In the spring of 811, Charlemagne (r. 768–814), the sixty-three-year-old king of the Franks and emperor, sent a memorandum to the bishops, abbots, and counts of his realm. Ecclesiastical and secular elites needed to prepare themselves to speak with Charlemagne one by one in the upcoming general assembly accordingly. In an influential paper, Janet Nelson proposed that we could hear Charlemagne's own voice in this document (hereafter Capitulary 71, according to the enumeration in Alfred Boretius's MGH edition).Footnote 1 Two queries in the memorandum curiously relate to the rite of baptism: “What is it that every Christian says at baptism, and what things should he renounce? When one makes his denial or renunciation null and void, what is he following or neglecting instead?”Footnote 2
In the Christian sacrament of initiation, candidates are required to swear to the renunciation (abrenunciatio) of the devil before being baptized. The ritual element itself is ancient, although how it was practiced varied according to early sources.Footnote 3 Latin patristic authors provided different descriptions for baptismal renunciation. Tertullian stated that “we declare to renounce the devil, his pomps, and his angels” before entering the water.Footnote 4 Ambrose instructed his listeners to remember “you have renounced the devil, his works, the world, its luxury, and pleasures.”Footnote 5 Salvian called the renunciation of “the devil, his pomps, spectacles, and works” the first confession at baptism.Footnote 6 According to a sermon (perhaps fifth-century) from northern Italy, the baptismal rite starts with candidates promising “to renounce all the pomps and works of [the devil], and all diabolical fornication.”Footnote 7 John the Deacon in his epistolary treatise on baptism ca. 500 described that the renunciation was among “the primary lessons of faith” and only those who had renounced “the snares and pomps of the devil” would be permitted to receive the Creed.Footnote 8 Martin of Braga saw the renunciation of “the devil, his angels, and all his wicked works” together with the confession of the doctrine as a promise made before God.Footnote 9 Caesarius of Arles equated the affirmative answer to the priest's question, “Do you renounce the devil, his pomps, and his works?” at baptism, with a pact of faith signed by the baptized.Footnote 10 Isidore of Seville called the renunciation of “the devil, his pomps, and his whole way of life” and the confession of the Trinity “the two agreements of believers” made at baptism.Footnote 11
According to the Gelasian Sacramentary, which records the Roman rite of Initiation in the sixth century, baptismal renunciation is carried out through the following dialogue between minister and candidate: “‘Do you renounce Satan?’ ‘I renounce.’ ‘And all his pomps?’ ‘I renounce.’ ‘And all his works?’ ‘I renounce.’”Footnote 12 According to one of the versions of Gallican rites recorded in the Bobbio Missal, the minister asks, “Do you renounce Satan, his pomps, his luxuries, and this world?” and the candidate provides an affirmative response. This question and answer are to be repeated three times.Footnote 13 The formula of baptismal renunciation in the Gregorian Sacramentary that Charlemagne received from Pope Hadrian in 786 is identical with that in the Gelasian Sacramentary.Footnote 14 Alcuin of York opened his expositional treatise on baptism known as the Primo paganus with the renunciation of “malign spirits and all his pernicious pomps” as the first step toward baptism.Footnote 15
A number of recent studies have explored from different angles the significance of baptism for Charlemagne's “Christian empire/ruling” (imperium christianum).Footnote 16 But the emperor's special interest in baptismal renunciation, as seen in Capitulary 71, deserves more attention than it has received so far. Relevant sources of different genres from Charlemagne's later reign (baptismal expositions, capitularies, epistolary treatises, and sermons) reveal a discourse that centers on the proper life and conduct of Christians. Its making and dissemination served the reform, or more accurately, the program of correctio initiated by the ruler and undertaken by his church, the central aim of which was the improvement of divine worship and mores of the Christian polity.Footnote 17 The article will start by examining how the renunciation of the devil was expounded in bishops’ replies to Charlemagne's inquiry on the rite of baptism, and the consequent reinforcement of relevant moral teachings in clerical education. It will then explore Charlemagne's use of baptismal renunciation to express his concern for the morality of ecclesiastics in two capitularies of 811, and how one archbishop, Leidrad of Lyon, responded. Finally, it will examine the publicity of the moral admonitions embodied in baptismal renunciation in popular preaching as reflected in sermons. The making and dissemination of the moralistic discourse of baptismal renunciation in the later reign of Charlemagne involved the agency of both the imperial authority and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and, as part of the practice of moral reform, incorporated the whole Carolingian Christendom as its audience.
Expounding the Works and Pomps of the Devil
Prior to the promulgation of Capitulary 71, Charlemagne had already showed interest in baptismal renunciation in his encyclical letter to the archbishops in his realm issued ca. 810, asking “to know how you and your suffragans teach and instruct the priests of God and the people entrusted to you about the sacramentum of baptism.”Footnote 18 Charlemagne asked the archbishops not only to provide written replies to his seventeen questions on fifteen elements of the baptismal rite, but also to confess “whether you understand and preach thus, and whether you yourself observe what you preach.”Footnote 19 Charlemagne's sixth question concerns the renunciation of the devil: “About the renunciation of Satan and all his works and pomps, what is the renunciation or what are the works and pomps of the devil?”Footnote 20
Charlemagne's baptismal questions, as Owen Phelan put it, point to “Christian formation, not ritual uniformity.”Footnote 21 Bishop Theodulf of Orléans (r. 798–818), the emperor's intimate courtier, reminded his metropolitan Magnus of Sens that “the royal Highness raised these questions not for the need to learn, but for the zeal to teach, not in order that he himself would be able to be taught about what he is ignorant of when these questions get solved, but that others would be able to awaken from the dream of idle torpor for the benefit of solving these issues.”Footnote 22 Charlemagne wanted to ensure that his ecclesiastical leaders understood the religious and moral teachings embodied in the very rite that made a person Christian and took pains to instruct them to their subjects. The rush of baptismal expositions hereafter witnessed the effect of the royal will.Footnote 23
Five archbishops’ replies to the emperor have survived, from Amalar of Trier, Odilbert of Milan, Leidrad of Lyon, Magnus of Sens, and Maxentius of Aquileia, respectively.Footnote 24 Two more extant anonymous expositions address Charlemagne as well, one most likely from Archbishop Hildebald of Cologne and the other from an unknown bishop or archbishop of Gaul.Footnote 25 Furthermore, Magnus apparently asked his suffragan bishops to reply to Charlemagne's inquiry, and the responses of Theodulf and of an anonymous bishop have survived.Footnote 26 On the topic of baptismal renunciation, Odilbert's exposition (a copy from an older florilegium) cites Isidore and John the Deacon.Footnote 27 Hildebald's piece combines the opening sentence of Alcuin's Primo paganus with a High German formula of the renunciation of pomps.Footnote 28 These two notwithstanding, all the other extant baptismal expositions of episcopal authorship in reply to the emperor's questions expound the renunciation of the devil as the denial of vices and improper conduct. The articulation in each exposition varies, but the unmistakably moralistic tone persists throughout them all.
