Slavery or Serfdom was an institution so closely connected among the Germans with their notions of property that the church could not think of its entire abolition; indeed the church itself, with its large landed possessions, owned quite a multitude of slaves. Yet it earnestly maintained the religious and moral equality of masters and servants, assigned to the manumission of slaves one of the first places among good works, and was always ready to give protection to bondmen against cruel masters.249―The church with special energy entered upon the task of Caring for the Poor; even proud and heartless bishops could not overlook it. Every well appointed church had several buildings in which the poor, the sick, widows and orphans were maintained at the church’s cost.250

§ 89.5. Practice of Pubic Law.―The custom of Blood Revenge was also a thoroughly German institution. It had, however, been fairly restricted by the custom of Composition or the payment of satisfaction in the form of a pecuniary fine. The church from its dislike of capital punishment decidedly favoured this system. As a means of securing judicial evidence oaths and ordeals were administered. Only the freeman, who was quite capable of acting in accordance with his own judgment, was allowed to take an Oath; the husband took the oath for his wife, the father for the children, the master for the slave. Relatives, friends and equals in rank swore along with him as sharers of his oath, Conjuratores. Although they repeated with him the oath formula, the meaning of their action simply was that they were fully satisfied as to the honour and truthfulness of him who took the oath. Where the oath of purgation was not allowed, conjuratores were not forthcoming and the other means of proof awanting, the Ordeal (Ordale from Ordâl=judgment) was introduced. Under this may be included:

The Duel, derived from the old popular belief: Deum adesse bellantitus. Only a freeman was allowed to enter the lists. Old men, women, children and priests were allowed to put in their place another of the same rank by birth.

Various fire tests; holding the bare hand a length of time in the fire; in a simple shirt walking over burning logs of wood; carrying glowing iron in the bare hand for nine paces; walking barefoot over nine or twelve glowing ploughshares.

Two water tests: the accused was obliged to pick up with his naked hand a ring or stone out of a kettle filled with boiling water, or with a cord round his naked body he was cast into deep water, his sinking was the proof of his innocence.

The cross test: he whose arms first sank with weariness from the cruciform position, was regarded as defeated.

The Eucharist test, applied especially to priests: it was expected that the criminal should soon die under the stroke of God’s wrath. As a substitute for this among the laity we find the test of the consecrated morsel, Judicium offæ which the accused was required to swallow during mass.

The bier test, Judicium feretri: if when the accused touched the wound of the murdered man blood flowed from the wound or forth from the mouth, it was regarded as proof of his guilt.

The church with its belief in miracles occupied the same ground as that on which the ordeal practice was rooted. It could therefore only combat the heathen conception of the ordeal and not the thing itself. But the church took charge of the whole procedure, and certainly did much to reduce the danger to a minimum. It was Agobard of Lyons, who died in A.D. 840, who first contended against the superstition as worthy of reprobation. Subsequently the Roman chair, first by Nicholas I., forbade ordeals of all kinds.―Among the various kinds of privileges involving the inviolability of person and goods, profession and business, the privileges of the church were regarded as next highest to those of the king. Any injury done to ecclesiastical persons or properties and any crime committed in a sacred place, required a threefold greater composition than ceteris paribus would have otherwise been required. The bishop ranked with the duke, the priest with the count.

§ 89.6. Church Discipline and Penitential Exercises (§ 61, 1).―The German State allowed the church a share in the administration of punishments, and regarded an evildoer’s atonement as complete only when he had submitted to the ecclesiastical as well as the secular judgment. Out of this grew the institution of Episcopal Synodal Judicatures, Synodus, under Charlemagne. Once a year the bishop accompanied by a royal Missus was to travel over the whole diocese, and, of every parish priest assisted by assessors sworn for the purpose, should inquire minutely into the moral and ecclesiastical condition of each of the congregations under him and punish the sins and shortcomings discovered. Directions for the conducting of Synodal judicatures were written by Regino of Prüm and Hincmar of Rheims (§ 90, 5). The state also gave authority to Ecclesiastical Excommunication by putting its civil forces at the disposal of the church. Pepin ordained that no excommunicated person should enter a church, no Christian should eat or drink with him, none should even greet him. Directions for the practice of Penitential Discipline are given in the various Penitentials or Confessional-books, which, after the pattern of forensic productions, settle the amount of penal exactions for all conceivable sins in proportion to their enormity. The Penitential erroneously ascribed to Theodore archbishop of Canterbury (§ 90, 8) is the model upon which most of these are constructed. The Confessional-books that go under the names of the Venerable Bede and Egbert of York obtained particularly high favour. All these books, even in their earliest form extremely perverse and in their later much altered forms full of contradictions, errors and arbitrary positions, reduced the whole penitential practice to the utmost depths of externalization and corruption. How confused and warped the church idea of penitence had become is seen by the rendering of the word pœnitentia by penance, i.e. satisfaction, atonement. In the Penitentials pœnitere is quite identical with jejunare. The idea of pœnitentia having been once associated with external performances, there could be no objection to substitute the customary penitential act of fasting (§ 56, 7) for other spiritual exercises, or by adoption of the German legal practice of receiving composition to accept a money tax for ecclesiastical or benevolent purposes. In this way the first traces made their appearance of the Indulgences of the later Roman Catholic church. It therefore followed from this, that, as satisfaction could be rendered for all sins by corresponding acts of penance, so these works might also be performed vicariously by others. Thus in the Penitentials there grew up a system of Penitential Redemptions which formed the most despicable mockery of all earnest penitence. For example, a direction is given as to how a rich man may be absolved from a penance of seven years in three days, without inconveniencing himself, if he produces the number of men needed to fast for him. Such deep corruption of the penitential discipline, however, aroused, in the 8th and 9th centuries, a powerful reaction against the Confessional-books and their corrupt principles. It was first brought forward at the English Synod at Clovesho in A.D. 747; in its footsteps followed the French Synods of Chalons in A.D. 813, of Paris A.D. 829, of Mainz, A.D. 847. The Council of Paris ordered that all Confessional-books should be seized and burnt. They nevertheless still continued to be used.―There did not as yet exist any universal and unconditional compulsion to make confession. The custom, however, of a yearly confession in the Easter forty days’ season was even during the 9th century so prevalent, that the omission of it was followed by a severe censure by the synodal court. The formulæ of absolution were only deprecative, not judicative.251

