[In the following excerpt, Cutts explores Charlemagne’s encouragement of learning and examines his religious policy, edicts, and controversial theological decisions.]

THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING

The feature of Charles’s character and work to which the historian naturally turns with the greatest sympathy is his love of learning and the wise and strenuous encouragement of it from which dates the revival of letters in Europe.

The elegant culture of which the letters of Sidonius have given us so charming a glimpse, had long since died out of the countries between the Alps and the English Channel. The Imperial schools, which we have seen still existed in the towns of Gaul in the time of the grandsons of Clovis, had fallen into neglect and decay. If the Frank conquerors had gradually progressed from their original barbarism, the civilization of the conquered race had gradually deteriorated in the midst of perpetual war, until at last, about the time of Charles Martel, the whole people had reached the lowest point of civilization to which Gaul had sunk since it learnt the language and the manners of Rome.

Letters had taken refuge in the monasteries; but the monastic schools did not fulfil the place of the old Imperial schools. Pagan literature was very naturally disliked and discouraged by the Church, and the schools of the monasteries took a narrower range.

The advantages of learning were indeed recognized by the Frank princes from the first, and Clovis, and his sons and grandsons, encouraged some of their young nobility to qualify themselves for high places in the State and in the Church. No doubt Pepin and Carloman, with the assistance of Boniface, in regulating and reforming the Frankish Church, did something to encourage learning. Pepin, we have seen, had the Italian scholar, Peter of Pisa, at his court as tutor to the young princes and the young nobles of the court. But the adoption of general measures to revive learning throughout the kingdom was the work of Charlemagne, and is one of his best claims to the gratitude of posterity.

It was about the year 780 that he induced an eminent Lombard scholar, Paul the Deacon, to take up his residence at his court, and to undertake the instruction of all who chose to attend his lectures. In the following year he met with the scholar whose name is more especially associated with that of Charles in the revival of learning.

It was at Parma, during Charles’s expedition to Italy, that a group of Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastics were introduced to him, who had been to Rome to fetch the pallium for Eanbold, the newly elected Archbishop of York. Chief of them was Alcuin, who held the honourable office of master of the schools of York, in which he had succeeded the new archbishop.

The schools of Britain and Ireland had at this time a considerable reputation. The school of York was one of the most famous of them. Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Abbot Adrian, the companion of his labours, were both men of considerable learning, and they had taken pains to establish schools in England. Bede (673-735) had gained for himself and for the Northumbrian schools a European reputation; Egbert, his scholar and friend, had maintained the high character for learning of the school of York; Egbert had been the master of Elbert, and Eanbold the new archbishop, and Alcuin, had been school-fellows under Elbert. When Elbert succeeded Egbert as archbishop, Eanbold succeeded Elbert in the schools; when Eanbold was in turn raised to the see, Alcuin succeeded him as scholasticus; so that Alcuin was a scholar of great reputation, and in a position in which he might naturally expect to succeed in his turn to the see of York. The school of York had maintained the Roman traditions derived from its founders; it taught the theology of Augustine and of Gregory the Great, and it regarded Rome as the mother of Western Christendom.

In the scholasticus of York, King Charles recognized the kind of man he needed to take the lead in that revival of learning on which he was intent. Alcuin listened to his proposals, and agreed to accept his offers, provided that when he reached England, in discharging his embassy, the archbishop and the Northumbrian king should give their consent; and in 782 Alcuin took up his residence at the court of the King of the Franks, as master of the Palatine school. The king gave him two abbeys to afford him an income—one near Troyes, and another, Ferrieres, in the diocese of Sens—and no doubt he cared for the well-being of the houses from which he derived his emoluments; but his duties were the teaching of the Palatine school, and the promotion of education throughout the Frank dominions. The king at this time was forty years of age, the scholar was forty-seven.

It was a strangely wandering life which was led by the court of the great Charles. Wherever the military or political affairs of his wide dominions made it necessary for him to fix his residence for a few months, thither his wife and children, his counsellors and secretaries, in short, his whole court, accompanied him,—now in Saxony, now in Aquitaine, now in Lombardy, now on the banks of the Rhine.

The duties of the master of the Palatine school were very much the same as those of the master of any of the great schools of the period. He was a professor, who delivered public lectures. But seeing he was here the sole professor, he had to lecture on all subjects which he desired that his pupils should learn.

