2.15.2017 CHARLEMAGNE by Derek Wilson

Chapter 6 - David and Josiah

83  brief is our life, now in the midst of years,
and death with silent footfall draweth near.
his dreaded fingers are upon the gates,
and entering in, takes all thou hast.
look forward to that day and to that unloved hour
that when Christ comes from heaven
he finds the father of the house still watching,
and then thou shalt be blessed.
happy the day when thou shalt hear the voice
of thy gentle Judge and for thy toil rejoicing:
'Come, my most faithful servant, enter in
the kingdom of the Father everlasting'.
that day, remember me and say;
'O Christ most gentle.
have mercy on a poor man, alciun.'

we are fortunate in having many poems and letters by the english scholar Alcuin (A)or Albinus. not only do they reveal a most attractive character but they admit us to the world of the Carolingian intelligentsia and provide insights to the thinking of Charlemagne (C) that we would otherwise lack. the king was much more than a semi-literate barbarian. he was more than an efficient warrior and formidable commander of men.  he was even more than a pious or superstitious religious enthusiast. C, like many semieducated politicians, held scholars in genuine awe.  as his territory grew, he certainly had a need of them as administrators, emissaries and diplomats. but, as his correspondence with Alciun
84  and other churchmen indicates, his relationship with the intellectual haut monde went well beyond the merely practical. he had an inquisitive and energetic mind and loved to engage his experts in doctrinal, liturgical, ethical and even political debate.
A was the last of the prominent scholars of the first great phase of English learning. he was born in about 735,  the year that Bede died, and he stood squarely in the northumbrian tradition of scholarly devotion that had its roots in the Celtic revival. A spent most of his life in York, where he was ordained deacon and where he eventually became director of the arch episcopal school. he immersed himself in the Bible and the Church fathers but was also intoxicated by the great latin authors. when he adopted the academic conceit of a classical nickname, he elected to be know as 'Flaccus' after the poet Horace (Quintus Horatius ?Flaccus).  teaching study ad worship in the abbey occupied most of his time, but who also kept up a lively correspondence and swapped verses with his counterparts throughout Britain and abroad. the interconnectedness of monastic communities and the conducting of Church business, which involved travel along the roads that led to Rome,  created and sustained an international brotherhood of men who shared a passion for learning. by 778 A had already made a coupe of trips to the Continent to consult books in the libraries of Frankish monasteries.

by this time the life of contemplatives in northumbria was becoming difficult. internal dissension was followed by the devastating raids of the Vikings. 'I cry from my heart before Christ's altar, A wrote when he heard of the sack of Lindisfarne in 793,  'O Lord, spare Thy people  and do not give the Gentiles Thine inheritance, lest the heathen say, 'where is the God of the Christians? ' C was equally appalled by events across the North sea. his coastline was also threatened by the Scandinavian raiders, but that was not the only kind of outrage that troubled him. he was incensed to hear of the murder of the Northumbrian king by a band of his own nobles and he gave sanctuary to the exiled heir. like every crowned head, C had a vested interest in opposing regicide and anarchy wherever they appeared.

the man who kept him closely informed of affairs in Britain was A. C had met the scholar at Parma in 781 when A was returning from a mission to Rome on behalf of his archbishop. what he encountered was no diffident, retiring scholar, but an ebullient enthusiast. a was a large man who approached life with gusto, held strong opinions and was not afraid to air them. one of the reasons the 2 men developed a close friendship was that, although a well understood the subservient attitude

85  expected of courtiers, he was no mere sycophant. the emperor could rely on him fro straight advice. the chemistry between them must have established itself very quickly, because C invited the Briton to accompany him to Aachen to take over the running of the 'palace school'. A spent the next 15 years at the royal court and, after his retirement to the monastery of Tours in 796, he continued to correspond with the emperor. just as he was to C 'your Flaccus', so C was to him 'my Lord David', named after the victorious Old Testament king and A performed what might almost be considered the role of a prophet, advising, warning and expounding the word of God to his sovereign. thus, for example, A pointed out the danger of swordpoint conversions:

Careful thought must be given to the right method of preaching and baptizing, that the washing of the body in baptism be not made useless by lack in the soul of an understanding of the faith...the Lord told His disciples in the gospel, 'go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of Rather, Son and Holy Spirit'.  matthew 28.19  the blessed jerome in his commentary on St. matthew's gospel explains the order of this commandment as follows; 'first they teach all nations and then dip them in water. the body cannot receive the sacrament of baptism if the soul has not first received the truth of the faith.'

on another occasion he urged his royal master to spare the rebellious people of Benevento and rely on diplomacy rather than force. and in 'preachy' letters he did not hesitate to tell C how to govern:

'forasmuch as imperial rank is ordained by god, IT'S PURPOSE MUST BE TO LEAD AND SERVE PEOPLE;  hence power and wisdom is given by god to His chosen, power to crush the arrogant and defend the lowly  against the wicked and wisdom to rule and teach his subjects with virtuous car...what then is your religious duty in time of peace, when the soldier's belt is undone and the whole people turns to you in peace for government...if it be not to decide what is right for every rank, to proclaim your enactments and to give holy counsel that each may go home happy with the teachings of eternal salvation?...
Spare your christian people and defend the churches of Christ, that the blessing of the heavenly king may strengthen you against the pagans. we read that one of the old poets, writing in praise of the ideal rulers of the Roman Empire, said, if I remember rightly, 'to spare his

86  subjects and defeat the proud. (Virgil, Aeneid, IV, 854),  a line which St. Augustine expounded with much praise in his City of God (I, 6). yet we should heed the teaching of the gospel more than the poetry of Virgil. Our Lord said, 'blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy' (Matthew 5.7) and elsewhere, 'Be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful'. Luke 6.36

A knew very well that he was dealing with a man of hearty and varied appetites and variable temper. he was, therefore, less forthright in advising the emperor on more personal aspects of his conduct, such as keeping concubines, but he did not hesitate to admonish C's son, 'have joy with the wife of your youth and keep free from other women, that the blessing god has given you may lead to a long line of descendants. Proverbs 5.17-8 the letters of cs' teacher, prophet and friend possess an affectionate frankness, not overly tinged with flattery, which reveal to us an emperor who valued the advice of scholars and holy men.  C read (though he never mastered the skill of writing) and was well versed in the Bible, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose and other books recommended by A. he eagerly collected examples of liturgy for use in his chapel and he had 'Flaccus' draw up for him tables of daily devotion for his private use. if he followed rigorously the spiritual exercises recommended to him, C must have spent long hours every day on his knees or before church altars. how much time competing inclinations and the demand of a busy life actually allowed him to spend with his God we cannot know, but there can be no doubt about the sincerity and depth of his religious convictions. as professor Barraclough has remarked, 'few things about him are more astounding than the way this man, who was incessantly engaged in campaigns and fighting, who forewent none of the pleasures of life, spent his time on abstruse questions, deeply engaged, for example, in the intricacies of Easter tables and the Christian calendar'.
in congratulating Leo III on his election, C defined the responsibilities of temporal and spiritual leadership in a christian state:
My duty is by divine aid to defend everywhere with armed might the Church of Christ from inroads of pagans and from ravaging of infidels without;  from within to fortify it by the learning of the Catholic faith. it is your part, holy father, to support our fighting by hands raised to god as those of Moses, so that, through your intercession and the guidance and gift of God, christian people may ever have victory over his enemies, and the name of our lord Jesus Christ be glorified throughout the world.
87  there is an element of realpolitik (def - practical, material, not theoretical, ethical) in all this . Napoleon laid down the dictum that government is impossible without law and law is unthinkable without religion. C, like his later imitator, had  diverse empire to hold together and this required the cement that only chrisitianity could provide. however, the fact that the problems faced by the two dictators were similar does not mean that their motivations can be aligned. there was no trace of sophisticated cynicism in C. he was a genuine visionary in a way that the little Corsican never was.