IV. THEOLOGY AND ITS BATTLES.

§ 90. Scholarship and Theological Science.252

With the exception of Ulfilas’ famous efforts, the Arian period of German church history is quite barren in scientific performances. Yet those few who preserved and fostered the scientific gains of earlier times were honoured and made use of by the noble-minded Ostrogoth king Theodoric, and under him Boethius [Boëthius] and Cassiodorus (§ 47, 23) performed the praiseworthy task of saving the remnants of classical and patristic learning. For Spain the same office was performed by Isidore of Seville, who died in A.D. 636, whose text-books continued for centuries, even on this side the Pyrenees, to supply the groundwork of scholarly studies. The numerous Scottish and Irish monasteries maintained their reputation down to the 9th century for eminent piety and distinguished scholarship. Among the Anglo-Saxons the learned Greek monk Theodore of Tarsus, who died in A.D. 690, and his companion Hadrian, enkindled an enthusiasm for classical studies, and the venerable Bede, who died in A.D. 735, though he never quitted his monastery, became the most famous teacher in all the West, The Danish pirates did indeed crush almost to extinction the seeds of Anglo-Saxon culture, but Alfred the Great sowed them anew, though this revival was only for a little while. In Gaul Gregory of Tours, who died in A.D. 595, was the last representative of Roman ecclesiastical learning. After him we enter upon a chaos without form and void, from which the creative spirit of Charlemagne first called a new day which spread over the whole West its enlightening beams. This light, however, was put out even by the time of the great emperor’s grandson, and then we suddenly pass into the night of the Sæculum Obscurum (§ 100).

§ 90.1. Rulers of the Carolingian Line.―Charlemagne, A.D. 768-814, may be regarded as beginning his scientific undertakings on his first entrance into Italy in A.D. 774. On this occasion he came to know the scholars Peter of Pisa, Paul Warnefrid, Paulinus of Aquileia, and Theodulf of Orleans, and brought them to his palace. From A.D. 782, however, the particularly brilliant star of his court was the Anglo-Saxon scholar Alcuin, whom Charles had met in Italy in the previous year. Scientific studies were now carried on in an exceedingly vigorous manner in the palace. The royal family, the whole court and its surroundings engaged upon them, but of them all Charles himself was the most diligent and successful of Alcuin’s students. In the royal school, Schola palatina, which was ambulatory like the royal residence itself, the sons and daughters of the king with the children of the most distinguished families of the land received a high-class education. The teaching staff was constantly recruited from England, Ireland and Italy. After such preparations Charles issued in A.D. 787 a circular to all the bishops and abbots of his kingdom which enjoined under threat of his severe royal displeasure that schools should be erected in all monasteries and cathedral churches. Meanwhile his endeavours were most successful, but were rather one-sided in the preference given to classical and patristic literature, without a proper national foundation. Charles’s great and generous nature indeed had a warm interest in national culture, but those around him, with the single exception of Paul Warnefrid, had in consequence of their Latin monkish training lost all taste for German thought, language and nationality, and fearing lest such studies might endanger Christianity and cause a relapse into paganism, they did not help but rather hindered the king’s effort to promote a national literature.―Louis the Pious, A.D. 814-840, had his weak government disturbed by the strifes of parties and of the citizens. This period, therefore, was not specially favourable to the development of scientific studies, but the seed sown by his father still bore noble fruit. His son Lothair issued an ordinance which gave a new organization to the educational system of Italy, indeed created it anew. But Italy restless and full of factions was the land where least of all such institutions could be successfully conducted. A new golden age, however, dawned for France under Charles the Bald, A.D. 840-877. His court resembled that of his great grandfather in having gathered to it the élite of scholars from all the West. The royal school gained new renown under the direction of Joannes Scotus Erigena. The cathedral and monastic schools of France vied with the most famous institutions of Germany (St. Gall, Fulda, Reichenau, etc.), and over the French episcopal sees men presided who had the most distinguished reputation for scholarship. But after Charles’s death the bloom of the Carolingian period passed away with almost inconceivable rapidity amid the commotions of the time into thick darkness, chaos and barbarism.

§ 90.2. The most distinguished Theologians of the Pre-Carolingian Age.

In Merovingian France flourished Gregory of Tours, sprung of a good Roman family. When in A.D. 573, in order to get cured of an illness, he made a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Martin (§ 47, 14), he had the bishopric of Tours conferred upon him, where he continued till his death in A.D. 595. His Historia Ecclesiastica Francorum in ten Bks. affords us the only exact and trustworthy information we possess of the Merovingian age. The Ll. VII. Miraculorum are a collection of several hagiographic writings, four of them recounting some of the innumerable miracles of St. Martin.

Scientific studies were prosecuted more vigorously on the other side of the Pyrenees than on this. In the empire of the Suevi (§ 76, 4) archbishop Martin of Braccara, now Braga, distinguished himself in the work of Catholicising the Arian population. He was previously abbot of the monastery of Dumio, and died about A.D. 580. He was a voluminous writer on church law and also in the departments of moral and ascetical theology. His writings in the latter section have so much in common with those of Seneca that they were at one time ascribed to the Roman moralist. The treatise De Correctione Rusticorum is very important for the history of the morals, legal institutions and culture of that period.―The great star of the Spanish Visigothic kingdom was Isidorus [Isidore] Hispalensis, who died in A.D. 636. He was descended from a distinguished Gothic family, and, as successor of his brother Leander, rose to the archbishopric of Seville (Hispalis). His writings are diligent compilations, which have preserved to us many fragments and items of information otherwise unknown. Incomparably greater, however, was the service they rendered in conveying classical and patristic learning to the German world of that age. His most comprehensive work consists of xx. Bks. Originum s. Etymologiarum, an encyclopædic exhibition of the whole field of knowledge of the day. He also wrote a Chronicon reaching down to A.D. 627, and Hist. de regibus Gotorum, a shorter Hist. Vandalorum et Suevorum, and a continuation of Jerome’s Catalogus de viris illustr. Of more importance than his numerous compilations of mystico-allegorical expositions of Scripture are the iii. Bks. Sententiarum, a well-arranged system of doctrine and morals from patristic passages, especially from Augustine and Gregory the Great, and the Lb. II. de ecclest. officiis. The two last-named works were highly prized as text-books throughout the Middle Ages. The two books Contra Judæos belong to the department of apologetics. He also composed a monastic rule (comp. further § 87, 1 and 88, 1).―Isidore’s elder brother Leander of Seville, who died in A.D. 590, had a good reputation as a church leader (§ 76, 2; 88, 1), and had no insignificant rank as a theological writer. The same may be said of the two bishops of Toledo, Ildefonsus, who died in A.D. 669, and Julianus, who died in A.D. 690.

