# Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought and Learning/Chapter I

CHAPTER I.
Claudius of Turin and Agobard of Lyons.
In the empire of Charles the Great the Latin church advanced to a clearer consciousness of her individuality, as apart from her oriental sister, than was possible before the state as well as the church had a western head. The old points of controversy which had once been common to all Christendom now vanish away. From the time of the British Pelagius, the heresies of the west had occupied themselves with a different class of speculations from those which convulsed the eastern church. Henceforward we shall find the former almost exclusively represented. The last of the eastern heresies, eastern in spirit if not directly in origin, is stamped out with the condemnation of the Spanish adoptians by the council of Frankfort, a proceeding in which Alcuin took a conspicuous part. The last controversy between the churches is signalised by the repudiation of image-worship at the same council.
The immediate antecedents of this decision in the matter of image-worship are worthy of notice. The second council of Nicea, seven years earlier, had unanimously approved the practice. It had decreed, under penalty of excommunication, that images of the Saviour and of his Mother, of angels, and of all saints and holy men, should be everywhere set up, should be treated as holy memorials and worshipped; only without that peculiar adoration which is reserved for God alone. In this ordinance the pope, Hadrian the First, concurred. The value of the pope's opinion was however now, and remained for several centuries, an extremely variable ​quantity. The famous Caroline Books, which (whatever be their actual authorship) indubitably proceed from the court of Charles the Great and from the closing years of the eighth century, speak with quiet assurance of certain usages as allowed rather by the ambition of Rome than by any apostolical tradition. Nor was this feeling confined to the atmosphere of the court. In the matter of image-worship the council of Frankfort thought nothing of placing itself in direct opposition to the policy favoured by the pope. The council too was no mere Frankish diet; it was attended by bishops from all the west, Spain and England, as well as by papal legates. But the authority of the latter was powerless against that of Charles, and the canons of Nicea were formally rejected. That the Greek contention in the end won acceptance is well known. But the process was silent and without express enactment, just as in the east the triumph over the iconoclasts was imperceptibly forgotten and images (in the strict sense) came to be unconsciously proscribed. At present, if the subject was discussed, as indeed it was with considerable vehemence, the question was how little, not how much, reverence could rightly be paid to images.
The extreme party on this side is represented by Claudius, bishop of Turin. A Spaniard, bred – if we may credit the testimony of his opponents – under one of the leading heretics whom the council of Frankfort condemned, he seems rather to have recoiled into a more decided, at least a more primitive, orthodoxy than to have been affected by his dangerous surroundings. He became a master in one of the royal schools of Aquitaine ​and was so much trusted by the king, Louis the Pious, that when the latter succeeded to the empire of his father Charles, he raised Claudius, about the year 818, to the see of Turin. His reputation was that of an interpreter of the Bible. He wrote commentaries on most of the historical books of the Old Testament, on the Gospel according to saint Matthew, and apparently on all the Pauline Epistles. Of these however but one, on the Galatians, has been printed entire. The others are known only by prefaces and extracts; and some are not edited at all. It is not likely that we lose very much by our defective information about his works. He had not the faculty of lucid or graceful, or always even of grammatical, expression; and he repeatedly laments a defect which gave an irresistible opening to the ridicule of his literary enemies. Far less did he bring the light of speculation or of original genius to bear upon the books he expounded. He compiled from the fathers – Augustin was his chosen ​master – for the benefit of those whose leisure or acquirements did not suffice for extensive reading. He commented with a view of edification; and seeking an ethical or a spiritual lesson everywhere, he fell willingly into the pitfall of allegory. His fearless pursuit however of the principles he had learned in the course of a wide, if irregular, study of the fathers, makes Claudius a signal apparition at a time when the material accessories of religion were forcing themselves more and more into the relations between man and God. The worship of images, of pictures, of the Cross itself, the belief in the mediation of saints, the efficacy of pilgrimages, the authority of the holy see, seemed to him but the means of deadening the responsibility of individual men.
Claudius sought to quicken this sense. He is sure that if a man has a direct personal interest in his own welfare, if he does not rely on spiritual processes conducted by others on his behalf, nor tie his faith to material representations of the unseen, he can be the better trusted to walk aright. The freedom of the gospel he is never tired of contrasting with the bondage of the law, a bondage which he saw revived in the religious system of his day. Faith is incomplete without its corollary, action, or, as he prefers to call it, love. With the works of the sacerdotal law he will have nothing to do. (Apologetic. ap. Jon. Aurel. p. 194 F. H.) Let no man trust in the intercession or merit of the saints, because except he ​hold the same faith, justice, and truth, which they held, he cannot be saved. Men choose the easy way before the hard one which consists in self-sacrifice. (ibid. p. 183 D, H.) God commanded men to bear the cross, not to adore it: they desire to adore that which they will not spiritually or bodily to carry with them. So to worship God is to depart from him. The only acceptable service is that, born of faith and supported by the divine grace, which issues in an all-embracing love. The following short passage contains the sum of his ethical principles. (Enarr. in Galat. iv. p. 161 C, D.) Charity, he says, or love, is comprehended in four modes. By the first we must love God, by the next ourselves, by the third our neighbours, by the fourth our enemies. Unless we have first loved God, we shall not be able to love ourselves; that is to say, to abstain from sin: and if we love not ourselves, what standard have we to love our neighbours? and if we love not our neighbours, much less shall we love our enemies. Whereof this is the proof, that for the sake of God we despise even our salvation, yea, and our very souls. Faith therefore alone sufficeth not for life, except a man love his neighbour even as himself, and not only not do unto him the evil which he would not unto himself, but also do unto him the good which he would have another do unto him; and so fulfil the universal law, namely, to abstain from evil and to do good.