he derived his image of the perfect society from Augustine's City of God and De Ordine. the thinker of antiquity had insisted that a true christian state should model itself on the heavenly city where perfect order and harmony reigned. the achievement of a semidivine ordo in the kingdoms of men involved establishing peace and justice for all. it was the ruler's responsibility to pay close attention to the minutiae of all regulations pertaining to the relationship between man and man; man and state and, above all, man and god. it is C's commitment to the augustinian ideal that explains his constant obsession with regulating the religious and secular life of his people. though a saw him as a David, the Old Testament parallel that the emperor preferred was Josiah, the 67th century B.C. reforming King of Judah, who rediscovered the deuteronomic law and purified the religion of his people. education and law had to go together because the heterogeneous traditions represented throughout his empire had to be brought into submission to the perfect law of God and the people had to understand what was required of them. for the moment, we must defer our examination of C's educational reforms and concentrate here on his attempts to get to grips with the problem of laying down a juridical foundation.
as w have suggested, establishing a legal framework was both a practical necessity and a religious duty.  as such, C needed no urging from a to make it a priority. his mind-set was that of a systematizer rather than an innovator. whether in the secular or religious sphere, what mattered was discovering what was sanctified by custom or divine mandate and setting it out for his subjects to obey. he armed himself with a copy of the rule of St. Benedict in order to eradicate abuses that had crept into monastic life in some centers. he set a to work on a revision of the Vulgate (latin translation of the Bible), in order to provide his priest with one, authoritative, version of the Bible in place of the confusion of texts hitherto in use. in the same way he ordered from Rome a standard sacramentary so that the mass would be everywhere celebrated 'properly'. intent on regulating the life of the clergy, he obtained from Pope hadrian a set of ecclesiastical laws, the Dionysio Hadriana.

88  the expansion of Frankish territory during the first 3 decades of Cs' rule necessitated frequent revision of the laws. each region and tribe had its own set of ordinances. they were based on custom, few were written and all were jealously cherished as part of the culture that determined the identity of the people who lived by them. C's task was to have these disparate codes set down for the benefit of local judges and administrators while ensuring that they were not at variance with Frankish law. Einhard suggests that it was only after he was crowned emperor that c realized the importance of standardizing the laws, but in reality this was an ongoing process that began early in his reign. from time to time the king called his leading men together to discuss and promulgate capitularies, collections of ordinances and regulations for the better governance of his peoples. it may be no accident that the first in this series of legislative gatherings was convened in 778.

in the previous months C had suffered serious setbacks and reverses - Saxon revolt, the fiasco of Roncesvalles and unrest in Aquitnia. this could not have failed to have a profound effect upon a man steeped in the old Testament, particularly in the chronicles of the kings of israel and judah. C believed implicitly in an almighty warrior God, the Lord of Hosts, whose terrible power was ranged alongside righteous rulers and turned against those who forsook the lord their god. up  to this point he had attributed all his victories to divine aid. how could it be otherwise when thousands of pagans were brought to their knees before the Cross of Christ?  now he had tasted defeat, humiliation and the loss of some of his dearest companions in arms. logic as well as piety obliged him to face up to the withdrawal of divine favor. what had he done, or failed to do, to forfeit the support of the god of Battles? now would C have been the only one to be asking the question. his warrior chiefs followed him cheerfully as long as he led them to victory and was obviously the favorite of heaven. but if the tide of war turned against him they too might have their doubts. in 788 C chose to hold his assembly in the Meuse valley, the area where his dynasty had originated, at the ancient palace of Herstal were he may well have been born. there like Josiah, he gave his people a new set of laws. it was the beginning of a long-term reforming program that he hoped would please God and help to create a holy nation.
the result was the Admonitio Generalis, a comprehensive set of laws governing Church and state and intended as a blueprint for reform. the kernel of the legislative code was the Dionysio Hadriana that Charles had obtained from the pope, but regulations governing the moral conduct of monks and the proper performance of the canonical offices shaded into the religious and ethical behavior of the laity. thus, for example, godparents
89  wee required BY LAW to teach the Lord's Prayer and the creeds to their charges. in a preface to this utopian schema, c made a clear statement of his own belief in his divine mission. his prime responsibility, he stated, were the extension of the kingdom of god, the care of the Church in his dominions and the correct teaching of the faith. there followed a list of regulations for the clergy. C had had them from Hadrian but did not hesitate to make his own amendments and additions. the first and most important task  of bishops and priests, he asserted, was preaching. they were engaged in a battle for the hearts and minds of the peoples of the empire, who had to be weaned away from their old practices and beliefs, not just nominally but in very truth.

