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The Invention of a Theology of Abduction: Hincmar of Rheims on Raptus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2009

RACHEL STONE
RACHEL STONE
Affiliation:
41 Lancaster Avenue, Hitchin, Herts SG5 1PA; e-mail: rachel@stonefamily.orangehome.co.uk
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Abstract

‘Raptus’, the abduction of women in order to marry them, was seen as a serious problem in Carolingian Francia. This article examines the only Frankish text that provides a theological justification for condemning raptus, Hincmar of Rheims's De coercendo et exstirpando raptu viduarum, puellarum ac sanctimonialium. It shows the difficulties that Hincmar found in providing a coherent theological argument against a practice normally condemned for its social and familial disruption. In particular, it suggests that Hincmar was worried that laymen, who had been encouraged by Carolingian reformers to study the Bible, might use Old Testament precedents to justify raptus.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , July 2009 , pp. 433 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009
MGH

Monumenta Germaniae Historia

Cap.

Capitularia regum francorum

Conc.

Concilia

Epp.

Epistolae

SRG

Scriptores rerum germanicorum in usum scholarum separatim editi

The abduction of women was seen as a significant problem in eighth- and ninth-century Francia. Several notorious cases involved royal women and prominent laymen; both Lothar i, emperor of Lotharingia, and his brother Charles the Bald, king of West Francia, had a daughter abducted.Footnote 1 This article examines the Carolingian text that gives the fullest discussion of abduction, Hincmar of Rheims's De coercendo et exstirpando raptu viduarum, puellarum ac sanctimonialium,Footnote 2 showing the author's creation of a theological view on this social issue.

Carolingian secular legislation and conciliar canons repeatedly condemn raptus. Although in some texts from the period raptus probably means rape,Footnote 3 more commonly the meaning is abduction (or sometimes elopement). One eighth-century capitulary defines raptus as ‘he who takes a free woman against the will of her relatives’.Footnote 4 Marriage by abduction has a long history in many cultures where arranged marriages are the norm, as a marginal alternative to such marriages.Footnote 5 Such abductions, however, were potentially very socially disruptive. At best, parental authority was flouted; at worst, they might lead to serious violence.Footnote 6 From the fourth century, therefore, Roman emperors treated raptus as a public offence and legislated against it.Footnote 7 Merovingian kings did likewise.Footnote 8

Since the underlying motivation of raptus was usually marriage, discussions paid considerable attention to the marital status of the rapta: the normal distinctions were between girls who were not yet betrothed, betrothed girls, widows and nuns. Secular penalties were sometimes extremely harsh. A law of Constantine (Codex Theodosianus ix.24.1) decreed equivalent punishment (implicitly, the death penalty) for the raptor, his accomplices and an unmarried girl who consented to her raptus.Footnote 9 In addition, the girl's nurse (nutrix), assumed to be an abettor, was punished by having molten lead poured down her throat. If the parents subsequently came to an agreement with the raptor and allowed the marriage, they themselves would be subject to exile.Footnote 10 Childebert ii in 595 ordered raptores to be killed or exiled; the same penalty applied to the woman if she had consented to the raptus.Footnote 11

In contrast, while the earliest recension of Salic law condemned abductions, fines were the only penalties unless the unfree were involved.Footnote 12 Formularies show a process in which an abduction marriage could be made into a normal marriage by the subsequent endowment of the bride.Footnote 13 There was also relatively little early conciliar legislation on raptus, and theologians generally took a more lenient attitude than Constantine, unless consecrated women were involved.Footnote 14 Merovingian conciliar decrees focus on the abduction of nuns.Footnote 15

This situation changed under the Carolingians: raptus was now described as an offence against both ‘human and divine authority’.Footnote 16 Yet although all Carolingian texts condemned raptus and agreed that the perpetrators must be punished, there was disagreement on one key aspect: whether or not a valid marriage could ever result from an act of raptus. Councils were consistent in ruling that raptores could not marry nuns or women consecrated to God,Footnote 17 and human or divine punishment is sometimes recorded for the perpetrators.Footnote 18 More contentious was whether a raptor could abduct and subsequently marry an unmarried girl, either betrothed or not. Salic law did not require betrothed girls to be returned to their fiancés,Footnote 19 but from the early ninth century some regulations specifically banned the raptor and the rapta from marrying in this case.Footnote 20 The prohibition against subsequent marriage was also extended by some councils to raptores of girls who were not yet betrothed.Footnote 21 Yet other near-contemporary councils did allow such marriages, if the girl and her parents consented subsequently. The Council of Meaux-Paris in 845–6, for example, allowed the subsequent marriage of a raptor (after penance) with a widow, a virgin or even a betrothed girl.Footnote 22 In contrast, the Council of Pavia in 850 insisted on maintaining the ‘statutes of the ancient Fathers’ in which a legitimate marriage with the raptor was not possible.Footnote 23

These differences do not indicate any ambiguity about raptus itself, as is sometimes claimed.Footnote 24 Moralists who allowed a valid marriage to be made from raptus instead stressed the need for damage limitation.Footnote 25 Baldwin of Flanders, for example, was anathematised by the West Frankish bishops after his (consensual) raptus of Charles the Bald's widowed daughter Judith in 862.Footnote 26 However, Baldwin sought help from Pope Nicholas i, and achieved reconciliation with Charles and a legal marriage.Footnote 27 Nicholas, in his intervention, stressed that he asked for mercy for Baldwin and did not demand Charles's forgiveness,Footnote 28 but that he was concerned: ‘lest something still worse may perhaps arise from this’.Footnote 29

De coercendo

Carolingian councils and capitularies condemned raptus, but provided no theological justification for their views: at most, earlier canons are cited. This explains the significance of De coercendo et exstirpando raptu viduarum, puellarum ac sanctimonialium. Its author, Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims (845–82), was not only a politician, historian and liturgist, but also a canonist, who produced some of the most extensive and significant discussions on marriage in the Carolingian period.Footnote 30 He played a prominent role in West Frankish synods from the early 840s, including the Council of Meaux-Paris and the synod in 862 which anathematised Baldwin and Judith. (A letter of his to Nicholas i from 864 expresses his unhappiness at the fact that the pope had not specified that Baldwin and Judith had to do penance for the act of raptus.)Footnote 31 The precise date of De coercendo is unclear, although passages common to this text and to De divortio Lotharii regis et Tetbergae reginae suggest that it dates to 860 or after,Footnote 32 and that Hincmar was, if not the sole author, at least a considerable influence on the work. Since the text itself says that it is the work of ‘Galliarum et Germaniarum episcopi’, the most likely occasion for its production is the Council of Ponthion in 876, the one occasion when bishops from both parts of Francia are known to have met.Footnote 33