With these thoughts in his heart, and longing to impress them upon his generation, Claudius passed to his diocese of Turin. His fiery and uncompromising temper met opposition and peril as inducements rather than obstacles to action. We are told that he often took up the sword with his lay comrades to drive back the Saracens when they pressed forward from their strong places on the coast of Spain or Gaul to overrun his country. But the paganism, as he held it, which reigned everywhere around him, - the offerings and images that defiled all ​ the churches, - formed the more present evil against which he set himself to do continual battle. (Jon. 168 G.) He called for the utter destruction of all images and pictures throughout his diocese. (Dungal. Responsa contra perversas Claudii Taurin. episc. sententias, p. 223 F.) He forbade the observance of saints' days, and the very mention of saints in the liturgy. Foremost in executing the work, he raised a storm about him: his life was not safe. (Dungal, ibid. p. 199 D: cf. infra pp. 31 sqq.) The people were passionately excited, but the protection or favour of higher powers was probably with him, and his name is not to be added to the roll of martyrs who have perished for lack of sympathy with the grosser needs of their contemporaries.
Yet the truth is that, with all his fanaticism, Claudius alone of his age grasped the inevitable consequences of its spiritual condition. It was an age of materialism, and there was no possibility that the images could remain in churches without the people worshipping them, or that if they worshipped them they would understand the nice distinction between this worship and that of God laid down by the second Nicene council. Claudius denounces this inevitable polytheism. If, he says, they worship the images of saints after the fashion of demons, - that is, of course, in the manner of the old gods of the country, - they have not left idols but changed their names. He was accused of inventing a new heresy. (Apol., ap. Jon. 169 F, 170 A.) Nothing, he replies, can be falser. I preach no sect, but hold the unity and expound the verity of the church. Sects and schisms, heresies and superstitions, I have ever, so far as in me lay, ​stamped upon and crushed; I have fought with them and taken them by assault, nor will I ever, so far as in me lies, cease to combat them with the help of God. He turns to his accuser: (Apol. ap. Jon. 175 G: cf. lib. super Levit., Mabillon 90 sq.) Why dost thou humble thyself and bow false images? why bend thy body a slave before vain likenesses and things of earthly fashion? God made thee erect. Other animals are prone and look earthward, but thy face is raised towards God. Thither look, raise thine eyes thither; seek God above, so shall thou have no need of things below. This is the basis of his teaching. Following closely in the track, often quoting the very words, of Augustin, he repeats that (Praef. in Levit., Mabillon 91: cf. Reuter I. 19 & n. 17.) a spiritual religion is independent of the sensuous, is dragged down by any attempt to make it intelligible to the outward eyes: it looks directly towards God. For this reason he refuses to dwell even upon the humanity of Christ. The man Jesus did his work once for all: Claudius would turn men's thoughts to their glorified Lord. (Apol., ap. Jon. 176 C, 177 C.) When these worshippers of a false religion and superstition say, For the memory of our Saviour we worship, reverence, adore a cross painted and carved in his honour, they take no pleasure in our Saviour except that which pleasured the ungodly, the shame of his passion and the scorn of his death. They believe of him what the ungodly, Jews or heathen, believed, who believed not in his resurrection; and they know not to think aught of him save as in anguish and dead; they believe and hold him in their hearts to abide continually in passion, nor consider nor understand that which the apostle saith, (2 Cor. v. 16.) Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.
Claudius attacks every visible symbol and memorial of the life of Jesus. (Apol., ap. Jon. 177 H sq.) You worship all wood fashioned after the manner of a cross, because for six hours Christ hung upon a cross. Worship then all virgins, because a virgin bare him. Worship stables, for he was born in one; old rags, for he ​was swaddled in them; ships, for he ofttimes sailed in them; assess, for he rode thereon. There is no end to his mockery. He excuses himself for it by the bitterness of the facts he has to withstand. (ibid. p. 178 G, H.) Ridiculous these things all are, and to be mourned rather than written. We are compelled to allege foolishness against the foolish; against hearts of stone we must cast not the arrows of the word, not sage reasons, but volleys of stones. Thus he traverses and assails the whole circle of the popular religion of the Latin world. About pilgrimages alone he is more reserved. The fashionable pilgrimage to Rome he cannot indeed approve, but he admits that (ibid. p. 189 A.) it does not hurt every one, nor benefit every one. But for the peculiar claims of the see of saint Peter he has nothing but derision. (ibid. p. 193 G: cf. Dungal 211 B.) The authority of the apostle ceased with his death: his successors possess it just so far as their lives are apostolic. (Apol., ap. Jon. 195 H sq.) He is not to be called apostolic who sits in the seat of the apostle, but he who fills the office of the apostle. Of them that hold that place and fulfil not its office the Lord hath said, (Matth. xxiii. 2 sq.) The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: all therefore whatsoever they say unto you, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say and do not. With equal clearness Claudius (Enarr. in Galat. i. p. 142 E.) expresses the distinction between the ideal church and the imperfect copy which represents it on earth.
