Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe: A Ritual Interpretation 9780198810209

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CHRISTIANIZATION AND COMMONWEALTH I N E A R L Y M ED I E V A L E U R O P E

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Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe A Ritual Interpretation

NATHAN J. RISTUCCIA

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Nathan J. Ristuccia 2018 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2018 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950696 ISBN 978–0–19–881020–9 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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For Grace

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Acknowledgments I did not grow up celebrating the Rogation Days. Indeed, I have never celebrated Rogationtide, had never seen the holiday until researching this project, and had never heard of the feast until I began learning Old English at college. Moreover, this book is only tangentially related to my dissertation, so the revision process was arduous. Indeed, there was no revision, rather a new beginning. As a result, these pages took much longer to write than I anticipated, and I have felt behind from the first day. Without the kindness, guidance, and material assistance of numerous people, this project would never have succeeded. I owe a great debt to many teachers both at Princeton University and at the University of Notre Dame, including Harriet Flower, Alan Stahl, Martin Bloomer, John Cavadini, Thomas Hall, Blake Leyerle, Hildegund Müller, and Marina Smyth. John Van Engen’s shrewd criticism of my dissertation and its problematic use of “Christianization” inspired me to move in a different direction for my book project; I cannot thank him enough for that. I am especially indebted to Tom Noble, who has repeatedly proven himself to be everything a young historian could want from an advisor. I also thank the Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Fund for generously awarding me a research fellowship. Most of this book was written during my four years at the University of Chicago’s Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. I appreciate the Society for funding my research over the last four years and for granting me a muchneeded sabbatical from teaching in the spring of 2016. Jonathan Lyon, my faculty mentor in the Society, deserves praise, both for the detailed feedback that he gave me on the entire manuscript and for his general guidance over these years. The library staffs at the University of Chicago, the Catholic University of America, the University of Notre Dame, and the British Library also helped me greatly. Many people have read and improved draft chapters of this book, including Ben Fong, Aaron Gies, David Lyons, John Moscatiello, Richard Oosterhoff, and Aaron Tugendhaft. My research assistant, Onsi Kamel, fixed many errors on my part. I appreciate all the work that Karen Raith, Gillian Northcott Liles, Vijaya Manimaran, and other team members at Oxford University Press, have devoted to shepherding this book through production, and I am grateful to Bryan Spinks and the two anonymous reviewers for their kind and judicious reader reports. I thank the family and friends around me whose support has made this book possible, above all my parents Matthew and Karen Ristuccia and my son Paul. Lastly, I thank my wife Grace, for her encouragement and longsuffering over these years. This book is dedicated to her.

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Contents List of Abbreviations Introduction: Tales of Christianizations

xi 1

1. The Fall of Rome and the Ascent of Rogationtide

24

2. Rome Purified: The Myth of Pagan Survival

63

3. Beating the Bounds of the Christian

97

4. Disrupting Rites and Profaning the Sacred

135

5. Praying Orthodoxy

178

Conclusion: Ritual and Christianness Bibliography Index

210 221 255

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List of Abbreviations AASS

Acta sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur, 68 vols. (Antwerp, Brussels, and Paris: 1643–1940, partially revised Paris: 1863–70).

CCCM

Corpus Christianorum, continuatio mediaevalis (Turnhout: Brepols, 1958–).

CCSL

Corpus Christianorum, series Latina (Turnhout: Brepols, 1953–).

CSEL

Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna: F. Tempsky 1866–).

EETS

Early English Text Society (London & Oxford: 1864–).

MGH

Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Hanover, Munich, and Berlin: Hahn, 1821–).

AA

Auctores Antiquissimi

CE

Capitula episcoporum

Concilia

Legum III: Concilia

CRF

Legum II: Capitularia regum Francorum

De Lite

Libelli de Lite imperatorum et pontificum saeculis XI. et XII. conscripti.

Epp.

Epistolae (in Quart.)

Epp. Sel.

Epistola selectae

Poetae

Poetae Latini medii aeui

SRG

Scriptores rerum Germanicarum

SRM

Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum

SS

Scriptores (in Folio)

PCBE

Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire (313–604), edited by Charles Pietri et al. (Rome: École française de Rome, 1999).

PL

Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina, 221 vols., edited by J.-P. Migne (Paris: 1841–64).

PLS

Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina, Supplementum, 5 vols., edited by A.-G. Hamman (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1958–).

SChr

Sources chrétiennes (Paris: Éditions du Cerfs, 1943–).

SLH

Scriptores Latini Hiberniae (Dublin: Institute for Advanced Study, 1958–).

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Introduction Tales of Christianizations

In the reign of the Burgundian king Godegisel (473–500), doomsday came to earth. Natural disasters battered cities throughout the realm: earthquakes, thunderstorms, fires, drought, plague, livestock disease. Disturbed from their normal habitat, wild beasts of all kinds invaded Gallic towns and farms. The predators among them—bears and wolves—devoured citizens and tore babies to pieces in their cribs. Churches, houses, villas, even the king’s own palace in Vienne collapsed in the calamities. The kingdom lay desolate for over a year. Finally, after a terrible inferno on the Vigil of Easter itself, Claudianus Mamertus of Vienne called the people together, warned them that the catastrophes were divine punishment for their sins, and instituted as communal repentance a three-day period of fasting, procession, and prayer before Ascension Thursday. Immediately, the catastrophes stopped, and the prosperity of the realm revived by God’s grace. This precis is the traditional narrative of the founding of the Christian festival of the Rogation Days, as retold by the early twelfth-century liturgist Honorius Augustodunensis.1 Dozens of medieval clergymen relate some version of this riveting story; Honorius’ account contains all the standard features: natural disasters, wild animals, urban decay, and a courageous cleric saving the people from destruction. Unfortunately, Honorius’ yarn is almost entirely fictitious. So are most versions. Honorius, for instance, supplies the wrong year, king, location, cataclysms, animals, level of ruin, and even hero— for the key figure was not Claudianus Mamertus, the Patristic theologian, but rather his brother, Mamertus the bishop. As far as they can be reconstructed from the fragmentary and tendentious sources, the events around the first Rogation Days were mundane, not apocalyptic. Bishop Mamertus interpreted a series of prodigies as portending future 1

See Honorius Augustodunensis, Gemma Animae 139, PL 172.681A–681B; Sacramentarium 19, PL 172.756A; Speculum ecclesiae, PL 172.951A–951B.

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Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe

divine chastisement, so he led a fast to ward off the bad omens. No one died and only a small number of people in the city of Vienne were involved. Apotropaic rites were common in Late Antiquity, just as in the earlier pagan Roman Empire, and most caused no longer term impact than a brief note in a chronicle. Mamertus’ ritual, in contrast, transformed into one of the great occasions of the medieval liturgical year. For, as this book argues, the three Rogation Days before Ascension Thursday became more than just a liturgical season. Rogationtide came to embody a new Christian commonwealth. Classical civilization had rested upon a network of semi-independent cities, each with its own civic institutions: council, forum, cathedral, walls, and so forth. But in the aftermath of Roman collapse, cities disappeared and another local order arose instead, based around rural congregations of Christian clerics and laity. The Rogation procession modeled this new order both as it was, with all its variety, short-comings, and outright conflicts, and as it wanted to be: a single army of God, humble and blessed.2 And by expressing the ideal, the procession sought to shape reality to it. The history of this festival is a window for viewing how Christian instruction, community formation, rival forms of leadership, and the struggle over licit and illicit popular practices forged the Latin West. A new narrative for early medieval Rogationtide supplies more than just a better understanding of one feast; it is a step towards centering our entire paradigm for the spread of Christianity around the development of mandatory rituals. This book demonstrates that historians can no longer imagine Christian expansion in terms of modern religious borders, as a process by which a core of Christian doctrines and practices replaced earlier pagan ones. Scholars must learn to envision Christianization without religions—that is to say, without the idea that there existed in the Middle Ages a number of fixed systems of beliefs and practices (e.g. Christianity, Judaism, paganism) which competed with each other for adherents and which modern interpreters can separate analytically from other spheres of life. Christianization was not the substitution of one religion for another across a region and people-group. It was primarily, though not exclusively, a ritual performance: the integration of individuals into church communities through mandatory rituals and the spread of the institutions of pastoral care which made the widespread performance of these ritual obligations possible. Christianization was never chiefly about pagans and Christians; it was always about Christians and Christians—a series of disputes about what rituals made

2 Cf. Adam B. Seligman, et al., Ritual and its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 7–10, 24–31; Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 90–8, 112–18, 126–7; Hendrik W. Dey, The Afterlife of the Roman City: Architecture and Ceremony in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 3–5, 138–46.

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Introduction

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someone Christian, debated between peoples who modern observers would now categorize as Christians. Conflicts about the form and purpose of Rogationtide were contests about the meaning of Christianness.

A L EG EN DARY F E AST In Northern Europe, the fifth and sixth centuries are the legendary age of heroes, like the Mycenaean world for the Greeks or the Vedic period for India. Beowulf and Arthur, Tristan and Siegfried, Attila and St. Patrick, all supposedly lived during these centuries. An obscure bishop like Mamertus seems out of place beside the heroes of saga. Yet the tale of the founder of the first Rogationtide functioned similarly. His myth retold through oral genres (the sermon and the liturgy) an embellished story of a valiant leader from the age of Germanic kings as part of annual ceremony (the liturgical feast day) celebrated by a set group (the local church community). Medieval churchmen interweaved origin stories about the first Rogation Days with the ritual of the holiday itself to try to shape how congregations experienced the feast. In modern times, Rogationtide is largely forgotten. But in early medieval Francia and Anglo-Saxon England, Rogationtide was—with the sole exception of Easter—the greatest feast of the liturgical year.3 Many holidays prominent today, such as Christmas or Ash Wednesday, have left meagre early medieval evidence. Sources for Rogationtide, in contrast, abound in both Latin and most Western vernaculars. This book could never have been written without the copious evidence for the Rogation Days—at least, relative to other early medieval feasts—contained in extant homilies, epistles, hagiographies, legislation, liturgical texts, and theological treatises. Participation in the Rogation procession, moreover, was required for all Christians. The Rogation Days thus are a rich case study for understanding how mandatory rituals molded European communities. Other rituals—for instance, baptism or Lenten penance—could supply equally rich cases, but they are beyond the scope of this project. Over the course of its long life, the Rogation feast constantly changed as different groups in medieval Europe sought to craft the ritual to their own ends and needs. Indeed, perhaps because 3 For Rogationtide, see John F. Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship: The Origins, Development and Meaning of Stational Liturgy (Rome: Ponticium Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1987), pp. 139–40, 158–66, 235–9; Joyce Hill, “The Litaniae maiores and minores in Rome, Francia and Anglo-Saxon England: Terminology, Texts and Traditions,” Early Medieval Europe 9 (2000): pp. 211–46; Terence Bailey, The Processions of Sarum and the Western Church (Toronto: PIMS, 1991), pp. 2–26, 52–8, 93–106, 120–62; Johanna Kramer, Between Earth and Heaven: Liminality and the Ascension of Christ in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), pp. 11, 20, 30–1, 147–200.

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the Rogation Days filled such an important role in early medieval life, celebrators gradually mythologized the tale of Mamertus. A ritual of such import needed a more exciting origin story. Ritual is a controversial term in medieval scholarship today. A number of medievalists, notably Philippe Buc, have argued that “ritual” is an obstacle to historical understanding.4 In his compelling monograph The Dangers of Ritual, Buc traces the genealogy of the modern concept of ritual back to a secularization of Christian sacramentology in order to prove that medieval writers already held proto-anthropological ideas on ritual. Whenever scholars read about a ceremony in a medieval work, they encounter not the ritual itself, but rather a text about ritual already interpreting and redescribing that ritual for polemical reasons. Historians can only approach past rituals through the mediation of past exegetes. Despite Philippe Buc’s cogent warnings, however, I will employ “ritual” in this book to mean a prescribed formal enactment, for a number of reasons.5 First, while ritual and similar words (e.g. ceremony, solemnity) are vague terms, as Buc complains, such imprecision mirrors Medieval Latin usage. Medieval authors employed a half-dozen overlapping synonyms (e.g. sacramentum, cultus, caerimonia, ritus, solemnitas, officium, religio, mos) to speak of routinized public performances. Buc rightly notes that rigid distinctions between temporal, political ritual and Christian liturgy only arose during the Reformation era.6 Just as early medieval authors did not differentiate sacraments from sacramentals (a later scholastic distinction), so they frequently analogized the liturgies of Christian worship with Roman rituals, royal ceremonies, and even pagan or magical rites. Furthermore, Buc focuses his criticism on scholars who employ models of ritual that can roughly be categorized as “functionalist.”7 Buc’s opponents analyze “political rituals” which allegedly legitimize the pre-existing worldly 4 For this debate, see Philippe Buc, The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 5–8, 51–87, 154–6, 248–61; Philippe Buc, “The Monster and the Critics: a Ritual Reply,” Early Medieval Europe 15, no. 4 (2007): pp. 441–52; Geoffrey Koziol, “The Dangers of Polemic: Is Ritual still an Interesting Topic of Historical Study?,” Early Medieval Europe 11, no. 4 (2002): pp. 367–88; Alexandra Walsham, “Review Article: The Dangers of Ritual,” Past and Present 180 (2003): pp. 277–87; Christina Pössel, “The Magic of Early Medieval Ritual,” Early Medieval Europe 17 (2009): pp. 111–29. 5 Adapted from Ronald Grimes’s definition: “an embodied, condensed, and prescribed enactment.” For definitions of ritual, see Ronald L. Grimes, The Craft of Ritual Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 185–208. 6 Buc, The Dangers of Ritual, pp. 5–8, 161–2, 166–7; for late ancient concepts of ritual, see Guy G. Stroumsa, The End of Sacrifice: Religious Transformations in Late Antiquity, trans. Susan Emanuel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 64–83. 7 Buc, “The Monster and the Critics,” pp. 443–4; Buc, The Dangers of Ritual, pp. 1–3, 11, 93–4, 225–7; for functionalism, see Catherine M. Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 14–15, 23–5.

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Introduction

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order. I concentrate instead on rites of Christian worship, such as baptism and penance. Rogationtide and similar ceremonies sometimes reinforced the prior temporal order, but, as often, they made new Christians and a new local order around them. Static, functionalist visions of ritual misinterpret such rites. Penitential processions, for example, are about change—the transformation of sinful souls and the protective forgiveness of God. Calling for repentance is confessing that something is wrong with the past. Finally, Buc’s monograph arguably inspires more research on rituals, not less. Buc himself only dismisses “anthropological readings of rituals depicted in medieval texts,” while allowing for interpretations of “practices that the historian has reconstructed using texts,” the task of this book.8 Moreover, Buc proves that medieval elites contested the meanings and purposes behind rituals, that elites expected their actions to be interpreted through ritual categories, and that they understood that ceremonies could operate on several levels and could backfire. Medieval people disputed the significance of rituals because they shared certain understandings about the importance of rites. Contestation about Rogationtide is at the center of this book. I will follow Buc by treating medieval intellectual history seriously—by rejecting any separation among what Latin authors thought about ritual theologically, how they depicted it historically, and how they promoted it legislatively.9

CHRISTIANIZATION WITHOUT RELIGION The history of the Rogation Days is a lens for examining the alterations in European life that followed widespread conversion to Christianity—the phenomena that scholars have traditionally termed “Christianization.” Over the course of centuries, in fits and starts and with occasional reverses, hundreds, if not thousands, of polytheistic peoples—differing in ethnicity, language, geography, and cultic practice—coalesced into a handful of Christian monarchies. Christianization is perhaps the most pervasive historiographical trope for the early Middle Ages. Especially since the 1980s, this word has appeared in the texts and titles of dozens of books on the period and has served as the theme of numerous academic conferences. Yet, despite its ubiquity, scholars rarely define the word Christianization. Standard academic parlance is clearer about what Christianization is not than what it is; Christianization is not conversion, meaning either an individual’s internal shift of adherence to Christianity from some other tradition or 8 9

Buc, The Dangers of Ritual, pp. 4, 255–6. Buc, The Dangers of Ritual, pp. 243, 250–6.

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that individual’s choice to embrace a more rigorous form of Christianity.10 Christianization, in contrast, is a process that changes collectives, such as a kingdom or people-group, and the interpersonal bonds within that collective, such as marriage or kinship. By focusing on the Christianization of groups, scholars have bracketed the quagmires of personal conviction, theological knowledge, and heart change, in order to focus on externals, which are more susceptible to research. The word “Christianization” covers a multitude of sins. Christianization, furthermore, is a flexible concept. “A vague, convenient, all-encompassing term,” one critic laments, “invoked as if its meaning were clear, though the term has moved no closer to meaningful historical definition.”11 The influential early medievalist Ian Wood forthrightly admits that Christianization is just “evangelisation within communities that were officially or superficially Christian” and thus had no “firm divide” with pastoral care in general.12 The problem is not that Christianization cannot be defined. It is that it can. Christianization can, and sometimes has, been defined in two dozen different ways—none obviously better or less arbitrary than any other. Judging from the diverse essays within collections devoted to the study of Christianization, the word can refer to missions, catechesis, the suppression of pagans, the physical spread of church institutions, changing ideologies of power, the enforcement of Patristic ethical norms in law and popular expectations, new vocabulary, new art forms, new material culture, new burial patterns, new rituals sacralizing time, space, and the lifecycle, and more.13 Indeed, the word is so flexible, it is almost vacuous. One detractor has rightly complained that “Christianization essentially becomes equated with the transformation of . . . societies in toto” across the entire early medieval period.14 In practice, scholars can view 10 For conuersio, see James C. Russell, The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: a Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 209–14; Bruno Dumézil, Les racines chrétiennes de l’Europe: Conversion et liberté dans les royaumes barbares Ve–VIIIe siècles (Paris: Fayard, 2005), pp. 10–14; Christopher P. Jones, Between Pagan and Christian (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), pp. 90–105. 11 John H. Van Engen, “The Future of Medieval Church History,” Church History 71, no. 3 (2002): pp. 496–7; for similar criticisms, Haki Antonsson, “The Conversion and Christianization of Scandinavia: A Critical Review of Recent Scholarly Writings,” in Conversion and Identity in the Viking Age, edited by Ildar Garipzanov (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 49–73; William G. Kilbride, “Why I Feel Cheated by the Term ‘Christianisation’,” Archaeological Review from Cambridge 17, no. 2 (2000): pp. 1–17. 12 Ian N. Wood, The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe, 400–1050 (Harlow, England: Longman, 2001), pp. 3–5, 265–6. 13 Cf. Guyda Armstrong and Ian N. Wood, eds. Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000); Nora Berend, ed., Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’ c. 900–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 14 Antonsson, “Conversion and Christianization,” p. 73.

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Introduction

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any change that occurred after widespread conversion as a symptom of Christianization, thereby assuming that Christianity, rather than some other factor, was the primary cause of all these changes. Post hoc risks becoming propter hoc. On the rare occasions that scholars explicitly define Christianization, rather than just use the term, they ground the word in a modern conception of religion. The Byzantinist Frank Trombley, for instance, calls it “the gradual displacement of the older religious culture with the new forms of Christian monotheism.”15 Philip Reynolds, likewise, describes the Christianization of marriage as “the process by which marriage became differentiated from its nonChristian origins and environment under the influence of Christianity . . . of the Christian Scriptures and of specifically Christian beliefs and ideals.”16 Historian John Van Engen speaks of “specifically Christian teachings and practices [shaping] the cultural milieu.”17 For James Russell, the term denotes “the interactive process which ensues when a non-Christian society and Christianity encounter one another”: the “reorientation of the worldview of that society” toward “the distinctive soteriological-eschatological core of Christianity.”18 And Nora Berend, in an introduction on the Christianization paradigm, claims that “Christianization meant that one set of rituals was exchanged for another” and defends the suspect concept of syncretism as “the combing into one system of elements attested in . . . separate religious systems.”19 These definitions differ markedly from each other, but they share a base format. They all presume that local pre-Christian societies once existed across Europe each with its own unique religious culture of beliefs and practices.20 Through a slow unilinear process, distinctively Christian beliefs and practices saturated those societies and replaced their older cultures—even if, along the way, popular syncretisms formed and pagan elements endured.21 This “religious process” vision is problematic when applied to medieval history. Multiple scholars over the last few decades have proven that both 15 Frank R. Trombley, Hellenic Religion and Christianization: C. 370–529 (Leiden: Brill, 1993), pp. ix–x, 35, 97–8, 142, 151, 161. 16 Philip Lyndon Reynolds, Marriage in the Western Church: the Christianization of Marriage during the Patristic and Early Medieval Periods (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994), pp. xiii–xiv. 17 John H. Van Engen, “The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem,” American Historical Review 91 (1986): pp. 521, 537. 18 Russell, Germanization, pp. 30–1, 36. 19 Nora Berend, “Introduction,” in Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy, pp. 4, 22. 20 For medieval pagans, see Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion: from Paganism to Christianity (New York: H. Holt and Co., 1998), pp. 3–6, 70, 102, 372, 437–41, 503–12; Bernadette Filotas, Pagan Survivals, Superstitions and Popular Cultures in Early Medieval Pastoral Literature (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2005), pp. 29–38; Wood, The Missionary Life, pp. 5–6, 250–6. 21 Kilbride, “Why I Feel Cheated,” pp. 6–8, 10–11.

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religion and society are seventeenth-century constructs.22 No such concepts existed during the Middle Ages and the Latin words sometimes translated as “religion” (lex, secta, religio, fides) and “society” (res publica, corpus, societas, or even ecclesia) diverged from the modern notions.23 Religion, even its modern usage, is notoriously hard to define and fundamentally means “anything that sufficiently resembles modern Protestant Christianity.”24 Today, both academic and popular observers speak of various world religions—Islam, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and so forth—as different species of a single genus: “religion,” a natural sphere of life isolated from politics, economics, culture, and science through which humans privately seek transcendent meaning and individual salvation. When people perceive religion as real, it is real in its consequences. Yet, as intellectual historians have demonstrated, religion and its conjoined twin secular society are implicitly Christian notions, forged during early modernity out of the European experiences of Reformations, colonialization, civil war, and absolutist centralization. These concepts contradicted how ancient and medieval people in both Europe and the rest of the world understood their lives. They impose a historical invention—the modern self—on past humans.25 Historians, therefore, must stop employing terms like “religion,” “religiosity,” and “religiousness” as if they are medieval concepts and transcultural universals, rather than second-order scholarly constructs. Pre-modern people lacked fixed belief systems bounded off from each other and from other spheres of life. Pagans, for instance, were not necessarily deluded when they viewed “Christ as a stronger god, rather than as a part of a different, monotheistic, religion.”26 Nor was the Apostle Paul just speechifying when he announced to the Athenians that they already worshipped the biblical creator as their unknown god.27 During the Middle Ages, no accepted standard existed for pronouncing that an idea, practice, or institution was fully Christianized, rather than syncretic, half-Christian, or just used by a Christian. “Pagan” is still more confused, for 22 For instance, Jonathan Z. Smith, “Religion, Religions, Religious,” Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. Mark C. Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 269–70, 276; William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 57–122; Peter Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), pp. 83–116. 23 Carlin A. Barton and Daniel Boyarin, Imagine No Religion: How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016), pp. 1–5; John Bossy, “Some Elementary Forms of Durkheim,” Past and Present 95 (1982): pp. 3–18; Peter Biller, “Words and the Medieval Notion of ‘Religion’,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 (1985): pp. 351–69. 24 Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), pp. 11–12, 16–21. 25 Éric Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200–450 CE (Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2012), pp. 1–3, 61–2, 91. 26 Berend, “Introduction,” pp. 22–3; cf. Russell, Germanization, pp. 35–6. 27 Acts 17:16–34.

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people never referred to themselves as pagani, gentiles, or similar terms in the Middle Ages. Instead, hostile observers applied these words to people who called themselves “Romans,” or “Franks,” or “Christians,” or perhaps nothing at all. Medieval writers never thought that mere self-ascription determined Christian or pagan status. Christianization is not an event; it is a contentious paradigm for interpreting events.28 As classicist Catherine Chin has rightly argued, “Christianization is not the same as an accumulation of individual conversions, nor is it the same as the demise of paganism; it is the addition of a new narrative of identity. . . . The difference between Christian and pagan, then, is not fundamentally a difference between one person and another but the difference between two narrative options. . . . We cannot, then, speak of Christianization as if it were a historical event.”29 Some contemporary scholars visualize Christianization as a brief process, accomplished in a few generations, while others allege that Europe was still Christianizing during the Reformation.30 Late antique and medieval Christians debated similar positions. Most ancient Christians viewed the triumph of Christianity as a brief clash between rival gods ending with the destruction of pagan temples and idols. Thus, when patristic and medieval authors employ words like semichristianus or pseudochristianus, they usually refer to heretics, rather than to nominal Christians who hold onto pagan practices.31 A minority of rigorists, though, such as Augustine and Caesarius of Arles, imagined instead a gradual task of ridding the world of unconverted customs left over from past paganism. These rigorists feared something like the syncretisms and pagan survivals which populate modern historical treatments.32 28 Christianization, that is, is a historical representation; cf. Frank Ankersmit, Meaning, Truth, and Reference in Historical Representation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), pp. 2–3, 44–7, 64–72, 84–6, 116–18, 154–6, 228–30; Frank Ankersmit, Historical Representation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 12–16, 40–3, 98–101; Timothy J. Furry, Allegorizing History: The Venerable Bede, Figural History, and Historical Theory (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2013), pp. 113–23. 29 Catherine M. Chin, Grammar and Christianity in the Late Roman World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), pp. 171–2. 30 Cf. Jean Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the CounterReformation (London: Burds & Oates, 1977); Scott H. Hendrix, Recultivating the Vineyard: The Reformation Agendas of Christianization (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004); Stella Rock, Popular Religion in Russia: “Double Belief” and the Making of an Academic Myth (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 142–52. 31 Peter Brown, Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 22–6, 53; Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200–1000 (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2003), pp. 145–54, 423–7; Rock, Popular Religion in Russia, pp. 1–4, 43–5, 84–6, 158–60; Nongbri, Before Religion, pp. 71–2; Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities, pp. 94–6. 32 For instance, Berend, “Introduction,” pp. 4, 22–3; Filotas, Pagan Survivals, pp. 12–20; cf. Valerie I. J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 7–9, 28, 254–83, 396–400; for a criticism of “pagan survivals,” Marilyn Dunn, Belief and Religion in Barbarian Europe c. 350–700 (London: Bloomsbury Academics, 2013), pp. 6–7, 130–1, 162.

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As it is usually formulated, the Christianization paradigm prevents us from understanding the past. Christianization has become a sprawling, ill-defined concept, explaining away virtually all early medieval changes through an ahistorical theory of religion at odds with how medieval people thought of themselves. Who is and is not a Christian is a theological question. Indeed, it is a theological question that medieval clergymen themselves debated. Perhaps answers can be sought in the empyrean beyond the stars, but historians live in the sublunary sphere of fortune and transience. There, early medieval Christianity was an evolving conglomeration of rituals, ideas, practices, and institutions. So we must be comfortable with a vision of Christian spread that does not presume fixed systems of beliefs and practices that can be separated from politics, society, and culture: Christianization without religion.

THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANIZATION Contemporary historians disagree greatly in their models of Christianization. Yet the one consensus that scholars do agree on—that Christianization is a group process—is expressly modern. Would any medieval thinker have understood why a collective can Christianize, but not a person? As historian Peter Brown has advised, “a history of Christianisation in late antiquity and in the early middle ages must begin with close attention to what Christians themselves considered to be ‘Christianisation’.”33 After all, “to Christianize” (christianizare) and its related forms appear in Medieval Latin, albeit rarely. Tertullian, the North African theologian and founding figure of Latin Christianity, devised the term.34 In his treatise Aduersus Marcionem, Tertullian attacked the heretic Marcion’s claim that the God of Jesus differed from the creator god of the Hebrew Bible. In denouncing Marcion’s theology, Tertullian appealed to the “rule of faith” (regula fidei): a set of traditional doctrines that apostolic churches supposedly preserved from the first century.35 Tertullian challenged Marcion to name a local church that dates from the apostolic age that taught Marcion’s dogma, asserting “you will discover no 33 Brown, Authority and the Sacred, p. 16; cf. Robert A. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. xii–xiii, 4, 6–9. 34 Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities, pp. 9–47, 91–7; Hervé Inglebert, “Introduction,” in Le problème de la christianisation du monde antique, ed. Hervé Inglebert, Sylvain Destephen, and Bruno Dumézil (Paris: Picard, 2010), pp. 8–10, 16. 35 For the regula fidei, Tertullian, Aduersus Marcionem 4.2, CCSL 1, ed. E. Kroymann (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954); Liuwe H. Westra, The Apostles’ Creed: Origin, History, and Some Early Commentaries (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), pp. 21–72.

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church of apostolic level that did not Christianize in the creator.”36 Tertullian likely had a baptismal context in mind; these apostolic churches literally made new converts Christians by having them confess faith in the creator. In North Africa at the time of Tertullian, the catechumenate was a lengthy period of pre-baptismal instruction—often three years in duration—that included a formal profession of Trinitarian faith.37 As soon as this preparation began, catechumens were considered christiani, even though they could not yet be baptized, take communion, or learn about certain secret rituals and doctrines. As a result, in other treatises, Tertullian opined “Christians are made, not born” and opposed infant baptism, advising “let them be made Christians when they are able to learn Christ.”38 For Tertullian, then, christianizare evidently meant something like “to initiate new Christians,” diverging from its prevailing modern usage. Tertullian found inspiration in Galatians 2:14, where Paul criticizes those who force Gentile converts to Christianity “to Judaize” (iudaizare, ἰουδαΐζειν in the Greek) through circumcision and keeping kosher.39 The only New Testament use of iudaismus in either the Vulgate or Vetus Latina is Galatians 1:13–14, where Paul refers to his “former conduct in Jewishness (iudaismo)” and employs “the customs that my ancestors handed down” as a rough synonym. Tertullian discusses these passages several times in Aduersus Marcionem: notably, in a section directly before his use of christianizare.40 “Judaizing” Christians either adopted Jewish customs or became Jews outright.41 But since the border between Jew and Christian remained porous, any 36

Non alia agnoscenda erit traditio apostolorum, quam quae hodie apud ipsorum ecclesias editur. Nullam autem apostolici census ecclesiam inuenias quae non in creatore christianizet, Tertullian, Aduersus Marcionem 1.21. 37 Paul F. Bradshaw, Reconstructing Early Christian Worship (Collegeville, MN: Pueblo, 2010), pp. 69–84; Owen Phelan, The Formation of Christian Europe: The Carolingians, Baptism, and the Imperium Christianum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 11–47; Susan A. Keefe, Water and the Word: Baptism and the Education of the Clergy in the Carolingian Empire (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), vol. 2, pp. 222, 422. 38 De uestris sumus: fiunt, non nascuntur christiani, Tertullian, Apologeticum 18.4, CCSL 1, ed. E. Dekker (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954); etiam aetate cunctatio baptismi utilior est, praecipue tamen circa paruulos . . . fiant christiani cum christum nosse potuerint, Tertullian, De baptismo 18, CCSL 1, ed. J. W. Ph. Borleffs (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954). 39 Si tu cum iudaeus sis gentiliter et non iudaice uiuis: quomodo gentes cogis iudaizare, Gal. 2:14. All quotations of the Latin Vulgate are from The Vulgate Bible, 6 vols., ed. Edgar Swift and Angela M. Kinney (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010–13); words like ἰουδαΐζειν and ἰουδαϊσμος first appeared in earlier Jewish texts (e.g. LXX Esth. 8:17; 2 Macc. 8:1, 14:38), see Shayne J. D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 87–96, 104–6, 175–97; Nongbri, Before Religion, pp. 46–50, 54–5; Barton and Boyarin, Imagine No Religion, pp. 109–13, 204–5. 40 Conuersationem meam aliquando in iudaismo . . . paternarum mearum traditio, Gal. 1:13–14; cf. Tertullian, Aduersus Marcionem 1.20, 5.2–3. 41 In Greek, verbs with ending -iζειν can mean “to give political support to some group,” “to adopt the customs of some group,” or “to speak the language of some group”; Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness, pp. 175–97.

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distinction between acting like a Jew and becoming a Jew is problematic. Tertullian likely understood the word as implying circumcision: the main topic of the epistle to the Galatians. Regardless of the exact meaning, Tertullian’s parallel is obvious: if someone Judaizes by undergoing a Jewish ritual of initiation—circumcision—then equally one Christianizes through catechesis and confession of faith. Tertullian may have modeled his word christianizare after the Greek χριστιανίζειν, which appears in a number of Patristic authors. The earliest instances, though, are in the third-century works of Origen of Alexandria, notably in his apologetic treatise Contra Celsum, written c. 248. There, Origen often uses the word when speaking of Christian conversion and catechesis— even in one section (Contra Celsum 5.8) alluding to Gal. 1:13–14.42 Since all extant examples of χριστιανίζειν post-date Tertullian, linguistic influence could also flow in the other direction. The term “Christian” itself was likely invented by Latin-speaking non-Christians living in Antioch, although the Latinism first appears in the Greek New Testament.43 One study of Christian Latin describes christianizare as a hyperhellenism: a word birthed in Latin rather than borrowed from Greek but based on a pre-existing Greek root.44 Indeed, as Tertullian wrote a number of lost texts in Greek, the North African may have coined the term in both languages. Origen, for instance, had visited Rome and may have known Latin, for he was well-educated. Origen perhaps even read Tertullian, either his extant works in Latin or some of his lost Greek works. Despite this early appearance in Tertullian, no other surviving late antique Latin text employs christianizare. Nonetheless, vernacular loanwords across Northwestern Europe (e.g. Old French crestiener, Middle Low German kerstenen) indicate that Merovingian Vulgar Latin used this word orally to mean undergoing the rituals of Christian initiation—in particular, baptism.45 Christianizare only occurs regularly during the sixteenth century, when Protestant reformers used the word to attack Catholic practice as semi-pagan.

42 Origen of Alexandria, Contra Celsum: Libri VIII, ed. M. Marcovich (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 5.8, 7.49, 8.52, 8.59. 43 The suffix -ianus is a Latin form denoting the partisan of a political leader, which was rarely adopted into Greek (native Greek suffixes like -ειος or -ιστος sufficed); cf. David G. Horrell, Becoming Christian: Essays on 1 Peter and the Making of Christian Identity (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013), pp. 164–210. 44 Olivia Claire Cockburn, “The Use of the Latin -izare (-issare, -idiare) Suffix in Early Christian Literature,” Revistas de Estudios Latinos 10 (2010): pp. 110–11, 114. 45 D. H. Green, “The Influence of the Christian Franks on the Christian Vocabulary of Germany,” in Franks and Alemanni in the Merovingian Period: An Ethnographic Perspective, edited by Ian N. Wood (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1998), pp. 352–3; one fifteenth-century Dutch lexicographer defined cristianizare as doepen (to baptize) and cristenen (to christen), J. W. Fuchs and Olga Weijers, Lexicon Latinitatis Nederlandicae Medi Aevi (Leiden: Brill, 1977), vol. 2, C.1295.

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Luther himself, for example, claimed that the writings of Ps-Dionysius “Platonize more than Christianize”: that is, Dionysius seduces his reader into paganism disguised as Christian dogma.46 I know of only two other appearances of christianizare between Tertullian and early modernity. The ninth-century clergyman Anastasius the Librarian employed the word in a translation of a canon from the Second Council of Nicaea in 787.47 According to this canon, Jewish converts ought only to be baptized and receive communion if they are sincere and do not merely “mock Christ and pretend to Christianize.” Before former Jews can be received in church, they must confess their faith openly and abandon Jewish practices like Sabbath-keeping. Similarly, the twelfth-century English historian Henry of Huntingdon relates how c. 630 the King Sigeberht of East Anglia, with the aid of his bishop Felix, Christianized many people.48 Henry adapts a passage in Bede that never uses christianizare and only mentions the king and bishop establishing a monastic school. But Henry mistakenly believed the East Anglians converted under Sigeberht rather than under Sigeberht’s predecessor Eorpwald, as Bede maintains. As a result, Henry interpolated christianizare into his narrative.49 Christianare, a shortened version of the word, also occasionally occurs in medieval texts when referring to the conversion and baptism of an individual.50 A fourteenth-century council at Béziers, for instance, issued a canon on the

46 Platonizans magis quam christianizans, Martin Luther, De Captiuitate Babylonica Ecclesiae (Wittenberg: Hans Lufft, 1562), 84v; cf. Thomas Rogers, The Faith, Doctrine, And Religion, Professed In The Realm Of England (London: John Legatt, 1621), p. 97; Hendrix, Recultivating the Vineyard, pp. xvii–xxi, 2–4, 18–20. 47 Errantes hi qui ex hebraeorum superstitione consistunt, subsannare se christum deum, existimant, simulantes christianizare, ipsum autem negant, clam et latenter sabbatizantes, et alia Iudaeorum more facientes: definimus hos neque in communionem, neque in orationem, neque in ecclesiam suscipi; sed manifeste sint secundum religionem suam Hebraei . . . Si uero ex sincero corde ac fide conuerterit se quis eorum, et confessus fuerit ex toto corde, diuulgans mores eorum et res, Anastasius Bibliothecarius, Council of Nicaea II (787), 8, in Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, edited by J. Alberigo et al. (Bologna: H. Jedin, 1973), p. 145. 48 Successit Sigbert frater eius christianissimus et ceteros christianizans cum felice episcopo, Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum 3.30, in Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon: Historia Anglorum (History of the English People), edited by Diana Greenway (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 180. 49 Bede, Ecclesiastical History 3.18, SChr 490, ed. André Crépin et al. (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2005), p. 98. 50 For example, filius Saladini tenens ciuitatem Ierosolime uellet christianari, Roger of Hoveden, Chronica, MGH SS 27, ed. F. Liebermann and R. Pauli (Hanover: Hahn, 1885), p. 175; cf. in Hispania Iudaei inuiti christianantur sub rege Dagoberto. Heraclius uidit in astris regnum suum a circumcisis uastandum et mandauit Dagoberto regi ut Iudaeos in Francia christianari compelleret, Ralph Niger, Radulfi Nigri Chronica: The chronicles of Ralph Niger, ed. Robert Anstruther (London: Caxton Society, 1851), p. 142; intelleximus quod dominus imperator filiam soldani Babilonis cum quinquaginta nobilibus domicellabus iam christianatis duxit in uxorem, Royal and Other Historical Letters Illustrative of the Reign of Henry III, ed. Walter Waddington Shirley (London: Longman, 1862), vol. 1, p. 343.

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procedure for infant baptism which defined “to catechize” as “what in vulgar speech we call ‘to Christianize’.”51 Medieval authors often used the terminology of catechesis (e.g. catechizare, catechismus) to refer to rites preparatory to baptism such as exorcism or signing with oil.52 The bishops at Béziers, then, meant that “Christianizing” was slang for ritual initiation—the ceremonies through which an infant became a Christian.53 Christianizare/christianare was a colloquialism: uncommon in formal written Latin but perhaps not in speech. In English, the word “Christianize” is a post-Reformation coinage, arising in 1593 for individuals, but only denoting a group process from the late seventeenth century.54 The related word “to christen” (itself from christianizare) primarily referred to the catechumenate or to baptism during the Middle Ages.55 By the fourteenth century, however, “to christen” could hold a secondary sense of “to make a people Christian.”56 Even then, though, the verb implied baptism en masse, rather than a centuries-long process. Strikingly, many of the medieval authors who employed christianizare and related words were history-writers such as Henry of Huntingdon or Ralph Niger. These chroniclers describe hundreds of years of historical changes and could have portrayed Christianization as a slow development. They chose not to do so. Medieval usage followed Tertullian’s closely; Christianization was a synonym for conversion, catechesis, and baptism. Medieval authors did not speak of the 51 From the Council of Béziers (1368): etsi . . . secundum formam praedictam eos infantes fuisse baptizatos, nec etiam catechiset, quod apud nos appellatur uulgariter christianare, sed inungantur in capite et inter spallas oleo benedicto, Charles du Fresne Du Cange et al., Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis (Niort: L. Favre, 1883–7), s.v. christianare. 52 In the Middle Ages, catechismus was a process, not a doctrinal document; see, for example, Michel Andrieu, Les ordines romani du haut moyen âge (Louvain: Spicilegium sacrum lovaniense bureaux, 1931–61), Ordo 11.40–1; Isidore, De Ecclesiasticis Officiis 22.2, CCSL 113, ed. C. Lawson (Turnhout: Brepols, 1989); Joseph H. Lynch, Christianizing Kinship: Ritual Sponsorship in Anglo-Saxon England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), pp. 61–3. 53 The humanist John Colet employed christianizatio to mean anointment: extrema unctio consummata christianizatio est. In unctione est significatio christianizationis, John Colet, In Ecclesiasticam Diui Dionisii Hierarchiam IV.3, in Super Opera Dionysii, Two Treatises on the Hierarchies of Dionysius by John Colet, D.D., ed. Joseph Hirst Lupton, (London: Bell and Daldy, 1869), p. 232. 54 Oxford English Dictionary online (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), s.v. “Christianize,” “Christianization,” accessed March 27, 2017. 55 John H. Van Engen, “Christening the Romans,” Traditio 53 (1997): pp. 4–23; John H. Van Engen, “Christening, the Kingdom of the Carolingians, and European Humanity,” in Rome and Religion in the Medieval World: Studies in Honor of Thomas F. X. Noble, edited by Valerie L. Graver and Owen M. Phelan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 101–28; Lynch, Christianizing Kinship, pp. 56–80. 56 Dictionary of Old English: A to G online, ed. Angus Cameron et al. (Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project 2007), s.v. “cristnian,” accessed April 7, 2017; Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “christen,” accessed April 7, 2017; the earliest usage in the sense of “to Christianize a group” that I know of is from 1305. The OED, however, lists an earlier example from the ninth-century Old English translation of Bede’s history (Paulinus ðær ðæt folc cristnode and fullode). The OED misinterprets this quote though, as the original Latin indicates: cathecizandi et baptizandi, Bede, Ecclesiastical History 2.14, SChr 489, p. 370.

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Christianization of society, but of the conversion of individuals at a specific moment through the rites of catechesis and baptism. They never pictured a collective Christianizing over centuries. During the Middle Ages, Christianization was a ritual that happened to individuals, not to countries, ethnicities, or habits. Christianizare and similar words had a variety of meanings, but always denoted the performance of mandatory rituals of initiation like baptism, communion, confession of faith, and the catechumenate. Medieval people would have judged that a group of people could be Christianized only insofar as the spread of preachers, churches, and dioceses across a region made the universal performance of these ritual obligations at least plausible. A new paradigm for Christianization, therefore, ought to restrict the term to what medieval people themselves meant when they spoke of “making Christians.” Once the modern concept of religion is removed, Christianization designates a relatively brief sequence of changes. People built infrastructure for pastoral care: cathedrals, high crosses, baptisteries, and so forth. They performed mandatory rituals there. And, if they performed these rites properly, they were recognized as members of the local congregation. In the case of baptism, for example, historical research indicates that by the year 700 churches and clerics were prevalent enough that virtually all Western Europeans were baptized as infants.57 They had become Christians.

THE CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC Since the early modern concept of religion obstructs comprehension of the spread of Christianity, a more medieval model may assist: Christianness as citizenship.58 By the ninth century, mandatory rituals of Christianization such as baptism or Rogationtide were normal across Latin Europe. Medieval observers began to envisage Latin Europe as a Christian commonwealth, a network of Christian polities joined together through common faith, institutions, and 57 For baptism in the Latin West, see Phelan, The Formation of Christian Europe, pp. 72–80, 227–34; Joseph H. Lynch, Godparents and Kinship in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 143–204; Lynch, Christianizing Kinship, pp. 56–98; John Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 457–63, 498; Yitzhak Hen, Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul, A.D. 481–751 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), pp. 155–7. 58 For Christian citizenship, cf. Eph 2:12, 19; Phil. 1:27, 3:20; Agobard of Lyon, Aduersus legem Gundobadi, 3, 6, CCCM 52, ed. L. Van Acker (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981); Hrabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis 14.1, 16.4, PL 111.383A, 451D, 457A; Phelan, The Formation of Christian Europe, pp. 81–92; John H. Van Engen, “Faith as a Concept of Order in Medieval Christendom,” in Belief in History: Innovative Approaches to European and American Religion, edited by Thomas Kselman (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), pp. 19–23.

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rites. On the local level, this commonwealth depended on rural congregations, each with some clergy, a few Christian buildings, and group of laity who were required to participate in certain rituals and know a few basic doctrines. The Latin West was not a homogenous world of orthodox Christians. Pagans, Jews, heretics, and even Muslims dwelled all over Western Europe. Nonetheless, in the minds of many churchmen, the Christian commonwealth had replaced— or, more accurately, fulfilled—Rome, and its citizens manifested the city of God in the world through once-Roman ceremonies like Rogationtide. Dissension and diversity on the ground could not nullify this unity. At times, medieval people used Christianitas as a name for this network of polities, so that “Christendom” can be a suitable translation.59 But, more often, christianitas means “Christian rite,” “Christian faith,” or “the Christian church.”60 Modern English speakers often use Christianity and Christendom in opposition to one another—one a religion, the other a society; some observers, for instance, have claimed that Christendom has disappeared from the contemporary world even as Christianity thrives.61 No such distinction existed in the languages of the early Middle Ages. Faith, rituals, and community formed one christianitas. The only Christianity was the societas of the baptized, the solidarity of those who had faith through the sacraments of God. When medieval authors chose to discuss this network more precisely, the preferred term was “the Christian commonwealth” (res publica christiana).62 Res publica christiana is an intrinsically political concept; it likens the Latin West to the archetypal polity of European history—the Roman Empire (res publica romana). Contemporary historians may view the early Middle Ages through the seventeenth-century concept of religion, but for medieval people, the model was Rome. The language of “Christian commonwealth” proliferated 59 On Christianismus and Christianitas, Tertullian, Aduersus Marcionem 4.6, 4.33, 5.4, 5.6; Marius Victorinus, Comm. Ad Gal. 1.3.10.4, Comm. Ad Eph. 1.3.18.13–16, 1.4.5.15–16, 2.5.2.1–4, Comm. Ad Phil. 2.1.70, CSEL 83.2, ed. Franco Gori (Vienna: Tempsky, 1986); Van Engen, “Christening the Romans,” pp. 4–23; Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 14–32; Nongbri, Before Religion, pp. 12–13, 53–7; Horrell, Becoming Christian, pp. 133–210. 60 For a critique of scholars who wrongly equate christianitas and Christendom, see Tim Geelhaar, Christianitas: Eine Wortgeschichte von der Spatantike bis zum Mittelalter (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), pp. 13–26, 34–8, 163–4, 339–40, 352–3; Van Engen, “Faith as a Concept of Order,” pp. 20–1; cf. Dictionary of Old English: A to G online, s.v. “cristendom,” accessed April 7, 2017. 61 For instance, Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), pp. 152, 171–3, 185–91, 211–13, 223–4, 235–6. 62 For the phrase, Raoul Manselli, “La respublica christiana e l’Islam,” in L’Occidente e l’Islam nell’alto medioevo, edited by Francesco Gabrieli et al. (Spoleto: Presso la sede del Centro, 1965), pp. 115–47; Giulio Vismara, Impium foedus: le origini della respublica christiana (Milan: A. Giuffrè, 1974), pp. 1–60; Andreas Osiander, Before the State: Systemic Political Change in the West from the Greeks to the French Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 7–8, 223, 235, 283, 303–11, 326–38.

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from the thirteenth century forward, but it has a long earlier history. Indeed, the expression grew out of the Augustinian idea that “there is one commonwealth of all Christians.”63 In The City of God, for instance, Augustine insists that Rome was never a commonwealth because it lacked justice.64 Augustine’s claim contradicted standard Latin usage, for res publica was a normal name for the Roman empire. The Latin res publica, however, fundamentally means “the people’s matter” or “the public interest.”65 Like the English “commonweal,” the Latin phrase elides distinctions between the people themselves, their shared concerns and benefits, and the institution designed to protect those interests. For Augustine, therefore, the true res publica is the one founded by Christ for the good of all and spread throughout the world, without regard for governmental boundaries. During the early Middle Ages, res publica christiana was a flexible expression. Foremost, as multiple papal letters testify, the expression was a name for the Byzantine Empire.66 Popes tended to use the phrase when reminding the far-off rulers in Constantinople that their power brought with it a ministerial obligation to defend the church against foes both military and theological. By the ninth century, the Roman bishops began to employ res publica christiana when exhorting the Frankish kings to similar actions, even when those rulers were not themselves emperors.67 For instance, the Liber Diurnus, a ninthcentury Italian formulary book used by the papal chancery, contains a set prayer for the victory of the res publica Christiana and its emperors over their non-Christian enemies.68 Papal letters gradually popularized the term throughout the Latin West, so that by the eleventh century, authors could employ res publica Christiana when referring to all the European realms under the headship of the pope in Rome.69 This final meaning was standard in the 63 Omnium enim christianorum una respublica est, Augustine, De Opere Monachorum 23.33, CSEL 41, ed. Joseph Zycha (Vienna: Tempsky, 1900), p. 580. 64 Augustine, De Ciuitate Dei 2.21, 19.21, 19.24, CCSL 47–8, ed. Bernhard Dombart and Alfons Kalb (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955). 65 Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879), s.v. “res.” 66 Cf. Gregory I, Ep. 6.64.1–4, 9.68.14–18, CCSL 140–140A, ed. Dag Norberg (Turnhout: Brepols, 1982); Agatho, Ep. 1, 3, PL 87.1161B, 1165B, 1168C, 1197D, 1200A, 1208B, 1225A, 1225D; Honorius I, Ep. 2, PL 80.470A. 67 Cf. John VIII, Ep. 64.31–4, 150.30–3, MGH Epp. 7, ed. Erich Caspar (Berlin: Weidmann, 1928), pp. 57, 126; Wido of Ferrara, De scismate Hildebrandi 2, MGH De Lite 1, ed. Roger Wilmans and Ernest Dümmler (Hanover: 1891), p. 565; Leo IX, Ep. 103, PL 143.779C; Urban II, Ep. 212, PL 151.485C. 68 This prayer may have originally referred to the Byzantine emperors, but it was later used for the Western emperors as well: de subiectione omnium gentium christianam rempublicam faciat triumphare, Liber diurnus Romanorum pontificium, ed. Hans Philipp Foerster (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1958), p. 325. 69 Petrus romam ingressus est . . . christiana respublica sub tranquilla pace commode agebat, Theodoric of St. Trond, Vita Secunda Trudonis 1, in Laurentius Surius, De Probatis Sanctorum Historiis (Cologne: 1575), vol. 6, p. 547; cf. Smaragdus of St. Mihiel, Collectiones, PL 102.557D;

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late Middle Ages and early modernity. Res publica christiana had shifted from meaning roughly what we now call “Rome,” to roughly what we now call “Christendom.” The political reinterpretation of Augustinianism that dominated the early Middle Ages encouraged Europeans to equate the visible church, the kingdom of God, and the network of Christian realms.70 The Christian commonwealth was not merely the church, the empire, or even the Christian people, but rather a broadly defined community of Christian polities, set off from pagans, Muslims, and heretics beyond. Medieval people constructed the Christian body politic by ritualizing individual Christian bodies.71 The European people had Christianized when they performed the mandatory rituals that marked each as a Christian—baptism, communion, the recitation of the creed and Lord’s Prayer, eventually Lenten penance.72 Such rituals were virtually the only universal institutions of the time, as central to Christianization as the Julian calendar, the shows, the imperial cult, and the legal privileges of citizenship were to Romanization. Despite their diverse geography, political loyalties, and ethnicities, the Christianized people came to be envisioned as a single commonwealth, united and equal in their submission to a single church. The Rogationtide procession embodied this Christianization imaginary. The procession was an annual ritual, which all Christians had to attend, each in their own church community, in order to pray for their collective needs. Their local clergy led the march and frequently used the three days as an opportunity for basic Christian instruction on faith and morals. Simultaneously, the march was a group of people, their shared interests, and the institution protecting them. Those on procession across Europe incorporated the totality of the commonwealth. In the words of philosopher Charles Taylor, such marches were “the only modes in which the society in all its components could display itself to itself,” a social imaginary “not expressed in theoretical terms, but . . . carried in images, stories, and legends.”73 Thus, when

Adelmann of Liège, Ep. Ad Berengarium 70–5, CCCM 171, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Brepols: Turnhout, 2000), p. 184. 70 On political Augustinianism, see Henri Xavier Arquillière, L’augustinisme politique: essai sur la formation des théories politiques du Moyen-Age (Paris: J. Vrin, 1955), pp. 117–98; Michael E. Moore, A Sacred Kingdom: Bishops and the Rise of the Frankish Kingship, 300–850 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011), pp. 14–16, 25–6, 118–21, 185–7, 243, 253–4. 71 For a theory of ritualization, Catherine M. Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 101–8, 218–23; Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, pp. 76–83, 88–93, 139–69. 72 Norman P. Tanner and Sethina Watson, “Least of the Laity: the Minimum Requirements for a Medieval Christian,” Journal of Medieval History 32, no. 4 (2006), pp. 399–403; Van Engen, “Christian Middle Ages,” pp. 545–6. 73 For rituals as “social imaginaries,” Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 1–2, 42–5, 63–7, 73, 148–9, 171–2, 205, 438–40; James K. A. Smith,

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interpreting the Rogation Days, clerics refused to admit that many nonperformers obviously did exist: whether Jews, heretics, or even just the disinterested. Yet in denying those outside the Christian commonwealth, the procession rendered the divisions within the Latin West all the more visible.

CHAPTER OUTLINE The narrative of early medieval Christianization must be a story about the rise, impact, and meaning of the rituals that made a person Christian and a member of the Christian commonwealth. Early medieval Christianization had an institutional, a liturgical, and a hermeneutic component, so studies of Christianization must examine all three. Institutionally, Christianization was the establishment of centers for pastoral care: chapels, baptismal churches, monasteries, and the like. Liturgically, Christianization was the performance of mandatory rituals which integrated an individual into the community of clergy and laity affiliated with these centers. And hermeneutically, Christianization was a series of arguments among medieval elites about the form, validity, and correct explanation of these rituals—arguments, that is to say, about which practices best transform heart, mind, and soul. Through the rest of this book—except when discussing the work of another historian—I will use “Christianization” to refer to these three topics. Rogationtide is an excellent case study for Christianization, for both implicit ceremonial structure and explicit clerical exposition repeatedly equated the Rogation march with the local church body. Medieval people debated numerous questions about Rogationtide. Who must participate and who cannot? What were the origins of the holiday and why should people still celebrate it? What behaviors were and were not apposite to the festivities? In what order should people march? Answering such questions illustrated, in a disguised form, the Christian commonwealth: its leaders and members, morals and creeds, history and goals. The procession physically encompassed both an imagined ideal and a conflicted reality. Because the Rogation Days was foundational to an official ideology of Christianization, rival groups could employ the festival as a time to contest the social order and shape a new model of the world. This monograph, therefore, examines how the development of one prominent mandatory ritual, Rogationtide, shaped the growth of Christianity in the early Middle Ages. Each of its five thematic chapters focuses on a different aspect of Christianization. The first chapter (“The Fall of Rome and the Ascent Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing Group, 2009), pp. 65–7.

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of Rogationtide”) examines the birth of the Rogation Days in the fifth century. It argues that the structure of the earliest Rogationtide celebrations is forever lost to history for two reasons. First, all the late ancient evidence for the Rogation Days depicts ceremonial diversity. None of the putatively standard features of the feast—such as its date on the three days before Ascension Thursday and its purpose to bless the crops for agricultural fertility—were set in its earliest century. Indeed, the earliest authors to discuss the holiday— notably Sidonius Apollinaris and Avitus of Vienne—wrote not as impartial observers but as advocates promulgating controversial versions of Rogationtide against competitors. Only the Carolingian reformers could bring uniformity to the feast. Second, from the moment Rogationtide appears in sources, its purpose was already in flux. As Roman power ebbed and barbarian kings carved up provinces, bishops and townsmen struggled to preserve the corporate identity of Gallo-Roman cities. The Rogation Days arose as performance binding local Roman citizens to God and each other through communal penance. But within a generation, Rome was gone, the cities conquered, and the procession instead embodied the unity of the local church. Christianization, rather than Romanization, was now the focus. Through the Rogation Days, loyalty moved not from one religion to another, but rather from the city of man to the city of God. The next chapter (“Rome Purified: The Myth of Pagan Survival”) considers a historiographical trope about Rogationtide: that the Rogation Days are a Christianized adaptation of an earlier pagan Roman festival, the Ambarvalia. According to many scholars, then, Rogationtide is a premier example of early medieval syncretism. This section scrutinizes the surviving Roman authors on the Ambarvalia in order to demonstrate that no single festival called the Ambarvalia ever existed and that the variegated sacrifices called ambarualis in Latin have no similarity to the Rogation Days. Mamertus of Vienne did not “Christianize” anything. Instead, this claim about Rogation syncretism arose and spread because it helped clerics delineate what kinds of practices were appropriately “Christian,” and what kinds were not. The canard is the remnant of a Christian theological debate about licit and illicit praxis. This dispute culminates in Reformation era writers like Peter Martyr Vermigli and Thomas Hobbes, but its roots are early medieval. The genealogy of this spurious Ambarvalia story illuminates how the standard Christianization paradigm rests on theology. In fact, Augustine and his followers argued that all historical narratives are matters of faith. Early medieval clerics imagined a world where Christian rites had forever superseded their Jewish and pagan antitypes; they read the liturgical year as a typological fulfillment of pagan and Jewish rites; they commandeered the authority of the ancients for the purposes of the Christian commonwealth. Like its ancestor supersessionism, syncretism is an inescapably theological concept.

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In the middle of the book comes a chapter (“Beating the Bounds of the Christian”) examining the role of Rogationtide in delineating local church communities. Early medieval Europe lacked both the classical polis and the high medieval parish. Although the idea of a local Christian congregation—the plebs—was vital to medieval reformers, no legal or administrative apparatus delimited who belonged to each local church and what area lay under the pastoral care of its clergy. Instead, preachers and congregants cast the Rogation procession as a time for community formation, when localities could define themselves as Christian bodies. The early medieval Rogation Days never “beat the bounds” in the physical sense of walking around the limits of a parish geography. But they did beat the bounds in another sense: they demarcated the borders of the Christian people. Through the Rogation Day processions, the pre-parishional order of the early medieval church exhibited itself to itself. Indeed, the ritual constituted these communities—seeking to fix otherwise imprecise boundaries. Rogationtide had begun by strengthening the pre-existing community of the Roman city, but ended up creating the new community of the Christian plebs. The themes of the feast’s preaching and the format of its ceremony depended on each other, stressing solidarity and social leveling. Together, ritual and preaching sought to simplify the diverse groupings of the medieval world into an amorphous mass of laity led by their clergy. And alike, they claimed that, outside the church plebs, there was no salvation. The following chapter (“Disrupting Rites and Profaning the Sacred”) evaluates various moments during the early Middle Ages when detailed historical narratives survive for particular Rogation celebration—such as for the Rogationtide of Paris in 580, Aldebert’s Rogationtide near Rheims in 743, and the Rogationtide of the Milanese Patarenes in 1066. Despite their divergent dates and locations, these events and their participants have much in common. In all, popular holy men led movements conflicting with the official church hierarchy. Opponents of all these ascetics framed their criticism through the binaries of licit and illicit practice, liturgy and magic, reform and semi-pagan decadence. And in all, the result was ritual failure. These local communities split into two separate processions, each loyal to rival forms of Christian leadership. As embodiments of the community, the Rogation Days were periods of danger. Their formal unity clashed with the actual divisions within church communities; this incongruity guaranteed that the ritual could upset the local order if performed improperly just as easily as the rite could reinforce order.74 The procession supplied an opportunity to transform the collective 74 Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 143–6, 153–69; Ronald L. Grimes, Ritual Criticism: Case Studies in its Practice, Essays on its Theory (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1990), pp. 9–11, 18–21, 191–209.

