The Imperial Church from Constantine to the Early Middle Ages. // History of the Church. Ed. Hubert Jedin, John Dolan. Vol. II. 846 pp.

 

Content

PART FIVE

 

The Latin Church in the Transition to the Early Middle Ages

SECTION ONE

 

The Missionary Work of the Latin Church

 

CHAPTER 3 3 The Origins of Christianity in Ireland and Scotland

 

Around the middle of the fifth century a new note was heard in the ancient praise of the City of Rome. "Ut gens sancta, populus electus, civitas sacerdotalis et regia latius praesideres religione divina quam dominatione terrena," said Leo the Great (440-461) in his sermon for the feast of the Princes of the Apostles, Peter and Paul. When the Emperors transferred their residence to Milan and Ravenna, Rome be came the City of the Apostles. When the Empire reeled on its founda tions, the Church carried, the gospel outside the Graeco-Roman Ecumene to the barbarians. A ne^-Western Ecumene arose on the foundation of the Christian faith and of Latin culture. According to the great Pope, this was the historical and theological mission of the Empire:

 

ut autem inenarrabilis gratiae [incarnationis~\ per totum mundum dif- funderetur effectus, Romanum regnum divina providentia praeparavit; cuius ad eos limites incrementa perducta sunt, quibus cunctarim undi- que gentium vicina et contigua esset universitas. Dispositio namque divinitus operi maxime congruebat, ut multa regna confoederarentur imperio, ut cito pervios haberet populos praedicatio generalis, quos unius teneret regimen civitatis.

 

Since the Church of the East had the advantage in time over that of the West, it is not surprising that it also radiated first into the barbarian world. In other respects, however, the Celtic mission of the West offers a genuine analogy to the Gothic mission of the East. As in the East it was Cappadocian, so in the Hesperides it was British war-prisoners who were the first messengers of the gospel, which took root in Ireland in the fifth century. The Aquitanian, Prosper Tiro, a friend of Leo the Great, noted in his Chronicle for the year 431: Ad Scottos in Christum credentes ordinatus a papa Caelestino Palladius primus episcopus mittitur. "Scots" was the ancient name of the Irish. The notice assumes the existence of Iro-Scottish groups of Christians, who were, however, without a bishop.

 

The first Bishop of the Irish, Palladius, appears as early as 429 as a deacon: ad insinuationem Palladii diaconi papa Caelestinus Germanum Au- tisidorensem episcopum vice sua mittit et deturbatis haereticis Britannos ad catholicam fidem dirigit. There may have been a connection between the mission of the Bishop Germanus of Auxerre to Britain and that of Palladius to Ireland. The mission of Germanus was intended for the fight against Pelagianism, which had numerous followers in Britain and from there may also have influenced the small groups of Irish Chris tians. Hence care for the orthodoxy of the Irish Christians may have been included in Palladius's commission.

 

Nevertheless, not Palladius but Patrick has gone down in history as Apostle of the Emerald Isle. Magonus Sucatus PatriciusЧthis must have been Saint Patrick's full nameЧdescribed his fate as a youth in the Confessio, composed by him probably toward the end of his life. He came from a Britanno-Roman curial family, which possessed a "villula" in the vicus Bannavemtabernae, a place not yet identified with certainty. Although his father, Calpornius, had been a decurio and deacon, and his grandfather, Potitus, a priest, the religious atmosphere in the paternal home was not of the best. Patrick was sixteen years old when Iro-Scots on a plundering raid kidnapped him and took him as a slave to Ireland, probably to Tirawley, Connaught. Here he found the way to God. After six years he succeeded in escaping and returning to his parents. A vision admonished him to proclaim to the Irish the Good Tidings. And so he finally went back to Ireland as a missionary bishop.

Unfortunately, the Confessio contains no chronologically fixed points. Later Irish annals, whose origin and trustworthiness have recently been strongly controverted, unanimously record the arrival of the apostle in the year 432 but his death in 461 or 491-492. The problem is further complicated by the fact that in these sources sometimes two Patricks with different dates of death are listed. It will probably have to be held that there was only one Patrick, who was apparently born c. 390, came to Ireland as bishop c. 432 or soon after, and died c. 460.

 

The most obscure part of Saint Patrick's life is the period between his escape from his Irish captivity and his return to Ireland as bishop. According to the likewise controversial Dicta Patricii, Patrick jour neyed per Gallias ad Italiam, and he also visited the islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Patrick's biographers from the late seventh and the eighth centuries connect the saint with Bishop Germanus of Auxerre and hence also with Palladius, who after a brief and unsuccessful activity had died on his homeward journey or had been martyred by the Irish. It is also said, explicitly or implicitly, that Patrick also proceeded from the school of Germanus and entered upon the succession to Palladius. On the other hand, Hanson has recently defended the opinion that Patrick remained in Britain during the entire time, became a monk there, and was sent by the British Church as missionary bishop to the Irish. Pat rick's missionary work can, in fact, also be understood from British postulates, since it has a parallel in the activity of the British Bishop Ninian, who in the early fifth century founded the episcopal church of Candida Casa (Whithorn, Galloway) beyond the frontiers of Roman Britain and worked among the southern Picts. Still, it will not do to reject wholesale the sources of the seventh and eighth centuries on the history of the Apostle of the Irish without producing a convincing ex planation for the origin of their statements. Rebus sic stantibus, it must be maintained that Patrick toured Gaul and Italy before his elevation to the episcopate, and at this time became acquainted with the Mediterra nean Provencal monasticism. His being sent by Germanus of Auxerre may be subject to stronger doubts.

 

The remembrance of the perhaps only brief activity of Palladius soon

 

I rtt LA I li"N LflUR^n nuuijiiivii

 

faded in Ireland. A note on three churches founded by him leads to the conclusion that Palladius was active chiefly in South Ireland and had perhaps established his chief seat at Cellfine (County Wicklow, Leins- ter). Patrick, on the contrary, seems to have worked chiefly in North Ireland from Armagh. The Bishops Auxilius, Secundinus, and Iser- ninus, mentioned in early Irish tradition, may have come to Ireland as companions of Palladius. But they must also have entered into contact with Saint Patrick; there seem to have been ritual connections between Cellfine and Armagh.

 

The oldest Christian groups in Ireland seem likewise, just as the first Christians among the Goths, to have belonged to the lower class. Patrick addressed all classes of the people, but naturally he also sought to win the toleration or the support of the dominant groups, whom he gained through gifts. The Irish mission, again like the Gothic mission, must have made use of the political and social structure of the people to be converted, and this differed considerably from that of the Empire. In Ireland there was a multiplicity of small tribal kingdoms (Tuathas), which were grouped into five areasЧConnaught, Ulster, Meath, Leins- ter, Munster. In the fifth century there was not yet a central High King. The Tuathas constituted the basis for the diocesan organization, which was brought from the continent to the Emerald Isle. Armagh lay in the vicinity of Emain Maechae, the royal seat of the Ulaid in Ulster, with whom Patrick probably entered into intimate relations. The Irish bishoprics of the fifth and early sixth centuries did not differ in other respects essentially from those of the mainland. Not until the sixth century did the monastic element become ever more prominent in the ecclesiastical centers, while at the same time the aristocratic notion of kinship influenced the ecclesiastical organization.

 

The indicated transformation of the Church organization was notice able also among the Celts of Britain, where it stood in close connection with the de-Romanization of the Britons. The de-Romanization of Bri tain was not based on a revolutionary repudiation of Rome. It was the consequence of the loss of the, for the most part, Romanized areas to the invading Angles and Saxons and of the isolation of Britain from the continent, caused by the wandering of the peoples. The Roman struc tures continued to operate for a while after the actual abandonment of the island by the imperial central government c. 408-410Чthe sub- Roman period. The decisive turning point came c. 457. The great cities of London and York, attested as episcopal sees as early as 314, fell into the hands of the invading Germans, and the foundations of Roman Britain tottered. Latin, which hitherto had been the colloquial tongue of the urban population, was confined to the ecclesiastical sphere. The civitates were transformed into tribal kingdoms, which did not differ essentially from those of the Irish and the Picts. In this crisis the British population clung the more strongly to the Christian religion, which for Patrick had already become the sign of Romanitas and was now assimi lated with the incipient Celtic culture. The fusion was completed in the symbol of monasticism, which was then in the process of establishing itself in Western Christianity, but appealed in a special way to the self-willed Celts. The details of this process elude our view. In the eighth century Illtud, Abbot of the monastic island of Calday (Ynys Pyr) on the south coast of Wales, was regarded as Magister Britannorum. He was the teacher of the next generationЧthe second third of the sixth centuryЧof which David of Menevia-St. David's (Wales), Samson of Dol (Brittany), and Gildas must be mentioned. Here was clearly appar ent the development in which the monasteries became the chief center of ecclesiastical life. St. David's, like other foundations of its kind, was at the same time both monastery and cathedral under the direction of an abbot-bishop.

 

The monastic transformation of the Irish Church followed, according to a tradition now questioned, under the influence of the British monas tic culture, even under the direct influence of men like David and

 

THE LATIN CHURCH IN TRANSITION TO iHb EAKLI MIUULC nuco

 

Gildas. In any case, it was the work of the great abbots of the sixth century, the saints of the second and third stages (after the first stage of the missionaries), among whom must here be mentioned Finnian, Com- gall, Brendan, and Columcille (Columba the Older). The series of great monasteries was begun c. 540 by Clonard in Meath, a foundation of the Abbot-Bishop Finnian, and other abbeys, such as Bangor (Ulster), Clonmacnoise (Connaught), Clonfert, Lismore (Munster), Moville, and Kildare (Leinster), followed. The Irish princes and kings supported these institutions, in which the abbatial dignity was usually reserved to the kin of the founder. The abbeys became centers of their own pastoral spheres (parochiae), which were grouped around the motherhouse and its daughter-foundations, but thereby broke up the territorial frame work and grew beyond the older dioceses based on the small kingdoms.

 

Several old bishoprics, including Armagh, "reorganized themselves on a monastic basis" (Bieter), that is, under the direction of abbot- bishops; others were absorbed by the monasteries and monastic pre cincts. There were many abbeys, including those of the older Columba, whose abbots did not themselves receive episcopal ordination but had it conferred on one of their monks. The director of the ecclesiastical district in this case was not the bishop but the abbot. In these monastic parochiae jurisdiction and power of orders were separated: this con tradicted the customary organization and from the viewpoint of the continent was an anomaly. Other anomalies are explained partly by the preservation of older customsЧthe method by which the Celts deter mined the date of Easter, which differed from the usage on the continent13Чand partly probably also by the acceptance of national customsЧsuch as the Irish tonsure, extending from ear to ear.

 

The rules of the Irish monastic fathers were based on the tradition of monasticism up to John Cassian. Ascetical-moral instruction occupied much space in them. The penitential system was based in other respects on the practice of oriental and Provencal monasticism. In the area of worship the Irish showed a special preference for litanies and apotropaic prayers (loricae). The cult of all the saints had one of its roots in Ire land.15

 

Instruction in the Irish monasteries served first of all the lectio divina -. the reading of the pagan classics seems to have been not much pursued until the end of the eighth century. On the other hand, the Irish of the seventh and eighth centuries were masters in the fields of exegesis, grammar, and the computus.16 Despite the inner monastic orientation to the religious and ascetical life, the Irish monasteries were not only religious but also intellectual, professional, and economic centers. Their

 

15 Bieler, op. cit., 577.

 

18 B. Bischoff, Monachesimo irlandese, passim.

 

1 NII II^O" - Ч Ч -

 

schools were open to children and youths from the laity, who, if their parents expressed no other desire, took part in the monastic life. From this often resulted lasting connections between monasteries and laity, which again were to the advantage of the monks' pastoral tasks. Thus the Irish stamped the spiritual life of the laity through the introduction of auricular confession and a graduated penitential system, which were adopted from monastic practice for the general care of souls. Finally, not to be forgotten are the monks' charitable duties. To the circle of people that gathered around a monastery belonged also a not small number of the needy, who had to be cared for. All in all, it can be said that the great Irish monasteries were comparable to the little cities of the Early Middle Ages. Excavations have shown that they were fortified by stone walls.

 

If, up to the middle of the sixth century, the Irish had learned from the Britons, they outstripped their teachers in the second half of the century. The most important personalities among the Old Irish abbots were the older and the younger Columba. Columcille (Dove of the Church) or Columba the Older (521-597) came of the royal house of the O'Neill of Connaught and became the Apostle of the Picts in mod ern Scotland (Caledonia). He entered Clonard as a monk and then founded the monastery of Derry in Ulster. After the battle of Cul- dranna (c. 561), which Columba had contributed to because of a quarrel over a biblical manuscript, he is said to have vowed to win again for Christ as many men as had fallen in the battle. Thus he devoted himself to the mission to the Picts, which had been started c. 400 by the Briton Ninian but had not advanced beyond the land of the southern Picts. In Caledonia toward the end of the fifth century Iro-Scottish princes had founded the little Kingdom of Dalriada or Argyle (Eastern Gael). A Pictish prince not far from Dalriada gave Columba the island of Iona in 563, on which the Irish Abbot founded a great monastery. From Iona the Picts and "Scots" of Caledonia were gained for the Church. At Columba's death in 597 the work had been completed. Iona remained the ecclesiastical metropolis of the newly won territory, although its abbots did not receive episcopal ordination.

 

The younger Columba, or Columban (530/540-615), was not related to his older namesake. He came from Leinster, became a monk of St. Comgall's Abbey of Bangor (Ulster), and in 592 with twelve compan ions set out for Gaul. He inaugurated the series of Iro-Scottish peregrtni on the continent, and through his foundations of Luxeuil and Bobbio he belongs as much to Frankish and Lombard as to Irish history.

 

CHAPTER 3 4

 

The Conversion of the Franks and Burgundians.

 

Origin and Organization of the Merovingian National Church

 

The conversion of the Irish and the Picts was without a parallel on the continent in the fifth and sixth centuries: the mission to the Germans did not at this time go beyond the frontiers of the Empire but concerned only the peoples who had invaded the Empire. Thus it appeared as an especially important and partial occurrence in the general process of the German-Roman assimilation on the soil of the Roman Empire. The leading classesЧfirst the Germans bearing imperial titles of dignity, then the kings and their magnatesЧtook the lead in this. The old pagan faith displayed little power of resistance and asserted itself only in residual elements. But we observe that Gothic prestige at times competed with Roman in the barbarian world. As noted earlier, the Goths succeeded in bringing the Burgundians, who had already gone over to Catholicism, and the Spanish Sueves to their own profession of Arianism around the middle of the fifth century. This statement underlines the historical change which Clovis produced in the history of the West.

 

The country of the encounter between the pagan Germans and Catholic Christianity was Gaul, and the representative of the German mission in the fifth and sixth centuries was especially the Gallic episco pate, in whom the spirit of the great bishops, Martin of Tours, Germanus of Auxerre, and Lupus of Troyes, was not extinguished. As early as 428-29 Rhenish Burgundians requested baptism from a bishop of Gaul. Hardly twenty years later Severus of Trier is said to have preached the gospel to unnamed peoples of Germania Prima. From the beginning of his reign, Clovis was in contact with Remigius of Reims, whose name remains forever bound to his through his baptism.

 

Contemporary sources threw little light on the origin of the conver sion of the Merovingian Kingdom and of Clovis. Gregory of Tours, the historian of the Franks, belonged to the generation of Clovis's grand sons. Nevertheless, his account of the age of Clovis must be correct in its basic features. Northern Gaul had since the death of Aetius in 454 gone its own way to a great degree, and the Frankish-North Gallic symbiosis had been prepared long before Clovis. On the other hand, the Franks had little contact with the Gothic Arian world of the Mediterra nean and Danube Germans. Not until the consolidation of Clovis's Kingdom between the Meuse and the Loire did Goths appear at the court of Soissons: Theodoric the Great sought to incorporate the Franks into his political system and in 494 married Clovis's sister, Audofleda.

 

Clovis now stood at the crossroads. It was very difficult for him to separate politics and religion. The connection with Theodoric meant for him acceptance into the circle of the great German Kings at the price of the recognition of the status quo, that is, of the leading position of the two Gothic peoples. A political option for Theodoric's system sug gested the religious decision for Arianism, for which Theodoric was re cruiting, not entirely without success. Clovis's sister, Lantechild, went over to the "Gothic religion," and his oldest son received at that time the name Theodoric, perhaps after the Ostrogothic King. However, the Frankish King did not commit himself: he married a Catholic princess of the Burgundian royal house and himself remained a pagan. But soon after his political decision was taken against the Goths: in 496 Clovis began war against the Visigothic King Alaric II.

 

At the same time a previous decision had thereby been made in favor of Catholicism. At the wish of Queen Clotilda, their first two children, Ingomer and Chlodomer, were baptized Catholics. Still, the die had not yet been cast. The account of Gregory of Tours makes known that religious tremendum was by no means unknown to Clovis. The death of Clotilda's first son immediately after baptism made the King doubtful. Si in nomine deorum meorum puerfuisset decatus, vixisset utique.2 An illness of Chlodomer after his baptism aroused strong doubts in regard to the Christian God: Non potest aliud, nisi et de hoc sicut et de frat re eius contin- gat, ut baptizatus in nomine Christi vestriprotinus moriatur.3 Chlodomer recovered. Thereby the clarity of the sign against Christ was put in question, but a positive sign for Christ was still not at hand.

 

Clovis obtained the sign in the battle with the Alemanni. Even during the war with the Visigoths, there also occurred in 497, under circum stances unknown in their details, a war between Franks and Alemanni. The battle went against the Franks. Then Clovis appealed to the God of

 

2 "If the boy had been dedicated in the name of my gods, he would still be alive" (Gregory, Hist. Fr. II, 29).

3

4 "It cannot be otherwise than it happened to him as to his brother: that, baptized in the name of your Christ, he will die" (ibid.)

5

injts LAUIN LTLUKLN UN LAANOILLU^ 1U L RAN ENIV^L MIIYIYUI /1VJUJ

 

the Christians: Jesu Christe, quem Chrotchildis praedicat esse filium Dei vivi, . . . tuae opis gloriam devotus efflagito, ut, si mihi victuriam super hos hostes indulseris . . . credam tibi et in nomine tuo baptizer. Christ granted victory to the Franks.

 

Despite the Christian scriptural mode of composition of Gregory's account, there is present here a German ritual exercise, as is attested similarly among the Lombards also, who in a battle against the Vandals passed to the worship of the Asen by appealing to Wodan. The Frank- ish victory over the Alemanni was regarded as a sign from God. The extant letter of the Metropolitan Avitus of Vienne to Clovis clearly alludes to this miracle: Numquidfidem perfecto praedicabimus, quam ante perfectionem sine praedicatore vidistisPG In the like manner, Eusebius had earlier interpreted the vision of Constantine and the victory at the Mil- vian Bridge as a miraculous revelation of Christ to the Emperor and connected it with Paul's call at Damascus ouk ex anthropon, oude di' anthropon.1

 

The further course of events has been convincingly reconstructed by Steinen out of the sources and baptismal customs of the day: After the consensus of the Franks had been obtained, in 498 Clovis promised at Tours to be baptized and before the baptism sent a "declaration of competence" to the Gallic episcopate, to which Avitus replied in the letter just quoted. Remigius officiated at the baptism at Christmas of 498 or 499 in Reims. The solemnity of the historical moment has con tinued until today in the famous statement of his address that was apparently correctly transmitted: Mit is depone colla, Sigamber; adora quod incendisti, incende quod adorasti.

The passage of the Franks to Catholicism immediately appears in retrospect to the observer as a necessary consequence of the political decision against the Goths. The historical reality is thereby excessively simplified. Gregory's report shows clearly that the acceptance of the Catholic religion was first deferred by negative signs and was then de cided only by a positive sign. Hence the conversion of Clovis was also a religious decisionЧnot, it is true, from a deeper religious and moral insight but from belief in the power of the God to whom the Queen and the Bishop of Reims adhered. That the instruction of Remigius was geared only to this argument must not be deduced from this. The Gallic episcopate in its polemic against Arianism had also appealed to the Petrine apostolic tradition, which was understood in the sixth century through the impressive image of Peter as Gatekeeper of Heaven. Clovis, who built a church dedicated to Peter and the ApostlesЧ Sainte-Genevieve near ParisЧand at his death sent a crown to the Pope, must have known this argument. Besides, the letter of Bishop Remigius on Clovis's accession to power, which had a strong ethical accent, allows the assumption that in the preaching of Remigius to the Franks moral instruction also had a place. That Christian moral princi ples were still alive in the Gallo-Roman episcopate of the period is shown, among other places, by the vita of Bishop Nicetius of Trier, composed in the sixth century.

 

Clovis's conversion to Catholicism operated in two directions: on the German Kings and on the Gallic episcopate. The Metropolitan Avitus of Vienne wrote, in regard to the baptism of the Frankish King, the celebrated but long misunderstood sentence: Vestra fides nostra victoria est. It contained no concealed appeal to Frankish weapons against the BurgundiansЧAvitus sought to divert Clovis's feverish activity to the Alemanni who were also threatening BurgundyЧbut expressed the hope that the Burgundians might soon follow the Frankish example. In fact, Clovis's conversion broke the spell whereby a German King could be only a pagan or an Arian. The Burgundian sub-king Sigismund of Geneva passed to Catholicism in the first years of the sixth century. He had the Cathedral of St. Peter of Geneva rebuilt and was the first German King to go on pilgrimage to the tombs of the Apostles at Rome. When in 515 he succeeded his father Gundobad in the gov ernment of the entire kingdom, a second Catholic dynasty took its place beside the Merovingian in Gaul. However, it was not to last long, since

 

Clovis's descendants conquered the Burgundian Kingdom in 534 and divided it up.

 

The situation in the Visigothic Kingdom of Toulouse differed from that in Burgundy. The expansionist policy of King Euric (466-484), who had extended the boundaries of his dominion to the Loire, had opened a gulf between Arians and Catholics, which was still not entirely bridged c. 500. Clovis knew that he could count on the sympathies of wide circles of the episcopate and of a great part of the Roman popula tion, although there were also circles which preferred the partly assimi lated Goths to the uncivilized Franks.14 Like a flourish of trumpets resounded the proclamation with which the King of the Franks, accord ing to Gregory, began the war against the Visigoths in 507: Valde moles- tum fero, quod hi Arriani partem teneant Galliarum. Eamus cum Dei adiutorium, et superatis redegamus terram in ditione nostra.15 Martin of Tours and Hilary of Poitiers, the patrons of the Gallo-Roman episco pate in the area of Gothic rule, showed themselves favorable to the Franks. At Vouille in Poitou occurred the battle in which the Visigothic Kingdom of Toulouse was crushed. Now Theodoric the Great with his Ostrogoths entered the lists. He successfully shielded the Mediterra nean lands against the Franks and the Burgundians allied with them, but could not prevent the two Aquitanian provinces and the royal city of Toulouse from coming under Frankish rule. Narbonensis (Septimania) was retained by the Visigoths, but after Theodoric's death Gascony and Provence were also occupied by the Franks.

 

The Frankish-Visigothic war of 507-511 became no less significant for Church history than for profane history. The North Gallic churches, which had suffered severely during the wanderings of the peoples, now found a firm support in Catholic Romania of Aquitania. Out of the collaboration of the Gallo-Frankish episcopate sprang the Frankish "national Church." In July 511, at the instigation of Clovis, the bishops of the Frankish territory met in Orleans for the first Council of the Merovingian Kingdom. The Council, whose agenda was decided by Clovis, laid down, under the King's influence, the fundamental law of the Merovingian Church and introduced ecclesiastical reorganization into the Regnum Francorum.

 

Synods at which a quite large number of bishops met to establish principles in doctrine, law, and liturgy, were nothing new in Church history. But up to the beginning of the sixth century the Empire had provided the framework for these gatherings of the episcopate. The

 

14 On this most recently K. Schaferdiek, Die Kirche in den Reichen der Westgoten und Suewen bis zur Errichtung der westgotischen katholischen Staatskirche (Berlin 1967), 32ff.

15

16 "I find it difficult to endure that these Arians occupy a part of Gaul. Let us with God's help set out, defeat them, and subject their land to our rule:" (Hist. Fr. II, 37).