It was probably opinions like these last which saved Claudius from any rebuke from the emperor for the greater part of his career. They pass almost without question even in the controversy raised by the publication of his Apologetic. His other views, too, if they went further than those accepted at the court, were at all events errors ​on the right side; iconoclasm was less reprehensible than the 'idolatry' of the Greeks. Those who were hottest in their repudiation of Claudius, used very similar language with regard to the other extreme. (De eccl. rer. exord. viii. Migne 114. 928.) Walafrid Strabo, who became abbat of Reichenau in 842, holds a scrupulous balance in the controversy; and Walafrid had been a pupil of Rabanus Maurus, and was in some sort a representative theologian of his age. How little, too, the style of argument adopted by his antagonist Jonas commends itself to modern catholics may be gathered from the cautions and expostulations with which his Benedictine editors have thought it necessary to accompany him. Claudius was in fact carrying to their logical issues principles which were virtually recognised by the council of Paris in 825, and which even fifty years later were mentioned by the papal librarian Anastasius, in a dedication to John the Eighth, as still holding their ground among certain persons in Gaul at a time when the Greek practice had won nearly universal acceptance in the west. We can therefore hardly take bishop Jonas at his word when he speaks of Claudius as an enemy of (p. 169 C.) all the sincerest churchmen, the most devoted soldiers of Christ, in Gaul and Germany: we know indeed from a friend who was also Claudius's opponent in this respect (Theodemir. epist. ad Claud., ap. F. A. Zachari. Biblioth. Pistor. 60, Turin 1752 folio.), that in spite of his action in the matter of images, his commentaries on the Bible were received with eager enthusiasm by not a few of the highest prelates of Gaul.
Claudius therefore took no pains to defend himself until he had carried on his warfare during a number of years. His Apologetic – a defiant proclamation of his views – he at last addressed to his former friend, the abbat Theodemir, who had warned him of the perilous course he was taking. The answer was a council of bishops held at Lewis's court (Dungal 223 H, Jonas 167 D.), and a condemnation; but Claudius can hardly have been much awed by what he is reported to ​have termed an assembly of asses (Dungal, 1. C.). Nor was his refusal to attend followed by any measure to reduce him to obedience. The emperor, more, it should seem, to conciliate these prelates than from any serious intention of controlling Claudius, sent extracts of the offending book to Jonas, bishop of Orleans, with the desire that he would refute it (Jonas 167 D, E.). These extracts are all that remain to us of what to the historian is Claudius's most valuable work: the refutation did not appear until after his death. Meantime, Dungal, a Scottish teacher of Pavia, issued a vehement Reply, (Dungal 199 F.) earnestly invoking the imperial aid in suppressing the new heresy. Theodemir also returned to the controversy. Perhaps we may infer (cf. Schmidt ubi supra, p. 64.) from Jonas's unwillingness to publish his polemic, that Claudius as he aged had tempered his fire: more probably Jonas himself found that the act would not increase his favour with the emperor. Be this as it may, the bishop lived more than ten years after he had sent forth his defence, to all appearance without let or molestation from any one. (F. Ugheil. Ital. sacr. 4. 1432 A, B, Rome 1652 folio.) His strenuous career was closed not earlier than 839, but he left behind him disciples enough to stimulate controversy (Jon. 167 E, F.). His writings too, with the exception of the Apologetic, were rapidly multiplied and diffused. His fame as a commentator secured the survival of a good deal of his peculiar teaching; but it is hazardous, if not impossible, to connect him in any direct way with the appearance of similar opinions, whether in the congregations of the Waldenses centuries later, or in those isolated puritan outbreaks which repeatedly confront us in the course of medieval history.
In his protest against the invocation of saints Claudius perhaps stood alone, but in the other points in which he separated himself from the current doctrine he had a ​supporter (there is, indeed, no evidence to place them in actual association) of far greater ability and far wider influence in the person of saint Agobard. Like him, born in Spain (A.D. 779.), Agobard was more fortunate in his education. He was brought up from an early age in the south of Gaul, at a time when the impulse given to learning by Charles the Great was in its first vigour: of that civilisation Agobard remained the representative when its founders were dead, and its spirit was falling into decay. Leidrad, archbishop of Lyons, bred him for his successor, made him coädjutor, and after some years secured his appointment to the see when he retired to a cloister in 816. Agobard's life as archbishop corresponds closely with the reign of Lewis the Pious; he died on the 8th June, 840, in the same month as the emperor.
Success was prepared for him by others: he deserved it by his contribution to the defence of the orthodox belief against the heresy of the adoptians. But he continued always entirely unaffected by the circumstances of his high position. Independent and regardless of consequences, he held to the principles which he enounced, with unconquerable audacity. He saw the masses around him sunk in a state of sluggish credulity, and instead of leaving them there, as others did, in the opinion that a debased people is the easiest to govern, he laboured hard for their liberation and attacked unsparingly every form of superstition wherever he found it. His thoughts were wider than Claudius's, but in the matter of images the Gallic and Italian prelates were of one mind. If Agobard was the less active in carrying his views into practice, it was not for want of firm conviction. Certainly he was not withheld by the risk of any opposition he might encounter in the Frankish church. He wrote ​in the same strong spirit, now of persuasion, now of rebuke, as Claudius; but no controversy ever arose over his utterances. The heads of the church were with him; but at the same time the masses were fast bound by superstition. Agobard may have calculated the injury which the character of an iconoclast would inflict upon his personal influence over them. He may have felt the hopelessness of the undertaking, and held it wiser, and in the end more effectual, to elevate the people gradually by the voice of reason.