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towards a supposedly more Christian order. When Rogationtide collapsed into ritual failure, then the holiday revealed most clearly its power for creating an exclusive Christian world. At the Rogation march, holy men and their followers proved unable to permanently alter the local church structure, despite extensive short-term successes. Opposing clergymen branded charismatic power as magical and heretical, though admittedly with some difficulty. For medieval churchmen, acting like a Christian and being a Christian did not differ; those who performed mandatory rituals improperly were exiles from christianitas. The final chapter (“Praying Orthodoxy”) studies the relationship between Rogationtide and basic Christian instruction. Throughout the early Middle Ages, yearly penitential seasons like Rogationtide and Lent provided a context for Christian formation—a replacement for the vanishing Patristic catechumenate. Not only was lay participation in such penitential seasons high, but the ritual structure of these holidays meant that verbal instruction and physical practice mirrored each other. Preachers like Hrabanus Maurus and Ælfric of Eynsham regularly used such opportunities for a wide array of instruction: moral, salvation historical, sacramental. But, as multiple scholars have noticed, mature Rogationtide had a special connection with teaching on the Lord’s Prayer.75 This last chapter will examine how and why the Rogation Days developed this link with teaching on the Pater Noster. Although scholars have often viewed the early Middle Ages as a nadir of Christian formation, the Latin West in the early medieval period also made the first attempt in European history to institute a minimum level of instruction. All baptized Christians were supposed to have memorized and understood the Apostles’ Creed and Lord’s Prayer. Knowledge of these two texts was the proof of someone’s Christianity. The Rogation procession—a ritual that all Christians had to join—mirrored the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer—a text that all Christians were expected to memorize. The interdependence of these two popular practices shaped lay experience of their own Christianization. Christian instruction occurred through rituals. The rule of prayer upheld the doctrines of faith. A short conclusion (“Ritual and Christianness”) discusses the waning of the Rogation Days during the later Middle Ages and early Modernity. Multiple causes contributed to the holiday’s senescence: its lack of apostolic authority, competition from new holidays such as Corpus Christi, fear of abuses, and state secularization. But perhaps the most important was the systemization of the parish and, with it, the exaltation of a different symbol of the community: 75 See Paul W. Robinson, “Sermons on the Lord’s Prayer and the Rogation Days in the Later Middle Ages,” A History of Prayer: The First to the Fifteenth Century, ed. Roy Hammerling (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 441–62; Eleven Old English Rogationtide Homilies, ed. Joyce Bazire and James E. Cross (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), pp. xvii–xxv.

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the Eucharistic host. This new model for church organization gradually supplanted the ritually defined communities of the early Middle Ages. Contemporary paradigms of Christianization, which treat Christianity as a fixed system of doctrines and practices, continue to impose later norms on early medieval people. The early medieval Rogation Days were Christianization before religion. Rogationtide was the consummate holiday of Latin Europe. The development of this feast is in miniature the development of the Christian commonwealth. As rival groups contested the Rogation Days and provided competing interpretations of the structure and purpose of the feast, they shaped and reshaped medieval life. For Christianization in the Latin West involved basic instruction, theological convictions, the spread of church institutions, and debates about licit practices, about sacred time and space, and about forms of leadership. But, foremost, it meant integration of specific people into their local community through the universal rites of the church.

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1 The Fall of Rome and the Ascent of Rogationtide The late ancient world bustled with processions. Roman people marched across the urban and rural landscape on all sorts of occasions: bridal processions before a wedding, funeral processions to the cemetery, senatorial processions on inauguration day, sacrificial processions in any number of festivals, processions for triumphs, ovations, circuses, and the arrival of potentates.1 And Romans did not walk quietly. They heightened the pageantry with music, singing, dancing, lewd joking, and diverse accoutrements like costumes, torches, divine statues, and ancestor masks. Outdoor processions were so ubiquitous that at times Romans felt them tedious. In 50 BC, the Roman statesman Cicero returned from a year leading minor military campaigns in the province of Cilicia and began canvassing the Senate for a triumph in his honor. The unimpressed senate tabled the issue and Cicero’s sometimes-ally Cato the Younger wrote a pedantic letter to Cicero explaining why his request would cheapen triumphal processions by celebrating them indiscriminately.2 The glut of procession could sicken even Roman taste. Early Christians regarded the procession (pompa) as the defining ritual of the idolatrous world around them. Indeed, by the second century, the baptismal ceremony included a formal interrogation. Catechumens would declare that they “renounced the devil and all his processions.”3 Tertullian, for 1 Sabine G. MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), pp. 15–61; Michael McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and Early Medieval West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 10–32; Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 187–98. 2 M. Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad familiares 15.5, edited by D. R. Shackleton-Bailey (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1988), vol. 1, p. 559. 3 Cf. interrogatus est abrenuntias diabolo, pompis et operibus eius, Caesarius of Arles, Serm. 12.3–4, CCSL 104, ed. G. Morin (Turnhout: Brepols, 1953); Keefe, Water and the Word, vol. 2, pp. 164, 172, 235, 299, 362, 470, 519; Bryan D. Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals and Theologies of Baptism: From the New Testament to the Council of Trent (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 31–2, 40, 44, 81; Nathan J. Ristuccia, The Transmission of Christendom: Ritual and

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instance, cited the baptismal renunciation when condemning Christians who watched military parades and circus processions.4 For Tertullian, Roman processions were demonic copies of Christian and Jewish rites such as the fast of Nineveh in the Book of Jonah; Christians who participated in such ceremonies were half-hearted at best.5 Despite this earlier Christian discomfort, imperial processions flourished during Late Antiquity. After Constantine’s conversion, they acquired Christian elements.6 Moreover, alongside imperial ceremonies like the aduentus, a bevy of ecclesiastical processions developed.7 Penitential processions were common, but churches also marched for holidays like Candlemas and on certain saint’s days. Processions are a frequent organizing device in Early Christian art; the mosaics of the sixth-century basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, for example, depict two lines of saints progressing down the nave and converging on the altar.8 While Christians often used pompa for imperial processions, they preferred novel Latin words (litania, processio) for these new church marches.9 By the late fourth century, Christian emperors and bishops processed at times of crisis. According to the church historian Rufinus, for instance, in 394 Theodosius I progressed with his army to various martyr shrines in preparation for battle with the usurper Eugenius.10 Rufinus contrasts Theodosius’ ritual with the bloody sacrifices performed on the eve of battle by Eugenius’ pagan supporter Virius Nicomachus Flavianus. Both rites may be Rufinus’ Instruction in the Early Middle Ages (Ph.D. Diss., University of Notre Dame, 2013), pp. 28–30, 98–9, 324–6. 4 Tertullian, De Spectaculis 4, CCSL 1, ed. E. Dekker (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954); Buc, The Dangers of Ritual, pp. 135, 140–4, 154–7, 242–6; Barton and Boyarin, Imagine No Religion, 79–83. 5 Tertullian, De ieiunio aduersus psychicos 16, CCSL 2, ed. A. Reifferscheid and G. Wissowa (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954). 6 Peter Kritzinger, “Christliche Prozessionen in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter,” in Sakralität und Devianz: Konstruktionen—Normen—Praxis, edited by Klaus Herbers and Larissa Düchting (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2015), pp. 21–44; MacCormack, Art and Ceremony, pp. 22–7, 42–54, 132–3, 145–6, 155; McCormick, Eternal Victory, pp. 60–4, 75–7, 108–11. 7 Baldovin, Urban Character, pp. 120–2, 129–31, 135, 138–40, 153–66, 206–9, 234–9; Bailey, The Processions of Sarum, pp. 25–6, 65, 75–6, 93–103, 115; D. De Bruyne, “L’origine des processions de la Chandeleur et des Rogations. A propos d’un sermon inédit,” Revue Bénédictine 34 (1922): pp. 14–26. 8 Thomas F. Mathews, The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 142–76. 9 Latin litania, derived from a Greek word for “to implore” (λιτανεύω), frequently means a liturgical procession, rather than a litany. 10 Rufinus, Historia Ecclesiastica 11.33, in Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller 9.2, ed. Theodor Mommsen (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1908), p. 1037; cf. Gregory of Tours, Historiae 3.29, MGH SRM 1.1, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hanover: 1884), p. 125; Gregory I, Ep. 3.54, 5.11, 5.15, 5.61, 6.31, 9.168, 11.26, 11.31, CCSL 140–140A, ed. Dag Norberg (Turnhout: Brepols, 1982); Gennadius of Marseilles, De uiris illustribus 100, in Hieronymus, Liber de viris inlustribus. Gennadius, de viris inlustribus, ed. E. C. Richardson (Leipzig: 1896), p. 97.

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literary inventions, but his descriptions are accurate to the ceremonial norms of his era. Another famous example is the dramatic swell of processions responding to the inguinal plague of 541 and its recurrences.11 But there were wars, diseases, famines, and droughts enough to provoke ample repentance long before the plague arrived. Together, the numerous royal marches, apotropaic rites, stational liturgies, and annual processional feasts like Candlemas and Palm Sunday exalted processions into the most frequent category of public event during the Middle Ages; as medievalist Kathleen Ashley observes, processions were “the most ubiquitous and versatile public performance mode until the seventeenth century . . . the privileged mode of public expression.”12 The archetypal Roman ritual had become a Christian rite. The Rogationtide procession—supposedly established by Mamertus, the archbishop of Vienne, around the year 472—erupted out of this late antique background. As best as we can reconstruct from the difficult sources, the first Rogation marchers behaved much like Theodosius before battle or sixthcentury plague-victims; they responded to specific threats by restoring divine favor through penitential acts. Yet other processions were forgotten once the events that induced them passed. In contrast, the Rogation Days spread quickly across the Latin West and transformed into one of the great holidays of the medieval liturgical year. Any account of the origins of Rogationtide must not only acknowledge the ritual’s deep roots in earlier Christian and Roman practice, but also must explain what marked out the Gallic fast as different from its predecessors and prompted its long-lasting preeminence. Unfortunately, all attempts to craft an early history for Rogationtide falter because the two main sources—Sidonius Apollinaris, bishop of Clermont, and Avitus, bishop of Vienne—supply contentious and contradictory accounts of the feast’s invention. Sidonius and Avitus both employed the holiday of Rogationtide as tool against their own opponents. Indeed, scattered sources outside of Sidonius’ and Avitus’ corpora suggest that Mamertus’ original fast in Vienne diverged greatly from later mature forms of Rogationtide—so much so that there is little reason to call Mamertus the creator of the feast. But Sidonius and Avitus both chose to present Mamertus as inventor, because this narrative helped them guide their struggling cities through the disruption of post-Roman Gaul. From the moment Rogationtide rises from the sources, it was already changing to fit the needs of a changing world. 11 Cf. Gregory of Tours, Historiae 4.5, 9.21, 10.1, 10.30, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 138, 441, 477, 525; Gregory of Tours, Vita Patrum 6.6, In Gloria Confessorum 78, MGH SRM 1.2, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hanover: 1884), pp. 234, 345; Martin Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours: History and Society in the Sixth Century, trans. Christopher Carroll (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 33, 77–81, 85–6. 12 Kathleen Ashley, “Introduction: the Moving Subjects of Processional Performance,” in Moving Subjects: Processional Performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, edited by Kathleen Ashley and Wim Hüsken (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001), pp. 7–10.

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In the 470s, Roman power collapsed. And, as the early sources for the holiday evince, the Rogation Days negotiated anxieties and tensions within the decaying urban centers of the post-Roman Latin West. The culture of the classical Mediterranean rested on a unique institution—the polis: a semi-autonomous city, complete with citizenry, a local curia, fortifications, a forum, and public buildings such as shrines, baths, and theaters.13 Gallo-Roman cities teemed with diverse groups: clergy and laity, peasants and artisans, landowners and laborers and slaves. Even in a time of prosperity, such groups moved at odds, and the upheaval of barbarian conquest risked splitting cities apart all together. Rogationtide could not enchant these strains away. As Catherine Bell rightly notes, new rituals “cannot turn a group . . . into a community if they have no other relationship or interests in common, nor can it turn the exercise of pure physical compulsion into participatory communality. Ritualization can, however, take . . . common interests and ground them in an understanding of the hegemonic order. It can empower agents in limited and highly negotiated ways.”14 In that age of social disruption, Rogationtide allowed Roman urbanites to harden their dwindling common interests into a solemn festive frame— to quiet, at least for a moment, their dissidence. Christianization emerged from Romanization. A holiday eventually focused on making people Christian arose as an effort to keep them Roman—to preserve the semi-independent cities which had upheld Roman civilization. In its original form, Rogationtide modeled a traditional form of Roman community, even as that structure withered away. Like Minerva’s owl, it spread its wings only at dusk.

NA MIN G ROGATIONTIDE Before examining the writings of Sidonius and Avitus at length, I should define some basic terms and glean whatever information about Rogationtide is possible from early witnesses beyond Sidonius and Avitus. The narrative that appears in other sources is not what either Sidonius or Avitus tell. Rogationtide was never fixed. The holiday varied over space and time, and this flexibility propelled its rapid success, by allowing groups to re-interpret the feast to suit local needs. Nonetheless, the Rogation Days always shared a family resemblance distinguishing them from other processions and penitential seasons.15 At its most basic, Rogationtide is any holiday that 13

Dey, The Afterlife of the Roman City, pp. 3–5, 12–13. Bell, Ritual Theory, pp. 141–2, 204–18, 222–3; cf. Pössel, “The Magic of Early Medieval Ritual,” pp. 122–4. 15 For later medieval Rogationtide, see Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400–c. 1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), pp. 136–9, 279–81; Italo Sordi, “I giorni del dragone,” in Rogazioni e processioni nell’arco alpino: atti del 14

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contemporaries viewed as a descendent of the fast of Vienne. More specifically, the Rogation Days entailed four structural elements: (1) a three-day duration, (2) annual celebration at a fixed time, usually in the weeks around Ascension and Pentecost, (3) a procession of laity and clergy together, and (4) accompanying penitential practices such as fasting and prayer. Along with Candlemas and Palm Sunday, Rogationtide was one of the major annual processions in the liturgical calendar of the Latin West.16 And of these processions, Rogationtide was the most important; it was the only one that lasted for days (five, if Ascension Thursday and Rogation Eve are included) and left the most textual evidence.17 The Frankish feast of the Rogation Days is distinct from the Roman feast of the Greater Litany, occurring on April 25.18 Unfortunately, both medieval authors and modern scholars sometimes conflate the two. This confusion is understandable: both feasts are outdoor penitential processions performed in the springtime. Both arose at roughly the same time (c. 450–550). And both are frequently called the litaniae maiores in Latin.19 The Frankish feast was popular on the Continent and in England. In contrast, during the early Middle Ages, the Roman feast never dispersed much further than Rome itself. For instance, with the exception of the homiliary of Paul the Deacon (an Italian), Carolingian homiliaries supply sermons for the Frankish feast but not for the Roman. Even some manuscripts of Paul move his texts for the April 25 feast to a position in front of his Ascension homilies, “fixing” Paul’s work to conform it to the Frankish calendar. When liturgical texts for the April 25 holiday

Convegno di Asiago, 14 maggio 1999, edited by Giancarlo Bortoli and Giovanni Kezich (Trent: Museo degli usi e costumi della gente trentina, 2001), pp. 39–62; Ludolf Kuchenbuch, Joseph Morsel, and Dieter Scheler, “La construction processionnelle de l’espace communautaire,” in Écritures de l’espace social: Mélanges d’histoire médiévale offerts a Monique Bourin, edited by D. Boisseuil et al. (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2010), pp. 139–82; Natale Rauty, “Litaniae maiores et minores: Le processioni penitenziali delle Rogazioni nel secolo XIII secondo gli Ordines officiorum della Chiesa pistoiese,” Bullettino Storico Pistoiese 106 (2004): pp. 63–98. 16 Ashley, “Introduction,” pp. 7–34; cf. G. J. C. Snoek, Medieval Piety from Relics to the Eucharist: a Process of Mutual Interaction (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), pp. 250–76. 17 For Rogationtide and Ascension, Kramer, Between Earth and Heaven, pp. 154–7; M. Bradford Bedingfield, The Dramatic Liturgy of Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2002), pp. 191–3. 18 For the Greater Litany, see Michel Andrieu, Les ordines romani du haut moyen âge (Louvain: Spicilegium sacrum lovaniense bureaux, 1931–61), Ordo 21, Ordo 50.35; Cyrille Vogel, Le Pontifical romano-germanique du dixième siècle (Vatican City: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1963–72), 99.419; Sarah Hamilton, The Practice of Penance, 900–1050 (Woodbridge: Royal Historical Society, 2001), pp. 104–72, 211–37; Joseph Dyer, “Roman Processions of the Major Litany (litaniae maiores) from the Sixth to the Twelfth Century,” in Roma Felix: Formation and Reflections of Medieval Rome, edited by Éamonn Ó Carragain and Carol Neuman de Vegvar (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 116, 122–3. 19 Joyce Hill, “The Litaniae maiores and minores in Rome, Francia and Anglo-Saxon England: Terminology, Texts and Traditions,” Early Medieval Europe 9 (2000): pp. 212–13, 219–22; Bedingfield, Dramatic Liturgy, pp. 191–210, 222–5.

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and its standard lectionary readings (Luke 11:5–13, James 5:16–20) traveled beyond the Alps, they were regularly misappropriated and used for the Frankish feast.20 Liturgists disagree about the origins of the Roman Greater Litany.21 The procession, though, dates from the mid-sixth century, for its liturgy displays Byzantine influence and the first text mentioning the rite—a 591 letter of Pope Gregory the Great—already treats the penitential feast as traditional.22 The Greater Litany presumably arose during the Gothic War (535–54), sometime after Belisarius’ occupation of the city of Rome in 536. Rome, after all, changed hands multiple times during the two decades of conflict and endured three long sieges. Pope Vigilius (537–55) or another Roman leader probably instituted the first Greater Litany in order to reinforce the waning city through penance. As this chapter demonstrates, the Rogation Days spread for similar reasons. Western cities confronted many of the same problems during Late Antiquity: war, natural disaster, ecclesiastical strife. As a result, Christian leaders in both Gaul and Italy devised analogous penitential feasts. For simplicity, I refer to the Frankish feast as Rogationtide or the Rogation Days—a cognate of the common Latin term rogationes (requests, appeals); the singular title Greater Litany will denote the Roman feast. This precision is not found in Latin, though. Medieval etymologists judged litanias, rogationes, and supplicationes to be rough synonyms.23 In contrast, virtually all the late 20 Earlier Frankish preachers had used other lections (e.g. Matt. 8:23–7; Luke 6:36–42; Matt. 7:1–11; parts of Daniel). Cf. Avitus, Hom. 6, MGH AA 6.2, ed. Rudolf Peiper (Berlin: 1883), p. 112; Ps-Haymo, Homiliae 94, PL 118.536–40; Eusebius Gallicanus, Serm. 25.79–99, CCSL 101, ed. François Glorie (Turnhout: Brepols, 1970); Ursula Lenker, Die westsächsische Evangelienversion und die Perikopenordnungen im angelsächsischen England (Munich: W. Fink, 1997), pp. xxi, 322, 356; Missale Gothicum, 327–52, at 351–2, CCCM 159D, ed. Els Rose (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 16–17, 476–85; Hill, “Litaniae maiores,” pp. 230–3. 21 For the feast’s origins, see Baldovin, Urban Character, pp. 158–66, 236–9; John R. C. Martyn, “Four Notes on the Registrum of Gregory the Great,” Parergon 19, no. 2 (2002): pp. 16–23; Jacob A. Latham, “Inventing Gregory ‘the Great’: Memory, Authority, and the Afterlives of the Letania Septiformis,” Church History 84 (2015): pp. 1–31; Rob Meens, Penance in Medieval Europe, 600–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 12–15, 30–1; Hill, “Litaniae maiores,” pp. 228–30; Margaret M. Andrews, “The Laetaniae Septiformes of Gregory I, S. Maria Maggiore, and Early Marian Cult in Rome,” in The Moving City: Processions, Passages, and Promenades in Ancient Rome, edited by Ida Östenbert et al. (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), pp. 155–64. 22 In his letters, Gregory I speaks of three different marches: a procession against the inguinal plague held on a Wednesday in 590; the customary litania maior celebrated in September 591; and the septiformis letania, celebrated in 603. Later medieval authors treated these processions as one, conjuring a legend that Gregory invented a feast called the Greater Litany on Wednesday, April 25, 590; Gregory I, Ep. Appen. 4, 9, CCSL 140A, ed. Dag Norberg (Turnhout: Brepols, 1982); Gregory of Tours, Historiae 10.1, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 477; John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii 34–43, PL 75.77C–81A. 23 For these words as equivalent, litaniae autem graeco nomine appellantur, quae latine dicuntur rogationes . . . supplicationis autem nomen quodammodo nunc ex gentilitate retinetur, Isidore, Etymologiae 6.19.80–1, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1911); cf. Walahfrid Strabo, De exordiis 29, in Walahfrid Strabo’s Libellus de Exordiis et Incrementis

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antique authors who discuss Rogationtide employ rogationes, rather than litaniae.24 This penchant suggests that the first Christians to observe the feast viewed supplicatory prayer—not the procession—as the primary event of the three days. Indeed, the earliest source for the fast of Vienne, Sidonius Apollinaris, speaks only of Mamertus instituting rogationes and supplicationes, hinting that no march occurred.25 Nonetheless, litaniae alone as a name occurs in Late Antiquity; the Rogation Days included a procession from 500 at the latest.26 In Old English, “walkingdays” (gangdagas) is the normal title, although “prayer-days” (bendagas/ gebeddagas) also appeared.27 The term litania maior first arose in the Frankish Gelasian sacramentaries of the eighth century, as clerics fused Frankish Rogationtide and the Greater Litany.28 The new name emphasized the larger import Rogationtide had in comparison to less momentous processions like Candlemas or Palm Sunday. But this title was also likely a deliberate Carolingian strategy to link the liturgies and cultures of once separate micro-Christendoms in order to build a broad Christian empire.29 Such cosmopolitan cultural mixing was a standard element of the Carolingian reforms. Ironically, modern scholars sometimes call Rogationtide “the Minor Litany” (litaniae minores) in order to contrast it with the Roman Greater

Quarundam in Obseruationibus Ecclesiasticis Rerum: A Translation and Liturgical Commentary, trans. Alice L. Harting-Correa (Leiden: Brill, 1996), p. 186; Honorius Augustodunensis, Gemma Animae 3.138, PL 172.680; some high medieval authors tried to distinguish between these words. Cf. Jean Beleth, Summa de Ecclesiasticis Officiis 6.a–h, 7.a–b, additio 7aa–ab, 123.a, CCCM 41A, ed. Herbert Douteil (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976). 24 For instance, Avitus of Vienne, Hom. 6, 7, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 108.4, 110.20, 111.7–13, 113.4–8, 116.24, 118.1; Council of Orléans (511), 27, CCSL 148A, ed. C. De Clercq (Turnhout: Brepols, 1973); Council of Tours (567), 18, CCSL 148A; Gregory of Tours, Historiae 2.34, 4.5, 9.6, 9.21, 10.30, Vita Patrum 4.4, 6.6–6.7, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 83, 138, 418, 441, 525, vol. 2, pp. 226, 234–5; Vita Gaugerici 8, MGH SRM 3, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hanover: Hahn, 1896), p. 654; Baudonivia of Poitiers, Vita Radegundis 2.14, MGH SRM 2, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hanover: Hahn, 1888), p. 386. 25 Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 5.14.1–2, 7.1.2–3, MGH AA 8, ed. C. Luetjohann (Berlin: 1887), pp. 87, 103; cf. the edition by A. Loyen, (Paris: Budé, 1970), vol. 2, pp. 196–7, vol. 3, pp. 31–3; Johannes A. van Waarden, Writing to Survive: a Commentary on Sidonius Apollinaris, Letters, Book 7 (Leuvens: Peeters, 2010), vol. 1, pp. 120–4. 26 Cf. Council of Lyon (567–70), 6, CCSL 148A; Venantius Fortunatus, Vita Germani ep. Parisiaci 33, MGH SRM 7, ed. Friedrich Leo and Bruno Krusch (Hanover: Hahn, 1881–5), p. 392; Vita Nicetii 6, MGH SRM 3, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hanover: Hahn, 1886), p. 522; Audoin of Rouen, Vita Eligii 2.2, MGH SRM 4, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hanover: Hahn, 1902), pp. 695–6. 27 Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Byrthferth’s Enchiridion 3.1.145–82, 3.2.207–82, 4.1.101–3, EETS s.s. 15, ed. Peter S. Baker and Michael Lapidge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Hill, “The Litaniae maiores,” pp. 212–13. 28 See Sacramentary of Angoulême 958–63, 1829–30, CCSL 159C, ed. P. Saint-Roch (Turnhout: Brepols, 1987); for the Frankish Gelasian, Cyrille Vogel, Medieval Liturgy: An Introduction to the Sources, tran. William G. Storey and Niels Krogh Rasmussen (Washington, DC: Pastoral Press, 1986), pp. 64–78; Hen, Culture and Religion, pp. 44–5, 49–50, 57–9. 29 Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom, pp. 363–6, 378–9.

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Litany.30 This major/minor dichotomy is late, not arising until the tenth century; it grew popular due to the widespread impact of the twelfth-century liturgical commentator Jean Beleth.31 The diffusion of this new title was one of the first signs that Rogationtide had started to fade, gradually losing its importance from c. 1100 onward as other processions—above all, Corpus Christi—dethroned it. High medieval theologians often explain that Rogationtide is “minor” because a less important person created it in a less important place for less important reasons.32 Mamertus—as a mere bishop of Vienne who was forgotten apart from his putative invention of the feast— could not compare to a great theologian, pope, and saint like Gregory the Great. The medieval sources, then, indicate that Rogationtide (rogationes) was the original Frankish name for this holiday. It was only labeled maior once it intertwined with the Roman Greater Litany and minor as later medieval theologians sought to detach the two again and marginalize the once great Frankish feast. Modern scholars who brand Rogationtide the Minor Litany and presume that it was less significant perpetuate the Rome-centric biases of the high medieval clergy.

EXPORTING RO GATIONTIDE Outside of Sidonius and Avitus, the sources for the spread of Rogationtide portray nothing like their story of an inspired founder, Mamertus, who inaugurated a fast at Vienne with all the customs of later Rogationtide and purposefully promulgated this holiday throughout Gaul. While Avitus, and to a lesser extent Sidonius, relate such an origin tale, the other sources indicate that the Rogation Days were liturgically diverse and disseminated haphazardly due to the efforts of multiple people. The main force guiding the export of Rogationtide across Latin Europe was not a creative genius but rather the instability and localism of the post-Roman world. 30 Hill, “Litaniae maiores,” pp. 212–14; Jussi Hanska, Strategies of Sanity and Survival: Religious Responses to Natural Disasters in the Middle Ages (Helsinki: Finish Literature Society, 2002), pp. 34–7, 153. 31 For early usages, Andrieu, Les ordines romani, Ordo 50.36.1–5; Liber Quare Additio 25.29–30, CCCM 60, ed. G.P. Götz (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983); Jean Beleth, Summa de Eccl. Officiis 122.c; although the Liber Quare dates to the eleventh century at the latest, additio 25 is an interpolation from the twelfth century or earlier. 32 Cf. minor ad differentiam primae, quia scilicet instituta est a minori episcopo in minori loco et pro minori morbo, Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea 70, ed. Theodore Graesse (Dresden: 1846), p. 313. Cf. Liber Quare Additio 25.29–30; Jean Beleth, Summa de Eccl. Officiis 122.c.

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The generations around the invention of the Rogation Days were not a stable time for monarchies.33 The last Western emperor died in 480; Odoacer’s Italy fell in 493; Visigothic Gaul in 507; the kingdoms of the Vandals, Burgundians, and Ostrogoths were all gone by the 530s; the eastern emperor Zeno (474–91) was almost deposed three times, yet somehow always returned to power. Nor was the other great European institution—the imperial church— much more steadfast. The church saw the Acacian schism between Rome and Constantinople, a papal schism within Rome itself, Miaphysite heretics in charge of most Eastern sees, and Arian heretics contesting most Western ones. Cities often functioned without bishops for years, because their pastors were jailed, in exile, or never appointed. When the Visigoths conquered Gaul, for instance, they kept at least a quarter of all Nicene sees empty, while establishing Arian bishops there.34 Understandably, the inhabitants of many cities across Western Europe feared for their safety and worried that the social dislocation and violence was divine punishment for sin. The penitential feast of Rogationtide combated this civic breakdown. Already by the first quarter of the sixth century, preachers in Gaul assumed that the whole universal church celebrated Rogationtide. In the first decade of that century, for instance, Bishop Avitus of Vienne exclaimed that the Rogation Days occur “not only throughout Gaul but through nearly all the globe”; for Caesarius, the bishop of Arles between 502 and 542, “the church regularly celebrates these three days across the entire world”; the Frankish historian Gregory of Tours (d. 594) thought that “all churches through all provinces” observed them.35 In the opinion of these churchmen, the observance of Rogationtide was part of what it meant to be a member of the universal church. But their sentiments overstate. No Greek or Asian churches ever adopted the feast; in 600 even much of Italy ignored it. Nonetheless, the Rogation Days quickly grew important in many areas of Latin Europe. Strikingly, the bishops of Vienne and the Burgundian monarchy played only a minor role in this popularization. Other groups, especially the Frankish kings, were the principal agents. In Gaul itself, multiple Merovingian 33

For Western collapse, see Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 63–81, 138–68; Élie Griffe, La Gaule chrétienne à l’époque romaine: La cité chrétienne (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1965), vol. 3, pp. 5–42; Stroumsa, The End of Sacrifice, pp. 85–9, 107–9; for a contrary position, Dey, The Afterlife of the Roman City, pp. 244–51. 34 Eric J. Goldberg, “The Fall of the Roman Empire Revisited: Sidonius Apollinaris and His Crisis of Identity,” Essays in History 35 (1995): pp. 2–4; in North Africa, similarly, the Vandal king Thrasamund exiled over sixty Nicene bishops to Sardinia for a decade. 35 Currit . . . non per Gallias tantummodo sed paene per orbem totum rogationalis obseruantiae flumen, Avitus, Hom. 6, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 108.4–5, 111.3–4; in istis tribus diebus, quos regulariter in toto mundo celebrat ecclesia, Caesarius, Serm. 207.2; per cunctas prouintias dispersa facti fama cunctus sacerdotes imitare conmonuit . . . per omnes eclesias . . . caelebratur; Gregory of Tours, Historiae 2.34, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 84.

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councils required that all churches celebrate the feast during the three days before Ascension. For instance, the First Council of Orléans (511)—called by Clovis himself and authoritative for the entire Frankish realm—mandated that “the whole laity of every church” fast, abstain from sex, and join the procession.36 Masters even had to give slaves time off work to attend. Clovis set the synod’s agenda, using the council to cement Frankish rule over newly conquered lands by standardizing customs like Rogationtide across the whole kingdom.37 As a result, most of the thirty-two bishops who attended the Council of Orléans were southerners who had lived within the Visigothic kingdom until the Frankish conquests of 507, rather than bishops from the pre-507 Frankish lands in Northern Gaul and Germany. The bishops of the two most influential episcopacies in Southeastern Gaul—Avitus of Vienne and Caesarius of Arles—did not attend, as their cities were not yet in Francia. Indeed, part of the purpose of the council may have been to end the influence of the customs of Vienne and Arles on bishoprics which had once been under their liturgical authority. Later Frankish councils presumed that all churches in Francia observed the Rogation Days; they legislated instead against improper Rogation customs. In 567, for example, a regional council at Tours demanded that monks fast in the three Rogation Days before Ascension even though they fell during Eastertide: a season of rejoicing between Easter and Pentecost when fasting is otherwise prohibited.38 The Council of Lyon c. 570 viewed Rogationtide as so normal that the bishops used its procession as a model for other newer fasts.39 Likewise, Carolingian canons worry about bad customs at the holiday, rather than outright neglect.40 As a result, ninth-century canonical texts often differentiate Rogationtide from the Roman Greater Litany—also a required feast by then—based on their date, acknowledging that the two feasts could be confused.41 36 Rogationes, id est laetanias, ante ascensionem domini ab omnibus ecclesiis placuit celebrari . . . per quod triduum serui et ancellae ab omni opere relaxentur, quo magis plebs uniuersa conueniat, Council of Orléans (511), 27. 37 Cf. Council of Orléans (511), 1; Hen, Culture and Religion, pp. 11–13, 63–4; Dumézil, Les racines chrétiennes, pp. 219–21. 38 Council of Tours (567), 18. 39 Council of Lyon (567–70), 6. 40 For instance, Capitularia Regum Franciae Occidentalis, 8, MGH CRF 2, ed. Alfred Boretius and Viktor Krause (Hanover: 1897), p. 269; Additamenta ad capitularia Regum Franciae Orientalis, 248, 252, MGH CRF 2, pp. 173, 211; Capitula Ecclesiastica, 19, MGH CRF 1, p. 179; Council of Mainz (813), 32–3, MGH Concilia 2.2, ed. Albert Werminghoff (Hanover: 1906), pp. 268–9; Council of Soissons (853), 8, MGH Concilia 3, p. 288; Haito of Basel, Capitula 8, MGH CE 1, ed. Peter Brommer (Hanover: 1984), p. 212; Radulf of Bourges, Capitula 30–1, MGH CE 1, pp. 257–8; Waltcaud of Liège, Capitula 16, MGH CE 1, p. 49; Walter of Orléans, Capitula 18, MGH CE 1, pp. 191–2. 41 For instance, Walahfrid Strabo, De exordiis 29, Harting-Correa, pp. 184–6; Council of Aachen (813), 22 (10), MGH Concilia 2.2, p. 710; Council of Dingolfing (932), MGH Concilia 6.1,

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The Frankish version of Rogationtide gradually disseminated outside the borders of the kingdom. By the early eighth century at the latest, Anglo-Saxon Christians celebrated Rogationtide on the same three days before Ascension as in Francia.42 According to Bede, Augustine of Canterbury introduced the feast to England in 597, the first year of his arrival in Kent.43 Rapid adoption is plausible. Neither Ireland nor Rome celebrated Rogationtide this early, and Augustine—a monk from the city of Rome—journeyed through Gaul at the wrong time of year to have witnessed the Rogation Days personally. Pope Gregory, however, had encouraged Augustine to adapt whatever liturgical customs he found helpful in designing a new liturgy for England and multiple Franks assisted Augustine’s mission (e.g. Queen Bertha of Kent, her chaplain, Archbishop Etherius of Arles). Augustine may have instituted the Rogation ceremony from the start.44 If not, then Bede’s sources anachronistically ascribed to Augustine the Frankish Rogation procession that was common in England a century later. Regardless, in 747, the Anglo-Saxon Council of Clovesho mandated the celebration of both Rogationtide and the Roman Greater Litany for the whole province of Canterbury. The Clovesho divines speak as if they were introducing the Roman holiday, but treat Rogationtide as customary.45 Indeed, the Rogation Days were so well-established in England that the bishops feared that popular abuses had crept into them. Frankish connections ensured that Brittany, and perhaps Wales, established Rogationtide in the early Middle Ages.46 The Rogation Days arrived in Ireland much later though. Early medieval Irish churchmen led many penitential

ed. Ernst-Dieter Hehl (Hanover: 1987), pp. 123–4; Council of Ingelheim (948), 7, MGH Concilia 6.1, p. 161; Herard of Tours, Capitula 94–5, MGH CE 2, ed. Rudolf Pokorny and Martina Stratmann (Hanover: 1995), pp. 147–8. 42 Bede died in the year 735 just after the monks of his abbey returned from their Wednesday Rogation procession; Cuthbert, Epistola de Obitu Bedae, in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 584. 43 Bede, Ecclesiastical History 1.25.2, SChr 489, p. 202; cf. Bede, Ecclesiastical History 2.2.6, 4.14.2, SChr 489, p. 296, SChr 490, p. 268; Bede, Homiliae 1.22.96–102, 2.14, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 122 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955); Bede mentions the singing of “Deprecamur te, domine,” a Rogation antiphon in the Gallican rite; cf. Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1991), pp. 11–12, 49; Hill, “Litaniae maiores,” 235–6; John Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 176, 225, 454–6, 473–5, 486–9. 44 Bede, Ecclesiastical History 1.24.1, 1.25.1, 1.27.6, SChr 489, pp. 199–200, 210. 45 Secundum morem priorum nostrorum, tres dies ante ascensionem domini nostri in caelos . . . non admixtis uanitatibus uti mos est plurimis, Council of Clovesho (747), 16, in Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, ed. Arthur West Haddan, William Stubbs and David Wilkins (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1869–78), vol. 3, p. 368; cf. Bede, De Temporum Ratione 66.2038, CCSL 123B, ed. Charles W. Jones (Turnhout: Brepols, 1977). 46 An eleventh-century life claims that the relics of the British saint Gildas were translated to the Breton monastery of Rhuys on Rogation Monday, May 11, 554; Vita Prima Gildae 31, MGH AA 13, p. 101; cf. Vita Secunda Turiaui 4, AASS Jul 3, p. 617.

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processions to avert natural disasters.47 But no evidence exists for Rogationtide in specific until after the turn of the millennium.48 Neither of the two chief Irish martyrologies—the Martyrology of Oengus and the Martyrology of Tallaght—mention the Rogation Days, nor does the Irish liturgist Gilbert of Limerick, nor any Old Irish homily.49 At the end of the eleventh century, though, the Irish church reformed its practices to accord with Continental norms: for instance, introducing Rogationtide.50 Around this same time, Anglo-Saxon and Frankish missionaries brought the feast to Scandinavia, for Scandinavian canons and sermons on the feast survive from the middle of the twelfth century.51 Throughout Northern Europe, then, the stature of the Frankish church induced a gradual spread of the holiday of Rogationtide. No evidence suggests that Mamertus, Vienne, or the Burgundian kings played any role in this development. Spain and Northern Italy, on the other hand, celebrated a form of the Rogation Days already in the sixth century. Churchmen under Gothic rule inspired the feast’s expansion there, and, as a result, both the Spanish and the Italian versions differed sharply from Frankish norms for centuries. Notably, while Frankish Rogationtide occurred on the three days before Ascension, outside Francia the timing varied. Visigothic Spain celebrated a three-day penitential procession with features resembling Frankish Rogationtide.52 Indeed, one Spanish council equated this

47 For instance, Adomnan, Vita Columba 2.45, ed. Alan Orr Anderson and Marjorie Ogilvie Anderson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 450; Ratherius of Verona, Itinerarium 14, CCCM 46, ed. Peter L. Reid (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981). 48 One fragmentary Leinster computus (written in 658) includes chapters entitled de terminis rogationum and de rogationibus. The published portions do not illuminate if the scribe knew the holiday from practice or just from reading Continental sources; Dáibhi Ó Cróinín, Early Irish History and Chronology (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003), pp. 173–212. 49 Gilbert of Limerick, De Statu Ecclesiae 131–71, in John Fleming, Gille of Limerick (c. 1070–1145): Architect of a Medieval Church (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), pp. 154–7. 50 F. E. Warren, The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church, ed. Jane Stevenson (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1987), pp. 146–7. 51 Thomas N. Hall, “Old Norse-Icelandic Sermons,” in The Sermon, edited by Beverly Mayne Kienzle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), pp. 661–709; Grágás 12–13, 56, 58, 148, in The Laws of Early Iceland: Grágás, The Codex Regius of the Grágás, with Material from Other Manuscripts, trans. Andrew Dennis et al. (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1980), vol. 1, pp. 44–5, 100, 102, vol. 2, p. 62; Gulathing Law 18, Frostathing Law 2.31, in The Earliest Norwegian Laws, trans. Laurence M. Lawson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935), pp. 47–8, 240. 52 Council of Toledo VI (638), 2, in Concilios visigóticos e hispano-romanos, ed. José Vives (Barcelona: Consejo Superiod de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto Enrique Flórez, 1963), pp. 235–6; Isidore, De Ecclesiasticis Officiis 1.42, CCSL 113, ed. C. Lawson (Turnhout: Brepols, 1989); Penitential of Vigila 15.94, CCSL 156A, ed. F. Bezler (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998); Penitential of Silos 12.238, 13.248–53, CCSL 156A; Roger Collins, Visigothic Spain, 409–711 (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004), pp. 76–7, 103–4, 165, 236–7; for Visigothic processions for rain, cf. Vita Sancti Fructuosi 5, in La Vida de San Frutuoso de Braga, Estudio y edicion critica, ed. Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz (Braga: 1974); Vitas Sanctorum Patrum Emeretensium 5.14.2–3, CCSL 116, ed. A. Maya Sánchez (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992).

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Visigothic procession with the Gallic feast.53 Until the Frankish victory at Vouillé in 507, the Visigothic kingdom was centered at Toulouse and ruled much of southern and western Gaul—including the see of Clermont, whose bishop, Sidonius Apollinaris, was the first extant writer to discuss Rogationtide. After 507, though, the Franks acquired all of Visigothic Gaul except for Septimania over the course of the tumultuous rule of the feckless king Gesalec (507–13). Spanish churches must have adopted a version of the Rogation feast sometime between the Visigothic conquest of Clermont in 475 and the loss of the kingdom’s Gallic lands. Indeed, the first Spanish synod to institute the feast occurred in 517 at Gerona, just on the other side of the Pyrenees from Gaul, and legislated only for the six bishoprics in the archdiocese of Tarragona, all close to the Gallic border.54 Areas of Spain south of the Ebro River, in contrast, may not have kept the holiday until the energetic Visigothic kings of the early seventh century unified their kingdom’s rites. When the Fifth Council of Toledo in 636 ordered the processions across the whole kingdom, its canon called Rogationtide “the new processions” (nouae letaniae), revealing that they were novel in most of Spain.55 Rogationtide in Spain could vary in dating. For instance, alongside spring Rogation Days, some Spanish churches held an additional three-day fast (the secundae letaniae) in November or December as part of the penitential season of Advent.56 But the Rogation Days usually fell on the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of the week after Pentecost.57 According to the ninth-century liturgical commentator Walahfrid Strabo, the Spanish observed the feast then in order to avoid fasting during Eastertide.58 Since the Council of Gerona in 517 already used this post-Pentecost dating, the Visigothic church probably acquired it from some bishopric in the area of Gaul that they controlled at the end of the fifth century. Even outside Septimania, certain episcopacies in Francia continued to use this post-Pentecost dating until the Carolingian 53 Quamquam priscorum patrum institutio . . . per uniuersas hispaniae et galliarum prouincias, Council of Toledo XVII (694), 6, Vives, p. 532. 54 Council of Gerona (517), 2–3, Vives, p. 39; the neighboring province of Saragossa also observed the Rogation Days in the sixth century, Gregory of Tours, Historiae 3.29, 9.6, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 125, 417. 55 Council of Toledo V (636), 1, Vives, pp. 226–7. 56 Council of Gerona (517), 2–3, Vives, p. 39; cf. a ninth-century Old Spanish Sacramentary (Toledo, Bibl. Capit. 35.3) speaks of “processions before Pentecost” (litaniis ante Pentecosten), a timing also found in Milan; Corpus benedictionum pontificalium 1910, CCSL 162A, ed. Edmond Moeller (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971); cf. Penitential of Silos 13.248–58. 57 The seventh-century Homiliary of Toledo places two “sermons for the Pentecost processions” (sermo de letanias pentecosten, Caesarius, Hom. 209 and 207) between its homilies for Ascension and Pentecost; Réginald Grégoire, Homéliaires liturgiques médiévaux: analyse de manuscrits (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1980), p. 302; Bailey, The Processions of Sarum, p. 97; cf. Penitential of Silos 13.249. 58 Walahfrid Strabo, De Exordiis 29, Harting-Correa, p. 186.

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reforms standardized the lectionary system across the empire.59 In Spain itself, this post-Pentecost Rogationtide endured until the Gregorian rite supplanted the Old Spanish liturgy at the end of the eleventh century.60 In the Lombard regions of Northern Italy such as the dioceses of Milan, Verona, Vercelli, Bergamo, and Aquileia, Rogationtide lasted from Wednesday through Friday of the week after Ascension, but before Pentecost. This timing corresponds to the period when the apostles gathered in Jerusalem to pray and await the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:14, 2:1), as Milanese churchmen noted.61 The Bergomense sacramentary, the oldest extant liturgical book of the Milanese rite, written c. 850, already records this timing.62 But the holiday must have arrived in Milan long before the Frankish conquest of Lombardy in 774; otherwise, the Carolingians would have instituted their own pre-Ascension dating. In fact, Northern Italy likely celebrated Rogationtide before the Ostrogothic kingdom collapsed in 554.63 In one of his extant sermons, Archbishop Caesarius of Arles announces that his see celebrated a post-Ascension Rogationtide.64 He implies this dating was common in Provence throughout his suffragan dioceses.65 While Clermont was in the Visigothic realm and Vienne under Burgundian control, the Ostrogothic kings ruled both Milan and Arles. During Caesarius’ forty-year episcopacy (502–42), Arles went from Visigothic control to Ostrogothic c. 508 to Frankish in 536. Arles eventually lost its

59 The Catechesis Cracoviensis from Bavaria contains a Rogation sermon directly after the homily for Pentecost, indicating the Spanish dating; Thomas L. Amos, “The Catechesis Cracoviensis and Hiberno-Latin Exegesis on the Pater Noster,” Proceedings of the Irish Biblical Association 13 (1990): pp. 77, 83. 60 Cf. Historia Compostela 1.20, 2.71, CCCM 70, ed. E. Falque Rey (Turnhout: Brepols, 1988). 61 In order to justify the Milanese dating, one Milanese author claims, without biblical support, that the Apostles fasted then; Landulf Senior, Historia Mediolanensis, 3.30 (29), MGH SS 8, ed. L. C. Bethmann and W. Wattenbach (Hanover: 1848), p. 95; Pietro Borella, Il rito Ambrosiano (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1964), pp. 36–48, 103–20, 420–6; Cesare Alzati, Ambrosianum Mysterium: The Church of Milan and its Liturgical Tradition, trans. George Guiver (Cambridge: Grove Books, 1999), vol. 1, pp. 37–41, vol. 2, pp. 20–4. 62 Angelo Paredi, Sacramentarium Bergomense (Bergamo: Fondazione Amministrazione Provinciale, 1962), pp. 194–201, 476–81; cf. Arnulf of Milan, Liber Gestorum Recentium 3.15, MGH SRG 67, ed. C. Zey (Hanover: 1994), pp. 188–90; D. De Bruyne, “Les notes liturgiques du Codex Forojuliensis,” Revue Bénédictine 30 (1930): p. 215; Ratherius of Verona, Synodica 15; Atto of Vercelli, Serm. 11–12, PL 134.848B–848D, 850A–850B; Vita Probi, AASS Nov 4, p. 482. 63 Henry G. J. Beck, The Pastoral Care of Souls in South-East France During the Sixth Century (Rome: Gregoriana, 1950), pp. 104–6; Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1998–2004), vol. 3, pp. 80–1. 64 Caesarius speaks of a Wednesday-through-Friday period. His congregation surely did not observe Ascension Thursday in the middle of Rogationtide, so the bishop must mean the following week: in his tribus diebus, a quarta feria usque ad sextam feriam nullus se ab ecclesiae conuentu subducat, Caesarius, Serm. 209.4. 65 Caesarius, Serm. 207.2; cf. Vita Caesarii 1.26, MGH SRM 3, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hanover: Hahn, 1896), p. 466.

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preeminence and started celebrating the Rogation Days according to the Frankish pre-Ascension dating, but not until it had transferred this postAscension dating to Northern Italy. There, it persisted through the eleventh century. The city of Rome itself was one of the last places in the Latin West to adopt some form of the feast.66 As late as the twelfth century, the liturgist Jean Beleth erroneously believed that Rogationtide was still not celebrated in Italy, suggesting that the holiday was not prominent there.67 In fact, Pope Leo III had inaugurated the first Rogationtide in Rome in 801 at “the request of the pious emperor.”68 The Liber Pontificalis records that, after his coronation as emperor on Christmas day 800, Charlemagne gave Pope Leo III the jeweled cross carried at the head of the new procession. The treasure was stored at the Lateran basilica, where the Rogation Monday march ended. Leo III established the Frankish form of the feast—not the post-Ascension version native to Italy. The emperor may have had to twist Leo’s arm somewhat. The Roman clergyman who wrote Leo’s biography in the Liber Pontificalis, for instance, stresses the difference between the traditional Roman Greater Litany and the novel Frankish feast. His emphasis perhaps reflects the disgruntled attitude of the Roman cathedral clergy at watching a foreign emperor dare to change the liturgy of Rome itself.69 Exporting the holiday and its pre-Ascension dating was part of the Frankish reform program. In the century after its creation, the feast of Rogationtide dispersed across the Latin West. It became, in the end, the universal Western feast that Avitus, Caesarius, and Gregory of Tours imagined it to be already in the sixth century. But the liturgical evidence for the holiday does not reveal a simple inchoate feast that diversified and elaborated once it broke away from the guiding hands of its inventor: Mamertus of Vienne. Rather, variability flourished from the first. Only the power of the Carolingian dynasts could institute anything like uniformity. Indeed, early sources never indicate that Mamertus spread the feast. Time and again, the decisive cause was the prestige of the Franks—and their victorious armies. Multiple famous medieval figures worked to promulgate and standardize Rogationtide: Sidonius Apollinaris, Clovis I, Caesarius of Arles, Charlemagne, perhaps Augustine of Canterbury. 66 For sixth-century penitential processions near Rome, Gregory I, Ep. Appen. 4, 9; Gregory I, Dialogi 3.15.148–61, SChr 260, ed. Adalbert de Vogüé (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1979); Gregory of Tours, Historiae 10.1, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 477. 67 Alia letania dicitur minor . . . non celebratur nisi in cisalpina ecclesia . . . hec letania per tres dies a cisalpina ecclesia celebraretur, Jean Beleth, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis 122.c, 123.a. 68 Pontifex in letania procedere constituit, secundem petitionem ipsius piissimi imperatoris . . . ante tres dies ascensionis, Le Liber Pontificalis, ed. Louis Duchesne and Cyrille Vogel (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1955–7), vol. 2, pp. 98.23–43, 105.17; cf. Chronica pontificum et imperatorum Basileensis 800, MGH SS 31, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger (Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1903), p. 286. 69 Cum die quadam, more solito, in letania que ab omnibus maiore appellatur procederet, Liber Pontificalis vol. 2, p. 98.11, 33.

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Its supposed architect Mamertus, though, does not seem to be one of them. Rogationtide did not ascend to its prominence because Mamertus had plotted the ideal procession, but because it was vague, flexible, and evolving, so clergy and laity all over Europe could adapt it to their needs.

INV E N TI NG RO GA T ION T IDE From the First Council of Orléans (511) onward, a reasonable sketch of the expansion and standardization of the Rogation Days is possible. By the year 511, though, the holiday was already popular—at least in much of Gaul—and it was already diverse in its customs. Rogationtide birthed in the confused last days of the Western Empire, as Roman power ebbed and warlords built kingdoms. But scarce and partisan sources thwart all attempts to discover the origins of Rogationtide, to move past the legends of bishop Mamertus to what occurred in Vienne sometime around 472. We cannot know what happened. Yet we can know why. For the earliest sources on Rogationtide already reveal how people manipulated the feast, how the inhabitants of Gallic cities used the holiday to shore up their Romanness in the midst of communal stress. The Rogation Days were an occasion for Romanizing before they were one for Christianizing. About a dozen authors allude to Rogationtide in the first century after Mamertus putatively invented the holiday. But all reconstructions of the events around the fast of Vienne depend on just two writers: the fifth-century man of letters Gaius Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius (c. 430–c. 485), who discusses the holiday in three of his epistles, and the sixth-century poet and theologian Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus (c. 465–518), who preached four sermons for the feast.70 None of the other early sources for the holiday (e.g. Caesarius of Arles, the Eusebius Gallicanus homily collection) care about where the feast was invented, why, or by whom. Scant sources are normal for the late fifth century. The odd thing is not that so few sources portray Mamertus and the fast of Vienne, but that these two writers do so and at such length. Why was recounting the origins of the Rogation Days vital to these two men? Sidonius and Avitus have much in common. Both men were bishops (of Clermont and Vienne respectively) from wealthy Gallo-Roman senatorial families with long traditions of government service. Both corresponded with the key political and ecclesiastical figures of their era. And both had direct 70 Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 5.14, 7.1, MGH AA 8, pp. 87, 103–4; Avitus, Hom. 6–9, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 108–20; for Avitus of Vienne (Avitus 2), Mamertus of Vienne, and Sidonius Apollinaris (Sidonius 1), cf. Charles Pietri et al. Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire (313–604) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1999), pp. 242–63, 1231–3, 1759–800 [hereafter PCBE].

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connections to Mamertus. Sidonius was a friend of the bishop’s brother Claudianus Mamertus and wrote one extant letter to Mamertus himself.71 Avitus was Mamertus’ godson and later his successor-plus-one as archbishop of Vienne.72 In late antique Gaul, narrating the first Rogationtide was a family affair. Sidonius Apollinaris is the sole contemporary witness for Mamertus’ fast. Written in 473 and published as part of a larger collection in the mid-480s, Sidonius’ letters on the fast of Vienne pre-date Avitus’ sermons by thirty years, for Avitus’ sermons apparently stem from a homiliary that the bishop compiled for friends c. 506.73 Nonetheless, most historians have privileged Avitus’ account as more reliable.74 Consider, for instance, a recent article on Avitus’ homilies by the influential medievalist Ian Wood. There Wood proclaims that “since Avitus was probably an eyewitness [to the fast of Vienne], which Sidonius was not, his account ought to take precedence” even when his narrative “differs markedly” from Sidonius’ letters.75 Wood praises Avitus’ sermon for the Sunday of Rogation Eve as a “remarkable historical document” and a “picture of urban psychology,” saturated with “important details” on “the day-to-day reality of Burgundy.”76

71

Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 4.2, 4.3, 4.11, 5.2, MGH AA 8, pp. 53–4, 62–3, 79; for Sidonius’ letters, see Jill Harries, Sidonius Apollinaris and the Fall of Rome, AD 407–485 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 3–8, 33–4, 103–15, 207–9, 226–30; Ralph W. Mathisen, “Dating the Letters of Sidonius,” in New Approaches to Sidonius Apollinaris, ed. Johannes A. van Waarden and Gavin Kelly (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), pp. 221–48; Waarden, Writing to Survive, vol. 1, pp. 5–10, 74–5. 72 Avitus of Vienne: Letters and Selected Prose, ed. Danuta Shanzer and Ian Wood (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002), pp. 3–13, 41–2, 56, 63–4, 383–4; Ralph W. Mathisen, “Episcopal Hierarchy and Tenure in Office in Late Roman Gaul: A Method for Establishing Dates of Ordination,” Francia 17, no. 1 (1990): pp. 135–9; Ralph W. Mathisen, Ecclesiastical Factionalism and Religious Controversy in Fifth-Century Gaul (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1989), pp. 173–215, 235–41, 258–9, 274. 73 Nuper quidem paucis homiliarum mearum in unum corpus redactis hortatu amicorum discrimen editionis intraui, Avitus, Prol. ad Apollinarem 1–4, MGH AA 6.2, p. 201. 74 For instance, André Pelletier, Vienne Gallo-Romaine au Bas-Empire 275–469 après J.C. (Lyon: Imprimerie Bosc Frères, 1974), pp. 184–9; Griffe, La Gaule chrétienne, vol. 3, pp. 209–13; Pierantonio Gios, “Le Rogazioni sotto l’aspetto storico-liturgico,” in Rogazioni e processioni nell’arco alpino: atti del Convegno di Asiago, 14 maggio 1999, ed. Giancarlo Bortoli and Giovanni Kezich (Trent: Museo degli usi e costumi della gente trentina, 2001), pp. 31–8; Hen, Culture and Religion, pp. 63–4, 88; Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Litanies, pp. 2–3, 7–12, 36–41, 46–9, 57; Geoffrey Nathan, “The Rogation Ceremonies of Late Antique Gaul. Creation, Transmission and the Role of the Bishop,” Classica et mediaevalia: Revue danoise de philologie et d’histoire 49 (1998): pp. 275–303. 75 Ian N. Wood, “The Homilies of Avitus,” in Sermo Doctorum: Compilers, Preachers, and the Audiences in the Early Medieval West, edited by Maximilian Diesenberger et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 84–7, 89, 94. 76 Cf. Ian N. Wood, “Topographies of Holy Power in Sixth-Century Gaul,” in Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages, edited by Mayke de Jong et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 145–54; for Rogation Eve sermons, cf. Caesarius, Serm. 207.1, 209.4.

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Wood is not the only historian to draw largely on Avitus when reconstructing the history of Rogationtide. In fact, Gregory of Tours—the first historian to discuss the Rogation Days and the only late antique author other than Sidonius and Avitus who connects the feast with Vienne or Mamertus— already cribbed from Avitus.77 Yet Gregory knew the letters of Sidonius well. Elsewhere in his works, Gregory quotes from Sidonius’ epistle to Mamertus on the Rogation Days, but only for information about Mamertus’ translation of the relics of St. Ferreolus and St. Julian.78 Like other Western churchmen around this time—for instance, Germanus of Auxerre or Lucillus of Noricum— Mamertus conducted a major relic translation, partly to buttress his own civic support during the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Until the late fifth century, relic translations were almost unknown in Gaul.79 These novel translations would have involved outdoor public processions of the new relics into church, so they mirror the Rogation Days as a strategy for civic unity. When Gregory of Tours recounts the translation of Ferreolus and Julian, he borrows from Sidonius, but when Gregory wished to depict the origins of Rogationtide, then he stuck to Avitus. Due to the wide influence of Gregory, Avitus underlies virtually all medieval retellings of the fast of Vienne. Medieval martyrologies, for instance, derive their entry for May 11th (Mamertus’ feast day, on the date of his burial rather than his death) from Avitus through mediators like Gregory.80 The preacher is an ideal primary source for medieval and modern authors alike, for his sermons are long, full of details, from Vienne, and by an author who knew Mamertus personally.81 Avitus’ account is perfect. That is why we ought to be suspicious. After all, Ian Wood himself, in his superb book on early medieval hagiography, stresses how untrustworthy seemingly factual stories about saints often are. Medieval writers used legends about a founding bishop or abbot as a weapon in later ecclesiastical debates. As Wood rightly notes, “the purposes of our sources [have] been ignored in earlier, often pious, attempts to construct the Grand Narrative . . . those purposes [can] be best understood by considering 77

Gregory of Tours, Historiae 2.34, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 83; from the eighth century forward, sources regularly link Mamertus and Rogationtide, cf. Liber Historiae Francorum, A.16, MGH SRM 2, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hanover: Hahn, 1885), p. 266; Bede, Martyrologium, May 11, PL 94.910B. 78 Gregory of Tours, Vita Iuliani 2, MGH SRM 1.2, p. 115; cf. Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.1.7, MGH AA 8, p. 104. 79 On the rise of relic translations, Kritzinger, “Christliche Prozessionen,” pp. 38–41. 80 Cf. Martyrology of Saint-Quentin, May 11, PL 94.910; Usuard of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Martyrology, May 11, PL 124.43; Notker Balbulus, Martyrology, May 11, PL 131.1070–1. 81 Some authors cite Avitus directly. For instance, Heiric of Auxerre, Homilarius super euangelium 2.12.154–78, CCCM 116, ed. Richard Quadri (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992); Ado of Vienne, Chronicon, PL 123.102C–102D; Jean Leclercq, “Pour l’histoire de deux processions,” Ephemerides Liturgicae 62 (1948): pp. 83–8.

