The records of the Council of Paris, held by Carolingian bishops in 829, contain numerous reflections on how Christian kings should exercise law and justice. Among these reflections, the council's delegates observed that ‘because the king must … render account to the Most Equitable Judge concerning the ministry committed to him’, he must enquire into the suitability of the judges he appoints, ‘lest he incur divine judgement because of them’.Footnote 1 These comments illustrate the ‘moral framework’ of law in early medieval thought. As Rosamond McKitterick puts it, ‘justice was a virtue’; ‘worldly justice was linked to divine justice’, and thereby situated ‘within a framework of moral salvation’.Footnote 2 Paul Fouracre has similarly highlighted how earthly law was believed to have a heavenly counterpart.Footnote 3 The practical concerns for justice laid out by this section of the council were informed by beliefs about God and morality.
The divine judgement of which the Paris delegates warned was not only eschatological (God's judgement on the Last Day) but also historical, in that God's judgement could be, and was, discerned in contemporary events. A year before the Council of Paris, the Emperor Louis the Pious (r.813–40) wrote to his nobility in such terms. Recent disasters, including military defeats in Spain, famines and diseases, and celestial phenomena were ‘driven by the just judgement of God, so that, because we fail in all things, we might be scourged both within and without’.Footnote 4 In response, Louis announced his intention to convene a series of councils to emend and correct what was amiss through further legislation. This belief in God's contemporary and immanent judgement thus provided a theological context for much thinking about law and justice in early medieval societies. Caroline Humfress and Julia Hillner have both noted the importance of theology for conceptions of law and its practice in Late Antiquity.Footnote 5 As the practicalities and dissemination of early medieval law receive increasing attention,Footnote 6 the current article will consider this aspect of its theoretical hinterland.
Many Carolingian capitularies, conciliar texts and letters shared similar concerns to those of Louis and the Council of Paris, explicitly interpreting recent events as God's judgement. In 805, for example, the Emperor Charlemagne (r.768–814) wrote to Gherbald, bishop of Liège, in response to recent disasters. These, Charlemagne wrote, were ‘very notable, if we wish to consider the kind of troubles which, for our merits, we suffer each day’.Footnote 7 He continued, ‘from these externals, we can learn that that we, who must tolerate such evils outwardly, are completely displeasing inwardly to the Lord’.Footnote 8 King Charles the Bald (r.840–77), similarly warned in his capitulary of Pîtres (862) that ‘by our wicked deeds we have grieved and driven away the Holy Spirit … for this reason the inhabitants of the land have been killed and driven away’ by the Vikings.Footnote 9 The Council of Ver in 884, meeting on the orders of Carloman II (r.879–84), realized that ‘our prayers are not accepted by God, because of the shouts and wailing and the deep sighing of the poor’.Footnote 10 As a result, ‘we can neither resist our enemies nor possess the kingdom of God’.Footnote 11 These texts suggest that law was strongly motivated by the belief that contemporary events portended God's judgement, vengeance or displeasure. This conviction was not confined to capitularies. Theodulf of Orléans’ famous poem attacking corrupt judges (c.798) also warned that ‘the wrath of the celestial Judge remains dreadful’ against such corruption.Footnote 12
Scholars have frequently noted how Christ himself was often depicted by early medieval writers as a judge.Footnote 13 Similarly, the importance of belief in God's judgement within history has long been recognized by modern scholarship.Footnote 14 Charlemagne's letter to Gherbald, as Yitzhak Hen puts it, showed how ‘natural disasters were often interpreted as a form of divine punishment for all’.Footnote 15 Perhaps the best studied case has been that of the Viking raids, which as the above examples show were often interpreted as divine judgement by contemporaries across western Europe.Footnote 16 Beyond purely legal texts, Karl-Ferdinand Werner argued that the phrase ‘by God's just judgement’, which Louis’ letter of 828 used, was ‘the basic formula of all [early medieval] Christian historiography’.Footnote 17 For Werner, the very purpose of early medieval Christian historians was to discern God's purposes in history for the kings and their courts producing such legislation. While this could involve depicting God's help, many scholars (including Werner) have emphasized the importance of God's judgement in such histories as a warning to their audiences. Only by correctly recognizing God's punishments in history could the legislation necessary for repentance and reform be enacted.