The difference, therefore, between him and Claudius regards chiefly the means to carry out their common aims. But Agobard is always guided by a calmer and clearer perception than his vehement ally. (Lib. contra corum superstitionem qui picturis et imaginibus sanctorum adorationis obsequium deferendum putant, xxxiii. 294 F.) He desires, indeed, the removal of all pictures from the churches, but he admits that they are essentially innocent and only rendered pernicious by abuse. (Cap. xxxii. 294 E.) The ancients, he says, had figures of the saints, painted or carved, but for the sake of history, for record not for worship; as, for example the acts of synods, wherein were portrayed the catholics upheld and victorious, and the heretics by the discovery of the falsehood of their vile doctrine convicted and expelled, in memorial of the strength of the catholic faith, even as pictures stand in record of foreign or domestic wars. Such we have seen in divers places: yet none of the ancient catholics held that they should be worshipped or adored. (cap. xxxiii. p. 294 F.) The pictures in churches should be looked at just as any other pictures. Only the faithlessness of the age, which will find some special virtue in them, forces him to condemn them utterly. (cap. xxiv. p. 292 D.) God must be worshipped without any sensuous representations. (cap. xxxi. p. 294 D: cf. ep. ad Barthol. vii. p. 282 C.) Whosoever adoreth a picture or a statue, carved or molten, payeth not worship to God nor honoureth the angels or holy men, but is an idolator: he is beguiled to evil under the fairest disguises of devotion; (2 Cor. xi. 14.) Satan transformeth himself into an angel of light. The opposition of spirit and matter is as real to him as to Claudius. He, too, held that (capp. xv., xvi. p. 290 B, D.) visible objects were a hindrance not a help to the perception of the invisible. (cap. xxxiii. p. 294 F.) When faith ​is taken from the heart, then is all trust set on visible things.
The rule thus stated Agobard proceeds to apply to the 'vulgar errours' of his day. Want of faith is the root of superstition: it is nurtured by unreason. (Lib. contra insulsam vulgi opinionem de grandine et tonitruis, xvi. p. 275 B.) The wretched world lies now under the tyranny of foolishness: things are believed by Christians of such absurdity as no one ever could aforetime induce the heathen to believe, who knew not the Creator of all. Of the various works which he wrote upon this subject, not the least interesting, and certainly the most curious, is the treatise Against the absurd Opinion of the Vulgar touching Hail and Thunder. It appears that (capp. i., xv. pp. 271 D, E, 274 G.) there was a class of impostors who assumed to themselves the office of 'clerk of the weather.' These tempestarii, or weather-wizards, claimed the power not only of controlling the weather, and securing the fields from harm, but also of bringing about hail and thunder storms, (cap. iii. p. 272 H.) and especially of directing them against their private enemies. (cap. xv. p. 274 G.) Plainly they derived a goodly revenue from a blackmail forced by the double motives of fear and hope. (cap. ii. p. 271 F, G.) We have seen and heard, says Agobard, many who are overwhelmed by such madness, carried away by such folly, that they believe and assert that there is a certain region called Magonia – no doubt the Magic Land – whence ships come in the clouds: the which bear away the fruits of the earth, felled by hail and destroyed by storms, to that same country; and these sailors of the air forsooth give rewards to the weather-wizards, and receive in return the crops or other fruits. Certain ones have we seen, blinded by so dark a folly, who brought into an assembly of men four persons, three men and a woman, as having fallen from the said ships; whom they held in bonds for certain days and then presented before an assembled body of men, in our presence, as aforesaid, that they should be stoned. Howbeit the truth prevailed, after much reasoning, and they who brought them forward were confounded. He condescended to seek evidence of the power of the weather-wizards, but could obtain no account at first hand. (De grand. vii. p. 272 H sq.) People were confident that such or such a thing had ​been done, but they were not present at its performance. It was this credulous habit of mind that irritated Agobard. He disdained to allege scientific reasons to overthrow what was in its nature so unreasonable. He could only fall back on the same broad religious principles which had guided him in his repudiation of images. There he says that our relation to God must be direct and without the intervention of sensible objects: (capp. ix., xiv. pp. 273 D, 274 F.) here, conversely, that God's relation to nature is immediate and least of all conditioned by the artifices of men. He acknowledges that (capp. i., xiv. pp. 271 D, E, 274 F.) almost every one, in these regions, noble and simple, citizen and countryman, old and young, believes that storms are under human control, and attributes the work of God to man. (cap. xi. p. 273 H.) He spares no words in condemning this infidelity which believes partly in God, partly that God's words are of men; hopes partly in God, partly in men. (cap. xv. p. 274 H.)
With equal vigour he opposed superstitions which tended to the profit of the church. To his straightforward vision they were the more dangerous, since they degraded the church with the people, instead of maintaining it pure, as a light shining in darkness. (Ep. ad Barth. episc. Narbon. de quorundam illusione signorum, i. p. 281 D, E.) There was an epidemic at a place, so he writes to bishop Bartholomew of Narbonne, the causes of which were traced to the activity of evil spirits. The terrified people crowded to the church and lavished offerings of silver and gold and cattle, whatever they possessed, at the feet of saint Firmin. The bishop in perplexity wrote to Agobard for advice: his answer was a warning against the faithlessness implied in trusting to the power of the saint to ward off visitations which proceed from the hand of God. The devil no doubt is at work, but not in the way these people supposed: his action is far less physical than mental: he is seen to prevail over some men, not so much for the purpose of striking them down as of deluding them. It is difficult to overestimate the change which the acceptance of Agobard's view would have caused in the popular beliefs of the middle ages. The continual visitations of evil spirits of which the history is full would then have ​resolved themselves into the creatures of a disordered imagination; the latter, not the former, being the work of the devil: those who believed in his direct visitation, not its supposed victims, were really under his influence. (cap. vii. p. 282 C.) For his success, Agobard explains, requires a receptivity on men's part, lack of faith or delight in vanity; and with these favourable conditions he can indeed lead them helplessly to destruction and death. Agobard gives elsewhere a remarkable illustration. (De grand. xiv. pp. 274 H sq.) A few years since, he says, a certain foolish story went abroad when there was a murrain of oxen: it was said that Grimoald, duke of Benevento, sent out men with powder to scatter over the fields and mountains, meadows and springs, forasmuch as he was enemy to the most Christian emperor Charles; by reason of which powder the oxen died. For this cause we have heard and seen many persons to be apprehended and certain slain. Agobard comments on the absurdity of the tale. He asks why only the oxen and no other animals suffered, and further how the murrain could extend over so large a tract of land, when if all the inhabitants of Benevento, men, women, and children, each with three wagons full of powder, had been employed, they could not possibly have sprinkled powder enough. But, what, he adds, was most strange, the prisoners themselves bare testimony against themselves, affirming that they had that powder, and had scattered it. Thus did the devil receive power against them by the secret but righteous judgement of God, and so greatly did he prevail that they themselves were made false witnesses unto their own death.