17

bishops assembled on the level of the provinces, the civil dioceses, and the Empire. What was new was that now they met also on the plane of a Regnum. The German Kings, who occasioned and permitted these "na tional councils,"Чas the first among them, even for the Catholic Church, must be named the Arian Visigothic King Alaric II Чthus in some respect took the place of the Emperor. They attached importance to the fact that the frontiers of their regna did not conflict with the ecclesiastical boundaries. Bishoprics which were separated from their former metropolises through new political boundaries were attached to the nearest metropolises of the particular sphere of power; fragments of bishoprics were newly constituted as autonomous sees. In these changes were expressed the collapse of the Imperium and the vitality of the new Regna.

 

The Germano-Roman national Churches naturally developed their own forms of religious life. But they still remained on the ground of tradition: they clearly regarded themselves as keepers of the tradition vis-a-vis the Emperor and the imperial synods convoked by him, which furthermore claimed general validity as ecumenical councils. Thus in the controversy over the Three Chapters, they assumed a con servative attitude and at first declined to accept the decrees of the Fifth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople. For a time the quarrel over the Three Chapters overshadowed their relations with Rome. This did not lead to a break, however, for the traditional authority of the Sedes Apos tolica as custodian of the tradition in faith and law was not questioned. When the opposition between Rome and Constantinople became worse in the seventh century, the Popes could throughout count on the Germano-Roman national Churches.

 

In the sixth century there was no lack of testimonies for pilgrimages from Gaul to Rome, for relations between the Popes and the Frankish Kings and bishops, which, it is true, depended also on the political relations with the Emperor. The echo of the Three Chapters Con troversy was relatively weak in the Frankish Kingdom, but this was probably connected with the decline of theological training in the Merovingian Church. The Papal Vicariate of the Metropolitan of

Arles continued after the incorporation of Provence into the Frankish Kingdom, and up to the time of Gregory the Great (590-604) it still had a certain practical importance. In the conciliar acts of the sixth century papal decretals were occasionally cited. It is surely due to the failure of the sources if after Gregory's death we hear nothing more of Frankish-Roman relations. The pilgrimages to the tombs of the Apos tles did not come entirely to an end. Around the middle of the seventh century the darkness grows a bit less. Pope Martin I in his struggle against Monothelitism also mobilized the Frankish Church and wrote in this sense to King Sigebert III in 649.18 He was in contact with the influential missionary Bishop Amandus, the "Apostle of the Flemings," who worked on the Meuse and the Scheldt.19 The elevation of Theodore of Tarsus to be Archbishop of Canterbury in 668 marked an epoch not only in the history of the Anglo-Saxon Church but also in Frankish- Roman relations, which were now gradually intensified indirectly by way of Britain, although still hindered by the inner crisis of the Merovingian Kingdom.

 

The Merovingian national Church was not a closely knit unity, since in the Frankish Kingdom the principle of partition prevailed.20 Al though the Frankish Regnum constituted a unity in regard to constitu tional law, in the subkingdoms tendencies toward autonomous devel opment asserted themselves, and these operated also on the ecclesiastical plane. To be sure, the demarcation of boundaries among the sub- kingdoms led in the earliest period only to the founding of new bishop rics, and the ecclesiastical provinces were not at all affected by it. But councils of the entire Kingdom could, of course, meet only when the Frankish Kings were united among themselves or the Kingdom was under an undivided government. Two phases of stronger unity are clear: 511-555 and 613-638. In the first phase the councils of the Kingdom were sponsored chiefly by the Kings of Paris and Reims, while

 

the Austrasian monastery of Remiremont, where he was at first received (Vita Colum- bani II, 9 and 10, MGSS rer. Mer. VI). At his death Amatus of Remiremont solemnly professed the Tomus Leonis (Vita Amati 12, MGSS rer. Mer. IV, 220), that is, the Council of Chalcedon, but probably in taking a stand against the Second Council of Constan tinople. The first canon of the Synod of Chalon (647-654) contains a profession of the faith of Nicaea and Chalcedon. The Synod of Saint-Jean-de-Losne (673-75) first for mally professed the five ecumenical councils, hence also the Second of Constantinople, at which the Three Chapters were condemned.

 

18 Vita Eligii II, 33, AIGSS rer. Mer. IV, 689ff.; Jaffe, 2058-2059.

19

20 P. E. de Moreau, St-Amand, apotre de la Belgique et du Nord de la France (Museum Lessianum, Section missiologique, 7, 1927). W. H. Fritze, "Universalis gentium confes- sio," op. cit.

21

22 E. Ewig, "Die frankischen Teilungen und Teilreiche 511-613 "AAMz 9 (1952); id., "Die frankischen Teilreiche im 7. Jh," Trierer Zschr. 22 (1954), 85-144.

23

the Kingdom of Soissons occasionally held itself aloof. The second phase, the "Golden Age" of the Merovingians, was marked by the unified Kingdom of Chlotar II and Dagobert I.

 

There was no dearth of synods at which the episcopate of the individ ual subkingdoms met. They began in the Austrasian Kingdom of Reims with the Council of Clermont in 535; the first in Neustria was the Synod of Paris in 577. Most important were the Synods of the Burgundian subkingdom under Guntram (561-593) and Theodoric II (596-612), which were continued in the Neustrian-Burgundian councils after 638. Finally, the political chaos brought an end to the synodal activity in the late Merovingian period. Nothing is known of synods of the Austrasian subkingdom of the seventh century; the last council of the Neustrian- Burgundian subkingdom met c. 680. Bishops of the western Frankish Kingdom met once more in 696.21 Then, together with the Kingdom, the metropolitan organization, which had been restored in the sixth century, also dissolved.

 

Instructive for the crucial points of ecclesiastical life in the Merovin gian Kingdom were the meeting places of the councils. In the first phase, Orleans, situated on the boundary of Francia and Aquitania, was completely in the foreground. In the second half of the sixth century Paris stood forth more prominently; under Chlotar II and Dagobert I it became the center of political and ecclesiastical life. But, in addition to Paris, the Burgundian area around Lyon held its own as an ecclesiastical radiation center, and in the second half of the seventh century the synods of the western kingdom usually met in the Franco-Burgundian border area. Within the Burgundian subkingdom the Bishop of Lyon acquired a super-metropolitan precedence in the sixth century.22 But this nucleus of a Burgundian national primacy did not develop, since in 613 the Burgundian subkingdom lost its independence. The fact that a primacy of the entire Frankish Kingdom could not develop is explained by the breaking up of the Regnum into subkingdoms.

 

The councils of the Kingdom and of the subkingdoms assembled at the command or at least with the assent of the Kings. But they were not under royal direction and issued their decrees independently in connec tion with the existing canon law, even if not without contact with the ruler. Their canons needed no royal ratification. Probably the Kings occasionally accepted individual decrees into their capitularies and thereby promoted their implementation. They were also not prevented

 

24 W. Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford 1946), 47; E. Ewig, "Beobachtungen zu den Bischofslisten der merowingischen Konzilien und Bi- schofsprivilegien," Festschr. Franz Petri (1970), 171-193.

25

26 L. Duchesne, Fastes episcopaux I, 2nd. ed., 140-141; also rfiy article quoted in the previous footnote.

THE LAI IN LHUKCM UN IKA1N31 i IWIN I kj junn DAJU-I ouuuix Aura

 

from legislating on their own in ecclesiastical matters; however, the Merovingians made little use of this right to issue decrees. Councils and meetings of the magnates were strictly separate in the sixth century; only from Clothar II did the boundaries begin to become blurred. The understanding of the separation of the two spheresЧa legacy of antiquityЧgradually became dulled. It was surely no accident that just at this time began the Germanization of the episcopate, which until then had consisted mostly of Romans. From now on we also encounter canons which forbade the bishops to participate in the hunt and to bear arms.

 

Perhaps Clovis established a higher wergeld for the clergy: for the priest and bishop, the rate of the free Frank in the royal service; for the deacon, that of the Romance Conviva Regis. For civil cases within the clergy the ecclesiastical court was competent in accord with Roman law, which also in criminal cases against bishops took cognizance of their guilt and deprived of his office the one found guilty. The Merovingians recognized the juridical autonomy of the Church. In 614 Clothar II added the decision that criminous priests were also to be degraded by the bishop before the pronouncing of the punishment by the secular court.

 

On the other hand, another principle of the ancient ecclesiastical organization appears to have been impaired since Clovis: the election of the bishop by the clergy and people of the see, with or without the participation of the metropolitan and the bishops of the same prov ince. The councils inculcated this principle time and again, but as early as 549 we find the compromise formula: cum voluntate regis iuxta electionem cleri ac plebis. At least an effort was made to prevent one-sided and simonical nominations by the King. But in his edict of 614 Clothar II retained the right of rejecting and of examining the worthiness of the candidate for the episcopacy. The episcopal office was greatly desired, since the bishops took precedence in rank and esteem over all other holders of offices and dignities in the cities and provinces. Add to this that the wealth of the Church increased considerably in the sixth and seventh centuries through donations, and the privileges of immunity, which excluded the royal officials from owning Church property, and also the external power of the Church grew, especially in the episcopal cities.25 Under this aspect is explained also the interest of the Kings in the filling of the episcopal sees. If in the early sixth century the episcopal function was still a domain of the established senatorial families, it soon became more and more the concluding of a career of the Germano- Roman magnates in the royal service.

 

One must not, of course, fail to recognize that the extensive episcopal official power under the Merovingians was in some respects also im paired and infringed. The First Council of Orleans had, it is true, rees tablished the monarchical power of the bishop over the members of the clergy and of the monastic order, and the succeeding synods issued decrees also on the metropolitan order and the competency of the clergy before the ecclesiastical courts. However, the episcopal organiza tion of the Early Church was soon destroyed by the Proprietary Church System.26 The principle that all churches founded by laymen should be conveyed to the bishop could not be maintained. Even the clerics ap pointed to the proprietary churches of magnates escaped the episco pate. The bishops tried to assure a minimum existence to the clergy of the proprietary churches of the magnates and reserved to themselves the right to examine them. They made the granting of benefices to clerics, the entry of clerics into patronage, and their summons to public business dependent on their consent. The episcopate sought in this way to keep the influence of the magnates as well as of the Kings over the clergy within defined bounds: without lasting success, since the pro prietary church system prevailed more powerfully in the seventh cen tury. Whether this process must be understood as a germanization of the ecclesiastical constitution is uncertain. It is certainly not to be evalu ated only negatively, since the many proprietary churches, despite their defects, also promoted the christianization of the rural areas.

 

The relations between bishop and monasticism27 were of a different sort from those between bishop and clergy: in its origin monasticism was

 

25 L. Levillain, "Notes sur l'immunite franque," Revue de droit francais et etranger, 4e serie, 6 (1927), 203-254; F. L. Ganshof, "L'immunite dans la monarchie franque," Recueils de la Soc. J. Bodin 1, 2nd. ed.: Les liens de vassalite et les immunites (Brussels 1958), 171-216.

26

27 U. Stulz, Die Eigenkirche als Element des mittelalterlichen germanischen Kirchenrechts (1895), is fundamental; Feine, RG I, 131ff. (with copious literature).

28

29 Summary of the various trends in monasticism: F. Prinz, Fruhes Nlonchtum im Franken reich (Munich-Vienna 1965). Sixth century: L. Ueding, Gesch. der Klostergrundungen der fruhen Merowingerzeit (Eberings Hist. Studien 261, 1935); C. Courtois, "L'evolution du monachisme en Gaule de St. Martin a St. Columban," Settimane di studio . . . IV. Ii monachesimo nell'alto medioevo . . . (Spoleto 1957), 47-72. Development of privileges: E. Ewig, "Beobachtungen zu den Klosterprivilegien des 7. und fruhen 8. Jh.," Adel und Kirche, Gerd Tellenbach zum 65. Geburtstag (Freiburg-Basel-Vienna 1968), 52-65.

THE LATIN CHURCH IN 'IKAJNM 1 HJIN IW Inc im^^i Д.Д^Д^

 

a lay movement. After some initial difficulties it was incorporated into the old episcopal system. The monasteries enjoyed an internal auton omy under the direction of their abbots, but they were subject to the supervision of the local bishop, who performed all functions connected with holy orders within the monastic property. The abbots were sup posed to govern only one monastery at a given time and were bound to attend the diocesan synod. Without the bishop's permission they might not leave their monastery, alienate any property, accept any benefices, enter into any relationship of patronage. The bishop's assent had to be obtained for new foundations. These rules applied in the sixth century also to the monasteries erected by the Kings and magnates. The papal privileges occasionally obtained for episcopal and royal foundations only thwarted the tendency discernible in the Frankish Kingdom toward an all too wide extension of episcopal power over the monasteries. They guaranteed especially the free election of the abbot, the autonomous administration of the monastic property, and the freedom of the monas tery from the taxes customarily paid by other churches to the bishop. Royal and private proprietary monasteries in the strict sense are hardly demonstrable in Gaul in the sixth century, but Frankish Kings may have issued letters of protection for their foundations. If there existed a right of possession of the founder over the monastery, it probably ended with his death.

 

A radical change, however, occurred when in 592 Columban ap peared in the Frankish Kingdom with his twelve companions and on the southwestern edge of the Vosges founded Annegray, Luxeuil, and Fon taine, the first continental monasteries of the Irish type. From Colum ban proceeded religious and moral impulses of the strongest sort, but the great saint completely disregarded the existing Gallo-Frankish monastic law. He ruled his foundations in an authoritarian manner, traveled at will, had ordinations performed by a bishop other than the local one, recognized no episcopal right to the monastic property, to taxes, or lodging, and performed pastoral functions beyond the monas tery's territory. When he finally even refused to appear at synods and

 

28 The chief source is the Vita Columbani, MGSS rer. Mer. VI, 1-152. Briefer, more basic survey: W. Levison, "Die Iren und die frankische Kirche," Aus rheinischer und fran kischer Fruhzeit (Dusseldorf 1948), pp. 247-263- More recent studies on Columban and his impact on the continent: Melanges colombaniens (Paris 1950). Last monograph on Columban: M. M. Dubois, Un pionnier de la civilisation occidentale: St. Colomban (Paris 1950). Further literature in F. Prinz, op. cit. More recently the contributions of Johan nes Dufo ("Irische Einflusse auf St. Gallen u. Alemannien"), Friedrich Prinz ("Fruhes Monchtum in Sudwestdeutschland und die Anfange der Reichenau"), K. U. Jaschke ("Kolumban von Luxeuil u. sein Wirken im alemann. Raum"), and Frantisek Graus ("Die Viten der Heiligen des sudalemann. Raums u. die sogenannten Adelsheiligen"), in Vortrage und Forschungen 20 (1974).

 

L- ... C.T JL

 

arbitrarily threatened King Theodoric II with excommunication, he was expelled from the Burgundian subkingdom in 610 and died in 615 in his Italian foundation of Bobbio. Nevertheless, Luxeuil remained a monastic center of the first rank, which radiated far to northern, eastern, and central Gaul. Columban's severe Rule, in which to a great extent organizational regulations were lacking, was united, soon after the de parture of the monastic father, with the Regula Benedicti infiltrating from Italy to form the Regula Mixta. The Irish rites did not long maintain themselves, and monastic unions of the Celtic type were unable to establish themselves on the continent. But the monastic strivings for autonomy found extensive recognition among the Kings and the spiritual and temporal magnates who were affected by the spirit of Luxeuil. The monasteries obtained episcopal privileges which accorded them not only internal autonomy under the Rule, the free election of the abbot, and the inviolability of their property, but often even free dom from any authority of the local bishop. These episcopal privileges were often complemented by royal charters, which granted to monas teries of the type of Luxeuil their individual immunity over and above protection, withdrew them thereby from the general immunity pertain ing to episcopal property, and constituted them as independent churches also in secular law. The route thus trod was not without perils. Like the proprietary church system, the monastic system of the new kind could not but lead, in the chaos of the late Merovingian epoch, to a far-reaching dissolution of the ecclesiastical organization. Now monk- bishops and itinerant bishops of the Irish type appeared also in the Frankish Kingdom. The sources of religious energy became mountain torrentsЧof course, as such they preserved their importance for the christianization of the Merovingian Kingdom, which moved into a new stage with the monasticism of Luxeuil.

 

The spread of Christianity is an essential chapter in the history of the Merovingian national Church. In thc north and east of Gaul was a broad border zone, which extended from the province of Besancon (Maxima Sequanorum) via the provinces of Mainz (Germania I), Cologne (Ger mania II), and Reims (Belgica II) to the Province of Rouen (Lugdunensis II) and had been powerfully affected by the upheavals of the fifth cen tury. In the north of Germania II the cities of Nijmegen and Xanten

 

I NE LAI

 

had already been ruined before the end of the Roman period; thereafter sees were not reestablished in them. Also in parts of Belgica II Christian penetration remained weak. The immigration of the Salian Franks led in the fifth century to the collapse of the ecclesiastical organization in the districts of Tournai, Therouanne (=Boulogne), and Arras, as well as to a strengthening of the rural paganism in the civitates of Cambrai, Ver- mand (Saint-QuentinЧNoyon), Amiens, Beauvais, and Rouen. The epis copal see of Vermand was transferred to Noyon, that of Tongres to Maastricht. In the sphere of settlement and influence of the Alemanni on the Upper Rhine and Aar the Church was also affected by the col lapse of the Empire. The see of Augst (=Basel) completely disappeared, the Bishop of the Helvetians withdrew from Windisch and Avenches to Lausanne, and German colonists reinforced the pagan rural population in the district of Besancon. The see of Chur (Raetia I) suffered losses in its northern areas.31 Farther east in Raetia II (Augsburg) and in Noricum Ripense (Lorch) the episcopal organization was totally wrecked, even if Christian congregations continued at Augsburg and Salzburg. The Bishop of Augsburg seems to have fled to Saben (=Brixen). Noricum Mediterraneum (East Tirol, Carinthia, Styria) was first affected by the catastrophe when the Slovene Carinthians settled there at the end of the sixth century.

 

Between the two invaded areas on the Lower and the Upper Rhine lay a zone of stronger continuity, which included the civitates of Col ogne, Mainz, Worms, Speyer, and Strasbourg. In this zone the con tinuance of Christian communities can be demonstrated not only in the cities but to a great extent also in the more important castra. Whether gaps in the episcopal lists indicate a temporary interruption of the epis copal organization is an open question. In any event, the Germans in these districts early came into closer contact with Christianity, and there also a favorable opportunity was offered for an ecclesiastical restoration: Here, of course, Clovis could not yet make the attempt, since he only incorporated the Rhineland into his enlarged Kingdom shortly before his death.

 

Gregory of Tours reports that more than 3,000 Franks were baptized with Clovis: probably the royal retinue and the groups which settled especially in the later subkingdoms of Paris and Orleans. But the first great Merovingian King set about the ecclesiastical reorganization in the

 

31 H. Buttner, Gesch. des Elsass (Berlin 1939); id. "Die Entstehung der Konstanzer Diozesangrenzen," ZSKG 48 (1954), 225-274; id., "Zur friihen Gesch. des Bistums Octodurum-Sitten und des Bistums Avenches-Lausanne," ibid. 53 (1959), 241-266; id., "Die Entstehung der Churer Bistumsgrenzen" ibid., 81-104, 191-212; id., "Fruhmittel- alterliche Bistumer im Alpenraum zwischen Grossem St. Bernhard und Brennerpass," HJ 84 (1964), 1-33.

 

^

Salian Frankish territories north of Reims, though without the desired success; for the initial steps taken by him at Arras and Tournai (?) soon atrophied.32 The Merovingians of Soissons, to whom these territories fell after Clovis's death, apart from Chilperic I (561-584), had little contact with the churches of southern Gaul, which could supply their surplus among the clergy. For finally Arras was united with the see of Cambrai, and the area of Tournai was assigned as a mission sphere to the see of Noyon (=Saint-Quentin).

 

The Austrasian Merovingians of Reims had greater success. Their Aquitanian enclaves constituted an intact recruiting ground for the clergy of Austrasian Francia.33 Theodoric I (511-534) had clerics come from Auvergne to Trier, and Aquitanians are also demonstrable in the area of Reims, although both churches were not so severely affected by the convulsions of the fifth century. Around the middle of the sixth century the episcopal lists of Maastricht, Cologne, Mainz, and Stras bourg began anew with Gallo-Roman names, whose bearers must have been at least partly Aquitanians.34 At the end of the sixth century the first Germans are encountered on these episcopal lists, and at the begin ning of the seventh century bishops of Worms and Speyer with German names also appear.35 Accordingly, a second stage of the restoration must

 

32 For Arras: Vita s. Vedasti, MGS S rer. Mer. III, 399-422 (Remigius with Clovis's Cooperation). For Tournai: L. Duchesne, Fastes III (1915), ll4ff. It is striking that the list of Arras breaks off at the time of Gaugerich, who moved his see from Arras to Cambrai.

33

34 E. Ewig, "L'Aquitaine et des pays rhenans au haut moyen age," Cahiers de civilisation medievale 1 (1958), 37-54.

35

36 L. Duchesne, Fastes III, 157 (Mainz: Sidonius), 171 (Strasbourg: Solarius), 179 (Col ogne: Carentinus). Tongres-Maastricht represents a special case in so far as here two or three bishops of the late fifth and early sixth centuries are known (Monulfus, Falco, Domitian), but then there is a gap between Domitian, last attested in 535, and Bettul- fus, first noted in 614 (L. Duchesne, Fastes III, 189). On Cologne cf. now also F. W. Oediger, Die Regesten der Erzbischofe von Koln I (Bonn 1954), and W. Neuss-F. W. Oediger, Gesch. des Erzbistums Koln I (Cologne 1964). Aquitanian origin is attested for none of the bishops named, but at least for Sidonius of Mainz it is to be assumed be cause of his name.

37

38 German names begin at the end of the sixth century in Trier with Magnerich, in Cologne with Ebergisel, in Mainz with Sigimund, in Strasbourg (probably somewhat earlier) with Arbogast. In Maastricht there appears Bettulfus in 614; in Worms and Speyer in the same year the episcopal list is resumed with men of German names. Maastricht represents a special case in so far as here German names began as early as c. 500 (Monulfus, Falco). As is well known, German names do not permit a sure conclu sion as to German origin. Bishops with Roman names still appear after those named in the lists of Trier, Cologne, and Strasbourg. Only from the second or third decade of the seventh century are only German names encountered in these lists. From this time on, one may speak with greater certainty of a germanization of the episcopate in the cities mentioned.

39

have been reached c. 550, and the work itself must have been con cluded c. 600. Probably at the latest in the sixth century the territories of Xanten and Nijmegen were added to the bishopric of Cologne, and the see of Strasbourg expanded to the former civitas of Augst (=Basel). The mission did not yet extend to the area on the right bank of the Rhine. Paganism must have disappeared from the cities first. In the Trier Ardennes it came to an end toward the close of the sixth cen tury. It seems to have maintained itself longer only in the Liege Ar dennes and in Toxandria.

 

This first phase of the Frankish mission entirely took the form of an interior ecclesiastical restoration, which could make use of the existing congregations and probably be borne substantially by the clergy, even if monks and especially hermits were not entirely absent from it. The hermits seem to have worked especially among the rural folk. The ecclesiastical restoration was promoted by the Kings in regard to orga nization and probably also materially, but there was no compulsory conversion of pagans. Only the sanctification of Sundays and holy days was imposed under penalty at the end of the sixth century Чa sign of the cultic and ritual view of Christianity. The prohibition of pagan worship, which Childebert I issued soon after 550, affected only the subkingdom of Paris, in which there must at that time have been hardly any pagans.

 

The second phase of the interior ecclesiastical restoration began under Chlotar II (584/613-629) and Dagobert I (623/629-639). It was carried out predominantly by circles which belonged to or were friendly with the monasticism of LuxeuilЧin the broadest sense. Strong Aquita- nian forces also poured into this monasticism. The chief points of depar ture lay in the Neustrian territory and the Alemannian-Burgundian- Raetian frontier area.

 

The first missionary of this phase in the North Gallic-Frankish ter ritories42 seems to have been Walaric, who worked in the dioceses of Rouen and Amiens and gave his name to the abbey of Saint-Valery- sur-Somme in the diocese of Amiens. He is said to have been sent forth by Columban, that is, before 610 or at the latest between 610 and 612. His successor, Blitmund, became the real founder of the abbey of Saint-Valery in 615-628.43 Richarius, patron of the abbey of Centula,44 began his activity in the diocese of Amiens under Dagobert I. Dagobert founded the bishopric of Therouanne (= Boulogne), whose first bishop was Audomar, a member of the Luxeuil circle, and to him the origins of the abbey of Sithiu (Saint-Omer-Saint-Bertin) went back.45 Still under Clothar II, c. 625, began the activity of the Aquitanian Amandus, which extended chiefly to the see of Tournai, united with Noyon, even if for a time Amandus had been Bishop of Tongres-Maastricht (c. 649). The abbey of Elno-Saint-Amand, the chief base of the "Apostle of the Flem ings," was founded under Dagobert I and richly endowed by him. The Vita s. Amandi tells, among other things, of an episode of conversion from the Beauvaisis. But the saint's real mission-field was the areas on the Scheldt and the Scarpe, the pagus of Ghent and the country of AntwerpЧthis of course probably only in the last years of Amandus, who died at an advanced age in 676. Among the younger companions and collaborators of Amandus was Bavo, who worked in Ghent and gave his name to the famous abbey there.46

 

politically active group. There must not have been pagans in this leading groupЧ probably still among the lesser folk in the northern frontier areas of Rouen, Amiens, and Beauvais.