Charles himself had a great thirst for knowledge, and a great desire to encourage learning. He frequently set the example of attending the master’s lectures, and such an example was sure to be followed by all who desired to stand well with the king. Still more frequently in conversation he availed himself of the great scholar’s supposed capability of solving all questions on all subjects. We take leave to quote a few paragraphs, which place the scene vividly before us:¹—

We find Charles and his courtiers plying the Vates from across the Channel with innumerable questions, often blundering strangely and misapprehending wildly, but forming a circle which even at this lapse of time it is impossible to contemplate without interest. The monarch himself, in the ardour of a long unsatisfied curiosity, propounding queries on all imaginable topics; suggesting, distinguishing, objecting, disputing;—a colossal figure, gazing fixedly with bright blue eyes on his admired guest, and altogether a presence that might well have disconcerted a less assured intellect. Alcuin, however, holding fast by his Boethius, Cassiodorus, and Isidorus, is calm and self-possessed; feeling assured that so long as he only teaches what ‘Gregorius summus’ and ‘Bæda venerabilis’ believed and taught, he cannot go very far wrong. Around him, as the years went by, he saw successively appear the three royal sons, born in rightful wedlock: Charles, the future ruler of Neustria and Austrasia; Pepin, the acknowledged lord of Italy; and Lewis, who almost from his cradle had worn the crown of Aquitaine,—the graceful young athlete and mighty hunter, his mind already opening to that love of learning which, through all the good and evil of his chequered life, he cherished so fondly in his later years. There, again, was Charles’s much-loved sister Gisela, Abbess of Chelles, who from her girlhood had renounced the world, but whom the fame of the great teacher drew from her conventual retirement. Thither also came the last and best-loved of Charles’s wives, Liutgarda, of the proud Alemannic race, hereafter to prove among the firmest of Alcuin’s friends; and the royal daughter, Gisela, whose parental affection held her too dear for the proudest alliance. There, too, was Charles’s son-in-law, Angilbert, chiefly distinguished as yet for his fondness for the histrionic art, but afterwards the saintly Abbot of St. Riquier. There, too, were the royal cousins, the half-brothers Adelhard and Wala, whose after action shook the whole fabric of the Carolingian Empire. There, too, was Riculfus, destined ere long to fill the chair of St. Boniface and rule the great see of Mayence; Eginhard, the royal biographer, the classic of the ninth century; and Fredegis, Alcuin’s youthful countryman, poet, and philosopher, not always faithful to his master’s teaching.

It appears to have been a frequent affectation in mediæval times for distinguished men to assume a literary or historic alias; and to this custom we must attribute the fact that Alcuin usually in his correspondence addresses the members of this circle under another name. Charles’s second name would seem to have really been David, and this fact may account for the assumption of scriptural names by some of his courtiers. Pepin was Julius; Gisela (the sister), Lucia; Gisela (the daughter), Delia; Queen Liutgarda was Ava; Adelhard was Antony; Wala, Arsenius; Eginhard, with reference perhaps to his destined state avocation, was Besaleel; Riculfus, Flavius Damoetus; Rigbod, Machairas; Angilbert, Homer; Fredigis, Nathanael.

There appears, however, little to support the popular idea of a regular Athenæum, or academy of adult members of Charles’s court.

For the first five years after Alcuin’s arrival (782-787) the mind of the king was occupied with the wars in which he was incessantly engaged; but when, in 785, Witikind laid down his arms and embraced Christianity, Charles had more leisure to turn to the designs of peace. During his residence at Rome, in the winter of 786-7, Charles had secured in the capital of Western learning several teachers of repute, whom, on his return, he distributed among the principal Frank monasteries to aid in the work of educational revival. Shortly after he issued the famous capitulary of a.d. 787. The copy which has been preserved is that addressed to the Abbot of Fulda:—

Charles, by the grace of God King of the Franks and of the Lombards, and Patrician of the Romans, to Bangulfus Abbot, and to his whole congregation, and to the faithful committed to his charge:

Be it known to your Devotion, pleasing to God, that in conjunction with our faithful we have judged it to be of utility that in the bishoprics and monasteries committed by Christ’s favour to our charge, care should be taken that there shall be not only a regular manner of life and one conformable to holy religion, but also the study of letters, each to teach and learn them according to his ability and the Divine assistance. For even as due observance of the rule of the house tends to good morals, so zeal on the part of the teacher and the taught imparts order and grace to sentences; and those who seek to please God by living aright, should also not neglect to please Him by right speaking. It is written, ‘By thine own words shalt thou be justified or condemned;’ and although right doing may be preferable to right speaking, yet must the knowledge of what is right precede right action. Every one, therefore, should strive to understand what it is that he would fain accomplish; and this right understanding will be the sooner gained, according as the utterances of the tongue are free from error. And if false speaking is to be shunned by all men, especially should it be shunned by those who have elected to be the servants of the truth. During past years we have often received letters from different monasteries, informing us that at their sacred services the brethren offered up prayers on our behalf; and we have observed that the thoughts contained in these letters, though in themselves most just, were expressed in uncouth language, and while pious devotion dictated the sentiments, the unlettered tongue was unable to express them aright! Hence there has arisen in our minds the fear lest, if the skill to write rightly were thus lacking, so too would the power of rightly comprehending the Holy Scriptures be far less than was fitting; and we all know that though verbal errors be dangerous, errors of the understanding are yet more so. We exhort you, therefore, not only not to neglect the study of letters, but to apply yourselves thereto with perseverance, and with that humility which is well pleasing to God, so that you may be able to penetrate with greater ease and certainty the mysteries of the Holy Scriptures. For as these contain images, tropes, and similar figures, it is impossible to doubt that the reader will arrive far more readily at the spiritual sense according as he is the better instructed in learning. Let there, therefore, be chosen for this work men who are both able and willing to learn, and also desirous of instructing others; and let them apply themselves to the work with a zeal equalling the earnestness with which we recommend it to them.

It is our wish that you may be what it behoves the soldiers of the Church to be,—religious in heart, learned in discourse, pure in act, eloquent in speech; so that all who approach your house in order to invoke the Divine Master, or to behold the excellence of the religious life, may be edified in beholding you, and instructed in hearing you discourse or chant, and may return home rendering thanks to God most High.

Fail not, as thou regardest our favour, to send a copy of this letter to all thy suffragans, and to all the monasteries; and let no monk go beyond his monastery to administer justice, or to enter the assemblies and the voting-places. Adieu.

This capitulary appears to have been issued from Augsburg, where he had just received the submission of the rebellious Tassilo.

It was probably some time after this that Charles sent round to the Churches a homilary or collection of sermons, corrected by the hand of Paulus Diaconus (at that time probably engaged in teaching at Metz), accompanied by the following instructions:—

Desirous as we are of improving the condition of the Churches, we impose upon ourselves the task of reviving with the utmost zeal the study of letters, well-nigh extinguished through the neglect of our ancestors. We charge all our subjects, as far as they may be able, to cultivate the liberal arts, and we set them the example. We have already, God helping, carefully corrected the books of the Old and New Testaments, corrupted through the ignorance of transcribers. And inasmuch as the collection of homilies for the service at Nocturns was full of errors … we have w illed that these same should be revised and corrected by Paul the Deacon, our well-beloved client; and he has presented us with readings adapted to every feast-day, carefully purged from error, and sufficing for a whole year.

Two years after the appearance of the famous capitulary of 787, Theodulphus, Bishop of Orleans, one of the Missi Dominici, and who appears to have succeeded Alcuin, on his retirement to Tours, as a kind of “minister of education,” addressed a document to the clergy of his diocese, which appears to have been widely adopted in other dioceses, in which he describes study as “a means whereby the life of the righteous is ennobled, and the man himself fortified against temptation.” In this, he requires his clergy to open schools in every town and village of his diocese, and to receive “the children of the faithful” for instruction, demanding in return no payment, though permitted to accept a gift spontaneously offered. Theodulphus himself was one of the cluster of learned men about the Frankish court. The library of his cathedral was famous for the number and beauty of the manuscripts he had gathered together. He has left us one monument at least which has in our days, in a translation, obtained a new popularity—the hymn “Gloria Laus et Tibi Honor”—

“All glory, laud, and honour
To Thee, Redeemer, King,” etc.