While this dynamic can clearly be observed in Carolingian legal material, let us compare such language with how Carolingian history writing interpreted recent events. As McKitterick and Helmut Reimitz have shown, Carolingian histories provide rich evidence for the worldviews of the Frankish elites.Footnote 18 As I have explored elsewhere, these histories reflected and informed the beliefs of those elites concerning God's agency in recent events. Since these elites were also responsible for exercising justice and implementing reform, the legal depiction of God in such historical texts deserves further exploration.Footnote 19 I shall consider the extent to which the narratives of their recent pasts depicted God in legal and judicial terms and for what purpose. Was God a ‘stern and unrelenting judge’, as one modern scholar has put it?Footnote 20 Were his judgements presented, as they had been by Louis the Pious and the Council of Paris, to motivate justice and legal reform? In particular, as Hillner has argued, ideas about God's forgiveness and patience led some late antique Christians to conceive of justice in terms of emendation rather than simply retribution (which would take place after death).Footnote 21 It is worth considering the extent to which God's justice could be seen as rehabilitative, or even fulfil other roles in the life of these communities.
God's Judgement in Late Antique Histories
As Werner has argued, Carolingian historians were part of a developing tradition of Christian history writing which stretched back to Late Antiquity and, ultimately, to the Bible.Footnote 22 These earlier histories were increasingly copied and read in the Carolingian empire.Footnote 23 Garry Trompf has demonstrated that many of these histories placed significant emphasis on God's judgement and retribution,Footnote 24 thereby providing Carolingian historians with various models for narrating and interpreting God's judgement in history. The phrase ‘God's just judgement’ can, for example, be found in the account of the death of King Antiochus, who had persecuted God's people (2 Macc. 9: 18). This phrasing was taken up with particular enthusiasm by Orosius in his Histories, written in the early fifth century and widely copied in the Carolingian empire.Footnote 25
For Werner, Orosius's emphasis on God's judgement defined the tone of Christian history writing until the twelfth century.Footnote 26 A typical example, for Werner, was how the heretical Emperor Valens (r.364–78) was burned alive ‘by God's just judgement’ at the battle of Adrianople.Footnote 27 Valens had earlier in the narrative allowed these Goths to be converted to Arianism rather than Catholic orthodoxy. Orosius's message seems to have been clear: heresy would be punished, both in this life and the next. Valens's death, however, represented God's judgement on the opponents of the communities for which these histories were written or those who later identified with them, in this case, Catholic Christians. Valens was aligned with earlier pagan emperors who had persecuted Christians and had also suffered God's judgement.Footnote 28 As Trompf argues, emphasizing divine retribution served to encourage the audiences of these histories, since it assured them that God would vindicate their cause. Despite similarities in phrasing, this approach was different from that of Louis the Pious and the Council of Paris, who used God's judgement on their own communities to motivate reform, rather than judgement on their enemies as a cause for celebration.
A different model from Orosius was provided by the Ten Books of History of Gregory of Tours, written in the 590s.Footnote 29 Like Orosius, Gregory was widely read in the Carolingian empire and most of his statements about God concerned judgement and vengeance.Footnote 30 In addition to falling on those outside the community, Gregory also often depicted divine judgement falling within his own Gallic political community. For example, Marcatrude, King Gunthram's wife, poisoned the son of his concubine, only for her own son to die ‘by God's judgement’.Footnote 31 In the following chapter, King Charibert married Marcovefa, sister of his previous wife, and was excommunicated by Germanus, bishop of Paris. Charibert refused to repent and Marcovefa ‘died, struck by God's judgement’; Charibert himself died ‘not long after’.Footnote 32 Gregory used God's judgement to address questions of episcopal authority and dynastic intrigue, both with clear moral relevance to the Christian reader.
Space forbids considering further examples, such as those offered by Bede or the Liber Pontificalis, but Orosius and Gregory serve to demonstrate that there was no single Christian way of writing God's judgement into history. The Bible itself presented a far wider range of approaches than that of 2 Maccabees.Footnote 33 Orosius and Gregory also went beyond the phrasing of ‘God's judgement’ to describe God's vengeance or anger, which could be depicted eschatologically as well as historically. The Carolingian readers of these histories would thus have noted the importance of God's judgement from a variety of angles.
Marginalizing God's Judgement?