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the relationship between texts.”82 Studied through this lens, for instance, Tírechán’s hagiography of Patrick c. 670 turns out to supply almost nothing useful about the fifth-century Irish saint, but lots about the jurisdictional struggles between Armagh, Kildare, and Iona during Tírechán’s own lifetime.83 This same logic applies to Avitus’ sermons. Are Avitus’ physical and psychological details evidence of historical accuracy? Late antique chroniclers are usually dull, brief, and matter-of-fact. In contrast, hagiographical romances about St. Andrew in the land of the cannibals and so forth contain novelistic levels of detail. As a native of Vienne and successor to Mamertus as bishop, Avitus had more obvious biases than a correspondent in far-off Clermont. Indeed, as I will demonstrate later in this chapter, Avitus preached his four sermons on Rogationtide as advocacy pieces in an ecclesiastical dispute. Moreover, even if Avitus was an eyewitness, he could not have remembered much about the first Rogationtide.84 Mamertus’ fast occurred around 472, as argued below, when Avitus was a child—for he was born c. 465. His information likely stems from stories that his father Hesychius (Mamertus’ successor as bishop) and others told after Mamertus’ death in 474, with all the dangers of oral traditions. According to Avitus, many still alive at Vienne at the time of his sermon could recall the first Rogationtide. But Avitus never claims he is one of those who remembered it—a pregnant silence.85 Sidonius and Avitus are not independent witnesses. The two men were relatives (perhaps uncle/nephew) and Sidonius’ son (a bishop of Clermont like his father) was Avitus’ most frequent correspondent.86 Avitus knew and imitated Sidonius’ letter collection in his own epistles.87 At times, Avitus’ story of Rogationtide is just an interpretative gloss adapting Sidonius’ difficult Latin.88 The supposedly well-informed eyewitness copied at length from a 82 Wood, The Missionary Life, pp. xi, 248–50; cf. Walter Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550–800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), pp. 235–328. 83 Wood, The Missionary Life, pp. 26–8. 84 Avitus of Vienne, pp. 7–10. 85 Et quidem terrorum temporis illius causas multos nostrum recolere scio . . . seu recolentibus haec seu ignorantibus, Avitus, Hom. 6, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 109.7–8, 111.8–9. 86 Their exact relationship is unclear, but their two families intermarried multiple times between 450 and 550, and both were relatives of the Western Emperor Avitus (455–6) who was born in Clermont; Avitus of Vienne, pp. 4–6, 337–8. 87 Avitus, Ep. 43, 51, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 73, 80; Avitus of Vienne, pp. 27, 62–3, 66. 88 For instance, compare Sidonius’ and Avitus’ descriptions of the fires in Vienne: ciuitas . . . per cuiusque modi prodigiorum terriculamenta uacuabatur. Nam modo scaenae moenium publicorum crebris terrae motibus concutiebantur; nunc ignes sulpure flammati caducas culminum . . . tumulabant . . . nam cum uice quadam ciuitas conflagrare coepisset . . . miraculo terribili nouo invisitato affuit flammae cedere . . . assiduitatem furentis incendii aqua potius oculorum quam fluminum posse restingui . . . fidei stabilitate, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.1.3–5, MGH AA 8, pp. 103–4; siquidem incendia crebra, terrae motus adsidui, nocturni sonitus cuidam totius orbis funeri prodigiosum quoddam bustuale minitabantur . . . Quis enim in crebris ignibus imbres Sodomiticos non timeret? Quis trementibus elementis aut decidua culminum aut disrupta

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letter-writer who admitted that he had only heard secondhand reports. Avitus’ sermons are not more reliable because he is a bishop of Vienne providing a lot of detail; they are less reliable because he is a bishop of Vienne providing a lot of detail. Historians are better off sticking with the only contemporary source they have—Sidonius. Not that Sidonius supplies much information about Mamertus’ actions either. Sidonius’ epistles are intricate literary documents—concerned mainly with impressing their reader with allusions to Latin epics and the Bible. Indeed, a radical skeptic might wonder if the fast of Vienne ever actually occurred. Total incredulity is too extreme, though, for a few reasons. First, it is bizarre to imagine Sidonius writing a letter to Mamertus congratulating the bishop on his fast, if both men knew that the whole tale was a fabrication.89 Second, as described below, the details of the fast in Sidonius’ letters diverge substantially from the later norms of the Rogation Days. With so many differences, why would Sidonius, Avitus, Gregory, and other writers conceive of the fast of Vienne as the first Rogationtide unless some link existed? If the fast of Vienne never occurred, then Sidonius and company could have written an origin myth that fit the later reality more closely. Finally, outside his supposed role in the rise of Rogationtide, Mamertus of Vienne was an inconsequential person. He appears in a handful of nonRogation sources, but only because he signed a few council documents, was miraculously cured by a saint, and had a more famous brother.90 Since Mamertus was so obscure, many Carolingian preachers told better foundation myths connecting the holiday to more authoritative figures like Gregory the Great, a council of bishops, the prophet Jonah, or St. Peter.91 Put simply, the story of Mamertus was unpromising as a legend; it must have contained a drop of truth. Nonetheless, scholars cannot access the events in Vienne c. 472 or the reasons why later writers came to view these circumstances as the creation of a new holiday. Like Avitus’ sermons, Sidonius’ letters are sources for their author’s own anxieties and the affairs of his own congregation—not for Mamertus and the fast of Vienne. Did Mamertus himself think he invented anything at all? Sidonius Apollinaris discusses Rogationtide in two letters, both written in the spring of 473: the year that Sidonius established the feast in his own see at terrarum imminere non crederet? . . . Aedes namque publica . . . ciuitatis . . . flammis terribilibus conflagrare crepusculo coepit . . . calorem fidei suae accendens flumine lacrimarum permissam ignibus potestatem incendio abscedente compescuit; Avitus, Hom. 6, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 109–10; cf. Avitus of Vienne, p. 381. 89 Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.1.1, MGH AA 8.103. 90 Mathisen, Ecclesiastical Factionalism, pp. 173–215, 235–41, 258–9, 274; PCBE pp. 1231–3; Vita Aniani 5, MGH SRM 3, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hanover: Hahn, 1896), p. 110; Gennadius of Marseilles, De uiris illustribus 84, Richardson, p. 90. 91 This phenomenon will be discussed more in Chapter 3.

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Clermont. He alludes to the holiday again in a third letter from the following year. The first epistle urges Aper, an absent friend and wealthy citizen of Clermont, to hurry home in time to celebrate the Rogation Days. Like many Gallo-Roman aristocrats, as the empire collapsed, Aper reacted by getting out of town—probably seeking “a place of refuge” at his fortified mountain estate (castellum) near Autun.92 Other Romans escaped from one city to another within Gaul or even to distant Italy.93 For wealthy Gallo-Romans, retirement was a way to keep safe and comfortable amidst political upheavals. In an epistle written c. 475, for instance, Sidonius worries that, unless God miraculously delivers them, the Visigothic threat may force the entire population of Clermont to migrate to Marseilles.94 Multiple letters in Sidonius’ collection encourage aristocrats to leave their secluded villas and become more involved in civic life; an earlier epistle to Aper, for example, presses the aristocrat to return as safe castella exist close to Clermont.95 Sidonius’ Rogation letter to Aper reveals that the bishop planned his introduction of the new holiday carefully. Sidonius ensured that Aper— and presumably other local elites—knew the story of Mamertus, and the Clermont bishop organized the celebration enough in advance that he had time to send a courier to search for absent citizens.96 Sidonius’ second epistle on Rogationtide was sent to Mamertus himself, to inform the bishop that Sidonius has instituted the feast’s celebration in Clermont on the model of Vienne.97 In both of these letters, Sidonius acknowledged that he was not in Vienne at the time of its fast, but had found out about “this most awe-inspiring precedent and most beneficial trial” secondhand.98 Sidonius had abundant opportunity to learn of the event, because he visited Vienne multiple times during Mamertus’ episcopacy, probably owned property nearby, and corresponded with at least four citizens there.99 Consider, for instance, Sidonius’ third letter mentioning the Rogation Days. The bishop sent this epistle to his uncle Thaumastus, a prominent inhabitant of 92 With a Vergilian echo: an fortasse montana sedes circum castella et in eligenda sede perfugii quandam pateris ex munitionum frequentia difficultatem, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 5.14, MGH AA 8, p. 87. 93 Ralph W. Mathisen, Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul: Strategies for Survival in an Age of Transition (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1993), pp. 58–66; Waarden, Writing to Survive, vol. 1, pp. 339–41, 374–8. 94 Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.7.6, MGH AA 8, p. 111. 95 Terrena uillis, saxosa castellis, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 4.21.5, MGH AA 8, p. 72; cf. Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 1.6, 2.1, 8.8, MGH AA 8, p. 8, 21, 134; PCBE pp. 158–9. 96 Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 4.12, 5.14.1, MGH AA 8, pp. 71, 87. 97 Waarden, Writing to Survive, vol. 1, pp. 69–126. 98 Mamertus pater et pontifex, reuerendissimo exemplo, utilissimo experimento inuenit, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 5.14.2, MGH AA 8, p. 87; cf. Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.1.6, MGH AA 8, p. 104. 99 Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 4.11.7, 5.6, 5.7, 7.15, MGH AA 8, pp. 63, 81–3, 122; Harries, Sidonius Apollinaris, pp. 49, 105–14, 137–9, 190–1, 226–30; PCBE pp. 481–4, 1688, 1867–8.

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Vienne. Sidonius intimates familiarity with customs in Vienne. The bishop lambasts some new money upstarts who had wormed into the confidence of Chilperic, a Burgundian king who the desperate emperor Glycerius had just named magister militum of Gaul. The empire’s weakness had thrown the social hierarchy off kilter, so that these social-climbers “whispered secret poisonous slanders” to Chilperic against the old aristocrats: that is, against Sidonius’ own relatives.100 Sidonius jokes the poor manners of these parvenus “drunk on their new wealth,” who “wear white at a funeral procession, furs in church, mourning clothes at the wedding march, beaver pelts to the litaniae.”101 Sidonius acknowledges various ceremonial marches in Vienne. Proper comportment at these processions signaled good breeding to him. Strikingly, Sidonius employs litania nowhere else in his letters. Is it only a coincidence that his one usage of a word so associated with a Viennois march comes in a letter to a Viennois aristocrat? If one takes his satire at all literally, then Sidonius had witnessed or heard described bad behavior at a Rogation procession in Vienne. Sidonius never states when in Mamertus’ long episcopacy (c. 452–74) the fast of Vienne occurred.102 But 471 or 472 is the likely date. In his 473 letter to Mamertus, Sidonius speaks as if he eagerly introduced the feast to Clermont soon after learning of it; if so, then the events were still recent.103 Moreover, Sidonius does not mention Rogationtide in his letters to or about Mamertus’ energetic brother Claudianus, a priest-theologian in Vienne.104 The reverse is also true: Claudianus’ name appears in none of the letters about Rogationtide. Sidonius and Claudianus had a warm relationship. Not only were they regular correspondents, but also Claudianus had catechized Sidonius before baptism and Sidonius visited his friend in Vienne multiple times. Sidonius even wrote a eulogy for the priest, where he asserts that Claudianus assisted his brother Mamertus as chorbishop in all pastoral duties.105 If Claudianus still lived, Sidonius would almost certainly have described the priest’s pastoral role in the creation of the holiday and perhaps even written to Claudianus about it. Therefore, the first Rogationtide probably occurred after Claudianus’ death in 471/472.106 Sidonius could not have introduced the feast to Clermont for at least a year, because his letter notes that “all the people [of Clermont and other Gallic

100

Mathisen, Roman Aristocrats, pp. 68–75, 125–31. Relatu uenenato quorumpiam sceleratorum fuisse secreto insusurratum, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 5.6.2, MGH AA 8, p. 81; nouis opibus ebrii . . . albati ad exsequias, pelliti ad ecclesias, pullati ad nuptias, castorinati ad litanias, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 5.7.4, MGH AA 8, p. 82; Avitus of Vienne, pp. 208–10. 102 Mathisen, “Episcopal Hierarchy,” pp. 135–7. 103 Sedulo petens . . . exempla transmisit, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.1.6, MGH AA 8, p. 104. 104 Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 4.2, 4.3, 4.11, 5.2, MGH AA 8, pp. 53–4, 62–3, 79. 105 Antistes . . . in secundo, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 4.11.5–6, MGH AA 8, p. 63. 106 Avitus of Vienne, pp. 383–4; Waarden, Writing to Survive, vol. 1, p. 93–4. 101

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churches] know what befell the Viennois before the feast and what no longer occurred after.”107 According to Sidonius, the sudden end of Vienne’s series of cataclysms had turned heads, but only once sufficient time passed to attest to the change. The fast of Vienne likely occurred within a narrow window of time. Mamertus organized the fast of Vienne in 471 or 472. Impressed with the results, the church at Clermont adopted the feast a year or two after. In his letters, Sidonius explains the supposed reasons why Mamertus held the fast and, more reliably, the reasons Sidonius decided to bring Rogationtide to Clermont. According to Sidonius’ narrative, Vienne had been “abandoned, for its outer walls shook with frequent earthquakes, as fire and brimstone entombed collapsing roofs in heaping piles of ash; the city emptied, as the rich and poor citizens fled alike.”108 Many inhabitants—perhaps aristocratic refugees like Aper—left town with their homes in ruins.109 The vacant streets filled up as “brazen deer—eerily tamed—den themselves in the city forum.”110 Despair reigned, almost overwhelming Mamertus himself.111 An inferno nearly killed the bishop—allegedly while at a church service in front of his congregation—but Mamertus’ trust in God rescued him. Sidonius never asserts that anyone died in the earthquakes or fires; he remarks solely on property damage. No one feared the deer would attack. Their unnatural gentleness (mansuetudo) was a menacing omen. Bishop Mamertus put out one blaze without any bodily harm. If Sidonius had wanted to stress the devastation of the city, body count could have strengthened his rhetoric. Instead, Sidonius’ story is about peril, not death. While these natural disasters themselves harrowed, Sidonius maintains that the people of Clermont considered them “frightening prodigies” and “divine warnings,” foreboding some greater coming punishment.112 In Sidonius’ depiction, the events troubled Mamertus and his congregants less than the meaning behind the events. Sidonius paints Mamertus much like a Roman pontiff interpreting 107 Quae omnia sciens populus iste Viennensibus tuis et accidisse prius et non accessisse posterius, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.1.6, MGH AA 8, p. 104. 108 Ciuitas . . . uacuabatur. Nam modo scaenae moenium publicorum crebris terrae motibus concutiebantur; nunc ignes sulpure flammati caducas culminum cristas superiecto fauillarum monte tumulabant . . . discessu primorum populariumque statu urbis exinanito, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.1.3, MGH AA 8, p. 103; cf. Ep. 3.2, 7.7.2, MGH AA 8, pp. 40, 110; Avitus and Gregory of Tours gloss scaenae moenium publicorum (“the facade of the public walls”) with aedes publica and palatium regale respectively. But Sidonius likely meant the outer walls of Clermont, for he refers to these city walls earlier in the letter. Pace Waarden, Writing to Survive, vol. 1, pp. 98–9. 109 Cf. Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.7.6, MGH AA 8, p. 111; Mathisen, Roman Aristocrats, pp. 58–66; Waarden, Writing to Survive, vol. 1, pp. 339–41, 374–8. 110 Nunc stupenda foro cubilia collocabat audacium pauenda mansuetudo ceruorum, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.1.3, MGH AA 8, p. 103. 111 Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.1.3–4, MGH AA 8, p. 103. 112 Prodigiorum terriculamenta . . . ne diuinae admonitioni tua quoque desperatio conuiciaretur . . . non fuere uel damna calamitati uel ostenta formidini, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.1.3, 6, MGH AA 8, pp. 103–4.

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a meteor shower or the birth of a two-headed calf for the Republic. As a good Roman spiritual leader, the bishop had the clerical duty of explaining the portents and advising the people how they could expiate the bad omen.113 Next, Mamertus supposedly preached a sermon explicating the signs to the citizenry. Sidonius places this homily in the saint’s mouth, but there is no reason to assume that Sidonius knew what Mamertus taught in 472—if Mamertus taught anything at all. More likely, the sermon reveals how Sidonius himself preached at the holiday once he established the march at Clermont. The homily describes how the citizens of Vienne—or Clermont— had sinned against God; “neither punishment nor forgiveness was far away.”114 Prayer, fasting, psalmody, and tears of repentance could prevent the city from becoming a desolation (solitudo). Such warnings illustrate Sidonius’ fear of deurbanization and mass exodus. According to Sidonius, Mamertus originally required that only the clergy keep the fast.115 But soon, he extended the fast to the laity. At first just a “mob of poor obeyed” Mamertus in the repentance, as they were the only people left in town. The upper class had fled to the safety of their country villas and strongholds. Finally, seemingly after a couple days, as much from social pressure as from piety, the elites returned to Vienne and joined the penance.116 “God was propitiated by this devotion” and stopped the natural portents immediately. The peace and civic solidarity that Vienne experienced after the Rogation Days impressed the citizens of other towns in Gaul. Sidonius’ letters on the Rogation Days are literary; the line separating fact from rhetorical flourish blurs. For instance, Sidonius’ letter to Mamertus alludes repeatedly to Lucan’s portrayal of Caesar’s march on Rome in his epic poem on the civil war.117 One wonders if Sidonius conjured certain details to strengthen the parallels and fit the Rogation Days into the long tradition of Roman ritual. In Lucan, portents such as fire, earthquake, and wild animals in the forum terrify the inhabitants of Rome—just as similar prodigies shocked the Viennois. Most of the senate and people of Rome alike flee the city, knowing conquest and tyranny approaches. Those remaining perform a 113

Waarden, Writing to Survive, vol. 1, pp. 96–7; Filotas, Pagan Survivals, pp. 47–9, 223–46. Exponis omnibus nec poenam longinquam esse nec ueniam, Sidonius Apollinaris, ep. 7.1.5, MGH AA 8, p. 104. 115 Igitur primum nostri ordinis uiris et his paucis indicis ieiunia interdicis flagitia . . . solitudinis minas, Sidonius Apollinaris, ep. 7.1.5, MGH AA 8.104; Waarden, Writing to Survive, vol. 1, p. 110. 116 Confestim sequax humilis turba consilii maioribus quoque suis fuit incitamento, quos cum non piguisset fugere, redire non puduit. Qua deuotione placatus inspector pectorum deus, Sidonius Apollinaris, ep. 7.1.6, MGH AA 8, p. 104. 117 Compare, for instance: siluis que feras sub nocte relictis/audaces media posuisse cubilia Roma, Lucan, Bellum Ciuile 1.559–60, ed. D. R. Shackleton-Bailey (Leipzig: Teubner, 1988); nunc stupenda foro cubilia collocabat audacium pauenda mansuetudo ceruorum, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.1.3, MGH AA 8, p. 103; Waarden, Writing to Survive, vol. 1, p. 74–7, 102–3. 114

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propitiatory lustration around the walls of Rome, to purify the city and ward off the bad omens. In Lucan’s poem, the expiation proves useless to stop Caesar. But, then, Sidonius collected and published his seventh book of letters (containing the story of Mamertus) after 477, when he knew that the Rogation Days did not thwart the Visigothic conquest of Clermont either. Through these classical allusions, Sidonius represents Vienne as an avatar of the city of Rome and the Gothic armies as Caesar: an archetypal Roman tyrant in the mind of a senator like Sidonius.118 The violence is less an invasion than a civil war, pitting Roman cities against federate troops which had once fought for the empire.119 Sidonius Apollinaris also compares Vienne’s action to the fast of Nineveh in Jonah 3.120 Like the prophet Jonah, Mamertus had warned a sinful city of its impending destruction, and all the people from the least to the greatest entered a multi-day fast of repentance to save the community. The third chapter of Jonah became a lectionary reading for Rogationtide almost immediately, perhaps due to Sidonius’ influence.121 Mamertus likely never intended this biblical parallel. Nothing suggests that the citizens of Vienne dressed in sackcloth and ashes, although such garb is central in the book of Jonah. Sidonius’ interest in the deer emulates the biblical passage’s concern with Nineveh’s livestock.122 The Ninevites also never progressed, carried no sacred objects (i.e. crosses, relics), sang no songs, fasted for forty days, and celebrated only once, rather than annually.123 By 500, in contrast, Rogationtide always included a three-day procession and fast. Interestingly, Sidonius never states that Mamertus led a procession, only mentioning fasting and prayers (rogationes, supplicationes).124 Nor does he refer to singing and psalmody: indispensable to any liturgical procession. The version of Rogationtide that Sidonius introduced to Clermont a year or two later, though, certainly

118

Cf. Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 1.5.7, MGH AA 8, p. 7. Sidonius had formerly held a positive view of Visigothic federates, cf. Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 1.2, MGH AA 8, pp. 2–3. 120 Ad noua celer ueterum Niniuitarum exempla decurristi, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.1.3, MGH AA 8, p. 103. 121 Alban Dold, Das ältesten Liturgiebuch der lateinischen Kirche: ein altgallikanisches Lektionar des 5./6. Jhs aus dem Wolfenbütteler Palimpsest-Codex Weissenburgensis 76 (Beuron: Beuroner Kunstverlag, 1936), pp. xxxvi–xxxix, 1–6, 15–21; Old, Reading and Preaching, vol. 3, p. 84; cf. Eusebius Gallicanus, Serm. 26.1–3, 26.27–8; Avitus, Hom. 6, 7, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 111, 113; Caesarius, Serm. 143. 122 Cf. Jon. 3:7–8, 4:11. 123 The LXX and Vetus Latinus versions of Jonah claim the fast of Nineveh was three days long, rather than forty; Thomas N. Hall and Nathan J. Ristuccia, “A Rogationtide Sermon from Eleventh-Century Salisbury,” Revue Bénédictine 123 (2013): pp. 51–2; Yves-Marie Duval, Le Livre de Jonas dans la littérature chrétienne grecque et latine. Sources et influence du commentaire sur Jonas de saint Jérôme (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1973), vol. 1, pp. 45–7. 124 Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 5.14.1–2, 7.1.2–3, 7, MGH AA 8, pp. 87, 103; Waarden, Writing to Survive, vol. 1, pp. 120–4. 119

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encompassed psalmody and likely marching as well.125 Perhaps Rogationtide did not originally involve a procession, but gradually acquired this feature after a few years due to the older Roman tradition of penitential marches. Regardless, the similarities between Vienne and Nineveh are more literary than historical; they reveal how Sidonius imagined the feast and likely how he conducted it in his own diocese, but little about the fast of Vienne. Sidonius’ description of the prodigies inspire similar objections. The earthquakes, fire, falling ash, and smell of sulfur may imply that a volcano had erupted near Vienne. But, more likely, Sidonius shaped his depiction of the natural calamities in order to mirror the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. When God leveled these two wicked cities, he “rained down brimstone and fire from the sky . . . [until] the ash rose up over the earth like the smoke of furnace.”126 The destruction of Sodom with fire and brimstone became the archetypal judgment of a city both for later biblical books and for Patristic authors. Combined with an earthquake, the fire, brimstone, and ash sound apocalyptic, as if the end of the world had come first to Vienne. Otherworldly cataclysms stand in for the much more human dread terrifying Roman cities all over Gaul: the Visigothic armies. Sidonius’ letter, then, casts Clermont and Vienne as hanging between the fates of two cities—Nineveh and Sodom—with its doom dependent on how the people respond to God. These two biblical cities are just one of the multiple binaries that structure Sidonius’ letter: the rich and the poor, the clergy and the laity, the walled city and the countryside, people and animals, wild and tame, natural behavior and miracle. While these binaries allow a compelling story, they prevent historians from getting behind Sidonius’ rhetoric to what occurred in Vienne in that crucial year. Nevertheless, Sidonius’ letters are superb sources for the establishment of Rogationtide in Clermont itself. Sidonius Apollinaris ought to be considered the true inventor of Rogationtide. After all, Sidonius was the first person to envision that the Rogation Days could be an annual holiday all over, rather than a minor fast in one see for one year only. In his two decades as bishop, Sidonius instituted many changes to the liturgy at Clermont, including introducing the Rogation Days due to Visigothic threat.127 By 473, Clermont was one of the last bastions of Roman power in Gaul.128 In his letters, Sidonius complained about the military peril and described Clermont as “the only hindrance” Ieiunatur, oratur, psallitur, fletur, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 5.14.3, MGH AA 8, p. 87. Igitur dominus pluit super Sodomam et Gomorrham sulphur et ignem a domino de caelo . . . ascendentem fauillam de terra quasi fornacis fumum, Gen. 19:24, 28; cf. Luke 17:29; Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.1.3, MGH AA 8, p. 103. 127 For other liturgical changes, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.3, 8.15, MGH AA 8, pp. 106, 147; Vita Aniani 5, MGH SRM 3, p. 110; Gregory of Tours, Historiae 2.22, Vita Patrum 3.1, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 67, 1.2, p. 223; Sacramentary of Gellone 3043. 128 Harries, Sidonius Apollinaris, pp. 222–3; Goldberg, “The Fall of the Roman Empire,” pp. 1–15. 125 126

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to Visigothic control from the Atlantic to the Rhône.129 Sidonius believed that the sins of his people had brought divine chastisement and propitiated their misdeeds—as a dutiful Roman pontiff ought.130 Visigothic power convinced at least one other Gallic bishop to behave almost identically around this time—as a sermon from the Eusebius Gallicanus collection testifies.131 The Eusebius Gallicanus is a group of over eighty anonymous sermons that were compiled into a homiliary in the early sixth century. The sermons stem from centers in southeastern Gaul, such as Riez, Arles, Lérins, and Lyon; they differ widely in date (c. 425–525). One of the sermons is a Rogation address delivered a year or two after the Visigothic conquest of Provence: that is, in 477 or 478.132 The preacher mentions that Rogationtide was still new to his congregation and contrasted it with “the public festivals of the olden days.”133 Those stemmed from “private piety,” but Rogationtide is from the city’s “single mind and concord.” A few years before, the preacher had established the three-day procession in order to atone for their communal sins and avert divine punishments: drought, plague, hail, and Gothic conquest are mentioned.134 The feast attempted to preserve the liberty of a Roman city through divine protection. “Whoever does not feel responsible [to fast],” warns the preacher, “steals from the collective.”135 Regardless, disaster arrived, as the anonymous preacher admits. For now, a few years later, the Visigoths had subjugated his city. Like the Eusebius Gallicanus preacher, Sidonius had hoped that the Rogation Days, rather than the crumbling bulwarks of the city, would be Clermont’s last line of defense.136 If so, the processions failed. After years of raiding, the Visigothic king Euric conquered Clermont in 475 and exiled Sidonius to a fortress near Carcassonne. In the end, Sidonius was forced to follow many Gallic aristocrats before him (e.g. Aper, the Viennois elites, the new money

129

Nos miseri Aruerni ianua sumus . . . de nostra tantum obice, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.1.1, MGH AA 8, p. 103. 130 Cf. Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.11.2, MGH AA 8, p. 118. 131 For the collection, see Lisa Karen Bailey, Christianity’s Quiet Success: The Eusebius Gallicanus Sermon Collection and the Power of the Church in Late Antique Gaul (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010); Mathisen, Roman Aristocrats, pp. 119–21. 132 Bailey is agnostic on whether two consecutive sermons—one on the litaniis and the other on the fast of Nineveh—are for Rogationtide. But since their preacher mentions a three-day fast, apotropaic prayer, almsgiving, sexual abstinence, and Nineveh, the holiday is so similar to Rogationtide that it can be no other; Eusebius Gallicanus, Serm. 25, 26; Bailey, Christianity’s Quiet Success, pp. 18–19, 32–6, 50–1, 90–2, 99–102, 131–4. 133 Sicut priore tempore festis publicis priuata deuotio totum annum commendatura successit, ita etiam nunc a triduanis supplicationibus uno animo pari que consensu, Eusebius Gallicanus, Serm. 25.1–8. 134 Eusebius Gallicanus, Serm. 25.9–14, 25–45. 135 Inter haec autem ille se ab oblatione communi reddat alienum, qui se his periculis non sentit obnoxium, Eusebius Gallicanus, Serm. 25.15–16. 136 For deteriorating fortifications, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.1.2, MGH AA 8, p. 103.

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upstarts cozying up to the Burgundians) by cutting deals with the new rulers and by abandoning the traditional Roman cities for the comparative safety of rural castella. Although Euric freed Sidonius a year later, he never reacquired political power, struggled to maintain control over his church’s property, and spent the rest of his life publishing his letter collection, reduced to a local literary figure.137 The Viennois church fared no better. By 474, Mamertus was dead and the city had become one of the Burgundian capitals, with a rival Arian bishop and a barbarian sub-king in residence.138 The independence of both sees was gone. Understandably, some impoverished Gallo-Roman Christians—left with little more than life and lack of exile now that the Visigoths had vanquished— complained “how did penance profit us before, what good did contrition do?”139 They felt the Rogation Days were not worth continuing; it had failed to prevent the Gothic takeover and was a penitential nuisance with no clear benefits. The Eusebius Gallicanus cleric preached his Rogation sermon in order to persuade his congregation to retain the holiday. He lamely insisted to his congregation that the holiday had worked and thus God had caused the Visigoths to capture the city without much violence. Thanks to the Rogation Days, the Visigoths were civilized “Roman barbarians.”140 An atmosphere of suspicion, aristocratic conflict, and Gallo-Roman powerlessness pervades Sidonius’ two 474 letters about his uncle Thaumastus in Vienne. After Mamertus’ death, the city had deteriorated and even the litaniae had become a mockery.141 Elites there did not even bother to wear penitential garb—probably because they felt the feast was pointless and ineffectual. When Sidonius collected and published his letters in the 480s, he likely included letters devoted to the Rogation Days in order to combat those critics in Gaul who urged towns to abandon the seemingly useless feast. For Rogationtide to endure as a feast, churchmen had to repurpose it now that its original goal was gone. In 473, though, hope still remained for Sidonius and his flock. Continuing Romanness depended on God, not man. Even if the emperor was helpless, God might deliver his cities, if they repented. Like the Eusebius Gallicanus preacher, Sidonius Apollinaris contrasts Rogationtide with the public prayers 137

Gregory of Tours, Historiae 2.23, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 68. Philip Grierson and Michael Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage I: the Early Middle Ages (5th–10th Centuries) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 74–5; Avitus of Vienne, pp. 208–10; Gregory of Tours, Historiae 2.33, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 80. 139 Quid nobis profuit ante laborasse et uires cordis nostri in gemitus et lacrimas profudisse . . . quid nobis profuit orasse et tota spiritus contritione laborasse, Eusebius Gallicanus, Serm. 25.17–50; Mathisen, Roman Aristocrats, pp. 119–21. 140 Romano ad te animo uenit qui barbarus putabatur, et ex omni parte conclusa romana barbaries . . . propter te donatur uictori incruenta felicitas, Eusebius Gallicanus, Serm. 25.40–5, 64–6. 141 Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 5.6–5.7, MGH AA 8, pp. 81–2. 138

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that were already known in Gaul. “There were earlier public prayers,” Sidonius states, “that were uncertain, lukewarm, rare, and often interrupted for lunchtime.”142 These older rites, moreover, had “beseeched especially for rain and good weather so that the potter and the gardener could not agree.” As Sidonius jokes, wet weather is good for farmers but bad for potters, so local communities could not pray for the same thing. Rogationtide, in contrast, is “a feast of bowed heads, a sigh-filled gathering of the prostrate citizens.” Sidonius’ point is plain. Mere weather was divisive; the city disagreed about what qualified as good. All Romans could celebrate the Rogation Days, because the feast prayed against natural portents like earthquakes, fire, and brimstone, and against Germanic raids capable of threatening the whole city. Sidonius called on all citizens—farmers, artisans, and far-off aristocrats like Aper—to come together in repentance before God. Modern scholars often view Rogationtide as a fertility ritual of blessing the crops in continuity with older pagan rites.143 Even some later medieval authors subscribed to this rites-of-spring theory, as will be discussed in Chapter 2.144 But medieval Rogation preachers and their congregations feared all sorts of threats: plague, war, murrain, earthquake, wild animals, demons, spiritual dangers.145 “Their most pressing concern was simply not to be dead.”146 Over time, agrarian concerns may have increased: partly because James 5:16–20 became the Rogation epistle lection.147 For this passage— originally a lection for the Roman Greater Litany—tells how the prophet Elijah prayed successfully for rain after the people’s sin brought a three-year drought. Medieval clergymen believed that the Roman Great Litany focused

142

Erant quidem prius . . . uagae tepentes infrequentesque utque sic dixerim oscitabundae supplicationes, quae saepe interpellantum prandiorum obicibus hebetabantur, maxime aut imbres aut serenitatem deprecaturae; ad quas, ut nil amplius dicam, figulo pariter atque hortuloni non oportuit conuenire . . . ad haec te festa ceruicum humiliatarum et sternacium ciuium suspiriosa contubernia peto, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 5.14.2–3, MGH AA 8, p. 87; cf. Eusebius Gallicanus, Serm. 25.1–5; Rupert of Deutz, De Diuinis Officiis 9.471–80, CCCM 7, ed. Rhabanus Haacke, (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967), p. 311. 143 For instance, André Vauchez, The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices, ed. Daniel E. Bornstein, trans. Margery J. Schneider (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), pp. 129–39; Jacques Le Goff, Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 159–88. 144 Cf. Nathan, “The Rogation Ceremonies,” pp. 285–6; The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts, EETS o.s. 300, ed. D. G. Scragg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 11.1–7, 12.1–12. 145 Homiliary of Angers 19, in Aidan Conti, Preaching Scripture and Apocrypha: A Previously Unidentified Homiliary in an Old English Manuscript (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 2004), pp. 263–4; Avitus, Hom. 7, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 113.5–8, 116.34–40; Caesarius, Serm. 208.2; Gregory of Tours, Historiae 9.21, 10.30, In Gloria Martyrum 90, Vita Patrum 4.4, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 441, 525, 1.2, pp. 98, 226; Vita Nicetii 6, MGH SRM 3, p. 522. 146 Jeremy Harte, “Rethinking Rogationtide,” Third Stone 42 (2002): p. 30. 147 For such agrarian concerns, Amalarius of Metz, On the Liturgy 1.37, ed. Eric Knibbs (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), vol. 1, p. 334.

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on agricultural threats, but that Rogationtide was more of a catch-all.148 Moreover, penitential prayers asking for deliverance from bad weather are not blessings and should not be equated with them.149 Sidonius reveals that, at least at first, Rogationtide had no connection to agriculture. The feast in Clermont, at the Eusebius Gallicanus church, and perhaps also in Vienne was radically novel, directed against divine prodigies and fear of chastisement through natural disasters or war—not against barren fields. Instead, communal solidarity and repentance was central. The entire Roman city, both rich and poor, both clergy and laity, joined in the prayer and fasting together. Notably, late antique Rogation sermons stress to the wealthy their duty of almsgiving.150 They highlight the self-abasement of the rich and the need for clerical intercession.151 As historian Christina Pössel has emphasized, medieval rituals allowed for external consensus while tolerating a high-level private dissent.152 The “solemn frame” meant that people could either disrupt the ceremony outright (as Mamertus allegedly feared the wealthy landowners would) or fully participate (as they ended up doing). No middle option—of nuancing and qualifying where one agreed and disagreed—endured. A notable like Aper could confess his sins, physically debase himself, and submit to episcopal authority—or else, he could refuse to return and show himself a traitor. But no one could half participate; no one could join without implying bodily that the city trumped all private interests. When Sidonius disparaged those elites in Vienne who refused at first to do penance, were wealthy skeptics in Clermont itself on his mind?153 The Rogation procession was a moment of communitas: a ritual leveling of social ranks that occurs at the limen (threshold) of normal life.154 For a few days, the feast suspended and even flipped the city hierarchy; paupers and beleaguered churchmen imposed penance on the absent aristocracy who had deserted and thus betrayed the town. Rogationtide specified both what should be within the town (the entire population, even those who have already fled) and what should not be in the 148 Ps-Alcuin, De diuinis officiis 22–3, PL 101.1225A–1225B; Ps-Bede, De Officiis, PL 94.537A–537B; Liber Quare quaestio 104; Jussi Hanska, “Late Medieval Catastrophe Sermons: Vanishing Tradition or Common Custom?,” Medieval Sermon Studies 45 (2001): pp. 58–74; Hanska, Strategies of Sanity and Survival, pp. 48–50, 68–80, 109, 121, 125–6, 138. 149 The penitential language of Rogation sermons dwarfs the occasional references to blessings; cf. Bazire and Cross 3.21–9, 8.110–14, Eleven Old English Rogationtide Homilies, ed. Joyce Bazire and James E. Cross (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982). 150 For instance, Eusebius Gallicanus, Serm. 25.34–5; Caesarius, Serm. 26.5, 143.1, 146.1, 148.3, 158.5, 209.4; Gregory of Tours, Historiae 2.34, 9.21, 10.30, MGH SRM, 1.1, pp. 83, 441, 525. 151 Eusebius Gallicanus, Serm. 25.15–16, 26.4–16; cf. Caesarius, Serm. 143.1, 207.3, 208.3. 152 Pössel, “The Magic of Early Medieval Ritual,” pp. 122–4. 153 Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 7.1.6, MGH AA 8, p. 104. 154 Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 94–7, 106–10, 131–2, 176–8, 202–3; Taylor, A Secular Age, pp. 46–51, 124.

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town (forest animals and Goths). The ritual marked the bounds between urban and rural, civilized and wild, the Roman city and the lands of Germanic kings outside. Rogationtide in fifth-century Gaul had little to do with rural popular Christianity and a great deal to do with the tensions within Gallo-Roman urban centers at a time of societal change. The polis was the backbone of classical Mediterranean civilization. But, in the fifth century, cities like Clermont and Vienne waned. Multiple threats suffocated them—not only barbarian invasion and natural cataclysms, but also class struggle, the breakdown of government and military infrastructure, deurbanization, and chiliastic fears. The first Rogation Days were one attempt to supply a ritual solution to these problems—to fortify cities of God against the strangling barbarism around them, to preserve Romanness even as Rome fell. From the start, this feast demarcated, but originally it separated Romans from barbarians, not Christians from pagans.155 Created to defend the traditional communal form of the dying Roman ciuitates, Rogationtide failed. But in its failure, it laid the boundaries of a new kind of Christian community.

FABLING ROGATIONTIDE The sermons of Avitus of Vienne depict this transition as work; they illustrate how one churchman imbued the Rogation Days with new meaning once their original Roman purpose was lost. By the time Avitus wrote at the start of the sixth century, the Rogation Days already differed greatly from bishopric to bishopric. Early medieval clergymen rarely worried about such ritual diversity, for they acknowledged outright the post-apostolic origins of familiar worship practices.156 As long as local customs did not contradict scripture or the universal traditions of the church, early medieval authors, for the most part, approved of such customs. The locus classicus for this attitude was Gregory the Great’s wide-quoted aphorism “diverse customs do not hinder the single faith of the church.”157 Or, as Augustine famously quipped while speaking of 155 The Visigothic and Burgundian leadership, after all, and likely many rank and file were Christians, although usually Arian ones. 156 For instance, Alcuin, Ep. 143–4, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH Epp. 4 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1895), pp. 224–30; Amalarius, On the Liturgy 1.7.1–2, 1.37.1–3, Knibbs, vol. 1, pp. 66–8, 332; Ratramnus of Corbie, Contra Graecorum opposita 4.2–3, PL 121.306–22; Walahfrid Strabo, De Exordiis 23–7, Harting-Correa, pp. 127–68, 176; Paul Meyvaert, “Diversity within Unity, a Gregorian Theme,” Heythrop Journal 4 (1963): pp. 141–61. 157 In una fide nil officit ecclesiae sanctae consuetudo diuersa, Gregory I, Ep. 1.41, 9.26, MGH Epp. 1, p. 58, 2, p. 59; cf. Council of Worms (868), 34, Concilia 4.A, p. 277; Liber Quare, Additio 1.196; Cassiodorus-Epiphanius, Historia Tripartita 9.37–9, ed. Walter Jacob and Rudolf Hanslik, CSEL 71 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1952); Ratramnus of Corbie, Contra Graecorum Opposita 1.2,

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liturgical rites, “when in Rome, do as the Romans do.”158 Churchmen worried more about diversity in praxis on the diocesan level than on the international level.159 Early medieval clerics believed that each locality—particularly, each diocese—must employ the same worship practices, but it was fine if those practices were unique to just that single region. For instance, in his liturgical commentary, Isidore of Seville insisted that “whatever is not contrary to faith or good morals is indifferent and ought to be preserved for the sake of partnership with those who live there lest different rites beget schism.”160 Avitus of Vienne, however, did not approve this easy-going attitude. While Avitus’ sermons for Rogationtide may not contain any trustworthy new details about Mamertus’ fast, they reveal how Mamertus’ successor imbued new meaning into the holiday once its original purpose failed and barbarian rulers subjugated the last Roman ciuitates. For Avitus of Vienne, unvarying liturgical customs guarded Christian unity in the volatile post-Roman world. The procession now embodied the Christian church, rather than the Roman city. Indeed, Avitus delivered and published his four Rogation sermons partly in order to combat the liturgical variability that marked the Rogation Days. For Avitus, ritual diversity was incongruous, because—he claimed—Vienne preserved the pure and original format for the Rogation Days from Mamertus down to Avitus’ own day. The founder’s own rite was a rule of practice: an authoritative transmission from the past. Loyalty to the bishop’s see replaced loyalty to the Roman city. As archbishop, Avitus was an activist. Beyond his administrative and liturgical duties, Avitus composed almost a hundred letters, multiple theological treatises, and a lengthy biblical epic. Avitus corresponded with the chief churchmen and monarchs of his day, and even served as an advisor to Gundobad, the king of the Burgundians—despite Gundobad’s confirmed Arianism.161 Avitus promoted missions to pagans and Arians, debated theology in public disputations, led Vienne’s citizens during several invasions and bloody sieges, ransomed captives, 4.1–4.2, PL 121.228, 303–11; Bede, Ecclesiastical History 1.27.5–6, SChr 489, p. 210; Ratherius of Verona, Serm. 5.4; Nicholas I, Ep. 86, ed. E. Dümmler et al, MGH Epp. 6 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1925), p. 451. 158 This Medieval Latin proverb (si fueris romae, romano uiuito more; si fueris alibi, uiuito sicut ibi) is paraphrased from an Augustinian letter: cum romam uenio, ieiuno sabbato; cum hic sum, non ieiuno; Augustine, Ep. 54.1–3, 55.2, ed. A. Goldbacher, CSEL 34.2 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1898). Cf. Ambrose, De Sacramentis 3.1.5, CSEL 73, ed. O. Faller (Vienna: Tempsky, 1955). 159 The church hierarchy did not suppress any local liturgies until the eleventh century. Cf. Boniface, Ep. 87, ed. Michael Tangl, MGH Epp. Sel. 1 (Berlin: 1916), p. 198; Notker Balbulus, Gesta Karoli Magni 1.10, 2.7, ed. Hans F. Haefele, MGH SRG n.s. 12 (Berlin: 1959), pp. 12–13, 58. 160 Quod enim neque contra fidem, neque contra mores bonos habetur, indifferenter sequendum, et propter eorum inter quos uiuitur societatem seruandum est, ne per diuersitatem obseruationum scismata generentur, Isidore, De Ecclesiasticis Officiis 1.44.2; cf. Isidore, Etymologiae 15.2.1–2; Isidore adapts this passage from Augustine. 161 Avitus, Ep. 7, 22, 31, 46, MGH AA 6.2.2, pp. 35, 55–6, 62, 75–6; Avitus of Vienne, pp. 163–6, 362–73.

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and played a key role in the conversion of two Germanic kings: Clovis I and Gundobad’s son Sigismund. Avitus also gathered and published a collection of “homilies for different times of year” early in the sixth century, sending copies of the homiliary to various allies (amici).162 The sermons reveal what Avitus thought should be the norm for Rogation preaching. In Latin, the earliest sermon collections were grouped by the scripture passages interpreted: for instance, Chromatius of Aquileia’s sermons on Matthew. Homiliaries organized around the liturgical year only arose in the late fifth-century Gaul, after the appearance of set lectionaries.163 Avitus’ homiliary is an early member of this genre and it encompasses almost all the key liturgical feasts of the year. The bishop promulgated the homiliary to furnish model sermons for clergy within the archdiocese of Vienne and beyond. The collection included the four Rogation sermons—a complete cycle for the holiday. Only the first two survive complete.164 In his first Rogation homily, Avitus avers that the city of Vienne celebrated Rogationtide during his episcopacy—and according to Avitus, under Mamertus as well—from Rogation Eve on Ascension Thursday to the following Sunday. While some scholars have assumed that Avitus was confused and meant the same pre-Ascension days used in Francia, no normative dating for the Rogation Days existed in the early sixth century.165 Moreover, Avitus interprets the Rogation Eve lection (Christ’s calming of the storm) to symbolize Christ’s rest in heaven after his ascension and exhorts the congregation of Vienne, like the apostles, to rouse the sleeping Christ with their petitions and procession.166 The church is a single ship sailing through the calamities of this world, keeping all Christians safe through its uniform customs.167 A pre-Ascension dating for Rogationtide renders this exegesis senseless, so Avitus must mean his plain words: that Vienne celebrated the Rogation Days from the Friday to Sunday after Ascension.

162 Avitus’ collection of homilias de diuersis temporibus anni (nos. 1–16, 34 in the Peiper edition) is fragmentary but comprised, at minimum, sermons for the Traditio Symboli on the Eve of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter, Easter Monday, the Saturday after Easter, Ascension, the Eve of Rogationtide, Rogation Friday through Sunday, and Pentecost; Avitus, Prol. ad Apollinarem 1–4, MGH AA 6.2, p. 201; Wood, “The Homilies of Avitus,” pp. 84–7, 89, 94; Nathan, “The Rogation Ceremonies,” pp. 285–6. 163 Grégoire, Homéliaires, pp. 41–7; Mark Vessey, “Orators, Authors, and Compilers: The Earliest Latin Collections of Sermons on Scripture,” in Sermo Doctorum: Compilers, Preachers, and the Audiences in the Early Medieval West, edited by Maximilian Diesenberger et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 25–44. 164 The ninth-century deacon Florus of Lyon incorporated extracts from Avitus’ later two homilies into his biblical commentaries; Wood, “The Homilies of Avitus,” pp. 82–4, 90. 165 Cf. Avitus of Vienne, p. 384. 166 Eligitur tempori triduum praesens, quod inter ascensionis sacrae cultum diemque dominicum . . . Post resurrectionem enim ascensionemque suam totus inter pericula nostra requiescit; Avitus, Hom. 6, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 110.33–5, 112.18–20. 167 Avitus, Hom. 6, MGH AA 6.2, p. 112.10–15; cf. Avitus, Hom. 7, MGH AA 6.2, p. 113.4–10.

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While Sidonius’ letters are the sole contemporary sources for Rogationtide, Avitus’ four Rogation sermons are more vivid and detailed. Sidonius, for instance, had just mentioned Mamertus’ leading public prayers over an unspecified amount of time and never spoke of a procession. Avitus, in contrast, specifies that the first Rogationtide occurred in the Friday through Sunday after Ascension and involved a march of the whole community outside the city, accompanied by prayer, repentance, fasting, sexual abstinence, and psalmody.168 Avitus’ additions probably reflect a “ritualistically distorted view of history,” in which the behavioral norms of Avitus’ own congregation creep into his narrative of the past.169 According to Avitus, Mamertus did not create the feast due to the specific sins and circumstances of Vienne. Vienne was no more sinful than any other city. Instead, the bishop and his church always intended that the holiday become standard across the Roman world.170 The feast expresses Vienne’s righteousness, not its guilt. Avitus does not focus on omens directed at one individual city (i.e. Vienne), but rather on the transregional dangers that menaced all churches during the collapse of Roman power and necessitated a transregional solution. As a result, the bishop exaggerates the disasters of the fateful year, speaking of multiple fires and earthquakes (rather than one) and asserting that they hurt a larger area than the city of Vienne. At Avitus’ time, the Old Testament lection for Rogationtide in Vienne was Amos 3:1–5:17: a fitting section on God’s punishment of multiple cities—not just one.171 Avitus claims Mamertus interpreted prodigies foretelling not punishment on Vienne, as Sidonius implies, but rather “the funeral of the entire globe.”172 Numerous species of “savage beasts” invaded the city, not just Sidonius’ gentle deer.173 Starting with Gregory of Tours, later authors elaborated on Avitus’ vague words, alleging the creatures included wolves, bear, lions, hares, foxes, boars, and even dragons.174 Sidonius briefly mentioned that Mamertus put out a fire, not even elucidating if this fire was days or years before the first Rogationtide.175 For Avitus, though, 168

Avitus, Hom. 6, 7, 9.2, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 110.20–39, 111.18–34, 113.16–17, 116.16–20, 117.32–9, 120.20–1; cf. Caesarius, Serm. 207.1–3, 208.2–3, 209.4; Gregory of Tours, Historiae 9.6, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 417. 169 Bedingfield, Dramatic Liturgy, pp. 5–7. 170 Avitus, Hom. 6, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 109.4–7, 111.3–12. 171 Avitus’ church also used Act 10 and 2 Tim. 2:20–2 as readings; cf. Avitus, Hom. 7, 9.20, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 113–16, 120. 172 Totius orbis funeri prodigiosum, Avitus, Hom. 6, MGH AA 6.2, p. 109.8–10. 173 Domestica siluestrium ferarum species . . . immania bestiarum corda, Avitus, Hom. 6, MGH AA 6.2, p. 109.11–14. 174 Cf. Gregory of Tours, Historiae 2.34, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 82; Beverly M. Kienzle, “Cistercian Preaching Against the Cathars: Hélinand’s Unedited Sermon for Rogation, B.N. MS Lat. 14591,” Cîteaux: commentarii cistercienses 39, nos. 3–4 (1988): pp. 297–9. 175 One commentator has plausibly argued that Sidonius’ fire section is a flashback to an event years earlier. If true, then Avitus evinces how little knew about the fast when he treats this episode as the climax of the story; Waarden, Writing to Survive, vol. 1, pp. 104–9.

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this inferno interrupted Mamertus’ Easter Vigil mass and burnt down “the public hall”—likely the old imperial palace of Valentinian II, which in Avitus’ time was a palace of the Burgundian king Godegisel (c. 473–500).176 Allegedly, when the fire began, the bishop of Vienne was in the middle of performing “the public absolution” reconciling Lenten penitents at the Vigil on Holy Saturday.177 By alluding to the reconciliation, Avitus implies that the Rogation Days themselves served as a form of Lenten penance for the entire community. In Avitus’ narrative, Mamertus conceived of the idea of Rogationtide right after putting out this fire and called “a secret meeting” (secreta collatio) in the week after Easter to plan the new feast.178 Together, they plotted the route of the procession carefully for maximum impact. Class tensions rived Vienne at the time, and Mamertus supposedly feared that “the illustrious senators of Vienne would not be led on new observances, when they barely submitted to the old ones.”179 Interestingly, Avitus’ second sermon stresses that all Christians, regardless of background, are members of a single body of Christ; the senators deserve no special status.180 Supposedly, the wealthier citizens dismissed the natural disasters as just coincidences (casui), rather than prodigies. The processions were physically tiring: “a most work-filled festival,” “a rest in labor.”181 No wonder that the wealthier citizens were unenthusiastic. Mamertus, thus, “directed the first day’s procession towards a basilica just outside the city walls,” so that the march would be short and mainly limited to the urban center itself.182 Later, Mamertus introduced the long, exhausting processions of the next two days—which moved far from the walls—after the mass of people were participating and the pressure on the wealthy to join was strong. In Avitus’ account, Mamertus is a clever master of ceremonies, who arranges

176 Aedes namque publica, quam praecelso ciuitatis uertice sublimitas, Avitus, Hom. 6, MGH AA 6.2, p. 110.4–24; Gregory interprets the building as the royal palace (palatium regale); Gregory of Tours, Historiae 2.9, 2.32–4, 3.6, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 54, 79–82, 103; Grierson and Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage I, pp. 74–5; Avitus of Vienne, pp. 208–10; cf. Liber Quare Quaestio 105.6–7; Honorius Augustodunensis, Sacramentarium 19, PL 172.756A. 177 Adfuit ergo nox illa uenerabilis, quae ad spem publicae absolutionis uotiuum sollemne patefecerat, Avitus, Hom. 6, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 110.7–20, 111.16–19, 12.1–4; in the Roman rite, the reconciliation occurred on Maundy Thursday, but this ceremony happened at other times in other Western liturgies; Beck, Pastoral Care, pp. 187–222; Meens, Penance in Medieval Europe, pp. 23, 79, 154. 178 Avitus, Hom. 6, MGH AA 6.2, p. 110.24–39. 179 Putabatur a quibusdam Viennensis senatus, cuius tunc numerosis illustribus curia florebat, inuentis non posse adduci, cum uix adquiesceret legitimis inclinari, Avitus, Hom. 6, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 109.15–16, 110.26–31, 111.3–12. 180 Avitus, Hom. 7, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 113.19–28, 117.5–10. 181 Rogationum nostrarum operosissimam festiuitatem . . . requies in labore, Avitus, Hom. 6, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 111.13–14, 112.2–4. 182 Ne ob tardam populi sequacitatem, paucioribus eductis obseruatio ipsa confestim in sui nouitate reuilesceret, ad basilicam, quae tunc moenibus uicinior erat ciuitatis, Avitus, Hom. 6, MGH AA 6.2, p. 110.36–41.

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the solemnity to ensure that the Rogation Days would become an annual tradition and spread throughout Gaul. Although Ian Wood sees this narrative as evidence of Mamertus’ psychological sophistication, Avitus’ repeated emphasis on Mamertus’ planning for the feast has a polemic goal.183 After all, Avitus’ sermon admits that Rogationtide’s exact date of the three-day fast differed from diocese to diocese for years. But the bishop claims that the original post-Ascension dating preserved at Vienne had recently become “a universal observance.”184 The Gallic churches had ignored Mamertus’ careful planning for a while. Now finally, during Avitus’ own episcopacy, the bishops had restored “the form of the institution” celebrated in the church that is “the mother of all”: Vienne. Avitus’ reference to a concordia of the bishops has caused some later authors, medieval and modern alike, to believe that a council c. 475 ratified Vienne’s version of the Rogation Days.185 But no contemporary evidence of such a council exists, and Avitus’ putative uniformity is fictitious. Despite Avitus’ claim, at least four separate timings for Rogationtide contended for dominance during the sixth century: the Monday through Wednesday before Ascension, the Friday through Sunday right after Ascension, the Wednesday through Friday in the week between Ascension and Pentecost, and the Thursday through Saturday after Pentecost. Indeed, Gallus, the bishop of Clermont, tried unsuccessfully to create three new Rogation Days in the middle of Lent.186 When a single timing became universal, it would not be Vienne’s post-Ascension date, but rather the pre-Ascension one that predominated in the Merovingian kingdom.187 Gregory of Tours does not seem aware that any other date for the feast ever existed. But at Gallic sees like Arles, Vienne, or the Septimanian bishoprics, other timings thrived for decades. Only the rising political power of the Merovingian and then Carolingian dynasties ensured that the pre-Ascension days would win out. Although Avitus asserts uniformity, he must have known that his claim was spurious. Already around the time of his sermon, Merovingian councils were

183 Wood, “The Homilies of Avitus,” pp. 84–7, 89, 94; Wood, “Topographies of Holy Power,” pp. 145–54. 184 Non apud omnes iisdem diebus, quibus penes nos institutum fuerat, celebraretur . . . tamen cum dilectione rogationum etiam sacerdotum crescente concordia ad unum tempus, id est ad praesentes dies, uniuersalis observantiae cura concessit . . . ecclesia, quae misit aliis formam institutionis . . . omnibus facta est mater exemplo, Avitus, Hom. 6, MGH AA 6.2, p. 111.3–12; cf. Avitus, Hom. 7, MGH AA 6.2, p. 113.8–10. 185 For instance, Haymo, Homiliae 2.13, PL 118.528; Waarden, Writing to Survive, vol. 1, p. 72. 186 Gregory of Tours, Historiae 4.5, 4.13, Vita Patrum 6.6, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 138, 144, 1.2, p. 234. 187 Gregory of Tours, Historiae 2.34, 9.6, Vita Patrum 4.4, 6.6–6.7, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 83, 418, 1.2, p. 226, 234–5; cf. Eusebius Gallicanus, Serm. 25.1–2, 4, 26.1; Audoin, Vita Eligii 2.2, MGH SRM 4, p. 696; Old, Reading, vol. 3, pp. 93–4, 109.