from this it was a straightforward move to issues of ethics and law:
'the people were to be taught an essentially redemptive philosophy, and told that their lives were fundamentally dedicated to God. all this adds up to a way of life which permitted few compromises and was both designed and destined to become the very bones and spirit of the medieval way of thinking about society.
in a christian society ANYONE WHO OFFENDED the King and THE COMMON GOOD WAS SINNING AGAINST GOD,  AND REPRISALS UNDER THE SECULAR LAW WERE EXPRESSIONS OF DIVINE RETRIBUTION. in a sense we should not really talk of 'secular law' at all in Carolingian Europe. all the regulations that C made about living in the material world on a variety of subjects - from coinage to care of the sick and form tithe collection to the maintenance of bridges - were made with one eye on the spiritual realm.

the Admonitio Generalis, though the most comprehensive legal document o the reign, was only the first of a series promulgated by this passionately reformist monarch. as the years advanced, an ever-increasing deluge of written instructions, laws, regulations, letters and admonitions poured from the royal chancellery. these capitularies wee usually issued by the king after consultation with his advisers. whee C led, his bishops followed. they wrote and circulated their own exhortations concerning the observance of canon law, as well as tracts explaining the holy mysteries and the importance of correct performance of the liturgy.  from very early in his reign C had attended to an overhaul of ecclesiastical structure. where bishoprics were vacant, held 'temporarily' by heads of religious houses or simply held by unworthy occupants, he installed men he could trust to carry out his policies. but there was no question of c making the rules and then leaving his senior clergy to get on with the business of enforcing them. his commitment to reform and orthodoxy was too

90  strong for that. he frequently summoned his bishops and abbots to church councils where he could discuss with them issues of doctrine, liturgical observance and spiritual discipline. thus, in 794, he summoned bishops from within and without his domains to meet him at Frankfurt to discuss, among other things, the refutation of the
Adoptionist heresy being taught by Bishop Felix and his Pyranean diocese. this had  about it all the elements of one of the great ecumenical councils of the Church and C had no doubt that it stood in that ancient tradition.
one of C's priorities after the imperial coronation of 800 was the planning of another major assembly. this eventually took place at Aachen in october 802. it was comprehensive in the subjects it covered. according to the Lorsch annals, C
asked the bishops along with the priests and deans to
Read all of the canons which had been adopted by the synod,
as well as the decretals of the popes.
he ordered that these decrees be translated before all the bishops, priests and deans.
in a similar manner he assembled all the monks and abbots who were present at the synod and asked them to read the rule of the holy father Benedict which was translated for all the abbots and monks...
then the emperor himself assembled all dukes, counts and other christians along with the legal scholars and had all the laws of the empire read out and translated so that each man heard his own law.
he ordered that improvements be made wherever necessary
and that the improved law be written down to enable the judges to make their decisions on the basis of written law and not accept any gifts.
so, all the people , rich and poor alike, were to have justice.

significantly, C also had everyone swear an oath to him as emperor, for it was one thing to enact sweeping, comprehensive legislation and another to have it universally accepted.

it was in the 780s the C began to make his court a center of religious scholarship.
he had always had an inclination to intellectual inquiry.  now it became a passion. he was determined to control the intellectual life of his empire; in effect to tell his people what to believe and think.

he sent to monastic libraries at home and abroad for books that might be kept at court or copied to be sent on to other schools and centers of learning throughout the empire.

in this way C ensured that future generations of churchmen and literate lay leaders were well versed in Holy Scripture, commentaries, patristic works and most of the great classical authors.