England’s greatest and most famous teacher was the Anglo-Saxon, the Venerable Bede. Trained in the monastery of Wearmouth, he subsequently took up his residence in the monastery of Jarrow, where he died in A.D. 735. He was a proficient in all the sciences of his time and withal a model of humility, piety and amiability. While his numerous pupils reached the highest places in the service of the church, their famous teacher continued in quiet retirement as a simple monk. He himself wished nothing else. Even on his deathbed he continued unweariedly to teach and write. Immediately before his death he dictated the last chapter of an Anglo-Saxon translation of the Gospel of John. By far his most important work for us is the Hist. ecclest. gentis Anglorum in 5 Bks. reaching down to A.D. 731 (Engl. Transl. by Giles, Lond., 1840; and by Gidley, Lond., 1871). Connected with this are his biographies of several saints of his native land, also a history of the monastery of Wearmouth, and a Chronicon de sex ætatibus mundi reaching down to A.D. 729. His commentaries ranging over almost all the books of the Old and New Testament give evidence of a wonderful knowledge of the fathers. His numerous sermons are mostly exegetical and practical, rarely doctrinal. He was distinguished too as a poet in Latin as well as in his mother tongue.

§ 90.3. The most distinguished Theologians of the Age of Charlemagne.

The brightest star in the theological firmament of this period was the Anglo-Saxon Alcuin (Albinus) with the Horatian surname of Flaccus, which he got for his poetical productions. He was educated in the famous school of York under Egbert and Elbert. When the latter was made archbishop in A.D. 766, Alcuin undertook the presidency of the schools. While on a visit to Rome in A.D. 781 he met Charlemagne who took him to his court, where he became the emperor’s teacher, friend and most trusted counsellor. Down to his death in A.D. 804 he was the king’s right hand in all religious ecclesiastical and educational matters. In order to allay a feeling of home-sickness, he undertook a journey in A.D. 789 to his native country as ambassador of Charlemagne, returned in A.D. 793, and did not again quit France. In A.D. 796 Charles gave him the abbacy of Tours. He soon raised its monastic school to the highest rank as a seminary of learning. His exegetical works are mere compilations. The Ll. II. de fide s. et Individuæ Trinitatis may be regarded as his dogmatic masterpiece; a compendium of dogmatics based upon Augustine’s writings. The Quæstiones de Trin. treat of the same matter in the catechetical form of question and answer. He contributed to the doctrinal controversies of his time the Libellus de processione Spiritus S. (§ 91, 2) and by several learned controversial tracts against the leaders of the Adoptionists (§ 91, 1). It is doubtful whether at all, and if so to what extent, he had to do with the composition of the Libri Carolini (§ 94, 1) which appeared during his stay in England. His numerous epistles, about 300 in number, are very important for the history of his times. In his Latin poems he sometimes very happily imitates his classical models.253

Paulus Diaconus or Paul (the son of) Warnefrid, of an honourable Longobard family, was next to Alcuin the most distinguished scholar of his age. Probably sorrow at the overthrow of his people (§ 82, 2) drove him into the monastery of Monte Cassino; but Charlemagne took him to his court in A.D. 782, where he was an object of admiration as a Homer among the Grecians, a Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, among the Latinists, and a Philo (!) among the Hebraists. Love of his native land, however, led him back to his monastery in A.D. 786, where he died at a very advanced age in A.D. 795. What was specially praiseworthy in this learned and amiable man, all the more that few then took interest in those matters, was love and enthusiasm for the language, the national legends and heroic tales, the old laws and customs of his fellow-countrymen. His most important work is the Historia s. de Gestis Langobardorum in 6 bks., reaching down to A.D. 774. The earlier Hist. Romana, composed at the wish of a daughter of king Desiderius, is, so far as its earlier periods are concerned, compiled from the classical historians, but for the later periods down to the overthrow of the Gothic rule is more independent. At the Frankish court he composed the Hist. Episcoporum Mettensium. He was also distinguished as a poet. On his Homiliarius comp. § 88, 1.254

Theodulf, bishop of Orleans, distinguished as a Christian poet and learned theologian, and especially as a promoter of popular education, stood in high repute with Charlemagne, but under Louis the Pious, being suspected of treasonable correspondence with Bernard of Italy, was deposed and banished in A.D. 818. Subsequently, however, he was pardoned and recalled, but died in A.D. 821 before he reached his diocese. His book De Spiritu S. was a contribution to the controversy about the procession of the Holy Spirit (§ 91, 2). At Charlemagne’s request he described and explained the baptismal ceremony in the book De ordine baptismi. His numerous poems have been published in 6 bks.

Paulinus, patriarch of Aquileia, who died in A.D. 804, and bishop Leidrad of Lyons, who died in A.D. 813, took part in Alcuin’s controversy against the Adoptionists by the publication of able treatises.

Of the works of Hatto, abbot of Reichenau, subsequently bishop of Basel, who died in A.D. 836, we still have the so-called Capitulare Hattonis, with prefatory directions for the official guidance of the Basel clergy, and the Visio Wettini, describing the vision of a monk of Reichenau called Wettin, who in A.D. 824 three days before his death was conducted by an angel through hell, purgatory and paradise. Hatto wrote it in prose and Walafrid Strabo rendered it into verse. It made a great impression on his contemporaries and was probably not without influence upon Dante’s Divina Comediá.

§ 90.4. The most distinguished Theologians of the Age of Louis the Pious.

Agobard of Lyons, a Spaniard by birth, died as archbishop of Lyons in A.D. 840. As the resolute defender of the integrity of the empire and the head of the national church party among the Frankish clergy, he was drawn into a conspiracy against Louis the Pious in A.D. 833 (§ 82, 4), which led to his deposition and banishment in A.D. 835. After two years, however, he was pardoned. He was a man of remarkable culture and extraordinary force of character, and withal a vigorous opponent of all ecclesiastical and extra-ecclesiastical superstition. On his writings referring to these matters see § 92, 2. In the book Adv. dogma Felicis he contended against Adoptionism (§ 91, 1). In connection with his battle against the insolence and pride of the numerous and wealthy Jews in his diocese he wrote and dedicated to the emperor the accusatory tract De insolentia Judæorum, followed by several similar addresses to the most influential councillors of the crown. Another series of writings from his pen was devoted to the vindication of the attitude which he had assumed in the struggle between Louis the Pious and his sons. Several treatises on the position and task, the rights and duties of the ministerial office show a reformatory tendency. He engaged in a passionate controversy with Amalarius of Metz about the necessity of a liturgical reform. Against Fredigis of Tours, Alcuin’s successor, he maintained the view regarding the prophets and apostles that the Holy Spirit non solum sensum prædicationis et modos vel argumenta dictionum inspiraverit, sed etiam ipsa corporalia verba extrinsecus in ora illorum ipse formaverit.