It is striking, therefore, that the earliest Carolingian historians significantly marginalized the importance of God's judgement in recent events. The two earliest histories were the so-called Continuations of the Chronicle of Fredegar and the Royal Frankish Annals, which both exerted a significant influence over subsequent Carolingian history writing.Footnote 34 The Continuations were completed between 768 and 786, possibly under the patronage of Childebrand and Nibelung, relatives of Charlemagne.Footnote 35 The first redaction of the Royal Frankish Annals (from 741 to 788) seems to have been written by someone associated with Charlemagne's court around 790s, who knew the Continuations.Footnote 36 As a result of their links to the Carolingian regime, both histories celebrated the Franks’ repeated victories under Carolingian leadership.
The Continuations offered their readers only two examples of God's judgement. Remistianus, a rebel against King Pippin III (r.751–68) in the 760s, was captured ‘through divine judgement’.Footnote 37 Earlier, in 756, Haistulf, king of the Lombards, was ‘thrown from his horse by divine judgement … and cruelly lost his life and kingdom by a worthy death’.Footnote 38 The Royal Frankish Annals similarly reported Haistulf's death, ‘struck by God's judgement’, but omitted any mention of the horse.Footnote 39 The annals framed the conflict between the Franks and the Lombards in legal terms.Footnote 40 King Pippin had attacked Haistulf earlier in the narrative because Pope Stephen was ‘seeking aid and support for the rights of St Peter’.Footnote 41 Pippin ‘sought justice’, while Haistulf ‘refused justice’, until Pippin's armies persuaded him otherwise in 755.Footnote 42 Haistulf then ‘promised to respect the rights of St Peter’, and bound himself to keep his promise with oaths and the exchange of hostages.Footnote 43 The author juxtaposed Haistulf's subsequent breaking of these oaths with God's judgement. In that sense, these accounts clearly connected ideas about law and justice on the international stage with God's judgement. This particular author, however, never returned to this motif.
The Continuations and the Royal Frankish Annals thus differed from the earlier histories considered above in marginalizing God's judgement within their narratives. God was, nonetheless, very important to both histories. In both the Carolingians repeatedly defeated their enemies, including the Lombards, ‘with the Lord helping’.Footnote 44 The authors of the Continuations and the Royal Frankish Annals shared earlier historians’ enthusiasm for divine agency in their narratives but shifted the weight from judgement and opposition to help. Both historians described God's purposes for Haistulf's death using different vocabulary from that for God's other actions within their narratives. In the Royal Frankish Annals, God's judgement on Haistulf and its consequences were also isolated structurally from other instances of God's agency. Most accounts of God's agency came later in the narrative, between 769 and 788. The two exceptions were Pippin's campaign against Haistulf in 755, ‘with the Lord helping’,Footnote 45 and then God's judgement on Haistulf. The combination of God's help to the Franks and judgement on their enemies was, in this single case, similar to Orosius's approach. Injustice occurred (and was subsequently punished by God) among those outside the community for whom this history was written. The Frankish readers of the Royal Frankish Annals would have been encouraged by Haistulf's death. Rather than serving to warn them to repent, it was part of the annals’ wider assurance of God's favour towards the Franks.
As Carolingian history writing developed, God's judgement appeared more frequently. It remained, as it had in the Continuations and the Royal Frankish Annals, primarily part of a wider discourse of divine aid. A few years after the composition of the annals, around 806, another pro-Carolingian historian wrote the Annals of Metz.Footnote 46 These annals covered the period from the Carolingians’ rise in the late seventh century until the year 805. Hen notes that these annals were almost exactly contemporaneous with Charlemagne's letter to Gherbald and suggests that the anxieties of that letter informed the annals.Footnote 47 The author, however, consistently stressed God's help and favour towards the Carolingians throughout the narrative, with only a few references to God's judgement. In the entry for 690, Pippin II (d.714), Charlemagne's great-grandfather and ruler of the Austrasian Franks, was depicted addressing his men before the decisive battle against the Neustrian Franks at Tertry. He described his men as ‘we who will submit to the Lord's judgement’.Footnote 48 In 717, Pippin's son, Charles Martel (r.715–41), faced the tyrants Chilperic and Raganfred before the battle of Vinchy. His opponents said ‘that [Charles] would … undergo the judgement of divine justice’.Footnote 49 The two decisive battles which secured the rule of Pippin and Charles were therefore framed with reference to divine judgement and justice. As in the Continuations and the Royal Frankish Annals, however, God's judgement was seen as benefiting the narrative's heroes and the audience who identified with them. These examples of divine justice should be placed alongside the many expressions of divine help, inspired by the Royal Frankish Annals. Pippin's address to his men exhorted them to fight ‘with the Lord helping’.Footnote 50 The text describes Charles Martel as winning the battle of Vinchy ‘with divine mercy succouring him’ and ‘with God's help’,Footnote 51 rather than referring to the idea of divine judgement. This reflected the dominance of the motif of God's help in Carolingian historians’ view of the recent past, a pattern set by the Continuations and Royal Frankish Annals. There was much in this narrative to encourage the reader, but little that explicitly warned against sin or motivated repentance and reform.