at the same time the king kept on the lookout for men of learning. such were the
91 blandishments that he and his agents offered that teachers of real stature were lured to the peripatetic (def - literally 'tred around') Frankish court or took up positions in Frankish abbeys. from italy came peter, later Bishop of Pisa; the historian Paul the Deacon; Paulinus, whose clear theological exposition and lucid style drew from Alcuin the comment, 'happy is the Church and the Christian people as long as it has even one such defender of the faith'.  A was not the only scholar poached from Britain. Notker tells a story about the arrival of 2 Celtic monks on the Frankish coast. it is a parable rather than historical narrative. according to the chronicler, the new arrivals puzzled the townsmen they encountered by CALLING OUT IN THE MARKETPLACES, 'WISDOM FOR SALE! news of this odd behavior reached the king and he sent for the monks. 'what is this wisdom yo offer, he demanded, and what do you charge for it?'  they replied that they came to instruct people in the ways of god, seeking no remuneration but only 'a place suitable for us to teach in and talented minds to train'.  the delighted c immediately employed them at his court and later put them in charge of educating boys drawn from the noble houses of the realm.

like the best of legends, the tale expounds essential truths.  the christian message in all its complexity intrigued and bewildered Cs' subjects, reared as they were to believe in a world of spirits who communicated with the living via priests and holy men. for his part, C was committed to enlightening jhis people in the higher knowledge of the christian revelation. he recognized this to be a formidable undertaking, which would require the talents of every teacher he could find who was well versed in the bible and the ancient writings. as for the men of learning who now resourced the educational crusade, they recognized in Cs' zeal a force that would empower the christian mission throughout his wide dominions and beyond. while evangelists ventured into pagan lands and monks interceded for them, teachers could ensure that the future leaders of the empire were trained to provide and sustain a secular government that would support the church in all it's endeavors.

but what WAS this empire? how did THIS RULER WHO AIMED TO CONTROL THE VERY THOUGHTS AND BELIEFS OF ALL HIS PEOPLE  understand his own imperium (latin - absolute power)?  in order to attempt an answer to this question the first point we need to grasp is that C was not thinking in territorial terms. in 806 he nominated his three sons by Hildegard as his heirs and divided his territory between them. the reality is that he had no choice. to have ignored Louis and Pepin in favor of their brother Charles would have been to invite fraternal strife and aristocratic rebellion. the regional dukes and counts would not have tolerated such a flouting of Frankish tradition. but what emerges from a closer study of this formidable military leader is that C had no interest
92  in creating a 'thousand year Reich'.  his conquests had not been for the glory of the Carolingian dynasty;  they had been for the glory of God. what he created in the West was an imperium Christianum, a civilization based on divine law.  the Franks were the new Israel, just as C himself was the new Josiah,.  these Old Testament parallels were powerful and were repeatedly stressed in the capitularies and ordinances that poured from the imperial chancellery. within C's dominions there were numerous lands and tribes and he did not attempt the impossible task of merging their identities within a greater Francia. HE SIMPLY ENSURED, AS FAR AS HE WAS ABLE, THAT PAGAN PRACTICES WERE ABOLISHED, that local laws did not conflict with those of the central authority and that christian preaching and teaching had the powerful backing of the government.

the second point we should note is that Cs' attitude to his task did not fundamentally change after Christmas Day 800. there was a continuum about the building of a christian society that had its origins early in his reign. the imperial coronation may appear to be a momentous even and in terms of its perceived challenge to the Byzantine emperor and to Frankish traditions, it was so. yet it was also just another step in a process that had about it an air of inevitability. c was aware of the progressive revelation of God's will for him. he could not be disobedient to the heavenly vision - whatever political complications it might involve. he could not but see the dramatic events of 798 to 799 in Constantinople and Rome as divine signposts to his own future. nor did the process end in 800. C spent the next 12 years seeking a modus vivendi with an outraged Byzantine court, which refused to recognize that the Roman Empire had been split into eastern and western segments. after the coronation his IMPERIUM (def - absolute power) still needed to be defined. Cs' first attempt at definition took some months to evolve. not until May 801 do we find him using the following formula: 'Charles, the most serene Augustus, crowned by god as great and pacific Emperor, governing the Roman empire, king of the Franks and Lombards by the grace of God'.  he accepted the mantle of the ancient caesars because the imperial throne was, in the view of most Western observers, empty; but even so he refrained from calling himself 'Roman Emperor'. in later years, as we shall see, he omitted all reference to 'roman' in his title. it never entered his thinking to march an army to the golden Horn to assert his authority. all this indicates that his imperium was something personal, rather than institutional and that it was an evolving concept.