But the influence of the devil, in Agobard's mouth, is actually little more than the conventional expression – for Agobard was before all things orthodox – for men's proclivity to unreason and faithlessness. Superstition ​might take the form, as we have seen hitherto, of their claiming powers which really belong to God. It was none the less superstition to postulate the intervention of Clod in cases where human judgement alone was necessary. For men to disregard the evidence of ascertained facts, and to call for perpetual miracles at their behest (Lib. de divinis sententiis digest. contra damnabilem opinionem putantium divini iudicii veritatem igni vel aquis vel conflictu armorum patefieri, ii. p. 301 E.) was impiety of the worst kind, making God in fact the servant of man. It is this argument, supported by copious citations from the Scriptures, that Agobard alleges against the popular customs of ordeal by fire or water and of wager of battle. Of the two usages the ordeal was discouraged (Capit. Wormat., a. 829, Pertz, legg. I. 352 § 12.) and prohibited by the emperor; and Agobard may have deemed it unworthy of serious argument. He applies his forces mainly to the exposure of the wrong - nex, not lex, (Lib. adv. leg. Gund. xi. p. 266 C.) - involved in the test of combat. The ordeal indeed was destitute of any feature except the superstitious, while combat, as Hallam observes (Middle ages, 3. 294, ed. 1872.), might be held to be partly redeemed by 'the natural dictates of resentment in a brave man unjustly accused, and the sympathy of a warlike people with the display of skill and intrepidity.' At Lyons, the old Burgundian capital, the 'wager of battle,' resting as it did on a law of the Burgundian king Gundobad, is thought to have been resorted to (Gfrörer 3. 751.) with peculiar frequency. (Lib. adv. leg. Gundob. vii. p. 265 C.) Agobard addressed one of his two treatises on the subject to the emperor and implored him to suppress the evil. (De div. sent. v. p. 302 B.) He urged not only the religious objections, ​that God's judgements are unsearchable and not lightly to be presumed, but also the arguments of common sense. The combat declares not the judgement of God but the right of the strongest, and gives a criminal encouragement to strife. (Lib. adv. leg. Gundob. 1. C.) The vanquished is cast into despair and loss of faith, while in many cases the conqueror proves his innocence by adding the guilt of murder. (cap. ix. p. 265 E, F.) If the test is worthy of confidence, how came Jerusalem into the hands of the Saracens, Rome to be pillaged by the Goths, Italy by the Lombards? The martyrs of the church, the witnesses of truth, waxed strong by dying: the upholders of iniquity by killing perished.
With these various weapons, drawn from the armoury of reason, of experience, of religion, Agobard made war upon the superstitions of his age. He took his stand upon the unassailable ground of Christian verity, but he had his own opinions even in matters like the inspiration of the Bible. Thoughtful men over whose minds the authority of the Bible is supreme have always endeavoured to temper its severity by one of two modes of viewing it. Some enlarge its field by erecting an ample superstructure of allegory upon the literal text, - thinking that they are laying bare its deep, underlying truths, - a method which allows the utmost freedom or license of interpretation upon a servile and uncritical basis. In this way Claudius, and far more John Scotus, were able to bring the words of Scripture into harmony with their own teaching. Others, with a greater fidelity to the scope of the Bible, insist that the letter is subordinate to the spirit, to the general bearing of the book. Among these is Agobard. He re bukes Fredegisus, abbat of Tours, for the absurdity of holding that the actual words of Scripture are inspired: its ​sense is no doubt divine but its form is human. The same rule must be our guide in its interpretation. We must make it intelligible, even against the grammatical sense, so long as we preserve its spirit; - ut sacramento rei concordaret.
To this wide-reaching liberality there is one exception in the hostility which Agobard bore towards the Jews. But the archbishop's action was not simply that of a bigot, and the motive of the controversy in which he engaged was entirely honourable to him. He set his face against a flagitious custom of which the Jews, the great slave-dealers of the empire (H. Graetz, Gesch. der Juden 5. 246, Magdeburg 1860.), had the monopoly. (De insolentia Iudaeorum, p. 255 C.) He forbade the Christians of his diocese to sell slaves to the Jews for exportation to the Arabs of Spain, and sought also to place a variety of restrictions upon the intercourse of the two races. The emperor however supported the Jews (A.D. 826.), and Agobard could only resort to passionate appeals to the statesmen of the palace and to the bishops, in the hope of reëstablishing a state of things more consonant with the principles of the church. We are not concerned to defend the curious slanders he repeats in his letter On the Superstitions of the Jews: it is sufficient that he believed them. But the truth was that under Lewis the Pious, particularly after his marriage with his second empress, Judith, the position of the Jews might fairly be held to menace Christianity. Charles the Great had shewn them tolerance; Lewis added his personal favour; and under him they enjoyed a prosperity without example in the long course of the middle ages. They formed a peculiar people under his own protection, equally against the nobles and the church; and their privileges ​were guarded by an imperial officer, the Master - he even claimed the title of King - of the Jews. Free from military service, the Jews were indispensable to the commerce of the empire; on account of their financial skill it was common to trust them with the farm of the taxes. Nothing was left undone which might gratify their national or religious prepossessions. They had rights from which Christians were excluded, entire freedom of speech was allowed, and the very weekly markets were postponed to the Sunday in order that the alien race might observe its sabbaths (De insol. Iud., p. 255 G.). The Jews built their synagogues, and held lands and pastures; they planted vineyards and set up mills, in perfect security. At the court of the emperor they were welcomed with marked distinction. They went there with their wives, and were only known in the throng by the more sumptuous display of their apparel. The empress Judith was singularly attached to them, and the courtiers, taking up the fashion, attended the synagogues and admired the preaching in them above that of their own clergy.