De coercendo took the hard-line view that disallowed the subsequent marriage of a raptor and the abducted girl. Hincmar's argument against raptus started from a text of St Paul's (1 Corinthians iii.16): ‘Do you not know that you are a temple of God and the Holy Spirit dwells in you? But if anyone should violate the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God, which you are, is holy.’Footnote 34 He then urged the (unnamed) ruler he addresses to drive out:

the very impudent audacity of certain people who, … without any reverence of divine or human modesty, do not fear … to violate the temple of God, which is the sanctity of the faithful … since in several parts of this realm, because of their public infestation, the deplorable desolation of widows is not allowed to have legitimate freedom, nor are daughters in the age of girlhood and living in the homes of parents allowed to be honoured with matronly marriage in any way, according to divine and human laws and the authority and wishes of the same parents: and even the appointed devotion to God of nuns themselves is dissolved and profaned, contrary to the profession of sanctity and reverence of divine consecration.Footnote 35

Hincmar associates raptus with sacrilege, but, perhaps deliberately, is vague about the details. At one level the ‘temple of God’ is women's bodies; the ‘profanation’ of nuns is implicitly extended to all raptus:

Thus that old enemy of human kind formerly polluted the gold and silver vessels of the house of God through Belshazzar the impious and sacrilegious king [Daniel v]: now through the profane insolence and impiety of these men, he does not cease to stain things much more precious and dear to God.Footnote 36

Yet St Paul's verse implies that any ‘bodily’ sin could be seen as sacrilege,Footnote 37 while conversely, consensual raptus need not involve ‘violation’ in the sense of sexual assault. Hincmar therefore broadens the sense of the ‘temple of God’ to the visible Church, linking together as offenders, ‘raptores of widows and girls and nuns, despisers of priests, violators of the temple of God’.Footnote 38

Hincmar then argues that since marriage is a matter of natural and divine law, raptus is an offence against both. He quotes the ‘public law of the Romans’;Footnote 39 from the details of the punishments, Constantine's law is meant.Footnote 40 Hincmar adds that this law's punishment of a girl who does not cry out when attacked ‘miraculously agrees with divine law, where a betrothed girl, if she should be attacked by someone in a city, is ordered to be stoned, since she did not call out’.Footnote 41 This supposed parallel to Mosaic law (Deuteronomy xxii.23–4) obscures two key points: that Constantine's law applied to abduction, not rape, and that it applied to all girls, not just those already betrothed. Hincmar adds several passages to demonstrate that divine law regarded a betrothed girl as already married, implying that her raptus should be equated with the more serious sins of adultery or bigamy.Footnote 42

Hincmar then returns to the theme of sacrilege: a valid marriage cannot be contracted from raptus, since it is sacrilegious:

Those who choose marital joining neither by order of divine law, nor by authority of parental will nor by piety of clerical holiness, and moreover have deserved public excommunication by the authority of the canons instead of priestly blessing, by what impudence do they want sacrilege seen as marriage and brigandry as marriage and violence as piety? … Let it by no means be said about this kind of, not legitimate marriage at all, but adulterous cohabitation [contubernium], what the Lord and the Gospel said: What therefore God has joined let man not separate [Matthew xix.6], but rather, What man has impiously and improperly joined, God will disunite by his just ruling.Footnote 43

Here, Hincmar considers raptus within the context of the ninth-century canon law debate on what constituted a marriage and whether marriage was always indissoluble. Hincmar had stated his views on the requirements for a valid marriage in an earlier case: ‘when it happens between free and equals, and by paternal authority a free woman is joined to a man, legitimately dowered and honoured by a public marriage, with sexual intercourse’.Footnote 44 By these criteria, a marriage made after abduction could potentially be valid, if the raptor subsequently obtained parental consent, but De coercendo hides such distinctions.

Hincmar follows this passage with a digression about the wickedness of those who do not respect excommunications, which is then abruptly linked to wife murder:

From these, [presumably the excommunicated] some are found to be so rough and of bestial cruelty, that having killed their previous wives from suspicion of adultery, by no law, no reason, no judgement, but only by their wrath and cruelty, they approach the altar of the Lord and indiscriminately presume to touch the sacred mysteries, while yet overflowing with blood and gore.Footnote 45

He now spends some time arguing that it is against both human and divine law to kill wives, even if adulterous, without a proper judgement. He cites both bible passages and biblical and Roman law (here explicitly stated to be pre-Christian),Footnote 46 yet could not avoid contradictions. Both Mosaic lawFootnote 47 and ninth-century secular law allowed the killing of a wife who was proved to be adulterous, but Carolingian churchmen rejected such actions.Footnote 48 Hincmar warns husbands who try to defend such killings by appeals to secular law: ‘If they are Christians, let them know that on the day of judgement they will be judged neither by Roman, Salic, or Burgundian law, but by divine and apostolic laws.’Footnote 49

After this long condemnation of uxoricide, Hincmar abruptly switches back to raptus:

Such men also break out into such stupidity and blindness, that after they have initially joined themselves to women, against all laws, both human and divine, and against the law of humanity itself, through violence and raptus, or even not fearing to defile them with sacrilegious impiety [by removing them] from the profession and habit of a nun, having besmeared the women with blandishments and placated their parents with ingenious, nay rather shameful flattery, they reckon they have evaded both divine and human justice and want such illicit and iniquitous cohabiting to be seen as legitimate and honest marriage.Footnote 50

Hincmar again justifies this condemnation of raptores who obtain subsequent parental permission both by secular law (Constantine's edict) and ‘divine’ law. His references to canon law seem to be to three separate statutes, none explicitly cited. Hincmar says that canon law demands that those who have married in such circumstances should be excommunicated or anathematised until separation,Footnote 51 or that after separation they should ‘be delivered wholly to workhouses (ergastula) under strictest penance until the day of death’.Footnote 52 This second punishment seems to be based specifically on a canon of the Council of Tusey 860 about nuns who married.Footnote 53 Finally, Hincmar cites part of a canon from the Council of Orleans (511), which orders that if a raptor has taken a girl by violence and flees to sanctuary, the girl must be returned to her parents, and the raptor be handed over to the parents in slavery, unless he redeems himself from this.Footnote 54 (Hincmar ignores the rest of the canon, which says that a girl who consents to her raptus before or subsequently is not punished).Footnote 55