According to Magnus, everyone is a slave of sin before baptism, and “one renounces the devil who is the prince of sin, all his works, and all his pomps, that is vices, so that he rejects his domination.”Footnote 29 Maxentius stated that it was the works of the devil and his pomps that had overcome the first man in Paradise, and mentioned the renunciation of “the error of paganism and the cult of images.”Footnote 30 Theodulf identified the works of the devil with the seven capital vices, and his pomps with “ambition, arrogance, vainglory, and other things of the same sort which are discerned to proceed from the font of pride.”Footnote 31
Amalar divided the works of the devil into ones “pertinent to desires of the flesh” and ones that “rule in the devil without the flesh.” Fornication, idolatry, witchcraft, murder, drunkenness, and reveling belong to the former; pride, envy, enmity, contentions, emulation, wrath, quarrels, dissensions, and factions to the latter.Footnote 32 All of the items, with pride as the only exception, are drawn from “the works of the flesh” (opera carnis) enumerated in Galatians 5:19–21 which, according the apostle Paul, prevent perpetrators from obtaining the kingdom of God. Amalar went on to define the pomps of the devil as “vain ostentation, mundane honors, musical melodies that wear down Christian vigor, indecent or superfluous spectacles, and so on.”Footnote 33 In a way similar to Amalar, Leidrad listed the pomps of the devil as “spectacles, vain delights, impudent pleasantness, and various pestilences of malicious feelings.” He equated the works of the devil to “profane rites presented to idols primarily, and then murder, theft, robbery, fraud, perjury, adultery, enmities, discords, wraths, quarrels, dissensions, and other things of this kind,” a handful of which likewise echo Galatians 5:19–21.Footnote 34
Explicit reference to the same biblical verses is also found in the exposition of the unknown suffragan from the province of Sens, in which the works of the devil are identified as “uncleanness, idolatry and things like what the Apostle describes,” and the devilish pomps as “pride through which he [the devil] fell and makes humans fall daily.”Footnote 35 The baptismal exposition of the anonymous episcopal author from Gaul states that the works of the devil are “what the Apostle named the works of the flesh,” and his pomps are “vain and fatal delights of this world, harmful desires, and idolatry.”Footnote 36
What has been demonstrated above reveals a consensus among Charlemagne's bishops that baptismal renunciation signifies the denial of immoral and sacrilegious thoughts and deeds. The idea itself was not innovative, like many other Carolingian ideas. There was a loose patristic hermeneutic tradition for these Carolingian bishops to follow, and they did so consciously, as, for example, Leidrad claimed that “we know ancient fathers preached to the faithful about shunning the pomps of the devil,” and cited passages from the sermons of Quodvultdeus of Carthage (d. 450) that assail “the madness of spectacles, the trap of passions and disgraceful pleasures” and define the pomps of the devil as illicit desires.Footnote 37 That being said, how the episcopal authors of Charlemagne used their own initiatives to present the moralistic sense of baptismal renunciation to the emperor is worth regarding as a good testimony to the intellectual style of the Carolingian era characterized by a combination of overarching unity and creative diversity.Footnote 38
The common reference to Galatians 5:19–21 in four episcopal baptismal expositions for vice enumeration has no clear patristic precedent, and thus should be taken as a Carolingian innovation. The biblical reference connected baptismal renunciation to Charlemagne's influential capitulary Admonitio generalis (789), the manifesto of his correctio project.Footnote 39 The final section of the Admonitio generalis is on preaching. It is declared that “the offenses for which people are to be assigned to eternal punishment with the devil” should be preached to all, and Galatians 5:19–21 is cited in full as the offenses that “the great preacher of the church of God [Paul] named individually.”Footnote 40
The moral theological construct of baptismal renunciation of the same kind is also found in a handful of anonymous baptismal expositions of the ninth century, most of which were composed apparently for clerical education or use. An anonymous instruction on baptism addressed to priests claims that the works of the devil manifest his hidden pomps, and “the origin of all the evils comes from the malign pomp.” Its author further elaborated on four capital offenses (pride, envy, concupiscence, and avarice) and various vices that derive from them.Footnote 41 A florilegium on baptism from northern Italy places under the caption “De opere diaboli” excerpts from multiple sources, including one from Augustine's De agone christiano that exhorts the renunciation of illicit delights of the world, pomps, and dangerous curiosity.Footnote 42 A fragmentary florilegium of uncertain origin arranged according to Charlemagne's baptismal inquiries follows a sermon wrongly attributed to Augustine to identify the works and pomps of the devil as “idols, baseness, divination, thefts, frauds, fornication, drunkenness, and lies.”Footnote 43 A florilegium from Bavaria enumerates the malign works of the devil as “cults and idols, lots and divination, pomps and theatres, thefts and frauds, murder and fornication, anger and avarice, reveling and drunkenness, pride and ostentation, singings and lies, and similar evils.”Footnote 44 An anonymous tract in question-and-answer format on the ordo of baptism from northern Italy or southern Gaul expounds the pomps of the devil as “haughtiness, divination, ostentation, or all his wickedness and images of clay, or boasting,” and his works as fornication, uncleanness, murder, adultery, perjury, and other things that keep the perpetrators from obtaining the kingdom of God, “as the Apostle describes.”Footnote 45
The alignment of moralistic interpretation of baptismal renunciation in these “local” expositions with the episcopal ones composed for the emperor is to a certain degree predictable. Charlemagne in his encyclical letter not only asked for reports about baptism, but also about how metropolitans and their suffragans taught and instructed “the priests of God and the people entrusted to you about the sacramentum of baptism.”Footnote 46 The two types of baptismal exposition, episcopal and local, reflect the two-way communication of reform in which bishops functioned as the pivot.Footnote 47 Both the hierarchical forging of a moralistic discourse about baptismal renunciation with royal endorsement and its dissemination among local clergy who implemented pastoral care shall be seen as its outcome.Footnote 48 Clear evidence of the promotion of this discourse is found in the acts of the council of Tours, one of the five reform synods assembled at the order of Charlemagne in 813:
Bishops should pay great concern to teach their priests the sacrament of baptism, and what ought to be renounced in it and what ought to be believed. One renounces the devil and his works. The works of the devil are understood as the works of the flesh, which are murder, fornication, adultery, drunkenness, and many other things similar to them, which are evidently conceived in the thought of the mind at the instigation of the devil, before being perpetrated in action. Meanwhile, the pomps of the devil are pride, ostentation, exaltation, vainglory, arrogance, and many other things which seem to arise from these.Footnote 49
The striking resemblance in expression, including the reference to Galatians 5:19–21, testifies to the serious effort that Charlemagne's ecclesiastical regime undertook to elevate the moral interpretation of baptismal renunciation as part of clerical education.