In the year 795, the abbacy of Tours became vacant. It was, perhaps, the wealthiest of all the preferments in the wide dominions of Charles. The Archbishop of Toledo, in a controversy with Alcuin, made it a subject of reproach, that as Abbot of Tours he was the master of 20,000 slaves—the serfs upon his wide domains.

Here Alcuin continued his labours as teacher. He sent some of his monks to England to bring back books for the abbey library. Scholars flocked to him from all parts of the Frankish dominions, and many from his native England. He continued to correspond with the king,² and continued to exercise a great influence on the literary progress of the kingdom.

He was immediately succeeded in the mastership of the Palatine school by Witzo, who had accompanied him from York; and he, after a short time by Fredegis, another scholar of York. But within about two years there arrived from Ireland two men, in secular learning and in the Sacred Scriptures incomparably learned,³ named Clement and Albinus, and they seem to have eclipsed Alcuin and his disciples in the regard of Charles.

The scholars of the Celtic school seem indeed to have had some advantages over the scholars of the school of York. We have seen that Alcuin and his school walked along the narrow path of Augustinian theology and Roman tradition. The Celtic scholars were familiar with the Greek Fathers. Manuscripts of Origen and other Greek authors, written in the beautiful character distinctive of the Celtic school of caligraphy, long remained at Luxeuil, St. Gall, and Bobbio, the great foundations of Columbanus, which long maintained their Celtic traditions. They were, by temperament as well as by training, more speculative than the steady Saxons. Clement appears, also, to have had a greater acquaintance with natural science than Alcuin. In one of Charles’s letters to Alcuin, we find that Clement had given some different explanation of astronomical phenomena from those which Alcuin had previously given. Charles expresses the hope that he will not be too proud to admit that he was wrong if he sees reason to think so. It is interesting to find Alcuin quoting, with reference to Clement, Virgil’s story of Dares and Entellus, which Jerome had quoted when Augustine opened a controversy with him.⁴ We find the influence of these new Celtic teachers opposed also by Theodulphus, Bishop of Orleans, and Benedict of Aniane, whose character and abilities gave great weight to his opinions on all theological questions. On the other hand, Clement and his companions, if viewed with suspicion at Tours, and in the cell by the Anianus, and at Orleans, would find sympathy and support in the great monastery of Luxeuil and in its daughter-house of St. Gall, which were among the most famous of the religious communities of the time. It is from the monk of St. Gall that we have several stories about Clement, one of which is worth transcribing, as an illustration of Charles’s encouragement of learning among the young men of his court.

On his return from Italy (probably the expedition of a.d. 786-7), Charles called before him the youths who had been under Clement’s instructions, and found those of the middle and lower class more advanced than those of the noble class. Charles, with gracious looks and kind words, encouraged the former to persevere in their studies, promising them noble sees and abbeys as their reward. Then he turned to the others, and thundering at them rather than speaking to them, he reproached them with trusting to their noble birth and riches and good looks, and neglecting his orders and their own glorification, postponing their studies to luxury and play, idleness and useless exercises. Lifting his august head and unconquered right hand to heaven, he swore, with his accustomed oath, by the King of Heaven, “I do not care much for your nobility and your good looks, though others admire you; be sure of this, that unless you speedily repair your former negligence by diligent study, you shall never get any good from Charles.”⁵

We return, for a moment, to our countryman Alcuin. The king invited him to accompany him in the journey to Rome, in which he received the Imperial crown and title, but ill health prevented the Abbot of Tours from being present with his master on that memorable occasion. The last two years of his life, his growing infirmities led him to devolve much of the business of his great and laborious position upon others, while he continued his devotions and his studies, and awaited his end. He had been accustomed to express a wish that he might depart this life on the festival of Pentecost; and so it came to pass. He died on the day of Pentecost, in the year a.d. 804.

The sense of the signal service rendered by Alcuin to his age must not lead us to exaggerate his merits or powers. He was a scholar, one of the foremost scholars of his age; and, through the wise and powerful patronage of Charles, he was instrumental in doing much for the revival of learning on the continent of Europe, when it had fallen to its lowest point of neglect. He was a vigorous upholder of the faith, and he exhibited the example of a pure and blameless life in the midst of a rude and licentious court. But, as a scholar, he had nothing of genius; he was merely the painstaking teacher of the traditions of his school. The plans for the extension of learning, of which he was a chief agent, were those of Charles. He left no work of genius, like Eginhard’s Life, or Theodulphus’s Hymn. There was no heroic spirit of self-devotion, like that of Columbanus or Boniface. He was in his place as master of the school of York; he might, like his predecessors in that office, have risen to be Archbishop of York; he accepted Charles’s invitation to be master of his Palatine school, and he was recompensed with the abbacy of Tours.