It is evident that some motive nobler than jealousy or intolerance might actuate a churchman in resisting what he was bound to consider inimical to the interests of religion. Agobard's view of it was confirmed by the distrust he felt in the emperor's advisers, and in the empress. But we have not here to do with his position as a leader in the revolt which attempted to place Lothar on his father's throne, (cf. Reuter I. 36.) instructive as it may be as illustrating Agobard's application to the field of politics of that clear perception of right and wrong, that fearless and unswerving adherence to his beliefs, that we have found elsewhere. ​For his courage, as Gfrörer notes (vol. 3. 753.), is even more astonishing than the freedom of his vision. In the light of ten centuries we may think his arguments truisms and wonder at the pains he took to demonstrate what seems to us to need no demonstration, to expose what is unworthy of exposure. But the fact remains that he stood absolutely alone in his generation, with the single exception of Claudius of Turin; and Claudius's interest was limited to a single branch of superstition, while Agobard undertook the destruction of the whole.
In both alike the influence of saint Augustin is paramount. It is, indeed, the continual interruption of long extracts from the fathers, and above all from Augustin, that too often defaces to our modern eyes the impression of lucidity and vigour which are the just attributes of Agobard's style. Whether or not in direct quotation the presence of the father's treatise On true Religion and of the City of God is seldom wanting. Doubtless Claudius and Agobard were here simply following the universal habit of the scholars of their day, with whom Augustin ranked second alone to the Bible; to contradict him, as Paschasius Radbert said, was impiety. But there were few who accepted his spiritual force and left out of account his extravagance of fancy; there were few who chose only his good part and wrought it with such wisdom, as these two did. (cf. Reuter I. 41 sq.) While others in the generation immediately following heard only the appeal of his less worthy utterances, the incongruous children of his genius, and were led into the opposite extreme, superstition, they used precisely those elements of his teaching which had a practical tendency. They found in him a beacon to shed light upon the deepening obscurity of the age, a weapon ​to assail and overthrow its resistance to vital religion; and with this they were content. To enquire deeper into their master's thoughts, to speculate upon the mysteries of being and of God, was foreign to their purpose.
Agobard does, indeed, once venture upon the field of controversy in theological metaphysics; he wrote a book against Felix of Urgel, the adoptian: but here, too, he is still the theologian, not a philosopher. He recites the testimonies of the fathers, but he cares not to add to them his independent criticism. His reticence was justified by the experience of the years after him, when the attempt was made to a accommodate the spiritual system of Augustin to the concrete doctrines of the church (cf. Reuter I. 43.), and the amalgam proved the strangest product of that materialising age, the definition of the doctrine of transubstantiation. No innovation could have been better calculated to promote the decay of the moral individualism of Christianity, and the growth of a servile dependence upon the priestly order. It succeeded, not because it professed a conformity with saint Augustin, but because the age was tending towards intellectual degradation. When, however, some years later, Gottschalk, the medieval Jansen, revived from the same father an unconditional doctrine of predestination, the result was quite different. For this doctrine was as subversive as Claudius's puritanism of the newer theory of the church. A stimulus was given to controversy, but the issue was foregone. Latin Christianity had come to acquiesce in a belief which admitted God's predestination of the good, his foreknowledge only of the wicked; in the technical phrase of Calvinism, predestination but not reprobation. When Gottschalk affirmed both, the language of saint Augustin had to be explained away. It was impossible that his authority could support tenets which, it was seen, struck at the root of the power of the clergy, not only by the implied denial of the efficacy of the sacraments, but also of the value of human absolution. Augustin's unseasonable restorer appeared to be guilty of the most hopeless, ​unpardonable heresy. It was discovered that his opinions included the most opposite errors, the denial of the freedom of man's will, and of the necessity of divine grace.
Few disputes ever had a more accidental origin. Gottschalk, the son of a Saxon noble, was forced as a child into the monastery of Fulda. When he grew up he rebelled, and denied the obligation of his father's vow. A council at Mentz, to which he appealed against the authority of his superior, reversed the sentence (A.D. 829.). The powerful abbat, it was none less than Rabanus Maurus, brought the case before the emperor and won his cause. The youth was condemned for life to the rule of saint Benedict. But the high-spirited ambition of his birth was quickened, not quenched, by his bondage. The fame he would have made in the active life of a noble, he now sought in the adventurous paths of speculation. He removed to the monastery of Orbais near Soissons, and buried himself in saint Augustin. The theory he developed in this seclusion had a natural affinity with the morbid cravings, the vindictive passions, of a disappointed man. It assuaged his regrets for lost earthly prosperity by the confidence of eternal happiness hereafter. It gave him a weapon with which to assail his opponents: their reward was already decided for them. He pressed the certainty of their doom with fanatical violence. The controversy which followed is too purely theological, too unrelieved by any warmth of human sympathy, by any real sense of human needs, to detain us in its dark and weary progress. It is of importance as introducing us to that astonishing thinker whose aid was rashly invoked against the monk of Orbais. The theological dispute was for a moment merged in the deep sea of philosophy: when it rose again the monk Gottschalk was forgotten; the voice of orthodoxy on all sides was directed against Johannes Scotus, the belated disciple of Plato, and the last representative of the Greek spirit in the west.