Claudius, bishop of Turin, who died in A.D. 839, was also a Spaniard by birth and a scholar of Felix of Urgel (§ 91, 1), without, however, imbibing his heretical views. He was throughout his whole career a zealous and determined reformer. His reformatory notions were set forth first of all in his exegetical works that covered almost the whole range of Scripture. Of these only the commentary on Galatians is now extant. He also vindicated his position against the attacks of his old friend the abbot Theodemir in his Apologeticus (§ 92, 2).

Jonas of Orleans, the successor of Theodulf, was one of the most distinguished prelates of his age, who wrought earnestly and successfully for the restoring of discipline and order in his diocese. In the struggle between Louis the Pious and his sons he resolutely took the side of the old king. He died in A.D. 844. His three books, De institutione laicali constitute a handbook of morals for married persons, which also, because it deals with the sins and vices that were then rampant, is of value as a picture of the moral condition of his age. The book De institutione regia, addressed to Louis’ son Pepin, may be regarded as an appendix to the former treatise. In opposition to the iconoclastic opinions of Claudius (§ 92, 2) he wrote Ll. III. De cultu imaginum.

The principal work of the priest Amalarius of Metz is his De ecclesiasticis officiis in 4 bks., a detailed description of all the ceremonies of public worship and the ecclesiastical furniture and vestments, with many arbitrary mystico-allegorical explanations, which called forth a crushing rejoinder from Agobard. On his revision of the rule of Chrodegang, see § 84, 4.

From the pen of the German monk Christian Druthmar of Old Corbei we have a commentary on Matthew, which is remarkable for the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper which it sets forth (§ 91, 3), as well as for the hermeneutical principle there laid down, that first and foremost the exegete must secure a thorough understanding of the historical literal sense, before he may think of developing the spiritual sense, which must have the former as its basis.

Rabănus [Rabanus] Magnentius Maurus, the most distinguished scholar of his age, was descended from an old Roman family but one that had long been Germanized at Mainz. His earliest education was received at the monastery of Fulda. He then became a pupil of Alcuin at Tours. In A.D. 803 he became himself a teacher at Tours, and in A.D. 822 was made abbot of Fulda. After the death of Louis the Pious he took the side of Lothair against Louis the German, and was consequently obliged to resign his position as abbot and to quit Fulda in A.D. 842. Subsequently, however, he obtained Louis’ favour, and upon Otgar’s death in A.D. 847 (§ 87, 3) was appointed his successor in the archiepiscopal see of Mainz. He died in A.D. 856. The monastic school at Fulda was raised by him to the highest eminence. His commentaries extending over almost all the Old and New Testaments are mainly occupied with the development of the so-called spiritual sense, manifest wonderful familiarity with the writings of the Latin fathers from Ambrose to Bede, and were held in the highest esteem throughout the Middle Ages. The same may be said of his numerous homilies. The encyclopædic work De universo in 22 bks., is a continuation of Isidore’s Origines. His book De institutione clericorum in 3 bks. affords a summary of all that was then to be learnt by the clergy for the practical work of the ministry. The Tractatus de diversis quæstionibus ex V. et N. T. contra Judæos is an apologetic treatise. He wrote against Gottschalk’s doctrine of predestination in a letter to bishop Noting of Verona (§ 91, 5), and another to the abbot Eigil of Prüm against Radbert’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper (§ 91, 3). Of his many other works we may mention a Martyrologium based upon ancient authorities.

Walafrid Strabo received his early training in the monastery of Reichenau. He studied subsequently under Rabanus at Fulda, in which institution he became a teacher. About A.D. 842 he was made abbot of Reichenau; the seminary here he raised to high repute, although he died in his early prime in A.D. 849. Among his evangelical writings his so-called Glossæ ordinariæ, i.e. short explanations of the Latin text of the Bible, mostly culled from the commentaries of Rabanus, were extremely popular, and continued in use throughout the Middle Ages as an exegetical handbook. In the liturgical department we have his treatise De exordiis et incrementis rerum ecclesiasticarum, in which he expresses himself on the image controversy in the spirit of the old Frankish church (§ 92, 1). Walafrid was also famous as a writer of sacred and secular poems.

§ 90.5. The Most Distinguished Theologians of the Age of Charles the Bald.

The powerful metropolitan Hincmar of Rheims, who died in A.D. 882 (§ 82, 7; 83, 2), was not indeed strong in dogmatics, but in his writings just as well as in his life and struggle he was heart and soul a church leader and statesman. His most important work from a theological point of view is the Capitula Synodica ad presbyteros parochiæ suæ on various points of worship and discipline, a notable witness to the zeal and care which this man, so much taken up with affairs of state and ecclesiastical controversies, showed in the discharge of his ministerial duties. Of his writings in connection with the Gottschalk controversy (§ 91, 5, 6) only the prolix work De predest. Dei et libero arbitrio vindicating the decrees of Quiersy of A.D. 853 are now extant.

Paschasius Radbertus, who died about A.D. 865, was monk, and, from A.D. 844-851, also abbot of the monastery of Corbei in Picardy. But among the monks of that place there was a cotery which occasioned the most profound grief to the pious-minded abbot; especially the learned monk Ratramnus under the protection of court favour took delight in contesting the somewhat ultra-pietistic views of his abbot. Probably it was this that led Radbertus to resign his office in A.D. 851. Besides the two treatises controverted by Ratramnus he composed biblical commentaries, which are more independent and contain more of his own than was common at that time. He also wrote 3 bks. on faith, love and hope; besides several Hagiographies.