 

42 On the mission in these areas: E. de Moreau, op. cit.; also, E. Vancandard, "L'idolatrie en Gaule aux 6e et 7e siecles," RQH 65(1899). Synopsis of the testimonies from the vitae: E. Ewig, "Die frankischen Teilungen und Teilreiche im 7. Jh.," Trierer Zschr. 22 (1954), 99, no. 61.

43

44 Vita Walarici 11, 22, 35, 36: MGSS rer. Mer. IV, 164, I68ffД 114Ђ. On paganism in the see of Amiens, also the Vita Lupi ep. Senonici 11, 12, ibid. IV, 182.

45

46 Vita Richarii 2, 4, ibid. VII, 445ff.

47

45Vita Audomari 1-5, ibid. V, 754-756. H. von Werveke, "Het bisdom Terwaan," Universite de Gand, Recueil de Travaux publ. par la Fac. des Lettres, 52e fasc. (Ghent-Paris 1924).

 

46 Vita s. Amandi 13, 24, MGSS rer. Mer. V, 436ff., 447. Vita s. Bavonis 3, ibid. IV, 537.

THB LA'llJN LHURLtl irs ilUU^OlllUil XKJ XL II. Uiiї^^ i " ї . A

 

Closely united with Dagobert I were the two great Bishops Eligius of Noyon (641-690) and Audoin of Rouen (641-684), but they obtained these episcopal sees only after the King's death. Audion worked closely with Wandregisil, a Frank of the Moselle country, founder of the abbey of Saint-Wandrille c. 645, while his relations with the Aquitanian Philibert, founder of Jumieges, were for a time strained. The last traces of paganism disappeared at that time from the diocese of Rouen.47 The missionary activity of Saint Eligius was concentrated on what was then the diocese of Tournai, especially the areas of Kortrijk (Suebi), Bruges (pagus Flandrensis), and Ghent.48 Around the same time Burgundofaro of Meaux must have sent the Irishman Kilian (Chillena) to Artois,49 where Bishop Audebert of Cambrai (645/652-667) at that time raised the remains of the first bishop, Vedast, and founded the abbey of Saint-Vaast of Arras.50 In Toxandria Lambert (671/675-before 706) and Hubert of Tongres-Maastricht (before 706-727) baptized the last pa gans.

 

Progress can be clearly recognized from the absorption of more or less large pagan minorities in the territories of Rouen, Beauvais, Amiens, and Arras into the mission in the territories with an over whelmingly pagan populationЧTherouanne, Tournaisis, Toxandria, Kortrijk, Bruges, Ghent, AntwerpЧwhich perhaps spread as early as the 680s from the Frankish-Frisian frontier territory to the Frisians.51 The missionaries or mission directors were always monks or at least were in friendly relations with the Luxeuil circle, to which also belonged the Aquitanians, Amandus, Remaclus, and Philibert. Hence monas teries often grew out of mission stations, and in a newly founded dio cese, such as Therouanne, could have even a greater importance than the cathedral. Many new monastic foundations assisted them, so that the boundaries between mission and monastic organization often became blurred.

 

E. de Moreau, St.-Amand, apotre de la Belgique et du Nordde la France (Louvain 1927); A. Verhulst,Over de sticbtingen devroegate gescbiedenis van deSt. PietersendeSt. Baafsabdijen te Gent (Ghent 1953).

 

47 Vita Audoeni 4, MGSS rer. Mer. V, 556. Vita Wandregisili 16, ibid. V, 26ff. E. Vacan- dard, Vie de St. Ouen, eveque de Rouen (Paris 1902), 641-684.

48

49 Vita Eligii II, 2, MGSS rer. Mer. IV, 695.

50

51 Vita Faronis 100, ibid. V, 194.

52

53 A. B. Hoxie, "Translatis civitatis Atrebatensis," Revue Beige de phil. et d'bist. 16 (1937), 591-598.

54

55 Vita Wulframni ep. Senonici 3, MGSS rer. Mer. V, 663. The value of this vita is very controversial. But I would accept a missionary activity of Wulfram in Friesland or in the Frankish-Frisian frontier zone where Willibrord was still working.

56

A detailed description of mission methods is found only in the Vita s. Amandi, composed c. 725. From this it follows that the preaching of the gospel in the predominantly or entirely pagan countryside was not free of dangers to life and limb and hence demanded an entirely personal effort. And so the missionary needed the royal protection. Perhaps such a royal letter of protection was the point of departure for the claim of the Vita s. Amandi that King Dagobert had issued a command for the forcible baptism of the pagans. Otherwise no trace of compulsion is found. Amandus created a first step for a missionary station by purchas ing slaves and having them baptized. The Vita refers the break-through of the mission in Ghent to a raising from the dead by the saint. A direct connection of the mission with economic and social changes was not hitherto demonstrated, although the origin of large and rich monasteries in the final stage or after the completion of the conversion may have fostered the formation or consolidation of a land-owning upper class and the development of commercial places such as Quentovic and Dores- tad.

 

The impetus proceeding from Luxeuil for the christianization of the North Gallic-Frankish areas occurred just as early but was still directly operative also in the Burgundian-Alemannian-Raetian frontier zone, where the mission to the Alemanni grew out of the ecclesiastical restora tion in an entirely analogous manner to that of the North Gallic- Frankish lands.

 

The ecclesiastical organization had, as already said, completely col lapsed in the old civitas of Augst (=Basel). The sees of Windisch- Avenches (Helvetia) and Chur (Raetia I) had been for their part power fully effected by the immigration of the pagan Alemanni in the second half of the fifth and in the sixth centuries. The Alemanni had poured into the area of the Aar, modern central Switzerland, as far as Lake Thun and the Lake of Lucerne, and in the east as far as the Lake of Zurich and the Upper Rhine. Some ancient Christian centersЧZurich (Felix-Regula), Bregenz (Aurelia), Zurzach (Verena)Чwere inundated, although the memory of the old religion maintained itself, in them. In other castra or vici Christian communities continued, such as in Con stance, Arbon, Grabs and Gams, in Solothurn and Grenchen. Here the ecclesiastical restoration and organization could begin. The episcopal

 

THE LATIN CHUKLH UN i NNIUI J. IV/1 > A V *

 

cities of Strasbourg, Lausanne (=Avenches), and Chur offered support, but their capabilities had not yet been developed in the sixth century. The Alemannian dukes could also provide help: as members of the Austrasian and Burgundian aristocracies they had become Christians in the later sixth century.

 

The springtime of the mission in the country inundated by the Alemanni is connected with the name of Columban, to whom the Aus trasian King Theodebert II assigned there in 610-11 a new field of operation after his expulsion from Luxeuil. Columban began in the Germano-Romance zone of penetration at Tuggen on the Lake of Zurich and at Bregenz on Lake Constance, but was unable to accom plish much, since after the defeat and death of Theodebert II in 612 he had to withdraw to Italy. More enduring was the cella founded by his pupil Gall (d. after 629), whose later rise to a great abbey could not, of course, have been foreseen in the seventh century. For a long time yet, Sankt Gallen was only one Christian station among others.

 

There was already a bishop at Constance in the time of Saint Gall. The Christians of Constance, Arbon, and Grabs were oriented to Chur, in whose sphere of influence Sankt Gallen was also erected. The origins of the see of Constance, to which was later assigned the land inundated by the Alemanni south of the Rhine, are unknown. Important for the separation from Chur was the fact that for a while the country south of the Rhine belonged to the Franco-Burgundian subkingdom (595-609/ 610, 6l2ff.). The original endowment of the see and its separation from Chur go back to Dagobert I (629-639), who at Constance itself was later regarded as founder of the bishopric. Burgundian influence was proclaimed by the patronage of Benignus over the church of Pfaffikon, which, with the newly founded churches of Saint Martin at Olten and Windisch, probably belonged to the first period of consolidation. The bishopric included the Aargau and the Thurgau, hence areas which had previously belonged to Helvetia and Raetia. But it soon extended also to the country of the Alemanni north of the Rhine, so that it became simply the "Aleman bishopric" with a territory unusually large even for medieval conditions. The conclusion must be drawn that this could not have happened without lasting support of the dukes of the Alemanni, if in the present state of research more detailed statements on the course and the bearers of the mission are not available. In any event there occasionally occurs a mere name, such as that of Saint Trudpert in the Breisgau. Archeologically the Alemannian mission province north of the Rhine was marked by the appearance of the "Lombard" gold-leaf crosses, which point to influences from Italy, but thus far cannot be satisfactorily interpreted. Lombard influences by way of Chur are con ceivable. A ducal donation to Gall's Cella in the territory of Cannstatt from 708 may belong in the great period of the mission, which at that time was probably drawing to a close. The abbey of Reichenau, founded in 724, and Pirmin's circle may hardly have played a role in the conver sion of the Alemanni, but they probably did in the consolidating and deepening of their Christianity. The possessions of Reichenau and of the monastery of Sankt Gallen, whose rise began under Abbot Othmar (719/720-759/760), later marked the northern limits of the see of Con stance.

 

Around the time when the bishopric of Constance was founded in the area south of the Rhine, there first appeared also a Bishop of Augst (=Basel), Ragnachar, a former monk of Luxeuil and disciple of Colum- ban's successor, Eustasius (610-629). He may have collaborated in the founding of Luxeuil's daughter-monastery of Moutier-Grandval in the Jura, which Abbot Waldebert (629-670) put, together with the perhaps somewhat older cells of Saint-Ursanne and Vermes, under the authority of the Luxeuil monk Germanus of Trier. The new foundation of the see of Basel had, it is true, no long existence, since the diocese was attached to the see of Strasbourg in connection with the southern expansion of the dukes of Alsace. From Strasbourg mission influences seem to have proceeded early to the Upper Rhine. Strasbourg and Chur appear as stations in the life of Fridolin, who in the late sixth or in the seventh century came from Poitou to the Rhine and founded the cella of Sack.- lingen. In the Thurgau the patronage of Arbogast over Oberwinterthur was proclaimed by Strasbourg influence. The Alsatian see acquired property, probably in the seventh century, at Solothurn and on Lake Thun. Thus Strasbourg appears to have shared at the side of Lausanne,

 

THE LATIN CHURCH IN 1KAINM11UIN 1U INN EARLI SMIUU^E. AUM

 

Chur, and Luxeuil, in the ecclesiastical reorganization and mission in the Burgundian-Alemannian-Raetian frontier area.

 

The new beginnings of the see of Augsburg also extended back to the seventh century.56 The reorganization seems to have begun at Saint Afra, where a Christian community had maintained itself. At the abbey, which celebrated the memory of Dagobert I, rich graves from the pe riod around or before 700 were recently uncovered, among them per haps also tombs of older bishops. The representatives of the mission on the Lech remain anonymous. Influences from Italy could have been noted in the late sixth century. That on the Frankish side Amandus then also worked in Augsburg remains only a weakly supported conjecture. Not until the eighth century does some light begin to dissipate the darkness. Beside Augsburg there appear as ecclesiastical centers Neuburg on the Staffel Lake, Epfach on the Lech, and the stations of Fussen and Kempten in the Allgau, founded with the aid of the Sankt Gallen monks Magnus and Theodore. If Magnus was said to have really evangelized in the Allgau, then paganism must have maintained itself there unusually longЧinto the 740s. Hence one should think rather of the organizational construction of the diocese, especially since right at this time the mayors of the palace established the Iller frontier between Augsburg and Constance.

 

Around the turn from the seventh to the eighth century Augsburg probably belonged to the territory of the dukes of Bavaria, which in cluded the old province of Raetia II and parts of Noricum. Just as in the Raetian capital of Augsburg, so also apparently in the large Roman camp of Regensburg a Roman Christian community had maintained itself, grouped around the local basilica of Saint George.57 The con-

 

58 On Bavaria in general: R. Bauerreiss (see the survey of the literature). On Augsburg, Kempten, and Fussen: F. Zoepfl, Das Bistum Augsburg und seine Bischofe im Mittelalter (Augsburg 1956); E. Klebel, "Zur Gesch. der christlichen Mission im schwabischen Stammesgebiet," Zschr. fur wurtt. Landesgesch. 17 (1958), 145-218; F. Prinz, Fruhes Monchtum, 334-336, 359-364, 406, 434; H. Buttner,Konstanzer Diozesangrenzen, 265- 268, id., Fruhmittelalterliche Bistumer, pp. 7, 9, 26; H. Hubener, "Zum romischen und fruhmittelalterlichen Augsburg,"JA. des RG Zentralmuseums Mainz 5 (1958), 154-238; J. Werner, "Studien zu Abodiacum-Epfach," Munchener Beitrage zur Vor-und Frugesch. 1 (1964; in it, especially K. Schmid, "Bischof Wikterp in Epfach. Eine Studie uber Bischof und Bischofssitz im 8. Jh."); K. Reindel, "Die Bistumsorganisation im Alpen-Donau- Raum in der Spatantike und im Fruhmittelalter," M1OG 72 (1964), 277-310. 57 F. Prinz, Fruhes Monchtum, 319, 332, 337, 380, footnote 171; J. Sydow, "Unter suchungen uber die fruhen Kirchenbauten in Regensburg," RivAC 31 (1955), 75-96; E. Klebel, "Regensburg," Vortrage und Forschungen, ed. T. Mayer, IV (Lindau- Constance 1958), 87-104; M. Piendl, "Probleme der fruhen Baugeschichte von St. Emmeram in Regensburg," ZBLG 28 (1965) (Festgabe M. Spindler), 32-46; H. Buttner, Fruhmittelalterliche Bistumer, 9 and 14.

ХiAA __ _ tinuity of the cult of Saint Florian indicated similar circumstances at Lorch, and a Roman Christian congregation can have continued also at Passau.58 Larger groups of free and wealthy Romans clearly continued around Salzburg-Reichenhall, whose ecclesiastical center may have been Saint Peter of Salzburg. Here even in the countryside at Bischofs hofen the continuity of an early Christian cult, that of Maximilian, can be demonstrated.59 In the North Tirol the immigrating Bajuwares came upon the tribe of the Breones, in which Christian influences had as yet scarcely established themselves.

 

The Raetian-Norican Christians in the Duchy of Bavaria were tradi tionally oriented to Aquileia. The connection with the ecclesiastical province of Aquileia had probably continued into the early seventh century.60 However, the impulses proceeding from there grew weak as

 

58 R. Noll, Fruhes Christentum in Osterreich von den Anfangen bis um 600 (Vienna 1954). On Lorch and St. Florian: F. Prinz, Fruhes Manchtum, 330ff. and 435. Settimane di studio . . . XIV. La Conversione alcristianesimo (Spoleto 1967), 539-540 (More on the cult of Florian in Lombard Austria: Friuli, Vicenza, Treviso, Verona); F. Lotter, "LauriacumЧ Lorch zwischen Antike u. MA," Mitt, des oberosterreichischen Landesarchivs 11 (1974), 31-49- On Linz: H. Koller, "Der Donauraum zwischen Linz und Wien. Kulturkon tinuitat und Kulturverlust des Romanentums nordlich der Alpen," Hist. Jb. der Stadt Linz (1960), 1-53. On Passau: M. Heuwiesser, Gesch. des Bistums Fassau I (Passau 1939). F. Prinz, Fruhes Monchtum, 325, 329ff., 413; id., "Salzburg zwischen Antike und MA," Fruhma. St. 5 (1974).

59

60 F. Prinz, Fruhes Monchtum, 338, 395-404, 423ff.

61

62 The more recent research on the Christian connections of Bavaria with the south and southeast began with E. Klebel, "Zur Gesch. des Christentums in Bayern vor Bonifatius," St. Bonifatius. Gedenkgabe zum 1200. Todestag (Fulda 1954), 288-411, to which Klebel himself added some supplementary material regarding Augsburg in his article cited in note 56. Klebel investigated the relations on the basis of patrons, of archaeology, of liturgy, and of ecclesiastical language. In his view patronage yielded little, whereas the early Christian buildings as well as the liturgy and ecclesiastical vocabulary clearly revealed relations. Klebel thought in this connection of Gothic Arian influences, and, like I. Zibermayr, Noricum, Bayern und Osterreich (1956), of old connec tions with Sirmium. He did not greatly value the influences on the part of the Alpine Romans, who belonged to the province of Aquileia and like it adhered to the Schism of the Three Chapters. But the most recent research, which Prinz synopsizes in various places in his book, strongly emphasizes the connections with Italy, especially with Aquileia. Prinz accepted a .more or less strong Roman continuity, not only in the Salzburg area but also around Regensburg and Passau. He thought he saw an opposition between these Roman Christian groups of the Aquileia observance and the Merovingian clerics and monks, who came into the country with Frankish rule (F. Prinz, op. cit., 354, 383, note 181). The conversion of the Bavarians who had immigrated into Raetia and Noricum was essentially the work of Merovingian missionaries. The ecclesiastical inte gration of the two groups of peoples was definitively "completed probably only with Boniface's organization of the Church." The following picture results: Arian influences may have been active among the Bajuwares but they are not really evident (F. Prinz, op. cit., 337, note 48, 358, note 100). The special nature of the South German ecclesiastical a consequence of the political and ecclesiastical isolation of the ancient metropolis of northeast Italy in the seventh century. Thereby the Roman-Christian island communities in Bavaria lost the support of the great ecclesiastical centers of the untouched Christian interior. Of the bishoprics of the province of Aquileia only the little refuge-see of Saben (=Brixen) in the Eisack Valley belonged to the territory of the Bavarian

63

vocabulary is unclarified (F. Prinz, op. cit., 345ff.). Influences from Milan have left traces in the liturgy and perhaps also in the cult of Ambrose at Augsburg (F. Prinz, op. cit., 334; E. Klebel, Mission im schwabischen Stammesgebiet, 211). In the diocese of Augsburg Italian patronages are found: Valentine of Mais (near Meran), Zeno of Ver ona, Justina of Padua, Christina (Klebel, op. cit.). The Early Christian architecture of Noricum stood in the closest relations to Aquileia (R. Noll, Fruhes Christentum, 127ff.). Also in the sequel the connection of the ecclesiastical architecture of Bavaria was maintained with now Lombard Italy (F. Prinz, op. cit., 444). Elements of the liturgy of Aquileia maintained themselves at Salzburg (F. Prinz, op. cit., 326, 398, 401); in Salzburg's Bischofshofen Maximilian of Celeia probably had an old shrine (E. Klebel, Christentum in Bayern, 395). Churches in the dioceses of Salzburg (E. Klebel, op. cit.), Regensburg (chapel: E. Klebel, op. cit.), and Freising (E. Klebel, op. cit., F. Prinz, 340, 344) were dedicated to Zeno of Verona. Vigilius of Trent was honored in the diocese of Freising and at Regensburg (E. Klebel, op. cit.). Cassian of Imola was patron of a Regensburg church (E. Klebel, op. cit., F. Prinz, op. cit., p. 338; J. Sydow, "Fragen um die Cassianskirche in Regensburg," Der Schiern 29 [1955], 452- 457). The patronage of Saint George in Regensburg (St. Emmeram) and perhaps also elsewhere may have been transmitted from late antiquity or related to Italy or eastern connections (F. Prinz, op. cit., 337ff., 355; E. Klebel, Mission in Bayern, 399). Eastern influences (from Sirmium?) are detectable in the Passau liturgy (E. Klebel, Mission in Bayern, 403ff.). Byzantine jewelry is found in graves of Bavarian nobles (F. Prinz, op. cit., 355). Gold-leaf crosses are found on the Lower Inn and the central Salzach (J. Werner, op. cit., 54; H. Buttner, Fruhmittelalterliche Bistumer, 21). The evidence cited is not all of the same cogency and probably not always chronologically exactly determined. Most of the Italian cults, especially the patronage of Cassian and the relatively wide spread patronage of Zeno, must hardly have been adopted before the eighth century. Here the Lombard stratum appears surely more clearly than the Late Roman and Early Christian, which is more tangible in archeology and perhaps in liturgy. That Saint Florian of Noricum appears much more frequently in Lombard Austria as an ecclesias tical patron (cf. note 58) than in old Bavaria, that Saint Afra "already found admission into the Upper Italian preliminary forms of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum" (F. Prinz, op. cit., 345, note 75) but was only rarely a patron in Swabia, are paradoxes which still await clarification. From this one cannot without more ado infer an atrophying of the Late Roman Christian tradition in Raetia and Noricum, since the continuity of the shrine of Saint Afra is attested in the sixth century by Venantius Fortunatus, and the wandering route of the Luxeuil monk Agrestius permits no doubt for the early seventh century in connections existing between Bavaria and Aquileia (H. Buttner, Fruhmittel alterliche Bistumer, 22). Also, Bishop Marcianus, who probably died in 608 and was buried at Grado, and who for forty years "peregrinatus est pro causa fidei," has his place here. His activity extended, according to H. Buttner (Fruhmittelalterliche Bistumer, 21) "at the earliest to the Alpine region in the vicinity of the Brenner Pass and the northern approaches to the Alps." dukes. Although Sahen apparently carried on the tradition of Early Christian Augsburg, no initiative could proceed from it for the ecclesiastical reorganization and mission of the wider area occupied by the Bajuwares. The personnel of the little see was absorbed by the mission of the Breon country (North Tirol) and invaded by the Baju wares, but in any event ecclesiastical radiations became noticeable in the approaches to the Alps as far as Augsburg.61

 

The decisive initiatives for the Bavarian mission came, not from the South, but from the West. At the very establishing of the Bavarian Duchy by Theodebert I (534-548) Gallo-Roman bishops (Galliarum episcopi) were installed, who tried to extend their influence also to Noricum Mediterraneum (Carinthia).62 But their activity was without last ing effect. However, the Agilulfing Dukes, who made their appearance in the second half of the sixth century, professed the Catholic faith, causing the still mostly pagan Bajuwares to receive a Christian head. If the dukes came from Burgundy, as has recently been assumed by most,63 they could have participated directly in the missionary initiative proceeding from Eustasius of Luxeuil (610-629). In fact, Tassilo I (529-after 610) seems to have supported Eustasius and his companion Agilus in the founding of a mission-station near Regensburg, from which resulted the abbey of Weltenburg.64 From Luxeuil, also under Eustasius, went the monk Agrestius as missionary to Bavaria and from there to Aquileia, where he joined the schismatics of the Three Chap ters.

 

On his journey to the Slavs, Amandus must also have crossed Bavaria, but there are no reports of a mission of the Apostle of the Flemings among the Bajuwares. Meanwhile, the christianization of the people must have been in full swing, when Emmeram (Haimchramm) came to Regensburg c. 665 (or 685-690), where he met death in an obscure conflict with the ducal family. The stops on Emmerams route from Poitiers to Regensburg are unfortunately unknown. In view of the early relations of Columban's monasticism with Bourges and Poitiers, the supposition is natural that Emmeram also came from the Luxeuil

 

64 Saben as place of refuge of the Bishop of Augsburg: R. Heuberger, Raetien im Altertum und im Fruhmittelalter (1932), 172; H. Buttner, Fruhmittelalterliche Bistumer, 18-20 (Bavarian since c. 600), 23, 28. E. Klebel called attention to the old possessions of the sees of Regensburg, Freising, and especially Augsburg in the sphere of the see of Saben (Mission im schwabischen Stammesgebiet, 186ff.). Whether references to mission connections are supplied with this remains still an open question.