Questioning how Renunciation is Made Null and Void
In two capitularies issued in 811 (numbered 71 and 72 in Boretius's MGH edition), Charlemagne raised the topic of the invalidation of baptismal renunciation.Footnote 50 The two documents were copied consecutively in the identical group of capitularies found in two extant manuscripts.Footnote 51 It has been suggested that this capitulary section originated from the archives of the church of Sens.Footnote 52 Magnus, the archbishop of Sens between 801 and 818, was thus very likely one of their actual recipients. Since none of extant replies from archbishops to Charlemagne's encyclical letter, including Magnus's, addresses the topic of the invalidation of baptismal renunciation, it is more likely that Charlemagne released the two capitularies after these archbishops submitted their expositions to him than before. The emperor apparently sharpened the inquiry on the renunciation of the devil in his earlier baptismal questionnaire, and used it to criticize the moral deficiency among the recipients of the two capitularies, that is, his ecclesiastical elites.
Titled “Concerning the lord emperor's interrogation from the eleventh year” in the hypothetical Sens collection, Capitulary 71 was the preparatory document sent in advance to the bishops (piissimi pontifices) expected to attend the assembly of 811.Footnote 53 After an opening entry, the eleven clauses of the capitulary make a series of progressive quests for the roots of the moral failures that the emperor observed happening in his empire. Charlemagne started with questioning four specific social problems: why men refuse to offer mutual help in military campaigns; why disputes arise from the covetousness of others’ possession; why one receives another's runaway bondsman; how laymen and ecclesiastics impede each other carrying out their office, and how far bishops and abbots ought to get involved in secular affairs or laymen ought to get involved in ecclesiastical affairs. Charlemagne particularly wanted his churchmen to contemplate Paul's admonition that “no man, being a soldier to God, entangleth himself with secular businesses” (2 Tim. 2:4).Footnote 54 The two questions on baptismal renunciation then follow: “What is it that every Christian says at baptism, and what does he renounce? When one makes his denial or renunciation (renunciatio vel abrenunciatio) null and void, what is he following or neglecting instead?”Footnote 55 What invalidates baptismal renunciation even endangers Christian identity, as the following clause states: “That a man who thinks he can despise God's precepts with impunity, or despises what God has threatened on the grounds that it will not happen, does not truly (vere) believe in God.”Footnote 56 Everyone was commanded to question himself “whether we are truly (vere) Christian” and to examine his own “life and conduct” (vita et mores) by discussing his way of life (conversatio) in public.Footnote 57 The next (tenth) clause singles out the life and conduct of bishops, since they, as “imitators” of Paul the Apostle (Phil. 3:17), ought to be examples for the people of God not only by teaching, but also by living. Two shorter enquiries follow on the proper way of life for canons and monks.
In the final clause of Capitulary 71, Charlemagne mentioned that he would perhaps send his additional thoughts to the bishops. It is probably in Capitulary 72 — under the title “Short list of points on which we wish to speak to our faithful bishops and abbots and to warn them about the common interests of us all” in the Sens capitulary collection) — that the emperor's further thoughts were recorded and delivered.Footnote 58 The mentioning of “the three rounds of three-day fasts last year” helps date Capitulary 72 safely to 811.Footnote 59 Identical biblical quotations (Phil. 3:17 and 2 Tim. 2:4) confirm its connection with Capitulary 71.Footnote 60 The opening clause of Capitulary 72 asks bishops and abbots to recall that fasts were organized in the previous year “to pray to God to deign to show us in what respects our conversatio ought to be improved (emendari) in his sight,” and to remind them in a very assertive way that it is now the time to carry out the emendatio.Footnote 61 The whole capitulary expanded and deepened the critical examination on the life and conduct of ecclesiastics as seen in Capitulary 71. Bishops and abbots are forbidden to get involved in secular affairs beyond the limit set by the emperor himself.Footnote 62 Charlemagne wanted ecclesiastics to explain to him what it meant that they were supposed to have left the world, and how different they were from those who still follow the world besides that they did not bear arms and were not married publicly.Footnote 63 Charlemagne used drastic language to reproach ecclesiastics for despoiling laypeople of their property in the name of God or saints, and, “led by desire to acquire possession,” paying people to commit perjury and false witness to their advantage.Footnote 64 It is in this context of intense moral critique that the questions on baptismal renunciation in Capitulary 71 are rephrased in a more pointed way:
What each person promises to Christ at baptism and what things they have renounced: so that, although every Christian ought to seriously think about this, it is especially by ecclesiastics that enquiry ought to be made, since it is they who ought to offer layfolk an example of that promise and that renunciation in their own lives. This is something to be most carefully considered and most rigorously investigated, what things each one of us ought to follow or neglect, in order to keep what they have promised or renounced, or alternatively make it null and void. And who is that Satan or Enemy whose works and whose pomps we have denied (renunciavimus) at baptism? This is to be investigated, so that none of us should follow, by wrongdoing, him whom we long since denied at baptism.Footnote 65
The solicitude for the moral condition of churchmen led Charlemagne to claim that imperfection in chanting was more tolerable than imperfection in living, and that he preferred “correction of conduct” (emendatio morum) to the construction of churches. Substantial improvement had to be made immediately “in our practice and custom” (de usu et consuetudine nostra).Footnote 66
Among all the extant Carolingian baptismal expositions, the only one that touches the issue of the invalidation of baptismal renunciation was composed by Theodulf. According to the bishop of Orléans:
The pact that is made with God at baptism, in which Satan, his works, and pomps are renounced ought to be put before our eyes of both those who are to be baptized and us who have already received the sacrament of baptism. The pact would become null and void, if someone is subject to vices while remaining in the faith, or if someone slipping away from the faith is subject to the cult of idols or the errors of heresy.Footnote 67
Theodulf addressed his exposition to his metropolitan Magnus, as ordered by the latter “to reply briefly and quickly certain questions concerning the order of baptism sent to you [Magnus] by the lord and glorious emperor Charles.”Footnote 68 While Theodulf's elaboration on the invalidation of baptismal renunciation is not among the passages that Magnus incorporated from his suffragan's exposition into his own submitted to Charlemagne, its appearance in the acts of the Council of Aachen of 816 reveals its circulation and influence.Footnote 69 It is tempting to hypothesize that this chief counselor of Charlemagne on religious matters forwarded his own baptismal exposition to the emperor, which in turn triggered the call to reflection on the invalidation of baptismal renunciation in the two capitularies of 811.Footnote 70 Regardless of such guesswork, Charlemagne and his court managed to manipulate and sharpen a moralistic discourse that recently burgeoned to serve a severe call for moral correction that primarily targeted ecclesiastical leaders — ironically, the very group that shaped and disseminated this discourse.