Of Charles’s own literary attainments it is difficult to speak. On one hand we are told that he spoke Latin fluently and forcibly, that he understood Greek, that he had an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and was industrious in its acquisition. The authorship of the hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus” is attributed to him. He ordered a collection to be made of the Teutonic ballads which had come down from old times. He was correcting the Latin version of the New Testament by reference to the Greek at the time of his death. Yet we are told that, not having learned the art of writing in youth, he in vain tried to acquire it in manhood, though he took persevering pains to do so. It is probably an error on our part to overlook the many evidences with which history supplies us, that a good memory and a strong understanding will enable a man to acquire an amount of knowledge and an intellectual training which we think unattainable by a man who does not possess our keys to learning—the arts of reading and writing.

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THE ECCLESIASTICAL WORK OF CHARLES.

The religious side of Charles’s character is of the greatest interest in the study of his remarkable character as a whole, and his religious policy led to the most important and durable results of his reign.

He inherited an ecclesiastical policy from his father; the policy of regulating and strengthening the influence of the Church in his dominions as the chief agent of civilization, and a great means of binding the various elements of the empire into one; the policy of accepting the Bishop of Rome as the head of Western Christianity, with patriarchal authority over all its Churches.

We have seen that he required the bishops and abbots to maintain the sacred buildings in their guardianship in good repair. The Domkirche at Aix is the principal ecclesiastical building which he himself erected. We have seen that he diligently attended the services of the Church, took great interest in the details of the service, and interfered personally in their conduct.

He seems to have taken completely into his own hands the nomination to all the bishoprics and abbeys, and, having a sincere desire for the efficiency of the Church, his appointments were usually good. We have no charges that he received presents from candidates for his patronage. Still, he allowed those about him to solicit patronage for their friends and dependents; and he sometimes selected his nominees in a way which savours of caprice. We will only relate one of the anecdotes of the monk of St. Gall in illustration of the subject.

On one occasion, when it was announced to him that one of the bishops had died, Charles asked whether, out of his good or labours, he had sent anything before him (“utrum de rebus vel laboribus suis ante se præmitteret aliquam”). The messenger, apparently misunderstanding the question, and thinking the king asked how much the bishop had left behind him, answered, “Not more than two pounds of silver.” A young clerk of the king’s chapel, who happened to be standing by, muttered in a low tone to himself, “A small viaticum for so long a journey.” Charles overheard, and said to him, “Do you think, if you received the see, you would take care to make better provision for that long journey?” The clerk, swallowing the words like premature grapes falling into a gaping mouth, fell at his feet and said, “My lord, that depends on the will of God and your power.” The king bade him stand behind the curtain which was behind his chair, and he would hear how many suitors he had for that honour. The news of the vacancy had become known in the palace, and there came a number of the courtiers begging for it for one man and for another. The Queen Hildegardis first sent a message, and then came herself, to beg for the vacant see for her own clerk; and the monk laughingly records the honeyed phrases with which the beautiful queen asked her boon of her mighty spouse: “Sweetest lord, my king, my glory and my refuge” (“Domine dulcissime, mi rex, gloria mea et refugium meum”). The clerk felt that his grapes were very likely to be intercepted before they could fall into his mouth, and said from behind the curtain, “Lord king, hold fast your courage, and let not any one wrest from your hands the power which God has entrusted to them” (“Domine rex, tene fortitudinem tuam, ne potestatem a Deo tibi collatam de manibus tuis quisquam extorqueat”). Then the most strong lover of truth (so he calls Charles) called the clerk out from behind the curtain before all, and said to him, “Take that see, and provide diligently that you send greater expenditure and a viaticum for the long and irrevocable journey before thyself and before me.”⁶

Charles’s assumption of the patronage of the sees and abbeys of his dominions was indefensible in theory, submitted to because it could not be resisted, and made tolerable by appointments which were for the most part good. That it was considered an irregularity and a grievance, is shown by the fact that when Louis the Pious succeeded to the throne and published edicts for the better regulation of the discipline of the Church, he restored the right of canonical election.