Hincmar then moves to two biblical narratives: David's marriage to Bathsheba (2 Samuel xi) and the mass abduction-marriages of the Benjaminites (Judges xxi). Hincmar uses David's punishment by God as a warning for ‘someone so insane that he should therefore think that profane and violent cohabitation can be made a legitimate marriage’.Footnote 56 (David's crime is, of course, not actually raptus but adultery, followed by murder.) The passage, however, poses two problems for Hincmar. One is that the Bible treats David's marriage with Bathsheba as valid, which directly contradicts Hincmar's own statements on marriage after raptus, and the other is David's polygamy. Hincmar explains away the polygamy as being ‘conceded by the Mosaic law for that time’,Footnote 57 but is forced to see the marriage to Bathsheba simply as something miraculous, not to be imitated.Footnote 58

Hincmar starts his discussion of the passage from Judges with a brief retelling of the story. All but 600 Benjaminites were justly killed in battle by the other Israelites for their sins. The other Israelites had also sworn not to give their daughters in marriage to Benjaminites, but were now concerned that the whole tribe might die out. They therefore encouraged the Benjaminites to abduct and marry virgins gathered at Shiloh for a religious festival, thus allowing marriage without the explicit breaking of their vow. Hincmar comments:

In this matter there would now be no divine indignation to be feared, since all would be done for divine love and honour and for the sake of God … therefore with justice preserved everywhere, since neither were those girls abducted from the rule of their parents from any lust or contumacy, but from necessity alone, nor did those who had captured them do anything by their own will or temerity, but by the order and authority of populus and seniores, there remained only the parents' complaint to be assuaged by reasonable compensation.Footnote 59

As in the biblical passage, the parents are told to show mercy.Footnote 60 Hincmar then stresses again the exceptional nature of this abduction: ‘All that, therefore, rationally provided, rationally done, rationally finished, for the sake of public utility, by public authority and prayer, is thus unique and not to be imitated at all, it is to be read as a mystery, done once and never again repeated.’Footnote 61

After these exemplary non-examples, Hincmar then returns to the denunciation of raptors who obtain subsequent parental consent to their marriage. They may have pacified the parents, but they have not pacified the Church of God, unless they do penance.Footnote 62 He follows this with a condemnation of raptores who gain the support of principes for such marriages; instead rulers should protect the Church from such ‘deadly contagions’.Footnote 63 (There seem to be echoes here of Charles the Bald eventually allowing the marriage of Judith to Baldwin). The treatise finishes with further rhetorical flourishes: women who are abducted are ‘prostituted’, the couple are ‘always branded with the mark of infamy’.Footnote 64

The invention of a theology

Why is De coercendo such a clumsy and at times contradictory work? This was perhaps because Hincmar faced unusually severe problems in developing a theological position on raptus. First, there was an inherent tension between attempts to specify what made a legitimate marriage and to keep marriage indissoluble.Footnote 65 There were a number of attempts by ninth-century laypeople to obtain divorces by arguing that their marriage had never been valid.Footnote 66 Carolingian reformers were keenly aware that too strict regulations on contracting marriages might give additional pretexts for divorce.Footnote 67

Second, there was little church tradition on which Hincmar could draw. He quotes no patristic comments specifically on raptus. An appendix includes extracts from the canons on raptus: only two of these refer to betrothed womenFootnote 68 and two to widows or unbetrothed girls,Footnote 69 while eleven deal with consecrated virgins or nuns. Constantine's law did support harsh punishment for raptus; however, Hincmar's discussion of killing adulterous wives shows that he did not necessarily regard secular law as morally authoritative.

There were also problems with more ‘rational’ arguments against raptus. Although Carolingian moralists strongly supported parental authority over children, they could not in principle oppose disobedience by unmarried daughters, since there was a long hagiographic tradition of female saints defying their families to become nuns.Footnote 70 In the case of an elopement to which the parents subsequently agreed, all the elements of a valid marriage were potentially fulfilled. The conversion of an illicit relationship into subsequent marriage was also seen as acceptable in other circumstances: for example, a man was able to turn his concubine into his wife.Footnote 71

Hincmar thus resorted to two rather unsatisfactory tactics. One was conflating all forms of raptus with its most objectionable forms, the abduction or elopement of nuns and violent raptus. The second was using biblical texts, but he could find relevant passages only in the Old Testament. This raised problems such as the continuing validity of Mosaic law,Footnote 72 and its differing categorisation of offences. Hincmar admitted the existence of polygamy, but elsewhere was more concerned to hide discrepancies.Footnote 73

Hincmar's use of biblical narratives is particularly interesting. As part of his attempt to link raptus with other more lurid crimes, he uses the example of David and Bathsheba to prove that a marriage cannot be made through violence. Hincmar's use of the example of the Benjaminites initially seems more problematic. This story goes far more directly against Hincmar's argument, presenting a set of abduction marriages that implicitly were divinely approved. Why did Hincmar introduce a story so potentially damaging to his argument?

Hincmar's discussion seems to be a conscious reaction to other views: theology against someone else. One possibility is that the varying views on raptus seen in conciliar legislation were accompanied by theological debate. However, the passage about the Benjaminites seems an unlikely focus for learned dispute. No exegetical works available to ninth-century theologians that discuss this text can be traced.Footnote 74 What is more, Hincmar twice refers to the possibility of the ‘wicked’ taking this story as an example for their own conduct.Footnote 75 The implication is that Hincmar's opponents (potential or actual) include laymen, along perhaps with clergy dependent on them.Footnote 76

There was no simple distinction between clerical and lay views on marriage and sexual norms in the period. Capitularies, mirrors for laymen and other texts show a number of laymen listening to and endorsing the provisions of reformers on incest and divorce.Footnote 77 However, there are several other traces in Carolingian texts of similar ‘theological’ resistance by laymen to the Church's teachings on sex. Jonas of Orléans, in his moral tract for laymen, De institutione laicali, gives several examples of how married men might argue against his teachings on marriage. Discussing the need for times of abstinence within marriage, Jonas writes:

There are very many leading a married life, who take care to distinguish very modestly between the times of uniting and not uniting with wives; also there are those who not only reject using this manner of discretion, but also are accustomed shamelessly to oppose themselves to those who censure and contradict them. Our wives, they say, are joined to us by law; if we use them at our will, when and how we want, we do not sin. But we are made answerable for a greater crime, if we abstain from the embrace of wives, and we do not beget sons, whom we should have begotten. This objection, I must say, is very often made to me.Footnote 78