Diagnosing the Return to the Renounced
While there are no surviving records of the assembly of 811, the epistolary treatise on baptismal renunciation composed by Archbishop Leidrad of Lyon (r. 798–816) provides a window to observe how ecclesiastics responded to Charlemagne's strong demand of their moral correctio. Leidrad was among Charlemagne's most trusted churchmen. Born and educated in Bavaria, he arrived in Francia and served in Charlemagne's court ca. 790. Leidrad worked as Charlemagne's missus dominicus in southern Gaul together with Theodulf in 798, soon after assumed the episcopacy of Lyon by royal will, and initiated an impressive church reform there, as recorded in his epistolary report to the emperor. Earlier in the same year (811) as the promulgation of Capitularies 71 and 72, Leidrad acted as one of the witnesses of Charlemagne's will. His personal devotion to the emperor may explain his voluntary retirement from the episcopacy to the monastery of St-Médard at Soissons not long after Charlemagne's death.Footnote 71
Leidrad's baptismal exposition in reply to Charlemagne's questionnaire is exceptionally long in comparison with those of his metropolitan colleagues, and it has an unusually coherent theological framework. It starts with a survey of water-related images in the Old Testament (“things pertinent to the power of baptism prefigured since the beginning of the world”), the foundation of the sacrament of baptism and martyrdom in Jesus Christ, and his Great Commission to the Apostles to teach and baptize.Footnote 72 The economy of salvation mirrors the path of salvation of individual Christians, who are “transferred to the kingdom of the Lord through the sacramentum of baptism.”Footnote 73 Leidrad construed the sacramentum to proceed in three steps: exorcism liberates one from the power of the devil; baptism proper cleanses one of the filth of sins; and anointment confirms the grace of the Holy Spirit.Footnote 74 The devil, his works, and pomps are renounced in the first step. Leidrad opined that the profession of the renunciation is spoken not to humans, but to God and his angels, and made “not just in voices, but also in mores; not only in the sound of tongue, but also in the action of life.”Footnote 75 The first-person profession of the abrenuntio and the credo, no matter whether it is given personally or by sponsors on behalf, makes one a fides.Footnote 76
Compared with other Carolingian baptismal expositions, Leidrad's piece has a unique ending. In response to Charlemagne's order at the end of his encyclical letter to report “whether you yourself observe what you preach,” Leidrad made an earnest self-examination (the self-referential first-person nos is used throughout) on how it is ever possible to observe the divina mandata embodied in the baptismal rite as expounded:
But concerning what you ask, as we say similarly, whether we ourselves observe what we preach, we hitherto have had no idea and still have no idea, whether a man is able to profess the observance which he holds in respect to divine commands. For when we daily endeavor to follow the self-restraint of life, and sin daily due to oblivion, to deception, to weakness, or even worse, to our own volition, how can we profess the things that we do willingly, when we do not understand the things that we do unwillingly, as it was written: “Who understands misdeeds” (Ps. 18:13)? For although it was said: “I have declared to thee my life” (Ps. 55:9) — we think that this is about the offenses that we can commit rather than other actions of ours, as it was written: “I will confess against myself my injustice to my lord” (Ps. 31:5) — how we who sin daily observe what we preach?Footnote 77
The liturgical issue is transformed into a moral challenge: if Christians do not stop sinning, how can they proclaim to observe the divine commands received via baptismal renewal? As Leidrad was fully aware of, the challenge is even more critical to pastors, since “if for this reason we cannot fulfill them [divine commands], we would not be able to preach them to others, and we think it would be double evil.”Footnote 78
Charlemagne obviously read (or more likely, heard) Leidrad's baptismal exposition characterized by a strong moral tone and rigid introspection carefully. He apparently wrote back to have a discussion about it. Charlemagne in his reply (now lost) praised the parts of the exposition that pleased him, but also pointed out its deficiencies, as Leidrad himself grasped “that our ignorance barely satisfied in respect to the things that you prepared to hear more eagerly.” The emperor specifically reminded the archbishop that he had written less than desired on “the renunciation of the devil and of his things.”Footnote 79 Leidrad thus took pains to compose his second baptismal treatise for Charlemagne with the renunciation of the devil as the exclusive subject.