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legislating against celebrating the Rogation Days at any time except for the three days before Ascension.188 Indeed, Avitus’ constant references to Vienne as a model for the rest of Gaul demonstrate that the widespread adoption of Vienne’s date was something that Avitus advocated, not something that was common. At least three other timings challenged Avitus’ preference. And those other dates were becoming the norm in various barbarian kingdoms (the Merovingian, the Visigothic, and the Ostrogothic), just as Vienne’s dating likely dominated in the Burgundian realm. The disintegration of the Roman world had encouraged the fragmentation of liturgy. Avitus’ narrative is mythmaking. Through it, the bishop argues that Mamertus had perfectly planned the time, place, and manner of the feast, that Vienne maintained a direct tradition from Mamertus, and that all other churches should conform to Vienne’s model. In Avitus’ legend, the slothful curia of Viennois senators stands in for the fractious bishops of Gaul who refuse to acknowledge the canonical authority of Mamertus’ secret council. They probably also symbolize those complaining Gallo-Roman elites who felt that the new feast should be abandoned once it failed to prevent Germanic conquest. By disseminating his homiliary, Avitus sought to extend Vienne’s dating, and thus its prestige, against competitors. Avitus’ account must be used with caution. It is not unbiased history, but rather an exaltation of Vienne’s customs against its rivals, conjuring an unbroken ceremonial tradition going back to Mamertus. Avitus’ foes included the Arian bishop in Vienne and his congregation.189 Avitus attacks Arians in one Rogation sermon and surely excluded them from his procession, so that the march served as an embodiment of orthodoxy.190 Local Jews may also be in view, as one of Avitus’ sermons suggests.191 But, fundamentally, Avitus’ sermons are part of the larger conflicts concerning the archdiocesan status of Vienne that split the Gallic church roughly 450 to 550. Since numerous scholarly works analyze these ecclesiastical debates, I will not describe them at length.192 In brief, already by the time of Mamertus himself, the archbishops of Vienne asserted metropolitan rights over a number of bishoprics in southeastern Gaul that the archbishops of Arles also claimed as suffragans. This quarrel continued to rage during the episcopacies of Avitus and Caesarius. In fact, the shifting borders of the post-Roman barbarian kingdoms heightened it. When the Burgundian kings acquired new territories, the de facto 188

Council of Orléans (511), 27; Council of Tours (567), 18. Gregory of Tours, Historiae 2.33, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 80. 190 Avitus, Hom. 8.4, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 119.25–120.2. 191 Avitus, Hom. 9.1, MGH AA 6.2, p. 120.10; cf. Avitus, Hom. 7, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 113.19–20, 114.2–6. 192 See, for instance, Mathisen, Ecclesiastical Factionalism, pp. 173–215, 235–41, 258–9, 274; Avitus of Vienne, pp. 7–8, 123–9, 159–62, 357–9, 366; Pelletier, Vienne Gallo-Romaine, pp. 178–84; Waarden, Writing to Survive, vol. 1, pp. 71–2. 189

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jurisdiction of Vienne increased; when the Goths or Franks conquered, Vienne waned. Strikingly, Avitus of Vienne and Caesarius of Arles are the only late antique Gallic bishops to publish extant homiliaries of their own sermons during their lifetime.193 And, in one of his Rogation sermons, Caesarius insists upon the Arles timing for the feast—just as Avitus’ sermons press for the Viennois tradition.194 The two clergymen were not close. Except for one formal letter (Ep. 11), Avitus never wrote to Caesarius—even though he corresponded with most other important Gallic bishops at the time. According to his hagiographers, later in life, Caesarius would not attend a council called by Avitus’ successor as bishop of Vienne.195 Those same hagiographers state that Caesarius mailed his homiliary to clerics all over Francia, as well as in Italy, Spain, and elsewhere—even to clergymen who had never desired a copy.196 Since the episcopacies of Vienne and Arles were rivals, Caesarius likely promulgated his model sermons partly to bar the influence of Avitus’ sermonary. If so, he won. Caesarius’ homiliary was phenomenally popular, while Avitus’ nearly vanished—surviving only in fragments in a few manuscripts. Regardless, the jurisdictional dispute between Vienne and Arles explains why Avitus labored to standardize the Rogation Days. Liturgical uniformity is jurisdictional control. Throughout his more than two decades as bishop, Avitus struggled to protect his city against a myriad of opponents: whether those adversaries were Frankish raiders, Arian priests, Burgundian courtiers, or the archbishop of Arles. He sought to bind the scattered churches of the post-Roman successor kingdoms around a single liturgical calendar. Avitus’ advocacy failed. His dream of a post-Roman church united around uniform Rogation customs came true, but only by scrapping Avitus’ liturgy. A generation after Avitus, the Council of Lyon speaks of the “holy fathers” (sancti patres) who established the Rogation procession on the three days before Ascension; in the memories of these bishops, Mamertus had not acted alone.197 As metropolitan, Archbishop Philip of Vienne was the first signer of the council’s canons. Around this time, Philip also appointed a former student of Caesarius named Theudarius 193

A half-dozen of Caesarius’ 250 sermons have rubrics specifying Rogationtide usage (nos. 143–4, 146, 148, 157, 160a, 207–9). Early homiliaries—like the Würzburg Homiliary and the Roman Homiliary—add a few more (nos. 26, 160) while other sermons interpret known Rogation lections (nos. 158, 158a); Grégoire, Homéliaires, pp. 169, 209, 303; Yitzhak Hen, “The Contents of Aims of the So-Called Homiliary of Burchard of Würzburg,” in Sermo Doctorum: Compilers, Preachers, and the Audiences in the Early Medieval West, edited by Maximilian Diesenberger et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 127–52. 194 Caesarius, Serm. 209.4; cf. Caesarius, Serm. 207.2. 195 Vita Caesarii 1.60, MGH SRM 3, p. 481. 196 Vita Caesarii 1.55, MGH SRM 3, p. 480. 197 Litaniae, sicut ante ascensionem domini sancti patres fieri decreuerunt . . . philippus in christi nomine episcopus ecclesiae Viennensis constitutionibus nostris subscripsi, Council of Lyon (567–70), 6.

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to an important clerical position in Vienne, indicating that the two sees had reconciled.198 Even the clergy of Vienne had switched to a pre-Ascension Rogationtide and forgotten that alternatives ever existed. If the Burgundians had created a stable Roman successor kingdom, perhaps Avitus’ version of Rogationtide would have prevailed. But the bishop died in 518, the Burgundian realm fell to the Franks in 534, and Vienne’s dating for Rogationtide perished with them.

FROM ROMANIZATION TO CHRISTIANIZATION The earliest evidence for Rogationtide already depicts a changing feast—a changing feast for a changing world. The holiday had begun as a ritual of Romanization, but it became one of Christianization. Imperial rituals converted into Christian rites and made Christian churches out of Roman cities. Post-Roman liturgical diversity slowly gave away to Frankish imperial pretensions. Roman citizens became Christian congregants, local curia gave way to cathedral chapters, and the empire’s dreaded pompae endured in a new ecclesiastical guise. Rogationtide for Avitus did not signify what it meant for Sidonius, let alone what such processions meant for Mamertus and for Christians before him. Sidonius hoped the feast would revive civic loyalty and stiffen resistance against Rome’s Germanic foes. Avitus commandeered the legacy of Mamertus and presented the local traditions of Vienne as normative for the whole church. Yet the holiday had already spread outside their control. Rival interpretations had already arisen. A debate about the proper structure and function of the Rogation Days already split the Gallic church. Through the feast, Gallo-Roman cities acted out what kind of community they were, or at least what kind of community their Gallo-Roman bishops wanted them to be. The uncertainties about the original form, time period, and purpose for the feast helped to popularize it. Because Rogationtide was so open-ended, each church community could mold it for its own particular needs.

198

Ado of Vienne, Vita Theudarii 13–15, MGH SRM 1.2, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hanover: Hahn, 1885), pp. 234–5.

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2 Rome Purified The Myth of Pagan Survival

When grave persons express their fear that England is relapsing into Paganism, I am tempted to reply, “Would that she were.” For I do not think it at all likely that we shall ever see Parliament opened by the slaughtering of a garlanded white bull in the House of Lords or Cabinet Minister leaving sandwiches in Hyde Park as an offering to the Dryads. If such a state of affairs came about, then the Christian apologist would have something to work on. For a Pagan, as history shows, is a man eminently convertible to Christianity. He is essentially the preChristian, or sub-Christian, religious man.1

Thus, the British medievalist and man-of-letters C. S. Lewis began a 1952 article on the philosophy of theism. The essay is now remembered for its prominent early use of the term “post-Christian” to describe twentieth-century Europe. But Lewis’s remarks also startle for his perspective on the relationship between pagan and Christian—that paganism is reducible to sacrificial rituals, that ancient rite is propaedeutic to the doctrinal arguments of a Christian apologist like Lewis, and that history demonstrates these truths. Other apologists expressed similar sentiments. G. K. Chesterton, for instance, could observe that “the man who does not see that the Saturnalia was almost Christian is a man who has never read the Magnificat,” and elsewhere concluded that “if we do revive and pursue the pagan ideal of a simple and rational self-completion we shall end—where Paganism ended . . . we shall end in Christianity.”2 The idea that Christianity is the natural fulfillment of pagan cultus, then, is common enough in modern Christian thought. But this thesis does not solely appear in apologetics; it is also mirrored in the Christianization paradigms of many historians. 1 C. S. Lewis, “Is Theism Important?” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, edited by Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970), p. 186. 2 G. K. Chesterton, “The Winter Feast,” in The Apostle and the Wild Ducks and Other Essays, edited by Dorothy E. Collins (New York: HarperCollins, 1975), pp. 42–3; G. K. Chesterton, Heretics (Rockville, MD: Serenity, 2009), pp. 80–1, 87.

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Medieval preachers frequently advanced origin stories for the Rogation Days. Whether these stories concerned Mamertus of Vienne, Pope Gregory the Great, or Jonah and Nineveh, they expressed the feast’s theology in narrative form: one community, led by the clergy, united together in prayer for divine mercy. Most contemporary historians who have discussed Rogationtide have also recounted an origin story for the feast—albeit a different one with a different message. According to these scholars, Rogationtide was a Christian substitute for the Roman feast of the Ambarvalia: a springtime fertility rite celebrated in May.3 The claim that the Rogation Days are the Ambarvalia Christianized is far from new. Already during the English Reformation, Protestant reformers like Peter Martyr Vermigli and Anti-Trinitarian skeptics like Thomas Hobbes used this allegation as weapon against the Anglican liturgy. The Book of Common Prayer, after all, commanded the celebration of Rogationtide. Dissenters, in contrast, saw it as semi-heathen superstition. Indeed, this claim is older than the Reformation. In the ninth century, one anonymous Carolingian preacher interpreted the Rogation Days as an adaptation of the Ambarvalia.4 Neither this Frankish clergyman nor later Puritan critics bothered to cite proof for their theory of a reworked pagan feast. But modern historians have gathered fragments of supporting evidence. Unfortunately, when scrutinized in depth, none of the evidence justifies this canard.5 As a rare disagreeing scholar from the late nineteenth century noted, “the parallel between the Christian Rogations and the Roman procession . . . [is] the slightest external resemblance . . . caught at without any attempt at investigating the matter.”6 Writers who equate these two holidays have ignored the diversity of Roman pagan worship, drawn inaccurate structural parallels, and accepted the word of misinformed pre-modern authors. Mamertus could not have copied from

3

For this Ambarvalia claim, see, for instance, Anselm Alfred Coppersmith, The Ambarvalia and the Rogations: A Pagan Rite and Its Christian Counterpart (Ph.D. diss., Washington University, 1943), pp. 60–93; Gaetano Forni, “Alle radici precristiane delle Rogazioni,” in Rogazioni e processioni nell’arco alpino: atti del Convegno di Asiago, 14 maggio 1999, edited by Giancarlo Bortoli and Giovanni Kezich (Trent: Museo degli usi e costumi della gente trentina, 2001), pp. 17–30; Gordon B. Sellers, The Old English Rogationtide Corpus: A Literary History (Ph.D. diss., Loyola University, 1996), pp. 1–36; Kramer, Between Earth and Heaven, pp. 151–2, 188–9, 194–5; Philippe Walter, Christian Mythology: Revelations of Pagan Origins, trans. Jon E. Graham (Toronto: Inner Traditions, 2014), pp. 118–26. 4 For this sermon, discussed more below, see Nathan, “The Rogation Ceremonies,” pp. 299–302. 5 For similar examples of Protestant polemic solidifying into historical assumption, see John Forrest, The History of Morris Dancing, 1458–1750 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), pp. 1–27; Max Harris, “Claiming Pagan Origins for Carnival: Bacchanalia, Saturnalia, and Kalends,” European Medieval Drama 10 (2006): pp. 57–107. 6 John Gerard, “Folk-Lore Ex Cathedra,” The Month 87 (1896): pp. 9–10; cf. Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, ed. F. Cabrol and H. Leclercq (Paris: Librairie Letouzey et Ané, 1948), s.v. Rogations.

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the Ambarvalia because the Ambarvalia did not exist, and what did exist was nothing like Rogationtide. The repeated attempts over the course of the last millennium to link Rogationtide and Ambarvalia reveal more about changes and continuities between paradigms of Christianization than they do about past events. Christianization paradigms—ancient and modern—stand upon theology. Only theology can answer who is, and is not, a Christian. As a result, Christianization narratives are not verifiable historical descriptions, but rather myths: fundamental stories authorizing particular configurations of power.7 Syncretism and pagan survival, for instance, are theological concepts. Whenever historians interpret a practice such as Rogationtide as a pagan survival, they echo supersessionism: the exegetical trope that construes the church as the replacement of Israel. According to this trope, the rites and symbols of the Mosaic covenant—circumcision, burnt offerings, temple architecture, and the like—were mysteries pointing to Christ and the New Covenant.8 In the present day, Christian doctrines and practices have fulfilled the letter and figures of the old law.9 Now that its spiritual meaning is unveiled, the Mosaic law is obsolete. In a similar manner, medieval churchmen seized the legacy of Rome for the Christian commonwealth; they understood pagans on the model of Israelites. Clerics “were not at all shy about concealing the pagan origins of Christian sites or rituals. They took an antiquarian delight in finding such a connection, and if it didn’t exist, they made it up.”10 Since idolatry, unlike the Mosaic law, was not a divine revelation, how could Roman ritual foreshadow? At times, Christian authors suggest that Roman ceremonies were ancestral to Christian ones because reason and nature conferred a partial knowledge of God: a knowledge that manifested itself through the veil of idolatrous worship. (This is roughly the stance of Lewis and Chesterton.) Other clerics, though, indicate that the fathers of the church had deliberately reshaped pagan ceremonies to new purposes. If so, then ritual parallels are post facto, not inherent. Regardless of the exact causation, close examination of the Carolingian sermon on Ambarvalia—seemingly strong evidence for the pagan survival position— reveals how ritual supersessionism saturates this homily. In the origin stories of medieval clerics and modern scholars alike, the Christian liturgy adapted

7

For this definition of myth, William G. Doty, Myth: A Handbook (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), pp. 18–21; Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence, pp. 6–7, 123–4. 8 See, for instance, Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (New York: Zone Books, 2010), pp. 29–34, 150–5, 309–12; Furry, Allegorizing History, pp. 6–9, 126–8. 9 For passages commonly cited in defense of this doctrine, cf. Matt. 5:17–19; Rom. 10:2–4; 2 Cor. 3:6–16; Heb. 8:6–13. For instance, Hrabanus, De Institutione Clericorum 2.33, Fontes Christiani 61.2, ed. Detlev Zimbel (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), p. 326; Walahfrid Strabo, De Exordiis 16, Harting-Correa, p. 100. 10 Harte, “Rethinking Rogationtide,” p. 30.

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older Roman pagan ceremonies much as a New Covenant sacrament fulfilled a Jewish type.11 Rogationtide was not a pagan survival; that matters for reasons that have little to do with Rogationtide. Banishing syncretism and pagan survivals lets historians see Christianization differently. Instead of focusing on pagans and Christians, scholars should study the ceaseless theological infighting Christians waged over the proper performance of rituals—for the rumor of pagan survivals was a piece of this larger theological dispute.

A F EAST REFORMED Contemporary scholars who derive the Rogation Days from a pagan festival revise arguments dating back to the Reformation and beyond. Like feudalism or the barbarian invasions, the Christianization of rites is a legacy of centuries of scholarship.12 The early modern background to this historiography reveals how inescapably theological such pagan survival models are. This chapter, thus, will sketch the genealogy of this Ambarvalia interpretation and then re-examine the evidence from late antique and medieval authors that supposedly sustains it. Only after setting forth this historiographical background can the continuities and differences between modern and pre-modern explanations of Rogationtide emerge. The legitimacy of Rogationtide was a minor, but important, issue throughout the Reformation Era. Puritan allegations of a connection between Ambarvalia and Rogationtide capped more general criticisms of the Rogation Days. Rogationtide was already losing popularity by the late Middle Ages. The Protestant Reformation accelerated this slide. Many reformers rejected the feast outright. Even those Lutherans and Anglicans who kept the feast radically adapted it to the new theologies and social structures of Protestantism. The simple penitential procession of the late antique feast perhaps could have withstood Protestant scrutiny. After all, communal confessions of sin and penitential occasions—such as Scottish Communion Season—thrived in all branches of magisterial Protestantism. But fifteenth-century Rogationtide was tied to transubstantiation and the cult of saints; it could never win the praise of

11 Buc, The Dangers of Ritual, pp. 251–2; cf. Zachary Sayre Schiffman, The Birth of the Past (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), pp. 77–136. 12 For ritenchristianisierung, see, for instance, Trombley, Hellenic Religion, pp. ix–x, 35, 97–8, 142, 151, 161; Berend, “Introduction,” pp. 4, 22; Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 103–9; Dunn, Belief and Religion, pp. 102–19, 130–1.

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the reformers.13 Each day’s processions, for instance, began or ended with a mass. Monasteries and shrines of saints served as prayer stations. Processors often carried the Eucharist in a monstrance, along with holy relics, the crucifix, bells, and illustrated banners depicting saints, allegorical beasts, or scenes from the life of Christ. During their Rogation sermons, late medieval preachers sometimes emphasized praying to Mary and the saints for blessings rather than praying to God himself.14 The medieval clergy, moreover, had long complained about moral abuses such as gluttony, drunkenness, and licentiousness associated with the postprocession banquets. The Protestants continued such objections. The Protestant autobiographer Bartholomew Sastrow (1520–1603), for instance, tells of a young Catholic priest near Speyer slipping away during the Rogationtide procession for a sexual rendezvous with a lady in the crops; two Catholic laymen stole the priest’s clothes after he undressed, so they could prove his transgression to his superiors.15 Late medieval clergymen also occasionally criticized Rogationtide on theological grounds—not solely on ethical ones. Clergymen worried that Rogationtide blurred the line between sacrament and superstition. “Superstition” was a vague pejorative, whose meaning shifted greatly between text but could refer to almost any practice that a writer viewed as inappropriate.16 While Roman authors presented superstitio as excessively scrupulous observance— disproportionate religio, rather than the opposite of religio—Christians often applied the word to the false rites of pagans, heretics, and Jews. According to Isidore’s definition, for instance, religio is “worship of God in virtue” while superstitio is “forbidden worship.”17 Due to fears of superstition, provincial synods like the Council of Cologne in 1452 and the Council of Passau in 1470 13 For late medieval Rogationtide, Robert Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), pp. 5, 34–5, 42, 46; Michael D. Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies: The Boundaries of Superstition in Late Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), pp. 180–3, 233–5; Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: the Ritual Year, 1400–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 34–6; Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, pp. 136–9, 279–82. 14 Cf. Johannes Herold, Sermones discipuli de tempore et sanctis (Lyon: Antonium du Ry, 1529), 95r–97r; Rituale Sacramentorum Romanum Gregorii Papae XIII. Pont. Max. Iussu editum (Rome: 1584), pp. 638–41. 15 Social Germany in Luther’s Time: Being the Memoirs of Bartholomew Sastrow, trans. Albert Vardam (Westminster: Archibald Constable, 1902), p. 276. 16 For the debates over superstitiones, see Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, pp. 11–14, 19–21; Euan Cameron, Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 79–88, 135–40; Barton and Boyarin, Imagine No Religion, pp. 33–7, 46–9; Dumézil, Les racines chrétiennes, pp. 37–46. 17 Religio est cultus . . . homines religantur uinculo seruiendi ad cultum diuinitatis. Religio autem est in uirtute, superstitio uero in cultu illicito, Isidore of Seville, Differentiae 1.846, PL 83.59A; cf. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 18.16.2; Heiric, Homiliae 1.24.237; Walahfrid Strabo, De Exordiis 2, 8, Harting-Correa, pp. 54, 78; Hrabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis Pref., PL 111.10B; Hrabanus Maurus, De Institutione Clericorum 2.58, 3.16, Zimbel, vol. 2, pp. 432, 516;

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criticized the Rogation Days and other weather processions.18 At a Rogation station, a priest might read a passage from each gospel, while facing a different cardinal direction respectively, as an agricultural apotropaic against demons; such actions paralleled the gestures of medieval charms and therefore inspired misgivings.19 Councils thus limited outdoor processions to Corpus Christi exclusively, restricting the Rogation march to the church building itself or outright banning the feast. In sixteenth-century Italy, likewise, Roman inquisitors in Friuli grew perturbed at groups of Christians who believed that they fought witches in their dreams to ensure health and fertility. These Christians, who called themselves the benandanti (the “good walkers”), and their alleged foes—witches—would marshal in formations that mimicked the Rogation procession, bearing banners and crosses through the countryside.20 In their dreams, the benandanti maneuvered their march to prevent the witches from entering homes or fields. When testifying before the inquisition, accused benandanti compared their behavior with the Rogation Days.21 The inquisitors condemned the benandanti procession as well-meaning unintentional witchcraft and their vigilance extinguished benandanti customs by the end of the seventeenth century. Just like Protestant leaders, Tridentine Catholic clergymen could fret over the superstitiones surrounding Rogationtide. In 1519, a month before the Leipzig Disputation, Martin Luther preached a Rogation sermon inaugurating Protestant attacks on the holiday. This sermon—soon printed as a tract—complained about moral abuses at Rogationtide: drunkenness, gluttony, and sloth.22 But Luther added new theological concerns. The reformer emphasized that prayers are only answered due to divine grace, not pre-existing human merit. Thus, he warned that people who pray based on their own perceived worth, rather than by faith alone, should not come to the procession lest they increase divine wrath accidentally. Such advice contradicted the long medieval tradition that all Christians had to attend. Huguccio of Pisa, Derivationes, L.79.6, R.35.5, S.301.65–6, Enzo Cecchini (Florence: SISMEL, 2004), vol. 2, pp. 687, 1027, 1171; Biller, “Words and the Medieval Notion,” pp. 356–9. 18 Scribner, Popular Culture, pp. 34–6, 42; Heather McCune Bruhn, “The Parish Monstrance of St. Kolumba: Community Pride and Eucharistic Devotion in Cologne around 1400,” Athanor 25 (2007), pp. 22–3; Hanska, Strategies of Sanity, pp. 156–7, 161–3. 19 Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, pp. 214–17. Cf. A. H. J. Baines, “Beating the Bounds: Rogationtide at Waddesdon,” Records of Buckinghamshire 41 (2001), pp. 145–7. 20 Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), pp. 1–9, 22–4, 154–6. 21 Ginzburg, The Night Battles, pp. 9, 156. 22 Martin Luther, Von dem Gebeet und Procession yn der Creützwochen: On Prayer and Procession in Rogation Week, intro. and trans. Helga Robinson-Hammerstein (Dublin: Friends of the Library, 1983); Luther’s Works, vol. 42, Devotional Writings, ed. Martin O. Dietrich, trans. Martin H. Bertram (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), pp. 83–94; Cameron, Enchanted Europe, pp. 158–73.

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Luther told bishops and temporal rulers to end the Rogation procession or at least to remove the abuses.23 The holiday began for good reasons, but it had warped into sin over time. If the processions were to continue, the crowds must pray properly for God to graciously give good weather and protection from disease. Unlike some fifteenth-century councils, Luther did not agonize over superstition. In fact, Luther commended ministers who read scripture publicly in the fields to drive away demons. The soteriology of Rogationtide worried Luther, but he approved of its role as a fertility ritual and apotropaic. Luther’s Catholic adversaries—such as Johann von Eck and Friedrich Nausea—soon associated Lutheranism with the rejection of the Rogation Days and censured Protestant heretics in their Rogation sermons.24 Luther himself placed two sermons for Rogation Sunday in his influential homiliary, the Kirchenpostille: published in stages between 1525 and 1544. There, Luther praised congregations that had abolished the festival.25 Luther stated that he supported ending the procession but believed that the days before Ascension should remain a period of prayer. In a 1539 letter to George Buchholzer, a reformer in Berlin, Luther consented to the march itself.26 If a prince such as Joachim II of Brandenburg wanted to keep the outdoor procession, complete with vestments and bells, that was fine—especially if the prince (like Joachim) was hesitant on the Lutheran reform. But the pure gospel must be preached, the saints’ invocation eliminated, and the sacrament received in both kinds. For Luther, the penitential season of Rogationtide was a microcosm of his larger critique of the medieval sacramental system in light of justification by faith alone. Luther salvaged the Rogation Days, but only after removing sinful accretions and creating an appropriately evangelical feast.

23

Luther’s Works, vol. 42, pp. 90–1. Friedrich Nausea, Euangelicae Ueritatis Homiliarum Centuriae (Cologne: Quentell, 1532), 61v, 308r, 391v; Johann von Eck, Homiliarum Tomus Secundus (Paris: 1579), pp. 69–71, 80; Johann von Eck, Apologia Pro Principibus Catholicis (Antwerp: 1542), pp. 70–1; John M. Frymire, The Primacy of the Postils: Catholics, Protestants, and the Dissemination of Ideas in Early Modern Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 4–7, 52, 55–61, 104–6; cf. H. Leith Spencer, English Preaching in the Late Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 30–2. 25 Sermons of Martin Luther, vol. 3, Sermons on Gospel Texts for Pentecost, trans. John Nicholas Lenker (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), pp. 166–80; Dr. M. Luthers Samtliche Werke, ed. E. L. Enders (Frankfurt: Heyder & Zimmer, 1869), vol. 12, pp. 155–69; although produced under Luther’s supervision, not all of the sermons in the homiliary are by Luther himself; Frymire, The Primacy of the Postils, pp. 35–7, 93–6; Old, Reading and Preaching, vol. 4, pp. 3–42; Paul W. Robinson, “Sermons on the Lord’s Prayer and the Rogation Days in the Later Middle Ages,” in A History of Prayer: The First to the Fifteenth Century, edited by Roy Hammerling (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 447–8, 454. 26 The Letters of Martin Luther, trans. Margaret A. Currie (London: Macmillan, 1908), pp. 377–9; Dr. Martin Luthers Briefe, Sendschreiben und Bedenke, ed. Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1828), vol. 5, pp. 232–6. 24

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As a result, many Lutheran congregations continued to observe the Rogation Days, after making Protestant changes.27 Johann Sebastian Bach even wrote two Cantatas (nos. 86 and 87) for Rogation Sunday. Anabaptist and Reformed ministers repudiated the medieval lectionary and virtually every medieval holiday. In contrast, Lutheran and Anglican preachers employed the standard medieval calendar and lections—with slight modifications—until the middle of twentieth century.28 Lutheran ritual books were often just German translations of medieval liturgies. Clergymen could no longer carry the host or relics. But prayers and hymns in the fields remained acceptable. Only at the end of the nineteenth century were the remnants of medieval Rogation processions extinguished in Protestant Germany.29 The English Reformation assaulted Rogationtide more brutally. Already in 1528, William Tyndale disparaged as “idolatry” Rogation practices such as processional crosses and “the saying of gospels to the corn in the field, in the procession-week, that it should the better grow.”30 But Tyndale never attacked the Rogation Days themselves, only surrounding abuses, just as late medieval clerics had. Thomas Cranmer’s Exhortation and Litany (1544)—the only English-language liturgy approved before the death of Henry VIII—contained a service based partly on the Rogationtide texts in the Sarum Processional and partly on Lutheran litanies.31 During the reign of Edward VI, Cranmer included this new English litany, along with collects and prayers for Rogation Sunday, in his two editions of the Book of Common Prayer (1549 and 1552), where it persists in substantially the same form today.32 No early modern observer would have expected such liturgical continuity. Already in 1547, Edward VI banned outdoor processions and required that Cranmer’s litany simply be said while kneeling in church, rather than while 27 Scribner, Popular Culture, pp. 5, 34–5, 42, 46; Nicholas Hope, German and Scandinavian Protestantism, 1700–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 17–20, 165–6, 217, 596. 28 For the Reformation lectionary, Frymire, The Primacy of the Postils, pp. 11–15, 32–3, 72–4, 124, 259; Spencer, English Preaching, pp. 24–33. 29 Hans Ehlert, “Der Hagelfeiertag im Lande Braunschweig,” Braunschweigische Heimat 1 (1974): pp. 11–19; Ulrich Jahn, Die deutschen Opfergebräuche bei Ackerbau und Viehzucht: ein Beitrag zur Deutschen Mythologie und Alterthmskunde (Breslau: Wilhelm Koebner, 1884), pp. 146–56. 30 William Tyndale, Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1850), pp. 61–2; cf. William Tyndale, Doctrinal Treatises And Introductions To Different Portions Of The Holy Scriptures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1848), pp. 234–5. 31 Edward Burton, Three Primers Put Forth in the Reign of Henry VIII (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1834), p. 381; cf. Marion J. Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer Book (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), pp. 40–7, 110, 142, 154–62, 208–9, 214, 258–9, 316, 339, 555, 930; Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, pp. 425–6, 452, 568, 578–9; Steve Hindle, “Beating the Bounds of the Parish: Order, Memory, and Identity in the English Local Community, c. 1500–1700,” in Defining Community in Early Modern Europe, edited by M. J. Halvorson and K. E. Spierling (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2008), pp. 205–27. 32 The Book of Common Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662, ed. Brian Cummings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 234–7, 705–6, 726, 739, 751–3.

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walking in the open air.33 For reformers, processions were exemplars of the medieval church’s “popery”—that is, its infatuation with putatively unchristian paraphernalia such as masses, censers, candles, altar rails, indulgences, and relics. By 1549 outdoor processions largely had stopped, standing crosses were torn down, monasteries—former prayer stations—dissolved, and many parishes sold off their processional banners. When Queen Mary and her Catholic bishops tried to revive the holiday, this earlier destruction of liturgical objects hampered them. Elizabeth’s royal injunctions in 1559 principally repeated Edward’s rules but exempted the Rogation march from its general denunciation of processions. While some parishes neglected the procession— presumably out of Puritan sympathies—churchwarden’s accounts and diocesan records suggest that the processions grew more popular under the Stuarts than they had been under Edward or Elizabeth.34 The revolutionary parliament avoided officially condemning the holiday and Rogation marches flourished after the Restoration. As a result, Rogationtide survived as the sole Anglican remnant of the ubiquitous processions of medieval England. Not that Rogationtide endured unchanged. Reforming bishops like Edmund Grindal and Thomas Bentham limited the march to high-status men, requiring that at the “common perambulations . . . in the days of Rogations” when “once in the year at the time accustomed . . . the curate and the substantial men of the parish [shall] walk about their parish, as they were accustomed, and at their return to the church, make their common prayer.”35 Purging the procession of women was a central element of cleansing the feast of popery. Episcopal injunctions also ignore Rogation penance, specifying instead that the perambulation was “thanks to God . . . for the increase and abundance of his fruits upon the face of the earth.”36 The rite was now a “perambulation,” not a procession; everyone dressed in normal garb, and no one carried bells, crosses, relics, or banners. George Herbert, for instance, described Rogationtide as an old custom “good and harmless,” popular with the rural laity, which needed only to have its minor defects pared away. According to Herbert, a proper country parson 33 Edward Cardwell, Documentary Annals of the Reformed Church of England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1839, 1844), vol. 1, pp. 4–23; Hutton, The Rise and Fall, pp. 85, 99; Ronald Hutton, Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 57, 277–87. 34 Hutton, The Rise and Fall, pp. 105–6, 142–3, 175–6, 217–18, 247; Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 61–5; Alexandra Walsham, The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity, and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 258–68; John Brand, Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain (London: Bell & Daldy, 1873), vol. 1, pp. 197–212. 35 Henry Gee and Thomas Hardy, Documents Illustrative of English Church History (London: Macmillan 1914), pp. 425–7; Edmund Grindal, Various Letters Of Edmund Grindal (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1843), pp. 240–1; Walsham, The Reformation of the Landscape, pp. 252–7; Harte, “Rethinking Rogationtide,” p. 33. 36 Gee and Hardy, Documents Illustrative, p. 426.

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“loves Procession, and maintains it because there are contained therein four manifest advantages”: divine blessings of fertility, clear boundaries, neighborly charity in walking together, and poor-relief.37 Herbert’s march resembles a cheerful Maying, more than a grueling penitential fast. Even Rogationtide preaching altered. Penitential acts and the story of Mamertus are conspicuously absent from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Anglican Rogation homilies. These sermons vary widely in theme and subject.38 With penance removed, ministers were no longer certain about what the defining concern of the holiday was. The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England required that ministers read to their congregation the sermons in the two authorized Books of Homilies—including one for Rogationtide. This sermon, probably composed by Matthew Parker, divides into three-parts so that the minister could read one part on each Rogation Day. The homily says nothing about penitential activity, the Lord’s Prayer, Mamertus, the fast of the Ninevites, or doomsday: standard topics in medieval Rogation sermons.39 Instead, it tells the congregation to beseech God for natural blessings and waxes long on God’s goodness in creation and on thankfulness. According to this official sermon, the march reminds Christians to be content and not covetously seize the property of their neighbors. The perambulation acts out the doctrine that all humans are transitory pilgrims in this world. In their attempt to purge the festival of “popish” elements, these Anglican clergymen created a holiday that truly was a “beating of the bounds.” Despite many alterations, Rogationtide from Mamertus’ time until the Reformation was foremost a penitential occasion, and secondly, an apotropaic—whether against plague, war, crop-failure, or urban decline. Anglican Rogationtide, in contrast, was a liturgy of surveying, an opportunity for the parish to define itself as a geographical unit and even to repair parish markers along the way. Indeed, it was only in the late fifteenth century that the march began marking the parish boundary in England.40 The Elizabethan Poor Laws of 1597 and 1601 strengthened the need for a ceremony defining the parish geography.

37 George Herbert, A Country Parson; the Temple, ed. John N. Wall (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1981), p. 35. 38 For instance, John Rawlinson, Foure Summons of the Shulamite: A Sermon Preached at Pauls Crosse vpon Rogation Sunday, the 5. of May. 1605 (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1606), pp. 1–82; Daniel Price, Sauls prohibition staide. Preached in a sermon commaunded at Pauls Crosse, vpon Rogation Sunday, being the 28. of May. 1609 (London: Matthew Law, 1609), B1–F5; William Smith, Two Sermons Preached at the Cathedral Church of Norwich (Norwich: J.M., 1677), pp. 5–12. 39 Certain Sermons or Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches in the Time of Queen Elizabeth (London: SPCK, 1864), pp. 502–3, 517–18, 527–30. 40 Helen Gittos, Liturgy, Architecture, and Sacred Places in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 136–7; W. S. Tratman, “Beating the Bounds,” Folklore 42, no. 3 (1931): pp. 317–23; Harte, “Rethinking Rogationtide,” pp. 33–5; Hindle, “Beating the Bounds,” pp. 213–14, 221–2.

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Since medieval poor relief had centered on now-dissolved monasteries, the Elizabethan acts made each parish responsible for the welfare of the deserving poor settled within that parish’s boundaries. Anglican congregations had both a moral duty and a financial incentive to delineate parish geography. “Rich and poor” walked not out of penance, but rather for “the preservation of love and their parish rights and liberties.”41 Community formation originally was tertiary to Rogationtide. Once the clergy had proscribed penance and apotropaic “superstitions,” however, community building was all there was left.

EMPTY BOTTLES OF GENTILISME As great as the alterations were between the traditional medieval Rogation Days and the Elizabethan version of the feast, Puritan reformers did not think these changes enough. Indeed, during the seventeenth century, Rogationtide perambulations—like Maypoles, morris dances, and holiday fairs—became emblematic of Anglican corruption in the eyes of Puritans. Dissenters viewed customs like Rogationtide as pagan inventions that could never become Christian and were always threatening to destroy the church. Puritan, Laudian, and Catholic controversialists debated the history and legitimacy of the feast.42 Puritan detractors of Rogationtide, for instance, lambasted the perambulations not only as popery, but increasingly also as pagan—allegedly a descendent from the pagan festival Ambarvalia. Peter Martyr Vermigli, the Italian Augustinian turned Oxford don, was the first Protestant to make this claim. In a 1560 letter sent to an Anglican cleric of Puritan leanings—either Thomas Sampson or Edmund Grindal—Vermigli attacks Rogationtide as a heathenism: But concerning those processions in Rogation-week, which seem to have been derived from the Ambarvalia of the heathen, I scarcely know what I can rightly advise you. This I say, that superstition is altogether to be avoided. But if in these processions only prayer is made to God, that He will graciously supply us with new fruits, and grant us a good use of them, and thanks be given at the same time for the sustenance of the year preceding, superstitions perhaps will seem to have been sufficiently avoided: although both magistrate and people should be

41 Izaak Walton, The Lives of Doctor John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr George Herbert, and Doctor Robert Sanderson (Chicago: Stone and Kimball, 1895), pp. 155–6. 42 For instance, John Martiall, A Replie to M. Calfhill’s Blasphemous Answer Made Against the Treatise of the Crosse (Antwerp: John Latius, 1566), 165r–166v; William Fulke, Stapleton’s Fortress Overthrown. A Rejoinder to Martiall’s Reply (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1848), pp. 182–5; Roger Edgeworth, Sermons Very Fruitful, Godly, and Learned (London: In aedibus Roberti Caly, 1557), 273v.

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instructed against such ceremonies, and every effort must be made to get rid of them as relics of the Amorites.43

Vermigli’s recommendations were hardly novel. Like reformers before him, Vermigli despised popish superstitions on the Rogation Days, but accepted the feast itself as long as it was transformed. What is new, however, is Vermigli’s claim that the Rogation Days were a pagan survival descended from an earlier Roman festival, namely Ambarvalia. Although Vermigli was a confirmed Protestant and reformer in England from the 1540s, he asserted this theory only during Elizabeth’s reign, once the English Reformation was firmly established. The Rogation–Ambarvalia linkage was not an initial Protestant objection to the medieval church, but rather a later debate among Protestant factions. Multiple Protestant authors repeated Vermigli’s assertion over the next century.44 While Vermigli grudgingly tolerated the feast, by the seventeenth century Dissenters called for abolition.45 Whenever modern scholars repeat a version of Vermigli’s allegation, they promulgate early modern theological polemic. Thomas Hobbes was the most influential of these polemicists—and the one who guaranteed that Ambarvalia would stay linked with Rogationtide for centuries. In the forty-fifth chapter of his treatise Leviathan—entitled “Of Demonology and Other Relics of the Religion of the Gentiles”—Hobbes argues that paganism survives into his own day disguised within Roman Catholicism and implicitly within Anglicanism too. Hobbes compares Catholicism to a “kingdom of fairies” and points to structural similarities between pagan and Christian rites.46 The Ambarvalia assertion is his culminating example:

43 De illis autem ambulationibus in hebdomada rogationum, quae uidentur ab ethnicorum ambarualibus defluxisse, quid recti consulere possim uix habeo. Id dico, superstitiones omnino uitandas. At si in ambulationibus iis deus tantummodo oretur, ut nouos fructus benigne suppeditet, et eorundem bonum usum largiatur, simulque gratiae agantur de alimentis praeteriti anni, uidebuntur fortassis euitatae superstitiones. Quamuis et contra huiusmodi ritum sit et magistratus et populus edocendus, et pro uiribus agendum ut explodantur seu reliquiae Amorrhaeorum, Peter Martyr Vermigli, The Zurich Letters (Second Series): Comprising the Correspondence of Several English Bishops and Others with Some of the Helvetian Reformers, during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (Cambridge: The University Press, 1845), vol. 2, pp. 25, 40; similar, but not identical, ideas appear in a 1553 work by the Swiss reformer Pierre Viret, a friend of Vermigli; Pierre Viret, De vero verbi Dei (Geneva: Oliva Roberti Stephani, 1553), 34v, 104r. 44 Richard Huloet and John Higgins, Huloets Dictionarie (London: Thomas Marsh, 1572), s.v. “Going and walking about the towne”; André Rivet, Catholicus Orthodoxus, Oppositus Catholico Papistae (Leiden: Apud Abrahamum Commelinum, 1630), pp. 581–3; John Jewel, The Works of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, ed. John Ayre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1842), p. 915; Lancelot Andrewes and Edward Leigh, A Learned Discourse of Ceremonies Retained and Used in Christian Churches (London: Charles Adams, 1653), p. 59. 45 Richard Baxter, The Saints’ Everlasting Rest (London: Thomas Underhill, 1654), 3.5.91; John Hildrop, God’s Judgments Upon the Gentile Apostatized Church (London: R. Knaplock, 1713), p. 89; Joshua Stopford, Pagano-Papismus: or, an Exact Parallel between Rome-Pagan and Rome-Christian, in their Doctrines and Ceremonies (London: Robert Clavel, 1675), pp. 224–6. 46 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 45.38, in Hobbes: Leviathan: Revised Student Edition, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 457; cf. etiam perambulatio

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The church of Rome imitates [the heathen] also in their Holy Dayes. . . . They had their procession called Ambarvalia; and we our procession about the fields in the Rogation Week. Nor do I think that these are all the ceremonies that have been left in the Church from the first conversion of the Gentiles; but they are all that I can for the present call to mind. And if a man would wel observe that which is delivered in Histories concerning the Religious Rites of the Greeks and Romanes, I doubt not but he might find many more of these old empty Bottles of Gentilisme, which the Doctors of the Romane Church, either by Negligence, or Ambition, have filled up again with the new Wine of Christianity, that will not fail in time to break them.

Many English scholars of folkloristics adopted Hobbes’ conclusion. Early investigations of “popular antiquities”—the standard term until “folklore” was coined in 1846—concentrated especially on the customs of the liturgical year. John Aubrey, one of the founders of seventeenth-century folkloristics, not only borrowed from Hobbes but was also a good friend of the political writer and his eventual biographer.47 Likewise, some later Victorian folklorists explicitly framed their discussion of Rogationtide in terms of Hobbes.48 This Puritan paradigm of the medieval church as Christianized paganism still lurks behind modern scholarly support for the Rogation–Ambarvalia linkage. Thus, for instance, art historian Carol Neuman de Vegvar declares that “the letania maior was a specifically Roman rite, a Christian replacement of the ambarvalia,” early modernist Ronald Hutton refers to how “a clear pagan progenitor, in the festival of Ambarvalia at Rome . . . [was] Christianized,” feminist historian Pamela Berger notes that Mamertus “Christianized a deeprooted pagan practice . . . substituted a Christian liturgy for pagan hymns . . . [to] redirect peasant veneration from pagan deities to Christian figures,” and medievalist Bernadette Filotas concludes “the liturgy of Rogations was meant to fulfill the functions of the Ambervalia (sic).”49 The language of replacement, illa per parochiarum fines post pascham, imitatio est festi qui romanis appellabatur ambarualia, Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 45, in Opera philosophica quae latine scripsit Omnia, ed. W. Molesworth (London: John Bohn, 1841), vol. III, p. 489.15–20; Cameron, Enchanted Europe, pp. 256–8, 282–5. 47 John Aubrey, Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, ed. James Britten (London: Folk-lore Society, 1881), pp. 17, 58–9; cf. John Brand, Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain: Including the Whole of Mr. Bourne’s Antiquitates Vulgares (Newcastle: T. Saint, 1777), pp. v, 263–70; this first edition of Brand differed from later redactions. 48 Edward Clodd, Pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Huxley: With an Intermediate Chapter on the Causes of Arrest of the Movement (New York: D. Appleton, 1897), pp. 59–60; Gerard, “Folk-Lore Ex Cathedra,” pp. 9–10; E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage (London: Oxford University Press, 1903), vol. 1, pp. 119–20, 124, 148; Richard M. Dorson, The British Folklorists: A History (London: Routledge, 1968), pp. 4–10, 248–57. 49 Carol Neuman de Vegvar, “Converting the Anglo-Saxon Landscape: Crosses and their Audiences,” in Text, Image, Interpretation: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature and its Insular Context in Honour of Éamonn Ó Carragáin, edited by Alastair Minnis and Jane Roberts (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 413–14; Hutton, Stations of the Sun, p. 277; Pamela C. Berger,

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substitution, and fulfillment—all traditional terminology in supersessionist theology—is noteworthy. These contemporary scholars echo a discourse about the growth of medieval Christianity that stretches back for centuries. No wonder, then, that during the seventeenth century, new definitions of both “Christianize” and “syncretism” arose. “Syncretism,” for instance, derives from the Greek verb συγκρητίζειν: to act like a Cretan by allying militarily against a shared enemy.50 In the seventeenth century, though, syncretismus and its vernacular cognates began to refer to the ideas of Protestant theologians like George Calixtus or Hugo Grotius who strove to reunite the divided Christian denominations around a few common doctrines. In the eighteenth century, the word was applied to pagan survivals—reconciling, in that sense, Christianity and paganism, rather than Catholics and Protestants.51 As for “Christianize,” although the word originally meant “to initiate someone as a Christian,” it acquired a secondary sense of “to ape Christianity.”52 In 1641, for example, John Milton lamented that “a greedy desire to win proselytes” through an attractive liturgy rather than through preaching caused “the old Christians [to] paganize, while by their scandalous and base conforming to heathenism they did no more . . . but bring some pagans to Christianize; for true Christians they were neither themselves nor could make other.”53 Christianization was reduced to syncretism. Lutheran and Anglican reformers transformed Rogationtide in many of the same ways. They removed trappings such as relics and masses and emphasized that processions and penance could not merit divine blessings. Christians should use the Rogation Days, instead, as an occasion to throw themselves in prayer on the grace of God. Protestant Rogationtide was an agricultural festival, not a penitential one. Unlike the medieval feast, Anglican Rogation

The Goddess Obscured: Transformation of the Grain Protectress from Goddess to Saint (Boston: Beacon Press, 1988), pp. 21–3, 150; Filotas, Pagan Survivals, p. 154; cf. “the Ambarvalia, then, must be unquestionably the source for Rogations . . . crucial to the process of Christianization,” Nathan, “The Rogation Ceremonies,” pp. 283, 288; “fossilized myth could then be transposed and Christianized with complete impunity into the festival of the Rogations,” Walter, Christian Mythology, p. 122. 50 Rosalind Shaw and Charles Stewart, “Introduction: Problematizing Syncretism,” in Syncretism/ Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis, edited by Rosalind Shaw and Charles Stewart (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 1–5; Oxford English Dictionary online, s.v. “syncretism,” accessed March 3, 2017. 51 I know of no mention of syncretism with paganism before East Apthorp, Letters on the Prevalence of Christianity before its Civil Establishment with Observations on a Late History of the Decline of the Roman Empire (London: J. Robson, 1778), pp. 162–3; as the title implies, Apthorp’s work is a rebuttal of Edward Gibbon. 52 Oxford English Dictionary online, s.v. “Christianize,” accessed March 23, 2017. 53 John Milton, Animadversions, in The Prose Works of John Milton: With a Biographical Introduction, ed. Rufus Wilmot Griswold (Philadelphia: J. W. Moore, 1853), vol. 1, p. 99.

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perambulations beat the bounds of the parish to bring fertility.54 Although Dissenting authors insisted that Rogationtide grew out of a Christianized Roman festival, ironically the Protestant adaptation of the feast looked much less distinctively Christian, and much more like pagan folklore, than the medieval penitential season ever had.

AMBARVALIC SACRIFIC E IN ROMAN THOUGHT Admittedly, when modern historians repeated a secularized form of this Puritan polemic, they base their interpretation on more than the opinions of Vermigli and Hobbes. Contemporary scholars like Geoffrey Nathan or Donatien de Bruyne have cited two different lines of evidence in support of a Rogationtide–Ambarvalia linkage.55 First, they have noted supposed parallels between the timing, form, and purpose of these two festivals. Second, historians have pointed to the existence of an anonymous Latin homily from ninthcentury Francia claiming exactly this: that Mamertus created the Rogation Days as a Christian substitute for the Ambarvalia. A closer examination of both of these lines of evidence, however, demonstrates that neither can convince. First, a major obstacle blocks any argument based on structural parallels between Rogationtide and the Roman feast of the Ambarvalia. The Ambarvalia itself may never have existed. If not, then Mamertus could not have based a Christian feast upon it. Classicists who have examined the half-dozen passages in Roman literature that supposedly mention the Ambarvalia have convincingly argued that Roman authors use the word to describe a wide range of agricultural rites, both public and private, with no set date or procedure. One scholar summarized contemporary research in this way: Recent investigations have to a large extent clarified the problems surrounding the Roman agricultural lustrations. It may now be concluded that the Romans knew three types: the lustratio agri, the lustratio pagi, and the lustratio agri Romani. The fratres arvales did not celebrate the ambarvalia; no Roman noun Ambarvalia exists; and a festival, which we call Ambarvalia, is virtually impossible to reconstruct.56

54 For fertility, see, for example; Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, pp. 136, 279–80; Hutton, Stations of the Sun, pp. 286–8. 55 For instance, Nathan, “The Rogation Ceremonies,” pp. 281–3; De Bruyne, “L’origine des processions,” pp. 15–18. 56 Jan Bremmer, “Tibullus’ Colonus and his ‘Ambarvalia’,” in De Agricultura. In Memoriam Pieter Willem de Neeve (1945–1990), edited by Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg et al. (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1993), p. 177.

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Ritual purifications (lustrationes) were a standard part of the Roman festal calendar. Over the course of the year, Roman priests cleansed everything from the boundary (pomerium) of the city of Rome in February, to military trumpets in March, to fields of crops in May, to sheepfolds in April, to weapons in October, to the Roman citizenry at the end of a census.57 Lustrations also occurred at special occasions like births, funerals, or army musters. The Latin word derives from the verb lustrare, meaning “to purify,” “to encircle,” or even just “to wander over.” These ceremonies entailed a procession of the sacrificial victim—normally a suovetaurilia: a pig, sheep, and goat, usually all sucklings—around the object being cleansed. Priests would also often sprinkle the object with water from a branch. For example, in the sixth book of the Aeneid, the priest Corynaeus expiates the Trojans after the pollution of a funeral: “three times he walked around his allies with pure water, / sprinkling them with light dew from the bough of a blessed olive tree, / and he purified the men.”58 Cato the Elder’s agricultural manual, De agri cultura, provides the fullest account of a rural lustration. Cato’s manual depicts a private ceremony performed by a wealthy Roman planter with the help of his family, slaves, and a hired soothsayer. The farmer wards off illness, bad weather, and infertility by leading a suovetaurilia around his estate boundaries, ending with an immolation, a libation, and set prayers to Mars.59 Cato frets more about the wording of archaic prayers, than about the procession itself. Indeed, his ritual formulae indicate that the animals did not have to circumambulate the entire estate, only “as many parts as is judged best to go around.” The Romans borrowed many civic holidays from older familial rites. As a result, for centuries, historians posited the existence of an annual public procession of the landscape around Rome—called the Ambarvalia—on the model of private rural lustrations.60 Contemporary research has undermined this traditional interpretation. Unlike, for instance, the Saturnalia or the 57 For lustrations, see Jörge Rüpke, Religion in Republican Rome: Rationalization and Ritual Change (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), pp. 37–44; Coppersmith, The Ambarvalia and the Rogations, pp. 6–59. 58 Idem ter socios pura circumtulit unda/spargens rore leui et ramo felicis oliuae/lustrauitque uiros, Vergil, Aeneid, ed. R. Deryck Williams (London: Bristol Classical Press, 1996), 6.229–31. 59 Agrum lustrare sic oportet . . . quota ex parte siue circumagi siue circumferenda censeas, uti cures lustrare, Cato the Elder, De agri cultura, ed. A. Mazzarino (Leipzig: Teuber, 1982), 141.1–4; for the lustration of private estates, cf. Vergil, Georgics 1.338–50 and Tibullus, Elegiae 2.1.15–18; C. Bennett Pascal, “Tibullus and the Ambarvalia,” The American Journal of Philology 109, no. 4 (1988): pp. 523–36; and Lucan 1.592–4; Bremmer, “Tibullus’ Colonus,” pp. 77–81. 60 For such a traditional view, Arnaldo Momigliano, “An Interim Report on the Origins of Rome,” The Journal of Roman Studies 53, nos. 1–2 (1963): pp. 100–1, 115; for opposing modern interpretations, Roger D. Woodard, Indo-European Sacred Space: Vedic and Roman Cult (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2006), pp. 98–103, 108, 118, 123–40, 150, 157–63, 255; John Scheid, Romulus et ses frères. Le collège des frères arvales, modèle du culte public dans la Rome des empereurs (Rome: BEFAR, 1990), pp. 26–35.

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Lupercalia, the Romans had no single public holiday going by the title Ambarvalia. In fact, the noun Ambarvalia never appears in Latin. Roman writers only ever use the adjective ambarualis, which could describe a broad array of sacrificial circumambulations—“ambarvalic” rites rather than an Ambarvalia, to use one scholar’s coinage.61 Indeed, the sole source that describes an ambarvalic state festival is the geography of the first-century Greek author Strabo of Amasia. In a passage on the landscape of Latium, Strabo asserts: between the fifth and sixth milestone from Rome is a place called “Festi,” and this place displays the limit of Roman territory back then [i.e. at the time of Romulus]. And the pontifexes perform burnt offerings which they call ambaruia there and also at many other boundary places on the same day.62

Although a Roman citizen, Strabo’s knowledge of Latin literature was shallow and his lengthy Geography relied on outdated Greek authors like Polybius.63 The garbled spelling of ambarualis as Ἀμβαρουίαν suggests that the geographer had not experienced the rite directly. Even assuming that Strabo’s information is accurate, the festival that he describes does not match fifth-century Rogationtide. Strabo pictures a group of priests celebrating a series of blood sacrifices at a number of locations around Ager Romanus: the hinterland of the city of Rome. He never mentions a fixed annual date or a march to shrines within and without the city. Strabo thought that only a specific priestly college (the collegium pontificum) celebrated the festival, not the wider population; only on a single day, rather than three; and only near the city of Rome, not in provinces like Gaul. At best, Strabo supplies evidence for a local “ambarvalic” lustration that was already archaic by the Augustan Age and so obscure that no other classical author ever mentioned it again. Latin authors furnish even less evidence than Strabo. Ambarualis is not a common word. Only three extant authors before the year 600 ever employ this adjective: Servius, Macrobius, and the anonymous author of the Augustan History. Although all three use ambarualis to refer to outdoor sacrifices, these sacrifices include both public and private ceremonies and have no set annual date or procedure. These three authors wrote during the late antique twilight of classical paganism and all three probably picked up the word ambarualis

Woodard, Indo-European Sacred Space, pp. 123–5; cf. Pascal, “Tibullus,” pp. 531–3. μεταξὺ γοῦν τοῦ πέμπτου καὶ τοῦ ἕκτου λίθου τῶν τὰ μίλια διασημαινόντων τῆς Ῥώμης καλεῖται τόπος Φῆστοι: τοῦτον δ᾽ ὅριον ἀποφαίνουσι τῆς τότε Ῥωμαίων γῆς, οἵ θ᾽ ἱερομνήμονες θυσίαν ἐπιτελοῦσιν ἐνταῦθά τε καὶ ἐν ἄλλοις τόποις πλείοσιν ὡς ὁρίσις αὐθημερόν, ἣν καλοῦσιν Ἀμβαρουίαν. γενομένης δ᾽ οὖν στάσεως φασὶ κατὰ τὴν κτίσιν ἀναιρεθῆναι τὸν Ῥῶμον, Strabo of Amasia, Geography 5.3.2, ed. H. L. Jones (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1932), vol. 2, pp. 382–3. 63 Scheid, Romulus et ses frères, pp. 98–100, 442–51, 475–6, 714; Woodard, Indo-European Sacred Space, pp. 157–64. 61 62

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from grammatical treatises like De uerborum significatu—a lost secondcentury dictionary by the antiquarian Sextus Pompeius Festus—rather than from popular usage. Festus’ treatise vanished sometime in the twelfth century. But historians can gauge what his work said from entries in an epitome of Festus’ dictionary by the Lombard monk Paul the Deacon.64 According to Paul, “those offerings are called ambaruales that are sacrificed by two brothers on behalf of the field.” Paul contrasts these with “amburbial” lustrations (amburbiales, amburbium) “that are led around the boundaries of the city of Rome.”65 Judging from Paul’s epitome, Festus blended together two separate hypothetical etymologies for ambarualis: the first, from ambio + arua (“to go around the fields”); and the second, from ambo + fratres aruales (“by the two members of the Arval Brotherhood,” a different priestly college than the pontifexes). Classicists today prefer the first etymology.66 By providing two contradictory etymologies, Festus reveals that he never witnessed these offerings—at least, not in the version Strabo portrays. All three late antique authors who employ ambarualis likely knew Festus’ lost dictionary. Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, for instance, explicitly cites Festus. Macrobius was the author of the Saturnalia, a dialogue about Roman cult, dining, the calendar, and literature, set at a dinner-party during the holiday of Saturnalia in 382.67 Twelve Roman aristocrats participate in the discussion—most frequently the party’s host, the noted pagan official Vettius Agorius Praetextatus. The dialogue is fabricated, mainly extracts from earlier Latin treatises. Macrobius, a Christian senator, actually wrote the work in the 430s and may not even have been born in 382. Emperor Theodosius I ended pagan sacrifices in 391, so Macrobius likely had never seen a traditional Roman festival. The Saturnalia is a testament to the antiquarian culture of the Christian senatorial class of mid-fifth-century Rome, not an accurate depiction of the last Roman pagans. Macrobius employs ambarualis in the midst of a long speech by Praetextatus about Vergil’s expertise in the pontifical law. While explaining names for kinds of sacrificial victims, Praetextatus quotes Festus as saying “an ‘ambarvalic’ 64 Ambaruales hostiae appellabantur, quae pro aruis a duobus fratribus sacrificabantur. Amburbiales hostiae dicebantur, quae circum terminos urbis Romae ducebantur . . . Amptermini, qui circa terminos prouinciae manent. Unde amiciri, amburbium, ambarualia, amplexus dicta sunt, Paul the Deacon, Excerpta ex libris Festi de significatione uerborum, ed. W. Lindsay (Leipzig: Teubner, 1931), pp. 5, 16; L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Texts and Transmissions: A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 162–4. 65 For amburbial sacrifices, Woodard, Indo-European Sacred Space, pp. 101, 132, 269. 66 Bremmer, “Tibullus’ Colonus,” pp. 77–8; Scheid, Romulus et ses frères, pp. 26–35; Woodard, Indo-European Sacred Space, pp. 99, 108, 130–4, 140, 158. 67 For Macrobius, see Cameron, The Last Pagans, pp. 231–75; Reynolds and Wilson, Texts and Transmissions, pp. 222–4, 233–5; Michael Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 320; Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, pp. 151–7.