More generally, Jonas complains about certain impudices: ‘There is no lack of men wanting to be intent upon their lust, who may say: The reason that the genital members have been created by the highest maker, God, in each sex, is so that they may be mingled equally: how therefore do we sin if we practice intercourse at will?’Footnote 79 The Council of Douzy (874), meanwhile, complains about ‘very many, particularly those noble in carnal terms and elevated by temporal honour’ committing incestuous marriages and trying to justify themselves by quoting Gregory the Great's Libellus responsionum, which allowed marriages in the third or fourth degree.Footnote 80

Should these claims by clerical authors that laymen were raising specific moral objections to the Church's rules on marriage and sexual behaviour be seen just as a rhetorical strategy, with no basis in reality? This seems unlikely, since such depiction of alternative arguments is rarely seen when moralists discuss other aspects of lay life.Footnote 81 Instead, these comments should be considered against the background of Carolingian religious reforms, which consciously aimed to affect lay as well as clerical behaviour. Noble laymen were encouraged by Carolingian moralists to read the Bible (or have it read to them).Footnote 82 Such activity, they were told, should not simply be left to clerics.Footnote 83 Some laymen clearly took such advice seriously: one of Alcuin's letters discusses a question raised by a layman about two contradictory gospel passages.Footnote 84 Other laypeople are known to have owned Bibles and commentaries or to have borrowed theological works from ecclesiastical libraries.Footnote 85

Against this background, the lay elite probably did develop their own theological ideas, drawing directly on biblical stories. The most famous example of such a ‘lay theologian’ is Dhuoda, a ninth-century noblewoman who wrote a moral tract for her teenage son William.Footnote 86 Although Dhuoda's originality has sometimes been over-stated,Footnote 87 one small example shows her own distinctive view of biblical figures. She praises King David's captains Joab and Abner as examples of loyalty.Footnote 88 Apart from Joab's loyalty he was otherwise a somewhat peculiar moral exemplar, carrying out several murders, the killing of the defenceless Absalom and the mass destruction of cities.Footnote 89 There is no obvious source for Dhuoda's praise of Joab, who is rarely mentioned by earlier Christian writers, except in commentaries on the Books of Kings.Footnote 90 Instead, her views presumably came directly from her study of the Bible.

Dhuoda's personal response to Scripture is unusually well-documented, but other laypeople may also have developed their own biblical interpretations.Footnote 91 Hincmar's concern to interpret the Benjaminite story ‘correctly’ may thus reflect a serious belief that it could be or already had been used to justify raptus. In Alcuin's letter of 798 on the two swords he rejected the idea of ‘a certain wise man’ who thought that learning the Gospel was for clerics, not laymen; the time was now right for laymen to do so.Footnote 92 The comments of Jonas and Hincmar a few decades later, however, suggest that the consequences of lay interest in the Bible could be unexpected.

Raptus was a social practice that offered substantial benefits to a few fortunate lay noblemen, such as Baldwin.Footnote 93 Its prohibition therefore needed to be repeatedly reinforced. De coercendo shows Hincmar attempting to reinforce such prohibitions by providing a new theological response to raptus, placing it within a framework of moral absolutes about marriage as a divine institution. Hincmar's thinking, however, was hampered by the absence of a patristic tradition on the topic and the inconsistencies in the Carolingian theology of marriage and divorce. His recourse to Scripture brought equal problems: with at least some of the laity newly inspired to bible study, it was hard to ensure that texts were always interpreted as the church hierarchy intended. Creating a theology of abduction was an unprecedented and difficult task in the ninth century; Hincmar's relative lack of success in De coercendo is perhaps not surprising.

References

1 Annales Fuldenses s.a. 846, ed. F. Kurze, MGH, SRG vii. 36; Annales Bertiniani s.a. 862, ed. G. Waitz, SRG, v. 56–7.

2 Hincmar of Rheims, De coercendo et exstirpando raptu viduarum, puellarum ac sanctimonialium, PL cxv.1017–36; a new edition is being prepared by Sylvie Joye (Université de Reims. No manuscripts are extant: L. Böhringer, ‘Einleitung’, in Hincmar of Rheims, De divortio Lotharii regis et Theutbergae reginae, ed. L. Böhringer (MGH, Conc. IV, Supplementum 1), 1–98 at p. 68.

3 Elsakkers, M., ‘“Raptus ultra Rhenum”: early ninth-century Saxon laws on abduction and rape’, Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik lii (1999), 27–53.Google Scholar

4 ‘qui feminam ingenuam trahit contra voluntatem parentum suorum’: Summula de bannis c 5, MGH, Cap. I, no. 110, 224.

5 Evans-Grubbs, J., ‘Abduction marriage in late antiquity: a law of Constantine (CTh IX. 24. 1) and its social context’, Journal of Roman Studies lxxix (1989), 59–83 at pp. 61–4.Google Scholar

6 Eleutherius carried off and married Pope Hadrian ii's daughter, who was already betrothed to another man. When missi were sent to judge him, he killed his wife and her mother, before being slain himself: Annales Bertiniani s.a. 868, 92.

7 Grodzynski, D., ‘Ravies et coupables: un essai d'interprétation de la loi ix, 24, 1 du Code Théodosien’, Mélanges de l'École française de Rome xcvi (1984), 697–726.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 S. F. Wemple, Women in Frankish society: marriage and the cloister, 500–900, Philadelphia 1981, 34; Siegmund, F., ‘Pactus legis Salicae s 13: über den Frauenraub in der Merowingerzeit’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien xxxii (1998), 101–23.Google Scholar

9 A girl who did not consent was also punished (with loss of inheritance rights) if she failed to raise enough clamour to alert the neighbours and prevent the attack.

10 Evans-Grubbs, ‘Abduction marriage’, 59–65.

11 Pactus legis Salicae, Capitula Legi Salicae addita, Capitulare VI, 2-2, ed. K. A. Eckhardt, MGH, Leges nationum Germanicarum, 4.1, 268.

12 Ibid. 13·1–7, 12–13, 59–63.

13 R. Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc (VIIe – Xe siècle): essai d'anthropologie sociale, Paris 1995, 268.