The resulting tract is a work that intersperses the archbishop's own words with a large amount of biblical verses and patristic excerpts. The most frequently cited patristic works are Augustine's De civitate Dei and Julianus Pomerius's De vita contemplativa.Footnote 80 Other writings of church fathers that Leidrad may have consulted include: Jerome's Commentary on Nahum and Against Jovinianus; Augustine's Confessions, Enchiridion, and Letter 138; John Cassian's Collationes; Gregory the Great's Moralia on Job; and Bede's Commentary on Luke. Through flexible quoting, excerpting, and sometimes skillful adaptation (see below), Leidrad managed to make the ancient authors speak for him.Footnote 81
Leidrad's second baptismal treatise focused on the nature and classification of sins, and especially, close to what his emperor put forth in the two capitularies of 811, the return to the vices that have been renounced at baptism.Footnote 82 In the prologue Leidrad pointed out the problem of politico-religious disorder directly:
We realized after your most kind admonition that there was need for a much fuller reply concerning the works and pomps of the devil, since desire spreads and multiplies daily through them, and the temptations of the world spread and multiply daily through desires. What is worse, discords arise between the rectors of the church and the officers of the state, and what is still the worst of these, hatreds emerge between teachers and their audience, enmities are aroused, and slanders are stirred up.Footnote 83
Of the two fundamental social conflicts allegedly incited by the works and pomps of the devil as Leidrad formulated here, that between ecclesiae rectores and reipublicae administratores seems intentionally to echo Charlemagne's enquiry in Capitulary 71 “in what matters, or what places, ecclesiastics impede laymen, or laymen ecclesiastics, in their carrying out of their office.”Footnote 84 The opposing sides in the second type of conflict, auditores and doctores, have multiple meanings in medieval Latin.Footnote 85 Given Leidrad's episcopal status, it is most likely that by doctores he referred to the ecclesiastics learned in divine knowledge and responsible for guiding subjects toward proper belief and behavior, and by auditores the Christian people who receive pastoral care, as Gregory used both of the terms in his Regula pastoralis.Footnote 86 It is to desires (cupiditates) that Leidrad ascribed the disfunction of basic pastoral structure, and he later repeated that “all the evils that originate from the root of desire through the seedbed of pride are included in these two, namely, the works and pomps [of devils].”Footnote 87 It is in line with Charlemagne's accusation of ecclesiastics’ “desire to acquire possession.”Footnote 88 Leidrad's stress on avarice due to which “man sought more than should suffice for him” is also reflected in his deliberate rearrangement of six sins remitted at baptism listed by Augustine (“pride, sacrilege, murder, spiritual fornication, theft, and avarice”) to “pride, avarice, sacrilege, murder, spiritual fornication, and theft,” when he cited the relevant passage from Enchiridion.Footnote 89 These tiny clues altogether suggest that Leidrad had the capitularies of 811 in mind when composing his second baptismal treatise and took pains to echo it. This, however, only makes the dissent implicit in his unusual distinction between “denying” (renunciare) and “renouncing” (abrenunciare) more remarkable.
“Denying” and “renouncing” are used interchangeably in Charlemagne's two capitularies of 811.Footnote 90 Whereas Leidrad claimed firmly that “the two must be distinguished,” one denies the worldly possessions to be the disciple of Christ and his soldier, but one renounces the devil, all his angels, his works, and all his pomps to be accepted into the Church.Footnote 91 As Leidrad argued:
What is the difference between “denying” and “renouncing?” The distinction between the two is very apparent in the sense that we deny things licit, but renounce things illicit; we deny loving things, but we renounce alluring things; we deny parents, but renounce the devil.Footnote 92
Here Leidrad was probably using a familiar case in Latin grammar teaching of his time.Footnote 93 His intention, however, is to separate the denial of the world, which makes one an ecclesiastic, from baptismal renunciation, which makes one a Christian. There is no compromise for baptismal renunciation: “the devil, his works, and pomps ought to be renounced with the whole heart, so that we have no association with them, lest we are forced to fall back to his reign once again due to their plot.”Footnote 94 As for the denial of the world, the things denied are licit, and ecclesiastics should be allowed to keep property, as long as “they possess earthly resources for the sake of maintenance, so that they use them to serve God whose eternal goodness they desire.” After all, “it is desire that is blamed in divine letters rather than resource.”Footnote 95
We have seen how Charlemagne urged his ecclesiastics to live as examples of baptismal renunciation for lay people in the ninth clause of Capitulary 72.Footnote 96 Moreover, in the same capitulary, Charlemagne relentlessly rebuked how ecclesiastics who claimed to have left (relinquere), given up (dimittere), and denied (renunciare) the world seized property unscrupulously and behaved like those who follow the world.Footnote 97 Thus, Leidrad's distinction was no less than a challenge to the emperor's argumentation behind his moral critique against the churchmen.
According to Leidrad, falling back to what one has renounced at baptism gives birth to “shameless pride, monstrous desire, and senseless wantonness.”Footnote 98 Vices arouse the threat and wrath of God in the forms of natural disasters, wars, and plagues. Political and ecclesiastical disciplines also emerge as remedies, but have limits in correcting wrongdoing:
Due to these [vices], not only we are rebuked and punished from heaven, but truly powers are even placed by God in command of us, to which we ought to be submissive, not only because of His wrath but also for the sake of our conscience. Those who promulgate laws for the purpose of correcting these vices (propter ista emendanda) propose severe punishments, chains, tortures, beatings, exiles, amputations of body parts, forfeiture of possessions, and different kinds of deaths; yet they cannot remove vices from the world. On account of these vices, [there is] ecclesiastical force, rebuke, excommunication, exclusion from the church, laws of penance, and anathema. But they cannot remove vices from the church.Footnote 99
Leidrad strengthened this view with passages excerpted from Augustine's De civitate Dei on the discipline, punishment, injustice, and turmoil in the earthly city.Footnote 100 The treatise ends with an excerpt from the same work of Augustine which claims that faith and love of God are the only way to win the battle against vice.Footnote 101
Leidrad's second epistolary treatise on baptism is an intriguing text. Among many other things, it preserves a sample of how an ecclesiastical leader, by means of discussing baptismal renunciation, responded with both consent and dissent to Charlemagne's deep concern of the moral status quo of his realm. Leidrad clearly shared his lord emperor's apprehension over Christians’ moral deficiency despite the renunciation they have made at baptism. The archbishop reinforced a point already implied in his earlier baptismal exposition: Christians are destined for a lifelong struggle with what they have renounced. Meanwhile, by the meaningful distinction made between “denying” and “renouncing,” Leidrad announced to Charlemagne his disagreement on the latter's severe critique of the lives and conduct of ecclesiastics. The very Augustinian stance in the matter of public authority in the saeculum could also be a message cannily intended for the ears of the emperor.Footnote 102
It is not coincidental that Leidrad's second letter of reply on baptism to Charlemagne circulated more narrowly and was less influential than his first.Footnote 103 It was meant to serve as a direct communication with the emperor rather than as a pastoral work for wider audience. The intimate relationship with the court could have licensed the archbishop with the parrhesia of a certain degree to deliver alternative opinions on policy.Footnote 104 It would be far from correct, however, to label Leidrad's stance “anti-reform.” In an early-eighth-century biblical manuscript, Paris, BnF, Nouvelle acquisition latine 1740, there are more than 400 marginal and intercolumnar exegetical annotations on the book of Deuteronomy. It is very likely that they were composed and copied in Lyon during the episcopate of Leidrad for the benefit of the biblical education of clerics in his cathedral school.Footnote 105 As far as it is concerned here, the annotation for Deuteronomy 17:16–17 (“And when he is made king, he shall not multiply horses to himself nor lead back the people into Egypt . . . ”) criticizes greedy ecclesiastics in a language strikingly similar to what we have seen in Capitulary 72:
Salomon neglected to observe this precept, who, allured by the love of women, turned out to fall into the cult of idols. But now (nunc autem), the haughty priests in the church, who love wealth, indulge in pleasure, and live luxuriously, by their own perverse example and word provoke the people subject to them not to the heavenly homeland, but to the concupiscence of this world that they have denied (renuntiauerunt) in baptism, as though they call them back to Egypt. For Egypt is the figure of this world, and the life of Egypt is the way of life of gentiles.Footnote 106
In view of the probability that it was Leidrad who promoted the dissemination of this moralistic exposition from the imperial court to the church of Lyon, he might choose to adopt different rhetorical strategies in the matter of baptismal renunciation, when admonishing his clerics on behalf of the emperor on the one hand, and responding to the emperor on behalf of the ecclesiastical order on the other. The evidence is too tenuous to confirm this hypothesis, but enough to alert us to the malleability of the discourse of baptismal renunciation when used in the complex communication of reform of that time, in which bishops provided the hinge.