65

66 MGEp I, 1, 20; F. Prinz, op. cit., 352ff.

67

68 E. Zollner, "Die Herkunft der Agilulfinger," MIOG 59 (1951), 245ff.

69

70 F. Prinz, op. cit., 356-358. Prinz dates the Bavarian mission of Eustasius to the period c. 610, following Barrault; Buttner, on the other hand, c. 626-27 (Fruhmittelalterliche Bistumer, 22).

circle. He could have taken the route of his probably somewhat older countryman, Fridolin of Sackingen, to the Rhine, on which Strasbourg may have been an intermediate station. The monk-Bishop Erhard (of Narbonne?), who worked at Regensburg in the early eighth century, was, according to his biographer, in contact with the ducal house of Alsace. In regard to Emmeram it does not go beyond a guess. How ever, the ducal residence of Regensburg clearly emerges as a chief point of departure of the Bavarian mission, both in the case of Eustasius and in that of Emmeram and Erhard. Also Bishop Rupert (Hrodbert), who probably left his diocese of Worms in 695 for political reasons in order to work in Bavaria, apparently went first to Regensburg and received from Duke Theodo the country of Salzburg as his field of activity, with supervision of the mission among the Slavonic Carinthians.

 

The last in the series of "Apostles of Bavaria" was Corbinian, who came from Melun (province of Sens) and worked in Freising soon after 716. Meanwhile, the Bavarian Duchy had been divided, and so Corbi nian did not go via Regensburg, but perhaps was presented by Rome to the Duke of Freising. The deceased Duke Theodo had contacted Rome in 716 about erecting a Bavarian ecclesiastical province. This initiative of Theodo shows that the Bavarian mission was externally completed. Since Emmeram, Rupert, and Corbinian there were in the ducal capitals of Regensburg, Salzburg, and Freising, to which Passau was also added, "monk-bishops with fixed sees" (Schieffer). However, it characterizes the position of the three churchmen that none of what became cathedral monasteries had been founded by them: the three patrons of Bavaria do not stand at the beginning of the history of the conversion of the coun try-

 

On the whole, the picture of the mission among the Bavarians is somewhat clearer than that among the Alemanni. King Theudebert I probably gave the people a Christian leadership and sent Gallo-Roman bishops, who perhaps busied themselves in the reorganizing of the sur viving Roman-Christian communities. No missionary impulse could go out from these, since their support in the Christian hinterland of Aquileia that had remained intact had been interrupted by the political frontiers and had finally failed entirely. The initiative for the Bavarian mission came from Luxeuil, in which perhaps the blood relationship of the monk Agilus with the Agilulfing ducal house played a role. And later missionaries may have been in contact with the monasticism of Luxeuil in the broader sense. Both the persisting Romance communities and the residences of the Agilulfings offered points of departure for the mission to the Bajuwares. In the seventh century there is no further word of a collaboration of the Merovingians. Not until Charles Martel did the influence of the Frankish central power again assert itself. The conversion of the Bavarians to Christianity appears, then, like that of the Alemanni, as a process which was indeed represented by Frankish or Irish-Frankish elements, but took place within the tribe without a discernible exterior pressure.

 

While Christianity was being established among the Alemanni and the Bavarians, it was also carried to the neighboring lands to the right of the Rhine by the Rhenish episcopal cities. Dagobert I subjected the first church at Utrecht to the bishopric of Cologne; according to a later source, Soest is said at that time to have been assigned also to the see of Cologne. If the orientation of the graves of the seventh century in Westphalia south of the Lippe may indicate that they were Christian, the mission would have already extended at that time to the entire part of the later diocese of Cologne to the right of the Rhine. However, this interpretation is disputed. The first churches of Utrecht and Soest may have served a Frankish garrison in a still greatly pagan milieu. The advance of the Frisians and Saxons put an end also to these advance- stations: a new beginning had to be made in the eighth century. The areas that remained Frankish in the strip of Cologne, Bonn, and Kob lenz on the right bank of the Rhine must have been Christian up to the early eighth century, since they were no longer mission territory in the Carolingian epoch. There are no direct written statements, but thus far only archeological testimonies for the Rhenish towns of Niederdollen dorf and Leutesdorf.

 

The progress of the mission in the sector of Mainz, Worms, and Speyer stands out somewhat clearer. Here too the first testimonies come from Rhenish places. In Kastel and Wiesbaden Christianity per sisted from Roman times; a Christian tombstone from Goddelau in the Ried (south of Trebur) is dated from the fifth or early sixth century. Other tombstones of the seventh and eighth centuries show an advance on the Lower Main as far as the Niddagau. An inscription of 711-717 from Nilkheim near Aschaffenburg confirms that the see of Mainz had at that time reached the Spessart frontier. Inferences permit the state ment that the Wetterau had also been christianized at that time from Mainz. Advance-posts, but, in contrast to Utrecht and Soest, firmly in Frankish hands, were Buraburg (near Fritzlar), Amoneburg, Glauberg (near Budingen), and the Kesterburg (Christenberg near Wetter). The Church of Saint Martin at Christenberg and the Church of Saint Bridget of Buraburg were probably built in the first or second decade of the eighth century.

From Worms in the seventh century the Lower Neckar from Laden- burg to Wimpfen was opened up and at the end of the century the Wingarteiba with the Bauland had been reached. The abbey of Amor- bach was erected in the early eighth century in the eastern Odenwald. From Speyer the Kraichgau and the central Neckarland were evangelized in the late seventh and early eighth centuries, and in this the abbey of Weissenburg, founded c. 660, played a special role.75 Pre sumably around the same time influences proceeded from Strasbourg to the Ortenau and the Breisgau. The first monasteries in the Ortenau arose under the influence of Pirmin, of course only after the Frankish conquest of Alemannia in the decade 740-750.76

 

From Worms ancient roads ran to Wurzburg, which in the seventh and early eighth centuries was the seat of the ducal house of the "Hedene" in the Main area. Christian influences were active here after the first third of the seventh century. The Irish Kilian, who is regarded as the Apostle of the country, and his companions Colman and Totnan lost their lives c. 689 in a conflict with the already Christian Duke Gozbert. Gozbert's son, Duke Heden II, who c. 700 extended his rule also to Thuringia, is said in a late tradition to have founded the Church of Our Lady of Wurzburg on the Marienberg. In fact, Heden II exerted himself for the ecclesiastical structure in his lands. He tried to gain the Anglo-Saxon Willibrord for this task, giving him in 704 properties at Arnstadt, Muhlberg near Gotha, and Grossmonra in Thuringia and in 716 his family property of Hammelburg in the Saalegau of the Main area for the purpose of founding a monastery. Apparently Willibrord deputed some Anglo-Saxon helpers to go to Thuringia in 715-719, when the Frisian mission-field was closed to him by the Frisian Duke Radbod. However the monastery at Hammelburg did not materializeЧa part of the property given there to the Anglo-Saxon was

 

778," W. Kuther, Die Wustung Hausen (1971), 136-166. Cf. also the contributions of Schlesinger, Wand, and Schwind in Althessen im Frankenreich, loc. cit.

 

75 H. Buttner, "Amorbach und die Pirminlegende," AMrhKG 5 (1953), 102-107; id., "Christentum und Kirche zwischen Neckar und Main im 7. und fruhen 8. Jh.," St. Bonifatius (Fulda 1954), 363-387; id., "Frankische Herrschaft und fruhes Christentum im mittleren Neckargebiet," 22. Veroffentlichung des Hist. Vereins Heilbronn (1957), 7-15; id., Die Mainlande um Aschaffenburg, 111-112; id., "Das Bistum Worms und der Neckarraum wahrend des Fruh- und Hochmittelalters," AMrhKG 10 (1958), 9-38; id., Mission und Kirchenorganisation des Frankenreiches, p. 458. Buttner stresses that the earliest church organization on the Rhine, Neckar, and Main was very closely connected with the Frankish fisci.

76

77 The beginnings of Gengenbach are said to extend back to c. 727: H. Jaenichen, "Warin, Ruthard und Scrot," Zschr. fur Wurttemberg. Landesgesch. 14 (1955), 327-384. In the period of the powerful Alemannian duchy influences from Alsace were not, in my opinion, of very great importance.

78

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turned over to the abbey of Echternach. In the March of Hammelburg and in Schweinfurt the abbey of Weissenburg also had possessions, which are first attested by the Weissenburg land record, drawn up after the middle of the ninth century. Whether these properties were pre sented by Heden II to the South Frankish abbey and were included in a missionary effort of Weissenburg is doubtful, according to the more recent studies. The tradition of the founding of the monastery of Saint Peter at Erfurt by Weissenburg is to be rejected as a fabrication. On the contrary, there seem to have been relations between Heden II and Mainz. The legendary tradition that Bilichild, the foundress of a con vent of Altmunster, established at Mainz around or shortly before 700, was a blood relative of the Wurzburg ducal family is supported by the endowment of the abbey in the vicinity of Wurzburg. The- oldest network of churches in the Main area was closely connected with the fiscal organization, as the endowment of the bishopric founded by Boniface through the agency of the Mayor Carloman shows. It was probably completed under Charles Martel after the breakup of the Main-Thuringian Duchy c. 719-

 

When Winfrid-Boniface took up his activity in Hesse and Thuringia on the other side of the forest, there were already old bases of the mission in these two districts and on the Main. The evangelization of the Frankish strip on the right bank of the Rhine, Alemannia, and Bavaria was completed. The German mission had grown out of the ecclesiastical restoration, which had achieved its first successes on the Rhine in the sixth century, then in the Burgundian-Alemannian-Raetian frontier zone at the end of the sixth and beginning of the seventh centuries, and finally in the North Gallic-Frankish territory in the first and second thirds of the seventh century. But its great triumphs are due extensively to the Luxeuil monasticism, which renewed the missionary impulse and was active both on the North Gallic-Frankish front and in the sphere of the South German tribes.

 

The Merovingian Kings did not employ compulsion for the mission, but probably encouraged the ecclesiastical restoration and mission di rectly and indirectly. Thus Theuderic I brought Aquitanians to Austra- sian Francia in order again to fill up the thinned ranks of the clergy there. Thus Theudebert II established Columban and his companions on the Lakes of Zurich and Constance, and Dagobert I summoned monks of Luxeuil to the North Gallic-Frankish country. The clerics and monks active in the mission obtained the royal protection and a material support that was occasionally very considerable, as the founding of the abbey of Saint-Amand shows. The distant possessions on the Rhine of the churches within Gaul hence probably go back in part to the use of these churches in restoration and mission. From it one can infer with the necessary caution to a sharing by the churches of Reims and Chalons, of Trier, Metz, and Verdun, in the work of rebuilding on the Rhine.

 

The royal encouragement operated indirectly in such a way that the mission could begin, and usually had begun, near the center of royal government: near the royal residences, the Roman and Merovingian fortifications, and the great fiscal manors, where churches were erected early for the needs of the court and of the Frankish garrisons and administration, and where the protection of the Merovingian officials was most effective. The decay of the Merovingian royal authority since the second third of the seventh century fundamentally changed nothing in this situation, since the dukes were Christian and in many respects could assume the functions of the crown in regard to Christianity and Church. True, they did not have the right to found new bishoprics.79 In practice conflicts often resulted when the missionaries were regarded at the same time as political emissaries of the Franks or when they intransi- gently upheld canon law and ecclesiastical morality vis-a-vis a still rudis christianitas. To what extent the mission work suffered wrongs from case to case is difficult to determine.

 

In the city residences of kings and dukes and the fortresses there were still Romance Christian groups both on the Rhine and east of the Iller

 

79 After the death of Dagobert I (638) no more bishoprics were established in the Merovingian Kingdom up to Boniface. On the other hand, the dukes of Alsace in the extending of their domination to the Swiss Jura, had the bishopric of Basel, only re cently founded, given up and united the territory of Basel with Strasbourg. Constance developed in the period of the de facto vacancy of the throne into a national Aleman- nian see, by absorbing the entire Alemannian mission area and thereby became one of the largest dioceses of the Middle Ages. A plan of the Bavarian Duke Theodo of 716 for the ecclesiastical organization of his country could, characteristically, not be im plemented. It remains historically significant in so far as then, for the first time, the effort was made in the Frankish sphere of influence to call upon the Pope for the founding of bishoprics.

Ч i . 553 and south of the Danube, which had survived the wanderings of the peoples. On the Rhine, where the ecclesiastical restoration began as early as the sixth century, they supplied a powerful support for the work of construction, especially since the Aquitanian Gallic clerics were not seen by them as foreigners. But occasionally reactions against the hel pers from the West and South appeared among the German Frankish population. The Raetian and Norican Romance peoples seem to have taken a more reserved stand toward the episcopi Galliarum and their helpers, perhaps also toward the Luxeuil monks of the seventh century, even if the opposition may have been at times overstressed by Prinz. Finally, at Regensburg and Salzburg the churches for which a Roman continuity is assumed became the germ cells of the new bishopric. As Prinz himself emphasizes, the Bavarian dukes in general must have maintained good relations with the indigenous Romania. The symbiosis, present from the beginning in the areas to the left of the Rhine and south of the Danube must, in any event, on the whole have facilitated the conversion of the Franks, Alemanni, and Bavarians who settled there.

 

On the Rhine line from Cologne to Worms the work of construction must always have lain in the hands of the bishops, where the episcopal organization, despite gaps in the lists of Rhenish bishops, had not en tirely collapsed or could soon be rebuilt with the aid of Aquitanian and inner Gallic clergy. In this connection it was surely of importance that the outside helpers themselves were either clerics or, as monks of the older type, could be the more readily incorporated into the episcopal organization. The oldest churches were always subject to the bishop or to the abbots of the old basilicas dependent on the bishop, and in a few cases also to the King. The proprietary churches of the landowners only joined the others in the phase of completion. Monasteries of the Luxeuil type were likewise founded only in this second phase and developed especially in the arable areas of the Ardennes (=Eifel) and Vosges (=Hardt). They acquired a greater importance for the structure of the dioceses only in the sphere of the see's of Maastricht-Liege, Speyer, and Strasbourg, where they had a greater share in the real work of conver sion.

 

In clear contrast to the Rhine zone in this respect were the North Gallic-Frankish and the Alemannian mission areas, where the sees of Therouanne and Constance appeared for a long time as "poor relatives" as compared with abbeys such as Saint-Omer (Sithiu) and Sankt Gallen or Reichenau respectively, or the abbey of Saint-Vaast of Arras which formed a powerful opposite pole to the episcopal city of Cambrai. Finally, Bavaria represented a third zone, where the episcopal churches themselves first developed out of monastic beginnings. On the other hand, it can hardly be misunderstood that the stronger missionary dynamism in the seventh century lay in districts dominated by or at least strongly stamped by monasticism.

 

Thus it is implicitly said that the spread of Christianity is to be under stood not only as an ecclesiastical-political-organization procedure, even if the organizational procedures can be seen the best. Of the motives of the conversion, of the spirit and methods of the mission, which were at least partly aimed at it, the sources unfortunately give only a very in adequate picture.80 In the foreground often stood the tests of the power of the Christian God and of his preachers. Procedes simples et violents, such as the destruction of pagan sanctuaries and cult objects, sprang in general not from sheer fanaticism but were intended to display the powerlessness of the gods ad oculos. The positive counterpart to this was the miracles of the saints. But the prouesses ascetiques not only of the monks of Columban but also of the older hermits, such as Wulfilaich, also made a great impression. Also in keeping with the genuine Chris tian spirit were the works of mercy, including the redemption of cap tives. Spiritual instruction was apparently very strongly required by Caesarius of Aries.

 

In the conversion doubtless faith (profession) and cult stood in the foreground, if the two cannot be so sharply distinguished in the Chris tian sphere from ethics and morals, as Kuhn does this.81 In the language of the Fathers pietas was, however, very strongly related to dementia and misericordia. In the Merovingian Frankish Kingdom there was no total absence of striking testimonies of genuine love of neighbor and of enemies. Furthermore, the Church also considered the protection of the defenseless and oppressed, of underage children and of foreigners, as its special task. But on the whole there still prevailed a formal understand ing of the Christian religion, which led to an overemphasis of cult and rite as opposed to moral principles. Nothing is perhaps more charac teristic of this religious formalism than the indulgence which the Merovingians allotted without exception to their godchildren in the family feuds that otherwise could have led to complete annihilation. The cultic bond woven by sponsorships was inviolable, stronger than all bonds of blood. In the same context belongs the careful regard for the ecclesiastical right of asylum, which could be circumvented only by stratagem. On the other hand, the vital religious impulses of this piety must also not be overlooked. In the strict observance of cultic-ritual

 

80 Cf. on this F. Graus, Volk, Herrscher und Heiliger im Reich der Merowinger (Prague 1965); id., Sozialgesch. Aspekte (as in footnote 52); especially G. Tessien, Conversion de Clovis, 183-187 (see survey of literature for this chapter).

81

82 H. Kuhn, "Das Fortleben germanischen Heidentums nach der Christianisierung," Settimane di studio . . . XIV. La Conversione al cristianesimo, 743-757.

prescriptions was expressed a genuine fear of God, but in this way one might occasionally try to outwit God. For the expiation of crimes com mitted, people were prepared for great physical exertions and material sacrifices. Numerous pilgrimages, foundations of new churches, and donations attest to this readiness. The often extravagant adornment of altars, saints' tombs, and churches is an eloquent expression of the religious sentiment of this age.

 

To men of this type of mind the saints had to appear as helpers rather than as models. A change of this sort was under way from the end of the fourth century: since the cult of relics gradually covered up the cult of the saints as understood more symbolically and theologically in the early period. German ideas expedited this process. Among the oldest saints honored in Gaul were Mary, the Apostles or the Princes of the Apostles, the Ambrosian martyrs, the protomartyr Stephen, Maurice (Gaul), Vincent (Spain), and Lawrence (Rome), as well as the great Gallic Bishops Hilary of Poitiers, Martin of Tours, Germanus of Au- xerre, and Lupus of Troyes. In the early sixth century Peter was re garded as the foundation of the Catholic Church and symbol of its unity. But Peter was buried in Rome. Martin and Hilary acted more directly on Clovis: they were favorable to him in the Gothic war and he himself rescued their sanctuaries from the Goths. They remained the patrons of the Merovingians, of their Kingdom and their Church. Alongside them came in the sixth and seventh centuries the saints of the royal cities: Remigius of Reims, Medard of Soissons, Denis of Paris, and finally probably also Gereon of Cologne. Decisive weight was carried by the presence of the holy corpse in the royal city, in the royal burial basilica, or in one of the great episcopal cities of Francia. In Neustria and Bur gundy the basilicas of celebrated saintsЧubi ipse sanctus corpore requiescitЧobtained from Queen Bathildis soon after the middle of the seventh century special privileges with their proper immunity. The individualization of the cult of the saints affected also the cult of Mary, although it was not connected with relics. Mary, who in the Early Church had been regarded as a symbol of the Church, became in the seventh century the patroness of many newly founded convents of nuns. The cult of Peter and of the other Apostles remained alive in the episcopate in the sixth century; in the seventh century it was borne to wider circles, not least of all by monks of Luxeuil.

 

It was in accord with the thinking of early medieval society that the canon law that was in a closer relationship to ritus became earlier and more frequently prominent than the Christian moral law. In the course of the sixth century the Kings gradually also accepted ecclesiastical rules into their capitularies. To be mentioned would be, among others, the already referred to prohibition of idolatry and sacrificial meals by Chil- debert I (c. 533), the prescription of fasting by Guntram, the command to sanctify Sunday by Guntram (588) and Childebert II (596), the pro hibition of marriage between close relatives by Childebert II and of the marriage of nuns by Clothar II (614), as well as enactments on the law of asylum. The Lex Salica, compiled under Clovis, was still hardly touched by a Christian spirit, but the case was different with the Lex Ribuaria, drawn up in the first half of the seventh century. In it is found for the first time the later often quoted legal proposition, "Ecclesia vivit lege Romana," with which was expressed the recognition of a special ecclesiastical body of law. The Lex Ribuaria also received the legislation of Clothar II and Dagobert I, including the prescriptions which exten sively subordinated to the Church's patronage freed men who had not belonged to the crown. Still stronger was the ecclesiastical influence in the Lex Alamannorum and the Lex Baiuvartorum, whose traditional com pilations go back to the 720s and 740s. A great part of the royal decreesЧwergeld of clerics, sanctification of Sunday, marriage of blood relatives, law of asylum, ecclesiastical patronage of freedmenЧwas ac cepted into these laws.83 In them the bishop is contrasted with the clergy by a special wergeld, the oath is partially christianized, excommunication is added to the secular penalty for especially heinous crimes, such as parricide. It is difficult to determine the Christian influence on the spirit of the legal norms in the popular laws.84 Christian legal thought is manifested in general only in an already formally Christian environ ment, that is, after the conclusion of the conversion in the stricter sense. In this later phase people were more energetic in abolishing pagan customs. This is more clearly expressed in the late seventh and early eighth centuries in the change of burial rites: in the giving up of deposit ing objects in graves and of interment in rows of graves, in the transfer of the cemetery to the parish church.

 

The christianization of State and society, running parallel to evangeli zation, began at the earliest and most clearly with the kingship.85 Clovis

 

83 Many a conflict still flared up over the ecclesiastical law of marriage between mis sionaries of the seventh and early eighth centuries (Kilian, Corbinian) and the already converted dukes on the right side of the Rhine.

84

85 J. Imbart, "L'influence du christianisme sur la legislation des peuples francs et ger- mains," Settimane di studio . . . XIV. La conversione al cristianesimo, 365-396; G. Vis- mara, "Cristianesimo e legislazione germaniche. Leggi langobarde, alamanne e bavare," ibid., 397-467.

86

87 E. Ewig, "Zum christlichen Konigsgedanken im Friihmittelalter," Vortrdge und Forschungen, ed. T. Mayer, III (Lindau-Constance 1956), 19-24.

88

at his baptism had had to renounce the divine origin of his familyЧsola nobilitate contentus, as Avitus of Vienne put it. The German ideas of a special royal healing power were not thereby lost. And the ancient forms of lifting up and installing the King did not change. The change began in the view of the ruler's calling: here a constant influence of Christian moral principles is first to be recognized. Already Remigius of Reims had impressed on Clovis the protection of the unarmed and the oppressed, of widows and orphans, in a simple transfer of episcopal duties to the King. He inaugurated the series of bishops who ad monished the Kings to maintain iustitia in the sense of aequitas, to cultivate pietas in the sense of the personal fear of God as care for the Church and protection of the needy. In the liturgy of the seventh cen tury the King took the place of the Emperor, the Frankish took the place of the Roman name. As special task of the ruler appeared here the maintenance of external peace, especially in regard to pagans. In the seventh century the King was represented as God's vicar in the gov ernment of the world, and to him was even attributed the function of conferring the episcopal function. Already there occurred references to the Old Testament kingship. Clothar II was the first Frankish King to be compared to David. In the early eighth century Dagobert I was desig nated in retrospect as Solomon, King of Peace.

 

Thereby was struck a new note, which was attentively listened to. Many clues show that in the period from c. 585 to 638a new stage had been reached in the christianization of State and society: the boundaries between national councils and assemblies of magnates became blurred, Germans entered the episcopate in greater numbers, the Luxeuil monasticism radiated to the kingship and aristocracy of Francia, ecclesiastical decrees gradually found entry into royal and popular law. The development as such did not stop, but the organizing power of the Kingdom disappeared as a consequence of the hopeless decadence of the Merovingian Dynasty, which since 680 was clear to the whole world. Only the Carolingians took up the threads and tied them again.

 

CHAPTER 3 5

 

The East Germans and Catholicism: The Conversion of the Sueves and Visigoths of Spain to Catholicism and the Second Flowering of Christian Antiquity in the Spanish Visigothic National

 

Church

 

The West stood under the aegis of the East Germans, especially the Goths, for scarcely a centuryЧfrom the extinction of the Theodosian Dynasty in 455 to the beginning of Justinian's wars of reconquest in 533. In the dissolution of the Imperium in the West the Vandals under Gaiseric (428-477), who probably was the first ruler to found a sovereign regnum, played a significant but ephemeral role. In contrast to the Vandals, the Goths gradually grew into the Imperium, although as Arians they remained separate from the Romans. Their kings took over the legacy of the great army commanders who had governed the Hes- perium Regnum since the death of Theodosius I. Visigoths and Os trogoths collaborated in this. The Visigoths had been settled, after they had broken out of the Balkans, as foederati in southwest Gaul {Aquitania II, province of Bordeaux) in 418 and there they established the Kingdom of Toulouse, which expanded over southern Gaul and northern Spain. The Ostrogoths invaded Italy in 489- From the Visigoth Euric (466-484), the great King in Gaul and Spain, hegemony passed to the Ostrogoth Theodoric (488/493-526), the imperial patricius and great King in Italy.