God's Judgement as Correction
As Mayke de Jong has shown, the idea of God's judgement became increasingly important for Carolingian political discourse in the reign of Louis the Pious.Footnote 52 Historians recounting Louis’ reign certainly depicted greater misfortunes befalling the Franks than their predecessors had done. While this altered the tone in which God's agency was depicted, it did not lead to the motif of God's just judgement becoming as dominant as it had been in the writings of Orosius or Gregory.
Following a series of rebellions in the early 830s, Louis was restored in 834, and shortly after became the subject of a biography by Thegan of Trier.Footnote 53 Thegan did not mention God's help as frequently as the Royal Frankish Annals or the Annals of Metz,Footnote 54 but nor did he explicitly depict God's judgement on Louis. He described Louis’ tumultuous relationship with his rebellious son, Lothar (795–855), and quoted Hebrews 12: 6: ‘he whom the Lord loves, he corrects, and scourges every son whom He receives’.Footnote 55 Thegan implicitly ascribed Louis’ misfortunes at Lothar's hands to God. Rather than using the language of judgement, however, Thegan cast this as evidence of God's love for Louis. Thegan continued that ‘he, who will not accept the Lord's corrections voluntarily, cannot become his son’.Footnote 56 That Louis accepted his troubles demonstrated his sonship to God, whereas Lothar's unwillingness to be corrected placed his in doubt. Thegan thus alluded to the language of God's judgement which had surrounded the Council of Paris and the later rebellions, but made a virtue out of God's apparent chastisement. In this way he invested Louis with both political and moral legitimacy rather than calling for further reform, and encouraged the Frankish political community to see the troubles of the early 830s in a positive light.
Writing in the early 840s, an anonymous author known as the Astronomer also wrote a Life of Louis.Footnote 57 The Astronomer repeatedly emphasized God's help, and also gave a similar nuance to events which could have been interpreted as God's judgement. He mentioned God's help at numerous points, such as when Louis’ men defeated the Saracens in Spain ‘depending on divine help’.Footnote 58 Much later in the narrative, the Astronomer lamented how Lothar's army had been devastated by plague in Italy; it was as if Francia's ‘nerves had been cut, her prudence annulled’.Footnote 59 The Astronomer continued: ‘God shows how salutary, how praiseworthy, it is to observe what is represented as proceeding from his mouth, saying, Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, nor the strong man in his strength, nor the rich man in his riches.’Footnote 60
The Astronomer, whose narrative had celebrated Louis’ rule, was clearly admonishing Lothar for moral failure. There was, however, no precise phrasing to confirm that God was punishing Lothar. The reader's attention was not drawn explicitly to Lothar's many sins. Instead, the author showed that Francia, all the Franks, suffered from this loss, and then addressed the reader about how to learn from this to live rightly. This was similar to the warnings pronounced by Louis and his churchmen cited above, but was altogether subtler. Lothar had opposed Louis but was also a reigning Carolingian when the Astronomer wrote. For all his faults, Lothar needed to be part of the solution to the succession crisis following Louis’ death, and so part of the broader community which the Astronomer was addressing. The Astronomer appealed for greater submission to God without explicitly threatening judgement. Despite the discourse of Louis’ reign, or perhaps because of its ferocity, both Thegan and the Astronomer depicted God's judgement carefully. It fell on Louis, his family and the Frankish political community very infrequently and was portrayed in more rehabilitative terms than that falling on the Franks’ enemies in the histories of Charlemagne's reign.