14 Evans-Grubbs, ‘Abduction marriage’, 73–6.

15 There are three references in Merovingian councils to the raptus of consecrated women: Concilium Aurelianense 538 c 19, Concilium Parisiense 556–73 c 5, Concilium Clippiacense 626–7 c 26, MGH, Conc. i, 79, 144, 200. Only two councils deal with other forms of raptus: Concilium Aurelianense 511 c 2 (on sanctuary claims by the raptor), Concilium Aurelianense 541 c 22 (no-one ‘per imperium potestatis’ is to marry without parental consent), MGH, Conc. i, 3, 92.

16 Capitulare ecclesiasticum 818x819 c 22, MGH, Cap. i, no. 138, 278, inserts canons on raptus so all know ‘quantum malum sit, et non solum humana sed etiam divina auctoritate constricti’.

17 The raptores of nuns were often excommunicated, for example, Capitulare ecclesiasticum 818x819 c 25, MGH, Cap. i, no. 138, 279; Council of Ver 844 c 5, MGH, Conc. iii, no. 7, 41.

18 Programmatic capitulary 802 c 33, MGH, Cap. i, no 33, 97, refers to the example made by Charlemagne of Fricco's ‘incestum’ with a nun. Annales Fuldenses s.a. 887, 105–6, records how Liutward of Vercelli abducted the daughter of Count Unruoch from a convent for his relative to marry; the relative was then killed by divine punishment.

19 Pactus legis Salicae 13.12–13, 63. Capitula legibus addenda 818x819 c 9, MGH, Cap. i, no. 139, 282, also seems to allow the marriage if the girl's guardian agrees subsequently, but the perpetrator must still pay compensation to the groom and the fisc.

20 See, for example, Capitulare ecclesiasticum 818x819 c 24, MGH, Cap. i, no. 138, 279 (citing Council of Ancyra 314 c 10 [11]); Capitula incerta c 1, MGH, Cap. i, no. 156, 315.

21 See, for example, Capitulare ecclesiasticum 818x819 c 23, MGH, Cap. i, no. 138, 278.

22 Council of Meaux-Paris c 64–5, 68, MGH, Conc. iii, no. 11, 115–17. However, c 66, 116, specifically punishes the serial raptor by anathema and barring him from all marriage.

23 Council of Pavia 850 c 10, MGH, Conc. iii, no. 23, 224.

24 Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir, 301; I. Weber argues convincingly that the decrees on raptus instead show the Church's ambiguity as to whether the couple's consent alone created a valid marriage: ‘“Consensus facit nuptias!” Überlegungen zum ehelichen Konsens in normativen Texten des Frühmittelalters’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung cxviii (2001), 31–66 at pp. 52–7.

25 See, for example, Council of Meaux-Paris c 65, MGH, Conc. iii, no. 11, 115: ‘non regulam constituimus, sed … quid sit tolerabilius, aestimamus’.

26 Hludowici, Karoli et Hlotharii II conventus apud Saponarias 862 c 5, MGH, Cap. II, no. 243, 160–1.

27 Annales Bertiniani s.a. 863, 66.

28 Nicholas i, epp. vii–viii, lvii, ed. E. Perels, MGH, Epp., vi, 272–5, 361.

29 Idem, ep. lx,369: ‘ne ex hoc adhuc deterius forte aliquid oriatur’. In ep. vii, 274 he specifies that he is concerned that Baldwin might ally with the Vikings.

30 On Hincmar see Jean Devisse, Hincmar, archevêque de Reims, 845–882, Geneva 1975–6.

31 ‘Post quae voluimus … ut iuxta ecclesiasticiam traditionem prius ecclesiae, quam laeserant, satisfacerent et sic demum quod praecipiunt iura legum mundialium exequi procurarent. Sed quoniam litteras vestras, quae inde nihil praeceperunt … sibi sufficere voluerunt’: Hincmar, ep. clxix, ed. E. Perels, MGH, Epp., viii. 145. Hincmar did not resist the pope, but took as little part in the marriage ceremony as possible.

32 Böhringer argues that the passages in De divortio are copied from De coercendo, based on their more logical arrangement in the latter text: ‘Einleitung’, 68–71. However, this ignores the overall subject of the common passages: that husbands may not arbitrarily kill even adulterous wives. This topic is clearly related to the wider one of whether a marriage may be ended in any way (the theme of De divortio); it has only peripheral relevance to the question of marriage by abduction.

33 Devisse, Hincmar, 461–3.

34 De coercendo c 2, 1018D.

35 ‘Obsecramus igitur, ut et pietas vestra … arripiat zelum pro domo Dei … et flagello justae severitatis exterminans quorumdam hominum impudentissimam audaciam, qui … absque ulla divini sive humani pudoris reverentia … templum Dei, quod est sanctimonia fidelium, violare non metuunt … dum in nonnullis regni hujus partibus, propter eorum publicam infestationem, nec viduarum miseranda desolatio legitimam habere libertatem permittitur, nec filiae in aetate puellari et parentum domibus constitutae, juxta leges divinas et humanas, eorumdem parentum suorum votis atque auctoritate, matronalibus nuptiis honestari ullatenus sinuntur: et ipsarum quoque sanctimonialium Deo dicata devotio, contra professionem sanctitatis, et reverentiam divinae consecrationis, dissolvitur et profanatur’: ibid. c 4, 1019D-20B.

36 ‘Ita ille antiquus humani generis hostis quondam per Balthasar impium et sacrilegum regem vasa domus Dei aurea atque argentea polluit: nunc per istorum profanam insolentiam atque impietatem multo pretiosiora et Deo chariora commaculare … non cessat’: ibid. c 4, 1020B.

37 St Paul specifically applies it to prostitution, a sin rarely condemned explicitly by Carolingian moralists and councils.

38 ‘raptores … viduarum et puellarum, et sanctimonialium, contemptores sacerdotum, violatores templi Dei’: De coercendo c 4, 1020C.

39 ‘Testantur hoc publicae Romanorum leges’: ibid. c 5, 1021A.

40 Hincmar's failure to mention who promulgated the law may be intended to imply that it was a pagan Roman emperor, thus showing that such a prohibition was ‘natural’.

41 ‘Quod mirabiliter divinae legi consonat, ubi puella desponsata, si ab aliquo in civitate oppressa fuerit, lapidibus obrui jubetur, quia non clamavit’: De coercendo c 5, 1021A.