Ratramnus, the antagonist of the former, takes a very prominent place among the clear and subtle thinkers of that age. Besides his controversial treatises against Radbertus (§ 91, 3, 4) and against Hincmar (§ 91, 5, 6), he took part in the burning controversy between the Greeks and Latins (§ 67, 1) and wrote, Contra Græcorum opposita Romanam eccl. infamantium.

Florus Magister was a cleric of the diocese of Lyons distinguished no less for great learning than for poetic gifts. His principal work De actione Missarum, s. expositio in Canonem Missæ is, notwithstanding its title, not so much a liturgical treatise as a controversial tract against Radbertus’ doctrine of the Eucharist (§ 91, 3). In the liturgical controversy between Agobard and Amalarius, he took the side of Agobard and argued against Amalarius in several epistles. In the predestinarian controversy he published the work Contra J. Scoti Erigenæ erroneas definitiones (§ 91, 5). He also composed a Martyrologium.

Haymo, bishop of Halberstadt, who died in A.D. 853, won great reputation not only by his compiled exegetical works and his Homiliarium for the festival part of the year, but also as author of a Church History, which, however, is nothing more than a working up of extracts from Rufinus.

Servatus Lupus, scholar of Rabanus, was from A.D. 842 abbot of Ferrières. His 130 epistles are important for the history of his time, as he was in constant correspondence with the most famous men of his day. On the side of Gottschalk in the predestinarian controversy he wrote his treatise De tribus quæstionibus.

Remigius of Auxerre, who died about A.D. 908, was teacher of the monastic school at Rheims, and subsequently at Paris. Besides numerous commentaries on the books of the Old and New Testaments in the usual compilatory and allegorical style, he has left in his Expositio Missæ a mystico-allegorical explanation of the ceremonies of the mass.

Regius of Prüm, abbot of the monastery there, subsequently resigned his rank and retired into the monastery of Treves. He died in A.D. 915. His Chronicon reaching down to A.D. 906 is of great value for his own times. His 2 bks. De cantis synodalibus et disciplinis ecclesiasticis are a directory for the visitation of churches to be carried out by means of synodical judicatures.

§ 90.6.

Anastasius Bibliothecarius was abbot of a Roman monastery and librarian under popes Nicholas I., Hadrian II. and John VIII., and visited the Byzantine court in A.D. 869 as member of an embassy of Emperor Louis II., and was also present at the 8th œcumenical Council at Constantinople (§ 67, 1). He translated the acts of this synod into Latin, wrote the lives of several saints, and composed a Hist. ecclest. s. Chronographia tripartita drawn from three Byzantine historical works of that period. To the Liber Pontificalis s. de vitio Roman. pontificum, reaching down to the death of Stephen V. in A.D. 891, which has been ascribed to him, he can only have contributed the Vita of pope Nicholas I., and perhaps also the Vitæ of his four immediate predecessors. It is a history of the popes gathered together from various sources that had their origin at different times, the earliest of which goes back to A.D. 354. The oldest extant recension of it reaches down to Pope Conon in A.D. 687, and forms an important link in the chain of Romish fabrications and interpolations, by means of which the numerous fabricated acts of Romish martyrs, as well as already existing fables referring to particular popes and emperors (comp. e.g. § 42, 1), gained credence, more recently introduced liturgical practices had assigned to them a more remote antiquity, and the popes were represented as legislators for the whole church. The complete biographies often written by contemporaries preserved in this collection are of great historical value.

Eulogius of Cordova was chosen archbishop in A.D. 858, but was not received by the Moorish government, and suffered martyrdom in A.D. 859 (§ 81, 1). The most important of his writings is the historical Memoriale Sanctorum s. Ll. III. de Martyrib. Cordubens. The Apologeticus Sanctorum is a continuation of the former with violent invectives against Islam and its false prophet. Paulas [Paul] Alvarus of Cordova, from his youth closely associated with Eulogius, wrote his life and vindicated in a Judiculus luminosus the tendency to court martyrdom then frequently shown by Christians but often objected to.

§ 90.7.

Joannes Scotus Erigena, the miracle as well as the enigma of his age, by birth probably an Irishman, who flashed out as a brilliant meteor in the court of Charles the Bald and passed away from view, without its being known whence he came or whither he went, was the greatest scholar, the most profound, subtle and liberal thinker of his times, with a speculative power the like of which was not seen for centuries before and after. He died after A.D. 877. His extant works embrace fragments of his commentary on the Areopagite (§ 47, 11), and a Latin faithful, literal and therefore hard to understand translation of the Areopagite’s writings, also a translation of a work of Maximus Confessor on difficult passages from the writings of Gregory Nazianzen (Loca ambigua), his controversial treatise De prædestinatione (§ 91, 5), a homily on the prologue of John’s gospel, a fragment of a speculative-mystical treatise De egressu et regressu animæ ad Deum, and the Opus palmare of the author, by far the most comprehensive of his writings, the 5 bks. De divisione naturæ. Based upon the gnosis of the school of Origen, but resting mainly on the theosophical mysticism of the Areopagite and the dialectic of Maximus Confessor, he produced in this treatise a system of speculative theology of magnificent dimensions which, in spite of every effort to hold by the doctrinal position of the church, is but one piece of heterodoxy from beginning to end. He starts from the principle that true theology and true philosophy are only formally different, but essentially identical. The Fides have to express the truth as Theologia affirmativa (καταφατική) in the biblically revealed and ecclesiastically communicated shell, accommodating itself to the finite understanding by figurative and metaphorical expressions. But the task of the Ratio is to strip off this shell (Theologia negativa, ἀποφατική), and by means of speculation raise the faith to knowledge. The title of this book is to be explained from its fundamental thought that nature, i.e. the sum of all being and non-being, by which he understands everything the existence of which is yet unknown, or merely potential, or necessarily belonging to things past, comprises four forms of existence:―Natura creatrix non creata, i.e. God as the potential sum of all being, Natura creatrix creata, i.e. the eternal thoughts of God regarding the world as the eternal primal types of all creation, Natura creata non creans, i.e. the world in time as the visible product and sensible realization of the eternal invisible world of ideas, and Natura nee creata nee creans, i.e. God as the final end of all created being, to whom all creation when all contradictions have been overcome returns in the ἀποκατάστασις τῶν πάντων. The Aristotelian threefold division into the unmoved and moving, the moved and moving, and the moved and not moving, seems to have afforded him the starting-point for his fourfold division; while the divergent conception of them, their enlargement and development may be traced to Platonic and Neo-Platonic influences.―That such a system must essentially tend to pantheism soon became evident, but on the other hand Erigena’s own Christian consciousness strongly reacted against the pantheistic current of his thought, and he was anxiously concerned to preserve the fundamental truths of Christian Theism. By the fundamental fourfold division of his system he could not give to the doctrine of the Trinity a necessary and controlling but only an accidental and occasional position. Only the presence of this doctrine in Scripture and tradition obliged him to maintain it. He speaks indeed of three persons in God, but he uses the expression only in an improper sense, and has no intention of explaining Father, Son and Spirit as mere names of divine relations (habitudines, relationes): Pater vult, Filius facit, Spir. S. perficit. In the Son as the creative Word of God are all original causes of things, undistinguished, unordered; by the Spirit are they differentiated into the various phenomena and effects in the kingdom of nature as well as of grace. On his doctrine of evil, comp. § 91, 5. As Origen has in himself the germs of all orthodoxy and heterodoxy of the ancient church undeveloped and uncontrasted, so also in Erigena are there the germs of the contradictions of later scholasticism and mysticism. Had he lived three centuries later he would probably have set the whole learned world astir, but now he passed unhonoured, misunderstood, scarcely regarded worth dealing with for heresy (§ 91, 5), and apparently leaving little trace behind him. His great work De divisione naturæ was first condemned by a provincial Council at Sens, and this judgment was confirmed by Honorius III. in A.D. 1225. The book was characterized as Scatens vermibus hæreticæ pravitatis; orders were given that it should be sought out everywhere and burnt.255