Lamenting God's Judgement
As the ninth century progressed, more historians alluded to, or engaged with questions, about God's judgement, although these remained complex and part of wider reflections on God's agency in recent history. Writing in the early 840s, the lay commander Nithard composed a history of the conflict between Louis the Pious's sons following the emperor's death in 840. The first two books were written for King Charles the Bald (r.840–77) and his court, the latter two for himself.Footnote 61 Much of Nithard's narrative depicted God's judgement as favourable to himself and Charles the Bald's supporters. Prior to the battle of Fontenoy (841), Charles's advisers told him to fight against his brother Lothar, ‘relying on the justice of his case and thus on divine help’.Footnote 62 As with earlier Carolingian histories, Nithard equated God's justice with his help, and Nithard described himself as fighting at Fontenoy ‘with the Lord helping’.Footnote 63 The latter two books were much clearer about God's judgement, although Nithard offered this interpretation largely through the mouths of the bishops in his narrative. They confirmed that Lothar had been ‘restrained by God's judgement in this disaster’,Footnote 64 and that ‘God's judgement had declared His will between [the brothers]’.Footnote 65 Much like the Annals of Metz, Nithard depicted God's justice as a source of help.
Nithard's conclusion to his Histories, however, shifted to warning his readers ‘how mad it is to neglect the public benefit’.Footnote 66 He asserted that this would ‘offend the Creator very greatly’.Footnote 67 Nithard believed that God had indeed been offended, and proved it with examples of the natural elements making war on the once prosperous res publica.Footnote 68 Nithard concluded his history with the assertion that ‘God's just judgement, as I said above, instilled lamentation in many’.Footnote 69 Nithard's use of the phrase ‘just judgement of God’ was no accident. It took a phrase that earlier historians had used to depict judgement on the enemies of their communities and focused it inwards. This concluded the history with a pessimistic call to repentance and recast the whole history as a warning of divine judgement. Although Nithard had depicted God's judgement as favourable to Charles and his men at Fontenoy, this was not a matter of straightforward triumph. Nithard had shown through Fontenoy that God's justice had significant implications for the whole political community, whether supporting Lothar or Charles. While the just could take comfort from this, it meant that those who neglected the public good risked the same fate as Lothar. There was also a strongly emotive element to Nithard's closing passage. It functioned almost as a call for readers to lament and confess their sin.
A similar pattern can be found in the Annals of Xanten, a set of annals covering 790 to 873, whose final redaction can be linked to the church in Cologne.Footnote 70 The later sections, especially from 863 onwards, focused on the Viking raids and ecclesiastical politics, especially the crises facing the Cologne church as a result of Lothar II's divorce case.Footnote 71 As in Nithard, the Annals of Xanten depicted God's judgement as favourable to their own community. When the villainous Lothar II returned from Rome, for example, the annalist wrote that ‘the Lord struck him terribly with almost all his noblemen … as if the Avenger had said, Vengeance is mine, and I will repay’.Footnote 72 The final triumph of Archbishop Willibert's party over that of Lothar II's servant, Gunthar was similarly described as ‘the Lord [revealing] His justice in the sight of the nations’.Footnote 73 In both cases, the annalist asserted God's just intervention in history on behalf of the faithful of Cologne. Whereas earlier annals had showed God helping the empire, here God acted on the church's behalf, against the empire's own rulers.
The annalist, however, knew that God's justice placed demands on his audience. The narrative of political and military events beyond Cologne was deeply pessimistic, especially concerning the Viking raids.Footnote 74 He closed his history with a general assertion that ‘the Lord continually afflicted His people with various blows, and visited their transgressions upon them with the rod, and their sins upon them with lashes’.Footnote 75 The annalist here alluded to Psalm 88 (Vulgate), but turned its first-person warning into a retrospective description, to depict contemporary events as expressions of God's judgement which implicitly demanded a response. As with Nithard, this concluded the history as it has survived, casting the whole work as a prompt to repentance and prayer.
Nithard and the Annals of Xanten were unusual in that they depicted God's judgement both for and against their own communities, in contrast to other Carolingian histories. It should be noted that both histories survived only in a single manuscript, and so did not represent the mainstream of history writing, as the Royal Frankish Annals or the nearly contemporary Annals of Fulda did. Their way of recounting the recent past aligned both histories much more closely with Carolingian reforming literature than other histories. This may, indeed, have been a direct result of lying beyond the mainstream of Carolingian history writing. Without needing to celebrate the exploits of specific Carolingian rulers on the pattern set by the Royal Frankish Annals, they could afford to offer a more morally complex view of contemporary events.