42 Ibid. c 6, 1021B–D.

43 ‘Qui cum nec divinae legis ordine, nec parentalis voluntatis auctoritate, nec ecclesiasticae sanctitatis pietate, conjugalem copulam sortiti sunt, sed insuper pro benedictione sacerdotali excommunicationem publicam ex auctoritate canonum meruerunt, qua fronte sacrilegium videri volunt esse conjugium, et latrocinium matrimonium, et violentiam pietatem? … de hujusmodi nequaquam legitimo connubio, sed adulterino contubernio, nullatenus dici possit quod Dominus in Evangelio ait: Quod ergo Deus conjunxit, homo non separet, sed potius: Quod homo impie et improbe conjunxit, Deus sua aequitate dissociet’: ibid. c 7, 1022A–B.

44 ‘quando inter ingenuos et inter aequales fit et paterno arbitrio viro mulier ingenua, legitime dotata et publicis nuptiis honestata sexuum commixtione coniungitur’: Hincmar, ep. cxxxvi, 93. The case was that of Count Stephen of the Auvergne, who attempted to get his marriage dissolved on the grounds of incest and non-consummation. On the case see Devisse, Hincmar, 432–6; Gaudemet, J., ‘Indissolubilité et consommation du mariage: l'apport d'Hincmar de Reims’, Revue de droit canonique xxx (1980), 28–40Google Scholar; Gérard Fransen, ‘La Lettre de Hincmar de Reims au sujet du marriage d'Étienne: une relecture’, in R. Lievens, E. Van Mingroot and W. Verbeke (eds), Pascua mediaevalia: studies voor Prof. Dr. J. M. De Smet, Leuven 1983, 133–46.

45 ‘Ex his nonnulli tam immites, et non humanae affectionis, sed belluinae immanitatis inveniuntur, ut prioribus uxoribus ex suspicione adulteri nulla lege, nulla ratione, nullo judicio, sola sua animositate et crudelitate occisis, adhuc cruenti et sanguine madentes, … incunctanter ad altare Domini accedant, et indifferenter sacra mysteria contingere praesumant’: De coercendo c 8, 1023B–C. This passage is also found in De divortio, responsio 5, 145, where it fits more logically into a discussion of whether a man may ever divorce his wife and where no explicit link is made with raptus.

46 De coercendo c 9, 1024A–C.

47 Leviticus xx.10.

48 Paulinus of Aquileia, ep. 16, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH. Epp., iv. 520–2, in a judgement referred to by later Carolingian authors, imposed a severe lifelong penance on a certain Aistulf, who had killed his innocent wife and afterwards alleged she was an adulteress. He added (p. 521): ‘Nam et si verum … fuisset, sicut adulter ille mentitus est, post octo annos paenitentia forsitan peracta dimittere eam per adprobatam causam poteras, si voluisses, occidere eam tamen nullatenus debuisti.’ Concilium Triburiense 895 c 46, MGH, Cap. ii, no. 252, 239–40, declares that bishops must protect any ‘debauched’ (constuprata) wife who fled to sanctuary, to ensure she was not killed. They should aim to negotiate with her husband to spare her life, but if this failed, she should not be returned, but taken to a place of safety. (Such episcopal concern to protect adulterous wives is seen in practice in the case of Ingiltrude, the wife of Count Boso of Italy: see, for example, Hincmar, ep. cxxxv, 82–3, where Hincmar tells Archbishop Gunther of Cologne that Ingiltrude must be returned to Boso, once guarantees of her safety have been obtained from him).

49 ‘tamen si Christiani sunt, sciant se in die judicii nec Romanis, nec Salicis, nec Gundobadis, sed divinis et apostolicis legibus judicandos’: De coercendo c 12, 1026B.

50 ‘Qui etiam usque ad tantam stultitiam et caecitatem prorumpunt, ut eas quas in primis contra omnes et divinas et humanas leges, et contra ipsius jura humanitatis per violentiam et raptum sibi conjungunt, vel etiam ex professione et habitu sanctimoniali sacrilega impietate commaculare non metuunt, postea blanditiis delinitas, et parentibus earum artificiosa, imo ignominiosa adulatione placatis, putant se et divinum et humanum evasisse judicium, et tam illicitum atque iniquum contubernium volunt videri velut legitimum et honestum conjugium’: ibid. c 12, 1026D.

51 The Council of Chalcedon 451 c 27, which anathematised laymen who committed raptus, was cited by, for example, Capitulare ecclesiasticum 818–819 c 23, MGH, Cap. i, no. 138, 278; Council of Pavia 850, c 10, MGH, Conc. iii, no 23, 224; Council of Worms 868 c 77, MGH, Conc. iv, 290. Concilium Romanum 721 c 10–11, also anathematised those who committed raptus on widows or girls: Sacrorum conciliorum: nova et amplissima collectio, ed. G. D. Mansi, Florence 1759–98, xii. 264.

52 ‘et per ecclesiasticum judicium, quicunque ejusmodi sint, vel usque ad separationem excommunicandos sive anathematizandos, vel etiam post separationem ab omni aspectu publico arcendos, et usque ad diem mortis sub arctissima poenitentia in ergastula jubeat contradendos’: De coercendo c 12, 1027A.

53 ‘De velatis et sacratis deo tam viduis quam virginibus, si clam adulteraverint vel si publice nupserint … volumus, ut usque ad finem vitae in ergastulis retrusae poenitentiam agant, viri autem, qui vim eis intulerint, et ipsi censura ecclesiastica ad poenitentiam constringantur’: Council of Tusey 860 c 2, MGH, Conc. iv, no. 3, 19.

54 Concilium Aurelianense 511 c 2, MGH, Conc. i, 3; De coercendo c 12, 1027A.

55 ‘Sin vero quae rapitur patrem habere constiterit et puella raptori aut rapienda aut rapta consenserit, potestati patris excusata reddatur et raptor a patre superioris conditionis [enslavement or redemption] satisfactione teneatur obnoxius’: Concilium Aurelianense 511 c 2, MGH, Conc. i, 3. There is no specific prohibition on a raptor who has redeemed himself from slavery then marrying the rapta.

56 ‘si quis tam insanus est, ut istud profanum et violentum contubernium idcirco putet legitimum fieri posse conjugium’: De coercendo c 13, 1027B.

57 ‘Haec ergo … vel ita illi tempori Mosaicae legis concessa, … Sed et regem, qui pro conditione temporis illius non prohibebatur plures habere uxores, potuisse legitime accipere cujuslibet defuncti uxorem?’: ibid. c 14, 1028A–B.