The policy of Charles towards the see of Rome was a continuation of that already inaugurated by his father. He maintained the Bishop of Rome in the possession of the territories which Pepin had added to the endowments of the see, and even made some considerable additions to them from time to time. The Bishop of Rome held these possessions of his see on the same conditions as all the rest—the same conditions on which the bishops of Gaul held the landed endowments of their sees. He exercised a virtual lordship over them, subject to the sovereign authority. The authority of the bishop over the possessions of his see, is to be distinguished from the authority which he possessed as the most wealthy and powerful man in Rome, who had thereby attained to the political leadership of the Respublica Romana. Ultimately they became confounded. But when the Bishop of Rome accepted from Pepin the exarchate of Ravenna and the Pentapolis as endowments of his see, the Roman Republic still continued to acknowledge the Eastern emperor as its sovereign. It was not until Leo placed the crown on the head of Charles, at the Christmas festival of 800, that the Roman Republic formally withdrew its allegiance from the Eastern emperor; and by the same act it acknowledged a similar sovereignty in the newly elected emperor of the West, and the pope and the magnates of Rome did homage to Charles as their political lord. It was when, under the successors of Charles, his empire fell in pieces, and each great division asserted its independence, that the bishops of Rome, like the rest, were able to assert a practical independence—still, however, subject in theory to Imperial rights, which a strong emperor, in some special conjuncture, from time to time found himself able to enforce.

From the edict of Leo the Isaurian (a.d. 724), the prohibition of images in the Eastern Church had been maintained by successive emperors, till the Council of Nicæa, 786, when the use and adoration of pictures (not statues) was restored, and the long schism which had existed on this subject between the East and West was terminated.

The Pope Adrian, on receiving the acts of the Nicene Council, communicated a copy to the Frankish Church, clearly anticipating that the decision of a so-called general council would be accepted by the Franks. But the Churches north of the Alps appear never to have fallen into the abuse of images, which had grown up in the Churches of the East and of Italy. And the customs and convictions of these Churches made them unwilling to accept the decisions arrived at in the synod of Nicæa. Charles sent the decisions of the synod to Alcuin, who was then on a visit to England, and it is said that the English bishops joined in desiring their illustrious countryman to write against the council. Alcuin wrote some remarks, in the form of a letter to Charlemagne; others of the Frankish divines are said to have also written on the subject. Out of these writings grew a treatise in four books, known as the Caroline Books, because the king took a kind of editorial part in the compilation, and finally put the book forth in his own name. The tone of the book is firm and dignified. Great deference for the Apostolic See is professed, but the views of the Frankish Church are resolutely maintained,—that the use of images for the ornamentation of churches, and as historical memorials, is allowable and laudable, but that adoration of them is superstitious and to be forbidden. The views, both of the worshippers of images and of the breakers of images, are unsparingly criticized. Adrian sent a long reply to the king’s book, but his arguments are feeble; his tone seems to show both a sense of the weakness of his cause and a fear of offending the king.

The general tendency of the theology of the age was to follow with implicit trust the system of doctrine which the genius of Augustine had recommended to Latin Christendom. Gregory the Great is the chief link of transition between the period of the Fathers and the mediæval period, and he chiefly follows Augustine. Isidore of Seville (595-636), a large and intelligent contributor to the literature of Spain, in his theological writings transcribes Augustine and Gregory. Bede (672-735) has no theological originality; he follows the Fathers, and especially Augustine; Egbert of York, and Alcuin follow, without any originality of thought, the teaching of their school.