§ 90.8. The Monastic and Cathedral Schools had as their main task the training of capable servants for the church. The handbooks mainly in use were those of Cassiodorus, Isidore, Bede, Alcuin and Rabanus. Great diligence was shown, especially in the monasteries, in founding libraries and multiplying books by means of good copies. Alcuin made a threefold division of all sciences; ethics, physics and theology. Ethics corresponded to what was afterwards called the Trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric and Dialectic); Physics to the Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy). These two together comprehended the whole range of the seven free arts, i.e. worthy of the study of a free man, liberal studies. Latin was the language of intercourse and instruction. Greek, which was spread by Theodore of Tarsus, a Greek monk, who, after being long a teacher in Rome, was in A.D. 669 made archbishop of Canterbury, and by his pupils was also taught in the more important schools. Acquaintance with Hebrew was much more rare, and was often obtained by means of intercourse with learned Jews. Boethius [Boëthius] was the vehicle of instruction in philosophy. In the 9th century the works ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite (§ 47, 11) were sent to France as a present from the Byzantine emperor Michael to Louis of France. He was identified with the founder of the church of Paris of the same name, and patriotic feeling gave an immense impulse to the study of his writings. The abbot Hildmin of St. Denys, and subsequently Joannes Erigena, translated them into Latin. Encyclopædic works, giving compendiums of the whole range of the sciences then known, were produced by Isidore and Rabanus.256―Continuation, § 99, 3.

§ 90.9. Various Branches of Theological Science.―The labours of the German church in the department of scientific theology was directed to the church’s immediate needs, and hence the character of its theology was biblical and practical, and the reputation of the fathers so extravagantly high, that wherever it was possible, teaching, preaching, proving and refuting were all carried on in their very words. Charlemagne’s powerful efforts in the direction of reform gave even in the department of theology abundant occasion and encouragement to scholars round about him to a more independent procedure, and the theological controversies of the 9th century afforded sufficient scope to independent thinking.

Exegesis on the basis of the Vulgate was most diligently prosecuted. Charlemagne set Alcuin to produce a critical revision of its very corrupt text. Agobard combated the mechanical theory of inspiration by the assertion that the holy prophets were something better than Balaam’s ass. Only one out of the very numerous exegetes, Christian Druthmar, recognised it as a first principle, most essential and necessary, if not the only task of the exegete, to bring out the grammatical and historical sense of the words of Scripture. The literal sense was and continued to be regarded as the scullion of interpretation, while it was thought that the most precious treasures of Divine wisdom were to be found in the allegorical sense, i.e. with application to the mysteries of the faith, the tropological or moral, and the anagogical, which aimed at the elevation of the mind.

In Systematic Theology Apologetics was most feebly represented. The humble form of the paganism to be controverted did not require elaborate defences of the Christian faith, but the advance of Mohammedanism and the great number of Jews established in France, especially under Louis of France, by means of their wealth and bribes, developed an incredible arrogance. While Jewish and pagan slaves were not allowed to have baptism, Christian slaves on the other hand were compelled to observe the Sabbath, to work on Sunday, to eat flesh on fast days; they openly blasphemed Christ, insulted the church and sold Christian slaves to the Saracens. Agobard fought against them energetically by word, Scripture and action, but the needy court protected them. Isidore and Rabanus in their apologetical writings proved the nullity of the Jewish beliefs. From the time of Charlemagne theologians were much more eagerly engaged in polemics (§§ 91, 92). Isidore in his Ll. III. Sententiarum collected from patristic passages a system of doctrine and morals, which continued a favourite text-book for centuries. Alcuin’s Ll. III. De fide Trinitatis form a compendium of dogmatics. The introduction of the Pseudo-Areopagita into the West prepared the way for speculative mysticism, which had its first representative in Joannes Scotus Erigena.

In Practical Theology homiletical literature was but poorly represented. Besides the Homiliarius of Paul Warnefrid (§ 88, 1), we meet with Bede, Walafrid, Rabanus and Haymo as authors of sermons. On the other hand great and constant interest was shown in developing a theory of worship, in describing it and giving a mystical explanation of it. Isidore with De officiis ecclesiasticis was the first in this department. Charlemagne set to all his theologians the task of explaining the baptismal ceremony. In the time of Louis the Pious, Agobard appears as a reformer of the liturgy, in connection with which he passionately contended against Amalarius, against whom also Florus Magister entered the lists. Important works in this department were also written by Rabanus, Walafrid and Remigius. On works treating of church law and church discipline, see § 87 and § 89, 5.

