Augustine and the Art of Ruling in the Carolingian Imperial Period

Political Discourse in Alcuin of York and Hincmar of Rheims

Sophia Moesch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351116008
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781351116022, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 licence.

DOI https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351116022

Published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

This volume is an investigation of how Augustine was received in the Carolingian period, and the elements of his thought which had an impact on Carolingian ideas of 'state', rulership and ethics. It focuses on Alcuin of York and Hincmar of Rheims, authors and political advisers to Charlemagne and to Charles the Bald, respectively. It examines how they used Augustinian political thought and ethics, as manifested in the De civitate Dei, to give more weight to their advice. A comparative approach sheds light on the differences between Charlemagne's reign and that of his grandson. It scrutinizes Alcuin's and Hincmar's discussions of empire, rulership and the moral conduct of political agents during which both drew on the De civitate Dei, although each came away with a different understanding. By means of a philological–historical approach, the book offers a deeper reading and treats the Latin texts as political discourses defined by content and language.

Part I

Augustine of Hippo

1 Inf luences on the De civitate Dei

This first part provides an introductory overview of fundamental questions ­relating to Augustine of Hippo, his late work, the De civitate Dei, and the Roman empire of the fourth and early fifth centuries. It sets the groundwork for a focused and systematic identification of Augustinian ¹ political ideas and political ethics in the Carolingian materials, and presents the themes and concepts of Augustinian thinking that define the analysis of Carolingian texts.

One question that arises, considering Augustine’s place in time and his occupation as an early Christian writer, is: what are the main influences on Augustine’s De civitate Dei? Other questions that are more specifically concerned with the political ideas and ethics inherent in the De civitate Dei are: what meaning does Augustine attribute to worldly rule and rulership? How does Augustine define and evaluate politically organised communities? An examination of prominent concepts from the De civitate Dei – which I have selected on the basis of their relevance to the Carolingian sources – supports my argument.

Historical and cultural context

The Latin Father Augustine lived at a time when changes were being made to the administrative, social and cultural structures of the Roman empire. ² Although this transformation varied from region to region, it affected the empire everywhere and reshaped the society of Western Europe. ³ One facet of this transformation between the third and the fifth centuries concerns the settlement of Germanic invaders in Roman provinces from the last quarter of the fourth century onward. ⁴ This movement is, despite its significance to the development of the De civitate Dei, ⁵ perhaps less relevant to the conceptual questions that are addressed here. What is important, however, is that the settlement of Germanic peoples in the West resulted in a political fragmentation and brought about a cultural separation between the Germanic West and the imperial East. ⁶ In the West, a blending of Roman with Germanic elements took place, and “a shared Latin, ecclesiastical culture […]” ⁷ emerged. A more relevant facet of the transformation is the revolution in the Christian ‘church’s’ mode of existence since the beginning of the official establishment of Christianity under Emperor Constantine I. ⁸ It was the Christian writers of the time who were the main actors involved in reconciling the Christian ideas about the nature of man’s existence in politically organised communities with the change in the ‘church’s’ status. ⁹ Scholars are now agreed that these writers were not systematic philosophers in regard to their political thought. ¹⁰ Their personalities combined irreconcilable features and tensions, “[…] often unresolved, sometimes unrecognised,” ¹¹ and their works did not give full consideration to the implications of the political ideas they contained. ¹² In this first part of the book, I explore to what extent Augustine was one of them. It should be noted, however, that it is not pertinent to this research to determine the influence of each of the different strands of thought that were at work in the execution of the De civitate Dei (indeed, it is doubtful whether this could be achieved at all). Therefore, I merely address those elements of influence that have had the most resonance in recent scholarship.

Biographical aspects

Augustine, born to a Christian mother and a pagan father in the Numidian town of Thagaste in 354, received a traditional education that was marked by “the conservative, strongly literary and rhetorically oriented culture […]” ¹³ of Late Antiquity. ¹⁴ During the various stages of his life, Augustine’s lifestyle, beliefs, occupations and responsibilities changed, and his texts were influenced by various strands of thought. ¹⁵ After a period of attachment to Manichaeism ¹⁶ and years of experience as a teacher of rhetoric (which earned him the official chair of rhetoric in Milan), ¹⁷ Augustine was first a follower of Academic Scepticism and then experienced his conversion to Christianity via neo-Platonic Christianity and the sermons of Bishop Ambrose of Milan. ¹⁸ The conversion brought about a change in lifestyle; Augustine resigned from his public office in 386 and retired to Cassiciacum. ¹⁹ Augustine developed his conception of monastic life ²⁰ and afterwards became a presbyter at Hippo Regius in 391. ²¹ His life changed again when he replaced Valerius as Bishop of Hippo Regius; ²² during his episcopate (395/396–430), Augustine was part of an intricate network of institutional relationships with imperial and provincial authorities who held responsibilities in the political and military sphere. ²³ Overall, an intellectual development from a Greco-Roman to a Judaeo-Christian perspective via neo-Platonism and St. Paul can be observed. ²⁴

Authorities and movements

Augustine composed the De civitate Dei during the period between 412/413 and 426/427. ²⁵ Scholarship refers to the work as an apology, ²⁶ written in response to a movement of heathen Romans who blamed the sack of Rome by Alaric I in 410 on the official establishment of Christianity in place of the traditional pagan cults. ²⁷ The De civitate Dei is both a reflection of an intellectual development and “[…] a compendium […], a major work in which previous thought has matured and settled down.” ²⁸

In the late fourth and the early fifth centuries, two traditions of Western Christian political thought coexisted. ²⁹ An earlier Christian tradition was shaped by “[…] the imagery of exile running through Old and New Testaments, rabbinic and patristic writings […]”, which “[…] needed re-interpreting in a society governed by Christian emperors and officials […].” ³⁰ A later tradition emerged as a “[…] Christian response to the conversion of Constantine and to the progressive Christianisation of the Roman Empire […].” ³¹ In very simple terms, there were the following orientations among Christian writers with an interest in politically organised communities: the apocalyptic and the Eusebian. ³² The ancient apocalyptic attitude of hostility to the empire saw the ‘church’ as a persecuted body encircled by an alien world. Representatives of this movement were Donatist theologians in Africa and ascetics in Syria. They stood within the ancient tradition of Christian thought. At the opposite extreme were the followers of Eusebius of Caesarea, ³³ who saw the reign of Constantine I as a fulfilment of what God had conceived in Christ and the Augustus: the uniting of the world under a single Christian order, empire and ruler, whose monarchy on earth mirrored that of God in heaven. Augustine supported neither of these two approaches. He took a critical stance on human society, while at the same time urging the Christian community not to disregard questions relating to worldly affairs, rule and rulership. Markus and Oort agree that the Donatist theologian Tyconius was probably Augustine’s main source for this approach. After Tyconius, it is the gnostic religion of Manichaeism that has been most frequently named as the source of the doctrine of the two civitates, and hence as a major influence on Augustine’s De civitate Dei. ³⁴ Manichaeism, named after its founder Mani, is based on the ­primordial and inextinguishable dualism of the spiritual world of light and the material world of darkness. Despite the fact that Augustine’s own dualism of good and evil is lasting, extending to the end of world history, it is not primordial. Only the good has existed from the beginning, when God created a world destined to fall apart permanently into His realm and that of Satan. Other...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Note on the text
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• PART I Augustine of Hippo
• PART II Alcuin of York
• PART III Hincmar of Rheims
• Conclusion
• Index