I found it hard to get a handle on this book for two reasons. Firstly, as Matthew Gills himself states, “The book's alternative essay-style approach suggests historical and intellectual connections rather than making a more traditional argument” (3). My second difficulty was in understanding the meaning of “religious horror.” Gillis’ focus is on a rhetorical style that might alternatively be called “Christian terror,” the fire-and-brimstone sermonising used for millennia in calls to repentance. As he states, “biblical scholars have demonstrated the importance of monsters, negative emotions, gory imagery and disturbing rhetoric in Scripture, which served to correct believers by revealing the grim results of human wickedness and immorality” (2).
What turns this mission to frighten sinners into horror? Gillis gives no definition or theory of horror but implicitly reveals two reasons for the term. The rhetorical images he highlights are particularly gruesome: blood dripping from someone's mouth, the tearing and devouring of human flesh, worms, rotting flesh. These are tropes evoking not just fear but disgust, common in the genres of horror literature and film. Gillis refers several times (104, 116, 123) to “worm theology,” using scriptural and patristic imagery of worms spontaneously generated from corpses and eternally devouring them in hell (42–43).
The second reason for Gillis’ use of the term “religious horror” is that the evil-doers denounced are not the Vikings raiding Francia in the late ninth and early-tenth centuries, but the Franks themselves, whose sins result in God's punishment and failure to defeat their attackers. Late Carolingian moralists had met the enemy, and, to their horror, he was them.
Gillis explores a variety of genres from the period 880–930 CE. The first two chapters discuss texts (including the Capitulary of Ver promulgated by King Carloman II in 884, hymns, and a planctus) that use gory imagery to denounce soldier-robbers, who plunder other Christians rather than protecting them from Viking plunderers. The third chapter explores how the monastic author Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés constructs the image of heroic Christian soldier-martyrs in his epic poem on the Viking siege of Paris in 885–886. The final chapter looks at three of Abbo's sermons from the 920s discussing the problem of robber-soldiers.
This final chapter makes Gillis’ argument more explicit: that Abbo in his sermons links the gory soldier-plunderers and the glorious soldier-martyrs to highlight the possibility of conversion from evil to good. Gillis ends the book (130–131) by seeing a possible connection between Abbo's model of converted soldiers and Pope Urban II's call to crusade in 1095. This is an important point. Most Carolingian war poetry glorifies warriors whose previous moral status is either exemplary (as with the planctus on Eric of Friuli) or unmentioned (as with Ermoldus Nigellus’ heroes). Abbo's stress on the chance to change one's moral status is distinctive.
However, at this point, difficulties appear with Gillis’ emphasis on horror. The specific sermon (no. 6) that calls on soldiers to repent of their misdeeds makes little use of graphic imagery (105). Abbo's most gruesome metaphors instead comes in sermons simply denouncing such soldiers or consoling their victims (111–127).
Were religious horror tropes invoked during calls for fighting the Church's visible enemies? Gillis describes Abbo's poem on the siege of Paris as including “horror rhetoric” (97), but, apart from one statement that “blood fell through the air” (78), there is little graphic horror; instead, Abbo describes the fear felt by the besieged. Gillis cites one passage joking about Danes burnt by oil and pitch fleeing to the river for protection and others “spitted” by arrows (79). This suggests a rhetoric of minimizing horror, or at least resembles Mel Brooks’ quip that “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”
In motivational terms, would evoking feelings of disgust around violence and death, and denouncing soldiers as bloodthirsty, encourage their violence against the “correct” target? Here a gap in the book becomes evident: the omission of contemporary texts that treat holy warfare as glorious. In particular, the Ludwigslied, a triumphal vernacular account of Louis III defeating Northmen in 881, seems a parallel, more encouraging, model for soldiers facing Vikings.
This omission reflects both the strengths and weaknesses of the book. Gillis provides detailed analysis of imagery from often understudied texts, helped by including substantial passages, both in a readable English translation and the Latin original. I felt at times, however, a lack of context. As Gillis mentions, many individual images derive from Biblical and patristic references or have other earlier parallels. Including comparisons with Carolingian visions of hell, other ninth-century planctus, or Angelbert's lament on the battle between Carolingian royal brothers at Fontenoy might have made it clearer what distinguishes Gillis’ cluster of texts from previous Frankish rhetoric.
This is also a depoliticized account of Viking Age Francia. Gillis claims that “Religious horror [. . .] gave teeth to the authorities’ calls for correction” (18) but does not discuss whether this rhetoric was now needed because late Carolingian rulers’ power had weakened. There is much recent scholarship both on rhetorical claims to moral authority by rulers such as Louis the Pious, as well as on the political effectiveness of Carolingian kings in the 880s and later. Gillis cites works by Mayke de Jong, Simon Maclean and Geoffrey Koziol but does not really engage with these.
Open access publishing gives opportunities for experimentation by authors, both in approach and length. Gillis has used these opportunities to produce an engaging and thought-provoking book, which makes an important suggestion about the development of new moral expectations of soldiers. I am not convinced, however, that his “alternative” and more loosely articulated approach is the most useful one to take in this case.