The great controversy, which disturbed the theological serenity of the age of Charles, sprang up in Spain, whose Church, though not oppressed by the dominant race, yet lay under such disadvantages that we should hardly have expected to find in it any exceptional originality of thought. Felix, Bishop of Urzel, a town on the south side of the Pyrenees, in the country subject to the Frank monarchy, was the most able teacher of the new opinions; Elipandus, Archbishop of Toledo, the first see of the Spanish Church, was their most prominent and ardent partisan. The system of doctrine which Felix of Urzel taught seems to have had many points of likeness to that of the Antiochean school of the fifth century, which was condemned in the third general council at Ephesus. It may have been derived from a study of the Syrian writers of that time, such as Theodore of Mopsuestia; or Felix may have come to something of the same conclusions from approaching the subject of the divinity of Christ from the same side and in the same spirit—the spirit of rational inquiry, giving prominence to that which in the Person of Christ answers to the analogy of human nature. The general result was a sort of revived Nestorianism—a lowering down of the doctrine of Christ’s divinity.⁷ As in the Nestorian controversy the word Theotokos had been forced into undue importance, and taken as the keyword of the controversy, so now the phrases “adopted son” and “adoption” gave a title to the whole type of doctrine, and the controversy is known as the Adoptionist controversy.

The controversy was conducted with great acrimony in Spain, each side denouncing the other as unworthy of the name of Christian. From Spain it spread into the Frank Empire, disturbing the minds and unsettling the faith of many. Charles caused the question to be considered by an assembly convened at Regensburg, in the year a.d. 792. Felix of Urzel, his see being under the metropolitan jurisdiction of Narbonne, was cited to appear before the council. His doctrine was condemned, and he consented to a recantation. The king thereupon sent him to Rome, where his explanation was not considered satisfactory, and he consented to a further recantation. But on his return home he betook himself to the adjoining part of Spain, which was under the Moorish dominion, where he could express his real opinions without fear of persecution, and withdrew his recantations. Upon this Elipand and other Spanish bishops wrote two letters, one to Charles and another to the Frankish bishops, defending. Adoptionism; and they proposed a re-examination of the question, with a view to the reinstatement of Felix in his see. These letters the king sent to Pope Adrian for his information; but without waiting for any expression of opinion from him, he brought the matter before a council at Frankfort-on-the-Main, in August 15th, 794.

It was an assembly not unworthy to be compared with the earlier councils of the Western Church. Three hundred bishops were assembled, from Gaul, Germany, Lombardy, with some representatives of the English Church, and two legates from the Bishop of Rome. Alcuin was also admitted to a place, at the king’s suggestion, on account of the service which his learning might be able to render. The meetings were held in the great hall of the palace. Charles, like Constantine at Nicæa, assisted at the council, and opened the proceedings with an address. Paulinus of Aquilæa, who was himself present, tells us “the venerable prince rose from his throne, and from the elevation of the dais he pronounced a long address upon the interests of religion which were in question. He concluded thus: ‘It is for you to pronounce. Since the time, already far past, when the plague arose, its violence has not ceased to increase, and the contagion of the error has spread to the frontiers of my kingdom. It is necessary, then, to take steps to suppress it, by a precise definition of the faith.’” Then some days were given to the assembled Fathers in which to give in their opinions in writing; and not one defender of Adoptionism was found among them.

The question of the worship of images was also laid before the assembly for its decision, and was dealt with in a way which showed that the council was no more disposed to be bound by the decisions of Rome than of Constantinople; for it endorsed, by a formal conciliar act, the views which Charles and the Frankish theologians had already set forth in the Caroline Books.

The decisions of the council were notified by Charles, or at least in his name, to the bishops of his own dominions, and to the Spanish bishops and others beyond his own kingdom.

The decision of the Council of Frankfort by no means at once restored peace to the Church. Other lesser councils repeated the condemnation of the Fathers of Frankfort; one at Friuli (796), and one at Rome (799). The controversy continued between Felix and Alcuin, and between Elipand and Alcuin. Leidrad, Archbishop of Lyons, Nefred, Bishop of Narbonne, and Benedict, Abbot of Aniane, were sent into the district which had been infected by the Adoptionist teaching, to preach and argue, and reclaim those who had been perverted; and it is said by Alcuin that, in the course of two such missionary journeys, they made twenty thousand converts—bishops, clergy, and laity. Felix was induced to appear again before a council held at Aix, where Alcuin met him in a discussion which lasted six days, and Felix at last professed himself convinced by his adversary’s arguments. But his former vacillations told against him now. He was not permitted to return to his diocese, but was committed to the care of the Archbishop of Lyons; and ultimately died in this kind of exile, leaving behind him papers which showed that it had not been an unnecessary precaution.

Another very important theological controversy of the reign of Charles is that on the question of the procession of the Holy Ghost.