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victim is one that, because of the matter of the gods, is led around the fields by those who perform offerings for the crops.”68 Praetextatus adds that Vergil twice portrayed an ambarvalic sacrifice: at Eclogues 5.74–5 and Georgics 1.345.69 These passages describe private lustrations to different agricultural deities (Daphnis, Ceres) at various times (harvest, spring). Macrobius evidently thought almost any rural lustration qualified as “ambarvalic.” The pagan grammarian Maurus Servius Honoratus wrote a prominent commentary on the poetry of Vergil around the year 420.70 There, Servius employs ambarualis when commenting on the three Vergilian passages: the two that Macrobius cites plus one other (Eclogues 3.77).71 These common citations stem from a shared source: the lost fourth-century Vergilian commentary of Aelius Donatus.72 Servius was an acquaintance of the Praetextatus circle in real life and is a character in Macrobius’ Saturnalia. Yet, despite their overlapping lifespans, social circles, and grammatical sources, Macrobius and Servius never borrow from one another.73 They are independent witnesses to how late Romans understood ambarualis. According to Servius, Vergil’s Georgics calls the ambarvalic victim “fortunate” (felix) because it is “fertile” (fecunda): a pregnant sow.74 Actually, the

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Ambarualis hostia est, ut ait Pompeius Festus, quae rei diuinae causa circum arua ducitur ab his qui pro frugibus faciunt . . . hinc enim uidelicet et nomen hostiae adquisitum est, ab ambiendis aruis, Macrobius, Saturnalia, 3.5.7, ed. Robert A. Kaster (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), vol. 2, pp. 40–1; Macrobius knew a longer version of Festus’ entry than Paul preserves. Festus’ original might be reconstructed as: “ambaruales hostiae appellantur, quae rei diuinae causa circum arua ducuntur a duobus fratribus, qui pro frugibus faciunt.” Pro frugibus faciunt alludes to a line of Vergil (Ecl. 3.77: cum faciam uitulam pro frugibus), discussed below; Cameron, The Last Pagans, pp. 168–9, 575–80, 619. 69 Macrobius, Saturnalia, 3.5.7, Kaster, vol. 2, pp. 40–1; cf. Vergil, Eclogues, ed. O. Ribbeck (Leipzig: Teubner, 1894), vol. 5, pp. 65, 70, 74–5; Vergil, Georgics, ed. O. Ribbeck (Leipzig: Teubner, 1894), vol. 1, pp. 338–40, 345–7. 70 The dominant redaction of Servius in the Middle Ages was a fifth-century interpolated version that supplements Servius with extracts from other grammarians, such as Aelius Donatus. When I cite Servius, sections found in the longer version, but not in the original, will be underlined. For Servius, Robert A. Kaster, The Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 61–3, 66, 169–98, 356–9; Cameron, The Last Pagans, pp. 162–3, 240–52, 571–90; Reynolds and Wilson, Texts and Transmissions, pp. 385–8; Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library, p. 332. 71 Maurus Servius Honoratus, In Vergilii carmina, Eclogues 3.77, ed. G. Thilo and H. Hagen (Leipzig: Teubner, 1881), p. 39; although Macrobius discusses Eclogues 3.77, he did not deem this sacrifice to be ambarvalic; Macrobius, Saturnalia, 3.2.15–16, Kaster, vol. 2, pp. 14–15. 72 Cf. “Et cum lustrabimus agros” . . . “Lustrare” hic circuire: dicit enim ambaruale sacrificium, Servius, In Vergilii carmina, Eclogues 5.75, Thilo, p. 63; huius sacrificii mentionem . . . “et cum lustrabimus agros.” Ubi lustrare significat circumire, Macrobius, Saturnalia, 3.5.7, Kaster, vol. 2, pp. 40–1. 73 Cameron, The Last Pagans, pp. 247–52; Kaster, Guardians, pp. 275–8. 74 “Felix hostia”: id est fecunda. Dicit autem ambaruale sacrificium, quod de porca et saepe fecunda et grauida fieri consueuerat, Servius, In Vergilii carmina, Georgics 1.345, Thilo, p. 203; note the singular hostia in Vergil’s poem.

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normal victim at Roman lustrations was a suckling suovetaurilia to Mars, but a pregnant sow was a standard sacrifice to Ceres.75 When expounding the Eclogues 3.77 passage, Servius contradicts himself and portrays the ambarvalic offering as a young calf (uitula), rather than a pregnant pig.76 Servius’ usage is flexible, probably because he learned the word ambarualis from late antique grammatical texts, not from actual practice. The final classical source to use the word ambarualis is a notorious collection of biographies for over fifty emperors, junior emperors, and usurpers, known as the Augustan History. This work presents itself as a gathering of vitae written by six separate authors during the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine I. In truth, it is a group of fictionalized biographies forged by a single unreliable author sometime in the last third of the fourth century.77 The author-forger—“a frivolous, ignorant person with no agenda worthy of the name”—interwove paraphrases from a variety of sources with passages of his own free invention.78 The influential classicist Ronald Syme has argued that the anonymous author was a pagan antiquarian grammarian affiliated with the circle of Praetextatus: not unlike Servius and Macrobius.79 The author of the Augustan History mentions ambarvalic offerings in his biography of the Emperor Aurelian (270–5). Aurelian’s vita starts with a spurious preface in which an invented historian—one Flavius Vopiscus of Syracuse—admits he will make false statements (aliquid . . . mentitum), complains about the inaccuracies of earlier Augustan History biographies, and avers that he resolved to write while attending the festival of the Hilaria: a holiday associated with social inversion, ritual laughter, and disguise.80 Even “Flavius,” thus, acknowledges that the biography is little more than a joke. In the key passage, Aurelian is about to war against the Marcomanni, a marauding Germanic tribe. But first, the emperor decides to revive a forgotten practice by consulting the Sibylline Books in order to guarantee victory. In preparation for examining the books, the Roman senators purify themselves through ambarvalic sacrifices and other ceremonies such as lustrations, singing, and amburbiales. Yet the consultation is “overly late” and “hesitant”; Emperor Aurelian complains that the senators delayed so long that 75

Woodard, Indo-European Sacred Space, pp. 121–2, 130. “Cum faciam uitula pro frugibus, ipse uenito”: dicitur autem hoc sacrificium ambaruale, quod arua ambiat uictima . . . sicut amburbale uel amburbium dicitur sacrificium, quod urbem circuit et ambit uictima, Servius, In Vergilii carmina, Eclogues 3.77, Thilo, p. 39. 77 For the Augustan History, Cameron, The Last Pagans, pp. 558–9, 743–82; Reynolds and Wilson, Texts and Transmissions, pp. 354–6. 78 Cameron, The Last Pagans, p. 781. 79 Ronald Syme, Ammianus and the Historia Augusta (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), pp. 72–9, 176–202. 80 Scriptores Historiae Augustae, Aurelianus 1–2, ed. E. Hohl (Leipzig: Teubner 1965), pp. 149–50. 76

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they are behaving more like Christians than pagans.81 Nothing in this passage suggests that the Augustan History author had any direct knowledge of ambarvalic offerings.82 Indeed, according to the anonymous biographer, ambarvalic sacrifice was already rare in the third century and Christian power hindered any attempt to restore the rite. In an act of novelistic verisimilitude, the author probably mixed details he discovered in grammatical sources like Donatus or Festus in order to depict a pagan ceremony that would seem archaic and impressive to late antique readers. Together, these classical authors indicate that the Romans never celebrated an annual festival called the Ambarvalia. And if no such unitary holiday existed, then Mamertus of Vienne could not possibly have adapted it into Rogationtide. Moreover, Rogationtide cannot even be categorized as an “ambarvalic rite.” In Roman usage, ambarualis denotes a flexible category of animal sacrifice. An ambarvalic offering could occur at various times of year (spring, autumn, special occasions like the start of a military campaign), use different victims (a pregnant pig, a young calf, a suovetaurilia), supplicate a variety of gods (Ceres, Mars, Daphnis), and be celebrated by diverse peoples (pontifexes, Roman senators, Arval Brothers, individual farmers). The only common characteristic is that all ambarvalic offerings require that someone lead a victim through, but not necessarily around, a field of crops. This commonality is obvious from etymology alone (ambio + arua). Furthermore, none of these authors probably ever witnessed an ambarvalic sacrifice personally. Strabo, after all, was foreigner to Italy, and the other three wrote in the Christian empire, close to or after the abolition of pagan sacrifice in 391.83 These authors likely acquired their knowledge by reading elite sources like Polybius and Aelius Donatus. Finally, these classical authors consistently view ambarvalic sacrifice as a ceremony practiced only around the city of Rome, not in the empire in general. Ambarualis was a learned antiquarian category classifying a range of practices. An ambarvalic lustration was rural and close to the city of Rome, but, otherwise, the ceremony varied widely. The early Rogation Days shared almost nothing in common with such ambarvalic rites. After all, in its original fifth-century form, Rogationtide was a three-day penitential procession, publicly celebrated by the whole population of a Gallo-Roman city, without any agricultural connection until later. It was not a private Italian rural lustration. In one of his letters on 81 Sero nimis . . . tamdiu . . . dubitasse . . . quasi in Christianorum ecclesia, non in templo deorum omnium tractaretis, Scriptores Historiae Augustae, Aurelianus 19.3, 20.4–5, Hohl, pp. 163–4. 82 Nos aruis ambarualia indicemus . . . lustrata urbs, cantata carmina, amburbium celebratum, ambarualia promissa, Scriptores Historiae Augustae, Aurelianus 19.6–20.1, Hohl, pp. 163–4. 83 The sons of Constantine forbad public animal sacrifices such as ambaruales earlier still, in the 340s, though the emperor Julian tried to reverse this ban; Cameron, The Last Pagans, pp. 59–74.

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Rogationtide, Sidonius Apollinaris praises the new feast specifically because he viewed it as superior to the kinds of agrarian lustrations that late antique authors called ambarvalic. Unlike the Rogation Days, “earlier public prayers,” were “uncertain, lukewarm, rare, and often interrupted for lunchtime”; they “beseeched for rain and good weather” and were attended by only part of the community.84 In its original form, Rogationtide was radically distinct from an ambarvalic offering, as a genuine Roman pagan like Servius would have recognized. Only due to their increasing ignorance of the authentic practices of long-dead Roman pagans could later Christian authors conclude that Rogationtide was ambarvalic.

THE AMBARVALIA IN MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY The alleged parallels between Rogationtide in the fifth century and those pagan sacrifices termed ambarualis are illusions. How then can one account for the second piece of evidence that scholars have employed: the survival of a genuine Carolingian homily asserting exactly this—that Rogationtide originated as a Christianized replacement for the Ambarvalia?85 Detailed examination of this anonymous sermon, alongside other medieval uses of the word ambarualis, reveals that the Frankish preacher had no fresh knowledge about the origins of Rogationtide. The concept of ambarvalic sacrifices, after all, was far from unknown during the Middle Ages. Most of the classical authors who speak of ambaruales had minimal impact on medieval clerics. But Servius was widely read in the Latin West; his commentary survives in dozens of manuscripts from the Carolingian period onward.86 Just like late antique schoolboys, medieval clerics found Servius a matchless tool for understanding the allusions and historical context of Vergil’s poetry—a central textbook for Latin grammar throughout the Middle Ages. Unsurprisingly, on account of Servius, at least a dozen medieval authors employ the term ambarualis in a variety of genres and historical periods. The word received an entry in every important Latin dictionary produced during the Middle Ages. Consider, for instance, the earliest extant medieval dictionary, Papias the Lombard’s Elementarium, written in the vicinity of Pavia during the 1040s. Papias follows Servius by describing an ambarvalic 84 Vagae tempentes infrequentesque utque sic dixerim oscitabundae supplicationes quae saepe interpellantum prandiorum obicibus hebetabantur, maxime aut imbres aut serenitatem deprecaturae, Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 5.14.2–3, MGH AA 8, p. 87. 85 Nathan, “The Rogation Ceremonies,” pp. 299–302; Vercelli Homilies 11.1–8, 12.1–16. 86 Reynolds and Wilson, Texts and Transmissions, pp. 385–8; Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library, p. 332.

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rite as an animal sacrifice that moves around a city.87 Some later dictionaries— for instance, Osbern of Gloucester’s Panormia, from the third quarter of the twelfth century—supplement Servius with language from Paul the Deacon, but the content remained the same.88 Any medieval reader would discover roughly the same information on ambarualis regardless of the dictionary perused.89 When the word appears outside dictionaries, it is a rough synonym for “procession.”90 For instance, the Parisian master Peter Cantor tells an exemplum about a Christian procession for rain at Rheims; Peter states that the marchers “performed both amburbial and ambarvalic rites”: that is, they perambulated around the town and countryside alike.91 Similarly, according to a now-lost Vita Marcsuidis, in 939, Marcsuith, the abbess-founder of the Ottonian convent of Schildesche in Westphalia, issued an ordo for an annual purifying procession, to be conducted on the Monday after Pentecost. Marcsuith states that the procession will “circumambulate the parishes and lustrate the houses in the manner of a pagan ambarvalic rite.”92 The story is dubious.

Papias and later lexicographers misspell ambarualis as aruambalis, flipping the two roots. Any later author who employs this spelling knew the word indirectly from a dictionary, rather than from a Roman source: amburbale uel amburbium sacrificium quod circuit ciuitatem . . . arua ab arando et colendo dicta, id est tellus, inde aruambale sacrificium aruorum et arualis, id est rusticus agrestis; Papias, Elementarium: Littera A, AM 59, AR 268, ed. V. De Angelis (Milan: Cisalpino-Goliardica, 1978), vol. 2, pp. 208, 367; cf. Servius, In Vergilii carmina, Eclogues 3.77, Thilo, p. 39. 88 Arum componitur ambarualis, id est hostia quadam cum qua arua ambiebant, et amburbiales id est hostia cum qua urbem ambiebant . . . amburbialis, hostiae cum quibus aruum ambiebant, Osbern of Gloucester, Panormia, in Angelo Mai (ed.), Classicorum auctorum e Vaticanis codicibus editorum (Rome: Pontifical Urbaniana University, 1836), vol. 8, pp. 39, 52; cf. Paul the Deacon, Excerpta ex libris Festi, Lindsay, pp. 5, 16. 89 Cf. Huguccio of Pisa, Derivationes, A.309.16–18, Cecchini, vol. 2, p. 83; Johannes Balbus of Genoa, Catholicon (Paris: Badius, 1506), 79v, 91r; Conrad of Mure, Fabularius, 2857–60, CCCM 210, ed. T. van de Loo (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), p. 159; Fuchs and Weijers, Lexicon Latinitatis Nederlandicae, vol. 1, A 285, A 294, A 594, pp. 211, 215, 365. 90 For instance, a late medieval glossary treats londlepar (“land-jumper,” “processor”) as a synonym for aruambulus; Thomas Wright and Richard Wülcker, Anglo-Saxon and Old English Glossaries: Vocabularies (London: Trübner, 1884), p. 565.46; cf. Hans Kurath et al., Middle English Dictionary, Part L.6 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1973), p. 1187; Siegfried Wenzel, Latin Sermon Collections from Later Medieval England: Orthodox Preaching in the Age of Wycliff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 175–7. 91 Extractis reliquiis et capsulis fecerunt per triduum fideles cuiuscumque sexus uel officii uel meriti aruambalia et amburbalia, Peter Cantor, Verbum Adbreuiatum, Textus Conflatus, 1.76.287–90, 372–85, CCCM 196B, ed. M. Boutry (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012); shorter versions of this story appear in earlier redactions of Peter’s treatise; cf. Radulf of Rivo, Gesta trium pontificum Leodiensium, in Gesta Pontificum Leodiensium Scripserunt Auctores Praecipui, ed. Jean Chapeauville (Liège: Christian Ouvverx, 1616), vol. 3, p. 51. 92 Parochiis uestris longo ambitu circumferentes et domos uestras lustrantes pro gentilico ambaruali . . . determinatum a uobis ambitum pia lustratione complentes, Fundatio monasterii schildecensis 11, MGH SS 15.2, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger (Hanover: 1888), pp. 1050–1; Kuchenbuch, “La construction,” pp. 150–2. 87

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The hagiographer probably wrote long after Marcsuith’s death in 945, in the thirteenth century or later.93 The ordo contains high medieval language— ill-suited to its allegedly tenth-century date.94 The hagiographer likely ascribed a later liturgical text to Marcsuith, as founder of the abbey, and borrowed the word ambarualis from Servius or a dictionary. High medieval sources consistently understand the word ambarualis as a kind of Roman sacrifice: one that involves a perambulation of a field. Their knowledge stems, directly or indirectly, from Servius. Medieval clergymen knew no historical facts about ambarvalic sacrifice; they only knew an etymology (ambio + arua). None of these sources provides any original evidence for either ambarvalic rites or late antique Rogationtide. In fact, the sole medieval source that equates Rogationtide with the Ambarvalia, an anonymous Carolingian homily, follows on these widespread medieval patterns, as close examination demonstrates. Like Papias or Peter Cantor, what the Frankish preacher knew about ambarvalic offerings was what Servius told him.

CLEANSING THE PAST Medieval sermons for Rogationtide overflow with diverse origin stories for the Rogation feast—some partly true, like the story of Mamertus, and some fictitious, like attempts to trace the holiday to the fast of Nineveh. Strikingly, three early medieval sermons claim that Rogationtide derived from an earlier Roman pagan feast. Initially, these sermons would appear to be strong evidence for the syncretic origins of the feast. In truth, once read within the context of medieval ideas on paganism, they actually demonstrate how supersessionist exegesis pervaded medieval historical thought. The first two examples are a pair of anonymous Old English sermons for the Monday and Tuesday of Rogationtide from the Vercelli Homilies, a collection of twenty-three assorted sermons by diverse authors, copied c. 975 into an Old English anthology. A single Anglo-Saxon preacher composed both these sermons.95 The homilist begins his Monday sermon by sketching an origin 93 Heino Pfannenschmid, Germanische Erntefeste im heidnischen und christlichen Cultus (Hanover: Hahn, 1878), pp. 367–70; Oswald Holder-Egger, MGH SS 15.2, pp. 1045–6. 94 For instance, the ordo states that the procession circled multiple parishes (parochiis . . . circumferentes). In the early Middle Ages, however, parochia nearly always means a diocese, not a parish. The ordo also anachronistically portrays the abbey as possessing relics of John the Baptist and papal approval (summi pontificis auctoritate) from the year of its foundation. Likewise, solemnizare and curs for cors (a courtyard) are high medieval coinages; Fundatio monasterii schildecensis 11, MGH SS 15.2, pp. 1050–1. 95 Charles Darwin Wright, “Vercelli Homilies XI–XIII and the Anglo-Saxon Benedictine Reform: Tailored Sources and Implied Audiences,” in Preacher, Sermon, and Audience in the Middle Ages, edited by Carolyn Muessig (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 203–27.

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story for the feast. Supposedly, St. Peter and the bishops of the other apostolic churches “first caused us to observe these three days because of the error of the heathen, for the heathen worshipped their idols and demonic images on these days.”96 In his Tuesday sermon, the homilist depicts this pagan idolatry at greater length. Allegedly, the ancient pagans “customarily set three days apart before the other days of the year in order to offer to their gods the offspring of their herds and all their property.”97 During the festival, the pagans would prostrate themselves before their idols, sacrifice to them, and hear their demon-possessed main idol speak.98 Although the Vercelli homilist believed that the apostles adapted the Rogation Days from an earlier Roman holiday, he did not have an ambarvalic ceremony in mind. Since the New Year in Rome—and also often during the Middle Ages—began on March 1, the preacher evidently imagined that the pagan rite occurred in later February or early March.99 The heathen rite, moreover, concentrated on an oblation before a cult statue in a specific temple, seemingly a temple in Rome where Peter was bishop. It was not a rural occasion and did not involve a procession—or, at least, the preacher never suggests that it did. The Old English homilist was manufacturing an apostolic origin for the Rogation Days in order to boost the authority of the feast, so it is hazardous to conjecture what Roman festival inspired this idea, if any. Another Old English preacher from around the same time, for instance, asserts that Christ himself instituted the Rogation Days.100 Still, the Vercelli homilist’s picture parallels closely the February lustration of the city of Rome, which the Venerable Bede described in his calendrical work On the Reckoning of Time, as will be discussed shortly. No connection exists between Rogationtide and St. Peter or Rogationtide and the February lustration, so no modern scholar has ever thought that the Vercelli preacher’s account is factual. In contrast to these two Vercelli homilies, many historians trust the third early medieval sermon to allege a pagan root for Rogationtide, although its claims are just as dubious. This origin story for the Rogation Days appears in an anonymous Latin homily from the continent, which survives solely in a 96

For þan sanctus Petrus se ealdorapostol ærest us gesette to healdanne ðas dagas & to beganganne for hæðenra manna gedwilde, for þan þe hie hiera wiggild & hiera diofulgild on ðas dagas weorðedon & beeodon, Vercelli Homilies 11.4–7. 97 Liornodon we þæt geo hæðene liode hæfdon þry dagas synderlice beforan hira oðrum gewunan þæt hie onguldon hira godum, & hiera ceapes wæstma & ealle hira æhta hie hira gode bebudon, Vercelli Homilies 12.1–3; beforan hira probably means that the days came at New Year’s, earlier than all other days. But it could mean “prior in rank,” rather than “prior in date.” 98 Vercelli Homilies 12.4–14; Hrabanus Maurus asserts that the Roman Greater Litany was dedicated to St. Peter, perhaps influencing this Old English author’s claim. Cf. Hrabanus Maurus, Martyrologium, April 25, CCCM 44, ed. J. McCulloh (Turnhout: Brepols, 1979). 99 The Oxford Companion to the Year, ed. B. Blackburn and L. Holford-Strevens (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 5–15, 58–64. 100 Bazire and Cross 5.16–21.

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tenth-century manuscript from the monastery of Corbie (Paris, BN, Lat. 18296).101 Corruptions in the text reveal that the sermon is not original to the manuscript, but was copied from a lost Carolingian exemplar. Since the preacher borrows from Alcuin’s De uirtutibus et uitiis, he cannot have worked before the Carolingian period.102 The sermon’s first editor suggested plausibly that the text is from ninth-century West Francia.103 If so, then the preacher worked at the height of the Carolingian Renewal, when reverence for and imitation of Rome was so great that Charlemagne adorned Aachen with classical spolia and one court poet spoke of “Golden Rome restored and born again on earth.”104 In the course of his lengthy Rogation address, the Frankish homilist discusses a variety of topics, from an exposition of the day’s lection, to the fast of Nineveh, to penitential theology, to Paul’s Areopagus sermon in Acts 17:15–34.105 The passage on Acts is particularly noteworthy, because this New Testament section exemplifies supersessionist reinterpretation of pagan customs. According to Acts 17, the Apostle Paul announced to a gathering of philosophers at the Athenian Areopagus that their own cult to an unknown god was a partial revelation of the true worship of the Creator. “You are excessively observant and ignorant of what you worship, but this I make known to you. God has disregarded your times of ignorance, but now he announces that all people must repent.”106 Paul had come to Athens in order to proclaim doctrines to them that until then their poetry and pagan ceremonies had only intimated. Christian dogma fulfills pagan rite. Since the Areopagus section is not a normal Rogation lection, the Frankish preacher had little reason to mention Paul’s speech except to allude to this biblical precedent. Paul’s Areopagus sermon attracted attention during the Carolingian period. The Ps-Dionysian corpus—a series of Christian Neoplatonic texts falsely ascribed to Dionysius of Athens, a natural philosopher whom Paul supposedly converted—was translated twice in the ninth century and the royal Abbey of Saint-Denis promoted his cult. According to hagiographic legend, Dionysius Nathan, “The Rogation Ceremonies,” p. 299. The phrase penitentia non annorum numero censetur sed amaritudine animi in the homily, right after the discussion of ambaruales, borrows on Alcuin. Indeed, the preacher signals this dependence to his audience (et hoc est quod alibi legimus); cf. Alcuin, De uirtutibus et uitiis, PL 101.622C. 103 De Bruyne, “L’origine des processions,” pp. 16–17. 104 Aurea Roma iterum renouata renascitur orbi, Peter Godman, Latin Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), pp. 45–6, 190–7. 105 Nathan, “The Rogation Ceremonies,” pp. 299–300; De Bruyne, “L’origine des processions,” pp. 14–15. 106 Superstitiosiores uos uideo . . . quod ergo ignorantes colitis, hoc ego annuntio uobis . . . Et tempora quidem huius ignorantiae despiciens Deus, nunc annuntiat hominibus ut omnes ubique pœnitentiam agant, Acts 17:22–3, 30. 101 102

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himself built the Athenian altar to the unknown god, after witnessing a solar eclipse at the time of the full moon.107 As an astronomer, Dionysius knew that such eclipses were impossible during a full moon, so he recognized this phenomenon as the work of a god.108 In response, Dionysius consecrated a plain outdoor altar, “harmoniously decorated” with only a brief inscription to the god, in contrast to the elaborate statuary of the Athenian temples around.109 This legend is biblical exegesis in narrative form. Like the magi at Christ’s nativity, Dionysius and his countrymen discovered God by watching the heavens.110 Both in scripture and in legend, the story of Paul at the Areopagus implies a doctrine of natural religio: that pagans can obtain partial knowledge of God and the rudiments of proper worship through the evidence of reason and cosmic order. Righteous pagans were not merely aware of God. They already venerated him. For pagan ritual, at least in its simplest form, was an antitype of Christian worship.111 Supersessionist exegesis inspired the Frankish Rogation homilist’s allusion to Paul; it may also guide the preacher’s remarks on the fast of Nineveh.112 As the next chapter will examine, many medieval churchmen viewed Nineveh as the exemplar of a community united in penance. By treating Nineveh as a model, clerics blurred the line between pagan and Christian. Hrabanus Maurus, for instance, shames his Christian audience by pointing out that “ignorant barbarians” like the Ninevites knew better than his congregation how to humble themselves before God.113 For Hrabanus, sinful Jonah and the repentant Ninevites were archetypes for the Jews and the Gentiles.114 In their 107

This legend is based on one of the Ps-Dionysian letters which relates how Dionysius saw the eclipse that allegedly occurred during the crucifixion; cf. Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, Passio Dionisii 1–28, in Hrotsvit: Opera Omnia, ed. Walter Berschin (Munich: Teubner, 2001); Hilduin, Passio Dionysii 5–7, PL 106.27A–28B; Ælfric, Lives of Saints 29.1–48, EETS o.s. 82, ed. W. W. Skeat (London: 1890); Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea 153, Graesse, 681. 108 Medieval astronomers understood that an eclipse at the full moon was impossible. For instance, Bede, De Temporum Ratione 27, CCSL 123B, ed. Charles W. Jones (Turnhout: Brepols, 1977). 109 Inter stultorum simulachra profana deorum/culte constructam poni praeceperat aram/ hanc ipsam titulis decernens congrue pictis, Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, Passio Dionisii 19–20. 110 Hrotsvitha refers to Dionysius as a magus and an astrologus: words that would immediately remind any Vulgate reader of the three wisemen; cf. Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, Passio Dionisii 6, 11. 111 For a similar concept of natural religio, cf. Walahfrid Strabo, De Exordiis 2, HartingCorrea, pp. 52–4; “natural religion,” in something akin to the Enlightenment sense, has often been connected with Snorri’s prologue in the Prose Edda. See Jesse L. Byock, trans., The Prose Edda (London: Penguin, 2005), pp. 3–5. 112 Nathan, “The Rogation Ceremonies,” p. 301; De Bruyne, “L’origine des processions,” p. 15. 113 Homines barbari et imperiti tantum habere potuerunt intellectum diuinae bonitatis . . . haec ipsa exempla praecessisse non ignoramus multa, Hrabanus, De modo poenitentiae 3.17, PL 112.1324; cf. Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 19, PL 110.37C–38A; Hrabanus, De Institutione Clericorum 2.26, Zimbel, vol. 2, p. 370. 114 Cf. Hrabanus, De Rerum Naturis 3.2, PL 111.68D.

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Rogation sermons, other Carolingian preachers marveled that if God saved “gentiles and pagans” like the Ninevites when they repented, how much more will he save “us who are deemed worthy of the name Christian and hold the true faith.”115 In some sense, every clergyman who interpreted the fast of Nineveh as a precedent for Rogationtide envisioned a pagan rite as the figure of a Christian one. In the middle of his sermon, right after alluding to Paul’s Areopagus speech and right before commenting on Nineveh, the anonymous Frankish homilist relates an origin story for the feast. According to the Frankish preacher, the “ancients” (antiqui, meaning the Romans) invented the Rogation Days in order to beseech “on behalf of the fertility of the fields.”116 He then describes two separate pagan solemnities: the amburbale and the aruambale; he evidently envisioned them as calendrical holidays, rather than as kinds of sacrifices. Supposedly, the amburbale receives its name “from going around the city, for it was the custom of heathenism to circle their cities purifying them with sacred things and praying for peace every five years”; Christians “transferred this solemnity into one honoring Mary”—Candlemas, the feast of the Purification of the Virgin on February 2.117 The Rogation Days, in contrast, are a Christian substitute for the feast of aruambale, an annual rite of going around the fields for fertility, hence its title.118 When speaking of the shift from pagan feast to Christian, the homilist employs the words imitor and transferro, suggesting a deliberate copying, transferal, or even a “translation.” The “holy fathers” (sanctis patribus) supposedly instituted Rogationtide “so that those who overindulged in the Eastertide cheer” could mortify their flesh in penance for their dissipation—presumably before celebrating Ascension and Pentecost. 115

Si illi, dilectissimi fratres, saluate sunt qui gentiles et pagani, multo magis nos saluabimur qui christiani nominis dignitate censemur et peccatores sumus, tamen si fidem rectam teneamus, Leclercq, “Pour l’histoire,” p. 87; cf. si populus impius et idolis seruiens tam cito potuit mitigare iram dei, quanto magis nos fideles Christi . . . Quia si deus omnipotens illo populo nineuitarum qui idolis seruiebat . . . quanto magis nobis qui christiani sumus, Pembroke Homiliary 40.19–22, 45–7, in James E. Cross, Cambridge Pembroke College MS.25: A Carolingian Sermonary used by Anglo-Saxon Preachers (London: University of London Press, 1987), pp. 111–12, 114. 116 Ipsa festa rogationum pro fertilitate agrorum roganda ab antiquis inuenta sunt . . . duo enim apud illos maxima habebantur sollemnia quae ipsi uocabant amburbale et aruambale; Nathan, “The Rogation Ceremonies,” p. 300; De Bruyne, “L’origine des processions,” p. 15. 117 Amburbale dicebant ab ambitu urbis. Circuibant enim ciuitates suas lustrantes eas sacris quibusdam suis, sicut mos erat gentilitatis, et hoc pro pace petenda faciebant in quinto anno. Quam sollempnitatem singulis annis transtulimus in honorem beate Mariae quarto nonas Februari; Nathan, “The Rogation Ceremonies,” pp. 300–1; De Bruyne, “L’origine des processions,” p. 15. 118 Aruambale uero celebrant omni anno ab ambitu aruorum pro fertilitate eorum, ut dictum est. Quam sollempnitatem istis rogationibus imitamur nostros circumeuntes agros, non tam pro fertilitate eorum quam pro ceteris necessitatibus animae et corporis. Et digne hoc fieri constitutum est a sanctis patribus, ut qui pascalibus gaudiis libere et ultra modum deliciis indulsimus, saltem his tribus diebus carnem macerantes, Nathan, “The Rogation Ceremonies,” pp. 300–1; De Bruyne, “L’origine des processions,” p. 15.

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The Frankish cleric never names Mamertus of Vienne, and he contends that Rogationtide was invented in order to guarantee fertility, rather than to ward off natural disasters. His reference to “holy fathers” suits early Christian leaders better than it does an obscure fifth-century Gallic bishop like Mamertus. Perhaps the preacher conceived of an origin somewhat similar to the legend about St. Peter in the Vercelli homilies. Problems in the sermon demonstrate that the Carolingian preacher had no actual knowledge about the beginning of Rogationtide. Firstly, the cleric wrote his sermon at least three hundred years after the events in question. Like many later medieval authors, the preacher misspells the word ambarualis as aruambalis, suggesting secondhand knowledge. Moreover, the Carolingian preacher’s understanding of paganism was far from sophisticated. He assumed that both the amburbale and the aruambale were Roman festivals on a yearly or five-yearly basis, like the Lupercalia. While classical authors always explain both of these as forms of offerings, the Frankish cleric never even mentions animal sacrifice. Instead, he treats the procession itself, rather than the sacrifice at its end, as the culmination. The most damning objection to the Latin homilist’s assertion, however, is that the source for his assertion is easy to trace. He based his idea that the Christian feast substituted for a pagan rite on a learned written tradition, not an oral one. The preacher reveals his source when he digresses to talk about the amburbial procession. He analogizes: the amburbale is to Candlemas just as the arumbale is to Rogationtide. This digression is unnecessary minutia, unrelated to the wider context; the preacher’s audience was probably puzzled about why the churchman bothered to discuss the amburbale at all. In fact, the Frankish preacher describes these two rituals together because he paraphrased from two earlier authorities. The first is Servius’ commentary on Vergil. Suspiciously, the Latin homilist employs amburbale and aruambale, two rare Latin words, in close proximity. The unusual, archaic language suggests that the Frankish homilist knew of both Roman rituals from a single classical source. Only three Roman authors use these two Latin words together: Festus, Servius, and the Augustan History. Not only was Servius the most widely read, but also his syntax parallels the language of the Frankish homily.119 The other source is the Venerable Bede’s discussion of the holidays of the month of February in his On the Reckoning of Time.120 According to Bede, the 119 For instance, both Servius and the homilist use lustrare, dicere, ambire, circuire, and pro fruges/fertilitate: sicut amburbale uel amburbium dicitur sacrificium, quod urbem circuit et ambit uictima . . . “cum faciam uitulam pro frugibus.” Lustrare hic circuire, Servius, In Vergilii carmina, Eclogues 3.77, Eclogues 5.75, Thilo, pp. 39, 63; cf. Nathan, “The Rogation Ceremonies,” p. 300; De Bruyne, “L’origine des processions,” p. 15. 120 Hanc lustrandi consuetudinem bene mutauit christiana religio, Bede, De Temporum Ratione 12.67–76; cf. Romanorum tamen semper ab antiquioribus usus fuit, Bede, Ecclesiastical

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feast of the purification of the Virgin was a Christian replacement for the pagan lustration of the city of Rome in February. In order to justify this strange assertion, Bede had to fuse information about two different Roman lustrations—the Lupercalia in February and the lustrum of the city of Rome at the close of the every five-year census—which he had learned respectively from Macrobius and Isidore of Seville.121 The resulting amalgamation is a single fictitious holiday: a February lustration that parallels Candlemas much closer than do either of the two genuine Roman rituals. Bede’s work was widely read both in England and on the Continent, because early medieval schoolmasters employed On the Reckoning of Time as a textbook on astronomy, one of the seven liberal arts. Frankish authors—for instance, liturgical commentators like Amalarius of Metz and preachers like Heiric of Auxerre— cite Bede’s garbled information about the Roman festal calendar when explaining the feast of the Purification of the Virgin.122 To quote Heiric, “Christian religio altered this custom of processing so that we march in remembrance of heaven, not due to the memory of pagan superstitio.”123 Multiple early medieval authors express the more general idea that pagan worship practices should be quietly replaced with similar Christian ones. Famously, Gregory the Great wrote a letter advising missionaries in England to rededicate pagan temples as Christian churches and exchange Christian feasts for pagan sacrifices.124 Other examples survive abundantly. According to Isidore, divine foreknowledge ensured that pagan temples had fonts for purification which could be repurposed for baptism.125 For Bede, Easter History 1.27.24, Colgrave and Mynors, p. 94; Nathan J. Ristuccia, “Fælsian and the Purification of Sacred Space in the Advent Lyrics,” Comitatus 41 (2010): pp. 8–12, 18–21; Nathan J. Ristuccia, “The Rise of Spurcalia: Medieval Festival and Modern Myth,” Comitatus 44 (2013): pp. 65–70. 121 Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.13.3, 1.14.6, Kaster, vol. 1, pp. 156, 170; Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 5.33.3–4, 5.37.2; cf. Bede, De Temporum Ratione 48.17–22; Bede probably only knew excerpts of Macrobius. 122 Cf. Hrabanus Maurus, De Institutione Clericorum 2.33, Zimbel, vol. 2, pp. 326–8; Amalarius, On the Liturgy 3.43.2, Knibbs, vol. 2, p. 254; Ps-Alcuin, De diuinis officiis 7, PL 101.1181C–1181D; Ps-Ildephonsus, Serm. 10, PL 96.277A–277B; Ps-Eligius, Homiliae 2, PL 87.602C–602D; Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library, pp. 238, 240, 243, 255, 268. 123 Hanc lustrandi consuetudinem bene mutauit christiana religio . . . circumeunt, non utique ob recordationem paganae superstitionis . . . sed in perennem memoriam regni caelestis, Heiric, Homiliae 1.24.237. 124 Bede, Ecclesiastical History 1.30, SChr 489, p. 248; similarly, medieval authors incorrectly assert that All Saints’ Day arose because Pope Boniface III re-dedicated the Pantheon as the Church of St. Mary and the Martyrs, see Bede, De Temporum Ratione 66.1780–4; Hrabanus, Martyrology 11.1; Walahfrid Strabo, De Exordiis 4, Harting-Correa, pp. 60; Interpolated Homiliary of Paul the Deacon, Hom. 61–4, PL 95.1535D; Martin Wallraff, “Pantheon und Allerheiligen: Einheit und Vielfalt des Göttlichen in der Spätantike,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 47 (2005): pp. 128–43. 125 Delubra ueteres dicebant templa fontes habentia . . . Ipsa sunt nunc aedes cum sacris fontibus, in quibus fideles regenerati purificantur: et bene quodam praesagio delubra sunt appellata; sunt enim in ablutionem peccatorum, Isidore, Etymologiae, 15.4.9–10; cf. Isidore, Etymologiae, 6.19.81–2; Walahfrid Strabo, De Exordiis 2–3, Harting-Correa, pp. 50–6.

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stole its name from the holiday to the goddess Eostre it replaced.126 For a ninth-century Vergilian commentator, partaking of the Eucharist cleanses the Christian, just as eating sacrificial meats after a lustration procession expiated pagans.127 For an eleventh-century preacher, the taboos of “the ancients” (antiqui, i.e. the Romans) were a source for the Ash Wednesday liturgy.128 Contemporary historians have debated whether any of these claims have merit. Regardless, all these medieval authors envisioned the ritual parallels between Christian and pagan rites as proof of the superiority of the Christian liturgy to the pagan holidays it superseded. The anonymous Frankish homilist followed a Carolingian tradition of thought when he presumed that ritual substitution was a normal feature of Christianization. The Frankish preacher, then, knew both Servius and Bede, at least indirectly. While Bede never uses the term amburbale for the February lustration, the homilist evidently saw similarities between the lustration and the description of the amburbale in Servius: both involve a Roman procession around the city. The homilist reasonably equated the amburbale with the lustration that Bede claims Candlemas replaced. Once the Frankish homilist had forged the Candlemas– amburbale linkage, he began to wonder if the other rite mentioned by Servius, the ambaruale, also had an analogous Christian replacement feast. The homilist guessed wrongly that it might be related to Rogationtide because both ceremonies involved processing in the countryside. Interestingly, the twelfth-century liturgical commentator Jean Beleth blundered in much the same way, also confounding amburbial sacrifice with Bede’s invented February lustration.129 Due to Beleth’s great influence, multiple later medieval authors believed that Candlemas originated in a February amburbial sacrifice that itself never existed.130 126

Eostre . . . a cuius nomine nunc paschale tempus cognominant, consueto antiquae obseruationis uocabulo gaudia nouae solemnitatis uocantes, Bede, De Temporum Ratione 15, CCSL 123B; Bede does not explicate how a Christian moveable feast on the solar Julian calendar could share timing with a holiday on the Anglo-Saxon lunar calendar. 127 Prof. David Ganz has kindly allowed me to use his unpublished edition of these glosses in Valenciennes BM 407. On Aeneid 8.183, the glossator writes: lustralibus qui exta de quinquenali boue transacto lustro fiebant uel quia post lustrum offerebantur uel etiam lustralibus id est purgatoriis . . . nam ut nos credimus lustrari purgari et expiari dominica sumendo sacramenta sic illi putabant expiari immolatiuis carnibus. Cf. Bede, De Temporum Ratione 12.67–76. 128 Antiqui milites cum debebant ire ad bellum, fortiter per septem dies equos suos pascebant leuibus cibis, ut plus currere possent. In capite septem dierum ponebant cineres super capita sua, Herwagen Homiliary, 15, PL 94.500B; Nathan J. Ristuccia, “The Herwagen Preacher and His Homiliary,” Sacris Erudiri 52 (2013): pp. 193, 216–20, 234; cf. Burchard of Worms, Decretum 2.53, PL 140.635A. 129 Quare autem candelaria uocetur, ab aliqua auctoritate non habetur, sed potius ab antiqua gentilium consuetudine. Erat enim antiquitus consuetudo Rome, ut circa hoc tempus in principio februarii lustrarent urbem . . . amburbale. Et ab illa consuetudine illud, quod fiebat a gentilibus in indiscretos usus, a Christianis fit modo in festo beate Marie, Jean Beleth, Summa de Eccl. Officiis 81.b; De Bruyne, “L’origine des processions,” pp. 14–26. 130 For instance: gentilis populus faciens aruambula Rome/excoluit festum Cereris, sed munera Christi,/uirginis et matris festiua rogacio poscit, John of Garland, Carmen de misteriis

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Both the Vercelli homilist and the Frankish preacher suggest that the Rogation Days had their roots in an older pagan ritual, and both of them are wrong. In both cases, their descriptions of Roman practices swarm with errors. Indeed, despite their similar dates, the two clergymen cannot even agree on what the original pagan ritual was: one connected Rogationtide with the February lustration and the other with ambarvalic sacrifice. These preachers’ claims cannot be taken as factual. Instead, they are attempts to legitimize the Rogation Days by supplying a primeval lineage to the rites. Roman ritual could serve as another source of liturgical authority, alongside the church fathers and scripture. The Carolingian project of “the renewal of the Roman Empire” (renouatio Romani imperii) probably strengthened the longing for Roman precedents.131 After all, the Frankish homilist lived during an age when churchmen were importing Roman books, Roman liturgies, and Roman artwork into Francia. Strikingly, the Frankish preacher calls Roman polytheists the “ancients” (antiqui), avoiding the pejorative pagani.132 The “custom of heathenism” (mos gentilitatis) was a mos maiorum.133 The Christian policy of ritual substitution, which followed the precedent of the popes such as Gregory the Great and supposedly even St. Peter, kept the intellectual boundary between Roman custom and Christian tradition imprecise. While modern historians sometimes bemoan pagan survivals, many medieval clergymen did not consider the endurance of ancient customs as a problem.134 As Peter Brown rightly states, “an ancient pagan past that dogged the Christian present, lay close to the heart of medieval Christendom—an inescapable, endlessly fascinating companion, tinged with sadness and with a delicious sense of danger.”135 While some late antique rigorists viewed “antiquitas . . . [as] the last enemy of all true Christians,” other churchmen— such as the anonymous Frankish preacher—saw antiquitas as not only a

Ecclesie, 341–3, ed. Ewald Konsgen and Peter Dinter (Leiden: Brill, 2004), p. 30; Agapitus . . . statuit ibi Ypanton celebrari pro mortalitate hominum, quum ante Romae celebraretur propter amburbale tollenda. De his legitur in fastis Ouidii, Ralph Niger, Chronica, Anstruther, p. 135; Ralph Niger likely alludes to Ovid’s Fasti (2.36, 2.46) which uses tollere when describing purifications at the February holiday of the Lupercalia; cf. Innocent III, Serm. 12, PL 217.510A–510B; Guillelmus Durandus, Rationale diuinorum officiorum 7.7.14, CCCM 140B, ed. A. Davril and T. M. Thibodeau (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000). 131 For Rome in Frankish thought, Rosamond McKitterick, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 40–4, 190–3, 203–9, 215–16. 132 Ab antiquis . . . mos erat gentilitatis, Nathan, “The Rogation Ceremonies,” p. 300; De Bruyne, “L’origine des processions,” p. 15. 133 Cf.: mos paganorum conuersus est in ritum Christianorum, Jean Beleth, Summa de Eccl. Officiis 12.a, 13.b. 134 For pagan survivals, see, for instance, Berend, “Introduction,” pp. 4, 22–3; Filotas, Pagan Survivals, pp. 12–20; Flint, The Rise of Magic, pp. 7–9, 28, 254–83, 396–400; for opposition, Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, pp. 6–15. 135 Brown, Authority and the Sacred, pp. 24–6.

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companion, but also a guide. Exegesis had tamed paganism. Liturgists like Bede, Walahfrid Strabo, or Jean Beleth could dig through old texts to reconstruct ancient Roman holidays with the confidence of knowing that all they could ever discover were pagan antitypes pointing to Christ. Just as the spirit of Christian faith had fulfilled the letter of the old Jewish law, so Christian worship had replaced pagan rites: a second Roman supersession.

T H E P E R I L S OF CH R I ST I A N I Z A T I O N Rogationtide was not the Ambarvalia. No evidence justifies the repeated attempts to say otherwise. Its fifth-century Gallo-Roman creators had found inspiration for the feast in Christian penitential processions that occurred all around the late ancient world. These bishops did not need to borrow from pagan precedents, let alone from a supposed annual Roman festival that never existed. But many well-educated people throughout the last twelve hundred years have believed that Rogationtide was the Ambarvalia Christianized because this theory matched established traditions of thought. Rogationtide has been an occasion for mythmaking for medieval churchmen and modern scholars alike. We tell myths, because they told myths—indeed, because they told the same myths. For the Carolingian homilist, Rogationtide was the Ambarvalia because he already knew on the authority of Bede and others that ritual substitution was a standard policy of the church—that the Christian liturgy had superseded pagan and Jewish rites. For a Protestant like Vermigli, Rogationtide was the Ambarvalia because he already knew that the Roman Catholic Church was just crypto-paganism. For some modern historians, Rogationtide was the Ambarvalia because they already knew that syncretisms and pagan survivals abounded in medieval practice. It is a testament to the seductive power of Christianization as a historical paradigm that so many for so long have overlooked details that did not fit. Like all foundational narratives, the myth of pagan survival authorizes a particular configuration of power.136 What amazes is how many variant configurations of power it has authorized over the centuries. The idea of pagan survivals could charter Christian hegemony over Jews and Roman polytheists in medieval Europe. But it could also sanction Protestant reformers ripping down the medieval church. Today, it assures contemporary Westerners that all religions are equivalent—equally true or equally false— and that secularists should not feel guilty when they celebrate holidays like 136

Doty, Myth: A Handbook, pp. 18–21; Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence, pp. 6–7, 123–4.

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Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Rogationtide, because these feasts were never really Christian.137 Histories of pagan survival—whether for Rogationtide or another custom— require an impoverished representation of traditional Roman worship, in which some pagan core remains entrenched in practice and can endure for centuries without the need for any actual living pagans. The essence of paganism turns out to be an act without thought or belief—an empty bottle ready to be filled up with Christian meaning. In this model, the difference between pagan and Christian is the difference between externals and internals, letter and spirit, thoughtless praxis and disembodied doctrine, the Mosaic law and the New Covenant. It is hard to imagine that this interpretation would not insult Roman pagans like Servius or Praetextatus, if any were around to complain. Theology underlies all narratives of Christianization.138 For medieval thinkers, Christianness was a spiritual status—it depended on the work of the Holy Spirit. What rites made someone Christian and what practices were irredeemably unchristian were topics of debate. Whenever modern historians or contemporary pollsters select one criterion of Christianness over any other—whether church attendance, self-identification, doctrine, morals, or ritual performance—they cannot avoid deciding what event has the power to change souls.139 Selecting criteria does not side-step the problem of Christianness; it places the historian in a long chain of theologians, from Athanasius to Bede to Luther, who debated this same question. No wonder that modern scholars have answered “how did someone become a Christian” by borrowing from exegetical tropes. If historians want to discuss Christianization at all, we should be frank about doctrine and watch how medieval theologians shape our narrative. As this book emphasizes, Rogationtide—like most medieval rituals— developed haphazardly out of a variety of earlier ceremonies for reasons particular to specific times and places and often impossible to reconstruct. The Christianization of pagan rites, in contrast, is a later interpretation pressing one theology of Christianness on the range of options active in the Latin West.140 Most medieval churchmen thought that cleansing Rome was easy—a gracious act of God achieved through his saints. But modern scholars, in contrast, wonder if the impure remnants of pagan custom still tainted all.

For such reassurances, cf. “today, Carnival has become a noisy and crazy parentheses in the middle of winter, a means to amuse tourists . . . but before . . . Carnival was a religion—it was the religion preceding Christianity and containing an entirely coherent explanation of the world and humans,” Walter, Christian Mythology, pp. 4, 179–80. 138 Cf. Ankersmit, Historical Representation, pp. 32–6, 80–3; Furry, Allegorizing History, pp. 11, 136–40. 139 On the difficulty of criteria, Christopher Abram, “The Two ‘Modes of Religiosity’ in Conversion-Era Scandinavia,” in Conversion and Identity in the Viking Age, ed. Ildar Garipzanov (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 21–4; Kilbride, “Why I Feel Cheated,” pp. 5–8. 140 Chin, Grammar and Christianity, pp. 171–2. 137

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3 Beating the Bounds of the Christian Even in the twenty-first century, people celebrate a holiday called the Rogation Days. But the modern festival has little in common with the original medieval feast, about as much as egg-carrying bunnies share with Roman executions and cans of cranberry sauce with Calvinist refugees. In the apt words of one folklore scholar, “Rogations is an age-old tradition . . . except that none of the traditions which define it today were part of it when it began.”1 Modern renditions of Rogationtide treat the holiday as if it were first of all about “beating the bounds”: marching around the border of the parish in order to bless the local farm lands. But the beating of the parish bounds was a rare and late custom—appearing only at the end of the Middle Ages, probably not until the fifteenth century, and restricted largely to England.2 During the early Middle Ages, the Rogation Days remained primarily penitential, not agricultural; congregants never physically circled the geographical boundaries of a parish. Nonetheless, the expression “beating the bounds” captures Rogationtide’s purpose symbolically—rather than physically. Early medieval Christianization created discrete congregations through the rituals of pastoral care. Medieval preachers, liturgists, and lay people understood the annual procession as Christian unity and solidarity embodied. By marching together and removing themselves from those who did not join, the local congregation fixed the borders of the Christian commonwealth. The Rogation procession embodied the pre-parishional structure of the early medieval church; indeed, it helped to constitute it. During the early Middle Ages, Christianization did not occur through the competition of fixed religions, but rather through ritual performance. Institutions of pastoral care such as the monastery and baptismal church spread

Harte, “Rethinking Rogationtide,” p. 35. For the physical beating of the bounds in the Tudor England, see Tratman, “Beating the Bounds,” pp. 318–23; Gittos, Liturgy, Architecture, pp. 134–9; Hindle, “Beating the Bounds,” pp. 205–28; Blair, The Church, pp. 486–9. 1 2

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across Europe. There, people chose—for a variety of local reasons—to participate alongside others in their community in pastoral rites like Rogationtide. And elite clerics and laity then recognized these people as Christian due to their participation. Rogationtide may have started as a holiday for the Roman city, but it changed into one for the Christian plebs.3 This mandatory feast marked out the local church congregation from everything outside it, separating off a properly Christianized people. Collective penance sheltered all those within the procession from divine wrath. Outside the church procession, there was no salvation.4 In fact, for three short days, clerics could pretend that outside the church, there was nothing at all. This chapter and the two following will reconstruct the experience of early medieval Rogationtide on the ground and interpret the various meanings this rite had for participants. All attempts, though, to recreate a past ritual must remain somewhat tentative, because medievalists lack the kinds of sources that a contemporary anthropologist can use to study, for instance, a Balinese cockfight or an Azande poison ordeal.5 Historians cannot attend a medieval Rogation ceremony nor interview participants. Most of the material objects used in the procession—banners, crosses, sackcloth, and so forth— disintegrated long ago. Illuminations drawing the procession, diaries describing it, charts mapping it: these do not survive from the early Middle Ages and probably were never produced. For the most part, historians must depend instead on four categories of sources for Rogationtide: legislation, liturgical texts, narratives, and sermons. Each of these four types of evidence has its own limitations, but a cogent reconstruction of the feast is possible by interweaving them. Historians will almost never be able to know exactly how Rogationtide occurred at any specific date and place.6 The next chapter will focus on a few moments, studying the experience of the Rogation days in particular communities. In this chapter, in contrast, I will employ evidence from all four of these genres and from various places and time periods in order to perceive the common patterns of early medieval Rogation celebration. By comparing sources across a range of locations—England, East Francia, West Francia— and across centuries, the broad tendencies of Rogation praxis emerge.

3 Cf. John J. Contreni, “From Polis to Parish,” in Religion, Culture and Society in the Early Middle Ages: Studies in Honor of Richard E. Sullivan, edited by Thomas F. X. Noble and John J. Contreni (Kalamazoo, MI: University of Western Michigan Press, 1987), pp. 155–64. 4 Cyprian’s widely quoted maxim (salus extra ecclesiam non est) arose during a debate about proper baptism and penance; Cyprian, Ep. 72.21.2, De ecclesiae catholicae unitate 6, CSEL 3, ed. G. Hartel (Vienna: C. Gerold, 1871); cf. Avitus, Hom. 6, MGH AA 6.2, p. 112.10–15. 5 For this issue, Buc, The Dangers of Ritual, pp. 1–12. 6 Buc, The Dangers of Ritual, pp. 51–87.

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TH E P ARIS H AN D THE P L E B S Parishes are no longer the bricks of modern societies. The annual perambulation of the parish borders retains nothing like the social import that it had in the Reformation Era. Nonetheless, many European communities still walk the fields out of antiquarian interest and environmental concerns. In England today, for instance, Rogationtide processions are more popular than at any time since the seventeenth century.7 Likewise, the Great Rogation in Asiago, Italy, is majestic and has attracted tourists for over two centuries.8 For some country churches, Rogationtide is a time to invoke God’s blessings on the budding crops. But for most Europeans today, the holiday of Rogationtide is far worldlier: a chance to walk outside in the sunshine and have a few laughs. Over the centuries, the penitential season has mutated into a moment of collective enthusiasm: a Carnivalesque rite of spring packed with quaint behaviors like picnicking, fancy clothing, and dragon puppetry.9 Whenever the marchers come to one of the parish’s old boundary stones, they hit it a few times with rods or—better yet—gently knock a small child against it as a kind of mnemonic. Hence the phrase “beating the bounds.” Anyone can enjoy a family stroll through the country on a warm spring day, but it is hardly penance. From the viewpoint of most modern celebrators, the Rogation Days concentrate on processing around the geographic borders of the parish. But the march was not the obsession of early medieval Christians. As noted already, most late antique authors who speak of the feast stress prayers (rogationes), not processions (litaniae). The key border for these processions was not a boundary of land, but of people; the whole church community (plebs) performed penance under the guidance of their clergy. Through the procession, the local society of the baptized separated from sinful outsiders by literally walking away from them for a time. All the early modern pageantry of border marching, dragon puppets, and boundary stone knocking is irrelevant to the feast before 1100. The early Middle Ages had neither dragons nor parishes. Dragon puppets probably only appeared in in the twelfth century.10 Likewise, the high medieval parish was a slow development that had roots in the Carolingian Empire, but reached completion only in the middle of the twelfth century.11 As classically defined, a

7 For this estimate, Hutton, Stations of the Sun, pp. 286–8; cf. Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England, pp. 34–6; Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, pp. 136–9, 279–82; Baines, “Beating the Bounds,” pp. 143–64. 8 Cf. Sordi, “I giorni del dragone,” pp. 39–62. 9 Harte, “Rethinking Rogationtide,” pp. 29–35. 10 See under “Preaching Solidarity” later in this chapter. 11 For the rise of the parish, see, for instance, R. I. Moore, The First European Revolution, c. 970–1215 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 37–8, 55–64, 175, 181, 186; Susan Wood, The Proprietary Church in the Medieval West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 66–91,

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parish is a diocesan subdivision located in a delineated area with a church building, resident priest, and parochial rights: that is, the authority to baptize, bury, and collect tithes. By 1200, most villages in Northern Europe had such a parish church. During the early Middle Ages, however, church networks differed greatly from the later parish system and the format of Rogationtide reflected this earlier structure. The Latin West in the Early Middle Ages lacked both the parish and the polis. Community building proceeded differently than in a landscape centered on either of those institutions. The format and ethos of Rogationtide strived to form unified Christian communities out of the disparate inhabitance of postRoman Europe. In the time of Sidonius and Avitus, bishops had employed the Rogation Days to shore up the weakening interpersonal bonds within Roman cities and to seek divine protection in the midst of imperial collapse. By contrast, early medieval Rogationtide was a clerical response to the unique landscape of the pre-parishional church: a ritual proclamation that locality and congregation were the same. During the early Middle Ages, the diocese was the basic unit articulating church structure. Until around 1100, parochia usually meant a diocese—not a parish.12 Diocesan density in the Latin West varied greatly over time and space, growing slowly from the seventh century onwards.13 In the early Middle Ages, England and Francia had relatively few bishops governing large dioceses: eighteen in England by the Norman Conquest, for instance, and just thirty-five in the Ottonian lands. On the other hand, Ireland, Wales, Italy, and preconquest North Africa enjoyed a glut of bishops, more than two hundred and fifty in Italy, who often oversaw tiny areas with small populations.14 In diocesan poor regions like Francia, the bishop and cathedral clergy could never have performed all the mandatory Christian rites—baptism, Rogationtide, the Eucharist, and so forth—for their laity. The Venerable Bede, that great prophet of church reform, bewailed that a preaching circuit through every village and estate in the diocese of York took over a year; to counter this

882–921; Julia Barrow, The Clergy in the Medieval World: Secular Clerics, Their Families, and Careers in North-Western Europe, c. 800–c. 1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 310–43. 12 The term was flexible, and its meaning must be determined from context; Blair, The Church, pp. 36–8, 45–8, 73–4, 427–9, 450–1; Florian Mazel, L’Évêque et le territoire: L’invention médiévale de l’espace (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2016), pp. 91–100, 290–1, 374–5. 13 Cf. Wood, The Proprietary Church, pp. 292–311; Raymond Van Dam, “Bishops and Clerics in Late Antiquity: Numbers and Their Implications,” in Episcopal Elections in Late Antiquity, edited by Johan Leemans et al. (Boston: de Gruyter, 2011), pp. 217–42; Thomas F. X. Noble, “Carolingian Religion,” Church History 84 (2015): pp. 293–5. 14 Beat A. Kümin, “The English Parish in a European Perspective,” in The Parish in English Life, 1400–1600, edited by Katherine L. French et al. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), pp. 15–32.