58 ‘Quod autem conjugium illud, tam graviter increpatum et improbatum, atque flagellatum, ita manere permissum est, manifeste non est cuiquam ad imitandum propositum, ut quilibet in injusto ordine credat se habere justum conjugium: sed potius divinum exstitit miraculum vel sacramentum’: De coercendo c 13, 1027D. Patristic and later exegesis often allegorised David's adultery with Bathsheba in various ways to stress its aspect as a mystery: Buc, Philippe, ‘David's adultery with Bathsheba and the healing power of the Capetian kings’, Viator xxiv (1993), 101–20 at pp. 101–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 ‘In qua re jam nulla metuenda esset divina indignatio, cum pro amore et honore divino, et pro Dei causa totum ageretur … Servata ergo ubique justitia, cum neque illae puellae aliqua lascivia vel contumacia, sed necessitate sola parentum suorum regimine abductae essent, nec illi qui eas ceperant, aliquid suo libitu vel temeritate, sed populi et seniorum jussione atque auctoritate fecissent: restabat sola parentum querimonia rationabili satisfactione sopienda’: De coercendo c 16, 1030A.

60 ‘Miseremini eorum. Non enim ceperunt eas jure bellantium atque victorum, sed rogantibus ut daretis, et non dedistis, et a vestra parte peccatum est’: De coercendo c 16, 1030A–B (following Judges xxi.22). Unlike the original, however, Hincmar sees the parents here not as being bound by the original vow, but refusing solely from hardness of heart. He comments ‘Erant itaque residui habitatores Silo … qui nec in illo juramento, nec in illa pugna … fuisse credendi sunt: et idcirco licenter dare potuisse istas filias suas in conjugium, sed quadam duritia et exsecratione illius facinoris, quod a tribu Benjamin fuerat perpetratum, facere noluisse’: c 15, 1029C–D.

61 ‘Totum igitur istud rationabiliter provisum, rationabiliter factum, rationabiliter finitum, pro publica utilitate, publica auctoritate, atque intercessione, ita singulare est et minime imitandum, vel potius mysticum, ut semel legatur gestum, et nunquam ulterius iteratum’: ibid. c 16, 1030B.

62 ‘qua stultitia atque dementia putant placatis et pacificatis parentibus, pacatam se habere posse Ecclesiam Dei, … cum tantae praevaricationis et impietatis malum, adversus Deum et Ecclesiam ejus commissum, nulla ratione, nullis argumentis emendari possit, nisi omnipotentis Dei et Ecclesiae judicio ac satisfactione?’: ibid. c 17, 1030D.

63 ‘contagia funesta’: ibid. c 18, 1031C.

64 ‘quaelibet illa sit, uxor dici non potest prostituta, uterque vestrum nota semper inuretur infamiae’: ibid. c 19, 1032A.

65 The literature on the Carolingian Church's attitudes to marriage and divorce is extensive. See, for example, Il matrimonio nella società altomedievale, 22–28 Apr 1976, Spoleto 1977; J. Gaudemet, Le Mariage en occident: les moeurs et le droit, Paris 1987, 111–29; P. L. Reynolds, Marriage in the western Church: the Christianisation of marriage during the patristic and early medieval periods, Leiden 1994; and P. Toubert, ‘L'Institution du mariage chrétien de l'antiquité tardive à l'an mil’, in Morfologie sociali e culturali in Europa fra tarda antichità e alto medioevo, 3–9 aprile 1997, Spoleto 1998, i. 503–53. On Hincmar's specific contributions see also Devisse, Hincmar, 366–467; Brühl, C., ‘Hinkmariana ii: Hinkmar im Widerstreit von kanonischen Recht und Politik in Ehefragen’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters xx (1964), 55–77Google Scholar; and K. Heidecker, ‘Why should bishops be involved in marital affairs? Hincmar of Rheims on the divorce of King Lothar ii (855–869)’, in J. Hill and M. Swan (eds), The community, the family and the saint: patterns of power in early medieval Europe, Turnhout 1998, 225–35.

66 As well as Count Stephen (see n. 44 above), examples include Lothar ii's attempt to divorce Theutberga (Airlie, S., ‘Private bodies and the body politic in the divorce case of Lothar ii’, Past and Present lxi [1998], 3–38)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the case of Falcric, a vassus of Lothar i (Devisse, Hincmar, 36–42); and the unnamed Frankish noble who claimed at the Council of Tribur 895 that despite a long marriage to a Saxon noblewoman, he was not validly married to her by Frankish law: Concilium Triburiense 895 Iudicia c 4, MGH, Cap. ii, no. 252, 207).

67 On the problems caused by too strict definitions of consanguineous marriage see, for example, Hrabanus Maurus, ep. xxix, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH, Epp., v. 447.

68 These are Council of Ancyra c 10 and Pope Siricus, Epistola I ad Himerium episcopum Tarraconensem c 4, PL xiii.1136B–1137A.

69 These are Concilium Aurelianense 511 c 2 (Conc. 1, 3) and Concilium Romanum 721 c 10–11: Mansi, xii. 264. It is not clear why the text of Council of Chalcedon 451 c 27, frequently quoted in Carolingian conciliar decrees on raptus, is omitted.

70 K. Heene, The legacy of paradise: marriage, motherhood and woman in Carolingian edifying literature, Frankfurt-am-Main 1997, 73–6.

71 See Gaudemet, J., ‘Indissolubilité et consommation du mariage: l'apport d'Hincmar de Reims’, Revue de droit canonique xxx (1980), 28–40 at p. 30Google Scholar. Leo i explained to Rusticius of Narbonne how a concubine might be turned into a wife.

72 On a discussion between Hrabanus Maurus and Abbot Hatto of Fulda on Old Testament incest provisions see M. de Jong, ‘Old law and new-found power: Hrabanus Maurus and the Old Testament’, in J. W. Drijvers and A. A. Macdonald (eds), Centres of learning: learning and location in pre-modern Europe and the Near East, Leiden 1995, 161–76 at p. 171.

73 For example, he drew on Deuteronomy xxii when discussing the punishment for abduction of betrothed women, but omitted any mention of verses 28–9, which provided that the rapist of an unmarried girl must marry her.

74 Hrabanus Maurus, the most authoritative biblical scholar of the period, discusses only the first half of the story of the Benjaminites (ch. xx) in Commentaria in Librum Judicum, PL cviii.1999A–1200B.

75 ‘Possunt etiam istiusmodi pravi atque distorti homines, sive fautores ac deceptores eorum, illud quasi juste et licenter assumere in exemplum, quod de viris tribus Benjamin refertur in libro Judicum’: De coercendo c 15, 1028C–D; ‘Quapropter quod Scriptura Dei narrat ad memoriam pietatis, vel ad commendationem mysterii spiritualis, absit ut stulti et impudenti petulantia dissoluti usurpare permittantur ad exemplum vel defensionem suae procacitatis, ut putent se isto exemplo, cum non facile impetrant a parentibus, licere sibi rapere quas voluerint, et postea complacatis parentibus, quasi legitimo eas matrimonio detinere’: c 17, 1030B–C.