 

Politically and in Church history the Kingdom of the Vandals, whose Kings from Gaiseric to Thrasamund engaged in an active arianization, occupied a special position. Among the Vandals there occurred a real persecution of Catholics, which it is true did not lead to the ruin of the Afro-Roman Church but considerably impaired the importance and significance of that Church within the whole of Christianity. In the two Gothic Kingdoms and that of the Sueves in Spain which was under Gothic influence and that of the Burgundians in Gaul, the Catholic Church was spared trials of this severity. The structure of these regna was arranged in a double pattern. The dual construction was based on the Late Roman separation of military and civilian and made possible an on the whole peaceful and at times even friendly coexistence of Arian Germans (military) and Catholic Romans (civilian). Of course, it consti tuted an impediment for the German-Roman symbiosis, although the Goths opened themselves in a greater degree to Graeco-Roman culture than did the Franks. For the most powerful bond of community was not education but faith.

So long as the Arian Germans lived as foederati inside the Imperium, their relations to the Catholic Church were not problematic, since the Church, as an imperial institution, was withdrawn from their compe tence. True, there could be encroachments and plundering but not to the extent of a conflict of fundamental importance. Such a conflict first occurred when Euric dissociated the Visigothic Kingdom from the Im per ium, by which the connection of the Catholic Church of his domin ions with Rome and the Church of the Empire was severed, and the making of new appointments to vacant sees in his kingdom was thwarted. These restrictive measures crippled ecclesiastical life and naturally were felt as persecution, but they sprang from a new situation and had at bottom only a political, not a religious-ecclesiastical back ground. Euric's son and successor, Alaric II, replaced them with a posi tive policy of integration. The Lex Romana Visigothorum, also called Breviarium Alaricianum, which was published under him in 506, con tained the essential decisions of imperial law which regulated the life of the Church in the Imperium and were now sanctioned as Gothic royal law for the Romans. The Synod of Agde, which met in the same year under the presidency of Bishop Caesarius of Aries, inaugurated, five years before the Franco-Gallic Synod of Orleans and eleven years be fore the Burgundo-Gallic Synod of Yenne (Epaon), the series of early medieval "national councils," which were to meet in the future on the basis of a regnurn at the order or at least with the assent of the German king of the moment. Ecclesiastical affairs in the Visigothic Kingdom became normal, and the Catholic Romans put up with a general, but in extent not more carefully defined, supremacy of the Arian King over the Church.

 

Alaric's solution was not at first effective in the Gothic area, since the Frankish war of 507-511 put the bases of life of the Visigoths in ques tion. The Kingdom of Toulouse perished and the strongholds of the nation in western Aquitania were lost to the Franks along with the capital. The great Ostrogothic King Theodoric saved his Visigothic kinsfolk from destruction, but annexed Provence to the area under direct Ostrogothic rule and at the same time claimed the government in the interest of his Visigothic grandson, Amalaric, son of Alaric II. Under Ostrogothic protection the Visigothic capital was first transferred to Narbonne.

 

Not only as King of the Ostrogoths but also at the same time as patricius in the service of the Emperor, Theodoric was ruler of Italy. His position in relation to the Roman Church as well as to the Catholic Church of the West in general was therefore not comprehensible in the national-church categories. Even if the Amal was said to have exercised an influence over the Roman Church in far broader measure than was previously believed, in fact his domination was to the advantage of the ecclesiastical autonomy of Rome vis-a-vis the Emperor. In the entire

Gothic area the relations of the Gallic-Spanish churches to Rome were again established, as the special mandate of Pope Hormisdas to the Bishop of Elne (province of Baetica) and the grant of papal vicariates to Aries for Gaul and Spain in 514 and to Seville for Baetica and Lusitania in 521 show. In Spain under Gothic rule the Church resumed its synodal activity of the old type: in the form of provincial, not of national councils.4

 

Thus the rule of Theodoric the Great in the Gothic Kingdoms of the West meant for the Church basically a return to the situation of late Roman times. There was at first no change in this in the Visigothic sphere even after Theodoric's death. For when the restoration policy of Justinian spread to Italy, the intermedio ostrogodo in the Visigothic King dom still continued under Kings Theudis (531-548) and Theudegisil (548-49). Theudis was able to stop new Frankish attacks in 531 and 541. Gothic rule was maintained in Narbonensis I (Septimania without Toulouse) and in Spain. In Spain, the Goths could gradually spread beyond Tarraconensis and Carthaginiensis into Baetica (province of Seville).

 

The future of the Visigoths was threatened less by external dangers than by inner conflicts since Theudis and Theudegisil did not succeed in establishing a new dynastic legitimacy. The power struggles of the great noble factions threatened at the end of the intermedio ostrogodo to lead to total chaos. Against King Agila who had been elevated to the throne in 459, a revolt was led by Athanagild, who sought help from the Em peror. Athanagild established himself in place of Agila, but he had to put up with the fact that the Byzantines, who had landed in southern Spain in 552, occupied parts of Baetica and Carthaginiensis and or ganized them as an imperial province. Nevertheless, the reign of Athanagild (551/554-567) meant a new start in the history of the Vis igoths. Under this ruler Toledo, situated on the southern edge of the Gothic area of settlement in Spain (Castile-Leon), which had been the royal residence under Theudis, became clearly more prominent as the capital. The real refounder of the Spanish Visigothic Kingdom of To ledo, however, was Athanagild's successor, Leovigild (568/572-586).

 

der Gros.se (Munich 1947). New but not yet thoroughly discussed view: G. P. Picotti, "Osservazioni su alcuni punti della politica religiosa di Teoderico," Settimane di studio . . . III. I Goti in Occidente (Spoleto 1956), 173-226; cf. also the survey of the literature in Haendler, Literaturiibersicht 13, 3. Even if Theodoric had interfered far more strongly in the business of the Church than has thus far been held, there still remained a considerable distinction between the Ostrogothic and the East Roman Byzantine domi nation.

 

4 On the impact of Theodoric's rule on the ecclesiastical situation in the Visigothic Kingdom, cf. K. Schaferdiek, op. cit., 68ff.

 

 

Beside the Visigothic Kingdom there existed in Spain a second Ger man Kingdom of the Sueves, which embraced the weakly romanized province of Gallaecia (Braga) and parts of northern Lusitania.5 The Sueves had become Arians in the fifth century under Gothic influence, but almost no reports concerning the history of their kingdom are ex tant for the last third of the fifth and the first half of the sixth centuries. The "sole genuine document" from this period, a letter of Pope Vigilius to the Metropolitan of Braga from 538, makes known that the Catholic Church was not then substantially impeded under Suevic rule, but op posed not only Suevic Arianism but also the Priscillianism which had been disseminated in wide circles of the province. From later sources it must be inferred that even paganism was not yet ended among the rural population of Galicia. A change in the Church history of the Suevic Kingdom began when King Chararic c. 550-555, under the influence of miracles at the tomb of Martin of Tours, passed over to Catholicism and around the same time the Pannonian monk Martin, who had traveled to Spain, established the new mission center of Dumio near Braga. Martin of Dumio, who soon became Metropolitan of Braga (after 561-580), successfully united with the Suevic mission the fight against Priscil lianism and pagan remains. He established the Catholic national Church of the Suevic Kingdom. Rightly was he celebrated even in his own day as the Apostle of the Sueves, even if at his death Arianism had not yet been completely extirpated.

 

Martin of Dumio's work of conversion did not radiate directly to the Visigoths. But the dualist structure of State and society, which had been the characteristic mark of the Arian German Kingdoms, had also al ready become an anachronism among the Visigoths. The cultural romanization of the Goths had already begun in the Kingdom of Toulouse. Marriages occurred among the magnates of both groups of people, although they were forbidden by law. King Theudis himself married a lady of the Hispano-Roman senatorial aristocracy. Although Goths and Romans still lived according to different laws, Theudis enacted laws which were valid for both peoples. Gothic aristocrats and military men, especially in the southern parts of the kingdom, came into intimate contact with Roman magnates, who adhered politically to the Gothic Kingdom.6 Ecclesiastical and cultural contacts with Latin Africa seem to have simulated Catholic controversial theology in the southern

 

5 On the history of the Spanish Sueves now see K. Schaferdiek, op. cit., 120 ff. and 247ff. (there also the sources and literature). Sch'aferdiek's presentation retains its value even in comparison with Thompson (Goths in Spain).

6

L

 

7 To these circles belonged the family of Leander and Isidore of Seville, whose father Severian left his native city of Cartagena when it was occupied by the imperial forces and migrated to the area that remained Gothic.

8

562

province around the mid-century and thereby released a missionary impulse which had an impact on the Spanish Gothic upper class.7 Impor tant Goths were converted to Catholicism and rose in the Catholic hierarchy.8 Thereby new problems were created for the kings.

 

In the first decade of his reign Leovigild had to consolidate his king dom and his own authority against internal and external enemies. He suppressed the unruly aristocracy in northern Spain and gained suc cesses against Sueves and Byzantines. He assured the future of the dy nasty as early as 573 by elevating his sons Hermenegild and Recared to consortes regni, probably following the imperial model. He gave the kingship new prestige by receiving imperial insignia and by his own coinage. Probably in 478-580 he tackled the interior reconstruction of the Kingdom. The prohibition of marriage between Goths and Romans, already much violated in practice, was abolished. In addition, Leovigild took the decisive step toward the unity of the Kingdom: he had the Gothic law of Euric revised and made the Codex revisus the law of the Kingdom.9

 

If the imitatio imperii was the signum of Leovigild's reign, it benefited the reputation of the Goths, whose kingdom he enlarged, whose law he made the basis of the beginnings of Gothic Spanish unity. In the course of this work there was posed also the question of the ecclesiastical and religious unity of the Kingdom of Toledo, but it seems only to have been raised by a tragedy in the royal family.

 

In 579 Leovigild made his oldest son Hermenegild regent of the Gothic territories of Baetica with his seat at Seville. Hermenegild had as his wife the Frankish Princess Ingundis, who, despite her very young age, had clung at the court of Toledo to the Catholic faith of the Franks in opposition to the powerful pressure of Queen Goswintha, her own grandmother.10 In Seville Hermenegild himself now converted to

 

9 J. Fontaine, Conversion et culture, 96ff. cf. also S. A. Thompson Goths in Spain, 37-38.

10

11 Known by name are Masona of Merida and John of Biclar, both of whom came from Gothic Lusitania.

12

13 Thus Stroheker (Leovigild) and, following him, Schaferdiek. Thompson (Goths in Spain) and Sanchez-Albornoz (Pervivencia y crisis) think otherwise, holding to the tradi tional view that the unity of the kingdom was first established by Chindaswinth and Recceswinth. According to Thompson, Recared introduced the development of unity of law. The discussion is complicated by the opposing thesis of Garcia Gallo, again taken up in modified form by Alvaro d'Ors, that the Codex Euricianus and the Breviarium Alaricianum were already national laws. Cf. also K. Schaferdiek, op. cit., 15, note 35, and C. Sanchez-Albornoz, op. cit., 137ff.; finally, D. Claude, Gentile und territoriale Staatsideen, 29.

14

15 Ingundis was the daughter of the Australian King Sigibert I and of his wife Brun- hildis; through her mother Brunhildis was a granddaughter of the Visigothic King Athanagild and of his wife Goswintha, whom Leovigild married after the death of

16

Jta

THE LATIN CHURCH IN IKAXMSlinjiN iw inu unm.*

 

Catholicism under the influence of the Metropolitan Leander. The young prince thereby brought on a conflict with his father, who at this time certainly had an entirely different idea about the solution of the religious question.11 A quarrel broke out. Hermenegild sought help from the Byzantines and Sueves but he could not hold out against his father. Leovigild conquered Seville and Cordoba in 584, and the son fell into his hands. Hermenegild could not be induced to recant. He was killed in Tarragona on Easter of 585 and the perpetrator remained unpunished.

 

It was in accord with the policy followed by him that Leovigild sought to realize ecclesiastical unity also on the basis of the "Gothic religion," but in doing so he made certain accommodations to Catholic views. In 580 the King convoked an Arian national Council to Toledo, which facilitated the conversion of Catholics by the abolition of the rebaptism hitherto practiced in conversions, something regarded as especially scandalous by the Catholics. Furthermore, Leovigild tried to efface the differences between Arianism and Orthodoxy by the accepting of the cult of Spanish saints and by his saying that he recognized the identity of substance of Christ with the Father, even if this expression must not be understood as an official formula of mediation. In an effort to achieve his goal, the King was not sparing in rewards but he also did not renounce external methods of pressure, such as exile and confiscation. However, there is no word of a bloody persecution. Naturally, the Goths who had accepted the Catholic faith and had obtained positions of leadership in the Catholic Church were exposed in a special degree to the King's pressure, such as the Metropolitan Masona of Merida and Abbot John of Biclar. Also among the Sueves, whose kingdom he conquered in 585, Leovigild carried out an Arian reaction. The measures of compulsion, however, were by no means restricted to Catholic Germans. The goal of the ecclesiastical religious policy was also and especially the transductio Romanorum ad haeresim Arianam.12

 

Despite temporary successes, Leovigild did not achieve this goal. His

 

Athanagild in a second marriage. Goswintha was the stepmother of Hermenigild and Recared, who were born of Leovigild's first marriage.

 

17 Intrigues of the grandmother Goswintha may have played a role but can hardly have been the sole cause of the conflict. That Leovigild's reforms were a homogeneous work is suggested by the parallels of his procedure in the implementation of the unity of law and faith. In both cases Gothic law and Gothic faith provided the bases of the policy of unity even if the King was prepared to include individual Roman elements. If Leovigild began with his reform of the law in 578, then he must have had definite ideas about his ecclesiastical policy as early as 578-580.

18

19 Council of Toledo III, PL 84, 347. This definite witness of the sources speaks clearly against Thompson's hypothesis that Leovigild's ecclesiastical union was restricted only to German circles (Goths and Sueves).

son and successor, Recared (586-601), embraced the Catholic religion in 587, ten months after his accession, and thereby at the same time inaugurated the conversion of the Visigothic nation, which was solemnly proclaimed in 589 at the Third Council of Toledo, the first national Council of the Spanish Gothic Church. Here Recared appeared as a ruler in the succession of the Emperors Constantine and Marcian: reno- vans temporibus nostris antiquum principem Constantinum magnum sanctam synodum Nicaenam sua illustrasse praesentia, necnon et Marcianum christianissimum imperatorem, cuius instantia Cbalcedonensis synodi decreta firmata sunt. Thus did the assembled bishops acclaim him in accord with the imperial style and at the same time in actual insinuation as Apostle of the Goths: Cui a Deo aeternum meritum nisi vero catholico Reccaredo regi? . . . Ipse mereatur veraciter apostolicum meritum qui apos- tolicum implevit officium.u

 

The King eased the passage of the Goths to Catholicism by the fact that he accomplished the acceptance of the Arian clergy, including the bishops, into the Catholic clergy. Nevertheless, there was some resis tance. Conspiracies of Arian groups in Lusitania, at court, and in Sep- timania were suppressed in 587-89. Whether an Arian reaction oc curred later is uncertain. But it has been noted that, of the eight Arian bishops who in 589 signed the acts of Toledo, four belonged to the Suevic area (Viseu, Porto, Tuy, Lugo) and, of the four Arian bishops of the Gothic area (Valencia, Tortosa, Barcelona, Palencia), only one (Palencia) had his seat in the heartland of Gothic settlement. Accord ingly, a part of the Gothic Arian clergy right in the Gothic heartland must have still held itself aloof in 589 and been gained only in the future. But even here there was no serious opposition. The Goths of the Castilian meseta gave up their burial customs in the early seventh cen tury: along with Arianism there disappeared the last remnants of paganism. In the Spanish literature of the early seventh century the

 

Arian controversy no longer played a role. From 633 the episcopate was recruited from the circles of the Gothic aristocracy.18

 

No source informs us about the motives for Recared's conversion. Hence the historian cannot throw light into the heart of the King and his Goths but only point to the concomitant circumstances and people: to the family tragedy of the royal house, which is said to have deeply affected Recared as mediator between father and brother,19 to the prob ably superior theological formation of the Catholic episcopate, to the impressive personality of Leander of Seville and other prelates. For the rest, religious and political motives may have been inseparably joined in Recared, as in Clovis, but at the same time the conversion was the decisive step to the unification of Spain under Gothic leadership. In this perspective Recared completed not the religious but probably the polit ical testament of his father in the ecclesiastical sphere. The work of unification was continued after Recared's death by Sisebut (612-621) and Swinthila (621-632), who expelled the last of the Byzantines from the peninsula, by Chindaswinth (642-652) and Reccesswinth (649/ 652-672), who, following Justinian's model, again stamped the Lex Visigothorum in a Christian sense and thereby created the most impor tant legal work of their time in the Latin West. The anti-Jewish legisla tion of the kings was supposed also to serve the idea of unity but the episcopate partly opposed it and partly took a reserved stand. It cast a deep shadow over the Spanish Gothic Kingdom and ultimately only exacerbated the political crisis of the late seventh century. It had a parallel only in the Empire.

 

In his civitas regia of Toledo the orthodox King of the Visigoths could appear as successor of the Western Emperors20Чa west, of course, which was restricted to the Iberian Peninsula and its Gallic appendage of Septimania. Toledo was the single royal city of the West which, like Constantinople, was also the ecclesiastical capital. In it from 589 met all the Spanish Gothic national councils. Like the imperial city on the Bos-

 

maintained themselves in the Meseta, settled by the Goths, in connection with the Gothic customary law. The question whether a German customary law of the Gothic rural population continued into the Spanish Middle Ages is still controverted. Most recently Sanchez-Albornoz (Pervivencia y crisis) answers in the affirmative.

 

18 S. A. Thompson, Goths in Spain, 289-292.

19

20 According to Gregory of Tours (Hist. Fr. V, 38), Recared had assured his brother that he would not be "humiliated" if he surrendered to their father. The constraint to return to Arianism, which finally led to Hermenegild's violent death, was a violation of this promise. Recared apparently took this very hard and after his accession had the mur derer of his brother executed also.

21

20J. Fontaine, Isidore de Seville, 872; E. Ewig, "Zum christlichen Konigsgedanken," Vortrage und Forschungen 3. Das Konigtum. Seine geistigen und rechtlichen Grundlagen (Lindau-Constance 1956), 27ff., J. Lacarra, lglesia visigoda, 358 and 376ff.

porus, Toledo had originally been only a simple episcopal city. Signs of an emancipaton from the older Metropolis, Cartagena (Carthago Nova), are first noticeable in 531. The Church of Toledo definitively gained metropolitan rank at the time when Cartagena was in the hands of the Byzantines. As the royal city, Toledo would in time outstrip the other metropolises of the kingdom, including Seville with its rich tradition. As early as 646 it was decreed that the neighboring bishops should annually make a visit ad limina to Toledo pro reverentia principis et regiae sedis honore vel metropolitani civitatis ipsius consolatione. From 656 the Met ropolitan of Toledo directed the national councils, over which previ ously the metropolitans had presided alternately, according to the date of ordination or reputation. In 681 he obtained the right to approve candidates designated by the King in episcopal vacancies in the entire Kingdom, and in 683 it was enacted that King and Metropolitan of Toledo could summon, under pain of excommunication, every bishop to prescribed liturgical or judicial actions at Toledo.

 

However, not the Metropolitan of Toledo but the King occupied the dominant position in the Spanish Gothic Church. Recared had already claimed the right to fill episcopal sees, which his successors apparently exercised in a much broader scope than the other kings of the timeЧ even before it was expressly fixed in 681 and was easily restricted by the participation of the Metropolitan of Toledo. Recared not only convoked the first national council, but he directed it, decided the agenda, and signed the acts. In 681 it was set down as a custom that the kings opened the council, made known in the Tomus regius the agenda they wanted, and then withdrew. If the decrees of the synod were to obtain validity in the national law, they needed sanction by a royal law in confirmatione concilii.

From the beginning the bishops were also involved in secular matters, but strictly in the framework of the program laid down by the ruler in the Tomus regius. As early as 589 secular magnates also attended the consultations; the presence of royal dignitaries became in the future the rule, and in 653 they acquired the right of participation in the discus sions and of signing the acts. Finally the Councils of Toledo became in this way also national assemblies. They decisively stamped the Vis- igothic constitutional law, issued decrees on the election of the king, the rights of the crown, on high treason, on the legal status of the magnates. The bishops created a political ethics determined by the virtues of iustitia andpietas of late antiquity, objectified the royal domination into a royal function, and introduced the anointing of the king to strengthen the ruler's authorityЧfirst attested in 672. From 633 the episcopate took part, alongside the seniores Gothorum in the election of the king. Around the middle of the seventh century there appeared mixed ecclesiastical and secular commissions, which had to be consulted for the pardoning of rebels and in the publication of laws, and finally they became competent as a forum for political trials relating to the episco pate and the nobility. "Medieval" changes were thereby anticipated in the Gothic Kingdom of Toledo, otherwise still so strongly stamped by late antiquity.

 

The Spanish Gothic national Church was in itself much more compact and more strongly centralized than the Merovingian. The Itio in partes, which is characteristic of the entire western development in the sixth and seventh centuries, was apparent in Spain before the passage of the Goths to CatholicismЧat the death of Theodoric the Great in 526, at which the vicariate for Gaul and Spain, granted in 514 to Caesarius of Aries, de facto ended. The canonical collections, which constituted the basis for the development of canon law in Gothic Spain make this break clear. The relations with Gaul came to a close, those with Africa moved to the foreground. As in the other countries of the West, Jus tinian's ecclesiastical policy aroused lively opposition in Spain also, but the Spanish attitude in the controversy over the Three Chapters was more strongly determined by the African polemic than elsewhere. The Spanish Church never recognized the Fifth Ecumenical Council, Con stantinople II of 553. The connection with Rome lost in intensity on the basis of the general historical development, but the tensions be tween the Visigothic Kingdom and the Empire also reacted unfavorably on the relations of the Gothic national Church with the papacy. Add to this that the Spanish Gothic episcopate no longer attributed great im portance to the support of Rome after the conversion of the Goths to Catholicism.

 

In 589 and 633 the Spanish Church acknowledged that papal synodal letters had the same authority as the ecumenical councils. Isidore of Seville saw in the Roman Bishop the head of the Universal Church, whom everyone is bound to obey, independently of the personal qual ities of the successor of Peter: ... in nullo laeditur obsedientia nostra, nisi praeceperit contra fidem,26 The relations between Spain and Rome had, after a long suspension, been strengthened again under Gregory the Great, who was a personal friend of Leander of Seville and had also sent him the pallium, without however renewing the Vicariate of Seville. Recared had made known his conversion and that of his nation to Catholicism to Gregory as head of all the bishops. King Chintila (636-39) sent a votive offering to Saint Peter. True, Recared did not really hurry with his communication to the Pope: the delay may have been attributable to a mistrust on the King's part in regard to the Roman Bishop as a subject of the Emperor. Real ill-feeling resulted when in 638 Honorius I in a letter of reprimand sharply reproached the Spanish episcopate's all too great complaisance toward the perfidi, that is, probably the Jews. Braulio of Zaragoza replied in the name of the Spanish Gothic Church. He recognized the sollicitudo for the Universal Church as the prerogative and task of the Roman Bishop, but made it clearly understood that the Roman intervention had already been dealt with, since God had correspondingly enlightened King Chintila. Braulio, not without irony, joined with this the hint that the Pope must exercise supervision over other churches not frivolously but only after a thorough examination of the matter.

 

In the future the connection between Rome and Spain seems to have been almost completely broken. In the period after Isidore papal de cretals were no longer found in Gothic Spanish canon law. The Popes, for their part, apparently did not induce the Spanish episcopate to support their position vis-a-vis Constantinople in the Monothelite Con troversy. Contact was not renewed until Leo II communicated to the Gothic Spanish Church the decrees of the Sixth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople III of 680-81). Julian of Toledo, under whom the national primacy of the Church of Toledo was fully established, had the acts examined at provincial synods together with an Apologeticum fidei, which he had composed on his own. The decrees of Constantinople were received by the Spanish Church. However, Julian reacted in an unusually violent manner to a criticism of his Apologeticum, expressed

 

211 ". . . our duty of obedience is affected on no point except that he order something directly against the faith" (Ep. 6, 2 and 3: PL 83, 903). The obligation of obedience to the Pope as head of all members in the body of Christ is stressed by Isidore also in a letter to Bishop Eugene of Egara (Ep. 8, 2 and 3: PL 83, 908). The authenticity of this passage is of course disputed; cf. J. Lacarra, who accepts the authenticity (lglesia visigoda, 361ff. and 362, footnote 19), as well as Y. Congar, who doubts it (L'ecclesiologie du haut moyen-age [Paris 1968], 152, footnote 81). The letter to Eugene of Egara, however, contains no statement that would not also be covered by other witnesses from the period 589-638.

only orally by Pope Benedict II, and had his answer, composed in a challenging form, read and approved at the Fifteenth Council of Toledo in 688. No break followed, because at Rome, where Benedict II had meanwhile died, no one took up the matter. The increasing gravity of the situation was to a great extent Julian's work, but the support which Julian found in the episcopate of the Visigothic Kingdom makes clear an estrangement between Spain and Rome. How far this estrangement went is difficult to say. The older view that the Church of Peter was the fundamental center of Christendom must not have been totally lost. For when the Muslims conquered the Visigothic Kingdom, the Primate Sindered of Toledo fled to Rome, where in 721 he signed the acts of a synod.