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obstacle, Bede advised that the bishop conscript priests and doctores to assist in preaching and the sacraments.15 Instead of dioceses or parishes, collegiate baptismal churches served as the foundation of pastoral care throughout the early Middle Ages.16 Such baptismal churches were originally extensions of the cathedral, served by a group of clerics dependent on the bishop—rather than on a lay patron—and were rarely more than about eleven kilometers (seven miles) apart from each other. Like later parishes, baptismal churches had parochial rights, but they ministered to a larger area. A normal Carolingian diocese might have several dozen such collegiate mother churches, roughly one for every seven or eight villages.17 Lucca, for instance, had fifty-nine baptismal churches, Trier fifty, Freising fifteen, and Canterbury a dozen. Instead of a single priest, these churches typically housed a small staff of clergymen, who managed not only the central mother church itself, but also the many oratories dependent on it in the surrounding hinterland. Thus, for instance, the liturgist Walahfrid Strabo speaks of a tripartite priesthood—bishops, priests of baptismal churches, and priests of lesser churches; “through the districts, priests of the congregation (plebs) are appointed who govern the baptismal churches and preside over the lower priests.”18 Lay people could take the Eucharist at dependent oratories and proprietary churches and attend service there on regular Sundays and minor feasts. But only mother churches could perform baptism, and everyone was supposed to attend a mother church with baptismal rights on the major feasts like Easter or Rogationtide. Early medieval Christians owed tithes to the mother church where they were baptized and often would later be buried.19 Although other words (e.g. uicus, mynster) occasionally appear, the Latin term plebs (“common people,” “laity”) frequently denoted the ecclesiastical 15 Latiora sunt spatia . . . et in singulis uiculis atque agellis uerbum dei praedicare etiam anni totius emenso curriculo sufficias necessarium satis est, Bede, Epistola ad Ecgbertum 5, in Opera Historica, ed. Charles Plummer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), pp. 408–9; for deacons preaching, cf. Council of Vaison (529), 2; Caesarius, Serm. 2. 16 Sarah Hamilton, Church and People in the Medieval West (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013), pp. 32–42, 185–6; Phelan, The Formation of Christian Europe, pp. 73–5, 256–8; Barrow, The Clergy in the Medieval World, pp. 269–309. 17 Moore, The First European Revolution, pp. 55–8; Donald A. Bullough, “The Carolingian Liturgical Experience,” in Continuity and Change in Christian Worship, edited by R. N. Swanson (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1999), pp. 31–64; Wood, The Proprietary Church, pp. 66–91, 109–75. 18 Quidam episcopi chorepscopos habent . . . per pagos statuti sunt, presbyteris plebium, qui baptismales ecclesias tenent et minoribus presbyteris praesunt . . . sub ipsis uicariis quaedam minora exercent, minoribus presbyteris titulorum, Walahfrid Strabo, De Exordiis 32, HartingCorrea, pp. 192–4; for similarly dated texts that define plebs as ecclesia baptismalis, cf. Capitularia Regum Franciae Occidentalis, 279.11, MGH CRF 2, p. 102; Nicholas I, Ep. 147.4, MGH Epp. 6, p. 664. 19 Bullough, “Liturgical Experience,” pp. 31–2; Wood, The Proprietary Church, pp. 66–91, 459–61.

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community dwelling around a baptismal church.20 Often, the word appeared in plural, although plebs is a collective noun; when plural, plebes referred to a collection of groups of peoples, especially the congregations of the multiple baptismal churches in a diocese.21 Documents, for instance, speak of the plebs of a particular saint—meaning either the people of a baptismal church dedicated to that saint or the church itself. This usage gave rise to vernacular words for a parish like plou in Breton, plwyf in Welsh, and pieve in Italian.22 The membership of any given plebs was fluid because the early medieval plebs was more a ritual community than a legal institution. Mandatory ceremonies like Rogationtide required the whole congregation to gather and participate. By being baptized in the same place, by being buried in the same graveyard, or by processing together yearly along the same route, the plebs constituted itself as a single social and ritual body. Unlike the high medieval parish or the city-states of antiquity, the plebs never acquired an administrative apparatus to define it as a legal entity with set borders. Many lay people may not have viewed themselves as members of any specific plebs. Legal records, however, sometime identify claimants by mentioning from which plebs they came, indicating that membership was established enough that courts based decisions upon it.23 Moreover, after the Carolingian rulers instituted mandatory tithing, legislators insisted that the laity pay their annual tithe to their specific baptismal church and that bishops not exact overly high dues from the plebes in their dioceses.24 Such laws presume that tithe boundaries existed, at least in theory.

20 Blair, The Church, pp. 36–9, 80–3, 124–7, 153–65, 368–71, 422–8; Alan Thacker, “Monks, Preaching and Pastoral Care in Early Anglo-Saxon England,” in Pastoral Care before the Parish, edited by John Blair and Richard Sharpe (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992), pp. 140–2. 21 This usage is common in Frankish episcopal statutes. For instance, Capitula Florentina (820s), 12, MGH CE 1, ed. Peter Brommer (Hanover: 1984), p. 223; Capitula Ottoboniana (c. 890), 1, 28, MGH CE 3 ed. Rudolf Pokorny (Hanover: 1995), pp. 123, 131; Atto of Vercelli, Capitula 29, 90, MGH CE 3, ed. Rudolf Pokorny (Hanover: 1995), pp. 275, 296. 22 Paul Aebischer, “La diffusion de plebs ‘paroisse’ dans l’espace et dans le temps,” Revue de linguistique romane 28 (1964): pp. 143–65; Bruno Ruggiero, “ ‘Parrochia’ e ‘Plebs’ in alcune fonti del Mezzogiorno longobardo e normanno,” Campania Sacra 5 (1974): pp. 5–11; Carine van Rhijn, Shepherds of the Lord: Priests and Episcopal Statutes in the Carolingian Period (Turnhout: Marston, 2007), pp. 171–212; Plebs was also the normal Latin translation of the Irish word túath (“petty kingdom”), each which was supposed to have its own bishop. 23 Cf. Wendy Davies, Small Worlds: The Village Community in Early Medieval Brittany (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 63–7, 81–5, 100–2, 105, 211. 24 De decimis uero que a populo in plebibus uel baptismalibus aecclesiis offeruntur nulla exinde pars maiori aecclesiae uel episcopo inferatur, Capitulare Mantuanum primum (c. 813), 4–5, 11, MGH CRF 1, p. 195; Capitularia Regum Franciae Occidentalis, 279.11, MGH CRF 2, p. 102; John Eldevik, Episcopal Power and Ecclesiastical Reform in the German Empire: Tithes, Lordship, and Community, 950–1150 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 23, 67–76, 235.

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Ecclesiastical sources regularly speak of the congregation committed to a specific cleric for pastoral care (e.g. populus subiectus, plebs commissa).25 The Carolingian reform movement elevated such language to prominence, occasionally even terming this duty a cura: later the standard high medieval term for the pastoral authority over a parish.26 A ninth-century Roman council, for instance, orders bishops “to supply pastoral care (cura) to baptismal churches entrusted to them (subiectis baptismalibus plebibus) and ordain local priests (plebani) there with the consent of the congregation (plebis).”27 An Aachen council at the time of Louis the Pious, similarly, instructs clergymen not to neglect “preaching in the baptismal churches (in plebibus) and pastoral care (cura) of the dependent laity.”28 Early medieval canonists speak of a priest’s entrusted congregation mainly when regulating compulsory Christian rituals. Many Carolingian canons require that priests teach their entrusted plebes the Lord’s Prayer and creed. The influential Frankish bishop Hincmar of Rheims, for example, issued an episcopal statute to his priests ordering “that each and every priest learn fully the meaning of the Creed and Lord’s Prayer according to the precedent of the orthodox fathers and then eagerly preach this to the laity entrusted to him.”29 Likewise, from the late ninth century forward, episcopal statutes and sermons often instruct priests to hear the confession of the entire congregation on Ash Wednesday, in order to prepare them for Lent and the Lord’s Supper at Easter.30 According to a synodal 25 For instance, Boniface, Ep. 60, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 121; Council of Arles (813), 10, MGH Concilia 2.1, p. 251; Hincmar of Rheims, Collectio de ecclesiis et capellis 1–2, MGH Fontes Iuris 14, ed. M. Stratmann (Hanover: 1990), pp. 67, 101; Capitula Ottoboniana (c. 890), 4, MGH CE 3, p. 123; Capitula Helmstadensia (c. 950), 11, MGH CE 3, ed. Rudolf Pokorny (Hanover: 1995), pp. 186; Ruotger of Trier, Capitula 8, MGH CE 1, ed. Peter Brommer (Hanover: 1984), 64. 26 For Carolingian texts referring to the cura of an entrusted congregation, see, for instance, Collectio Capitularium Ansegisi 2.4, MGH CRF n.s. 1, ed. Gerhard Schmitz (Hanover: 1996), p. 523; Council of Ascheim (755–60), 3, MGH Concilia 2.1, p. 57; Council of Reisbach (798), 4, MGH Concilia 2.1, p. 198; Nicholas I, Ep. 26.3, MGH Epp. 6, p. 292; Ghaerbald of Liège, Capitula 1.6, MGH CE 1, ed. Peter Brommer (Hanover: 1984), p. 18; Capitula Monacensia (late ninth century), 5, MGH CE 3, ed. Rudolf Pokorny (Hanover: 1995), p. 163; Capitula Trecensia (late ninth century), 1, MGH CE 3, ed. Rudolf Pokorny (Hanover: 1995), p. 169. 27 De sacerdotibus in subiectis baptismalibus plebibus constituendis. Episcopi in baptismalibus plebibus ut certe propriis diligenter curam habere debent . . . plebani presbyteri reuerentius ordinentur et cum consensu plebis, Council of Rome (826), 8, MGH Concilia 2.2, p. 571. In the eleventh century, plebanus often meant a priest at a baptismal church, but I know of no other ninth-century appearance. 28 Cleroque neglecto . . . de qua re et destitutio diuini cultus et praedicatio in plebibus et cura subiectorum postponitur, Council of Aachen (836), 2.28, 3.96, MGH Concilia 2.2, pp. 711, 766. 29 Ut unusquisque presbiterorum expositionem symboli atque orationis dominicae iuxta traditionem ortodoxorum patrum plenius discat et exinde predicando populum sibi commissum sedulo instruat, Hincmar of Rheims, Capitula 1.1, 4.1, MGH CE 2, pp. 35, 82; cf. Ghaerbald of Liège, Capitula 1.6, MGH CE 1, p. 18; Capitula Florentina (820s), 1–2, MGH CE 1, p. 222; Capitula Vesulensia (c. 800), 4–5, MGH CE 1, p. 346; for more on this issue, see Chapter 5. 30 Cf. Capitula Neustrica Quarta (c. 830), 3, MGH CE 3, ed. Peter Brommer (Hanover: 1984), p. 71; Ruotger of Trier, Capitula 26–27, MGH CE 1, p. 70; Ps-Alcuin, De Diuinis Officiis 13, PL

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address copied into many conciliar protocols, churchmen must “make sure to teach the Lord’s Prayer and Creed to all parishioners and summon the plebs to confess on Ash Wednesday just as the penitential states.”31 A tenth-century episcopal statute develops this logic further, commanding priests “to announce to their congregations (plebibus) that they cannot communicate at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost unless they confess and when parishioners come to confession at Ash Wednesday, make them chant the Lord’s Prayer and Creed and do not let them commune unless they can recite them.”32 The clergy, therefore, were expected to recognize who was in the plebs that they served and to police their ritual performance. Indeed, these universal rites delineated the membership. Priests were responsible only for a specific group of Christians, and those people demonstrated their Christian status and affiliation with a particular congregation by receiving that priest’s pastoral care. This early medieval institution of the ritually defined plebs fully manifested itself in the rites of Rogationtide. Indeed, long after the rise of the parish and even into early modernity, the Rogation Days remained—to quote the famous Reformation historian Eamon Duffy—“rituals of demarcation, ‘beating the bounds’ of the community, defining its identity . . . Rogationtide observances were, with the exception of the annual Easter communion, the most explicitly parochial ritual events of the year.”33 According to another early modernist, the procession had “truly Durkheimian significance . . . one of those fleeting moments when society might be observed in the act of describing itself.”34 Early medieval clerics forthrightly interpreted the Rogation procession as an embodiment of the local church. Already at the Council of Orléans in 511—the first of many medieval synods authorizing the feast—the Merovingian bishops 101.1192; Regino of Prüm, De Synod. Causis I.I.59, ed. F.W.H. Wasserschleben and Wilfried Hartmann, Das Sendhandbuch des Regino von Prüm (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2004), p. 32; Burchard of Worms, Decretum 19.1, PL 140.949; Council of Trier (927), 14, MGH Concilia 4, ed. Wilfried Hartmann (Hanover: 1998), 83; Council of Mainz (950 × 964), MGH Concilia 4, ed. Wilfried Hartmann (Hanover: 1998), 176–7; Atto of Vercelli, Serm. 5, 6, PL 134.840, 841; Ælfric, Lives of Saints 12.289–92, EETS o.s. 76, ed. W. W. Skeat (London: 1881); Wulfstan, Hom. 14.5–11, in The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Dorothy Bethurum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), p. 234; Meens, Penance in Medieval Europe, pp. 29, 79, 146–7, 152–6, 174, 214. 31 Videte ut omnibus paroechianis uestris symbolum et orationem dominicam insinuetis . . . feria quarta ante quadragesimam plebem ad confessionem inuitate . . . sicut in penitentiali scriptum est, Admonitio Synodalis 61–3, 85, 90, Robert Amiet, “Une Admonitio Synodalis de l’epoque carolingienne,” Mediaeval Studies 26 (1964): pp. 58, 65–6. 32 Ut plebibus denuntiet, ut in natali domini et pascha ac pentecoste communicent nisi penitentes . . . Ut parroechianis simbolum et orationem dominicam presbiter aut ipse insinuet aut aliis insinuandum iniungat; et cum ad confessionem quadragesimali tempore perveniunt, haec sibi cantari faciat, nec ante alicui sanctam communionem tradat, nisi haec ex corde pronuntiauerit, Capitula Helmstadensia (c. 950), 9, 11, MGH CE 3, p. 186. 33 Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, pp. 136–9. 34 Hindle, “Beating the Bounds,” pp. 206, 227; cf. Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. Joseph Ward Swain (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1915), pp. 10, 37–8, 44, 47, 206–7, 225–6.

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decreed “that through the three feast days, male and female slaves be released from all work, so that the whole people (plebs uniuersa) can assemble.”35 No one, not even a slave, could be left out.36 This same ethos pervades the widely circulated Carolingian synodal address mentioned above. That text orders priests “to teach all the plebs how the fast of the Rogation Days ought to be observed.”37 Tellingly, this canon occurs in the synodal address right between the two canons quoted above: one requiring that priests teach the Lord’s Prayer and Creed to all their congregants and another on compulsory Ash Wednesday confession. The author linked these three rituals due to their joint significance for the plebs. As Charlemagne’s own bishop, Waltcaud of Liège, noted in his episcopal statute, because Rogationtide is “for the advantage of the laity,” priests must “proclaim in the baptismal church” the proper observance of the feast.38 Rogation preachers likewise expressed this ethos of total communal participation. Already in the sixth century, Caesarius insisted that “no one steal away from church, unless some illness of the body will not let him come”; he threatened eternal punishment for anyone who “deserts the army camp of the church.”39 Rogationtide was the only feast that Caesarius insisted his whole congregation attend.40 The bishop of Arles advised his flock to empty their schedules well in advance and to avoid taking medicine, eating too little, or being bled before the holiday, so that they would be strong enough for the long walk.41 Caesarius would have agreed with the twelfth-century liturgist Jean Beleth, who notes “as all sin, so all must plead for pardon from sin.”42 35 Per quod triduum serui et ancellae ab omni opere relaxentur, quo magis plebs uniuersa conueniat, Council of Orléans (511), 27; many later canonists (e.g. Ivo, Gratian) repeated this acta; cf. Andrieu, Les ordines romani, Ordo 50.36.3. 36 Compare: nulla opera mundialia facere, Pembroke Homiliary 36.1–4, 79–82, Cross, pp. 102, 108, 110; postremo ab omni opere seruili . . . cessantes, Ratherius of Verona, Serm. 3.1, CCCM 46, ed. Peter L. Reid (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981). 37 Ieiunium . . . rogationum et litaniae maioris plebibus uestris omnimodis obseruandum insinuate, Admonitio Synodalis 62, Amiet, p. 58. 38 Quomodo a presbiteris letaniae denuntiantur in plebe uel quali tempore obseruentur, id est letania maiore uel ceteris indictionibus pro utilitate populi denuntiantur uel quo ordine obseruentur, Waltcaud of Liège, Capitula 16, MGH CE 1, ed. Peter Brommer (Hanover: 1984), p. 8; Charlemagne’s capital Aachen lay in the diocese of Liège; cf. Walter of Orléans, Capitula 18, MGH CE 1, ed. Peter Brommer (Hanover: 1984), p. 191; Riculf of Soissons, Capitula 24, MGH CE 2, ed. Rudolf Pokorny and Martina Stratmann (Hanover: 1995), p. 111; The Pontifical of Egbert, Archbishop of York, A.D. 732–766, Surtee Society 27, ed. W. Greenwall (London: T. and W. Boone, 1853), pp. 68–9; Corpus benedictionum pontificalium 1241. 39 Nullus se ab ecclesiae conuentu subducat nisi forte quem infirmitas corporis ad ecclesiam non permittit uenire, Caesarius, Serm. 209.4; cf. nullus se a sancto conuentu subducat; nullus ecclesiam, quae est caelestis medici scola, occupatus terrenis actibus derelinquat, nullus castra spiritalia deserat . . . sine aliqua infirmitate aut certa occupatione, Caesarius, Serm. 207.2. 40 Igor Filippov, “Legal Frameworks in the Sermons of Caesarius of Arles,” Medieval Sermon Studies 58 (2014), pp. 70–3. 41 Caesarius, Serm. 207.2. 42 Omnes a mundanis operibus illis diebus debent cessare, etiam serui et ancille . . . ut sicut omnes peccauerunt, ita et omnes pro uenia supplicent, Jean Beleth, Summa de Eccl. Officiis 123.b.

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Hrabanus Maurus, likewise, starts one Rogation address by demanding “that all sorts of people come together into one”: male and female, old and young, clergy and laity, rich and poor, free and unfree.43 Similar binary lists of “all Christian people” appear in other early medieval sermons.44 Such phrases parallel those found in Carolingian canons on the mandatory recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and Creed, for these decrees often paired all the different classes of the realm into a series of antonyms.45 Churchmen exempted the sick—and sometimes also the young and old—from Rogation fasting, but still expected them to attend the procession, even if they had to ride horses or give alms instead of marching.46 One Old English homilist even demanded that anyone skipping the procession provide a witness to testify that the absent person was too sick to walk.47 To enforce attendance, clergymen may have kept lists of all marchers, as they sometimes did with other obligations at this time: for instance, tithe-paying.48 Sermons for Rogationtide prominently employ the Latin verb conuenire, playing on its double meaning of both “to assemble” and “to agree.” One anonymous Carolingian preacher can speak of Christians “coming together into one: one heart, one mind, one spirit and love,” while another, from the eleventh century, exclaims that on the three days “all the people gather faithfully” to celebrate “a humble rite of Christian worship through which

43 Secundum patrum praecedentium constituta, omnes in unum uiri et feminae, pueri et senes, conuenistis, Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 19, PL 110.37C; cf. Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 20, PL 110.40B. 44 Ælcum, ge geongum ge ealdum, þis fæsten is bebode . . . þara cristenra manna, Vercelli Homilies 19.95–100; nu anra manna gehwylcne ic myngie & lære, ge weras ge wif, ge geonge ge ealde, ge snottre ge unwise, ge þa welegan ge þa þearfan, Blickling Homilies 10.1–3, in The Blickling Homilies: Edition and Translation, ed. Richard J. Kelly (York: Continuum, 2003), p. 76; cf. Maximus of Turin, Hom. 81.2, 4, CCSL 23, ed. A. Mutzenbecher (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962); on the later use of this Maximus homily as a Rogationtide sermon, see Grégoire, Homéliaires, pp. 169, 209, 302–3, 318, 456–7, 478. 45 For instance, Council of Friuli (796/7), MGH Concilia 2.1, p. 189; Capitula Treverensia (830/900), 1, MGH CE 1, ed. Peter Brommer (Hanover: 1984), p. 55; Ruotger of Trier, Capitula 22, MGH CE 1, p. 68; Ghaerbald of Liège, Epistula ad parochianos, in Wilhelm A. Eckhardt, Die Kapitulariensammlung Bischof Ghaerbalds von Lüttich (Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1955), p. 111. 46 See, Bazire and Cross 8.18–28; Caesarius, Serm. 208.3; Decreta Lanfranci Monachis Cantuariensis Transmissa, Corpus consuetudinum monasticarum III, ed. David Knowles (Siegburg: F. Schmitt, 1967), p. 43; Liber Ordinis Sancti Victoris Parisiensis 39.25–40, CCCM 61, ed. L. Jocqué and L. Milis (Turnhout: Brepols, 1984). 47 Butan hit seo nyd si þe mare and manna gewitnyss þæt he him fylian ne mæge, Bazire and Cross 5.140–3. 48 For records of tithe-payment, see, for example, Ghaerbald of Liège, Capitula 1.5, 2.1, MGH CE 1, pp. 17, 26; Capitula Cordesiana (c. 850), 3, MGH CE 3, ed. Peter Brommer (Hanover: 1984), p. 97; Capitula Treverensia (830/900), 1, MGH CE 1, p. 55; Theodosius of Oria, Capitula 10, MGH CE 3, ed. Peter Brommer (Hanover: 1984), p. 316; Eldevik, Episcopal Power and Ecclesiastical Reform, pp. 71–3.

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Christ protects his own people.”49 A Frankish homilist speciously claims that the word laetanie derives from the “great happiness” (grandis letitia) that arises when “the faithful people of one mind come together into one at church.”50 While these sermons and canons emphasize the inclusivity of the community, they implicitly exclude as much as they integrate. Indeed, these texts understand social stratification as ubiquitous. The hierarchy was legitimized even as it was transcended. “All people” must assemble regardless of gender, age, health, rank, or status, but only if they can participate in Christian rituals. In this model, Jews, pagans, the unbaptized, or even unreformed Christians have no place among the local people. Preachers and legislators alike speak as if these groups did not exist, as if all of Latin Europe was divided into neat groups of properly ritualized Christians under the authority of the local clergy— a world of plebes.

THE S AINTS GO M ARCHING The scale, format, and pageantry of the Rogationtide ceremonies themselves inscribed these values of unity and solidarity on the bodies of the marchers. Unity and solidarity was the Rogation ideal, expressed in sermons and liturgy alike. Medieval sources, however, frequently grumble about ignorance, lay apathy, interpersonal strife, physical and financial constraints, and perverse local customs. Concrete Rogation practice could divide the community as often as unify it. The drama of the processions must have impressed worshipers. The people progressed in a single amorphous bulk, on bare feet, and wearing penitential clothing. Two Merovingian hagiographies, for instance, highlight the “indiscriminate mix of people” marching out of the city of Metz.51 Ideally, during 49 In unum conuenistis fratres (et utinam uere in unum, unum corde, unum mente, uno spirito et uno caritate), Nathan, “The Rogation Ceremonies,” p. 299; conueniente fideliter omni populo, quatinus per hanc Christianae religionis humilem deuotionem populum suum Christus dominus noster ab omnibus periculis conseruet inmunem, Hall and Ristuccia, “A Rogationtide Sermon,” p. 61; cf. Avitus, Hom. 7, MGH AA 6.2, p. 117.32; Bazire and Cross 10.15–16, 136–7; Vita et Miracula Sancti Adalhardi Corbeiensis 1.8, MGH SS 15.2, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger (Hanover: 1888), p. 862. 50 Laetanię uero ideo dicuntur quia grandis lętitia est populum fidelem in unum audire dei precepta et relinquere mala et unanimiter ad aecclesiam uenire et deum colere, Pembroke Homiliary 36.71–8, Cross, p. 108; cf. in unum conueniunt, Pembroke Homiliary 40.68–9, Cross, p. 116. 51 Promiscuo populi genere . . . secundum mos ex urbe, Vita Arnulfi 10, MGH SRM 2, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hanover: Hahn, 1888), p. 435; promiscui populi generi . . . plebem sibi commissam, Vita Huberti Leodiensis Prima 6, MGH SRM 6, ed. Wilhelm Levison (Hanover: Hahn, 1913), p. 486.

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the procession, no physical difference divorced the richest lord from the lowliest peasant. “Everywhere there is love: peace among men, no different between slave and free. One diet, one dress, and one redemption for rich and poor alike,” to quote Caesarius of Arles.52 Only the clergy would have remained visually distinct: for they walked at the head of the procession, while bearing crosses, candles, and reliquaries, and presumably while dressed in their traditional vestments and habits. In fact, an eleventh-century vision of the afterlife asserts that the blessed souls in heaven look like a Rogation procession—the whole throng dressed alike and gathered in a field—with only St. Paul in his priestly grab distinguishable from the rest.53 The rite leveled social ranks by banning elite conspicuous consumption—such as feasting, horseback riding, and finery. Communitas ruled, if only for a moment. The visual leveling of ascetic clothes and fasting did not mean that social status disappeared during the ceremony. Rogationtide both subverted and affirmed roles; worshipers both acted out their social positions and lost them in the hunger, cold, exhaustion, and bewilderment of the march.54 Indeed, the oldest extant Ordo for Rogationtide, which the Carolingian lay abbot Angilbert of Saint-Riquier composed around the year 800, obsesses about status distinctions.55 Angilbert’s church order supplies far and away the most detailed depiction of a Rogation procession for the entire early Middle Ages. Until reform movements at the end of the early Middle Ages—occurring 816–17 in Francia and the 960s in England—rigid claustration was far from the norm during the early Middle Ages.56 Monastic sources often assume the presence of

52 Ubique castitas et dilectio: inter viros pax, inter mulieres silentium, inter ancillas et liberas differentia uel nulla uel grata. Vnus diuiti uictus et pauperi, et aemulatione proiecta sub uno constitutis iugo habitus erat unus in cunctis, unus in omnibus labor, quia danda erat omnibus una redemptio, Caesarius, Serm. 143.1; for this sermon at Rogationtide, Grégoire, Homéliaires, pp. 169, 209, 302–3, 318. 53 Hyne lædde to anum swyðe wlitigan felde & swyþe fægeran, mid swetan stence afylled. Þa geseah he swyþe mycele weorud swylce on gangdagan, & þa wæron ealle mid snawhwitum reafe gescrydde, Peter A. Stokes, “The Vision of Leofric: Manuscript Text and Content,” Review of English Studies 63, no. 261 (2011): p. 548. 54 Using Callois’s categories, Rogationtide combines aspects of agon and ilinx, usually seen as opposing ritual-types; cf. Seligman et al., Ritual and its Consequences, pp. 76–84. 55 For Angilbert of Saint-Riquier’s church order, see Edmund Bishop, Liturgica Historica: Papers on the Liturgy and Religious Life of the Western Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1918), pp. 324–6, 330–2; Institutio sancti Angilberti, Initia Consuetudinis Benedictinae: Consuetudines Saeculi Octavi et Noni, Corpus consuetudinum monasticarum I, ed. Kassius Hallinger (Siegburg: F. Schmitt, 1963), pp. 296–300; cf. Andrieu, Les ordines romani, Ordo 21, Ordo 50.35–6, Appendix 10–11; Vogel, Pontifical romano-germanique, 99.420–34; Phelan, The Formation of Christian Europe, pp. 256–8; Bullough, “Liturgical Experience,” pp. 41–2. 56 For instance, the Regularis Concordia assumes that monastic churches will have laity present on Sundays and chief feasts. Carolingian monasteries often solved the tension between pastoral care and claustration by building extra churches outside the walls; Joyce Hill, “The Benedictine Reform and Beyond,” in A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature, edited by Phillip Pulsiano and Elaine Treharne (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 151–7; Mary Clayton, “Homiliaries

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laity at monastic churches like Saint-Riquier on key holidays, as these sites served as the baptismal churches for their area.57 According to Angilbert’s document, each day, lay people from seven local villages as well as the town itself gathered at the portico of the monastery church at Saint-Riquier for prayer.58 Afterwards, when the congregation marched, the ordained collegiate clergy led, first the major orders and then the minor ones. Non-ordained monastics followed, then boys at the monastery school—that is, potential clerics in training—and finally the laity divided by sex and rank. Other liturgical sources likewise depict the Rogation processions as carefully structured in order of rank—although the ranking often differed between dioceses.59 Such sevenfold orderings evolved out of the format of the Roman Greater Litany, but, by the ninth century, were standard to the Rogation Days.60 The twelfth-century French liturgist Jean Beleth, for instance, specifies that “at large churches” the march should have seven sections by office: first secular clerics, then monks and canons, followed by nuns, schoolboys, aged men, widows, and married women.61 At one eleventh-century German church, though, for comparison, the order was clerics, monks, nuns, widows, married men, children, married women.62 Still other churches put all married people, regardless of sex, in the final procession, and devoted the fifth and

and Preaching in Anglo-Saxon England,” Peritia 4 (1985): pp. 233–5; Thacker, “Monks, Preaching,” pp. 140–3; Barrow, The Clergy in the Medieval World, pp. 71–114. 57 For instance: omnes presbiteros in illis locis cummanentes ad uestra monasteria pariter conuenire et per triduum ieiuniis et letaniis insistere . . . omnem itaque populum ad confessionem et penitudinem pro peccatis suis sacerdotes prouocent et que ignoranter a plebe cummissa sunt, digna emendatione soluantur, Frotharius of Toul, Ep. 27, in Michel Parisse, La Correspondance d’un évêque carolingien: Frothaire de Toul (ca 813–847), avec les lettres de Theuthilde, abbesse de Remiremont (Paris: Sorbonne, 1998), pp. 138–40; for locus as something approaching a “parish,” see Frotharius of Toul, Ep. 10, 29, Parisse, pp. 108, 142. 58 Susan A. Rabe, Faith, Art, and Politics at Saint-Riquier: The Symbolic Vision of Angilbert (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1995), pp. 129–32, 143; Bailey, Processions, pp. 97, 101, 108, 112–16; Dey, The Afterlife of the Roman City, 221–33. 59 For examples from eleventh-century customaries, see Decreta Lanfranci, pp. 43–4; Guido of Farfa, Disciplina farfensis 8, PL 150.1211B–1211C; Liber tramitis aevi Odilonis abbatis, Corpus consuetudinum monasticarum X, ed. Peter Dinter (Siegburg: F. Schmitt, 1980), pp. 103–4; Consuetudines Cluniacensium antiquiores cum redactionibus derivatis, Corpus consuetudinum monasticarum VII-2, ed. Kassius Hallinger (Siegburg: F. Schmitt, 1983), pp. 100, 306. 60 For sevenfold rankings, cf. Honorius Augustodunensis, Gemma Animae 139, PL 172.681A; Sicard of Cremona, Mitralis de officiis 7.6, CCCM 228, ed. Gábor Sarbak and Lorenz Weinrich (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), p. 573; Martin of León, Serm. 29, PL 208.1038B; Latham, “Inventing Gregory ‘the Great’,” pp. 4–6; Hanska, Strategies of Sanity, pp. 55–8. 61 In magnis ecclesiis septeno ordine itur in istis processionibus. In primo sunt clerici, in secundo claustrales ut monachi et canonici, in tertio moniales, in quarto pueri, in quinto laici ut prouecti etate, in sexto uidue, in septimo coniugate, Jean Beleth, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis 123.b. 62 Prima litania omnium clericorum, secunda abbatum et monachorum, tertia sanctimonialium, quarta uiduarum, quinta coniugatorum, sexta omnium puerorum, septima mulierum, Herwagen Homiliary 13, PL 94.499B.

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sixth ranks to male and female lay celibates: beguines and similar ascetics.63 Extant sources suggest widespread agreement about the sequence of the three clerical ranks in the front, but disagreement about how to sort the laity—by sex, by age, or by virginity. At Saint-Riquier, at least, the church leaders hand-selected “high-born men” to serve as the first grouping of lay people.64 They presumably chose men for their respectability as well as their high rank. After these men, walked “high-born women,” children, a less exclusive group of “honorable men and women,” and then normal lay persons. Those too old or sick to progress came last, on horseback.65 All the people walked seven abreast, lest “they extended for nearly a mile, if walking by twos or threes.”66 Angilbert may be exaggerating here, but, taking him at his word only suggests that the abbot expected around two thousand people to attend.67 If most of the population of the seven villages of the plebs were present, plus the town itself and the monks of Saint-Riquier, then two thousand is reasonable. After all, the monastery alone held three hundred monks. Other early medieval texts also mention surrounding villagers gathering at a central church for Rogationtide, so the large Saint-Riquier march had parallels elsewhere.68 Angilbert’s ordo stresses the extent to which the town and each village maintained their corporate identity even while processing with the larger plebs. Inhabitants of the town of Saint-Riquier itself and clergy associated with the baptismal church of Richarius and the Holy Savior in the town consistently walked at the front and center. Villagers and clerics from lesser shrines and oratories process on the edges or in ranks behind. In addition to seven crosses—one from each village in the plebs—the clergy

63 In quinto omnes layci, in sexto omnes uiduae et continentes, in septimo omnes conjugati, Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea 70, Graesse, p. 313. 64 Nobiles uiri . . . a proposito uel decano electi . . . feminae uero nobiliores . . . pueri et puellae . . . honorabiliores uiri et feminae . . . mixtus populus . . . equitando, Bishop, Liturgica Historica, p. 324; Institutio sancti Angilberti, Hallinger, p. 297. 65 Cf. Bazire and Cross 6.37–40. 66 Si bini uel terni incederent, unum uix miliarum caperet, Bishop, Liturgica Historica, p. 324; Institutio sancti Angilberti, Hallinger, p. 297; Rabe, Faith, Art, and Politics, pp. 14–15; according to a ninth-century list, 2500 households lived on the lands owned by the abbey of Saint-Riquier, Dey, The Afterlife of the Roman City, pp. 225–6. 67 How many people walking two-by-two would stretch for a mile depends on how close the ranks were packed. If each line came about a meter apart, the procession would include on the order of two thousand people. 68 For instance: et de diuersis monasteriis et adiacentibus uillulis cum suis reliquiis aderant multitudo innumerabilis, Frulandus of Murbach, Passio Leudegarii Tertia 2.34, CCSL 117, ed. Bruno Krusch (Turnhout: Brepols, 1957); per oppida et castella praedicando pergeret . . . extra ciuitate egrediens, Vita Huberti Leodiensis Prima 6, MGH SRM 6, p. 486; clamor ingens populi, qui a diuersis partibus collocatus, Olbert of Gembloux, Miracula Sancti Veroni Lembecensis 4, MGH SS 15.2, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger (Hanover: 1888), p. 751; homines uillae illius ibant cum suis monasterensium occurrere reliquiis, De miraculis Ludgeri 44, AASS Mar. 3, p. 662E.

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carried relics, censers, holy water, and banners.69 Some processions also carried the gospel books, for the readings during the walk.70 Such a large congregation of people marching in ordered ranks with a few horsemen at the end must have looked like an army, especially since they bore banners (flammula, uexilla) as if military standards.71 Indeed, in twelfth-century Liège, the people carried a genuine battle standard, which Bishop Alexander I (1128–34) had taken from a defeated foe and added to the traditional Rogation banners.72 Medieval observers often used military language to portray the march. As mentioned, Caesarius called the procession “a spiritual army camp” and termed those who fail to march “deserters.”73 Likewise, twelfth-century liturgist Rupert of Deutz portrayed the Rogation banners and crosses as “the symbols of the ascending Triumphator [Christ]” and traced the origins of their usage back to Constantine’s labarum.74 At Saint-Riquier, the marchers progressed on the main road through various gates, walked past farms and estates, stopped at two different stational churches each day, and returned to the monastic church for mass at the end.75 Along the way, the crowd chanted a variety of songs: for instance, psalms,

69 Cruces quae uenerat cum nostris . . . tam cruces quam et populus in locis supranominatis sibi constitutis, Bishop, Liturgica Historica, p. 325; Institutio sancti Angilberti, Hallinger, p. 299. 70 Cf. Vercelli Homilies 11.9–11, 12.12–50, 19.58–103; Miracula Sancti Wandregisili Fontanellensia 4, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger, MGH 15.1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1887), p. 408; Liber tramitis aevi Odilonis, p. 104; Consuetudines Fructuarienses-Sanblasianae, Corpus consuetudinum monasticarum XII, ed. Luchesius G. Spätling and Peter Dinter (Siegburg: F. Schmitt, 1985–7), vol. 1, p. 212. 71 For banners, William of Hirsau, Constitutiones Hirsaugienses 2.34, PL 150.1092; Bailey, Processions of Sarum, pp. 24–5, 115. 72 Gilles of Orval, Gesta episcoporum Leodiensium 3.6, 3.23, ed. Johannes Heller, MGH SS 25 (Hanover: Hahn, 1880), pp. 85, 98. 73 Nullus castra spiritalia deserat, Caesarius, Serm. 207.2; the fifteenth-century preacher John Mirk describes the procession as the army of “the kyng of christen men,” with banners and bells instead of standard and trumpets; Mirk’s Festial: A Collection of Homilies, EETS o.s. 96, ed. Theodor Erbe (London: Trübner, 1905), no. 36, 150.12–23; John Mirk’s Festial: Edited from British Library MS Cotton Claudius A.II, EETS o.s. 334–5, ed. Susan Powell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), no. 36.45–65. 74 In iisdem processionibus triumphatoris caelos ascendentis insignia scilicet cruces atque uexilla praeferuntur. Horum usus in ecclesia coepit a constantini temporibus, Rupert of Deutz, Liber de diuinis officiis 9.5, CCCM 7, ed. Rhabanus Haacke (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967), p. 311; cf. has ipsas rogationes, quas ante ascensionis dominicae triumphum caelebramus, Gregory of Tours, Historiae 2.34, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 83; cf. Sicard of Cremona, Mitralis 7.6.573; Guillelmus Durandus, Rationale 6.102.7–9. 75 Per publicam uiam . . . pergant recto itinere . . . iuxta eandem uillam ad sinistram . . . per mansum et per brogilum . . . coram mansionibus fabrorum, Bishop, Liturgica Historica, pp. 324–6; Institutio sancti Angilberti, Hallinger, pp. 297–9; for similar pre-Tridentine Rogation rites, cf. Emil Joseph Lengeling, “Die Bittprozessionen des Domkapitels und der Pfarreien der Stadt Münster vor dem Fest Christi Himmelfahrt,” in Monasterium: Festscrift zum siebenhundertjährigen Weihegedächtnis des Paulus-Domes zu Münster, edited by Alois Schröer (Münster: Verlag Regensberg, 1966), pp. 151–220; Andrew Brown, Civic Ceremony and Religion in Medieval Bruges c. 1300–1520 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 77–8, 87–91, 110–11.

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creeds, the Lord’s Prayer, and several litanies including one Angilbert himself wrote.76 By the high Middle Ages, the marchers also sometimes swung hand bells.77 Rogationtide singing—like the ringing of church bells, organ music, and monastic psalmody—marked out a Christian acoustic space. As dioceses and baptismal churches spread, the places where processional songs were never heard grew ever rarer.78 High medieval liturgists claimed that the noise of the march drove out terrified demons from the land.79 For instance, according to one twelfth-century sermon exemplum, a Norman priest attended a Rogationtide where it was the custom during the procession both for the clergy to sing psalms and for women to sing lewd songs.80 The priest saw a vision of an invisible battle, where hymnody strengthened the angelic army and profane music the evil spirits. During the early Middle Ages, such singing had the more mundane impact of drowning out the natural sounds of the fields and forests with resolutely human and Christian voices. No wonder that, from the ninth-century Pact of Umar in the Caliphate to French Revolutionary laws in the 1790s, legislation seeking to dechristianize a region banned outdoor processions, bells, and stational crosses.81 Dechristianizers sought to create a space emptied of Christian noises. In Angilbert’s church order, singing underscored not only penitential communitas, but also the innumerable social distinctions implicit in the ritual structure itself. The gathering at Saint-Riquier, for instance, performed the laudes regiae for the protection of the Christian commonwealth: solidarity made audible.82 But Angilbert also specifies that particular groups sang particular texts, depending on their rank and learning—for instance, the

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Bishop, Liturgica Historica, p. 324; Institutio sancti Angilberti, Hallinger, p. 298. Guillelmus Durandus, Rationale 1.4.2, 4.6.19–20; Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea 70, Graesse, p. 314; Mirk’s Festial, no. 36, 150.24–151.7; John Mirk’s Festial, no. 36.45–65; Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, pp. 38–9, 136–7, 452. 78 R. Murray Schafer, Our Sonic Enivornment and the Soundscape: The Tuning of the World (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1994), pp. 51–6, 173–8, 215–16, 231–3; Le Goff, Time, Work, pp. 35–6, 43–9. 79 For the song banishing demons, Guillelmus Durandus, Rationale 1.4.13–14, 1.6.26, 4.6.18, 6.102.6, 9; A Late Fifteenth-Century Dominical Sermon Cycle: Edited from Bodleian Libraray MS E Musaeo 180 and Other Manuscripts, EETS o.s. 337, ed. Stephen Morrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), no. 37; The South English Legendary, EETS o.s. 235, ed. Charlottee D’Evelyn and Anna J. Mill (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 159–62. 80 Videbat in aere binas bonorum atque malorum spirituum turbas a se invicem separatas . . . Cum itaque clerici psalmos hymnodiamque repeterent, fugientibus apostatis angelis, boni cominus accedebant, Herbert of Clairvaux, De Miraculis 1.21, PL 185.1298. 81 Cf. Milka Levy-Rubin, “Shurūt Umar and its Alternatives: the Legal Debate throughout the Eight and Ninth Centuries over the Status of the Dhimmīs,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 30 (2005): pp. 170–206; Michel Vovelle, The Revolution against the Church: from Reason to the Supreme Being, trans. Alan José (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1991), pp. 9, 28–30, 40–1, 56–7, 107–8, 143–4. 82 Laudes pro salute totius christianitatis, Bishop, Liturgica Historica, p. 325; Institutio sancti Angilberti, Hallinger, p. 298; Geelhaar, Christianitas, pp. 258–9, 335–6. 77

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monks intoned penitential psalms, but lay children only recited the Lord’s Prayer and Creed.83 Probably the greatest sacrifice demanded during the Rogation Days was not a leveling of hierarchy, but the lengthy procession itself. After all, Rogationtide was a penitential season like Lent and Advent. During the holiday, Christians were supposed to fast during these three days on bread and water, abstain from sex, keep vigils, and attend masses concluding the procession at the local baptismal church. The whole congregation also had to walk. All Christians, even the young and old, were obliged to walk for six hours—from Tierce to Nones—during the heat of three consecutive days. In addition to missing a meal, they skipped their post-lunch siesta. Processors could be sleepy, especially if they also kept vigils at night. Lanfranc of Canterbury, in his eleventh-century customary for the Canterbury cathedral priority and other houses, advises monks to sleep more than normal on the nights before the Rogation Days, because they would need to skip their afternoon nap in order to process.84 Walking poorly clothed and barefoot across uneven terrain, the marchers must have traveled at a slow rate: accruing scrapes, cuts, and bruises along the way. The fast ensured that many were undernourished and exhausted quickly. The singing would have kept them hoarse and out of breath. One English cleric, for instance, bemoans that Rogationtide fasters were often grouchy due to their hunger, and thus they failed to observe the feast with the proper attitude.85 Fights sometimes broke out during the procession, confirming this preacher’s portrait of an ill-tempered congregation.86 Even assuming good weather, the ceremony was not pleasurable. And weather was not always good. Hagiographies allude to swollen rivers obstructing the journey—perhaps from the seasonal May surge—and one eleventh-century monastic customary tells the monks to process within the walls of the abbey if it is muddy, but to march to external churches in the town and countryside otherwise.87 83 Bishop, Liturgica Historica, p. 324; Institutio sancti Angilberti, Hallinger, p. 298; cf. Capitula Helmstadensia (c. 950), 10, MGH CE 3, p. 186; John of Avranches, De officiis ecclesiasticis, PL 147.56C–56D. 84 In the summer months, (between Easter and October 1), monks slept between the sixth and eighth hour. Siestas were also common with the laity; Decreta Lanfranci, p. 43; cf. Liber tramitis aevi Odilonis, p. 103. 85 Geunrotsod on his mode and on his þeawum wiðerweard . . . geunblissod, Bazire and Cross 5.156–64. 86 For fights during the procession, cf. Gregory of Tours, Historiae 5.11, MGH SRM 1.1.205; Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, pp. 136–7; Daniel E. Thiery, Polluting the Sacred: Violence, Faith and the “Civilising” of Parishioners in Late Medieval England (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 68–9, 73–4, 116–18. 87 Si ex affluentia imbrium uia lutea est, portas muri monasterium ambientis non egrediuntur . . . si autem siccata est uia, faciant eam ad aecclesiam de uilla uel ad alium aecclesiam extra uillam in campo, Consuetudines Fructuarienses-Sanblasianae, vol. 1, p. 213; cf. Vita Procopii 2, AASS Jul 2, p. 141–2; Byrhtferth, Vita Oswaldi 4.16, Byrhtferth of Ramsey, the Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed. Michael Lapidge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 132–5; Paston

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Each day, the procession began and ended at the local baptismal church, where they heard mass and a sermon. In between, some congregations traveled long distances, to various stations around the baptismal church. Even with frequent stational breaks for prayers, songs, and readings, worshippers often wearied. One Carolingian hagiography, for instance, speaks of a procession that began at the shrine of St. Omer, turned around at the sixth hour, and returned to the shrine to celebrate mass by the ninth hour.88 By the end, the people were exhausted (fatigatae plebi) and one young girl left the concluding mass in a rush to quench her painful thirst.89 While fetching water, the girl promptly fell into a deep well, but was miraculously saved. According to a ninth-century miracle account, the canons of St-Winnoc’s priory in Wormhout—then a baptismal church, not yet subject to claustration— returned after Rogationtide “later than is proper, acting less punctiliously than they ought.”90 Due to darkness and fatigue, none of the monks noticed when part of Winnoc’s relics dropped during the march. The monks only found these relics again the next day. The shrines of saints usually served as stations along the march.91 In fact, the Rogation Days were a popular occasion for the elevation or translation of relics, since the clergy and laity already gathered to walk anyway.92 A few early medieval authors supply enough information on their local march to allow the estimation of approximate rates and distances. For example, Gregory of Tours

Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, no. 21, EETS s.s. 20, ed. Norman Davis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 1, pp. 33–4. 88 Ut post horam iam meridianam fatigatae plebi in processione et iam ad eandem aecclesiam reuertenti missa caelebrari deberetur. Inter quorum multitudines mulier quaedam cum duabus filiabus puellulis paruis conueniebat . . . sitis ardore fatigatam, Miracula Audomari 3, MGH SRM 5, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison (Hanover: Hahn, 1910), p. 777. 89 For a similar story, see Vita Cunegundis 4, AASS Mar 1, p. 277; for exhaustion after the procession: grauissima affligebat defetigatio, Gislebertus of Sint-Truiden, Gesta abbatum trudonensium 8.10, CCCM 257A, ed. P. Tombeur (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 10–11; Hanska, Strategies of Sanity, pp. 48–9, 62–3. 90 Tardius debito monasterium peteremus . . . cum minus sollicite ageretur, cecidit a fronte eius particula auri cum hisdem reliquiis, et tamen ipsa nocte nulli nostrorum omnino cognita fuit tanti perditio thesauri, Miracula Winnoci 3, MGH SRM 5, ed. B. Krusch and W. Levison (Hanover: Hahn, 1910), p. 781. 91 For Rogationtide visits to shrines: Amulo of Lyon, Ep. 1.8, MGH epp. 5, ed. E. Dümmler et al. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1899), p. 367; Vercelli Homilies 19.125–9, 20.1–8; Gregory of Tours, Historiae 9.6, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 418; Vita Prima Gildae 31, MGH AA 13, p. 101; Translatio et miracula Sanctorum Senesii et Theoponti 8–10, 12–13, MGH SS 30.2, ed. Percy E. Schramm (Leipzig: K. W. Hiersemann, 1926), pp. 989–2; Bedingfield, Dramatic Liturgy, pp. 195–6; Gittos, Liturgy, Architecture, pp. 137–9. 92 For instance, Lantbert, Libellus de certissima translatione Sancti Florberti, MGH SS 15.2, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger (Hanover: 1888), p. 643; Rudolf of Fulda, Miracula Sanctorum in ecclesias Fuldenses translatorum 8, MGH SS 15.1, ed. Georg Waitz (Hanover: Hahn, 1887), p. 335; Miracula Sancti Wandregisili Fontanellensia 4, MGH 15.1, p. 408; Vita Probi, AASS Nov 4, p. 482.

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claims that when the inguinal plague threatened the population of Clermont, Bishop Gallus inaugurated three new Lenten Rogation Days, modeled after the normal pre-Ascension ones.93 The Lenten Rogationtide lingered in Clermont for a generation before disappearing. Gregory himself likely walked it while a deacon there. The walk was treacherous. Ruffians allegedly assaulted the procession one year when it was in the open country; on another occasion, Gallus himself supposedly pressed a thorn deep into his bare foot, grew ill for days, and developed a nasty scar. 94 Much of the information about this march may flow from Gregory’s imagination rather than actual events; the historian leaves out key details such as how the people walked back to Clermont after and how they spent the nights out in the open country. Nonetheless, Gregory’s account reveals how far the author thought a Rogation procession could travel—at least, when desperation drove a breakneck pace. Allegedly, Gallus and his flock progressed from Clermont to the shrine of St. Julian at Brioude— nearly sixty-five kilometers (forty miles): a pace of about three kilometers per hour if they marched for six hours on all three days.95 During the Rogation Days of 858, similarly, the monks of Fontenelle translated relics of St. Wandrille from the village of Bladulf, near Boulognesur-Mer, to the church of St. Peter’s in Quentovic: a distance of perhaps thirty kilometers (eighteen miles).96 Although Viking raids induced this translation, the monks do not seem to have been in any immediate danger and only moved at a rate of about a mile per hour. Around 1100 at the abbey of Sint-Truiden, the procession visited the nearby villages of Brustem, Velm, and Melveren on the three consecutive days. Although none of these trips would have been more than a half-dozen kilometers, the fast pace made them exhausting (grauissima defetigatio).97 Despite rules to the contrary, monks, schoolboys, and lay people who could afford it usually rode—much to the grief of their soon-tobe abbot Rudolf, who eventually shortened the distance so all could walk. Narrative evidence suggests that most churches marched much shorter distances. Consider the gathering at Cambrai that a seventh-century hagiographer maintained “circled around the churches and passed before the door of the prison.”98 Likewise, Notker Balbulus records that Louis the German would 93

Gregory of Tours, Historiae 4.5, Vita Patrum 6.6, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 138, 1.2, p. 234. Gregory of Tours, Historiae 4.13, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 144. Gregory of Tours, Vita Iuliani 2, MGH SRM 1.2, p. 115. 96 Miracula Sancti Wandregisili Fontanellensia 2–4, MGH 15.1, pp. 407–8. 97 Fratres autem quos aut uoluntas aut necessitas pedites ire et redire faciebat, populo cito uestigio equitantes sequente domum, grauissima affligebat defetigatio, tum ex longo itinere, tum ex inasueta et cita ambulatione, Gislebertus of Sint-Truiden, Gesta abbatum trudonensium 8.10. 98 Basilicas . . . circuirent et ante ostium carceris praeterirent, Vita Gaugerici 8, MGH SRM 3, p. 654; other miracle stories also suggest short distances. In one Merovingian text, the procession remained in earshot of the town: Venantius Fortunatus, Vita Germani ep. Parisiaci 33, MGH SRM 7, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison (Hanover: Hahn, 1920), p. 392; at tenth-century Toul, people marched close enough to the town walls to nearly be hit by falling stones: sub eodem 94 95

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march—dressed in the same penitential gear as everyone else—from his palace to the monastery of St. Emmeram or to the local cathedral, if the king was not at his capital in Regensburg; both options are well within the limits of the cathedral town.99 In ninth-century Rome, the processors walked different routes each of the three days, none over about three kilometers long.100 On one Rogation Day in mid-ninth-century Francia, the monks of Fulda translated relics from a nearby church to the monastery, a distance of nine stadia— about a mile.101 A study of the Rogation Days in the twelfth and thirteenth century has found that French congregations at this time often only visited the old churches in town, neglecting the newly built churches further away. Instead of separating the town from the country, these high medieval processions beat the bounds between the privileged old city and the new, poorer settlement growing up around it.102 Such narratives indicate that many Rogation processions were urban affairs— limited to the environment of church centers and cathedral towns. But sources also speak of processions through the countryside.103 Oswald of Worcester (d. 992) and the soldiers, monks, and oblates of Ramsey, for instance, supposedly walked from their monastery to a chapel of St. Mary about five kilometers (three miles) away as the crow flies. When a lake prevented them from going directly, they took a circuitous route involving a bridge and

pariete . . . plebs pertransiret, Vita II Gangulfi 3, MGH SRM 7, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison (Hanover: Hahn, 1920), p. 173. 99 Notker Balbulus, Gesta Karoli Magni 2.11, MGH SRG n.s. 12, ed. Hans F. Haefele (Berlin: 1959), p. 68; in seventh-century Metz, the Rogation procession went from the cathedral to the nearby stational church of the Holy Cross; cf. Vita Arnulfi 10, MGH SRM 2, p. 435; Martin A. Claussen, The Reform of the Frankish Church: Chrodegang of Metz and the Regula Canonicorum in the Eighth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 41, 211, 277–80; in high medieval Liège, the march moved from St. Lawrence’s abbey to the church of St. James, both within or close to the city walls, Gilles of Orval, Gesta episcoporum Leodiensium 3.6, MGH SS 25, p. 85. 100 On Monday, the Romans marched from Santa Maria Maggiore to the Lateran Basilica, on Tuesday from Santa Sabina’s to St. Paul’s outside the Walls, and on Wednesday from Santa Croce in Gerusalemme to Saint Lawrence’s outside the Walls. Apparently, the processions never crossed the Tiber, not even to visit the Vatican; Liber Pontificalis vol. 2, p. 98.43. 101 Rudolf of Fulda, Miracula Sanctorum in ecclesias Fuldenses translatorum 8, MGH SS 15.1, p. 335. 102 Mary C. Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners: Public Penance in Thirteenth-Century France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), pp. 11, 148–51, 257–60; the Rogationtide processions at Old Sarum covered a small area, beginning at the cathedral and departing through different gate each day to visit a different nearby church before returning; Christian Frost, Time, Space, and Order: The Making of Medieval Salisbury (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 45–53. 103 For instance, in agrum . . . in eodem prato celebrantibus, Miracula Sancti Pirminii Hornbacensia 6, MGH SS 15.1, ed. Georg Waitz and Wilhelm Wattenbach (Hanover: Hahn, 1887), p. 32; et deportentur in supradictam uallem in spetiosam planitiem, Frulandus of Murbach, Passio Leudegarii Tertia 2.34; for a late thirteenth-century rural procession, cf. Rauty, “Litaniae maiores et minores,” pp. 71–4, 85–98.

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ferry.104 Oswald and his companions nearly died in a boating accident as a result of their detour. According to an eighth-century vita of Hubert of Liège, the saint was leading “his entrusted plebs outside the city through the villages and fortifications” when he encountered a demoniac woman whom he promptly cured.105 And, as mentioned, medieval people sometimes rode horses during the march, suggesting that they expected to travel far. What mattered most to churchmen was not where the processions walked— long distances through the countryside or short ones around the cathedral town—but where they stopped and what locations served as the prayer stations for the holiday. Some modern scholars have suggested that rural landmarks may have filled this role: cross-roads, wells, pools, ruins, and so forth.106 But virtually all the stations recorded are shrines of saints, usually ones close to the local cathedral or baptismal church.107 Beyond sacred buildings, high crosses are the only type of station that appear unequivocally in early medieval sources. Monumental stone crosses survive all over the British Isles as well as in areas of Scandinavia with significant Anglo-Saxon influence. Sources depict diverse uses for high crosses, which served as sites for prayer, assembly places for worship, and even apotropaics from bad weather.108 Art historian Carol Neuman de Vegvar, though, has interpreted the ubiquitous vegetative motifs on Anglo-Saxon crosses as evidence that such crosses were stations for Rogationtide prayer and preaching.109 One ninth-century Breton hagiography, which Neuman de Vegvar does not cite, supplies strong evidence for her theory. According to the 104

Byrhtferth, Vita Oswaldi 4.16, Lapidge, pp. 132–5; in the eleventh century, the procession of Minster-in-Thanet visited a seaside shine in Ebbsfleet, about five kilometers away; Hillary Powell, “Following in the Footsteps of Christ: Text and Context in the Vita Mildrethae,” Medium Aevum 82, no. 1 (2013): pp. 25, 34–7. 105 Per oppida et castella praedicando pergeret . . . promiscui populi . . . extra ciuitate egrediens uerba domini plebem sibi commissam, Vita Huberti Leodiensis Prima 6, MGH SRM 6, p. 486; per omnes uicos et plateas fieri processionem, Iocundus, Translatio et miracula Sancti Seruatii Traiectensis, MGH SS 12, ed. R. Koepke (Hanover: 1856), p. 110; cf. per oppida et castella coepit discurrere, Jonas of Orléans, Vita Huberti Leodiensis, AASS Nov 1, p. 810. 106 For instance, Blair, The Church, pp. 486–9. 107 Gittos, Liturgy, Architecture, pp. 19–29; Mazel, L’Évêque et le territoire, pp. 70–2, 114–16, 121; Bullough, “Liturgical Experience,” pp. 31–43; Powell, “Following in the Footsteps,” pp. 32–7; Gregory of Tours, for instance, usually specifies that a march went along the road near the town gate or processed to a local saint’s shrine, Historiae 4.5, 4.13, Vita Patrum 4.4, 6.6, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 138, 144, 1.2, pp. 227, 234; cf. Vita Arnulfi 10, MGH SRM 2, p. 435; Gilles of Orval, Gesta episcoporum Leodiensium 3.6, MGH SS 25, p. 85. 108 For instance, Huneberc of Heidenheim, Vita Willibaldi 1, MGH SS 15.1, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger (Hanover: Hahn, 1887), p. 88; Adomnan, Vita Columba 1.45, 3.23, Anderson, pp. 82, 220; Vita Caesarii 2.27, MGH SRM 3, p. 494; Amalarius of Metz, On the Liturgy 1.14.11, Knibbs, vol. 1, p. 174; Adolf Franz, Die Kirchlichen Benediktionen im Mittelalter (Graz: Akademische Druck-Verlagsanstalt, 1960), vol. 2, pp. 14, 74–5; Blair, The Church, pp. 200–1, 227–9. 109 Neuman de Vegvar, “Converting the Anglo-Saxon Landscape,” pp. 413–24; cf. Frost, Time, Space, and Order, pp. 217–35, 245–6, 251–3; Hanska, Strategies of Sanity, pp. 39–41, 170–2.