Finally, as to the department of Historical Theology all knowledge of earlier church history was derived from Rufinus and Cassiodorus. Even Haymo’s Church History is made up simply of extracts from Rufinus. All the greater diligence was shown throughout the Middle Ages in chronicling the ecclesiastical and political events of the immediate present and also keeping the past in memory. This endeavour shows itself in a threefold direction. (a) The writing of National Chronicles. The Visigoths had their Isidore, the Ostrogoths their Cassiodorus,257 the Longobards their Paul Warnefrid, the Franks their Gregory of Tours, the Britons their Gildas258 and Nennius,259 the Anglo-Saxons their Bede.―(b) Then we have the clumsy compilations of Annals and Chronicles which most monasteries produced, and which were continued from year to year.―(c) And further, Biographies, both of distinguished statesmen and distinguished churchmen. The Vitæ Sanctorum are innumerable, mostly quite uncritical, composed purely for the glorification of some local saint. To this category belong the numerous Martyrologies, arranged in the order of the Calendar. Among the most famous were those prepared by Bede, Ado of Vienne, Usuardus, Rabanus, Notker Balbulus, Wandelbert, etc. In the department of historical biography proper may be included the portion of the Liber pontificalis belonging to this period, the Hist. Mettensium Episcoporum of Paul Warnefrid, and Isidore’s continuation of Jerome’s Catalogus, which was further continued by Ildefonsus of Toledo.

§ 90.10. Anglo-Saxon Culture under Alfred the Great, A.D. 871-901.―Alfred the Great, the greatest and noblest of all the kings that England has ever had, was the grandson of Egbert who had united in A.D. 827 the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. When five years old he received papal anointing at Rome and two years later in company with his pious father he travelled thence, made a considerable stay at the brilliant court of Charlemagne where he received the impress of its superior culture, and began his reign in A.D. 871 in his 22nd year when the kingdom was sorely oppressed by Danish invasions. He applied all the energy of his mind to the difficult problems of government, to the emancipation and civilization of his country and people by driving out the Danish robbers, and then improving the internal condition of the land by attention to agriculture, industry and trade, by a wise organization, legislation and administration, by the founding of churches, monasteries and schools, and by furthering every scientific endeavour from a thoroughly national point of view. When already thirty-six years of age he learnt the Latin language and used this acquirement for the enriching of Anglo-Saxon literature by translations from his own hand, with many important additions of his own, of Boëthius’ Consolatio philosophiæ, the Universal History of Orosius, Bede’s History of the Church of England and the Regula pastoralis of Gregory the Great. He also began a translation of the Psalms. He stimulated his learned friends to a like activity, among whom bishop Asser of Sherborne in his Vita Alfredi (Engl. transl. in “Six Old English Chronicles”) has reared a worthy memorial of his master.260―Continuation, § 100, 1.

§ 91. Doctrinal Controversies.

The first important heresy that grew up independently on German soil was Adoptionism. This heresy took its rise at that point in the development of Christology that was reached by the 6th œcumenical Council of Constantinople in A.D. 680 (§ 52, 8), for it recognises the double nature and the double will while denying the double sonship. Frankish orthodoxy, however, saw in it not a further development of doctrine, but a relapse into Nestorianism, and so condemned the new doctrine. During the same period the dogma of the procession of the Holy Spirit was the subject of lively controversy, and the Frankish church came forward as defender of Western orthodoxy against the Greeks. In the Eucharistic controversy the most eminent Frankish theologians opposed the Transubstantiation doctrine of Balbutus [Balbulus]. A further controversy as to the conception of the Blessed Virgin was closely connected with the one just referred to. Neither of them was made the subject of any synodal decision. On the other hand very definite synodal decisions were passed in reference to the predestination controversy, without, however, bringing that controversy by any means to a conclusion. Of subordinate importance was the dispute over the expression Trina Deitas.

§ 91.1. The Adoptionist Controversy, A.D. 782-799.―Of all Christian dogmas none were so offensive to the Moslems as that of the Trinity which to their barren monotheism necessarily appeared as Tritheism, and none were the subject of so much scorn as the idea that God should have a son. It need not, therefore, surprise us to find that Spanish theologians endeavoured to put this doctrine in a form as little offensive as possible to the Moslems. One Migetius went so far as to adopt a very crude form of Sabellianism, for he, undoubtedly approaching the Mohammedan view of the prophetic order, represented the Trinitarian development of the one Divine Being as a threefold historical manipulation of God: in David the person of the Father is revealed, in Christ as son of David that of the Son, and finally, in the Apostle Paul that of the Holy Spirit. At a Spanish synod of A.D. 782 he was successfully opposed by the archbishop Elipandus of Toledo, who took the opportunity of attempting a further development of the Christological dogma. This also was more fully elaborated by Felix of Urgel in the Spanish Mark. Both taught: That Christ is properly Son of God only according to His divine nature (Filius Dei Naturâ); according to His human nature He is properly, like all of us, a servant of God, and only by the decision of the Divine will is He adopted as the Son of God (Filius Dei Adoptivus), just as all of us may by Him and after His example be raised from the condition of servant into the family of God. According to His Divine nature therefore He is the Only Begotten, according to His human nature the First Begotten Son of God. The adoption of the human nature into Divine Sonship began with its conception by the Holy Ghost, but was more definitely determined in His baptism, and perfected in His resurrection. The first scene of the controversy called forth by this doctrine was enacted on Spanish soil. Two representatives of the Asturian clergy, the presbyter Beatus of Libana and bishop Etherius of Osma, contended by word and writing against the heresy of Elipandus (A.D. 785). This was done perhaps with the view of emancipating the Asturian church from the see of Toledo then under Saracen domination. The Asturians applied to Hadrian I., who in an epistle to the bishops of Spain in A.D. 786 condemned Adoptionism as a heresy. The controversy entered upon a second stage through the interference of Charlemagne. The absence of Adoptionism in Frankish Spain afforded him an excuse for interfering, and he readily seized upon this, because it gave him an opportunity of posing as the defender of orthodoxy in the West, i.e. as Emperor in esse. Before a Synod at Regensburg in A.D. 792, Felix was compelled to renounce this heresy, and was sent to Rome to pope Hadrian I. There he had to make a second recantation, but escaped from prison and fled to Saracenic territory. In the meantime Alcuin had returned from his travels in England, and immediately engaged in controversy by addressing an affectionate exhortation to Felix. The Spaniards gave a very firm reply and Charlemagne then convened the famous œcumenical German Synod of Frankfort in A.D. 794. After further investigation Adoptionism was again condemned, and the judgment of the synod, in order that it might have an œcumenical character, was sent to Spain accompanied by four complete reports as representing the various national churches and authorities. But on the Spaniards this made little impression. Just as little effect had a learned controversial tract of Alcuin’s, to which Felix made a smart rejoinder. Meanwhile Charlemagne sent a clerical commission under Leidrad of Lyons and Benedict of Aniane (§ 85, 2) into the Spanish Mark, in order to root out the weeds of heresy that were growing there. Felix declared himself ready for further enquiry. At the national Synod of Aachen in A.D. 792 he disputed for six days with Alcuin, and declared himself at last thoroughly convinced. Alcuin and Paulinus of Aquileia published new controversial tracts, and Leidrad went a second time into the Spanish Mark where he succeeded in rooting out the heresy. But all the more determined were the bishops of Saracenic Spain in maintaining their doctrine, and Elipandus answered a conciliatory letter of Alcuin in a passionate and angry tone. Felix remained until the end of his life in A.D. 818 under the guardianship of the bishop of Lyons. Leidrad’s successor, Agobard, found among his papers undoubted evidence that to the end he was at heart an Adoptionist, and from this took occasion to publish another controversial tract. This was the very last of these productions. But in Spain Adoptionism seems to have maintained its hold down to the second half of the 9th century. At last about that time Paulus Alvarus of Cordova (§ 90, 6) contended with a certain Joannes Spalensis on account of his Adoptionist views. In the 12th century the controversy again broke out on German soil (§ 102, 6).261