 

The inner structure of the Gothic Spanish Church was marked by an, on the whole, uninterrupted development on an Early Christian basis. Ecclesiastical immunity, the right of asylum, the jurisdiction and legal status of the clergy were more strongly determined by late antiquity than elsewhere. The economic independence of the parish churches and monasteries was in accord with the time. The proprietary church system spread to the Iberian Peninsula and included also the monasteries, but the foundations of the episcopal organization of the Early Church were only loosened by it, not convulsed. At the conversion of the Goths to Catholicism, the liturgy was enriched by the admission of the creed into the Mass iuxta orientalium partium morem at the order of King Recared. It received its characteristic formation in the seventh century through the collaboration of great bishops and abbots, who displayed an impor tant literary activity and thereby also increased the self-consciousness of the Gothic Spanish Church. In the Pactum of Saint Fructuosus of Braga Gothic legal thought seems to have affected the relations between abbot and monk.

 

An early sign of the ties with home was the pride in the native saints, who from the late fourth century appeared beside Mary and the Apos tles: Prudentius had celebrated the martyrs of Merida, Cordoba, Tar ragona, Barcelona, Gerona, Zaragoza, Alcala, and Calahorra. With Vincent of Zaragoza, who as the chief Spanish martyr found universal veneration even outside the Visigothic Kingdom alongside the Roman Lawrence and the Gallic Maurice, with Eulalia of Merida, Justus and Pastor of Alcala, Felix of Gerona, and many others, was later associated

 

Leocadia, a saint of the royal city of Toledo. Foreign cults were also admitted, especially that of Martin of Tours, the patron of the Apostles of the Sueves, Martin of Braga.

 

Late Roman Spain was not rich in important ecclesiastical teachers, bishops, and abbots, but Visigothic Spain took the lead over other coun tries. After the confusion of the migrations, new life burst forth in the sixth century, often simulated by the influx of foreigners, especially of Easterners and Africans. In the first half of the sixth century Merida had three eastern metropolitans. Justinian's restoration strengthened the Greek influence in the south of Lusitania, in Baetica, and in the territory of Cartagena, and it there survived the collapse of imperial rule. Very old relations existed between Spain and Africa. They were strengthened by two waves of immigration in the days of the Vandal King Hunneric (477-484) and the Moorish expansion toward the imperial province of Africa c. 570, which also brought abbots and their communities to Spain. Episcopal and monastic schools replaced from c. 500 the rhetori cal schools that had disappeared. The oldest monastic school is demon strable at Valencia. Justus of Urgel, who had come out of it, signed the acts of the Second Council of Toledo in 531, at which decrees were issued on the education of clerics. The school of San Martin de Asan was founded in 522 by the Italian Victorian. C. 560 arose a new intellectual center at Dumio in Galicia. Soon after, the African Donatus established the Monasterium Servitanum in the province of Cartagena; the Goth John, the abbey of Biclar in Tarraconesis. C. 600 there existed at Zaragoza the abbey of Santa Engracia; at Toledo, Agali. Many bishops came from these monasteries. In the last fourth of the sixth century Leander of Seville, Severus of Malaga, Eutropius of Valencia, Maximus of Zaragoza, and John of Gerona (Biclar) represented the intellectual life of Spain. From Leander's school proceeded Isidore of Seville, the country's Doctor of the Church.

 

Isidore stands beside Augustine and Gregory as one of the great teachers of the Western Middle Ages. He was born soon after 550 and succeeded his brother Leander as Metropolitan of Seville (599-636). His importance does not lie in the originality of his thought but in his encyclopedic scholarship, which he displayed especially in his master piece, the Origines or Etymologiae. The Middle Ages derived from it, among other things, the system of the septem artes liberales. A number of other treatises dealt with individual fields of knowledge, such as gram-

 

I M fi LAlliN UlUIV^n U-N iiViiiuxiiw - ~

 

mar (Differentiae) and astronomy (De natura rerum). In the succession to Jerome and Rufinus, Isidore wrote a history of Christian literature (De viris illustribus) and a world chronicle, which he completed by a history of the Goths, Vandals, and Sueves. Not a few of his writings are devoted to exegesis. In the Synonyma Isidore appears as the father of the mystical theology of the Middle Ages. The Sentences, a manual of Chris tian doctrine involving also the lay world inaugurated the medieval Sentence-literature. The treatise De ecclesiasticis officiis and the Regula monachorum deal with ecclesiastical life; the apologetical work, De fide catholica, with the Jewish question, so acute in the Visigothic Kingdom.

 

The work of the Bishop of Seville was strongly engraved by antiquityЧbut of course by an already benumbed antiquity. Hellenistic natural science was known to Isidore only in fragments, philosophy only in condensations in the form of manuals. Thus, for Isidore, grammar with its methods (Differentiae, Synonyma, Etymolograe) became the basis not only of the trivium but also of the quadrivium, in fact of philosophy and theology. For him the "ancients" were no longer the classical writers but their late commentators who stood like a filter between him and the great authors of antiquity. Of course, through this filter Isidore also received the spirit of antiquity and made it so much his own that many regarded him as the last representative of the dying world. Through the Spanish Doctor of the Church Baetica became the "Conservatoire de l'erudition grammaticale antique" (Fontaine) and in this function re placed Roman Africa, on which Isidore's scholarship was essentially based, which probably supplied him with no slight number of Greek works in Latin translation. Next to Africa, only Italy can be mentioned as mediator, but at a great distance. By means of Rome, which under Gregory the Great maintained lively relations with Spain, some codices may have reached Spain, among them the later writings of Cassiodorus, Isidore's kindred-spirit, which the Bishop of Seville included in his work.

 

With his copious work, Isidore intended to serve not only schol arship. In the Synonyma he speaks to us as the mystic; in the Historia Gothorum, as the Spanish patriot. As Metropolitan of Seville Isidore was also preoccupied with the great questions of Church and Regnum. The Fourth Council of Toledo in 633 and the definitions of kingship and law in the Lex Visigothorum bear the mark of his spirit. Apparently the Hispana, the best general collection of canons of the age which became so important for the canon law development of the entire West through the Carolingian Renaissance, goes back ultimately to Isidore. It origi nated soon after 633 on the basis of a Spanish epitome, which in turn was based on collections from Provence and Tarraconensis. Thus in the origin of the Hispana is reflected the history of the Visigothic Kingdom

V7.3 since the reorganization by Theodoric the Great. Beside Isidore's Summa of divine and human knowledge stands the canonical Summa as an equally important achievement.

 

After the death of the Doctor egregius the cultural centers moved from the Mediterranean zone to the interior of Spain. Malaga, Seville, Car tagena, and Valencia receded. Merida and Zaragoza asserted their rank, while Toledo under the two Eugenes, Ildefonse, and Julian flowered anew. The Goth Fructuosus, who had grown up in Palencia, became in the years 640-650 the father of the monks of Spain. He wrote his Rule for the church in Bierzo, the hill country of Alcala, where, after him, his biographer, Valerius of Astorga, also lived. King Recceswinth made Fructuosus Bishop of Dumio and finally Metropolitan of Braga. The leading churchmen of the time elaborated, as mentioned, the "Mozarabic" Liturgy. The Liber de virginitate s. Mariae of Ildefonse of Toledo constituted a landmark in the history of the cult of Mary.

 

The importance of the geographical shifting of the cultural centers in the seventh century becomes clear from archeological investigation, which has established a Gothic province of settlement north of the Tajo in Castile and Leon, to which in the west was added the Suevic settle ment in Galicia. The Spanish lands north of the Tajo took little part in the cultural development of the Mediterranean zone in the sixth cen tury. Goths and Sueves were Arians, under the Romans of Galicia Priscillianism was not yet dead, and in the Cantabrian Basque moun tains there were still pagans. The northern advance bastions of the south were Merida and Toledo, which lay in the radiation sphere of Cordoba. The Goths preserved, according to the evidence of the finds, their national customs until the turn from the sixth to the seventh century. At this time the Christian art of Baetica, dependent on Africa, lost its force. A new style of architecture and art arose at Merida and Toledo, which had built the bridge from the south to the north. It spread via the Gothic area of colonization into Tarraconensis and to Septimania. This last epoch of Gothic Spanish culture no longer bore an African stamp, but was dependent on that of the Empire through its relations with Byzantine Italy. In it was reflected the Gothic Spanish national con sciousness of the time of King Recceswinth (652-672) and his succes sors. Only quite small churches of Gothia are extant from this phase: the imposing buildings of Toledo have perished. But with the colorful luster of the crowns of Guarrazar and the treasure of Torredojimeno a light still shines to our days from the time of the kings and metropoli tans of Toledo, the Father of Monks Fructuosus of Braga, the Hispana, and the Lex Visigothorum.

 

CHAPTER 36 The Lombards and Italy

 

Late arrivals of the migration of the peoples, late also in embracing Arianism, were the Lombards, who, shortly before 490, under the supremacy of the Heruls, entered "Rugiland" (Lower Austria), oc cupied the country between the Enns, Danube, and March and in 508 threw off the yoke of the Heruls. C. 526 they moved into the first Pannonian province between the Danube and the Drave, long ago evacuated by the Romans, and thereby became the immediate neigh bors of the Ostrogoths. Under their King Wacho (c. 510-540) they entered into friendly relations with the Gepids, who lived between the Theiss and the Carpathians, and with the Franks, both of whom were opponents of the Ostrogoths. A change occurred in Lombard policy when, after Wacho's death, Audoin (c. 540-560) assumed control, first as guardian of the heir to the throne, Walthari, then from c. 547-48 as King himself. Audoin fell out with the Franks and Gepids and c. 548 sided with Justinian, who granted to the Lombards for settlement the country between the Danube and the Save as well as eastern Inner NoricumЧhitherto Ostrogothic provinces.

 

According to Procopius, the Lombards had declared in 548 that they were of one faith with the Emperor.1 Although this was certainly a declaration of intention of the Lombard envoys, it must not have been taken entirely right out of the air. For, through the Franks, Catholic influence can have been at work, even if it would also have crossed with an Arian influence from the Gepid side. In the first years of King Alboin (c. 560-573) the religious decision was still undecided, as a letter of Bishop Nicetius of Trier to Alboin's first wife, the Frankish Princess Clodoswintha, shows. Only after the victory over the Gepids, immediately before the invasion of Italy in 568, did Alboin decide for Arianism, perhaps with a view to the assimilation of the Danubian rem nants of Germanic peoples into the Lombard nation. Also the desire to gain the Ostrogoths still remaining in Italy may have played a role. This recently accepted Arianism did not go very deep. Portions of the people even continued as pagans.

 

The Lombards entered Italy, in contrast to the Ostrogoths, not as foederati but as conquerors.2 Alboin occupied the provinces of Aquileia

 

' Bellum Gothicum III, 34.

 

2 The Byzantines only carried out resistance when the Lombards took Milan and be sieged Pavia. Following Bognetti, Mor and Fasoli have expressed the supposition that

 

(Venetia) and Milan (Liguria), except for the coastal districts, and then had a part of his troops advance via the La Cisa Pass into Tuscany in the direction of Benevento. After his death and the brief reign of his suc cessor Cleph there ensued an interregnum (573-585), in which the Lombards lived only under dukes.3 At this time the Emperor succeeded in attracting no small part of the Lombard duces into his service. Even after the renewal of the monarchy in 584, the restoration of political unity was at first a program rather than a reality. A Frankish-Byzantine coalition brought King Authari (584-590) to the edge of the abyss. The imperialists, who still possessed strong bridgeheads north of the Po, won back Reggio, Parma, and Piacenza and thereby drove a dangerous wedge between Lombard North Italy and the Lombard groups in Tus cany, Spoleto, and Benevento. Savior of the Kingdom was Agilulf (590-615), who subjugated the hostile dukes, eliminated the Byzantine wedge in western Aemilia, and conquered Cremona, Mantua, and Padua north of the Po (602-3). King Rothari (636-652) carried out a further break-through against the imperial positions by gaining Oderzo in Venetia, Modena in Aemilia, and in Liguria the entire coastal strip with Genoa. Now the Lombards possessed the entire province of Milan, the province of Aquileia except for Istria and the Venetian lagoon, the western half of Aemilia (Piacenza, Parma, Reggio, Modena), the greater part of Tuscany (Lucca-Pisa, Fiesole-Florence, Arezzo, Siena, Volterra, Chiusi, Volsinii), southern Umbria (Spoleto) with parts of Sabina, Sam- nium (Benevento), and parts of Campania (Capua). The duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, separated by the Exarchate of Ravenna and the Roman Duchy from the Regnum, stood in only a loose dependence on the crown. Benevento went into its own way and after 663 expanded over Apulia and Lucania.

 

The vicissitudes of the Church in the Lombard Kingdom become understandable only against the background of the political history. Paul the Deacon reports that, in contrast to the territories occupied under the rule of Alboin, the civitates conquered by the Lombard dukes were treated very harshly.4 Modern research is inclined to trust this

 

the Lombards had occupied Italy north of the Po in 568-69 in an understanding with the Emperor Justin II, who had been concerned to shield Italy from the Austrasian Franks by means of the Lombards. This assumption cannot be verified.

 

3 Mor raised the question whether the Interregnum was not in reality only a period of regency for Cleph's son, Authari. But this is no more than a guess.

4

5 Through these Lombard dukes, . . . churches were despoiled, priests were killed, cities were overwhelmed, and peoples . . . were wiped out, except in those regions which Alboin had taken, Italy was for the most part captured and subjected by the Lombards (Hist. Lang. 32). Basic for the more recent research is G. P. Bognetti, Con tinuity. Of the older investigations, the following should be mentioned: A. Crivelucci, "Les eveches d' Italie et 1'invasion lombarde," Studi storici 15 (1904-6); L Duchesne, statement of the historian of the Lombards. In an effort to arrive at a correct judgment, it has taken into account the devastations of earlier wars, whose wounds were in no way healed at the entry of the Lom bards. Thus, Venetia (Northeast Italy) was severely affected by the ex pedition of Attila's Huns in 452 while Central and Lower Italy, and also Milan, had suffered heavily in Justinian's Gothic war.

6

Although the two Metropolitans of Aquileia and Milan fled to impe rial territory in 568-69Чthe former to Grado, the latter to GenoaЧfor the most part their suffragans remained in the two provinces oc cupied by the Lombards. On the basis of the privilege which Alboin granted to the Bishop of Treviso right after the occupation of the city, it may probably be assumed that also the other bishops who came to terms with the new situation obtained legal guarantees from the King. No vacancies can be proved at all in Venetia.5 It is clear that in Liguria only Como was orphaned until the beginning of the seventh century, but the clergy stayed in the city. The picture is confusing in Tuscany, where long vacancies occurred in some episcopal cities (Lucca and especially Siena), whereas in others (Arezzo and Pistoia) the continuity was not disturbed.6 At Spoleto disturbances cannot be established, but in any event the local dukes were occasionally federated. On the other hand, the bishoprics in the sphere of Benevento were entirely destroyed: Paul the Deacon may have been thinking of them especially when he spoke of the devastations of the dukes. The Lombards of Benevento were noted for special ferocity, and among them there were also still pagans. Finally also the cities and sees in the frontier zone disputed between the Lombard Kings and the imperialists were more severely affected: e.g., the civitates of Aemilia reconquered by Agilulf and the only recently conquered Venetian districts of Padua, Oderzo, and Altino, whose bishops withdrew to the Venetian lagoons. In retrospect one reaches the conclusion that greater disturbances occurred in the areas which

 

"Les eveches d'Italie . . . ," MAH 25 and 26 (1905-6); Attidelcongrem internazionale di scienze storiche III (Rome 1903).

 

7 For the year 590-91 ten suffragans of Aquileia in Lombard territory are attested: Saben, Julium Carnicum, Belluno, Concordia, Trent, Asolo, Verona, Feltre, Treviso, and Vicenza (Settimane di studio . . . VII, 496). Six of them-S'aben, Julium Carnicum, Concordia, Trent, Verona, and FeltreЧwere represented in 579 at a Synod in Grado (ibid., 499).

8

9 Siena was already vacant from the end of the Gothic War. Bognetti has indicated that Lombard exercitales in Siena probably took the place of Italo-Roman cives. Similarly, this could have been the situation in Lucca, where apparently also a group of Ostrogoths had remained.

10

were too remote from the power of the King, and in those which were conquered late, disputed or after severe struggles.

 

Before the eyes of the Lombard Kings stood the model of the Amals. Alboin chose Verona as the royal seat and thereby gave notice that he intended to follow TheodoricЧ"Dietrich of Bern." In 584 Authari was elevated to the throne at Verona and there in 589 married Theodelinda, daughter of the Duke of Bavaria; through her mother she came from the old Lombard royal house of Wacho, the tradition of which she introduced to the renewed Lombard kingship. Authari assumed the nickname Flavius, which the Amals had borne, as had also the Visigothic Kings since Theudis and Athanagild. Thus was a program of govern ment imitated which promised to guarantee legal security also to the Italian population. The King was, of course, concerned strictly to main tain the separation between Lombards and Romans. At Easter 590 he issued a prohibition for Lombards to have their children baptized as Catholics.

 

That individual Lombards were converted to Catholicism in Authari's time is attested by Gregory the Great. The prohibition of Catholic baptism raises the suspicion that conversions were no longer limited to the smallest circles. The hopes of the Catholics of Venetia and Liguria may have been especially turned on Queen Theodelinda, who was like wise a Catholic and who, like them, did not recognize the Council of Constantinople of 553. The condemnation of the Three Chapters at this Council had led to schism in the provinces of Milan and Aquileia. The ecclesiastical alienation from Rome and the Imperial Church concealed from the start the danger of a political estrangement from the Empire. At first Narses had exorcised it by treating the Three Chapters with respect in North Italy, probably with an eye on the Franks, who also inclined to the schism and appeared still threatening even after their exclusion from the peninsula. The Emperor Maurice (582-602) adhered to this policy of Narses, but thereby encountered the opposi tion of the Popes, for whom naturally ecclesiastical unity had prefer ence. The Roman influence operated more powerfully on the Met ropolitan of Milan, a refugee at Genoa. The bishop-in-exile of Milan, Lawrence, secretly abandoned his opposition in 573, and his successor,

Constantius, chosen in 593, was orthodox. But the suffragans of Milan in the Lombard Kingdom did not go along with this change. They adopted a position against Constantius at Lombard Brescia. The Metropolitan-in-exile, Deusdedit, elevated to succeed Constantius c. 600, was recognized at Milan, but the union of the province was still quite far off. Como, which c. 606 obtained a new bishop in Agrippinus, even joined the clearly schismatic province of Aquileia. For Aquileia the situation was only altered when, after the change of the imperial religious policy under Phocas (602-610), an orthodox Metropolitan was also installed at Grado in 607. The suffragans of Lombard Venetia, in contrast to the bishops of Lombard Liguria, consummated the break and elected their own Metropolitan, who took his seat at Cormons. The old province of Venetia was thus split into a Lombard metropolitan unit of Aquileia, with its seat at Cormons, later Cividale (Forum Julii), and an imperial metropolitan unit of Grado.

 

The clever policy of Narses and of the Emperor Maurice delayed the estrangement of the schismatics from the Einpire but could not in the end prevent it, as the events of 607 show. The rapprochement of the schismatic Catholics in the Lombard Kingdom to the Lombard kingship became clear from the split of 593 in the province of Milan. It would hardly have been consummated so quickly if Queen Theodelinda her self had not been a Catholic and had found in her second husband, Agilulf, whom she had married after Authari's death, complete sym pathy for the new policy, probably first conceived by her, of a close collaboration with the Romans of North Italy. Agilulf remained person ally an Arian, but he transferred his residence from the "Gothic royal city" of Verona to imperial Milan, took Milanese Romans into his coun cil, encouraged the restoration of the Milanese churches, and finally in 603 even had his son Adalwald baptised as a schismatic CatholicЧ totally contrary to the baptismal decree of his predecessor Authari. The office of godfather of Adalwald was assumed by Abbot Secundus of Nano in the diocese of Trent, the long-time confidant of the Queen and historian of the court. The schismatic mission that began c. 600 among the Lombards of the Regnum took place under the aegis of Saint Euphemia of Chalcedon. Its route was reflected also in the dedication of churches to the martyrs of the Vai di Non (Nano) among the Lombard settlements of the west and to the Norican martyr Florian, whose cult the church of Aquileia spread farther, among the Lombard fortresses of the east. The royal couple were also able to interest in their aims the Abbot Columban, who had fled to Italy in 612. They made over to him the Church of Saint Peter of Bobbio as the basis of his mission in the diocese of Tortona and tried through him to gain influence over the Pope at the same time.

 

The first phase of Agilulf's reign coincided with the pontificate of Gregory the Great, the initiator of the mission to the Anglo-Saxons, who at his accession was confronted also with the question of the con version of the Lombards because of Authari's baptismal decree that had only just appeared. But Gregory saw in the liquidation of the Schism of the Three Chapters and in peace between the Lombard King and the Emperor the unalterable presuppositions for a corresponding Roman initiative. He staked all his energy on realizing these preliminaries, and in this sense especially tried to influence Queen Theodelinda. Complete success was denied him. After his death the Lombard royal pair even turned the tables by suggesting to Pope Boniface IV through Columban a new examination of the question raised by the Three Chapters.

 

Gregory's religious and peace policy, meanwhile, seemed to bear fruit when, after Agilulf's death, the imperial Exarch at Ravenna for his part adopted friendly relations with the Lombard court in view of the serious threat to the Empire from the Persians.9 Church union thereby again became urgent. The Queen-Mother and the young King Adaloald apparently let themselves be convinced that the Council of Chalcedon had not been jeopardized by the Second Council of Constantinople, and the exertions for the liquidation of the schism led c. 625 to the reunion of the metropolitan territories of Aquileia and Grado. But the negotiations had apparently been carried out over the heads of the Lombard magnates and the schismatic episcopate. Both groups united against the court. Adaloald was overthrown in 625, Arian kings again ascended the throne, the residence was transferred to national Lombard Pavia, and the schism flared up again.

 

The wheel of history, nevertheless, did not let itself be turned back. Hence there cannot be any word of an Arian reaction worthy of men tion, because the new ruler, Arioald, was also supported by the schisma tic Catholics. Add to this that his wife, Gundeperga, daughter of Agilulf and Theodelinda, continued the Catholic tradition at court and in fact also under the next King, Rothari, whom she married as her second husband. Gundeperga, however, belonged not to the schismatic but to the orthodox faction. Still more important was the fact that the abbey of Bobbio under Abbot Attala, after Columban's death and indeed before 625, had clearly taken a stand on the side of Roman Orthodoxy and thereby became the first center of an orthodox mission among the Lom-

 

9 After Agilulf's death (c. 616) the Visigothic King Sisebut sent a letter to the Lombard court, in which he called upon the young King and his mother to convert the Lombards to Catholicism. The backgrounds of this Visigothic initiative are still unclear.

bards. At the urging of its abbots, Bobbio was exempted from the jurisdiction of the local Bishop of Tortona by privileges of Popes Hon- orius I of 628 and Theodore I of 643 and directly subjected to Rome. The abbey still remained closely bound to the royal family, and its aspirations vis-a-vis Tortona were supported by Ariwald as well as Rothari and Gundeperga.