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hagiography, St. Turiau of Dol saw a vision while preaching to the crowds during Rogationtide.110 In response, Turiau commanded that the oaken processional cross be affixed to the spot of the vision, where the author avers it still stood. This tale is an explanatory legend, providing justification for some local custom. The community of Dol probably always processed to a specific stational cross before hearing the Rogation homily. During the early Middle Ages, Rogationtide processions configured like the hub and spokes of a wheel. As the liturgical historian C. Clifford Flanigan points out, “linear processions suggest the shared goal of the community” while “circular processions . . . are always directed toward some central object of veneration.”111 A hub-and-spokes style procession like the Rogation Days combines these features. Participants moved together on a shared pilgrimage to a local saint shrine while keeping the cathedral or baptismal church as the navel of the locality. Only the wicked would seek to sever the processional link between a mother church and its dependent stations. Pope Gregory VII, for instance, complains in a 1074 letter about how the collegiate clergy of the church of Saint-Hilaire in Poitiers “went to their mother church on the Rogation Days with the plebs in accordance with ancient custom” before realizing that their hostile bishop Isembert and his chapter had locked the cathedral doors on them.112 Pope Gregory later excommunicated Isembert. According to fifteenth-century legends, a similar disruption caused the foundation of Salisbury cathedral.113 Old Sarum cathedral—built under William I, before the Gregorian reforms— was located in the castle complex. One year, at the end of a Rogation procession, royal officials prevented the returning canons from entering the cathedral. This outrage convinced Bishop Richard Poore (1217–37) to relocate the cathedral from Old Sarum to Salisbury. By founding a different mother church with new processional paths, the bishop demarcated an episcopal zone, independent of the king. On the Rogation Days, thus, congregations met at the baptismal church of the plebs, marched out to a specific sacred site such as a nearby shrine or high cross for prayer, and then returned to the central church for mass. Prayer-stations often differed on each of the three days, so that some days the procession was 110 Vita Secunda Turiaui 4, AASS Jul 3, p. 617; cf. Boniface, Ep. 57, 58, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, pp. 104, 111. 111 C. Clifford Flanigan, “The Moving Subject: Medieval Liturgical processions in Semiotic and Cultural Perspective,” in Moving Subjects, pp. 38–9. 112 Cf. ex antiqua consuetudine cum sanctis reliquiis et plebe sua matricem ecclesiam in rogationibus adiisse et a canonicis tuis ad contumeliam sibi clausas portas ecclesiae et introitum negatum fuisse, Gregory VII, Ep. 1.73, MGH Epp. Sel. 2.1, ed. Erich Caspar (Berlin: 1920), p. 104; H. E. J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 343, 351–2, 394–5. 113 Frost, Time, Space, and Order, pp. 107–13, 203–4, 207; cf. Mazel, L’Évêque et le territoire, p. 354.

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quite short and essentially urban and other days it was a long, grueling hike through the rural landscape. But the walk never physically beat the bounds of the community. Instead, the procession mirrored the relationship between baptismal mother churches and dependent oratories that undergird the early medieval church. The procession marked the boundary not of the parish, but of the sacred spaces safeguarding the local community. At times, these holy sites and their saintly patrons quite literally guarded; Gregory of Tours repeatedly tells of Rogation processions that protected a specific congregation—such as the city of Rheims with its villages and hospices—from the inguinal plague raging in the lands around it.114 These marches must have roughly sketched a geographic area of protection around the sacred sites and revealed to the people which nearby shrines and saints were part of their plague-protected locality, and which were not. Not just any group could gather on the Rogation Days, but this particular congregation at those exact churches, beseeching its own patron saints. The Rogation ceremony heightened the contrast between the sacred ground of shrines, high crosses, and churches, and the profane land outside, even as the march itself literally transgressed this border. Only modern scholars who start out looking for a semi-pagan rite could ever interpret Rogationtide as a fertility procession through parish farmland. In fact, the Rogation procession manifested a different concept of sacred space than would arise with the twelfth-century parish. Instead of delineating the bounded lands of a village and its designated church, the march focused on a central mother church and the scattered villages, shrines, and crosses orbiting around it. In the twelfth century, as the parish system solidified in Northern Europe, some parishes celebrated recognition processions at Ascension and other feasts: occasions when multiple parish congregations would gather to march to their old mother church, from which otherwise they were now largely independent.115 When the cathedral chapter of Old Sarum relocated to Salisbury in 1220, for example, Bishop Richard Poore symbolized the move by leading the Rogation procession from Old Sarum to the site of the new cathedral.116 Even that late, the mother church remained a hub, at least for the sake of processions. Indirectly, the Rogation Days may have contributed to the slow process of turning diffuse plebes into discrete, legally delineated parishes. As the Saint-Riquier ordo suggests, by giving each village its own corporate

114 Circumeunt urbem cum uicis. Nec praetereunt ullum hospitium, quem non hac circuitione concludant, In Gloria Confessorum 78, MGH SRM 1.2, p. 346; cf. Gregory of Tours, Historiae 4.5, Vita Patrum 6.6, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 138, 1.2, p. 234; for a high medieval example, Hanska, Strategies of Sanity, p. 50. 115 Gittos, Liturgy, Architecture, pp. 138–9; Blair, The Church, pp. 430–2, 454–5, 486–9, 519. 116 Frost, Time, Space, and Order, pp. 58, 154–60, 168.

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identity within the larger plebs, the Rogation liturgy encouraged their eventual autonomy as parishes. The structure of the Rogation procession itself, then, impressed an ethos of unity and solidarity on participants. But, at the same time, the rite articulated local divisions. The march fastened together saint and suppliant, clergy and laity, old and young, magnates and paupers, mother church and far-flung chapels. Moral actions like almsgiving, fasting, and group forgiveness ideally accompanied the march, as realization of these values of concord. The repentance of the local congregation was powerful because it occurred by the group, as a group, for the salvation of the collective.

PREACHING S OLIDARITY The ritual format of Rogationtide manifests a twin concern for unity and solidarity. Clergymen preaching at the feast recognized this theme and employed the Rogation Days as an opportunity for community formation, even when the feast’s actual practices hindered them. Through sermon and ceremony together, clerics sought to fuse the disparate people of their locality into a united Christian body. The Rogation Days were one of the occasions during the medieval liturgical year when vernacular preaching to the laity was normal. Although some earlier historians denied that early medieval clerics preached to lay congregations at mass, the current scholarly consensus rejects this skepticism; lay preaching occurred, at least on major feasts and penitential seasons like Easter, Christmas, or Rogationtide.117 Rogation homilies survive in abundance— about one hundred out of the perhaps two thousand extant early medieval sermons in Latin and Old English.118 Churchmen all over Europe preached not only on the three main days of the feast, but also on the eve of the Sunday before and on Ascension Thursday.119 During the early Middle Ages, the feast

117 For this debate, see, for instance, Thomas L. Amos, The Origin and Nature of the Carolingian Sermon (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1983), pp. 194–7, 223–4; R. E. McLaughlin, “The Word Eclipsed? Preaching in the Early Middle Ages,” Traditio 76 (1991): pp. 78–122; Clayton, “Homiliaries and Preaching,” pp. 207–42; Rosamond McKitterick, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms, 789–895 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977), pp. 80–114; Thomas N. Hall, “The Early Medieval Sermon,” in The Sermon, edited by Beverly Mayne Kienzle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), pp. 203–47. 118 These estimates are based on my own research as well as Amos’ earlier assessment. 119 For sermons for Rogation Sunday, cf. Avitus, Hom. 6, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 108–12; Caesarius, Serm. 207, 209; for Ascension Eve, see Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Lotharium 44, PL 110.226–8; Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 2.22, in Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series, EETS n.s. 5, ed. M. Godden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979); Grégoire, Homéliaires, pp. 209, 302–3, 456–7.

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of Pentecost was one of the few occasions of the year when churchmen encouraged non-emergency baptism, and many canonical texts charge all Christians to commune three times a year: at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.120 Rogation homilists sometimes exhort their congregation to partake of the upcoming Eucharist, suggesting that many Christians failed to commune at Pentecost.121 Perhaps non-communicating Christians felt that they had already fulfilled their obligation at Easter a few weeks earlier. Regardless, the Rogation Days were spiritual preparation: a miniature Lent before the sacraments of Pentecost.122 Ritual and preaching alike stressed the theme of social solidarity. For instance, the feast often served as an occasion for public almsgiving.123 Lay people sometimes also had to pay various clerical dues.124 Such dues tallied well with almsgiving, as the clergy were members of the poor (pauperes), rather than of the magnates (potentes) in early medieval ideology. Other communities used the Rogation Days as a time for annual neighborly reconciliation and forgiveness— a spring cleaning, in some sense, of the resentments and grievances that had accumulated over the rest of the year.125 Indeed, Ælfric of Eynsham compares

120 For baptism and communion at Pentecost, see, for instance, Theodulf of Orléans, Capitula 1.3, MGH CE 1, ed. Peter Brommer (Hanover: 1984), p. 149; Haito of Basel, Capitula 7–8, MGH CE 1, ed. Peter Brommer (Hanover: 1984), pp. 211–12; Radulf of Bourges, Capitula 20, MGH CE 1, ed. Peter Brommer (Hanover: 1984), p. 249; Ruotger of Trier, Capitula 20–1, 25, MGH CE 1, pp. 68–9; Herard of Tours, Capitula 31, MGH CE 2, ed. Rudolf Pokorny and Martina Stratmann (Hanover: 1995), p. 134; Atto of Vercelli, Capitula 17, 73, MGH CE 3, pp. 271, 291; Capitula Helmstadensia (c. 950), 9, MGH CE 3, p. 18; Phelan, The Formation of Christian Europe, pp. 67–76, 159–61. 121 For instance, Ratherius of Verona, Serm. 3.1, 11.3–4; Vercelli Homilies 13.10–17, 20.1–5. 122 Cf. Heiric, Homilarius 2.12.184–90; Bazire and Cross 5.145–52; Ælfric, Supplemary Homilies 19.119–30, in Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection, EETS o.s. 260, ed. J. A. Pope (London: 1968); Ælfric probably designed this homily (entitled De Doctrina Apostolica) for Lent or Rogationtide. The copyist of Hatton 115 places De Doctrina Apostolica as the Wednesday homily in a series of Rogation sermons. 123 For Rogationtide almsgiving, see Haymo, Homiliae 2.13, PL 118.528C; Homiliary of Angers 20.29–35, Conti, p. 265; Pembroke Homiliary 36.1–4, 22–31, 79–82, 40.56–8, Cross, pp. 102–4, 108–10, 114; Vercelli Homilies 20.35–58, 21.38–47; Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.18.165–213, in Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The First Series, EETS n.s. 17, ed. P. Clemoes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Radulfus Ardens, Homiliae 54, PL 155.1902A; Ps-Augustine, Hom. 175, PL 39.2080; the Homiliary of Paul the Deacon employed this Ps-Augustinian text for Rogation Tuesday, Grégoire, Homéliaires, p. 456. 124 Cf. Historia custodum Aretinorum, MGH SS 30, ed. A. Hofmeister (Hanover: 1934), p. 1473; Dorothy Whitelock, English Historical Documents, c. 500–1042 (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1953), no. 138; Wulfstan, Canons of Edgar, 54, EETS 226, ed. Roger Fowler (London: Oxford University Press, 1972); Gittos, Liturgy, Architecture, pp. 12–13; Blair, The Church, pp. 454–5. 125 Literal spring cleanings were a Northern European custom by the later Middle Ages. People de-sooted fire-places, changed the rushes on the floor, scattered sweet-smelling herbs, and laundered winter clothing; C. M. Woolgar, The Senses in Late Medieval England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 140–3; Ristuccia, “The Rise of Spurcalia,” pp. 56–77.

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the feast to someone “cleaning up his house before a friend comes to visit.”126 One Anglo-Saxon preacher equates joining the procession with traveling to a moot in order to settle a legal dispute.127 In 1030, similarly, the inhabitants of Corbie and Amiens, terrified by recent fires, agreed to come before the relics of St. Adalhard of Corbie every year at Rogationtide to settle all disputes.128 When this practice faded over time, the monks of Corbie boycotted by refusing to carry most of the relics on procession until the custom was restored. Procession without social reconciliation dishonored the saints. Across the early Middle Ages, Rogation preachers increasingly voiced an ideal of solidarity. Late antique Rogation homilies demonstrate little in common. Sixth-century Rogation preachers converse on everything from biblical exegesis, to the call of the gentiles, Old Testament typology, the corporate acts of mercy, spiritual warfare, and the worthlessness of faith without works.129 The holiday had not yet routinized and developed a collection of standard topics. Beginning in the eighth century, on the other hand, sermons for the Rogation Days share a series of themes focused on community building.130 Common topics such as doomsday, heaven and hell, the story of Mamertus, and the Lord’s Prayer stress that all Christians must transform their social behavior to avoid divine judgment. In their Rogation sermons, for example, churchmen often repeat the gospel command to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. But preachers usually restrict “neighbors” to only mean “all Christians,” denying non-Christians any place in the neighborhood.131 Indeed, early medieval exegetes interpreted the Parable of the Good Samaritan to teach 126

Menn dæftað heora hus and wel gedreoglæcað, gif hi sumne freond onfon willað to him þæt nan unðæslicnyss him ne ðurfe derian; and we sceolon us clænsian, Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 2.19.36–40. 127 For þan ðe þas dagas syndon ure gemotdagas gastlicra gemota þonne bið ure gastlice gemotstow on ymbhwyrfte ure reliquia, Bazire and Cross 5.114–25, 178–82; cf. Ratherius of Verona, Serm. 11.4; Hall and Ristuccia, “A Rogationtide Sermon,” p. 61; Vercelli Homilies 19.81–5; Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.18.165–212; Bazire and Cross 10.7–10; Radulfus Ardens, Homiliae 56, PL 155.1907A. 128 Vita et Miracula Sancti Adalhardi Corbeiensis 1.8, MGH SS 15.2.862; the Truce of God often forbad warfare from the Rogation Days to the Octave of Pentecost, Alan Harding, Medieval Law and the Foundations of the State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 71–4. 129 Avitus, Hom. 6, 7, 8.1, MGH AA 6.2, pp. 111.29–112.37, 113.17–114.3, 118.10–22; Caesarius, Serm. 157.3, 5, 207.2, 209.1–2; Eusebius Gallicanus, Serm. 25.3–5. 130 For a list of common topics, see Bazire and Cross, Eleven Old English Rogationtide Homilies, pp. xxiv–xxv; for heaven and hell, see Pembroke Homiliary 40.101–9, Cross, p. 118; Blickling Homilies 8.76–116, Kelly, pp. 70–2; Vercelli Homilies 11.27–86, 13.37–47, 21.158–218, 239–57; Bazire and Cross 3.30–120, 4.40–106, 8.115–40; Nathan, “The Rogation Ceremonies,” pp. 299–300; for doomsday, Blickling Homilies 10.10–25, Kelly, p. 76; Pembroke Homiliary 40.23–30, Cross, pp. 110–12; Vercelli Homilies 10.164–76, 11.86–107, 20.16–22. 131 Uton lufian ure neahstan, þæt syndon ealle cristene menn, Vercelli Homilies 21.1–4, 225–8, EETS o.s. 300; cf. Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 2.19.6–17, 60–8; Bazire and Cross 7.106–36; Wulfstan of York, Hom. 8b.70–9, 8c.109–12, Bethurum, pp. 174, 302–4; Joyce Tally Lionarons, The Homiletic Writings of Archbishop Wulfstan (Woodbridge, UK: Brewer, 2010), pp. 19, 125–8; these Wulfstan homilies were Quando Volueris sermons, designed for any baptismal

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that only Christians were neighbors, as if the entire population of the locality were properly Christianized congregants.132 No theme better illustrates these anxieties about communal harmony than the repeated attempts preachers made to discover the origins of Rogationtide. For medieval theologians, history was not merely a set of agreed-upon facts regarding past happenings. History, rather, was the outworking of divine providence and only faith could only comprehend it. Anachronism was not always an error; it was fundamental to this hermeneutic, for “past and present [were] not ontologically separate.”133 God, who was beyond time and space, had patterned the events of history so that they conveyed the future mysteries of God to those not blinded by the devil. The repentance of the city of Nineveh, for instance, described in the third chapter of Jonah, supplied an ancient, biblical precedent for the Rogation Day—at least, so many clerics opined. Nineveh was a figure and the latter feast a fulfillment. Churchmen frequently noted parallel acts of solidarity, linking Rogationtide to the fast of Nineveh.134 On the Rogation Days, all classes in the Christian commonwealth needed to unite in repentance in order to save the whole body. Likewise, the book of Jonah emphasized that all inhabitants of Nineveh, including the men, women, infants, elders, and animals prayed together for mercy in sack cloth and ashes. Even infants and animals who had not consciously sinned joined in repentance for the communal sins. The king himself submitted to the prophet and was the first to repent—a paragon of royal piety, subject to the clergy yet still the leader of the people as a whole. Some of the Patristic texts adapted into Rogation homilies envisioned a distinctly Roman imperial Nineveh. Maximus of Turin, for instance, portrays the king of Nineveh divesting himself of his diadem and imperial purple in order to save the imperium by marshaling an army of penitents.135 A sixthcentury African homilist depicts the king repenting alongside his counts,

occasion—the Rogation Days before a Pentecost baptism, Lent before an Easter baptism, or Advent before a Christmas one. 132 Cf. Alcuin, Ep. 51, MGH Epp. 4, p. 95; Alcuin, De uirtutibus et uitiis 3, PL 101.616A; Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 45, PL 110.84D–85A. This Hrabanus sermon is a Quando Volueris, likely used at Rogationtide. 133 Furry, Allegorizing History, pp. 4–8, 43, 49–50, 59, 112–13, 118; Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, pp. 10–11, 32–3, 85–7. 134 For Jonah references, see Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 19, PL 110.37C–38A; Pembroke Homiliary 36.32–70, 40.6–18, Cross, pp. 104–8, 111; Vercelli Homilies 19.104–47; Nathan, “The Rogation Ceremonies,” p. 301; Leclercq, “Pour l’histoire,” pp. 86–7; Bazire and Cross 4.1–37; Paul E. Szarmach, “Three Versions of the Jonah Story: An Investigation of Narrative Technique in Old English Homilies,” Anglo-Saxon England 1 (1972): pp. 183–2; Sellers, The Old English Rogationtide Corpus, pp. 103–25. 135 Dum proicit purpuram dum diadema deponit . . . praeparat religionis exercitum non armis sed sola deuotione munitum, Maximus of Turin, Hom. 81.1–2; cf. Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 19, PL 110.37D.

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senators, chief men, and noble ladies (comites, senatores, principales, inlustres feminae): a model Roman court.136 Many Rogation sermons relaying the story of Jonah incorporate ad status elements, in which the preacher explains the social obligations of each class.137 Such sermons chide the rich at length. Caesarius, for instance, asserts that those who judge unjustly and strip the clothes off others and those who fail to give alms and host strangers are “not worthy of the name Christian.”138 A Carolingian preacher, likewise, maintains that just as the sins of the princes in particular, rather than sins in general, bring the people into suffering, so the righteousness of the elite restores peace to the kingdom.139 Anglo-Saxon Rogation homilists stress the superiority of the soul to the body and harp on the fleetingness of the physical world and its pleasures.140 As a result, they scold the rich and influential for their short-sighted focus on temporal money and power. A tenth-century English preacher, for instance, tells his congregation to look at the tombs of the wealthy and meditate on how people who once had banquet halls, servants, fancy clothing, and storehouses packed with crops are now food for worms.141 Since marchers likely passed graveyards while processing from the baptismal church to stational shrines, the churchman may literally expect gazing on tombs. Origin stories for the Rogation Days like the fast of Nineveh served as legitimizing myths, expressing the rite’s ethos of unity and solidarity in narrative form. After all, in some ways, the Rogation Days were a dangerous novelty. The holiday was the late invention of a single obscure Gallo-Roman bishop. The apostles, the church fathers, the popes before 800, and the Christian East never celebrated it. High medieval authors frequently labelled 136

Chrysostomus Latinus, Serm. B, PLS 4.849; in the Homiliary of Paul the Deacon, this sermon is rubricated “in Letania quando uolueris,” that is a homily for any penitential procession—including Rogationtide; Grégoire, Homéliaires, p. 478. 137 See, for instance, the Ad Status component in Vercelli Homilies 21.1–125; Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 2.19.91–250; Bazire and Cross 3.102–20, 7.171–83; Blickling Homilies 10.1–5, 29–42, Kelly, p. 76. 138 Christiani nominis non facit sola dignitas christianum. Nihil prodest quod aliquis christianus uocatur ex nomine, si hoc non ostendit in opera, Caesarius, Serm. 157.3–6, CCSL 103; cf. Caesarius, Serm. 144.2–3, 208.2–3, 209.3; Bodley Homilies 7.1–21, 120–35, in Old English Homilies from MS Bodley 343, EETS o.s. 302, ed. Susan Irvine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 197–8, 201. 139 Incipientes a principibus quorum iniquitate corruit populus et quorum iterum equitate aedificatur patria et quorum clementia roboratur regnum ut simul ab omnibus saluemur peccatis, Pembroke Homiliary 36.71–4, Cross, p. 108. 140 Vercelli Homilies 10.218–45, 13.21–36, 14.26–36, 20.180–204, 21.29–57; Bazire and Cross 6.95–174, 9.1–9, 11.56–98; the manuscript tradition of Vercelli Homily 10 associates this sermon with Rogationtide. Vercelli Homily 14 is a Quando Volueris sermon: suitable for Lent or the Rogation Days, as its reference to a vague “holy days” (halige dagas) evinces. 141 Gongan to byrgenne weligra manna, þonne magon ge geseon sweotole bysene, Blickling Homilies 8.10–66, 10.43–9, 75–113, Kelly, pp. 68–70, 78–80; for similar focus on graves, Vercelli Homilies 13.17–28; Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.18.191–2.

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Rogationtide as a “minor” litany, because it lacked the authority of a canonical creator or ecumenical council.142 Yet, by retelling a variety of contradictory origin stories about Rogationtide, medieval clerics clothed the season with something approaching traditionalism. As one liturgical historian rightly states, “Rogationtide is a polyvalent festival, and the multiple theories of origins reflect the multiple directions granted the liturgical form and, especially, the preaching.”143 Since reputed origins abounded, each local church could craft its own understanding of the event’s past to fit the needs of its own times. Some clergymen simply emended the story of Mamertus and the Rogationtide of Vienne in order to increase the gravity and authority of the event. Carolingian texts, for instance, can dispense with Sidonius’ gentle deer and instead assert that dangerous forest beasts like wolves, bears, lions, and boars overran the city of Vienne and devoured inhabitants.144 By the high Middle Ages, even elephants and dragons invaded.145 According to other medieval authors, Mamertus warded off a “most deadly disease from his congregation” and from Gaul in general.146 Evidently, memories and legends about the inguinal plague that scarred Europe a half-century after Mamertus crept into the history of the feast. Demons were as much a threat as plague or beasts. The canonist Regino of Prüm, for instance, proclaims that “back then [in Mamertus’ time], the people of Gaul performed the Rogation Days against visible wolves, but we do so in order to conquer invisible ones: that is unclean spirits.”147 High medieval liturgists expanded on this idea by asserting that Mamertus of Vienne had established the feast to drive away murderous demons who

142 For instance, Liber Quare Additio 25.29–30; Jean Beleth, Summa de Eccl. Officiis 122.c; Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea 70, Graesse, p. 313; Praepositinus of Cremona, Tractatus de officiis 2.129, 2.131, ed. James Corbett (Notre Dame, IL: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), pp. 196–8. 143 Bedingfield, Dramatic Liturgy, pp. 207–8. 144 Cf. Herwagen Homiliary 13, PL 94.499C; Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.18.5–39; Bazire and Cross 8.1–28; Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium 1.8, MGH SS 7, ed. Ludwig C. Bethmann (Hanover: Hahn, 1846), p. 406; Hermannus Contractus, Chronicon 501, MGH SS 5, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz et al. (Hanover: Hahn, 1844), p. 85; Leclercq, “Pour l’histoire,” p. 86. 145 Kienzle, “Cistercian Preaching,” pp. 297–9; Speculum Sacerdotale, EETS o.s. 200, ed. Edward H. Weatherly (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936), no. 34, 135–42. 146 Mortalitatem magnam populus suus pertulit et infirmitas grauissima super suam plebem euenit, Pembroke Homiliary 40.36–55, Cross, pp. 112–14; cf. Vercelli Homilies 19.149–64; Herwagen Homiliary 13, PL 94.499; Heiric, Homiliae 2.12.154–205. 147 Galliarum populi luporum rabie . . . non ut uisibilium luporum rabiem euadamus, set ut inuisibilium, id est spirituum immundorum, Regino of Prüm, De Synod. Causis I.C.280, Hartmann, Sendhandbuch, p. 148; for demons, cf. Haymo, Homiliae 2.13, PL 118.528B; Burchard of Worms, Decretum 1.94.48, 12.20, 13.7, 19.5, PL 140.576D, 880C, 886A–886C, 962D. Liber Quare Quaestio 105.5–7; Ivo, Decretum 4.11, 4.40, PL 161.266B, 273A; Hanska, Strategies of Sanity, pp. 127–8.

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had possessed the body of wolves and other beasts.148 According to this version of the Mamertus legend, when Christians observed the feast, their processing crosses, relics, and prayers banish evil spirits and the storms they bring from the countryside. As a result, many hagiographies describe demons expelled from the possessed through the Rogation ceremony.149 One late medieval sermon exemplum, for instance, tells of a woman who sells her unborn child to the devil in order to pay off her late husband’s debts.150 Her Franciscan confessor loans her “a cross that he carried with him when perambulating” in order to stop Satan from carrying off the baby. On Rogation Wednesday around the year 1400, a priest in northeastern France directed the march to a tree haunted by fairies—demons in disguise according to medieval clergymen— and read from John’s Gospel in order to exorcise the fairies.151 Apparently, the priest succeeded, because no one saw fairies at the tree ever again.152 In late medieval England, fights sometimes broke out between two processions because one congregation believed a neighboring parish marched in order to drive devils off their own land and onto their neighbor’s.153 Mamertus had allegedly set a precedent of employing the march against demons, and this legacy thrived. Another strategy was to extend the regions threatened by the calamities and the period they lasted, in order to make the story less provincial. Haymo of Auxerre, for instance, averred that the natural disasters affected all Gaul, not

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Demones . . . intrauerunt lupos, ut magis nocerent et interficiebant homines, non tantum in uicis sed etiam in urbibus . . . ut uexillo crucis et orationibus sanctorum demones, id est lupi, expellantur. Per campos etiam uadit, ut etiam a segetibus demones expellantur, William of Auxerre, Summa de officiis ecclesiasticis 1.84.1–2, 6–7, 16, at “Magistri Guillelmi Autissiodorensis Summa de officiis ecclesiasticis,” http://guillelmus.uni-koeln.de/tcrit/tcrit_prologus, accessed August 14, 2017; Gilles of Orval, Gesta episcoporum Leodiensium 2.23, MGH SS 25, p. 44; Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea 70, Graesse, p. 314; Guillelmus Durandus, Rationale 6.102.6–7; cf. Mark 5:12–13. 149 For example, Vita Arnulfi 10, MGH SRM 2, p. 435; Vita Huberti Leodiensis Prima 6, MGH SRM 6, p. 486; Jonas of Orléans, Vita Huberti Leodiensis, AASS Nov 1, p. 810; Historia Eleuati et Miraculorum Zenonis 8, AASS 2, p. 75. 150 Crucem quandam quam secum portauerat pelegrinando, Wenzel, Latin Sermon Collections from Later Medieval England, pp. 175–7; Wright and Wülcker, Anglo-Saxon and Old English Glossaries, p. 565.46; Kurath et al., Middle English Dictionary, Part L.6, p. 1187. 151 Inquisitors investigating the childhood of Joan of Arc recorded this event in 1452, although the Rogationtide occurred about fifty years earlier; Richard Firth Green, Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), pp. 28–9, 46–7, 54. 152 A Czech folktale recorded around 1860 tells of Marienka, a woman abducted by the dwarf king, who returns to earth yearly on the three Rogation Days to beg for alms. This tale likely reflects popular traditions about Rogationtide’s power over fairies and association with almsgiving; Édouard René Lefebvre de Laboulaye, Contes bleus (Paris: Furnes, 1864), pp. 205–15. 153 John D. Cox, The Devil and the Sacred in English Drama, 1350–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 15–16, 35, 68–9, 167–8, 174, 204.

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just Vienne, over the course of a year; in response, a synod of bishops gathered at Vienne and imposed the feast of Rogationtide on the whole country.154 An eleventh-century English sermon stresses that the calamities occurred “in many places, just as much in Italy, as in Gaul,” as if the preacher were countering critics who viewed the Rogation Days as an exclusively Gallic tradition.155 Other medieval writers avoid naming Mamertus—viewing the event as a collective effort—or even swap a different figure, such as Remigius of Cambrai, for Mamertus as the leading bishop.156 As the baptizer of Clovis, Remigius provided a securely Frankish founder, rather than a bishop from the Burgundian kingdom like Mamertus.157 Haymo and similar authors envisioned Rogationtide as the creation of a council of bishops legislating for an entire kingdom—suspiciously similar to the councils of the Carolingian reform movement that Haymo knew from his own lifetime. As a final method, many homilists erased the distinction between Rogationtide and the Roman Greater Litany and substituted Gregory the Great for Mamertus as founder. A few churchmen, for instance, allege that Gregory invented the Roman Greater Litany prior to Mamertus’ Rogation Days, skewing history by more than a hundred years.158 While Gregory I was well known throughout the early Middle Ages, these preachers likely had no hint when Mamertus lived. Since they knew almost nothing about the Gallic bishop, many preachers assumed that Mamertus followed the precedent of the most famous figure. Mamertus, after all, was just a name, but Gregory was a saint, a pope, and a great theologian. This proclivity of preachers to replace Mamertus with Gregory explains a bizarre feature of the Rogation rite: the carrying of processional dragon puppets. As an influential article by Jacques Le Goff discusses, in the twelfth century, Northern French congregations bore a long wicker dragon puppet—jaws open

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Congregati traduntur Galliarum episcopi . . . atque in commune statuerunt . . . antiquorum patrum uestigia sequentes, Haymo, Homiliae 2.13, PL 118.528A; cf. Pembroke Homiliary 40.36–55, Cross, pp. 112–14; Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 19, PL 110.38B; Vercelli Homilies 19.149–64; Burchard of Worms, Decretum 13.7, PL 140.886A–886C; Leclercq, “Pour l’histoire,” pp. 86–7; Speculum Sacerdotale, no. 34, 135–42. 155 Per multa loca, tam Italię quam Gallię, Hall and Ristuccia, “A Rogationtide Sermon,” p. 61; cf. Jean Beleth, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis 122.c, 123.a. 156 For sources dating the first Rogation Days to the time of Clovis and the conversion of the Franks (roughly thirty years later than in truth), see, for instance, Walahfrid Strabo, De Exordiis 29, Harting-Correa, p. 186; Liber Historiae Francorum 16, MGH SRM 2, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hanover: Hahn, 1885), p. 266; Orderic Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica 1.22, 5.8, PL 188.79B, 393A. 157 For Remigius, Chronicon Vedastinum, MGH SS 13, ed. O. Holder-Egger (Hanover: Hahn, 1881), p. 683; Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium 1.8, MGH SS 7, p. 406. 158 For instance, Ratherius of Verona, Serm. 3.1; Herwagen Homiliary 13, PL 94.499; Honorius Augustodunensis, Speculum ecclesiae, PL 172.951B; Werner of St. Blaise, Liber Deflorationum, PL 157.966C; Martin of León, Serm. 28, 29, PL 208.1035A, 1036A, 1037A; medieval chroniclers date the first Rogation Day to a range of years: 455, 463, 468, 492, 497, 501, and more.

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and tail stuffed with straw—with them on the march.159 Le Goff thought Rogation dragons arose due to the stature of the cult of St. Marcellus in Paris— for Marcellus supposedly slew a dragon—and viewed such dragon puppets as central examples of the distinction that Le Goff drew between clerical culture and folklore.160 In fact, the puppets probably evolved out of sermons linking Gregory the Great to the Rogation Days, for Gregory; far from depicting stratification, Rogation dragons exemplify how the culture of churchmen and lay people interweaved.161 European folklore often developed out of the Christian year, because the liturgical calendar was a nexus between elite and local cultures. While three-dimensional dragon puppets only arose in twelfth-century France, English Rogation banners sometimes depicted a dragon and a lion by the eleventh century at the latest.162 This iconography refers to a verse in Psalm 91(90) about God’s chosen trampling a lion and a serpent. Medieval exegetes interpreted this verse as a prophecy of Christ’s victory over Satan.163 The twelfth-century scholastic preacher Radulfus Ardens, for example, describes the dragon puppet and proclaims “the church represents Christ’s victory through the march of these days. For the crucified victor proceeds with his cross—the weapons of his triumph—with banners, the signs of his victory, with the defeated dragon.”164 On the last day of the march, the straw was removed from the dragon’s tail, causing it to droop as a sign—perhaps a phallic sign—of its defeat. This association between Rogationtide and dragons may have emerged already in the eighth century, for the reliefs on some British stone crosses—such as the Ruthwell Cross and the Bewcastle Cross—depict Christ

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Id est diabolum super alios exaltatum, hoc maxime ante Christi aduentum tempore, ante legem, et sub lege, cum homines uelut gregem post se trahebat; sed tertio tempore, scilicet gratiae, et tertio die, scilicet resurrectionis Christi, humiliatus est superbus . . . Inde est quae in rogationibus draco duobus primis diebus antecedit crucem plena cauda. In tertio, sequitur eadem euacuata, Peter Lombard, Commentarius in Psalmos 36, PL 191.376D; cf. Jean Beleth, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis 123.d–e; Praepositinus of Cremona, Tractatus de officiis 2.133, Corbett, pp. 198–9; Martin of León, Serm. 29, PL 208.1038C; Sicard of Cremona, Mitralis 7.6.571; Guillelmus Durandus, Rationale 6.102.2, 9; Radulfus Ardens, Homiliae 56, PL 155.1908D. 160 Venantius Fortunatus, Vita Marcelli 10, MGH AA 4.2, p. 54; Le Goff, Time, Work, and Culture, pp. 178–85; Vauchez, The Laity, pp. 134–7; Noble, “Carolingian Religion,” pp. 300–1. 161 Cf. Kienzle, “Cistercian Preaching,” pp. 297–9. 162 Super aspidem et basiliscum ambulabis et; conculcabis leonem et draconem, Psalm 91(90):13; cf. Gen. 3:13; Rom. 16:20; Rev. 12:9; Bailey, Processions of Sarum, pp. 24–5, 115; Frost, Time, Space, and Order, pp. 48–50, 154–60, 168, 251–2. 163 For instance, Bede, In Lucam 1.4.3082; Bazire and Cross 6.63–9; Jean Beleth, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis 123.e. 164 Repraesentat autem hanc Christi uictoriam sancta ecclesia per processiones, quas in his diebus facere consueuit. Procedit quippe in processione tanquam uictor crucifixus in carne cruce, cum armis uidelicet cum quibus triumphauit . . . Procedunt autem uexilla suae victoriae signa. Procedit et draco tanquam uictus ante uictorem, Radulfus Ardens, Homiliae 56, PL 155.1908D; cf. Kienzle, “Cistercian Preaching,” pp. 307–8.

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treading on the head of a lion and dragon.165 As mentioned, these high crosses likely served as Rogation stations, along with other uses.166 According to the legend, Pope Gregory I created the Greater Litany to defend Rome from natural disasters such as flooding, inguinal plague, and a huge river serpent in the Tiber.167 Although the earliest accounts treat the snake as a prodigy, not a peril, later versions expanded its role. For instance, in a passage near his discussion of the dragon puppet, the twelfth-century liturgist Jean Beleth claims that this serpent spread the plague with its poisonous breath.168 Many of the same liturgical commentators who speak of the dragon puppet also related the story of Gregory and the dragon—suggesting that these authors, at least, believed that the puppet alluded to the pope, not Marcellus of Paris.169 As foundation legends, all these stories stress different aspects of the Rogation liturgy. A local preacher who wanted to emphasize his community’s links with the larger world of Roman Christianity might prefer the Gregory legend, while a cleric wishing to exalt the monarchy might point to the paradigmatic conduct of the king of Nineveh. But despite their variations, these foundation legends supply similar models for the local church. All these stories are urban: Mamertus delineated the border between town of citizens and country of beasts; Gregory’s septiform litany moved between churches within Rome; Jonah walked for three days through the massive city of Nineveh. As the last chapter discussed, some churchmen even compared the Rogation Days to polytheistic rites around the city of Rome. With these analogies, preachers implied that the processions were similarly urban, or at least, the closest thing to urban that Northern Europe had during the early Middle Ages: the settlements, mother churches, and scattered sacred buildings of monastery towns and cathedral towns. In all these stories, the entire population of the city—whether Nineveh, Rome, or Vienne—joined together under the authority of a clergyman such as Jonah, Gregory, or Mamertus to fast and pray for divine mercy. Similarly, all the inhabitants of the mother church, across classes, genders, and ages, needed to unite in humble penitential communitas and join the procession led by the clergy. 165 Éamonn Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems of the Dream of the Rood Tradition (London: British Library and University of Toronto Press 2005), pp. 36–7, 41–3, 121–2, 201–6. 166 Neuman de Vegvar, “Converting the Anglo-Saxon Landscape,” pp. 413–24. 167 Multitudo etiam serpentium cum magno dracone in modo trabis ualidae, Gregory of Tours, Historiae 10.1, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 477–8; cf. Gregory I, Ep. Appen. 9; the gospel lection for Rogationtide also mentions a snake (Luke 11:11). 168 Jean Beleth, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis 123.d–e; cf. Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum 3.24, MGH SS rer. Germ. 48, ed. G. Waitz (Hanover: Hahn, 1878), p. 129; Paul the Deacon, Vita Gregorii 10, PL 75.47; John Hymonides, Vita Gregorii 36, PL 75.78. 169 Martin of León, Serm. 29, PL 208.1037–9; Sicard of Cremona, Mitralis 7.6.571; Guillelmus Durandus, Rationale 6.102.2, 9.

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These tales express through narrative the same values and ethos that the march itself performs. No wonder that preachers so often told them as part of the procession. Despite the many differences in these origin stories, they all pressed for the unity of the local Christian plebs under the guidance of their priests.

“ TA KE UP YOUR CROSS ” : THE C OS T O F FOL L OW IN G On the Rogation Days, expiation did not come cheap. Proper observance of the holiday demanded personal sacrifice from the medieval Christian. It insisted that the whole collective repent together and thus required that the sinful membership of that collective be clearly defined. As Eamon Duffy notes about the later Middle Ages, lay people and clergymen alike “believed that the prayers of the parish assembled precisely as a parish . . . were more powerful than the sum of its component parts.”170 In practice, only a fraction of the local population ever bothered to show up. The holiday had a tragic “as if” quality; it heightened the disjuncture between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be.171 Because embarrassed clergymen recognized this problem, they consistently exhorted all Christians to attend. As the next chapter will discuss further, some Europeans—just as Jews and heretics—were outright prohibited from joining in the feast. Many more skipped the procession out of their own disinterest. On the Rogation Days, the whole plebs had to assemble for six hours in the middle of each day: from Tierce to Nones. Since the holiday falls after the spring equinox sometime between April 27 and June 3, these hours lasted longer than 60-minutes; seven to eight modern hours is closer, depending on the exact date and location. Including Rogation Sunday and Ascension Thursday, the feast would have kept a pious Christian from the fields for five straight days, right in the middle of growing season. May was also a time for planting, weeding, milking, pasturing, sheering, foraging, propping, grafting, and cheese-making.172 While a farmer was away worshipping, a sudden drop in temperature, robbing birds, or a hailstorm could easily kill sprouting seeds and vegetable gardens. The Julian calendar was about a week later than the meteorological year during the early Middle Ages, so May was colder than it is

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Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, p. 136. For ritual as a shared subjunctive, see Seligman et al., Ritual and its Consequences, pp. 7–10, 21–31. 172 Wandalbert of Prüm, De mensibus 103–35, MGH Poetae 2, ed. Ernst Dümmler (Hanover: 1884), pp. 608–9; D. Oschinsky, Walter of Henley and Other Treatises on Estate Management and Accounting (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 274, 318, 330–6, 428–30. 171

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today. Later in the Middle Ages, Mamertus of Vienne was one of the “Ice Saints”: saints with their feast between May 11 to May 15, when Rogationtide often occurred.173 Supposedly, this period was the last time when a late frost in Northern Europe could ruin the budding crops. Perhaps to counter such fears, churchmen downplayed Rogationtide’s weather associations. For instance, the Carolingian liturgist Amalarius of Metz interpreted the bread, fish, and egg mentioned in the lection (Luke 11:5–13) as symbolizing agricultural blessings: “in the springtime, these things prosper— the seeds, orchards, vines, young animals. Because these things are necessary for our use, we must invoke God to preserve them.”174 Amalarius found immediate detractors. His great foe, Agobard of Lyon, labelled this exegesis as “worthy of derision” and cited Christ’s words “do not be anxious, asking what shall we eat or what shall we drink” in order to argue that Rogation blessings are spiritual, not physical.175 Later commentators were likewise unpersuaded. Although almost all medieval liturgists from the tenth century onwards borrowed on Amalarius, these writers insisted that Rogationtide prevented a variety of threats—war, plague, wild beasts—not just infertility. Indeed, churchmen contrast the multifaceted Rogation Days with the Roman Greater Litany; in their opinion, only the Roman march was a fertility rite.176 The thirteenth-century liturgist William Durandus, for instance, asserted that Rogationtide is a May feast because military campaigning starts in the spring, and commanded people to ask God to “rescue us from the enemies of Christian worship,” presumably Muslims.177 Theologians normally interpreted the lection’s three gifts (bread, fish, and egg)

173 The thirteenth-century Cistercian Gilles of Orval is the earliest author I know of to seem aware of the Ice Saints tradition, as his references to the Ice Saint Servatius indicate; Gilles of Orval, Gesta episcoporum Leodiensium 1.28, 3.6, MGH SS 25, pp. 24, 85; Vauchez, Laity in the Middle Ages, pp. 129–39. 174 Haec enim memorato tempore in aliquo profectu sunt: germina messis pullulant, arborum fructus ex flore prodeunt, uineae atque olei liquor suis ab arboribus se erumpit, pullorum animantia campos tondent. Quoniam haec necessaria sunt nostris usibus, petenda sunt a Domino ut conseruentur, Amalarius, On the Liturgy 1.37, Knibbs, vol. 1, p. 334; cf. Amalarius, Ep. 13, MGH Epp. 5, E. Dümmler et al. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1899), p. 269; Honorius Augustodunensis, Gemma Animae 3.139, PL 172.681. 175 The quote is from the parallel passages Matt. 6:31–3 and Luke 12:29–31. These sections are near the texts on bread, fish, and egg (Matt. 7:7–11, Luke 11:5–13); quis non uideat quanto risu dignum sit, Agobard of Lyon, Contra libros quatuor Amalarii 2, CCCM 52, ed. L. Van Acker (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981). 176 Nam illa a beato Gregorio papa constituta est ob duas causas . . . ex qualitate temporis colligimus eam necessariam esse ad fruges conseruandas, Liber Quare quaestio 104, additio 25.b–c; cf. Ps-Alcuin, De diuinis officiis 22–3, PL 101.1225A–1225D; Ps-Bede, De Officiis, PL 94.537A–537B. 177 Ergo hoc tempore maxime bella emergere solent . . . ab hostibus christiane religionis nos eripiat et defendat; Guillelmus Durandus, Rationale 6.102.4; cf. nos autem has letanias ideo in hoc tempore facimus, quoniam in hoc tempore bella maxime solent emergere, Jean Beleth, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis 123.d; both authors mention spring agriculture as well.

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to represent a variety of non-physical items: the three theological virtues, the three days in the tomb, the three ages of salvation history, the three orders of the church, the three continents, the three-year tribulation, and so forth.178 To convince all to attend, clergymen stressed the wide-ranging benefits of the feast; otherwise, Christian farmers might prefer the tangibility of extra work days to the intangibility of a crop blessing. No wonder landowners were loath to let their slaves and serfs off work. Not all did; an eleventh-century English churchman, for instance, complains of an Anglo-Saxon lord sending his serfs and freemen on errands during the fast.179 The unreformed cathedral canons of eleventh-century Arezzo used to send serfs and hired vicars to the Rogation procession, rather than attending themselves.180 Even these substitutes only went to collect fees due to the canons which were traditionally paid at the holiday, rather than to march. To a later hagiographer, such behavior encapsulated the bad old days before the papal reform. Hagiographies record saints cursing lay people who neglected to rest during the three days. For example, a ninth-century hagiography of Remaclus of Stavelot tells how a peasant living in a village two leagues (c. eight kilometers) from the monastery cut wood in the forest instead of attending the Rogation Monday procession at the abbey; his walking stick permanently glued to his hand as punishment, until the prayers of the monks cured him the following Sunday.181 A similar curse afflicted a peasant woman in Carolingian Eichstatt who performed household chores during the feast.182 Far from reassuring farmers about the fertility of their fields, the Rogation Days apparently scared them. Divine forgiveness was not always as valuable as another half week of hard work. At Rogationtide, the marching people symbolized the whole community. But the holiday also must have reminded everyone there that many people were absent. In a small society of a local medieval plebs, an ordinary congregant could simply have looked around and noticed faces missing from the crowd. This dual power of the Rogation Days—to embody all, yet visibly to 178

Cf. Honorius Augustodunensis, Gemma Animae 4.31, PL 172.700; Peter Lombard, Commentarius in Psalmos 36, PL 191.376; Sicard of Cremona, Mitralis 7.6.572, CCCM 228; Werner of St. Blaise, Liber Deflorationum, PL 157.964A, 967A; Vauchez, The Laity in the Middle Ages, pp. 136–8. 179 His þeowum oððe freomenn þæt he hafað ymbehydig ærende, Bazire and Cross 5.161–2. 180 Mittebat unusquisque illorum seruum uel mercennarium aut ipse per se ad eam requirendam, Historia custodum Aretinorum, MGH SS 30, p. 1473. 181 Dum esset diuinae seruituti mancipandus contra ius et fas et sibi uetitum soliuagus siluam petiit ac ligna ad usus domus, Miracula Remacli Stabulensis 2.15, MGH SS 15.2, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger (Hanover: 1888), p. 442; Miracula Remacli Stabulensis 2.4.15, AASS Sept 1, p. 716; Ellen F. Arnold, Negotiating the Landscape: Environment and Monastic Identity in the Medieval Ardennes (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), pp. 140–1, 145–50, 193, 258. 182 Wolfhard of Eichstatt, Vita Walburgis 3.2.6, AASS Feb 3, p. 536.

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omit some—troubled the medieval clergy. Indeed, early medieval hagiographers often portray saints miraculously incorporating people into the procession, who would otherwise have remained outside.183 According to his seventhcentury hagiographer, for instance, St. Gaugericus of Cambrai freed prisoners from their dungeon so they could join the march; Gaugericus first attempted to convince the local tribune to let out the convicts, then resorted to a miracle when the tribune proved obdurate.184 In one poignant tale, Venantius Fortunatus portrays a blind woman whose disability prevented her from joining the Rogationtide procession and who wept whenever she heard singing crowds pass her by.185 Germanus of Paris miraculously healed the blind woman on the vigil of the last day of the feast, so that she at least could walk in the procession on Wednesday. In an eleventh-century tale about the Bohemian saint Procopius of Sazava, a worshiper is prevented from attending the Rogation Days by a deep river; after the layman prays, though, Procopius miraculously moves a boat from the opposite back across the river to ferry the man across.186 Such sources reveal that many people never came to the procession at the local baptismal church, for many reasons—from disinterest, to illness, to travel difficulties, to a pressing work-schedule. They also demonstrate how ideologically powerful this vision of a unified commonwealth was. Integrating those who had previously been excluded was a saintly action, because it kept congregations commensurate with localities. While early medieval Rogation processions never beat the boundaries of the geographical community, they demarcated the bounds of the personal community, involving all members of a plebs in a single ritual of solidarity.

A MO DEL CHURCH Early medieval Christianization was inseparable from the development of the institutions of pastoral care that made Christianness possible. For a Europe between the polis and the parish, the procession was the fundamental local 183 For example, Miracula Sancti Pirminii Hornbacensia 6, MGH SS 15.1, p. 32; Frulandus of Murbach, Passio Leudegarii Tertia 2.34; Olbert of Gembloux, Miracula Sancti Veroni Lembecensis 4, MGH SS 15.2, p. 751; Adso of Montier-en-Der, Vita Bercharii 4.23, 5.35, AASS Oct 1, pp. 1026, 1030; Ermentarius, Vita Filiberti 4.82, AASS Aug 4, p. 91; Adalbert of Bamberg, Vita Heinrici 2.7, MGH SS 4, ed. G. Waitz (Hanover: Hahn, 1841), p. 813. 184 Vita Gaugerici 8, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH SRM 3 (Hanover: Hahn, 1896), p. 654; Gaugericus’ hagiographer imitates a story in Gregory of Tours about the miraculous release of convicts during Germanus of Paris’ funeral procession (d. May 28, 578—the Thursday before Pentecost and thus the first Rogation Day according to some reckonings); Gregory of Tours, Historiae 5.8, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 204. 185 Venantius Fortunatus, Vita Germani ep. Parisiaci 33, MGH SRM 7, p. 392. 186 Vita Procopii 2, AASS Jul 2, pp. 141–2.

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institution. On the Rogation Days, the early medieval church with its preparishional structure was on display. Laity from all around assembled together with their college of clergy to march through a large area. They stopped at the chief holy places of the plebs and returned again to the central baptismal church. By enacting the ritual, Christians learned the sacred spaces of their community and which people depended upon them. In this rite, congregations embodied a model Christian world where nonparticipants like Jews, pagans, or the apathetic did not exist; where locality equaled church congregation; where all social tensions erased in an effervescence of unity and solidarity; and where the local people joined with the whole Christian commonwealth in an age-old apostolic feast.187 On the Rogation Days, both liturgy and preaching expressed an ideal of Christianness and in expressing that ideal, strove to mold social realities to it. The holiday that confirmed participants as Christians also manifested and even created the pastoral institution which recognized them as such. The formation of churches was the formation of Christians.

187

For effervescence, Durkheim, The Elementary Forms, pp. 209–18.

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4 Disrupting Rites and Profaning the Sacred In 1947, the Italian humorist Giovannino Guareschi published “la processione,” one of the earliest tales of the 346 short stories that Guareschi wrote over his life about a fictional priest Don Camillo and his friendly rival Peppone, the communist mayor of a small Emilian village. In “la processione,” Don Camillo arranges the parish’s annual march from church to the Po River, in order to pray for good weather and rural prosperity.1 Technically, the march is not a Rogationtide, but it is rogational. Indeed, the narrator mentions three days of preparation and compares the rite to a medieval plague procession, perhaps alluding to Gregory I and the Roman Greater Litany. Before the march, Peppone and his comrades demand that they be permitted to walk as a group, carrying a communist flag and political banners. After all, they insist, members of the lay association Catholic Action always bear their flags, and communists are Christians too. Don Camillo refuses. The communists must follow as flagless penitents or not at all. Peppone then swears that the communists will assault anyone who joins the procession. Don Camillo marches alone to protect the villagers, and the communists try to block his path. To march onwards, the priest nearly bludgeons Peppone with the enormous processional crucifix. After blessing the Po, Don Camillo turns to walk back and realizes that the entire village was marching behind him—even Peppone, his communists, and the local village atheist. Guareschi’s story occurs in post-war Italy, but replace “communist” with “heretic” and a medieval hagiographer could have recorded the tale. “La processione” and medieval narratives of Rogation disruption share many components: rival leaders, liturgical disputes, threats of violence from both sides, anxieties about penitential unity versus social group distinctions, a blurring of congregational identity and village identity, even an implicit debate about who qualifies as “Christian.” Do Marxists and atheists? Guareschi’s short story ends happily with the reintegration of the entire village under

For “la processione,” Giovannino Guareschi, Mondo Piccolo: Don Camillo (Milan: Rizzoli, 1948), pp. 144–50. 1

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the authority of their priest. In contrast, medieval narratives of Rogationtide often end with bloodshed and communal breakdown. Rogationtide was a major feast during the early Middle Ages. Yet medieval narrative sources say little about it. In order to date other events, medieval chroniclers, annalists, and hagiographers often allude to the feast as a fixed point in the year. But these same writers rarely offer a detailed account for any individual Rogation holiday celebrated by a specific congregation in a named location. By far, the sources for Rogationtide are liturgies, homilies, treatises, and legislation—not narratives. Ironically, the holiday’s success triggered this absence. By the Carolingian period, the Rogation Days were a regular part of life: no more worthy of comment than the brooches, or pottery, or millstones on which archaeologists have written tomes, but medieval authors barely a word. Medieval people already knew what occurred at the feast and had no interest to read about the commonplace. A hagiographer might note that an exciting miracle occurred at the feast, but the holiday itself was just a setting— a stage for the real actor: God, who worked wonders through his saints. On a few occasions, however, a rich narrative for a specific Rogation feast survives from the early Middle Ages. But only because the story was anything but pleasant. For writers like Gregory of Tours, Boniface, or Arnulf of Milan, the ritual was worth telling when it was bad ritual—when the community celebrating broke into rival factions and the events of the holiday twisted away from the norm. The ritual could fail. Ritual failure—that is, when a ritual is prevented from achieving its end—is a key concept in contemporary scholarship.2 This was not always so. Early twentieth-century anthropologists—Émile Durkheim, for instance—stressed the power of ritual to depict and reinforce pre-existing social order; they usually presumed that rites succeed.3 In practice, however, disruptions are frequent, though not all imperfect ceremonies are outright failures. The theorist Ronald Grimes has taxonomized of over a dozen kinds of ritual failure.4 Procedural deviations may vitiate a ceremony; insincere participants might intentionally distort it; a rival ceremony might sabotage its results; the rite may be mistimed, misframed, or simply misconstrued. Grimes rightly notes that both the Bible and medieval texts abound with tales of ritual failure. 2 Both meanings of “end”—processual completion and empirical result—are in view. For ritual failure, see Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 143–6, 153–69; Kathryn T. McClymond, Ritual Gone Wrong: What We Learn from Ritual Disruption (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 36–43, 62–4, 175–82; for “outcome oriented” vs. “procedure oriented” conceptions of ritual failure, see Edward L. Schieffelin, “Introduction,” in When Rituals Go Wrong: Mistakes, Failure, and the Dynamics of Ritual, ed. Ute Hüsken (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 1–20. 3 Cf. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms, pp. 206–7, 225–6. 4 Grimes’ taxonomy adapts ideas about the “infelicities” of speech from Speech-Act theory; Ronald L. Grimes, Ritual Criticism: Case Studies in its Practice, Essays on its Theory (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1990), pp. 191–209.

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Christian ceremonies could fail because logically prior theological standards existed—independent of the rites themselves—for evaluating validity. For Christian authors, human sinfulness, more than procedural error, was the greatest threat to rituals.5 In the Hebrew Bible, for example, King Saul twice made offerings that were rejected by God (1 Sam. 13:7–14, 15:9–31), for he disobeyed the sacrificial rules of the Mosaic law and usurped to himself the office of a priest. Likewise, medieval theologians debated whether baptisms were still valid if, for instance, the baptizand had faked his confession of faith or had only submitted to the sacrament out of fear.6 This chapter lacks the scope to consider medieval theologies of ritual failure at length. Instead, I will only examine narratives of ritual failure at the Rogation Days. Rogationtide, after all, was a dynamic, polyvalent rite; it could have different meanings for different people. Leaders attempted to guide each local congregation’s understanding of the feast and, as much as possible, to shape its impact. Preachers sought to inculcate a particular vision of Christian community. Every Rogationtide was a time of danger as well as power to the church authorities and the local people as a whole. Like any prescribed formal enactment, Rogationtide could break off midway or diverge too much from accepted procedure and decorum for leaders to view the rite as valid. Factions could challenge the communal order by supplying a rival interpretation of Rogation Days as a new model for the Christian body. As two scholars studying eleventh-century processions have concluded, by leaving the “monastically-controlled environment,” Christian marches opened up “alternative possibilities for action. . . . The liminal [is] a zone of multiple possibilities and likely contestation . . . in which structural authority and popular desires vie for power.”7 Occasionally, Rogationtide factionalism grew so fierce that violence ensued, and only then did medieval writers bother to recount the happenings of a specific procession at length. On the Rogation Days, different forms of power—otherworldly sanctity, popular pressure, ecclesiastical office, traditional landed wealth, and the blunt instrument of armed force—struggled to shape the local order. The Rogation Days demonstrated their ability to separate Christian from non-Christian most clearly when the holiday broke down into communal strife. Christianization was a series of debates among the medieval elite about which kinds of ritual performance successfully made someone Christian and which did not. Conflicts between popular holy men and church hierarchs about the Rogation Days were the growing pains of the Christian commonwealth.

5

For ritual failure in Patristic theology, see Buc, The Dangers of Ritual, pp. 6–11, 144–7. For these disputes, cf. Marcia L. Colish, Faith, Fiction and Force in Medieval Baptismal Debates (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014). 7 Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn, “Sainte Foy on the Loose, or, the Possibilities of Procession,” in Moving Subjects, pp. 53–4, 62–4. 6

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JUDAIZERS AND CHRISTIANIZERS Groups at the margins of the Christian commonwealth could never fully participate in the Rogation procession. Because the Rogation Days were supposedly a gathering for all Christians, the exclusion of pagans, Jews, and heretics was part of the format and ethos of the feast. Medieval sources often illustrate how the Rogation feast could demarcate Christian orthodoxy from its rivals. Christian authors like Gregory of Tours sometimes glance at the experiences of marginal groups during the Rogation Days and describe their exclusion. Indeed, these writers reveal how omission from the procession aided in forming categories like Jew and heretic. Contemporary pagans appear rarely in Rogation sources. Gregory of Tours, for instance, never mentions pagans in his Rogation Day narratives. A few later Carolingian and Anglo-Saxon preachers do, but they depict pagans as a distant enemy—not an insidious pollution within the local community itself. 8 Consider, for instance, the Sermon sur Jonas—the only homily extant in Old French before 1100—which was preached on a Rogation Monday to a mixed audience in the vicinity of Saint-Amand Abbey sometime in the early tenth century.9 In this text, the preacher mentions some pagan Viking had already harmed his congregation and asks for God’s protection against pagan and Christian evil-doers alike. Churchmen exhorted their congregations to prayer, neighborliness, almsgiving, and repentance in order to avert various divine chastisements, of which pagan invasion was only one. The widespread breakdown of the Viking Age induced homilists to employ the Rogation ceremony as an opportunity both to explain away pagan victories as an expression of God’s providence rather than Christian incompetence—no more preventable than bad weather or a plague—and to rally Christians to support one another. In comparison to pagans, Jews held great prominence at the Rogation Days. According to Gregory of Tours, St. Boniface, and other writers, Jewish ceremony was a rival to the Rogation procession. Conflicts around Rogationtide

8 For instance: pro pace uniuersalis ecclesiae, pro ubertate frugum, pro expulsione paganorum, Heiric of Auxerre, Homilarius super euangelium 2.12.193–205; infestationem paganorum . . . securitatem hostium, et repellat insidias omnium inimicorum, Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 19, PL 110.38D–39B; nu syndon þa godes cyrican bereafode & þa wiofeda toworpene þurh hæðenra manna gehresp & gestrodu, Vercelli Homilies 11.90–2, EETS o.s. 300; cf. Bazire and Cross 3.15–21. 9 The Sermon sur Jonas is a set of homiletic notes which place Old French exegesis drawn from Jerome’s commentary on Jonah between the lines of the Vulgate text: ne aiet niuls male uoluntatem contra sem peer ne habeat . . . prieiestli qe de cest pagano nos liberat chi tanta mala nos habuit fait . . . ut protegat nos de paganis e de mals christianis, Sermon sur Jonas 185–91, 201–4, 208–14; David Ganz, “The Old French Sermon on Jonah: The Nature of the Text,” in Sermo Doctorum: Compilers, Preachers, and the Audiences in the Early Medieval West, edited by Maximilian Diesenberger, et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 427–39; Jeanette M. A. Beer, Early Prose in France: Contexts of Bilingualism and Authority (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), pp. 37–64.