§ 91.2. Controversy about the Procession of the Holy Spirit.―At a Synod at Gentiliacum in A.D. 767, held for the purpose of meeting a Byzantine embassy about the iconoclast controversy, the addition to the creed of the Filioque was spoken about (§ 67, 1). The result of the discussion is unknown. In Charlemagne’s time Alcuin and Theodulf defended the Latin doctrine in special treatises, and at a Synod at Friaul in A.D. 791 Paulinus of Aquileia justified its adoption into the creed and the Carolingian books (§ 92, 1). The discussion was renewed when the Latin monks of Mount Olivet, blamed by the Greeks because of the addition, appealed to the usage of the Frankish church. Pope Leo III. communicated in regard to this with Charlemagne, and a Council at Aachen in A.D. 809 defended the addition. But the pope, although not contesting the correctness of the doctrine, disallowed the change in the creed, and had two silver tablets erected in St. Peter’s in Rome with the creed wanting the addition. This was evidently a damper upon the ecclesiastico-political movements of the emperor.

§ 91.3. The Eucharistic Controversy, A.D. 844.―Vacillations about the doctrine of the Supper (§ 58, 2) lasted down to the 9th century. Paschasius Radbertus, monk at Corbie, undertook in A.D. 831, in his treatise De Sanguine et corpore Domini, theologically to justify, and on all sides to develop the doctrine of the Supper, which had long ago struck its roots in the practice of the church and the faith of the people. The air of genuine piety which meets us in this work impresses us favourably, and it cannot be denied that he had a profound perception of fulness, power, and depth of the Sacrament. It was, therefore, quite in accordance with popular belief. He could, also, refer to facts from the Vitæ Sanctorum, where the inner Veritas had come to outer manifestation. He thinks that the fact that this did not always happen is to be accounted for partly by this, that the Supper in its very nature is a Mysterium for faith and not a Miraculum for unbelief, partly by the divine condescendence which takes into account the natural horror at flesh and blood, and would take away from the heathen all occasion for blasphemy. At this time, A.D. 831, the Scriptures were not appealed to. Meantime Radbertus was made abbot of Corbie, and in this important position he revised his work, and presented it to Charles the Bald in A.D. 844. The king called upon the learned monk, Ratramnus of Corbie, to express his opinion on the subject, and he was only too ready to do an injury to his abbot. Without naming him, he contested his doctrine in his treatise, De corp. et sang. Domini ad Carolum Calvum, with bitter criticism, and subtly developed his own view, according to which the body and blood of Christ are enjoyed only spiritualiter et secundum potentiam. Rabanus Maurus, Scotus Erigena, and Florus of Lyons also opposed the magical transformation doctrine of Radbertus in favour of a merely spiritual enjoyment. Hincmar and Haymo, on the other hand, took the side of Radbertus, while Walafrid Strabo, and the able, energetic Christian Druthmar, found in the idea of impanation and consubstantiation a more fitting expression for the solemn mystery. But Radbertus had spoken the word which gave clear utterance to the ecclesiastical feeling of the age; the protest of so many great authorities might delay, but could not destroy its effects. Continuation, § 101, 2.

§ 91.4. Controversy about the Conception of the Virgin.―This notion of the magical operation of the Divine prevailed with Radbertus when soon afterwards he undertook in his own way, and also in accordance with Ps. xxii. 10 and Jer. xxxi. 22, in the tract, De partu virginali, to establish the opinion already expressed by Ambrose and Jerome (§ 57, 2), that Mary brought forth utero clauso, and without pain. Ratramnus also has left a treatise on this theme: De eo quod Christus ex Virigine natus est. He maintains equally with Radbertus that during conception as well as in bearing, the Virgin did not lose her virginity. But while Radbertus contended against those who taught less than this, i.e., that though Mary conceived as a virgin, she bore after the manner of all women, Ratramnus directed his attack against those who affirmed more than that, i.e., that Christ at His birth did not leave His mother’s womb in the usual, natural manner, by His mother bearing Him. Further, while the former was angry at the profaning of the mystery of the birth of Christ, by ranking it under the laws of nature, the latter emphasized the fact that in no case should it be regarded as in itself ignominious to be placed under the laws of nature. Finally, while Radbertus unconditionally repudiated the position, Vulvam aperuit, Ratramnus felt compelled by Luke ii. 23 to admit it in a certain sense. C. v. “Utique vulvam aperuit, non et clausam corrumperet, sed et per eam suæ nativitatis ostium aperiret, sicut et in Ezech. xliv. 3 porta et clausa describitur et tamen narratur Domino aperta; non quod liminis sui fores dimoverit ad ejus egressum, sed quod sic clausa patuerit dominanti,” and c. viii. “Exivit clauso sepulchro (?) et ingressus foribus obseratis (Jo. xx. 9) ... ut et clausam relinqueret et per eam transiret ... nec haureundo patefecit.” The polemic, therefore, was most probably occasioned not by anything in the writings, but rather in their oral utterances. Neither understood the other’s view, and the one drew consequences from the other’s statements that were not warrantable. But when Ratramnus pretends to be debating, not with his abbot but with an unnamed German opponent, this can only be regarded as a literary artifice.