The Council of Toledo, held under King Reccared, a.d. 589, at which the Visigothic Church of Spain formally abjured Arianism and adopted the orthodox faith, put forth a version of the great creed of Nicæa, in which they had interpolated an additional clause, which stated that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father “and from the Son” (Filioque). Under what influence the council took upon itself to make an addition to the creed of the universal Church is unknown. It is probable that the motive of the addition was to make a stronger protest against the Arian denial of the co-equal Godhead of the Son. The Spanish Church naturally took a special interest in the addition it had made to the symbol of Nicæa, and sustained it in subsequent councils. It became of special importance in the Adoptionist controversy, when it afforded a weapon drawn out of their own armoury against the Spanish heresy. The Frankish Church seems to have early adopted it from their Spanish neighbours, since at the Council of Gentilly (a.d. 767), under Pepin, when ambassadors from the Greek Emperor Constantine Copronymus were present, both the question of images and this question of the filioque were discussed, as points of difference between the two Churches; but the details of the proceedings of that council have not come down to us.

The question was brought before a council held at Aix in a.d. 809, in the form of a complaint that some Frank pilgrims to the Holy Land, visiting the famous monastery of St. Saba, near Jerusalem, had been accused of being heretics on the ground of this interpolation in the Catholic Creed, and an attempt had been made to drive them away from the monastery. The council formally approved of the addition to the creed, and Charles sent two bishops and the Abbot of Corbie to Rome, to request the pope’s concurrence in the decision. Leo, at a conference with the envoys, expressed his agreement with the doctrine, but strongly opposed its insertion into the creed. And it is said that he caused copies of the creed in its genuine form, in Greek and Latin, to be engraved on two silver shields, and set up in the basilica of St. Peter as a protest against any alteration. Notwithstanding the pope’s protest, the addition was adopted throughout the Frankish Empire. When the Emperor Henry V. was crowned at Rome, a.d. 1014, he induced Pope Benedict VIII. to allow the creed with the filioque to be chanted after the Gospel at High Mass; so it came to be generally used in Rome; and at length Pope Nicholas I. (858-867) insisted on its adoption throughout the West. At a later period the controversy was revived, and it became the ostensible ground of the final breach (a.d. 1054) between the Churches of the West and those of the East.⁸ The growing opinion of the English Church of the present day probably is that Pope Leo III. was in the right; that though the doctrine is true, it was undesirable to insert it in the creed of the universal Church on any authority less than that of a general council.

Two curious features of the proceedings at Frankfort ought not to be omitted. Peter, Bishop of Verdun, who had been accused of participation in the conspiracy of Prince Pepin, was arraigned before the council. There was not sufficient proof to convict him, and he was allowed to prove his innocence if he could, after the Teutonic custom, by the oaths of conjuratos—the oaths of two or three of his brother bishops, or of his metropolitan alone, that they believed him to be innocent. But they all declined to give this testimony. Then he offered to clear himself by another Teutonic custom, the appeal to “the judgment of God” by proxy. We are not told what the nature of the ordeal was, but his “man” came safely through it, and the bishop was acquitted.

The Duke of Bavaria, dispossessed and sent to Jumièges six years before, was also brought before the council, and made to confess his treason, and to recognize the justice of his sentence, to surrender for himself and his family all his hereditary rights, and to commend his children to the mercy of the king. We can hardly doubt that this painful scene was submitted to by the unhappy duke under the coercion of threats and promises, and that its object was to extinguish in Bavaria the last hopes of a recovery of its autonomy. He was sent back to his cell, and this is the last time he or any of his dynasty, the oldest in Germany, appear on the stage of history.

Notes

1. “The Schools of Charles the Great,” by J. B. Mullinger. London, 1877.

2. Among his scholars of this period were Raban Maur, Haymo, and other eminent men of the next generation.

3. The Monk of St. Gall, i. 1.

4. “The Fathers for English Readers,” S.P.C.K.: Jerome, p. 216; Augustine, p. 130.

5. Monk of St. Gall, i. 3.

6. Lib. i. c. 4.

7. Neander, “Church History,” vol. v. p. 215, etc. Bohn’s ed.

8. Mr. Ffoulkes, “The Church’s Creed and the Crown’s Creed.”