This important and exceptionally coherent collection of essays presents more than a fresh perspective on the notion of ‘reform’ and the challenges of determining the criteria thereof. These are considered in the context of the pre-history and reception, within communities of monks, canonical clerics and religious women throughout the Frankish realm, of the texts drafted for the councils convened at Aachen between 816 and 819 which include the Institutio canonicorum and Institutio sanctimonialium. Yet, as indicated by this book's title, the fundamental issues perceived by the authors are those of identity, and of categorisation. Certainly, since the late 1970s there has been increasing emphasis on the great diversity of Carolingian religious organisation and practice, and what Mayke de Jong described as the ‘repeated redrawing of boundaries and renewal of distance which is usually called “monastic reform”’, as well as the degree of local variation, despite or arguably even stimulated by the ideas of harmony and universalising aspirations articulated at a succession of Carolingian assemblies. This book nevertheless effects a crucial re-configuration of understanding. The questioning spirit of the two young scholars to whose memory this volume is dedicated imbues this volume.
The authors concentrate on local contexts and initiatives mirrored in regulatory and liturgical texts in order to stimulate new reflections on all types of religious communities: monastic, clerical and female. Underlying this is the fundamental adjustment of the old-imagined differentiation between monks, canons and other clergy, clearly set out by Emilie Kurdziel, that the ordo canonicorum and the canonici so often mentioned in Frankish texts are to be understood as canonical clerics, that is, all the clergy, not as a separate category of ‘canons’. The authors seek to determine what categorises religious communities at an institutional level and how they defined themselves. They also reflect much recent work in the early Middle Ages in their focus on the cultural influence exerted by texts and their production.
A background to the Carolingian material is provided in the section ‘Origins’, comprising three papers by Sebastian Scholz, Albrecht Diem and Brigitte Meijns, who look respectively at the organisation of the clergy in the sixth century, the remarkable emphasis on confession and the choreography of spiritual aspiration in the late eighth-century text known as the Memoriale qualiter, and the insistence on the religious discipline of everyone in the Carolingian capitularies and conciliar acts. The reader's horizons are widened in the following section on ‘Old norms, new boundaries’. Emilie Kurdziel offers an acute reassessment of the ecclesiastical ordines, and Rutger Kramer and Veronika Wieser explore the implications of the choice of patristic resources by the drafters of the florilegium included in the Institutio canonicorum of 816, and how it presents a view of what it meant to be a leader within the Church. Michael Eber discusses the Institutio sanctimonialium in relation to the Institutio canonicorum, and the extent to which masculine power structures were, or could be mapped onto female communities.
The next two sections, on ‘reception and reflection’ and ‘reform in practice’, address a range of religious communities, such as those of St Denis, St Gallen and the cathedral and monasteries of Lyon, and offer new reflections on many texts and individuals. Stephen Ling usefully provides an indication of some alternative thinking about monastic and canonical orders on Alcuin's part. Cinzia Grifoni establishes the importance of Hrabanus Maurus’ De institutione clericorum as a florilegium on clerical education addressed to monks who are expected to carry our clerical functions by virtue of their ordination. Ingrid Rembold reassesses the interplay between local and central in the independent response of the reformers at St Denis to the Aachen councils and their championing of their own traditions. Johanna Jebe's analysis of the three ninth-century copies of the Rule of Benedict and other monastic rules in the library of St Gallen (Stiftsbibliothek csg 914, 915, 916) demonstrates how they witness to discussion within the community to determine what comprised an exemplary monastic life and an understanding of monasticism ‘oriented towards written rules … of which the Regula Benedicti seemed the most perfect example’.
The last quartet of papers in the volume reinforces the importance of the liturgical evidence for understanding monastic and clerical communities; they provide this book's most effective demonstrations of local adaptation and creativity. The late Miriam Czock's paper on the sacred space of the oratory is a valuable reminder of the importance of physical space in relation to its spiritual function. She highlights the definition in the Regula Benedicti of the oratory as the place of prayer. Renie Choy questions the validity of the old distinction between monastic and cathedral office in the light of Walafrid Strabo's Libellus de exordiis et incrementis quarundam in observationibus ecclesiasticis rerum. She encourages us to think about how the ninth-century reformers perceived a ‘cathedral style of liturgy’ in relation to what they may have understood as the ‘pure monastic prayer’ of the desert Fathers. Incidentally, on p. 387 n. 30, the manuscript shelf mark for the Gelasian Sacramentary (BAV, reg. lat. 316) has been assigned in error to the so-called Verona Sacramentary; the latter should be Biblioteca capitolare, Verona, LXXXV(80). Graeme Ward's chapter on liturgical change in ninth-century Lyon addresses the role played by liturgy in exercising as well as coalescing ecclesiastical authority in the Carolingian empire. He argues convincingly that Agobard of Lyon's work was not a response to Amalarius (whose efforts are too often accepted in the version supplied by his opponents) but a modification of Leidrad's initiatives. Divine office was a key component of the drive to improve the state of the Church in Lyon. Arthur Westwell's study of many Frankish manuscripts containing edited and re-conceived texts of the liturgical ordines elucidates the creativity manifest in their local adaptation (as distinct from elite imposition) to suit particular needs. He explains how Ordines are not to be understood only as liturgical texts ruling the performance of rituals, but also as explanations of the meaning of the ritual and rules which regulated and defined the ‘mind set’ of the communities and made explicit theological points.
Charles Mériaux's assessment of the impact of the pioneering work of Josef Semmler on the ‘anianischen’ reform could perhaps have accorded a little more credit to Semmler's own acknowledgement that much more work needed to be done to identify the many and diverse reactions to the Aachen councils. In their endeavour to make the case for the book, moreover, the editors exaggerate the degree to which there has been too much concentration hitherto on, or assumptions of, ‘top-down’ rather than ‘bottom-up’ thinking about ‘reform’. Nevertheless, collectively all the essays undoubtedly tackle ‘the dynamic relationships between imperial pronouncements and local undertakings’ and the way ‘local perspectives clash with universalising aspirations’. The contributors represent a heartening new generation of excellent younger scholars, indicating that the future of the study of early medieval Europe is assured.