Preaching the Renunciation
The fact that Charlemagne and his churchmen exchanged opinions on baptismal renunciation confirms that they shared the idea that the renunciation of the devil signifies a set of moral standards that the baptized should obey in thoughts and deeds. We have seen how this moralistic discourse was integrated into the education of local clergy. How did local clergy fulfill their responsibility to disseminate the same reform message to common lay Christians?Footnote 107 According to the baptismal expositions of Amalar and Maxentius, the renunciation of the devil is one of the subjects of scrutiny.Footnote 108 It is not clear, though, whether or how concrete moral teaching and examination was performed to catechumen or sponsors. In comparison, we have much more information about how baptismal renunciation as a moralistic discourse was disseminated to wider audience of Charlemagne's empire via popular preaching.Footnote 109
While terms sermo, homilia, praedicatio, and oratio were largely interchangeable in the Carolingian era, scholars still tend to distinguish exegetical homilies that served the intellectual and spiritual training of cultural elites from popular sermons that targeted the laity and exhorted them with doctrinal and ethical teachings.Footnote 110 In the 1980s, Thomas Amos counted more than 900 extant sermons composed between 750 and 950. Even more Carolingian sermons have been discovered and studied since then.Footnote 111 Sermons are not easy historical sources to use, however. They are often anonymous in manuscripts.Footnote 112 Moreover, most sermons were copied as models for preaching, hence unspecific in historical context by nature. It is unusually difficult, indeed rarely possible, to date precisely any Carolingian sermon. Despite the unavoidable taste of speculation, a handful of sermons composed as guidelines for proper Christian life likely dated to the later reign of Charlemagne testify to the dissemination of the reform discourse of baptismal renunciation.
As early as 789, Charlemagne had claimed in the Admonitio generalis a duty of bishops and priests to preach to Christian people “the offenses for which people are to be assigned to eternal punishment with the devil,” as well as the doctrine of the Trinity, the Savior, the last things, and the virtues and good deeds that lead to possessing the kingdom of God.Footnote 113 In 810, Charlemagne sent out two capitularies in which he required his missi to ensure that every priest in every diocese was committed to preaching to his subjects.Footnote 114 In 813, Charlemagne ordered the assembly of five church councils in Gaul (in Rheims, Tours, Mainz, Chalon-sur-Saône, and Arles, respectively) “on correcting the condition of churches.”Footnote 115 The acts of four of them as well as the digest presented to Charlemagne contain the items that required ecclesiastical leaders to deliver sermons and to preach.Footnote 116 It is stipulated in the acts of Council of Tours, for example, that “every bishop should have sermons that contain necessary admonitions by which the subjects might be instructed,” and the content of preaching includes “by which works the blessed life may be merited or denied,” as well as “the catholic faith as far as they are able to understand, the perpetual reward of the good and the eternal condemnation of the wicked, and also the future resurrection and final judgment.”Footnote 117 Sermons were composed to put the stipulation as such into pastoral practice. As we will see, many of them utilize baptismal renunciation to frame the moral admonition against what are specified as “the offenses for which people are to be assigned to eternal punishment with the devil” in the Admonitio generalis and what are supposed to spoil the blessed life according to Council of Tours.
A sermon identified by its modern editor as “the model sermon of the age of Charlemagne” survives in at least four ninth-century manuscripts.Footnote 118 Wilhelm Scherer suggested that the sermon was composed under the direction of Archbishop Riculf of Mainz (r. 787–813).Footnote 119 It may be safer to position it in the more general context of Charlemagne's consistent demand for normative popular preaching, as discussed above, during his later reign.Footnote 120 The sermon consists of three parts. The first is a sketch of the biblical narrative of the Creation, the life of Christ, and the future final judgement. The third part is a list of “what leads to life,” namely virtues, including loving God, loving one's neighbor as oneself, peace, kindness, patience, humility, abstinence, modesty, justice, and various works of mercy. The eternal kingdom is prepared for those who perform them.Footnote 121 The part in between enumerates “bad works that lead a man to ruin and to hell” to remind the audience of the perils of sin. These “bad works” are forms of sacrilege and capital sins including murder, adultery, fornication, theft and robbery, false witness, perjury, slander, desire, pride, envy, vainglory, and drunkenness.Footnote 122 The anonymous author defined them as “works of Satan which Christians renounce in baptism,” and depicted in a vivid way how Satan would look for them in the dying, and, when finding them, drag the dead to hell for eternal suffering.Footnote 123 The sermon is a good example of how the moral sense of renunciation articulated in baptismal expositions and propagated in ecclesiastical legislation was put to use in popular preaching.