76 This seems the most likely explanation for the reference ibid. c 15, 1028D to ‘fautores ac deceptores’: see n. 75 above.

77 For fuller discussion see Rachel Stone, ‘Masculinity, nobility and the moral instruction of the Carolingian lay elite’, unpubl. PhD diss. King's College London 2005, 210–36.

78 ‘Sunt plerique conjugalem ducentes vitam, qui tempora coeundi et non coeundi cum uxoribus pudicissime discernere student; sunt etiam qui hujus discretionis modum non solum habere renuunt, quin potius se castigantibus et redarguentibus impudenter objicere solent. Uxores, inquiunt, nostrae nobis lege conjunctae sunt; si pro libitu nostro eis quando et qualiter volumus, utimur, non peccamus. Majoris autem criminis rei efficimur, si ab uxorum amplexibus abstinemus, et filios, quos generare debuimus, non generamus. Quod dico, saepissime mihi objectum est’: Jonas of Orléans, De institutione laicali ii.3, PL cvi.172D–173A.

79 ‘Non desunt suae libidini vacare volentes, qui dicant: Genitalia membra ideo a summo opifice Deo in utroque sexu creata sunt, ut pariter commisceantur: quid ergo delinquimus, si pro libitu nostro concubitus exercemus?’: ibid. ii.9, 184D–185A. Jonas follows Jerome, Adversus Jovinianum libri duo i.36, PL xxiii.260A, in this second objection: I have not been able to trace any analogy to the first objection he cites: see n. 78 above.

80 ‘quamplures et maxime carne nobiles et honore temporali sublimes’: Council of Douzy, 874, MGH, Conc. iv, no. 40A, 581. Hincmar's complaint (De divortio, responsio xii.179) that some people misapplied Scripture to claim that non-penetrative acts were not sodomitical is not specific about whether the offenders were clerics or laity.

81 There is an intensive study of moral texts with noble laymen as an audience in Stone, ‘Masculinity, nobility’, but no parallels were found in other moral areas, such as warfare or the use of power.

82 See, for example, ‘Sanctarum lectio Scripturarum divinae est cognitio beatitudinis. In his enim quasi in quodam speculo homo seipsum considerare potest, qualis sit, vel quo tendat’: Alcuin, De virtutibus et vitiis liber c 5, PL ci.616C. Lothar i had homilies and mass texts read to him while dining and Hrabanus' biblical commentaries were also intended to be read out to him: M. de Jong, ‘The empire as ecclesia: Hrabanus Maurus and biblical historia for rulers’, in Y. Hen and M. Innes (eds), Using the past in the early Middle Ages, Cambridge 2000, 191–226 at pp. 191, 195–6. Given the communal nature of court life, lay courtiers were presumably also among the audience.

83 ‘Grandis namque confusio est animabus laicorum, qui dicunt: Quid pertinet ad me libros Scripturarum legendo audire vel discere, vel etiam frequenter ad sacerdotes et ecclesias sanctorum recurrere? Dum clericus fiam, faciam ea quae oportet clericis facere. Quare non intelligit, quia panem et vinum, et omnia hujus terrae bona, et regni felicitatem aequaliter vult participare, et aequali labore jugum Christi ferre non vult?’: Paulinus of Aquileia, Liber exhortationis, PL xcix.240A.

84 Alcuin, ep. cxxxvi, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH, Epp. iv. 205–10. This letter is discussed in M. Alberi, ‘‘The sword which you hold in your hand’; Alcuin's exegesis of the two swords and the lay miles Christi', in C. Chazelle and B. V. Edwards (eds), The study of the Bible in the Carolingian era, Turnhout 2003, 117–31.

85 R. McKitterick, The Carolingians and the written word, Cambridge 1989, 245–9, 261–5.

86 On Dhuoda see J. L. Nelson, ‘Dhuoda’, in P. Wormald and J. L. Nelson (eds), Lay intellectuals in the Carolingian world, Cambridge 2007, 106–20, and Stofferahn, A., ‘The many faces in Dhuoda's mirror: the Liber manualis and a century of scholarship’, Magistra iv (1998), 89–134.Google Scholar

87 For example, Olsen, G. W., ‘One heart and one soul (Acts 4:32 and 34 in Dhuoda's “Manual”)’, Church History lxi (1992), 23–33 at pp. 32–3Google Scholar, argues for Dhuoda's ‘lay imagination’ in her use of the Apostles' common life in the book of Acts as a model for all Christians, but Jonas of Orléans used this passage in a similar way a little earlier: De institutione laicali i.11, 20, 143C, 163B–C.

88 Dhuoda, Handbook for her warrior son: Liber manualis, ed. M Thiébaux, Cambridge 1998, iii.4, pp. 92–3.

89 See 2 Samuel iii.22–31; xi.14–21; xviii.4–17; xx.7–10; 1 Kings xi.15–16.

90 The nearest parallel I have found in a search of the PL database is Freculf of Lisieux, Chonicon i.3.1, PL cvi. 971B–C: ‘Qua virtute audaciaque Joab, qui primus altitudinem superaverat arcis, est princeps factus militiae’.

91 The lament on Fontenoy by Angelbert, one of the rare surviving poems written by a layman, is also marked by biblical echoes: ‘Versus de bella quae fuit acta Fontaneto’, ed. P. Godman, Poetry of the Carolingian renaissance, London 1985, 262–5.

92 ‘quendam audivi virum prudentum aliquando dicere clericorum esse evangelium discere, non laicorum … saepe posterior adfert hora, quod prior non poterat’: Alcuin, ep. cxxxvi, 205. The view of R. E. Sullivan that this passage is an example of attempts by clerics to exclude lay aristocrats from literate culture does not seem plausible: ‘The context of cultural activity in the Carolingian age’, in R. E. Sullivan (ed.), ‘The gentle voices of teachers’: aspects of learning in the Carolingian age, Columbus, Oh 1995, 51–105 at p. 70.

93 S. Reynolds, ‘Carolingian elopements as a sidelight on counts and vassals’, in B. Nagy and M. Sebök (eds), The man of many devices who wandered full many ways: Festschrift in honor of Janos M. Bak, Budapest 1999, 340–6.