God's Help in Carolingian Law
Carolingian histories presented their readers with a subtle and complex picture of God's judgement which was often balanced with God's help and mercy. It never became a dominant feature of Carolingian history writing as it had in Orosius and Gregory. Similar complexity can be found in how Carolingian legislators depicted God's judgement. The preface to Charlemagne's greatest piece of reforming legislation, the General Admonition, did not mention God's judgement but his mercy.Footnote 76 Even the seemingly fearful legislative sources considered at the outset of this article found ways to bring nuance to the legal character of God which they presented. Apart from the Council of Paris and Louis’ letter of 828, none of those legislative texts mentioned God's judgement explicitly. Charlemagne's letter to Gherbald mentioned displeasure (non placere), not judgement. The capitulary of Pîtres, similarly, made the Holy Spirit the object of human impiety, as being ‘grieved’, rather than the agent of judgement. Finally, the Council of Ver did not explicitly ascribe recent defeats to God, even if this was implicit, but to human impiety and immorality, which affected God's willingness to help. As with Thegan and the Astronomer, they alluded to the sense of God's displeasure without stating it directly.
Similarly, these texts all envisaged God as continuing to be favourable, even in his displeasure. Charlemagne, for example, ordered Gherbald to organize fasts so that help might be ‘sought from him in whom we live, move, and have our being’.Footnote 77 Charlemagne explained to Gherbald that fasts could be completed ‘with the Lord granting it, in this way’, before detailing the process of litany and fasting.Footnote 78 Similarly, the Franks ought to pray ‘that almighty God, who knows not only everything which happens but also everything before it happens, may convict our hearts’.Footnote 79 The means by which God's favour might be restored was itself grounded in beliefs about God's help. Louis’ admonitions in 828, similarly, reported that already recent councils had met ‘with God being merciful’ to ‘seek God with all devotion so that he might be propitious to us’.Footnote 80 The capitulary of Pîtres, meanwhile, ended by saying that ‘we should return to God and believe’.Footnote 81 Theodulf, similarly, enjoined corrupt judges to be merciful because Christ was merciful.Footnote 82 Each of these texts continued to envisage God as favourable, even if such favour was currently absent. The sense of divine aid which was so prevalent in Carolingian histories also informed legislative texts alongside the language of divine displeasure.
Conclusion
Carolingian historians and legislators shared a common discourse which acknowledged that God could sometimes express his displeasure through recent events, but which also pressed upon their readers the assurance of God's help and mercy. When Carolingian historians depicted God acting in recent events they consistently emphasized his help and favour to the communities for whom they wrote. Where the language of judgement did appear, such language was part of this wider discourse of divine aid. While this was similar to Orosius, who had depicted God's judgement on persecutors and heretics, the tone of Carolingian historians was altogether more positive. God was not a stern and unrelenting judge, but a source of help and comfort.
When historians did see God's judgement as falling upon aspects of Carolingian society, this view of God as a source of help persevered. God's opposition to Louis the Pious or Lothar in the works of Thegan and the Astronomer, for example, was considerably subtler than his judgement on the villains of Orosius and Gregory of Tours. It allowed space for God's mercy and for further moral lessons to be learned, rather than bringing about a decisive end to sinners. Even the histories of Nithard and the Annals of Xanten, with a stronger sense of lament, did not lose sight of God's help and mercy, both in bringing judgement upon their enemies and in allowing room for repentance. This subtlety can also be found across Carolingian legislation, even where God's displeasure was made clear.
These texts have important implications for our understanding of early medieval religion. Far from being simply being seen a wrathful judge, as modern scholars have often assumed,Footnote 83 God was conceived by early medieval thinkers as merciful and benevolent, but also as just. As well as being an important part of the language of both legal and historical sources, such language further reflected wider ideas about justice. God's mercy could be learned from the history of the recent past and, as much as his justice, could motivate human law and justice. This balance of justice and mercy was important for legal thought because it allowed space for repentance and correction, as these texts demonstrate. Such an approach is consistent with what Hillner has demonstrated about late antique Christian approaches to law as rehabilitative as much as retributive.Footnote 84 The texts considered here show the continuation of that late antique dialogue between theology and law into the medieval West. God's whole character, not just its legal aspect as judge but his mercy and favour, was relevant to conceptions of law in the early medieval church.