the question, then, reemerges: was C ready and willing to receive the crown, whatever it might imply, on that unforgettable Christmas Day, or was he the object of a papal coup/ Leo III was a subtle schemer who
93  maintained himself in power for 19 years despite his very questionable moral standing and his array of enemies. he had every reason to stage a dramatic event that would strengthen his personal position and make permanent the papacy's switch of allegiance from Constantinople to Aachen.  Byzantine claims cramped the pope's style and limited his authority without offering any effective protection to the Church in the West. Leo's (L) predecessors had sheltered behind the Carolingian shield because they needed a military champion to safeguard the territorial integrity of the papal state and because they resented the emperor's claim to authority in matters doctrinal and liturgical. as far as the latter point is concerned, Hadrian and, now, L had exchanged a distant lion for a closer tiger, for C maintained tight control of all aspects of Church life. on valance, however, L adjudged that the future lay with an energetic and devout West rather than a decadent East.

so much for the longer term. L's immediate need, in the late autumn of 800, was to bind the Frankish leader to him with iron bands of obligation. his thought patterns were quite different from Cs'. as a member of the Roman curia, his mind was set in an institutional mold and he was no stranger to intrigue. whatever the gospel might teach, L was convinced that ends justified means. he would, therefore, do anything to enhance the power of the papacy. that involved careful planning, when possible, coupled within an intuitive readiness to grab opportunities and take risks when necessary. his talks with Charles at Paderborn had shown him that the king was disgusted with the scandalous goings on  in Constantinople and that he was open to guidance bout his own destiny. C needed no flattering courtiers to convince him that he was de facto leader of the Christ West and, arguably, leader of the Christian world. all he lacked was the purple. but this was not in pope's gift. emperors were traditionally created by the people they were acclaimed, quite often by factions of the army. what L needed to do was choreograph a demonstration of popular support and this is precisely what he did in the days leading up to the Christmas celebrations. it seems to me quite consistent with what we know of C's character that he might have been genuinely taken aback by the seemingly impromptu crowning ceremony while, at the same time, accepting - even welcoming - its implications. it did little more than confirm an existing reality, but it was, or could be seen as, one more divine signpost. as such C could not ignore it.
as for its long-term significance, we cannot accept the assumption that gibbon and most later historians held to be axiomatic. J. Bryce expressed the traditional view when he wrote, 'the coronation of Charles is not only
94  the central event of the Middle Ages; it is also one of those very few events of which, taking them singly, it may be said that if they had not happened the history of the world would have been different'.  of itself, Christmas Day 800 changed nothing. C's empire was an ephemeral entity.  what the ceremony in St. Peter's symbolized, however, WAS of timeless significance. it acknowledged the consolidation of the Latin Christian West as something distinct from the Greek Christian East. world history would certainly have been profoundly different if C, his clergy and his scholars had not imposed a cultural unity on the disparate peoples of Europe. those peoples would have gone their own ways with their own customs, languages , religions and laws. no other unifying factor could have emerged, to inspire in rulers and ruled a desire for cohesion around a core of common beliefs and values.  several nations did arise, as we know, frequently warring with each other and jockeying for supremacy, but always their rivalries were expressed within the framework of a common culture. it is this tension - this sense of belonging to a FAMILY,  however quarrelsome and, at times, dysfunctional - that has given Europe a unique and powerful position in the world.  that is what human history owes to Charlemagne. as for C's  coronation, that might reasonably be characterized as one of the most momentous nonevents in history.