 

The actual state of peace between Regnum and Imperium under Adaloald and Arioald, which lasted into the first years of Rothari (636-652), facilitated the throwing of a bridge from the Lombard court by way of Bobbio to Rome. But then in 643 Rothari again moved to the offensive against the Imperium: relations between Old and New Rome had fundamentally changed because of the Monothelite quarrel that erupted in 640. This explains why the ecclesiastical cooperation be tween Rome and Pavia, established by means of Bobbio, was not inter rupted by Rothari's war. In Tuscany the bishopric of Siena was restoredЧthis could now happen only with the active collaboration of Rome, since Tuscany belonged to the Roman ecclesiastical province. The Catholic mission was reinvigorated by clerics and monks who had fled from the East of the Empire. It then spread to the Tuscan Lom bards, who had not yet been affected by the schismatic mission. Rothari also permitted the bishops of Lombard Tuscany to take part in the Lateran Synod of 649, at which the Metropolitan of Milan and his suffragan of Tortona immediately appeared. Perhaps after the conquest of Genoa by Rothari the Metropolitan of Milan returned to his old provincial capital during this King's reign; in this way, beside Bobbio and Siena, there had been created a third starting point for the Lombard mission of the Roman observance. However, this cannot be regarded as certain.

 

Hence, paradoxically, the Catholic orthodox mission in the Lombard Kingdom gained its first bases under the two Arian Kings Ariwald and Rothari. The representative of the dynastic and Catholic community at court had been Queen Gundeperga. After Rothari's death and the brief reign of his son Rodoald, in 653, when the crisis between Emperor and Pope had reached its climax, a cousin of the Queen was made ruler of the Lombards: Aripert I, a nephew of Theodelinda. Aripert (652-661) was an orthodox Catholic. He annulled the position of Arianism as the State religion and close to the older parish church of Saint John the Baptist at Monza he founded Saint Savior at Pavia.10 But he did not exploit the political opportunities present in the conflict between Em peror and Pope; hence he did not fulfill the hopes which the Lombards

 

10 Saint Savior was not the first Catholic royal church at Pavia; Queen Gundeperga had already had a Church of Saint John built there.

 

S8U had probably placed in him. Thus, after Aripert's death, Duke Grimoald of Benevento was able to use a contest over the throne be tween the King's sons, Perctarit and Godepert, to gain the crown for himself with the aid of an Arian group, which probably supported Godepert.

 

It is significant that the Arian Lombards of the Regnum, from whom had probably come the initiative for the coup d'etat, no longer felt strong enough to raise a king from their own ranks but turned to the Duke of Benevento. The Beneventan Lombards, just as those of Spoleto, had not been touched by the Catholic mission of North Italy, and the great questions of the Regnum had remained foreign to them. Their Arianism bore the marks of a strong, unreflecting popular faith, which did not exclude pagan and Catholic elements. Grimoald (662-671) was de voted to the Archangel Michael, whose sanctuary lay on Monte Gar- gano in the Duchy of Benevento. He ascribed to the Archangel a vic tory over the Byzantines and spread his cult to Pavia, where his Catholic followers took it up. Michael pushed the older cult of John the Baptist into the background and became patron of the kingdom and nation of the LombardsЧstrange to say, through the initiative of an Arian ruler, who had even allied with the Arabs against the Emperor.

 

Grimoald's reign was basically an anachronism, which ran counter to an historical development introduced long before. Perhaps the King in his last years even returned to the course of his predecessors. When he died, the Lombards called back Perctarit.

 

Under Perctarit (661/671-688) and his son Cunincpert (678/688- 700), made cornier as early as 678, decisions finally matured which had been so long in preparation. Bishop Mansuetus of Milan (672-681) was the first Metropolitan of LiguriaЧof Lombard "Neustria"Чwho can be proved to have resided again in the old capital of Northwest Italy. King, Pope and Metropolitan took in hand the reorganization of the ecclesias tical province. Anastasius, the last Arian Bishop of Pavia, converted to Catholicism. The days of the schism were numbered in the province of Milan. Ecclesiastical union was apparently achieved without friction, since the common position in the Monothelite question made the old controversy over the Three Chapters pointless. When the Emperor Constantine IV yielded in the Monothelite quarrel, and Pope Agatho in 679 called upon the national churches of the West for a great demon stration of faith, a Synod of the province of Milan again met for the first time and placed itself behind the Pope. The peace of the Church, which the Sixth Ecumenical Council ratified at Constantinople in 680-81, also brought about the first official conclusion of peace between the Lombards and the Emperor. On this occasion the obligation of loyalty to the res publica and the Emperor, which the Roman suffragans assumed in

X I1U VLTI 1111 V.1 < AЂ, _

 

their oath of obedience to the Pope as their Metropolitan, was changed for the Roman suffragans in the Lombard Kingdom into the obligation to work for the maintenance of peace between the res publica, that is, the Imperium, and the gens Langobardorum.

 

The acts of the Synod of Milan were drawn up by the deacon Da- mian, who soon after, following the death of Anastasius, who had con verted to Catholicism, was made Bishop of Pavia and missionary Bishop for the Lombards. Under Damian the royal city of Pavia became the real center in the last phase of the Lombard mission under Roman auspices, and as such, in an analogy to Bobbio, was withdrawn from the ecclesias tical province of Milan and directly subordinated to Rome. Damian had studied in Greece and was probably himself Greek, as indeed his helpers, according to the testimony of their names and those of the patrons of the mission stations, were mostly also Greek or orientals and were probably sent to Damian directly from Rome. Thus there existed between the last phase of the Lombard mission and the last phase of the Anglo-Saxon mission under Theodore of Tarsus and Hadrian of Naples a "parallelismo cronologico e metodico." The wave of immigration from Greece, the East, and Africa to Italy, which the Monothelite con troversy and the Arab invasion had produced, worked to the advantage of the conversion of the Germans. Among the Lombards of North Italy, the cult of Donatus enables one to infer also an impact from Tuscany (Arezzo).

 

At the same time the Roman-oriental mission made progress also in the sphere of Spoleto andЧin keeping with the reconciliation of the royal family with the dukes of BeneventoЧin Lombard Lower Italy. Duke Romuald I of Benevento (662-687) was converted by Saint Bar- batus. Near his residence arose a church of Saint Peter, and the bishop rics of Benevento and Siponto were reestablished. Not Benevento, but Lombard "Austria," the province of Aquileia, the chief bastion of the schismatics, was the last support of the opposition to the Catholic monarchyЧan opposition, it is true, in which Arianism no longer played any role, and political motives were at least a match for ecclesiastical ones. Spokesman of the rebels was Duke Alahis of Trent, to whom

Perctarit had had to yield also the Duchy of Brescia. Alahis revolted at the change on the throne in 688. Battle occurred on the Campus Coro nate on the Adda, and in it the Archangel Michael appeared as patron of the Regnum. Alahis was defeated. Cunincpert had a church dedicated to Saint George built on the battlefield, for he was venerated at Byzantium as the patron of the army. A decade later a Lombard Council at Pavia sealed the return of the last schismatics of the province of Aquileia to Orthodoxy. The King sent the acts of the Synod of 698-99 to the Pope for confirmation. The separation of the ecclesiastical provinces of Aquileia and Grado, long ago hardened by the political boundaries between Regnum and Imperium, continued.

 

At Cunincpert's death the development begun under Agilulf and Theodelinda was essentially complete, but had been again and again thwarted not least by political vicissitudes. True, it must be taken into account that the political background was especially prominent in his torical retrospect. For the jejune tradition hardly lets one perceive the personal motives of the evangelizers and the converts, the individual effort and the methods of the missionaries. As elsewhere in history, here too one must avoid seeing in the result only the consequence of a necessary development. Certainly the weight of the Catholic Roman tradition was great in Italy, and Arianism was very much weaker among the Lombard people than among the Goths. However, the frequent ups and downs, the seemingly strangely chaotic course of Lombard mission history in comparison to the other German peoples, shows that the religious confrontation cannot be reduced to a scheme.

 

The Catholic monarchy gained stature among the Lombards only under King Liutprand (712-744) in consequence of a dynastic crisis, which again suspended the development for a full decade. However, essential outlines had already been fixed under Perctarit and Cunincpert. The Synod of Pavia can be compared, mutatis mutandis, with the national Council of Toledo of 589- It was convoked by the King and, in keeping with the imperial model, met in the hall of the royal palace. Union was solemnly sworn in the Church of Saint Michael, patron of the Kingdom. Since Perctarit or Cunincpert the bishops of Pavia were exempt and seem in the eighth century to have occupied a mediating position between Rome and the Regnum. King Liutprand founded the court chapel near the Church of Saint Saviour and built

 

1 X LUL -

 

Saint Peter in Caelo Aureo. Like the Frankish and Visigothic Kings, he exerted influence on the nomination to bishoprics and in his capitularies gave validity to ecclesiastical principles, once even expressly by appeal to the Pope as caput ecclesiarum Dei et sacerdotum [in omni mundo\17 Many boundary disputes between sees of the Regnum during the ecclesiastical reorganization of the Regnum were carried to his forum. The episcopate was even bound to military service in the late period of the Regnum.18

 

Meanwhile, Pavia, in contrast to Toledo, did not achieve primatial status, and in the Lombard Kingdom, also in contrast to Visigothic Spain, no national councils can be proved. The ancient metropolitan organization in ItalyЧdiffering from that in Gaul and SpainЧthwarted the full construction of the national Church. For only two ecclesiastical metropolisesЧMilan and Aquileia (Cividale)Чlay within the Regnum. The Lombard sees of Aemilia belonged to Ravenna; those of Tuscany, Spoleto, and Benevento, to the ecclesiastical province of Rome.

 

The Visigothic Kings had "wedded" Spain, as Isidore of Seville said. The conversion of the Lombards and the liquidation of the schism seemed to offer the Lombard Kings the possibility of making Italy their "bride." As legend has it, Authari is said to have marked the frontier of the Lombard Kingdom on the shore of Reggio di Calabria with his spear. In the inscription of a Crown donated by him Agilulf was designated as rex totius Italiae.zl Cunincpert's epitaph at Saint Savior of Pavia ended with the verses: Quem dominum Italiae patrem atque pastorem / Inde flebile maritum iam viduata gemet. After the reconstruction of the Regnum Liutprand set himself the goal of making his sovereignty really effective over Spoleto and Benevento and of including the Exarchate of Ravenna with the Pentapolis in the Kingdom of the a Deo dilecta et catholica gens Langobardorum. In regard to Rome he was satisfied with a defensio. But these ideas found no echo in Imperial Italy. The frontiers between Regnum and Imperium were too powerfully consolidated in minds, and Rome clung to the political status quo, although precisely at that time Iconoclasm had led to a new ecclesiastical conflict with the Emperor. The political conflict between Pope and King became thereby inevitable. The Popes had long clung to the Late Roman idea of the Empire, in which the welfare of the Universal Church was inextricably bound with that of the Imperium; now they felt themselves ever more clearly to be the protectors of Imperial Italy, indeed in a certain way even as the guarantors of the autonomy of Spoleto and Benevento. The sworn obligation of working for peace between Imperium and Regnum, which the Lombard suffragans of Rome undertook at their ordination, was reinterpreted as early as 740 as the obligation to defend the papal status quo policy with the Lombard King: at the very time when the first papal appeal went out to the Franks. In this way was created a conflict of conscience for the Roman suffragans in the Lombard Kingdom and, in addition, for all viri devoti in the clerical and lay states. The Lombard Kings tried for a while to settle the conflict only on the political plane. Even Aistulf in a politically critical situation carefully spared the ecclesiastical rights of Rome. Only Desiderius in 769 opposed Rome on the field of canon law, when he sought to withdraw the parts of Istria occupied by the Lombards from the obedience of Grado and had a layman of his choice uncanonically elevated to the metropolitan see of Ravenna. Five years later came the decision: the Regnum Langobardorum was wrecked in its conflict with Rome.

 

CHAPTER 3 7

 

The Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons and the Beginnings of the Anglo-Saxon Church

The age of the migrations meant for Britain a very much deeper turning point than for Gaul, Italy, and Spain. The German tribes of the "Anglo-Saxons"ЧAngles, Saxons, Jutes, and other national frag mentsЧoccupied the most permanently romanized eastern prov inces with the metropolises of London and York and thereby hastened the process of deromanization among the Britons who had withdrawn to the West and were more and more isolated from the continent. Hence the Celtic language and culture again filtered through among the old established population, even if the Britons clung to the Christian faith and to the Latin language in the liturgy; in fact for a long time still they regarded themselves as members of Romania. In their political and social structure the Britons and Anglo-Saxons did not differ substan tially from one another. Both were, like the Picts of Scotland, organized in petty kingdoms, among which, it is true, one or the other occupied a position of hegemony. But no symbiosis of the two peoples took place. Especially in the south of the island there persisted a hostile confronta tion, which did not allow a missionary impulse to appear among the Britons.

 

For the first Christian influences became noticeable among the Anglo-Saxons not from the British neighboring districts but from Gaul. Aethelbert of Kent, who as Bretwalda, "ruler of Britain," occupied a position of hegemony south of the Humber, before 589 married a Merovingian Princess, Bertha, daughter of King Charibert I of Paris (561-67). In her entourage came the Frankish Bishop Liuthard to the court of Canterbury. For the Queen's worship a cemeterial basilica of Roman Canterbury was furnished and presumably then dedicated in honor of Saint Martin of Tours. A treasure-find in this church indicates relations with the Garonne. Apparently, through the King's Frankish marriage, connections had been established with Charibert's territory between the Lower Loire and the GaronneЧNantes, Tours, Poitiers, Bordeaux. To what extent older ecclesiastical relations between Gaul and Britain were revived from the fifth century is uncertain. However, the Merovingian Church could hardly develop a stronger missionary activity on the other side of the Channel at the end of the sixth century, since it was still entirely preoccupied with the ecclesiastical restoration within the Merovingian Kingdom.

 

The real initiative for the Anglo-Saxon mission proceeded from Greg ory the Great. The universal mission mandate given by Christ had never entirely fallen into oblivion in the Roman Church. Leo the Great had still seen it in a connection with a providential mission of the Roman Empire: disposito namque divinitus operi congruebat, ut multa regna uno confoederarentur imperio, et cito pernios haberet populos praedicatio generalis, quos unius teneret regimen civitatis. Gregory the Great was in this tradi tion, but he lived in a changed world. Under Augustine's influence he had again established the biblical eschatological understanding of the universal mission to pagans and in so doing had progressed from the "basic affirmation of the Church's universal missionary commission"Ђ) the "planning and organizing of a missionary enterprise outside the boundaries of the Roman Empire."4

 

If the intellectual background of the great Pope's initiative, of the greatest importance for the future of the West, was to some extent judicious, so too the particular circumstances by which his interest was directed precisely to the Anglo-Saxons still remain obscure. The ques tion how Britain, removed from the Roman ecumene for a century and a half, came again into Rome's line of vision is answered tersely but in a simplistic manner, by the Northumbrian Vita Gregorii and the North umbrian legends transmitted by Bede. The external beauty of Anglo- Saxon slaves, which struck Gregory on a visit to the Forum, made him recognize that the Angles were called to be coheirs of the angels.5 The impressive narration was probably based on the fact that in 595 Gregory gave the commission to buy up Anglo-Saxon slaves in Gaul, that is, probably in Marseille, in order to have them educated in the Christian faith with a view to a future mission activity in their homeland, even if it is not impossible that Anglo-Saxon slaves also came to the Roman market. As testimony for Northumbrian ideas of the beginnings of the mission, the narrative is worthwhile, but as a historical report it encoun ters critical doubts.

 

access to the peoples whom the rule of the one City held under its control" (Sermo 82, in natali Apostolorum Petri et Pauli, PL 54, 423).

 

4 W. H. Fritze, Universalis gentium confessio, 113. Fritze rightly objects to the view represented especially in English research that Gregory's mission work must be under stood from Roman imperial presuppositions (e.g., cf. M. Deanesly, Pre-Conquest En gland, 45, and J. Godfrey, The Church in Anglo-Saxon England, 69). That meanwhile the notion of the Imperial Church was not dead to Gregory can hardly be denied in view of every acknowledgement of his specific achievementЧthe renewal of the biblical "theonomous" mission idea. It was known to the Pope that the Britain occupied by the Anglo-Saxons had once belonged to the Empire, and his plan of ecclesiastical organiza tion followed the older Roman organization. Gregory's inner connection with the Em pire proceeds from other witnesses, and the restoration of imperial rule in the West lay for contemporaries at least in the realm of the possible (J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, op. cit. 522). Thus it seems to me that the distance between Leo the Great and Gregory is not so great as Fritze assumes.

5

6 ". . . Rursus ergo interrogavit, quod esset vocabulum gentis illius. Responsum est, quod Angli vocarentur. At ille: 'Bene,' inquit, 'nam et angelicam habent faciem, et tales angelorum in caelis decet esse coheredes. Quod habet nomen ista provincia de qua isti sunt adlati?' Responsum est, quod Deiri vocarentur idem provinciales. At ille: 'Bene,' inquit, 'Deiri; de ira eruti et ad misericordiam Christi vocati. Rex provincia illius, quomodo appellatur?' Responsum est quod Aelli diceretur. At ille adludens ad nomen aid: 'Alleluia, laudem Dei Creatoris illis in partibus oportet cantari!' " (Hist, eccl., II, 1).

7

The story told by Bede is said to have occurred in the time of Pope Benedict I (575-79)- A first reference to Britain is found in Gregory's Moralia, which was composed between 585 and 595. The question whether as early as 585 Gregory had conceived the plan of the mission and then intended to implement it personallyЧfive years before his elevation to the papacyЧis controverted. However, the mission had certainly been prepared long in advance, as the already mentioned mandate to buy Anglo-Saxon slaves of 10 September 595 shows. The recruiting of the first missionaries caused difficulties, for the Roman diocesan clergy evidently declined. Finally in the late spring of 596 Gregory sent the Prior Augustine with a group of monks from the monastery of Sant'Andrea al Monte Celio, which he himself had founded. The Roman missionaries landed in the spring of 597 on the island of Thanet, belonging to the Kingdom of Kent.

 

Gregory had not selected Kent as the starting point of the mission by accident. He must have been informed, at least in broad outline, about the possibilities of a missionary activity at the court of Canterbury. Nevertheless, the journey to the remote pagan country seemed at least to those involved as a dangerous adventure: they would have very much liked to have turned back soon after their departure. Gregory did not give in, but sent to his envoys letters of recommendation to the Papal Vicar of Aries, the bishops of Aix-en-Provence, Vienne, and Autun, the Abbot of Lerins, the Frankish Queen Brunhildis and her grandsons, Theodoric II of Frankish Burgundy (Chalon-sur-Saone) and Theodebert II of Austrasia (Metz). With regard to the Queen, the Pope motivated his missionary embassy thus: he had learned that the Angles wished to become Christians but no bishop of the neighborhood under took to care for them. From this one could infer an initiative from Kent. But this was contradicted by, among other things, the distrust with which, according to Bede, the royal house of Kent first displayed toward the Roman missionaries. The Christian Franks in Kent seem not to have overbusied themselves in thirty years in preparing the King for Saint Augustine.

The first difficulties were, however, soon overcome, and the mission work made good progress. Aid came from the Merovingian Kingdom by means of Bishop Syagrius of Autun, who was close to Queen Brunhildis. In July 598 Gregory could report to the Patriarch of Alexandria great successes, which were climaxed by the conversion of King Aethelbert, baptized probably at Easter 601. Augustine, who had been ordained a bishop in the Frankish Kingdom, founded, with the King's assistance, Christ-Church, the Cathedral of Canterbury, and near the basilica of Saint Martin a monastery, whose Church of Saint Austin was to receive the tombs of the bishops and of the royal family of Kent. The episcopal church obtained the patronage of the Saviour in imitation of the Roman cathedral at the Lateran, while the monastic church was dedicated in honor of the Princes of the Apostles.

 

The newly established Anglo-Saxon Church was, in accord with Greg ory's wish, to be independent of the Gallic Church and the Papal Vicar of Aries, but was to be united with the Celtic British churches of the island. Augustine was to prepare for the founding of two ecclesiastical provinces with London and York as metropolises for twelve sees each, which were to be brought to completion after his death. As head of all the churches of Britain, he received the pallium in 601 with the permis sion to take his seat in London.

 

Gregory's plan of organization was based on the older Roman division of BritainЧapparently Diocletian's more recent arrangement, whereby Britain was divided into five provinces, was no longer known at Rome. However, the plan of organization corresponded neither to the political circumstances of the early seventh century nor to the status of the mission. London belonged to the Kingdom of Essex, whose ruler was subordinate to the Bretwalda of Canterbury and, besides, was still a pagan in 601. Under these circumstances, Augustine's removal to the ancient Romano-British metropolis was impracticable, and the union of the Anglo-Saxons with the British churches foundered on the difference of ecclesiastical usages, on the national antipathy of the peoples, and on Augustine's imperious manner.

The proclamation of the faith could develop only on the basis of the existing situation, and thus for the time being the mission extended only to the kingdoms which were closely connected with KentЧto Essex and East Anglia (Norfolk and Suffolk). Augustine and his companions gained a firmer footing in Essex, where a nephew of King Aethelbert ruled. Circa 604 Rochester was founded as a second see in Kent, with its Cathedral of Saint Andrew, and in Essex the bishopric of London, with the Cathedral of Saint Paul near the Roman forum. As little pressure for the acceptance of Christianity was exercised there as in Kent: Didkerat enim [rex] a doctoribus auctoribusque suae salutis servitium Christi volun- tarium, non coactitium esse debere.1 Gregory had instructed the mis sionaries not to destroy pagan temples but to turn them into churches and to give pagan feasts a Christian content: ut dum eis aliqua exterius gaudia reservantur, ad interiora gaudia consentire facilius valeant. Nam duris mentibus simul omnia abscidere impossibile esse non dubium est, quia et is, qui summum locum ascendere nititur, gradibus vel passibus, non autem saltibus elevatur.%

 

Augustine's mission, geared to individual conversion, naturally did not exclude the idea that the conversion of outstanding princes should also involve the wholesale conversion of their retinues and clients, in which on occasion pressure may have been resorted to. Even so, at Augustine's death between 604 and 609 not even all the members of the royal families of Kent and Essex had become Christians. And so after the death of King Aethelbert in 616 and of his nephew of Essex there could ensue a pagan reaction, which, it is true, produced only a temporary reverse in Kent, but in Essex and East Anglia it destroyed the first buds of Christianity. On the other hand, a decade later there opened up great prospects for the mission in northern England. King Edwin of Deira (Yorkshire), who also ruled Bernicia (Northumbria) and the Lindissi (Lindsey) and acquired the hegemony in Anglo-Saxon terri tory, in 625 married a daughter of Aethelbert of Kent. To northern England with the Queen went Paulinus, one of the missionaries from Kent, who was made a bishop. Edwin came into conflict with the West Saxons and in 626 held out the prospect of his conversion in the event of his victory. After the fortunate outcome of the battle he presented to the Witenagemot, that is, the meeting of the magnates of his kingdom, the question of whether Christianity should be accepted. The Witenagemot decided for collective conversion. The King had himself baptized at Easter 627.

 

Bede's report on the discussion at the Witenagemot is a significant monument from the history of the German mission, even if it cannot rank as a contemporary testimony in the strict sense. It shows that not only the God promising victory and success made an impression, but also the problem of the meaning and end of human life played a role.

"Talis," inquiens \unus optimatum\ "mibi videtur, rex, vita hominum praesens in terris, ad conparationem eius, quod nobis incertum est, temporis: quale cum te residente ad caenam cum ducibus ac ministris tuis tempore brumali, accenso quidem foco in medio, et calido effecto caenaculo, furentibus autem foris per omnia turbinibus hiemalium pluviarum vel nivium, adveniens unus passerum domum citissime per- volaverit; qui per unum ostium ingrediens, mox per aliud exierit. Ipso quidem tempore, quo intus est, hiemis tempestate non tangitur, sed tamen parvissimo spatio serenitatis ad momentum excurso, mox de hieme in hiemem regrediens, tuis oculis elabitur. Ita baec hominum vita ad modicum apparet; quid autem sequatur, penitus ignoramus. Unde si haec nova doctrina certius aliquid attulit, merito esse sequenda vid- etur."10

 

The second ecclesiastical province of York, planned by Gregory, seems to have become a reality after the publicly decided conversion of the Angles north of the Humber. Paulinus took his seat at York, where, soon after the baptism of King Edwin, there began the construction of a stone cathedral, which replaced the one erected before the King's bap tism and the wooden church dedicated in honor of Saint Peter. Popes Boniface V (619-625) and Honorius I (625-638) maintained contact also with the Northumbrian mission. The connection between Rome and the ultimi habitatores mundi was consolidated, and Honorius even brought it about in these years (629-632) that South Ireland accepted the Roman calculation of Easter.11 But the precarious political stability of Britain again led to a severe setback. In 632 King Edwin perished at Hatfield in a battle against Penda of Mercia and the British King Caed- walla of Gwynedd. The Northumbrian mission collapsed. When Hono rius I sent the pallium for Paulinus of York, the latter was in flight to Kent with the Queen and her children. Penda, ruler of the central English Kingdom of MerciaЧthe "March Kingdom" of the Angles

 

10 "The present life of men on earth, O King," said one of the magnates, "seems to me in comparison to the time which is unknown to us to be of this sort: as when a sparrow hurries through your house in flight, where you are sitting down during the winter with your dukes and servants for a meal around the hearth-fire in warm comfortЧbut outside the winter rain and snowstorms rage everywhere. The sparrow flies through one door and at once goes out again through another. So long as it is inside, it is untouched by the fury of the winter. But in an instant the tiny space of calm unconcern has been traversed and it is already withdrawn from your eyes, returning from winter into winter. Thus seems the life of men for a short while; but what may follow we do not know. Hence if this new teaching brings more certainty, it should be properly followed." (Hist. eccl. II, 13).