More extant sermons of similar nature from the same time put forth baptismal renunciation in juxtaposition with the promise made at baptism. Vatican, BAV, Pal. Lat. 485 is a manual for clerical education produced in the abbey of Lorsch between 860 and 875.Footnote 124 It contains, among various ecclesiastical texts, a sermon (fols. 91r–92r) under the rubric “PREDICATIO” (hereafter, Lorsch Sermon) attached to the first episcopal statute of Theodulf.Footnote 125 An enlarged version of this sermon is misleadingly known as the fifteenth sermon of Pseudo-Boniface.Footnote 126 The shorter and earlier version of the sermon in the Lorsch manuscript was anonymous, and has been dated to the late eighth or the early ninth century.Footnote 127
The Lorsch Sermon is structured in two parts. The first is about “what did you deny at baptism.” The answer immediately given is “you renounced the devil and all his works.”Footnote 128 Like many Carolingian baptismal expositions, the enumeration of the works of the devil in the sermon loosely follows Galatians 5:19–21, although the last four items are rather unconventional: consulting evil spirits, believing in “fictional wolves” (fictos lupos), being disobedient to masters, and wearing amulets.Footnote 129 Listeners are exhorted not only to deny these wicked things in heart and deeds, but also to “correct themselves by confession and appropriate repentance.”Footnote 130 Theodulf's baptismal exposition suggests confession, correction of conduct, and penance as solutions when Christians commit works and pomps of the devil.Footnote 131 A large number of penitentials were copied and new collections were made in the age of Charlemagne.Footnote 132 The penitential systems provided by them made the moral warnings given by preachers under the frame of baptismal renunciation practicable in local pastoral care. For instance, in the Excarpsus Cummeani, one of the most popular penitentials of that time, the tariff items are organized by chapter according to individual vices and offenses.Footnote 133
The second part of the Lorsch Sermon is about “the things which you promised at baptism and which you should keep.” Besides Christian doctrines, a comprehensive list of religious and ethical duties is given.Footnote 134 It has been argued that the dualistic moral teachings in the Lorsch Sermon belongs to the literary tradition of “the Two Ways” (the first section of the early Christian work Didache).Footnote 135 But the formulations “things renounced at baptism” and “things promised at baptism,” which are not found in the Didache, suggest a more probable connection with Charlemagne's enquiry in “what each person promises to Christ at baptism and what things they have renounced” and his demand for ecclesiastics to “offer layfolk an example of that promise and that renunciation in their own lives,” as we have seen in Capitulary 72.Footnote 136 The liturgical representation of the “baptismal promise” could be the profession of faith in the form of recitation or interrogation about the Creed and basic doctrines, often ritually associated with the renunciation of devil.Footnote 137 Nevertheless, when construed as the counterpart of baptismal renunciation, the promise is clearly endowed with strong moral implications as well as doctrinal, in the minds both of Charlemagne and of the author of the Lorsch Sermon.
The use of baptismal renunciation and its counterpart as a rhetorical frame in popular preaching is also found in a Carolingian sermon for those “who daily fight against their enemies visibly,” that is, soldiers.Footnote 138 It survives in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Clm 14410, an early-ninth-century Bavarian pastoral manual probably for a bishop's use. The major themes of the manuscript include baptism, vice, and penance.Footnote 139 The sermon begins with an appeal to reflecting the “Christian name” (nomen christianum) and the religious and ethical duties implied in it as established through baptism:
Dearest brothers, it is pleasing to consider in divine fear the Christian name which we hold, so that what we are called shines in us in worthy conduct. For the Christian name derives from Christ, because we promised ourselves to our Lord Christ at baptism and we renounced the devil and all his works and pomps. For this reason, it is especially necessary that we hand over with all zeal and devotion to Christ what we promised, and just as we renounced the devil, we are not again allured by the concupiscence of the flesh or return to our vomit like a dog, but stand manfully in the battleline of Christ, persevering in the confession of the true faith, and fight bravely, in order that we conquer effectually and get crowned happily!Footnote 140
The audience is urged to make constant confession, since “no one knows when his time shall come.” For the same reason, everyone should assiduously keep “the holy works” (operibus sanctis): “conquering concupiscence of the flesh, pursuing holy fasting attentively as much as possible,” and carrying out other works of mercy.Footnote 141 They are asked to loathe sacrilege, murder or hatred “against neighbor” (a qualification pragmatic for soldiers), fornication, adultery, perjury, false witness, fraud, robbery, envy, wrath, insult, dissensions, slanders, contentions, quarrels, and discords.Footnote 142
The conventional view that this sermon was composed for soldiers fighting against the Avars is speculative in absence of any explicit reference inside the sermon.Footnote 143 Little notice has been paid so far to the accordance in content and wording between the sermon and the second chapter of the Capitula Bavarica, an episcopal statute dated to 800–813, which not only requires priests to admonish “the Christian people to keep the holiness of life (sanctitatem vite) that they have assumed at baptism with zeal in every way,” but also underscores the necessity to “confess their sins to God in the holy church in the presence of priests” without delay, “since man does not know the day of his death.”Footnote 144 The connection is confirmed by the fact that Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Clm 14410 is the lone manuscript of both the Capitula Bavarica (fols. 83v–85v) and the sermon under discussion, and the episcopal statute follows the sermon immediately in the manuscript. Thus, there is reason to suggest dating the sermon to the later reign of Charlemagne and to regard it as a product of local church reform in Bavaria.
A sermon that survives in two capitulary manuscripts testifies to imperial involvement in the dissemination of the rhetorical framework of baptismal renunciation and promise in popular preaching.Footnote 145 In Paris, BnF, Latin 4613, the sermon is placed right after the well-known Capitulare missorum generale of 802, untitled, with the incipit “Listen, dearest brothers, for your salvation, I am sent here so that we admonish you how you ought to live righteously in the eyes of God and how we ought to behave ourselves according to this with justice and mercy.”Footnote 146 Only the first few lines of the sermon survives in the Paris manuscript (fol. 91v) due to the loss of a quire. Cava de’ Tirreni, Biblioteca della Badia, MS 4 has the entire sermon (fols. 214r–17r) placed between the prologue and chapters 3–4 of the Capitulare Italicum of 801, under the rubric “Admonition of Lord Emperor Charles.”Footnote 147 Georg Heinrich Pertz proposed that this sermon was an oratio imperatoris for the magnates, with which Charlemagne ended a general assembly.Footnote 148 Alfred Boretius suggested that it originated from a speech of an imperial missus sent by Charlemagne to Italy in a local assembly, and dated it to 801–12.Footnote 149 At all events, its intimate paleographical connection with important imperial capitularies is unparalleled by any other known Carolingian sermon, which suggests an official nature.