* ↑ Libr. Car. i. 3, Migne 98. 1015
* ↑ Milman 3. 95.
* ↑ Gfrörer has collected the early traces of this rapid change, Kirchengeschichte 3. 938 sqq.
* ↑ See H. F. Tozer in George Finlay's Hist. of Greece 2. 165 n. 3, ed. Oxford 1877.
* ↑ See especially Carl Schmidt's essay in Illgen's Zeitschrift für die historische Theologie, 1843 pt. 2.
* ↑ 'In Alvenni cespitis arvo, in palatio pii principis domini Ludovici, tunc regis, modo imperatoris,' are his own words, Epist. dedic. in enarrat. in epist. ad Gal., in the Maxima Bibliotheca Patrum 14. 141 A, Lyons 1677 folio; by the pages of which I regularly cite also Jonas of Orleans, Dungal, and Agobard. The school is conjectured to have been at Ebreuil, Histoire littéraire de la France 4. 223
* ↑ Possibly a little earlier: Neander gives the date as 814, General History of the Christian Religion and Church 6. 216, transl. by J. Torrey, Edinburgh 1850
* ↑ 'Claudium ... cui in explanandis sanctorum evangeliorum lectionibus quantulacunque notitia inesse videbatur, ut Italicae plebis (quae magna ex parte a sanctorum evangelistarum sensibus procul aberat) sanctae doctrinae consultum ferret, Taurinensi subrogari fecit ecclesiae,' says his enemy, bishop Jonas, praef. in libros de cultu imaginum, 167 C, D; cf. 168 G.
* ↑ Few writers have their works scattered through such a variety of collections. The Enarratio in epist. ad Galat. is printed in the Max. Biblioth. Patrum, ubi supra; for the rest we have only specimens published in the Vetera Analecta of Mabillon, the Bibliotheca mediae et infimae Latinitatis of J. A. Fabricius, and in two collections of cardinal Mai Some additional extracts are mentioned by Schmidt, who gives a detailed list of Claudius's known works and attempts a chronological arrangement, p. 44 n. 8 and in his article in Herzog and Plitt's Real-Encyklopädie: see too Mabillon p. 92, ed. 1723. All these pieces, I think, are collected in the hundred-and-fourth volume of Migne. How much besides lies hidden in the Vatican we cannot tell. Cardinal Mai's edition of the preface to Claudius's commentary on the Pauline Epistles is avowedly a specimen which he intended to follow by the whole work, Nova Collect. vet. Scriptor. 7. 274 n. 1, Rome 1833. He mentions also two codices at Rome of the Catena upon saint Matthew, Spicil. Roman. 4. 301, Rome 1840
* ↑ See for instance his preface to the Lib. informationum litterae et spiritus super Leviticum, Mabillon, p. 90, and that to his commentary on the Ephesians, ib. p. 92, where he alludes to his 'rustic speech.'
* ↑ Claudius's allegorising tendency has however been exaggerated. He himself lays down the limit, 'scilicet ut manente veritate historiae figuras intelligamus,' in Galat. cap. iv. p. 158 B.
* ↑ Dr. Reuter, Geschichte der religiösen Aufklärung 1. 17, is surely guilty of an anachronism in speaking of the 'crucifix,' of the existence or possibility of which neither Claudius nor any of his opponents seem aware. See for example Jonas 168 H. Pictures of the crucifixion there doubtless were, and perhaps crosses bearing a painted figure; but these are not what we call 'crucifixes.'
* ↑ De admonitione et exhortatione unde rogasti quod scriberem, ut votum quod voverunt domino reddant; ... nullam admonitionem meliorem potui invenire quam epistulae primae Pauli apostoli, quam misi, quia tota inde agitur ut merita hominum tollat, unde maxime nunc monachi gloriantur, et gratiam Dei commendat, per quam omnis qui vovit, quod vovit domino reddat: praef. in epp. Pauli, Mai, Nov. Coll. 7. 275 sq.
* ↑ Quia videlicet nisi quis a semetipso deficiat, ad eum qui super ipsum est non appropinquat, nec valet apprehendere quod ultra ipsum est si nescierit mactare quod est: Apol. ap. Jon. p. 184 C. The sentence, according to Jonas, is adopted from saint Gregory.
* ↑ Compare his reference to such expeditions, Mai, Nov. Coll. 7. 275.
* ↑ Inveni omnes basilicas, contra ordinem veritatis, sordibus anathematum et imaginibus plenas: Apol. ap. Jon. 170 D.
* ↑ See his complaints in the Apologetic, ap. Jon. p. 171 C, and in a preface addressed to Theodemir as late as 823, ap. Mabillon, Vet. anal. 90; cf. p. 91.
* ↑ Προσκύνησις was decreed, not λατρεία; cf. supra, pp. 27 sq.: a distinction which modern protestants find difficult to appreciate. The English language indeed allows great latitude to the signification both of 'worship' and 'adoration'; and the unique relation is only implied in 'idolatry' and certain hypothetical derivatives like 'Mariolatry.’
* ↑ Saint Agobard expressed himself in almost the same words, De imag. xix. p. 291 C. Claudius proceeds: Si scribas in pariete vel pingas imagines Petri et Pauli, Iovis et Saturni, sive Mercurii, nec isti sunt dii nec illi apostoli; nec isti nec ilii homines: ac per hoc nomen mutatur, error tamen et tunc et nunc idem ipse permanent semper: Apol., ap. Dungal. 201 G and Jon. 174 B. C.