 

" J. Ryan, The Early Irish Church and the See of Peter, 568-569-

 

. i ^ 9.1Ђ,

 

THE LATUM LHUKLH 1JN IKAJNM1IUIN 1U IJrtt HAKLi M1U1JLE AUDJ

 

against the BritonsЧwas until his death in 654 the "central figure of Anglo-Saxon history." He was and remained a pagan.

 

Paulinus ended his life as Bishop of Rochester (635-644). Canter bury and Rochester, the two Kentish sees, had weathered the storm, and in 624 the precedence of Canterbury in the Roman mission sphere was sanctioned with the sending of the pallium by Pope Boniface V. But Canterbury's mission area shrank considerably in the following period. Rome was distant and offered little help. In place of Roman support there came with the approval of the Popes support from the Merovin gian national Church of Gaul, which had already offered shelter to the refugees of the first pagan reaction, Bishops Mellitus of London and Justus of Rochester.

 

South of the Humber there were in the time of Penda of Mercia (632-654) only two kingdoms which could be designated as Christian: Kent and East Anglia. In addition to them, Wessex must be mentioned as a third kingdom, but at that time it was only beginning to open itself to the new teaching. Christian influences had first obtained recogni tion in East Anglia by way of Kent (Canterbury) and then by way of Deira (York). But the nova doctrina was only established under King Sigebert (630-35), who was baptized in Gaul and on his accession to the throne brought in the Frankish Burgundian Bishop Felix. Felix proba bly came from the circle of Luxeuil monasticism; his connections indi cate especially Meaux and the monastery of Faremoutiers, which very early became a center of attraction for Anglo-Saxon princesses and ladies of the Anglo-Saxon nobility. The Frankish Burgundian bishop, whose missionary activity was authorized by Canterbury, founded the see of Dunwich in the south of the East Anglian Regnum (Suffolk). In the north of the country (Norfolk) the Irish mission obtained a foothold, still under Sigebert, through Abbot Furseus at Cnobheresburg near Yarmouth. The two East Anglian missionary groups were apparently in friendly relations. They were united in a common work, and the differ ence of observances was at least moderated by the Irish influence on the Luxeuil circle.

From c. 633 the Gaul (?) Birinus worked independently of Canter bury in Wessex, which up to then had not been included in the mission. Birinus had received permission to preach to pagans from Pope Ho- norius I and had been ordained a bishop by the exiled Metropolitan Asterius of Milan. In 636 he baptized the King of Wessex, Cynegils, and took his seat at Dorchester, at that time the center of the kingdom. His successor was the Frank Agilbert (c. 650-660), who belonged to the circle of the founders of the monastery of Jouarre in the diocese of Meaux, had studied in South Ireland, and had been ordained a mission ary bishop in the Merovingian Kingdom. In 660 Agilbert fell out of favor because he was not sufficiently fluent in the Saxon tongue.16 His successor, Wini, also ordained in Gaul, transferred the episcopal see c. 663 to the new chief residence, Winchester, but he could not long maintain himself. He was followed by Agilbert's nephew Hlothere (Clothar), at the desire of the West Saxon King and with the approval of the Archbishop of Canterbury,17 whose precedence was thereby ac knowledged also in Wessex. Of course, there can be no question of a direction of the mission by the metropolitans at Canterbury either in East Anglia or in Wessex. Deusdedit (654-663), the first Anglo-Saxon on the archiepiscopal cathedra, was de facto restricted to Kent in his activity.

 

especially strongly represented. Chelles, however, as a convent of nuns was founded by Queen Bathildis only after the death of Bishop Felix in 647. Hence direct connections could have existed only between Felix and Faremoutiers. Lagny (diocese of Meaux) was founded by Furseus after his move to the Frankish Kingdom, at the earliest in 640 and probably in 644-45, with the help of the Neustro-Burgundian Mayor Erchinoald. The latter transferred the remains of Furseus (d. 650) to Peronne, when he founded the monastery, whose direction he gave to Furseus's brother, Foilan, who had settled in the Merovingian Kingdom in 650 (P. Grosjean, "Notes d'hagiographie celtique," 38: AnnBoll 75 [1957], 392ff.) Direct relations could again have existed only between Lagny and Bishop Felix. The possibility exists that Felix, through his Merovingian contacts, supported Furseus's monastic foundation. The circumstances, then, indicate closer relations with the diocese of Meaux. On both East Anglian missionary groups, cf. also Deanesly, Pre-Conquest Church 76, 8 Iff.

 

16 Agilbert did not return finally to the Merovingian Kingdom until after the North umbrian Synod of Whitby (664); he became Bishop of Paris c. 667 and died between 680 and 691. He was buried at Jouarre, and his sarcophagus is preserved. The abbey of Jouarre was founded by Ado, a brother of the great Bishop Audoin of Rouen, and early transformed into a double monastery (before 650, perhaps as early as 642). The first Abbess, Theudechildis, was a sister of Agilbert. The nuns seem to have come from Faremoutiers, only about twenty kilometers away. Jouarre itself supplied the first nuns for the royal monastery of Chelles and from Ebroin's proprietary monastery of Notre- Dame de Soissons. Saint Osanna, buried at Jouarre, is said to have been a sister of the Northumbrian KingOsred (705-716). Cf. J. Guerout, "Les origines et le premier siecle de l'abbaye," L'abbaye royale Notre-Dame de Jouarre (Paris 1961), 1-67.

17

18 Wallace-Hadrill, op. cit., 530.

19

The great turning point of the mission came from the north. The Angles north of the Humber had been again united after the defeat of Hatfield by the brothers Oswald (633-641) and Oswiu (641-670) of the royal family of Bernicia. In 641 Oswald fell in the struggle against Penda of Mercia, but in 654 in the battle of Winwood Oswiu was able to break Mercia's supremacy and restore the Northumbrian hegemony.

 

During the reign of Edwin of Deira (616-632) the two brothers had lived in exile among the Irish and Picts of Caledonia and there they had become Christians of the Irish observance. In 634, Oswald had the Irish Abbot Aidan come from Iona; with the King's help, Aidan founded the monastery of Lindisfarne and became the abbot-bishop there. Aidan was followed by Finnan (651-661) and Colman (661-64). After Os- wiu's victory of 654, Finnan baptized Penda's son Peada, who married a daughter of Oswiu, and King Sigebert of Essex, a "friend" of the Northumbrian ruler. The Irish Diuma was sent to Mercia as missionary bishop, and his Anglo-Saxon companion Cedd was soon after sent to Essex.

 

Thus Irish influence grew in England in the second third of the seventh century. On the other hand, Roman and continental influences made themselves apparent even in Irish-oriented Northumbria by way of Essex and Kent. The mission circles overlapped in wide areas of the Anglo-Saxon world, and conflicts could not be avoided. Into the center of the controversies moved the differences in regard to determining the date of Easter and hence also of Lent, which greatly aggravated daily life in intimate circles. At the Northumbrian court King Oswiu celebrated Easter according to the Irish calendar; the Queen, raised in Kent, ac cording to the Roman calendar. The disadvantages which ensued called peremptorily for a clarification, and so in 664 the King summoned a Synod to Whitby.

 

In the Kentish beginnings of the mission, the opposition between the Roman-continental and the Celtic-insular ecclesiastical systems, strengthened by the hostility between Anglo-Saxons and Britons, had occasionally assumed sharp forms. At Whitby a different climate pre vailed. Roman influences had vindicated themselves in the Irish Church: the South Irish had accepted the Roman calculation of Easter a generation earlier. Irish churchmen did not question apostolicity of faith as the basis of ecclesiastical unity, they went as pilgrims to Gaul and Rome, and they also encouraged their pupils to go. Hence the decision of Whitby could hardly be in doubt. The Frankish Bishop Agilbert of Wessex and his Anglo-Saxon pupil, Abbot Wilfrid of Ripon, defended the Roman standpoint against Colman of Lindisfarne. When Wilfrid appealed to the authority of Peter and in this connection quoted Matthew 16:18, the King intervened:

 

"Verene, Colmane, haec illi Petro dicta sunt a Domino?" Qui ait: "Were, rex." Ait ille: "Habetis," inquit, "vos proferre aliquid tantae potestatis vestro Columbano datum?" At illi ait: "Nihil." Rursum rex: "Sic ut- rique vestrum," inquit, "in hoc sine ulla controversia consentiunt, quod haec principaliter Petro dicta, et ei claves regni caelorum sint data a Domino?" Responderunt: "Etiam" utrique. At ille ita conclusit: "Et ego vobis dico, quia hie est ostiarius ille, cui ego contradicere nolo; sed, in quantum novi vel valeo, huius cupio in omnibus oboedire statutis; ne forte, me adveniente ad fores regni caelorum, non sit qui reserat, averso iUo, qui claves tenere probatur,"

 

In this way the dispute was settled in favor of the Roman group. Colman abandoned Northumbria with a group of intransigents, but other Irish remained. The great abbatial bishopric of Lindisfarne was divided into the sees of Ripon and York.

 

No less important than the Synod of Whitby was the change of epis copacy which soon after occurred at Canterbury. When the Anglo- Saxon candidate chosen by the Kings of Kent and Northumbria died after his arrival at Rome, Pope Vitalian, after a painstaking selection, elevated the Greek Theodore of Tarsus. Theodore went to Kent in 669, accompanied by the Neapolitan Abbot Hadrian, an African by birth. During his long episcopate (669-690), Theodore, who was the first Bishop of Canterbury recognized in the entire English Church, gave shape to this Church. Seven bishoprics, among them two for Kent (Canterbury and Rochester), and one each for the kingdoms of North umbria (York), East Anglia (Dunwich), Mercia (Lichfield), Essex (Lon don), and Wessex (Winchester), were reorganized. New sees were erected in the relatively large kingdoms of Northumbria (Lindisfarne, Hexham) and Mercia (Lindsey, Worcester, Hereford). After the conver sion of the South Saxons by Wilfrid (680-85), the see of Selsey arose in Sussex. After Theodore's death the number of Anglo-Saxon bishoprics was increased by only a few new foundations in Northumbria (Whithorn), East Anglia (Elmham), Mercia (Leicester, Dorchester,) and Wessex (Sherborne).

 

Under the direction of the Archbishop of Canterbury, England be came an ecclesiastical unity long before it constituted a political unity. The English Church assembled in provincial synods, which were at the same time "national synods." Since, as a consequence of the political pluralism, the councils could not be dated by regnal years, the episco pate adopted the era of the Incarnation, which soon began from England its triumphal procession through the West. The calculation of Easter was defined, and stabilitas loci was stipulated for monks, the clergy, and the episcopate. However, Theodore of Tarsus adopted basic elements of the Irish practice of penance, and for the first time he prescribed annual confession for all. A Poenitentiale, which was based on Theodore's in structions and was widely disseminated under his name, "acted so that the improved and individual penitential system of auricular confession became the common property of the Universal Church, with graduated expiatory acts even for secret sins."20 On the other hand, the Roman influence spread from England to the Celts of the British Isles. In 704 and 716 the Northern Irish of Bangor and the Picts adopted the Roman calculation of Easter. Only the Celts of Wales held fast to Columba's old usage until 768.21

 

For two generations England remained under the ecclesiastical direc tion of Canterbury. Then when the Bishop of York received the pallium in 735, Northumbria separated itself from the ecclesiastical province that had embraced all England. The bisection was not only in accord with the plan of Pope Gregory but also with the special development of the northern Anglo-Saxon Kingdom. And thus it remained in the fu ture. The ecclesiastical province of Lichfield (788-803), established in the eighth century by the Mercian overlords of the South, had no per manence. Also, the attempt of the King of Mercia to transfer the ecclesiastical metropolis of southern England from Canterbury to Lon don was unsuccessful, although in this case one could appeal to Gregory the Great. But the tradition of the sedes of Augustine and Theodore of Tarsus already was too strong.

 

20 T. Schieffer, op. cit., 76. Archbishop Theodore had no prejudices against the Irish. He elevated three pupils of Irish schools to be bishops (Deanesly, Pre-Conquest Church, 102; on his personality, ibid., 104-107).

21

22 Deanesly, ibid., 89ff.

23

[V/W de gente Anglorum ] qui maxime familiores apostolicae sedi semper exis- tunt, said a source of the ninth century about the Anglo-Saxons. In keeping with its origin and its character as an early medieval missionary Church, the Church of England was "more Roman" than those of the Frankish, Gothic, and Lombard kingdoms, which in their roots went back to antiquity and had a richer inheritance. The cult of Saint Peter was firmly anchored in all the German-Roman churches, but it ac quired a special intensity in England.

 

Saint Peter clearly became the national saint, to whom monas teries and churches . . . were dedicated in great numbers. The most obvious and best known characteristic of this religious devo tion was the stream of Anglo-Saxon pilgrims to the thresholds of the Apostles . . . many a one closed his earthly life in Rome, such as two Kings . . . Caedwalla (d. 689) and Ine of Wessex (d. 726).

 

In 679 the Anglo-Saxon Church met at Hatfield at the request of the Pope in order to station itself behind Rome in the Monothelite ques tion. The attachment to Rome also received juridical forms in England. Here the right of the metropolitan was first connected by Gregory with the reception of the pallium, a vestment consisting of a strip of white wool, which the Popes had previously granted to their vicars. By means of the pallium the metropolitan obtained a participation in the rights of the Pope and the title of "Archbishop" which had previously denoted a supermetropolitan position. As in the Lombard Kingdom, where the Pope had shared in the Lombard mission and in the reorganization of the ecclesiastical province of Milan, there occurred also in England the exemption of monasteries, which were freed from the power of the local bishop and directly subjected to Rome. True, these privileges of exemption, which were granted only in a few special cases on the initia tive of the founder, were not an effort by Rome to interfere in the circumstances of the English Church. For the English Church was, no less than the Frankish, Gothic, and Lombard, a "national Church," even if united more firmly with Rome. The competence of king and arch bishop, of Witenagemot (meeting of the magnates) and synod extended

 

to such important tasks as the erecting of sees,. . . the naming of the bishop by the king [was] not regarded as unusual, ... his assent to the election was taken for granted, the expulsion of the bishop from his church by the king was not unprecedented. The supremacy of the king was recorded in a legislation which assured the Church the state's protection, but also maintained an ecclesias tical disciplinary power over clerics and laity.. . . The bishops and abbots came from princely and noble families, which devoted themselves zealously to the founding of churches and monasteries, but also, in keeping with the custom of the proprietary church system, retained ownership of them.26

 

The phases of the christianization of Anglo-Saxon life can be clearly followed. The first Anglo-Saxon in the see of Canterbury was Frithona (654-663), who took the Christian name of Deusdedit. In the 640s and 650s are found the first Anglo-Saxons among the bishops of Rochester (Kent), East Anglia, and Wessex. Apart from Canterbury, all the episcopal sees of England were occupied by natives from the 670s. Earconbert of Kent (640-664) was the first Anglo-Saxon King to order the destruction of pagan shrines in his kingdom. King Aethelbert of Kent, who had the oldest Anglo-Saxon national law compiled, had al ready established penalties for offenses against God, the clergy, and the churches. But the national laws which Ine of Wessex and Wihtred of Kent issued in 694 and 695 are the first witnesses of a stronger Christian influence. The system of records which the Church brought to England clearly began under the episcopate of Theodore of Canterbury. From the start, the Anglo-Saxon Church was most intimately linked to monasticism, and indeed both that of Ireland as well as that of Rome and Gaul. But the great Anglo-Saxon monastic fathersЧCuthbert of Lindisfarne, Wilfrid of York, Benedict Biscop, Aldhelm of MalmesburyЧbelonged to Theodore's generation or were younger con temporaries of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Cuthbert (d. 687) as sembled the Irish usages of his monastery into a Rule. With the romani- zation of the English Church the Benedictine Rule found entry, for which Wilfrid of York and Benedict Biscop (d. 690) obtained recogni tion in broad areas of the country. The Benedictine abbeys were to a far greater degree centers of education than were the Irish monasteries, which were for the most part overburdened by pastoral work. However, the Benedictine stamp of Anglo-Saxon monasticism must not be overes timated. Augustine and his companions were not "Benedictines," and until the eighth century one can probably speak of a Benedictine domi-

 

!8T. Schieffer, op. cit., 73.

nant character, but not of an exclusively Benedictine monasticism among the Anglo-Saxons. Characteristic of early Anglo-Saxon monas ticism were the double monasteries, which originated in the Merovin gian Kingdom, but achieved special flowering in England. There seem to have been no monasteries solely for nuns in the Early Anglo-Saxon period. Among the great abbesses who presided over communities of men and women, preeminent was Hilda of Whitby (d. 680) a relative of King Oswiu of Northumbria.

 

The Anglo-Saxon schools first entered the light of history with Arch bishop Theodore and Abbot Hadrian of Canterbury (669-707/710). A special priority of the Canterbury school was the study of Roman Law and the, at that time, unique pursuit of Greek. But the brilliance of the South English cathedral school faded in the eighth century. The Anglo-Saxon center of education shifted to Northumbria: first to the monasteries of Saint Peter at Wearmouth and Saint Paul at Jarrow, founded by Benedict Biscop in 674 and 681-82 respectively, and from there to the Cathedral of York under Archbishop Egbert (734/735Ч 766). In addition to the great schools of Canterbury, Wearmouth- Jarrow, and York, there were, however, some other centers of education which have not yet been sufficiently investigated, including that of Mer cian Lichfield.

 

The founding or renewing of the school of Canterbury under Theo dore and Hadrian marked the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon "Renais sance," which was eminently represented by Aldhelm of Malmesbury (c. 640-709), the Venerable Bede (672-735), and Alcuin, and with Alcuin led to the "Carolingian Renaissance." The importance of the West Saxon Aldhelm, who had gone through the school of Canterbury, lay in the field of grammar, prosody, and religious education. Greater than he was the Northumbrian Bede, who as teacher at Jarrow culti vated not only biblical exegesis, grammar, and poetry, but also chronol ogy and historiography.

 

The after-effects of his chronological work. . . extend to the present day, for Bede here put the Alexandrian-Roman calculation of feasts into the canonical form for the Middle Ages and brought about the definitive victory of this Easter cycle, still standard for us. In fact, he threw bridges in a twofold respect... to the Roman sixth century by popularizing the reckoning of time after the birth of Christ in historiography. And precisely as a historian, Bede enjoys imperisha ble fame, for his masterpiece, the . . . Historia ecclesiastica gent is

Anglorum, already marks a climax of the just then beginning medieval writing of history.29

 

The foundations of the Christian Anglo-Saxon culture were Roman, characterized by the canonical collection of Dionysius Exiguus, the Roman Easter cycle, the ordo cantandi Romanus, the Regula Benedicti. Benedict Biscop journeyed no less than six times to Rome and brought back from there "an innumerable collection of books of every sort."30 But he also bought up books at Vienne and was a monk at Lerins for two years. His friend, Wilfrid of York, received decisive impressions of ecclesiastical life at Lyon. Lyon and the neighboring cities possessed well-endowed libraries in the Early Middle Ages, in which even Spanish literature, especially Isidore of Seville, was represented. Bede was familiar with Isidore and the Gallic literature of the fourth to sixth centuries: a great part of the works at his disposal must have come directly from the Frankish Kingdom.31

 

The Irish element in Anglo-Saxon culture is so clear that one often speaks simply of Insular Civilization without a detailed distinction of the two elements. The common criterion which strikes the eye is the Irish hand, which generally found acceptance in England and, as "insular," differed from "continental." However, one must think also of the Irish penitential law, of which mention has already been made. Controverted is the provenance of the insular book illumination, which originated in the transfer of the "barbarian" metalcraft to the book. The traditional view that the insular miniature is an achievement of the Irish of the sixth and seventh centuries is today under attack. Weighty arguments in fact maintain that this highly developed art arose c. 700 in Northumbria.32

 

29 T. Schieffer, op. cit., 79- However, more recent studies have underlined the share of the Church of Canterbury. If the Historia ecclesiastica moved beyond the restricted North English framework to a general Church history of England, this was due in two ways to Abbot Albinus of St. Austin (Sts. Peter and Paul): by the stimulus which he gave to Bede and by the documentary material which he sent him by the London priest Nothelm (Deanesly, Pre-Conquest Church, 42ff.). The relations of the Northumbrian monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow to Canterbury went back to Benedict Biscop, who for two years governed the abbey of Saint Austin.

30

31 Bede, Historia abbatum 6, ed. Plummer, 369.

32

33 Wallace-Had rill, op. cit., 527ff.

34

35 A. W. Clapham, "Notes on the Origins of Hiberno-Saxon Art," Antiquity 8 (1934), 43-57; F. Massai, Essai sur les origines de la miniature dite irlandaise (Brussels 1974); F. Henry, "Les defuts de la miniature irlandaise," Gazette des Beaux Arts (1950), 5-34; F. Massai, "II monachesimo irlandese nei suoi rapporti col continente," Settimane di studio, ... IV. II monachesimo nell' Alto Medioevo e la formazione della civilta occidentale (Spoleto, 1957), 139-163. According to M. Deanesly, the abstract Hiberno-Saxon an of the cross and manuscript came from Iona via Solway Firth to Lindisfarne. The Northumbrian manuscript illumination combined Celtic and classical traditions (relationship, not filia-

36

L 600

 

Strange to say, the literary influence of the Emerald Isle gained recogni tion especially in southern England c. 700: through Aldhelm, who had grown up in the West Saxon abbey of Malmesbury, founded by Irish, and who adopted the obscure style of the Irish, characterized by allitera tion and affected vocabulary.

 

While in the Romance lands Latin was still so close to the colloquial speech that it could also be still understood in broader circles, the problem of the popular tongue presented itself early in Ireland and England. Christianization had already given rise in Ireland to a literature in the popular speech, and we also observe the same phenomenon in England. Aethelbert's Kentish Lex is the first national law written down in the German language. The Widsith and the Beowulf epicЧ monuments of the pagan heroic ageЧmust first have been fixed in writing in the eighth century. But also the new Christian content pressed for expression in the national language: Bede reports about the stablehand Caedmon, who received from God in a dream vision the commission to sing his praise. Caedmon entered the monastery of Whitby and followed the command, ita ut, quicquid ex divinis litteris per interpretes disceret, hoc ipse post pusillum verbis poeticis maxima suavitate et conpunctione compositis, in sua, i.e., Anglorum lingua prof err et.33 Caedmon introduced a religious poetry into the popular language, the chief works of which belong to the eighth and early ninth centuries.

 

The beginnings of Christian Anglo-Saxon culture decayed with the close of the mission in England, the last acts of which were the conver sion of Sussex (680-85) and of the Isle of Wight. A few years later the mission crossed to the continent with Willibrord. But the Anglo-Saxon mission on the continent belongs to Frankish history. For the home of a saint isЧas we may say by varying a fine expression of Delehaye34Чnot the country in which he was born, but the spot of earth where he worked and where his remains rest.

 

tion, with the Irish art of the Book of Durrow and the Book of Kells) and developed its own metaphorical style (Pre-Conquest Church, 183-187).

 

37 " . . .so that, whatever he learned of Holy Scripture through interpreters, he ex pounded after a brief interval in poetic words of the greatest beauty and deepest sensitivity in his own tongue, that is, that of the Angles" (Hist. eccl. IV, 22).

38

39 "La patrie du martyr n'est pas la contree qui lui a donne le jour, mais l'endroit de la terre qu'il a arrose de son sang et ou reposent ses restes" (H. Delehaye, Les origines du culte des martyrs, [Brussels, 2nd ed. 1933], 40).

40