The preaching starts with basic Christian doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Passion, the Resurrection, the church (interestingly defined as the congregationem bonorum hominum per totum orbem terre), and confession and penance.Footnote 150 The topic then turns from fides to opera: “This is our faith, through which you will be saved, if you hold it firmly and fulfill it in good works, for faith without works is dead, and works without faith, even though they are good, cannot please God.”Footnote 151 There follow a series of general religious and ethical admonitions similar to what we have seen in the Lorsch Sermon, concluding with an impressive comment on sin and correction and an appeal to keep one's baptismal renunciation and promise in heart:
. . . to sin is human, to correct (emendare) is angelical, but to persevere in sin is diabolical. Defend the Church of God and assist its cause, so that the priests of God may pray for you. Remember what you promised to God at baptism; you renounced the devil through all his works; do not return to what you have renounced, but stay with the will of God as you promised, and love him who created you, and from whom you have had all good things.Footnote 152
The sermon goes on to elaborate how “everyone should serve God faithfully in the ordo he is in,” and to specify the conduct proper to wife, husband, son, cleric, monk, and secular officeholder (duke, count, and judge) in turn.Footnote 153 A sense of urgency similar to what we have seen in the Bavarian sermon for soldiers is expressed in the final section of the sermon: “This life is short, and the time of death is uncertain. What else shall be done except that we are always prepared?”Footnote 154
Regarded by Henri-Xavier Arquilliere as the most revealing document about “the dominant conceptions of Charlemagne in his government,” the sermon provides the image of an eschatological community constituted by different ordines with a shared moral bond forged by the baptismal renunciation and vow.Footnote 155 Its attachment to the Capitulare missorum generale of 802 in the Paris manuscript is not coincidental.Footnote 156 In this “programmatic capitulary” of Charlemagne's empire, “the fidelity to be promised to the lord emperor” requires foremost that “everybody is personally to strive, to the best of his understanding and ability, to maintain himself fully in God's holy service, according to God's command and his own promise.”Footnote 157 Subjects of the Christian empire were obliged to maintain and correct life and conduct according to both the baptismal sacramentum and the imperial sacramentum.Footnote 158 These sermons, all very likely from the imperial reign of Charlemagne, unexceptionally function as summa of religious and moral guidelines for the general populum christianum. They are impressive not for their innovation, but for their rhetorical affinities, including their shared employment of baptismal renunciation.
The final case to be examined here is a Carolingian sermon customarily called Homilia sacra, supposedly given by a pastor in front of a gathering inside the church. Roughly dated to ca. 800 or the early ninth century, it survives in a late-ninth-century manuscript of Frankish leges and capitularies.Footnote 159 Similar to the sermons analyzed above, the Homilia sacra has as its central theme the right Christian life and conduct, and the appeal to moral emendation, confession, and penance. Its opening clearly frames the religious and ethical responsibilities of Christians under the renunciation of the devil and the profession of faith made at baptism.Footnote 160 What follows is a further elaboration on the promise, the renunciation, and the works of devil:
Behold, brothers, what kind of denial of the devil we have made, and what kind of confession and pact we have promised to God the Father, Jesus Christ his Son, and the Holy Spirit at the same time, and whether as believers we have been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit for the forgiveness of all the sins. It is proper for us brothers who were baptized, denied the devil, and promised faithfulness to God to keep the commands of God and his precepts and to abandon the works of the devil. As the Holy Spirit admonishes us by prophecy: “Turn away from evil and do good” (Ps. 33:15). What is “turning from evil,” if not abandoning the devil with all his works, and doing the works of Christ? These are the works of the devil that we denied: desire, gluttony, fornication, anger, melancholy, sloth, vain glory, and pride. These are the eight capital vices, and from these arise the following vices: theft, false witness, perjury, rapacity, excessive eating, drunkenness, silly talk (that is immoderate and shameful words), vain and immoderate singings, murder, scandal, and quarrel (that is, insult, avarice, hatred, grumbling, and contentions).Footnote 161
This passage above is heavily based on the Scarapsus, a “short pastoral-practical catechism in the form of a long sermon” usually attributed to the early-eighth-century missionary Pirmin (d. 753).Footnote 162 But the textual comparison in parallel below shows how the anonymous author of the Homilia sacra took pains to edit and supplement his source in order to create a neat juxtaposition of baptismal renunciation (abandoning vices) and promise (doing the works of Christ), and an enumeration of vices in the same style of coetaneous baptismal expositions and sermons:
Here we see a Carolingian sermon writer at work remolding older material into the discourse framework of his time. Equally remarkable are questions with which he further inquired of his audience: “Whence can we brothers who denied the works of him [the devil] at baptism be truthful to God, if we do these works and have them as habit? And what is the benefit to have the Christian name, if we do not do Christian works?”Footnote 165 The questions are no less searching than the one “utrum vere christiani sumus” of Charlemagne in Capitulary 71.Footnote 166 If this capitulary preserves the voice of the emperor, we probably heard its echo from across his imperium christianum in the Homilia sacra and the other sermons examined here.
As Janet Nelson stated, “[b]aptism, a personal initiation, was now also a rite of membership within Charlemagne's empire. He had a sense of personal responsibility for ‘those committed to him by God to rule’.”Footnote 167 The discourse of baptismal renunciation centered on the proper life and conduct of Christians served not only to define the moral standard of this membership, but also to promote the emendatio morum of members according to it. It was part of the broader rhetoric of Charlemagne's empire, and various modes of communication that involved the agency of multiple parties made it a totalizing discourse of reform: from the emperor to bishops (reflected in the encyclical letter on baptism), from bishops to the emperor (reflected in episcopal baptismal expositions), within the ecclesiastical hierarchy (reflected in local baptismal expositions and conciliar acts), and from elites to the whole populus christianus (reflected in sermons).Footnote 168 Charlemagne and his churchmen diverged on how to understand and how to carry out the reform, but they used the same discourse of baptismal renunciation to exchange opinions (reflected in the two capitularies of 811 and Leidrad's second epistolary treatise on baptism). The story of the making and disseminating of baptismal renunciation as a discourse of Charlemagne's moral reform is also the story how the reform was mobilized through his imperium christianum.
It is also significant that while the Church Fathers had already associated baptismal renunciation with Christian moral guidelines, only in the late reign of Charlemagne did it become a totalizing discourse of moral reform throughout Latin Christendom. “The last years of Charlemagne” as a distinctive period thus deserve a more positive evaluation than in François-Louis Ganshof's defeatist picture of “échec” and “decomposition” or in Heinrich Fichtenau's elegiac vision for the “emperor's two bodies.”Footnote 169 Rather, these years witnessed the intensification of the moral correctio and the earnest pursuit of a deeper ethical foundation for the newly founded imperium christianum.