* ↑ This verse, it is interesting to note, was also a favourite with Berengar of Tours, who, in his resistance to materialistic opinions, was in many respects the unconscious disciple of Claudius: De sacra coena 45, 94, 200, ed. A. F. and F. T. Vischer, Berlin 1834.
* ↑ The reprint of Jonas's extracts (see below, p. 33 n. 23), p. 198 E, presents a variant still more guarded in language.
* ↑ It seems doubtful whether 'aliis' or 'aliis succedentibus,' just after, can be pressed (with Gfrörer and Milman) to mean the whole episcopal order: I have therefore omitted the clause, and interpreted the whole sentence in the light of what follows.
* ↑ I find this inference anticipated and extended by Gfrörer, Kirchengeschichte 3. 733. Schmidt, ubi supra, p. 62, thinks it implied by a passage in Jonas, p. 175 F, G, that Claudius had at one time come under the censure of the pope, a supposition not improbable in itself and rather confirmatory than otherwise of the suggestion which I have made in the text.
* ↑ See pp. 166, 167 H, 193 mg., and the pregnant note, Caute lege, p. 195 H, marg.
* ↑ Quibusdam dumtaxat Gallorum exceptis, quibus utique nondum est harum [imaginum] utilitas revelata; Mansi 12. 983 D.
* ↑ The fragments are collected in two pages of the Maxima Bibliotheca Patrum 14. 197 sqq., which give an appearance of continuity to what is really a string of extracts by no means regularly consecutive. Moreover the text is so inaccurate and the punctuation so bewildering that I have preferred to seek the originals in the pages of Dungal and Jonas themselves.
* ↑ I take the date from a manuscript notice quoted by Mabillon, Iter Italicum 68, Paris 1687 quarto. [So too Monsignor Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, 2. 172; 1899.] Bouquet, 6. 190 B marg. and note (1749), infers from the chronicle of Ado of Vienne, a. 815 (so also in Pertz's edition, 2. 320), that Agobard's elevation took place a year earlier.
* ↑ Dr. Reuter, 1. 30, confesses himself unable to harmonise the account in the place last quoted and in the eplistle to Bartholomew, vii, of the appearance of the devil 'als wirklich handelnder,' with the other passages in which his activity seems conditioned by the self-deception of men. But he has certainly drawn too definite an inference from Agobard's words when he represents him as saying, 'people are deceived because they deceive themselves.' Agobard in fact nowhere expresses himself without qualification, either on this head or on that of the devil's actual interference in human affairs. The words with which he closes the story given in the text, offering it as an example 'de inani seductione et vera sensus diminutione' (p. 275 B), shew how closely connected in his mind the two ideas were. It is uncritical to link a number of detached phrases or epithets, chosen from different places, and to take credit for realising, when one is only confusing, an author's system.
* ↑ Utilitas iudiciorum constat in discussione causarum et subtilitate investigationum: Lib. adv. legem Gundobadi et impia certamina quae per eam geruntur, x. p. 265 H.
* ↑ It is significant that so representative a churchman as archbishop Hincmar of Rheims opposed this ordinance: Noorden, Hinkmar 173. Gottschalk also challenged the ordeal as a test of the truth of his opinions: ibid. p. 67.
* ↑ Quod ita sentiatis de prophetis et apostolis ut non solum sensum praedicationis et modos vel argumenta dictionum Spiritus sanctus eis inspiraverit, sed etiam ipsa corporalia verba extrinsecus in ora illorum ipse formaverit: Lib. contra obiectiones Fredeg. abbat. xii. p. 277 E: an argument against all organic theories of inspiration.
* ↑ Usus sanctae scripturae est verbis condescendere humanis, quatinus vim ineffabilis rei, humano more loquens, ad notitiam hominum deduceret et mysteria insolita solitis ostenderet rebus: ibid. vii. p. 276 E.
* ↑ For the following outline I am chiefly indebted to Graetz, 5. 245-263 [pp. 230-247 in the fourth edition, Leipzig, 1909.] His remarks as to the dishonesty of Agobard in baptising the slaves of Jews and thus emancipating them may be just: but Christians have at all times been not unready to stretch their loyalty to honour at the call of religion, and Agobard asserts that the slaves begged to be baptised, De baptismo Iudaicorum mancipiorum, p. 262 E, F.
* ↑ The chief rabbi of the synagogue of Narbonne asserted that Charles had granted him this dignity; certainly a street in this place was named Rey Juif: G. B. Depping, Les Juifs dans le Moyen Âge 110, 1845.
* ↑ I am not sure that we can affirm, with Noorden, pp. 38 sq., that Agobard's preference for the power of the ecclesiastical over the secular estate was caused by his conviction of the feebleness of Lewis's government. This may have decided him, but his moderation has not the tone of a convert: see for instance his letter to the emperor, De comparatione utriusque regiminis, ecclesiastici et politici, especially p. 315 E.
* ↑ Augustinum quem contradicere fas non est: De partu virginis ii, in Luc d'Achery's Spicilegium sive Collectio veterum aliquot Scriptorum, l. 51 a, ed. F. J. L. de la Barre, Paris 1723 folio.
* ↑ The curious treatises of Paschasius Radbert and Ratramnus relating to the manner of Christ's birth will be found in d'Achery, ubi supra, pp. 44 sqq., 52 sqq. Paschasius addressed his disquisition to the matron and virgins of the convent of Vesona in the diocese of Périgord.
* ↑ The history here only glanced at is related in an admirably luminous chapter of Noorden's Hinkmar 51-100.