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and other rituals of Christianization expressed the horror that churchmen felt towards “Judaizing”: the performance of Jewish rites by Christians. Later sources help frame how early medieval authors treat the problem of Jews and Rogationtide. Multiple scholars have discussed how—from Late Antiquity to the early modern period—hostility between Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and pagans often intensified during processions.10 Because Rogationtide and other processional holidays occurred in open air and along streets, rather than in church, they were unstable and could descend into ritualized violence.11 Walter Map, for instance, claims that c. 1160 a Parisian Jew used the Rogation march as a chance to capture a clerical enemy out in the open and throw this foe into a privy.12 On a Rogation Day in 1268, likewise, the townspeople of Oxford allegedly diverged from their normal path and traveled through the Jewish quarter; an offended Jew supposedly grabbed the cross at the front of the march and trod on it.13 As punishment, King Henry III forced the Oxford Jews to buy two replacements: a portable silver cross for the marchers and a gilt marble crucifix built on the site of the desecration presumably to serve as a procession station. Rogation violence also arose in the early Middle Ages. Gregory of Tours, for example, describes a worldly sixth-century bishop of Clermont bringing a saddled horse on the march so he could flee quickly in case his Christian enemies attacked.14 They did, so the bishop abandoned his congregation and rode off in the middle of the liturgy—to Gregory’s annoyance. These tales may be fictional, but they reflect a shared mindset concerning the dangers of the Rogation Days. Because processions were public rituals demarcating the difference between sects, they were flashpoints that could escalate into insults, destruction of property, or riot. Medieval Christians recognized the structural parallels that Rogationtide and other church processions shared with Jewish, Muslim, and Roman pagan rites. Preachers presumed these similarities whenever they sought to discover a precedent for the Rogation Days in earlier holidays like the fast of Nineveh or

10 For instance, Elliott Horowitz, Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 149–78; David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 180–1, 212, 248–9; Kaplan, Divided by Faith, pp. 64–8, 73–5, 78–85, 91–8, 167–9, 266–70; Ashley and Sheingorn, “Sainte Foy on the Loose,” pp. 53–4, 62–4. 11 Early medieval processions—other than Rogation marches—could also breakdown into violence. For instance, Hincmar of Rheims, Annals of St. Bertin 864, MGH SRG 5, ed. Georg Waitz (Hanover: 1883), pp. 70–2; John VIII, Ep. 73–4, MGH Epp. 7, pp. 68, 70. 12 Walter Map, De nugis curialium: Courtiers’ Trifles 5.5, ed. M. R. James, rev. C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 452–4. 13 Horowitz, Reckless Rites, pp. 169–72; Christoph Cluse, “Stories of Breaking and Taking the Cross: A Possible Context for the Oxford Incident of 1268,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 90, nos. 3–4 (1995): pp. 396–441. 14 Gregory of Tours, Historiae 4.13, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 144.

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Roman ambarvalic sacrifice. A ninth-century sermon exemplum from southern Germany, for instance, claims that drought, local violence, and other disasters ravaged the inhabitants of Jerusalem at the time of Patriarch George (797–807). In response, first Jews, next Muslims, and finally Christians processed: all during Eastertide. The first two only increased the bad weather. But the three-day fast and procession of the Christians succeeded in ending the catastrophes.15 As preserved, the exemplum is a fantasy, but it descends from reports in the Carolingian Empire about real events in Jerusalem c. 797. The anonymous Frankish author assimilated his account of the Jerusalem ceremony to Rogation norms and an early manuscript associates it with the Roman Greater Litany. By the eleventh century, preachers employed the fable as an exemplum for the Rogation Days.16 The twelfth-century Parisian scholastic Peter Cantor recounts a similar story that supposedly happened in Rheims c. 1130, while Peter was a student there. According to Peter, a drought inspired the Jews and Christians of Rheims to hold separate weather processions: the Jews carrying the Torah and the Christians relics.17 Both factions promised to convert if the other brought good weather.18 First, Alberic (1118–36), the famed schoolmaster of Rheims and likely Peter Cantor’s teacher, led Christians “of all genders, ranks, and statuses” on a three-day progress through the city and countryside. When the Christian rite failed to yield rain, Alberic feared mass apostasy. As a safeguard, Alberic condemned the Jewish rite as demonic magic and physically prevented the Jews and their rabbi (archisynagogus) from ever marching. Although Peter Cantor may have walked in this procession, he likely dramatized the narrative. The story mirrors Elijah’s contest with the priests of Baal at Mount Carmel—the topic of James 5:16–20, the epistle lection for Rogationtide. Regardless, just as in the Jerusalem exemplum, Peter envisioned the two processions as an ordeal proving the efficacy of Christian or Jewish ritual. But the citizens of Jerusalem or Rheims, whether Christians, Muslims, or Jews, probably viewed these rites as different techniques for ensuring

15 Amnon Linder, “De plaga que facta est in Hierusalem eo quod Dominicum diem non custodiebant: History into Fable?,” in Laudem Hierosolymitani: Studies in Crusades and Medieval Culture in Honour of Benjamin Z. Kedar, edited by Iris Shagrir, Ronnie Ellenblum, and Jonathan Riley-Smith (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 3–30. 16 For instance, Opatovice Homiliary 133, in Ferdinand Hecht, Das Homiliar des Bischofs von Prag (Prague: H. Mercy, 1863), p. 80; while Hecht published the text from a mid-twelfth-century manuscript, the Opatovice Homiliary comes from eleventh-century Bohemia and contains many Carolingian sermons. 17 Fecerunt per triduum fideles cuiuscumque sexus uel officii uel meriti aruambalia et amburbalia, Peter Cantor, Verbum Adbreuiatum, Textus Conflatus, 1.76.287–90, 372–85. 18 For similar miracle contests, Joseph Shatzmiller, “Jews, Pilgrimage, and the Christian Cult of Saints,” in After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History: Essays presented to Walter Goffart, edited by Alexander Callander Murray (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), pp. 337–47.

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communal survival. Praying for rain each in his own way was an act of neighborliness. Local identity outweighed sectarian identity at that moment of crisis. In contrast, in the minds of churchmen like Peter Cantor—and Gregory of Tours, as I shall show—Judaizing was a terrifying possibility. “Judaizing” (iudaizare)—that is, continuing adherence to commandments of the Mosaic law that the New Covenant had fulfilled—was already a Christian anxiety at the time of Paul’s letter to the Galatians.19 Judaizing was an improper practice yoked to false belief, false theology, and even false grand narratives of history. In the words of one sixth-century monk, “Jewishness has been changed into Christianity and the figurative things of the law of Moses have ceased. Henceforth, no Christian people may Judaize, for the Apostle Paul contradicted it” in Galatians.20 Judaizing was anachronism; it was bad history, the opposite of the ritual supersession and typological exegesis discussed in Chapter 2.21 When Christians observed Mosaic ceremonies, they denied that the Old Covenant was obsolete and that Christian liturgy had succeeded Jewish and pagan. Throughout the Middle Ages, the hazard of Judaizing shadowed the rituals of Christianizing. In fact, as an earlier chapter described, Tertullian coined the term “Christianize” (christianizare) on the model of “Judaize.”22 The most conspicuous use of christianizare in the early Middle Ages appears in a ninthcentury Latin translation of a canon from the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, which warns “that some Hebrews mock Christ and pretend to Christianize while secretly keeping the Sabbath and other Jewish customs.”23 The Nicaea divines excommunicated such Christians and banned them from attending church, partaking of the Eucharist, owning slaves, or having their children baptized. The later medieval author Ralph Niger disparaged the Emperor Heraclius for misinterpreting the will of God and, in 632, “compelling unwilling Jews to Christianize” in both Byzantium and Francia; Heraclius created

19

Gal. 2:14. This section describes Novatian priest Sabbatius and his followers. Sabbatius was a Jewish convert who putatively celebrated Easter according to Jewish customs: iudaismo in christianitatem mutato illa subtilia et figuratiua legis Moysaicae quieuerunt. Quod hinc apparet. Iudaizare namque nulla gens christiana percepit . . . apostolus etiam contradixit, Cassiodorus-Epiphanius, Historia Tripartita 9.38.1–2; cf. Historia Ecclesiastica Tripartita 9.37–8, 10.24.4, 11.5, 11.10.3, 12.2.9; McKitterick, History and Memory, pp. 46–7, 206–7, 233–40; Geelhaar, Christianitas, pp. 39, 451–3. 21 On figural exegesis and the creation of the concept of anachronism, cf. Schiffman, The Birth of the Past, pp. 9–11, 80–1, 112–18. 22 Tertullian, Aduersus Marcionem 1.20–1, 5.2–3; F. J. E. Boddens Hosang, Establishing Boundaries: Christian–Jewish Relations in Early Council Texts and the Writings of Church Fathers (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 45–6, 93–4, 114–17, 120–1, 158. 23 Quod Hebraeos . . . simulantes christianizare, ipsum autem negant, clam et latenter sabbatizantes, et alia Iudaeorum more facientes: definimus hos neque in communionem, neque in orationem, neque in ecclesiam suscipi; . . . neque pueros eorum baptizari, Anastasius Bibliothecarius, Council of Nicaea II (787), 8, Alberigo, p. 145. 20

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a host of Christians who were Jews in secret and compounded the problem of Judaizers.24 More than just Eastern clerics feared the ghoul of Judaizers. Gregory of Tours, for instance, scorned certain Gallic conversi, who yielded to royal pressure to accept baptism in 582; Gregory asserted that these new Christians kept both the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian Sunday.25 Gregory’s nemesis King Chilperic I (561–84) served as godfather to the conversi and supposedly encouraged loose sectarian borders at his court. Chilperic induced Christian priests to bless even those Jews who refused baptism—to the disgust of both Bishop Gregory and some of the Jews.26 Rigorists on both sides sensed that the Jewish–Christian boundary at Chilperic’s court was too porous. Seventh-century Visigothic kings like Ervig (680–7) and Egica (687–702) promulgated laws tackling the same conundrum.27 The monarchs grumble that some converts—and even some born Christians—circumcised infants, observed food purity regulations, and refused to work on Saturday.28 Since Christian status came with legal benefits like slave-owning and office-holding, the temptation to feign conversion was strong. Laws required that new Christians prove the authenticity of their faith to the local bishop through a series of ceremonies. They had to recite the Nicene Creed and Lord’s Prayer, swear an oath and confession, renounce Jewish rites (abrenuncio, the same verb used to renounce the devil and his processions at baptism), and perform before witnesses a number of measurable Christian acts—such as eating pork and attending key feast days. These Visigothic laws treat mandatory rituals as markers of Christian status. According to such legislation, if a convert had not memorized the creed, for instance, he was not a Christian at all. Since an adult convert already 24 In Hispania Iudaei inuiti christianantur sub rege Dagoberto. Heraclius uidit in astris regnum suum a circumcisis uastandum et mandauit Dagoberto regi ut Iudaeos in Francia christianari compelleret . . . quo dolore Heraclius amens factus incidit in lectum doloris et mortuus est, Ralph Niger, Chronica, Anstruther, p. 142; Ralph adapts, perhaps indirectly, from Fredegar, who has ad fidem catolecam baptizandum in the place of christianari; Fredegar, Chronica 4.65, MGH SRM 2, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hanover: Hahn, 1888), p. 153. 25 Ad ipsam quam prius perfidiam habuerant, deo mentiti, regressi sunt, ita ut et sabbatum obseruare et diem dominicum honorare uidiantur, Gregory of Tours, Historiae 6.17, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 286. 26 Gregory describes how the king pressured him to lay his hands on the head of the Jew Priscus. The exact nature of this liturgical act is unclear (e.g. a benediction, an exorcism, the reconciliation of a penitent). Gregory and Priscus both refused; Gregory of Tours, Historiae 6.5, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 268–9; Bernard S. Bachrach, Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977), pp. 56–62, 161–2; in Late Antiquity, Christians sometimes sought Jewish blessings, cf. Boddens Hosang, Establishing Boundaries, pp. 45–50. 27 Collins, Visigothic Spain, pp. 76–7, 103–4, 165, 236–7; Bachrach, Early Medieval Jewish Policy, pp. 3–26; Dumézil, Les racines chrétiennes, pp. 292–302. 28 For instance, Lex Visigothorum 12.2.16–12.2.18, 12.3.13–15, MGH Leges nationum Germanicarum 1.1, ed. Karl Zeumer (Hanover: Hahn, 1902), pp. 424–7, 441–6.

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would have undergone the traditiones—the ceremonial exposition of the creed and Pater Noster—rulers assumed that converts had memorized the two texts.29 The lengthy confession and oath, moreover, included not only the full text of the Nicene Creed, but also a discussion of salvation history. For many medieval thinkers, “a key dimension of . . . Christianization” was asking “people to join them in a story, to share in something communis, common.”30 This rite of proving Christianness served as a form of instruction in itself, a catechumenate in miniature. By performing this rite, a new Christian, who might not understand basic doctrine yet, received teaching on the creed, on the history of the salvation, and on proper Christian worship. Criticisms of Judaizing reappeared across the early Middle Ages. Such criticisms focused on ritual, more than on belief; separating ritual and belief, though, is impossible, because medieval rituals are inextricably bound up with implicit theologies. For instance, the ninth-century Penitential of Ps-Theodore prevented Christians from celebrating Easter on Passover, praying with Jews, joining Jewish Sunday fasts, eating matzo, and saying mass at a Jewish funeral.31 The people under suspicion could hardly have acted this way, unless they believed, for instance, that Mosaic procedure for calculating pascha still obligated. Likewise, Boniface complained of a bishop who clung to Levitical marriage law, Bede of those who observe inappropriate Easter dates, Gregory the Great of Roman preachers who kept a Saturday Sabbath and of Sicilian Christians who prayed at a Jewish altar, Ælfric of priests citing the Torah to justify clerical marriage and polygamy.32 These foes are “pseudo-Christians” and “preachers of the anti-Christ” who “impose Jewishness on Christians” and “revive the outward ceremony of the law.”33 To quote Ælfric, “if anyone wishes to live 29 For the traditiones in Spain, James Monti, The Week of Salvation: History of Traditions of Holy Week (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1993), pp. 306–7, 360; T. C. Akeley, Christian Initiation in Spain c. 300–1100 (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1967), pp. 155–60. 30 This strategy appears in the writings of influential churchmen like Augustine, Pirmin, and Boniface; Noble, “Carolingian Religion,” pp. 290–2. 31 Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori, 24.4–5, 32.14, 36.1, 51.1, CCSL 156B, ed. C. van Rhijn (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009); Meens, Penance in Medieval Europe, pp. 136, 162, 178. 32 For Judaizers, see, for instance, Gregory I, Ep. 3.37; Columbanus, Ep. 1.3–4, Sancti Columbani Opera, SLH 2, ed. G. S. M. Walker (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1957), p. 6; Boniface, Ep. 60, 62, 77, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, pp. 123, 127, 160; Sven Meeder, “Boniface and the Irish Heresy of Clemens,” Church History 80, no. 2 (2011): pp. 251–80; Alcuin, Ep. 144, MGH Epp. 4, p. 230; Ælfric, Preface to Genesis 6–37, in The Old English Version of the Old English Heptateuch, Aelfric’s Treatise on the Old and New Testament and his Preface to Genesis, EETS o.s. 160, ed. S. J. Crawford (London: Oxford University Pres, 1922), pp. 76–7. 33 Quid aliud nisi antichristi praedicatores dixerim . . . quia iudaizare populum compellit, ut exteriorem ritum legis reuocet, Gregory I, Ep. 13.1; legis Mosaicae iuxta litteram seruaret iudaizante, Bede, Ecclesiastical History 3.4.4, 3.17.4, 3.25.6, SChr 490, pp. 34, 98, 152; sed magis pseudochristianos appellare . . . antichristi ministros, Boniface, Ep. 57, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 104; iudaismum inducens . . . inferens etiam christianis iudaismum, Boniface, Ep. 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, pp. 112, 118.

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now after the coming of Christ as people lived under the law of Moses, he is not a Christian and no Christian should even eat with him, for the old law was a sign of future things.”34 Sectarian identities are socially constructed and subjectively perceived.35 At times, these plaints may have aimed at what modern scholars would understand as crypto-Jews. But, in general, medieval people spotted Jews where modern historians would see Christians. Judaizers hardly sound impious; after all, laws had to prevent them from baptizing their children, celebrating mass, and taking communion. Some were clerics. Boniface’s bishop taught the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus; Pope Gregory’s Sabbatarians were uncircumcised.36 As John Van Engen has rightly noted, during the early Middle Ages, “Jews mostly served as an exegetical archetype for a people who refused to take on the name of christening or to participate in its rites and culture.”37 Judaizing was first and foremost failure to properly perform the universal rituals of the Christian commonwealth: rituals like Rogationtide.

GREGORY OF TO URS— ON THE MA RGINS OF THE COMMONWEALTH In sixth-century Gaul, clerical fear of Judaizers instigated a notable example of Rogationtide violence. No early medieval author obsessed about the origins, format, and purpose of processions more than Gregory of Tours. Gregory’s writings overflow with processions: apotropaics against plagues and prodigies, aduentus marches into cities, Lenten processions, the Roman Greater Litany, and the Rogation Days.38 Indeed, processions are such a major theme that Gregory ends his history by briefly portraying a Rogationtide that he himself led as bishop of Tours in the spring of 591, in fear that the apocalypse approached.39 Since Gregory is both the best extant source for Merovingian Francia and a complex thinker on processions, several passages warrant scrutiny. 34

Gyf hwa wyle nu swa lybban æfter Cristes tocyme, swa swa men leofodon ær Moises æ oþþe under Moises æ, ne byð se man na cristen ne he furþon wyrðe ne byð þæt him ænig cristen man mid ete . . . seo ealde æ wæs getacnung toweardra þinga, Ælfric, Preface to Genesis 6–37, Crawford, pp. 76–7. 35 Cf. Jonathan M. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 19–26. 36 Boniface, Ep. 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, pp. 112, 118; Gregory I, Ep. 13.1. 37 Van Engen, “Christening, the Kingdom,” pp. 115–16. 38 Cf. Gregory of Tours, Historiae 4.5, 9.21, 10.1, 10.30, Vita Patrum 6.6, In Gloria Confessorum 78, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 138, 441, 477, 525, 1.2, pp. 234, 345; Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours, pp. 33, 77–81, 79–86; Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History, pp. 163–4, 187–90; Buc, The Dangers of Rituals, pp. 116–18. 39 Gregory of Tours, Historiae 10.30, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 525.

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One of Gregory’s most detailed stories of the Rogation Days concentrates on the boundary between Jew and Christian. According to Gregory of Tours, when Bishop Gallus of Clermont died on Rogation Sunday, May 14, 551, other local bishops led the men and women of the town in a grand mourning procession on Rogation Wednesday “to carry his body from the cathedral to St. Lawrence’s church for burial.”40 Gallus’ nephew Gregory of Tours lived in Clermont at this time, so the historian presumably walked in this procession. Supposedly, Gallus was so beloved that “even the Jews, holding lamps, followed the procession weeping.”41 This march is one of several occasions in Gregory’s writings in which the historian mentions Jews partaking in the Christian cult of saints.42 The Clermont Jews were not equal participants; they walked behind, clustered together and visually separate. During the march, the Jews would have entered multiple churches. Throughout Late Antiquity, non-Christians were allowed to attend the first half of the mass—the Liturgy of the Word—in order to hear the day’s lections and sermon; catechumens and the unbaptized in general had to leave church before the Liturgy of the Eucharist.43 Like catechumens, the Jews at Clermont probably entered St. Lawrence’s church for the closing mass and were dismissed midway. Jewish presence at the Liturgy of the Word, moreover, explains why both Gregory of Tours and Venantius Fortunatus speak of the Clermont Jews listening to sermons, as discussed below.44 On the occasion of Gallus’ death, Rogationtide so fully incorporated the town that even Jews played a liturgical role. Gregory deliberately sets up his narrative so that the unitary sentiments at Gallus’ death augured their shocking sequel a generation later. While marching together at the funeral, the Christians and Jews alike lamented “woe is us, we will never merit such a bishop again.”45 They were right. Gallus’ immediate successor Cautinus had good relations with the wealthy Jewish merchants in Clermont. But, Gallus’ successor-plus-one, Avitus of Clermont, stirred up bad 40 Cum magna frequentia populi. Episcopis autem quarta die aduenientibus, eum de eclesia leuauerunt, et portantes in sancti Laurenti basilicam, sepeliunt, Gregory of Tours, Vita Patrum 6.7, MGH SRM 1.2, pp. 234–5; Ian N. Wood, “The Ecclesiastical Politics of Merovingian Clermont,” in Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies Presented to J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, edited by Patrick Wormald et al. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), pp. 34–57. 41 Ipsi quoque iudaei, accensis lampadibus, plangendo prosequebantur, Gregory of Tours, Vita Patrum 6.7, MGH SRM 1.2, p. 235. 42 For other examples, Gregory of Tours, Historiae 6.17, In Gloria Martyrum 9, 99, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 286, 1.2, pp. 44, 104. 43 For the catechumenate, Paul F. Bradshaw, Reconstructing Early Christian Worship (Collegeville, MN: Pueblo, 2010), pp. 55–68; Thomas M. Finn, From Death to Rebirth: Ritual and Conversion in Antiquity (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), pp. 137–238. 44 Gregory of Tours, Historiae 5.11, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 205; Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 5.5.17–30, MGH SRM 7, pp. 108–9. 45 Omnes tamen populi una uoce dicebant: “Vae nobis, qui post hac die numquam similem merebimur habere pontificem,” Gregory of Tours, Vita Patrum 6.7, MGH SRM 1.2, p. 235.

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blood with the city’s Jews from the first.46 Rumors circulated that the Jews had funded the unsuccessful candidacy of Eufrasius, a rival of Avitus for the episcopacy. On Easter 576, Avitus baptized a Jewish convert. Afterwards, the converso and other Christian neophytes processed through the town, likely through a Jewish neighborhood.47 Evidently adult baptism continued in sixth-century Clermont, so other catechumens—perhaps from a pagan background—were also initiated that day.48 Post-baptismal procession was not a standard part of the baptismal rite. Gregory notes that Avitus had frequently sought to convert the Jews of Clermont by preaching to them on biblical typologies: images and events from the Hebrew Bible that were allegedly fulfilled in the New Covenant.49 The historian does not signal if these were open-air sermons or if Jews sometimes attended church. Regardless, Avitus must have staged the abnormal march as a proclamation that Christian rites had replaced the Jewish law, a recapitulation of such typological sermons in non-verbal gestures. Angry at the insult, one Clermont Jew parodied baptismal chrism by dumping “rancid oil” (oleum foetidum), perhaps a euphemism for sewage, on the head of the converso, staining his white baptismal alb. Avitus prevented the furious Christian crowd from stoning the offending Jew, yet he only delayed their vengeance. A few weeks later, at the end of a Rogation procession following the exact route of Gallus’ funeral from the cathedral to the basilica of St. Lawrence, the marching congregation rioted and leveled the local synagogue.50 Gregory of Tours, the main witness to the events of 576, presents this attack as a response to the Easter assault. Gregory’s friend Venantius Fortunatus also wrote a poem about these events, only a year after they happened, roughly twenty years before Gregory’s history. Fortunatus composed his poem at Gregory’s request using information that Gregory had provided, so the differences between the poem and the later history may 46 Gregory of Tours, Historiae 4.12, 4.35, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 114, 167; Bachrach, Early Medieval Jewish Policy, pp. 52–8, 161; Dumézil, Les racines chrétiennes, pp. 79–80, 117–18. 47 Cum albatis reliquis in albis et ipse procedit. Ingredientibus autem populis portam ciuitatis, unus iudaeorum super capud conuersi iudaei oleum foetidum, Gregory of Tours, Historiae 5.11, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 205. 48 For adult baptism in the sixth century, Lynch, Godparents and Kinship, pp. 143–204; Hen, Culture, pp. 63–4, 155–7. 49 Gregory of Tours, Historiae 5.11, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 205; cf. Gregory of Tours, Historiae 6.5, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 268–9; Gregory I, Ep. 9.196; Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 5.5.17–30, MGH SRM 7, pp. 108–9. 50 Gregory asserts that the violence occurred at Ascension. His emphasis on the procession, though, suggests that Gregory meant the Eve of Ascension (that is, Rogation Wednesday). Like all vigils, Ascension Eve is officially part of the following day: die autem beato, quo dominus ad caelos post redemptum hominem gloriosus ascendit, cum sacerdos de aeclesiam ad basilicam psallendo procederet, inruit super sinagogae iudaeorum multitudo tota sequentium, distructam que a fundamentis, campi planitiae locus adsimilatur, Gregory of Tours, Historiae 5.11, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 205.

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show how Gregory’s own view of the event altered over time.51 Fortunatus never mentions the Easter baptism incident. Instead, he just bemoans that two faiths divided the city, claims that Avitus had long sought to convert Jews, and begins with the riot before Ascension.52 For the poet, Jewish obstinacy was provocation enough for violence. Both Fortunatus and Gregory agree, though, that partly to forestall further violence, Avitus demanded that the Jews of Clermont either convert or emigrate. Over five hundred became Christian ten days later on Pentecost, and the rest escaped to Marseilles, presumably without much of their property.53 Gregory’s account may not reliably depict the events that transpired in sixth-century Clermont and their motivations. In parts of his story, Gregory seems to imitate a fifth-century account of the conversion of the Jews of Minorca, which also culminated in a Christian procession leading to the destruction of a synagogue.54 A few other late antique hagiographers—such as Hilary of Arles and Paulinus of Nola—also portray Jews attending the funeral of a Christian saint, so this may be a topos.55 Moreover, the differences between Gregory’s later history and Fortunatus’ earlier poem suggest that Gregory’s version is quixotic: illustrative mainly of the author’s own mind rather than of Merovingian life. Gregory’s stories of the Clermont Jews are less historical veracity than narrative theology. They are expositions of how Rogation processions ought to separate pious Christians from the profane world of Jews and Judaizers around them. Gregory’s narrative of the fall of the Jews of Clermont involves three processions, two of them ritual failures. All these rites, even when failing, modeled forms of community. Gregory’s account implies that both those—like the Jews—who wished to maintain the status quo and those—like Avitus—who wished for a totally Christian city, recognized that celebrating processions and disrupting them could press for their goals. The five hundred Jews who supposedly converted is a large number for a diocese like Clermont; the town itself would have contained only a couple thousand people. Perhaps Gregory exaggerates. But, given the bishop’s fears about Judaizers, Gregory may have included among the converts many people who modern observers would now identify as Christians. After all, the “Jews” of Clermont participated in the cult 51

Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 5.5, MGH SRM 7, pp. 107–12. Bifido discissa tumultu, urbe manens una non erat una fide, Carm. 5.5.17–90, MGH SRM 7, pp. 108–9. 53 Gregory of Tours, Historiae 5.11, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 206; Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 5.5.105–8, MGH SRM 7, p. 111. 54 Severus of Minorca, Letter on the Conversion of the Jews 12–14, ed. Scott Bradbury (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 90–4; E. M. Rose, “Gregory of Tours and the Conversion of the Jews of Clermont,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, edited by Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 307–20; Colish, Faith, Fiction and Force, pp. 230–8. 55 Andrew Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula: A Commentary on the Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 451. 52

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of saints, had good relations with local clergymen, were involved in the bishop’s election, and listened to episcopal preaching.56 They attended synagogue, but that did not prevent them from also going to church. Scholars should hesitate before concluding that the Jews of Gregory’s narrative would necessarily qualify as Jews to modern observers. They may have been closer to what modern scholars call “God-fearers.” For medieval people, sectarian borders were fluid—except when people did not want those borders to be so.57 Borders hardened the most on procession days. On one day, an inhabitant of Clermont could attend a ritual at church; another day, the local people might deem it advantageous to brand that same inhabitant a Jew and drive him from his home. Elsewhere in Gregory’s history, he tells of another Rogationtide procession that divided a city and solidified boundaries between Christians and outsiders. There, the tense border was not between Christian and Judaizer, but between Christian sacrament and pseudo-Christian sorcery. Whatever normal congregants on the ground might think, elite churchmen were often wary of signs and wonders. According to a standard distinction stemming from St. Augustine, “not everyone who performs miracles has the Holy Spirit, for God works miracles through his sovereignty, demons through the natural forces implanted in things, magicians through covenants with demons, good Christians through righteousness, and evil Christians through the external symbols (signa) of righteousness.”58 Sacred rites were “the visible shape of an invisible grace,” but mere visible shape can transpire without any grace.59 Signs can trick, for the devil works marvels too. Heretics can manipulate objects associated with true worship—relics, paraphernalia such as oil or holy water, the names of angels— for wicked purposes.60 56 For Avitus’ preaching to Jews, Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 5.5.17–30, MGH SRM 7, pp. 108–9; Gregory of Tours, Historiae 5.11, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 205; Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness, pp. 168–74. 57 One scholar has concluded “that heresy, leprosy, and Jewishness lay with beauty in the eyes of the beholders and that their distinctiveness was not the cause but the result of persecution,” R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Eruope 950–1250, 2nd Edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 62–4, 76–82. 58 Nec quicunque facit miracula, habet spiritum sanctum, quoniam . . . deus enim facit miracula per auctoritatem . . . daemones per uirtutes naturales rebus insitas, magi per occultos contractus cum daemonibus, boni christiani per publicam iustitiam, mali christiani per signa publicae iustitiae, Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea 73, Graesse, p. 331; Augustine’s original is somewhat shorter, cf. Augustine of Hippo, De diuersis quaestionibus 79.4, CCSL 44A, ed. A. Mutzenbecher (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975); Buc, The Dangers of Ritual, p. 10. 59 Nam sine ista sanctificatione inuisibilis gratiae uisibilia sacramenta non prosunt . . . nihil quippe profuit Simoni Mago uisibilis baptismus, cui sanctificatio inuisibilis defuit, Hrabanus Maurus, Expositiones In Leviticum 16, PL 108.478C; the eleventh-century definition of a sacramentum as the inuisibilis gratiae uisibilis forma adapted various Augustinian passages, including the one that Hrabanus used; cf. Augustine, Ep. 105.3, CSEL 34.2, ed. A. Goldbacher (Vienna: Tempsky, 1895), p. 604. 60 Cf. Matt. 7:21–3; Acts 19:11–20.

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The longest narrative of a Rogation Days surviving from the early Middle Ages is Gregory of Tours’ account of a Spanish holy man who troubled Tours and Paris in 580. Gregory places this tale late in his history, after describing how a series of prodigies like unseasonal crops and a rain of snakes terrified Gaul in the year 587 and “foretold either the death of a king or the destruction of the land.”61 Gregory notes that a number of foreign necromancers challenged his authority at Tours in the 580s and concludes that such magicians fulfill the New Testament prophecy that “in the last days, pseudo-Christs and pseudo-prophets shall arise who will perform signa and omens that shall even entice God’s chosen into error.”62 In Gregory’s understanding, the world was ending and heretics like the Spaniard were just another mark of the impending apocalypse.63 Virtually the final scene in Gregory’s history highlights natural disasters in Gaul such as plague, fire, and drought and depicts the bishop himself leading the citizens of Tours in a Rogation procession to turn away the coming wrath of God.64 Gregory wanted his readers to finish by imagining the author as a new Mamertus and a new Pope Gregory I—the head of a penitential people, staving off the apocalypse for another day.65 No wonder that an odious heretic allegedly warped the Rogationtide procession by leading his own procession in opposition to the local bishop’s march. According to Gregory’s biased account, the Spanish holy man was a fugitive slave ( famulus) from the Pyrenean region of Spain who arrived at Tours in 580.66 During the early Middle Ages, most of the holy men denounced as heretics were elite male clerics working far away from their homeland.67 They awakened the suspicion of church hierarchs only once they introduced unusual and often foreign devotional practices. Gregory’s Spaniard allegedly bore the 61

Multa alia signa apparuerunt, quae aut regis obitum adnunciare solent aut regiones excidium, Gregory of Tours, Historiae 9.5, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 416. 62 Consurgere in nouissimis temporibus pseudochristus et pseudoprophetas, qui, dantes signa et prodigia, etiam electos in errore inducant, Gregory of Tours, Historiae 9.6, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 420; cf. Matt. 24:24. 63 Cf. Gregory of Tours, Historiae 10.25, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 517. 64 The last chapter in the Histories is a short standalone hagiography of the bishops of Tours. The penultimate chapter—the final chapter of the main narrative—portrays this Rogationtide and the various prodigies; Gregory of Tours, Historiae 10.30, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 525; Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours, pp. 85–6. 65 For these two tales, see Gregory of Tours, Historiae 2.34, 10.1, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 83–4, 477. 66 The holy man spoke a strange dialect (sermo rusticus et ipsius linguae latitudo turpis) and allegedly escaped from an estate of Bishop Amelius of Tarbes; Gregory of Tours, Historiae 3.29, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 125–6; for fugitive serfs as holy men, cf. Boniface, Ep. 80, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 175. 67 For such expatriate heretics, cf. Boniface, Ep. 44, 54, 59, 60, 62, 77, 80, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, pp. 71, 104, 109–18, 123, 127, 160, 173–7; Gregory of Tours, Historiae 9.6, 10.25, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 416–18, 517; Rudolf of Fulda, Annales Fuldenses 847, MGH SRG 7, ed. F. Kurze (Hanover: Hahn, 1891), p. 36; Acta Synodi Atrebatensis, PL 142.1269; Claudius of Turin, Gottschalk of Orbais, and Vergilius of Salzburg could perhaps also be included.

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relics of two famous Spanish martyrs: Vincent of Saragossa and Felix of Gerona.68 On arrival at first Tours and then Paris, he showed these relics to Gregory and Ragnemod, the local bishops respectively. Since both these cities had shrines dedicated to St. Vincent, the Spaniard likely sought a following in places that already had significant lay devotion to these saints. Perhaps he even hoped to sell the relics to the local bishops.69 According to Gregory, the Spaniard sent a message (mandatum) ordering Gregory and the cathedral clergy to come gaze at the relics. Gregory delayed for a day, perhaps because the message insulted his episcopal dignity, and the holy man took offense at the hesitation. Gregory ridicules the Spanish holy man repeatedly, yet his description reveals that the Spaniard fit normal expectations of sanctity. The Spaniard dressed in vestments, carried a cross and little vessels of holy oil (ampullulae), visited a number of shrines, prayed often, and impressed the people with his miracles.70 Gregory believed that these miracles were faked, at best charlatanism (dolositas) and probably demonic sorcery (maleficia). The holy man annoyed Gregory by entering an oratory without the bishop’s presence; there, the Spaniard prayed alone in a popular linguistic register—rather than formal Latin—even reciting parts of the Divine Office that usually several clerics would sing antiphonally.71 The Spaniard favored individual prayer in a popular dialect over the communal liturgy of the monastery and demonstrated an impressive level of memorization of such prayers. Gregory did not understand all the Spaniard’s prayers, but calls them irrational and ominous; Gregory may have believed the prayers to be magical gibberish.72 After his poor reception in Tours, the Spanish holy man traveled to Paris, arriving just before the feast of the Ascension. Bishop Ragnemod invited the 68 For the shrines to Vincent in Paris and near Tours, Gregory of Tours, Historiae 4.20, 6.46, 8.10, 8.33, 10.31, In Gloria Martyrorum 89, 91, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 152, 321, 377, 401, 534, 1.2, pp. 97, 99; Michel Rouche, L’Aquitaine des Wisigoths aux Arabes: Naissance d’une région (Paris: Jean Touzot, 1979), pp. 310–13. 69 On traveling relics of St. Vincent, some of which were sold, cf. Gregory of Tours, In Gloria Martyrorum 30, 89, MGH SRM 1.2, pp. 56, 97. 70 The Spaniard “dressed in an unusual way” (inusitato . . . indumento) in an alb (colobium) and an amice (amictus sindonis). Visigothic vestments differed significantly from the norms in Gaul; Gregory of Tours, Historiae 9.6, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 418; Herbert Norris, Church Vestments: Their Origin and Development (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1949), pp. 11–12, 17, 43–6, 53, 84–5, 132–3; Maureen C. Miller, Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), pp. 17–21, 56–8, 247, 252. 71 Et ingressus in oraturio, me postposito, ipse capitellum unum adque alterum ac tertium dicit, ipse orationem profert et ipse consumat, eleuataque iterum cruce, abiit. Erat enim ei et sermo rusticus et ipsius linguae latitudo turpis atque obscoena; sed nec de eo sermo rationabilis procedebat, Gregory of Tours, Historiae 9.6.15–17, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 418; for Gallican capitella, see Robert F. Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West: The Origins of the Divine Office and its Meaning for Today (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1986), pp. 101–13, 146–8, 154–5. 72 Obscoena often means “of an ill omen” in Latin, rather than “lewd,” and elsewhere Gregory connects the Spaniard to sorcery (maleficia).

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Spaniard to join the day’s procession and promised to examine the Spaniard’s relics only once the holiday concluded. Like Gregory before him, Ragnemod insisted that the Spaniard place his relics on the altar, rather than bearing them with him. Again insulted, the Spaniard cursed the bishop and instead formed his own Rogation procession, carrying his cross and relics in front.73 Numerous lay men and women left Ragnemod’s congregation to join the Spaniard’s march. The repute of Sts. Vincent and Felix attracted many. In order to restore his episcopal authority, Ragnemod excommunicated the Spaniard, chained him in a monastery, destroyed his cross and relics, and deported him as a slave to southern France.74 Gregory claimed that the Spaniard turned out to be carrying not relics at all, but rather magical paraphernalia (maleficia).75 Ragnemod suppressed the popular movement only with great difficulty; indeed, the Spaniard twice escaped imprisonment—presumably with the help of local supporters—and revived his following, before he was finally expelled. In Gregory’s account of the Spaniard, Rogationtide is a dynamic moment in which competing communal orders manifest themselves through rival forms of the feast. Ritual failure endangered the unity that the Rogation march embodied. The basic procedure of the Rogation Days—such as popular prayer and three days of processions with relics and a cross—were common to all interpretations. The Gallic bishops considered the bishop to be the appropriate leader of these processions and believed the focus should be the cathedral altar—where they told the Spanish holy man to place his relics.76 The Spaniard and his followers, on the other hand, thought that the relics of the saints themselves were the focus of Rogationtide. They treated the clergy the same as everyone else: as humble penitents crying out for mercy. The bishops guaranteed their vision’s success eventually, but only by re-interpreting the devotional acts of the Spaniard as magic and by breaking the objects of his wondrous power: the cross and relics. Through this re-interpretation, the sacred became profane. Strikingly, this incident is not the only place in Gregory of Tours’s history in which a Spanish Rogation procession is treated as magic; the differences 73

Hic cum cruce sua adueniens . . . adiunctis publicanis ac rusticis mulieribus, et iste chorum suum faceret, et quasi cum sua multitudine loca sancta circuire temptat . . . episcopum conuiciis ac maledictionibus prosequi, Gregory of Tours, Historiae 9.6, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 418. 74 Iussit eum recludi in cellolam . . . cuncta iussit in flumine proici; ablataque ei cruce, iussit eum a termino Parisiacae urbis excludi, Gregory of Tours, Historiae 9.6, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 418–19; Gregory’s language presents Ragnemod’s suppression of the movement as an exercise of the bishop’s penitential office (e.g. excludi, castigatio, excusatum). 75 Perscrutatisque cunctis quae habebat, inuenit cum eo sacculum magnum plenum de radicibus diuersarum herbarum, ibique et dentes talpae et ossa murium et ungues atque adipes ursinos. Vidensque haec maleficia esse, Gregory of Tours, Historiae 9.6, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 419; other tales in the Histories stress the difficulty differentiating maleficium from medicine and saintly miracle; cf. Historiae 2.1, 3.31, 6.35, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 38, 127, 305. 76 For the altar, Gregory of Tours, Historiae 9.6, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 417–18.

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between the Old Spanish and Gallican rites sparked distrust.77 According to Gregory, in 542, the Merovingian kings Childebert I and Chlothar I campaigned in Spain. While the kings besieged Saragossa, the townsfolk supposedly performed a penitential procession.78 Fasting and dressed in sackcloth and mourning garb, they marched around the walls of the city following the relic of the tunic of St. Vincent. At first, this behavior confused the besiegers, who assumed that Saragossans performed a magical rite (maleficium).79 But once the Frankish troops learned the truth from a local farmer, the Merovingian army retreated from Saragossa in fear. The early eighth-century Liber Historiae Francorum appends a new ending to Gregory’s story.80 Instead of departing terrified, Childebert negotiated a peace with the bishop of Saragossa in exchange for a relic of Vincent: the saint’s stola, a sleeveless outer garment worn over a tunica. Childebert later builds the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris to house this relic and later Merovingian kings used this church as a burial place. This ending is almost certainly a post facto origin story designed to explain why SaintGermain-des-Prés had a relic of St. Vincent; it is unreliable as history. The new ending mirrors how Gregory and Ragnemod had dealt with the Spanish holy man. Both Spanish Rogation celebrations, after all, used almost identical ascetic practices, followed the relics of the same St. Vincent, and seemed bizarre and magical to Frankish eyes—accustomed to the Gallican liturgy but not the Old Spanish. But Childebert chose to expropriate the power of the procession by acquiring and venerating its relic. The Spanish holy man’s relics, on the other hand, were destroyed. For Gregory of Tours, condemnation and expropriation were both successful techniques of taming rival ritual power. The ambiguity of early medieval devotional practice meant that only the bishop, the confessor, or the preacher could announce what was pious and what was occult. Christianization was primarily ritual performance. Thus, at a council in 811, Charlemagne discussed baptismal procedures—“invalid” (irritam) versions of the Credo and renunciation of the devil’s pompa—and asked his counts and bishops “are we even Christians?”81 Churchmen and lay leaders 77

For a similar link between the Rogation procession and magic, see Bede, Ecclesiastical History 1.25.2, SChr 489, p. 202. 78 Induti ciliciis, abstinentis a cibis et poculis, cum tonica beati Vincenti martiris muros ciuitatis psallendo circuirent . . . ut diceretur ibidem Niniuitarum ieiunium caelebrari, Gregory of Tours, Historiae 3.29, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 125. 79 Cum uiderent sic murum circuire, putabant, eos aliquid agere malefitii . . . quod illi timentes, se ab ea ciuitate remouerunt, Gregory of Tours, Historiae 3.29, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 125–6. 80 Liber Historiae Francorum, A.26, MGH SRM 2, p. 284; cf. Gregory of Tours, Historiae 4.20, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 152. 81 Quid sit, quod unusquisque christianus in baptismo loquitur, uel quibus abrenunciet . . . abrenunciationem irritam faciat . . . Quod nobis despiciendum est, utrum uere christiani sumus, Capitula tractanda, 6–9, MGH CRF 1, ed. Alfred Boretius and Viktor Krause (Hanover: 1897), p. 161.

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alike watched mandatory rituals closely, as an occasion when those only feigning piety might prove themselves to be Judaizers or pseudo-Christians. As mentioned in an earlier chapter, by early modernity, “to Christianize” in English could mean not only “to convert,” but also “to imitate Christians without actually being one.”82 For early medieval clerics, in contrast, action and being were inseparable.

BONIFACE —FRIENDS, FOES, AND F E L L O W REF O R M E R S In the province of Neustria around the year 743, changes to church processions like Rogationtide brought the fall of another popular preacher.83 While the Anglo-Saxon reformer Boniface was traveling around the Continent, attempting to conform the Frankish church to Roman and Anglo-Saxon standards, he clashed with an ascetic named Aldebert. Boniface objected to Aldebert and his followers for a number of reasons, but the changes that Aldebert made to his diocese’s processional liturgy were especially offensive. Boniface disliked Aldebert immediately. Many modern historians have found the holy man just as distasteful. Jeffrey Burton Russell, the noted scholar of popular Christianity, thought Aldebert had “a mad streak” and “suffered delusions.”84 A more recent scholar terms him a “renegade bishop” and “an unsavory character.”85 The medievalist David L. D’Avray cites Aldebert as an archetypal example of the Weberian category of charismatic mode of authority— as opposed to the traditional or legal rational modes.86 As an eccentric charismatic, Aldebert contrasted sharply with the “organisation men” who came to dominate the Carolingian church.87 Oxford English Dictionary online, s.v. “Christianize,” accessed March 23, 2017. For Boniface and Aldebert, see, for instance, Michael Glatthaar, Bonifatius und das Sakrileg: Zur politischen Dimension eines Rechtsbegriffs (Franfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 84–5, 148–63, 393–8; Meeder, “Boniface and the Irish Heresy,” pp. 265–7; Nicole Zeddies, “Bonifatius und zwei nütlische Rebellion: Die Häretiker Aldebert und Clemens,” in Ordnung und Aufruhr im Mittelalter, edited by Marie Theres Fögen (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1995), pp. 217–63. 84 Jeffrey Burton Russell, “Saint Boniface and the Eccentrics,” Church History 33, no. 3 (1964): pp. 235–47; Jeffrey Burton Russell, Dissent and Reform in the Early Middle Ages (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1965), pp. 14–17, 26. 85 Filotas, Pagan Survivals, pp. 100–5, 195. 86 David L. D’Avray, Medieval Religious Rationalities: A Weberian Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 80–4, 166–7. 87 Janet L. Nelson, “The Merovingian Church in Carolingian Retrospective,” The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 250–3; in a conservation with me, a prominent historian once called the Carolingian churchman Hincmar of Rheims “the patron saint of middle managers.” 82 83

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Closer scrutiny of the extant sources on Aldebert reveals, though, that the holy man was far more traditional that normally assumed. All the extant evidence for Aldebert is fragmentary and hostile, so only a rough sketch of Aldebert and his supporters is possible. But, when re-examined, the historical evidence indicates that Aldebert was not only an ascetic, but also the ordained bishop of an unknown see in eastern Neustria and a mainstay in the customary power structures of local Frankish communities. Aldebert was an obstacle to Boniface’s reforms as much due to his traditionalism as to his wonderworking. The story of his demise is less a tale of charlatanism or charismatic eccentricity than it is of pastoral care and institution building, of the same Christianizing reforms that Boniface himself exemplified. Aldebert and Boniface disagreed about processions because these marches embodied their competing models for Christianization. The spread of Christianity was not the substitution of one fixed system of beliefs and practices for another across a continent. It was the construction of institutions of pastoral care—shrines, high crosses, baptismal churches—through which Europeans could perform mandatory rituals and be recognized by elites as Christians because of this performance. Despite Aldebert’s successes in church building and pastoral care, he failed to convince many people that his rituals counted. The most important evidence for Aldebert’s downfall are letters sent between Boniface and his ally, Pope Zacharias, as the two labored together to quash Aldebert’s following. A disproportionate section of Boniface’s epistle collection depicts the suppression of Aldebert’s popular movement: a halfdozen letters, more than on any other topic. When Boniface’s successor Lull published Boniface’s letters after the saint’s death, he must have believed that this incident deserved extra attention.88 Unfortunately, the extant epistles are vague and oblique. Most are Pope Zacharias’ responses to earlier lost epistles by Boniface, his legate in Francia at the time. In them, Zacharias only alludes to Aldebert’s alleged crimes. Since Boniface and his associate Denehart had supplied the pope with all his information, Zacharias did not bother to describe at length facts that the reformers already knew. Outside these letters, a few details about Aldebert appears in the texts of a number of church councils from the 740s and in later hagiographies of Boniface. None of these sources, though, is sympathetic. Indeed, even Aldebert’s foes may have known little about the ascetic. Boniface, for instance, may never have met the holy man face-to-face, or perhaps

88 Boniface’s hagiographers also focus on this affair: Willibald, Vita Bonifatii 7, MGH SRG 57, ed. Wilhelm Levison (Hanover: Hahn, 1905), p. 40; Anonymous of Mainz, Vita Quarta Bonifatii 2, MGH SRG 57, ed. Wilhelm Levison (Hanover: Hahn, 1905), pp. 93–4; Othloh, Vita Bonifatii 1.40, 2.4, 2.7–8, MGH SRG 57, ed. Wilhelm Levison (Hanover: Hahn, 1905), pp. 154, 170–6, 183–5.

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only after his arrest in 747.89 Historians should not assume that Boniface personally encountered Aldebert; all his information could easily stem from oral reports or perhaps just from reading the hagiography that one of Aldebert’s supporters apparently wrote about the preacher. A number of Boniface’s complaints discussed below—such as those concerning visions and foreknowledge—allude to common tropes in saint’s lives. Even if Boniface and some of the other sources had direct knowledge of Aldebert, they are partisan. Boniface probably never lied about Aldebert, but he interpreted everything that he knew about his foe in the worst possible way. According to Boniface, Aldebert was born to a non-noble and uneducated family (simplicibus parentibus) in Neustria, but he could read and write Latin.90 Aldebert was probably a former child oblate to a monastery, who had left the cloister to labor in pastoral care. Throughout his ministry, he wore monastic garb and remained celibate, although his opponents declared confidently and without evidence that he violated his chastity in secret.91 He had gathered a large lay following at an early age (primeua aetate) even before he was old enough to be ordained as a bishop at thirty.92 Although no medieval sources names Aldebert’s see, he certainly had one— unlike Boniface himself, who was a wandering bishop without a fixed see for many years. In fact, Pippin the Short, the Mayor of the Palace of Neustria and the twenty-three Neustrian bishops who condemned Aldebert at the Council of Soissons (744) for heterodoxy (haeresis) acknowledged that he ruled a diocese (parrochia).93 Aldebert was a Neustrian opposed originally by other Neustrians, so presumably his see was in Pippin’s realm. Yet it must have been in the east, close to the Austrasia border, because Aldebert lived near Boniface’s areas of operation—in the 740s, the Rhineland.94 Soissons itself was in eastern Neustria. Since Aldebert does not appear on any later episcopal lists for Frankish sees, he was likely a chorbishop: an auxiliary bishop who assisted the main bishop in rural areas. Two sources mention Aldebert and the diocese of Rheims in 89 Boniface was at a synod when he first discovered Aldebert. The Latin verb repperi can mean either “to meet with” or “to learn about,” so Aldebert may not have attended this synod himself: synodum aggregasset et repperisset illic falsos sacerdotes, hereticos et scismaticos, id est Aldebertum, Boniface, Ep. 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 109. 90 Boniface calls Aldebert “a Gaul by origin” (natione generis gallus). Gallus was a geographic—rather than an ethnic—label in the eighth century and referred to Neustrians; Boniface, Ep. 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 110, 116; cf. Bede, Ecclesiastical History 3.7.4, SChr 490, p. 48; Boniface, Ep. 84, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 188. 91 Habitu et incessu et moribus imitatus est, Boniface, Ep. 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 112; a luxoria se minime continebat, Boniface, Ep. 57, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 104. 92 For Aldebert as an episcopus or later an exepiscopus after his deposition, Boniface, Ep. 57, 59, 77, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, pp. 104, 111–12, 114, 160. 93 Council of Soissons (744), 7, MGH Concilia 2.1, p. 35. 94 Council of Soissons (744), 2, 7, MGH Concilia 2.1, pp. 34–5; Boniface, Ep. 57, 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, pp. 104, 110.

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close proximity.95 Aldebert may have worked as a chorbishop in Rheims, under the notorious pluralist Milo of Trier—also an opponent of Boniface.96 As the hereditary archbishop of Trier and Rheims, Milo would have needed local chorbishops to administer his multiple dioceses. If so, then Aldebert, despite his low birth, had close connections with old elite families. Boniface successfully lobbied to have both Aldebert and Milo deposed at the Council of Soissons and again at a Roman council the next year led by Pope Zacharias. Whatever their eccentricities, contemporary evidence suggests that Aldebert and Milo were pious clerics who did not appreciate a meddlesome foreigner like Boniface upending local customs.97 Milo, after all, was a leading churchman in the Rhineland and the son of St. Liutwine.98 And Aldebert’s flock praised their bishop as “the holiest of apostles, a patron, intercessor, and miracle-worker.”99 In his letters, Boniface frequently disparaged Frankish churchmen for their sloth, ignorance, and moral lapses.100 Boniface’s denigration of Aldebert was entirely different; Aldebert did not lack education, morals, or pastoral diligence. In the eyes of his foes, Aldebert was not an unreformed cleric. He was either a heretic or a madman.101 At Boniface’s prompting, Pope Zacharias anathematized the holy man as “a forerunner of the Anti-Christ,” “not just a pseudo-prophet, but even a pseudo-Christian . . . a new Simon Magus.”102 Simon Magus was the archetypal heretic and supposed founder of Gnosticism. Theologians such as Jerome and Bede depicted Simon Magus as an exemplar 95 Cf. Council of Soissons (744), 2–3, 7, MGH Concilia 2.1, pp. 34–5; Boniface, Ep. 57, MGH Epp. Sel. 1.104; Vita sancti Waltgeri/Leben des heiligen Waltger. Die Klostergründungsgeschichte der Reichsabtei Herford, ed. Carlies Maria Raddatz (Münster: Aschendorff, 1994), p. 64; Matthew Innes, “ ‘Immune from Heresy’: Defining the Boundaries of Carolingian Christianity,” in Frankland: The Franks and the World of the Early Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Dame Jinty Nelson, edited by Paul Fouracre and David Ganz (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), pp. 101–25. 96 For Milo, see Boniface, Ep. 87, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 198; Eugen Ewig, “Milo et eiusmodi similes,” in Sankt Bonifatius: Gedenkgabe zum zwölfhundertsten Todestag (Fulda: Parzeller, 1954), pp. 412–40; Glatthaar, Bonifatius und das Sakrileg, pp. 232–6. 97 Boniface, Ep. 87, MGH Epp. Sel. 1.198; later disgraceful stories about Milo are unreliable slanders; Hincmar of Rheims, Vita Remigii, MGH SRM 3, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hanover: Hahn, 1896), p. 251; Gesta Treuerorum 24–5, MGH SS 8, ed. G. Waitz (Hanover: Hahn, 1848), pp. 161–2. 98 Matthew Innes, State and Society in the Early Middle Ages: The Middle Rhine Valley, 400–1000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 175, 183–4. 99 Sanctissimum apostolum . . . patronum et oratorem et uirtutum factorem et signorum ostensorem abstraxissem . . . uir apostolicae sanctitatis et signa et prodigia multa fecisset, Boniface, Ep. 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 111. 100 For such mundane criticisms, see Boniface, Ep. 26, 67, 68, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, pp. 47, 140–1. 101 Boniface, Ep. 59, 80, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, pp. 109–10, 116, 175. 102 Series sillabarum tuarum nobis panderetur . . . non pseudoprophetas, sed magis pseudochristianos appellare debemus . . . et nouum Simonem, Boniface, Ep. 57, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, pp. 103–4; for Aldebert as a precursor to the anti-Christ, cf. Boniface, Ep. 57, 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, pp. 105, 110, 113.

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of fraudulent baptism, someone who underwent outwardly the ceremonies of baptism, but did so without faith and therefore received no sacramental grace.103 This comparison to Simon, then, partly served to belittle Aldebert’s doctrine and practices. External ritual could not make Aldebert a Christian.104 Boniface also thought Aldebert had bribed bishops—perhaps including Milo—to ordain him and was a simoniac in that way too.105 Even Aldebert’s foes could not deny that he was a bishop, ordained and supported by other bishops in the area. All they could do was sneer at his behavior. After the condemnation, Boniface employed the coercive force of the young Carolingian mayors of the palace—Pippin and Carloman—to imprison Aldebert as a lifelong penitent in a monastery, probably Fulda.106 It took them until 747, two years later, to manage to arrest the holy man.107 To elude capture so long, Aldebert must have depended on wealthy local protectors. Indeed, according to an eleventh-century Mainz hagiographer of uncertain reliability, even Carloman, the mayor of the palace of Austrasia, briefly patronized the holy man.108 This hagiography also asserts that Aldebert soon broke free from Fulda again—presumably with the aid of supporters outside—but was killed during the escape. In spite of this violent end, Aldebert and his followers constituted a standard early medieval saint’s cult, complete with relics, a hagiography, shrines, miracles, and liturgical texts. Even the bizarre aspects of the movement paralleled practices known elsewhere in this period. His critics, for instance, burnt a hagiography written about Aldebert by a devotee—shocked because the holy man was still alive.109 Admittedly, medieval hagiographers usually

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Colish, Faith, Fiction and Force, pp. 104–7, 113–15, 119–26, 220. Boniface may borrow from Augustine’s language on Simon: et Iudam pseudoapostolum et Simonem magum et ceteros usque ad haec tempora pseudochristianos . . . cum tales ab spiritalibus euangelizantur et sacramentis inbuuntur, Augustine, De baptismo 1.16.25, CSEL 51, ed. M. Petschenig (Vienna: Tempsky, 1908), p. 169. 105 Boniface, Ep. 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 111; cf. Boniface, Ep. 58, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 107; a ninth-century Würzburg manuscript preserves canons that descend from a Bonifatian synod or letter. The canons refer to Aldebert as a hereticus, a scismaticus, and a simoniacus; Meeder, “Boniface and the Irish Heresy,” pp. 260–5, 280. 106 Although the Frankish mayors tried to put Aldebert into custody (in custodia) already in 745, they were unsuccessful; cum principibus Francorum retrudi fecit in custodiam. Illi autem non in paenitentia degunt, Boniface, Ep. 57, 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, pp. 105, 109, 112. 107 Aggregatum concilium, ad medium deducantur sacrilegi illi et contumaces Aldebertus, Boniface, Ep. 77, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 160; cf. Boniface, Ep. 59, 60, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, pp. 118, 123; Willibald, Vita Bonifatii 7, MGH SRG 57, p. 40. 108 This hagiographer may have used lost sources, for he includes details not in Boniface’s extant letters; Anonymous of Mainz, Vita Quarta Bonifatii 2, MGH SRG 57, pp. 93–4. 109 Although Aldebert wrote some short works, he did not compose an autobiography. He “caused the life to be written” by a follower: sceleratissimam uitam, quam sibi Aldebertus conscribere fecit . . . igni cremarentur, Boniface, Ep. 60, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 123; sacrilega illius Aldebercti nefandissimi uita et omnia opuscula, Boniface, Ep. 62, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 127; cf. Boniface, Ep. 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, pp. 113–14. 104

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waited until after the saint’s passing. Yet, the most famous of all Latin hagiographies, Sulpicius Severus’ Life of St. Martin, was composed during the lifetime of the saint.110 Perhaps Aldebert deliberately emulated Martin in his ministry and arranged for his own Severus-like hagiographer. The veneration of Aldebert stretched beyond hagiography. His followers supposedly revered relics of Aldebert—such as his hair and fingernails—and declared him to be a living saint (uir sanctitatis).111 According to Boniface, Aldebert even consecrated churches dedicated to himself to hold these relics.112 In the Latin West, living saints were suspect already in the Merovingian period.113 In contrast, living saints were common in the late ancient world and remained so in Byzantium.114 Confessors who had survived persecution often had such status, as did extreme ascetics, such as stylites. Living saints, moreover, occasionally distributed miracle-working relics of themselves to their followers. The sixth-century Life of Symeon the Younger, for instance, depicts the saint doling out pilgrimage tokens with his picture on them that cured diseases.115 Likewise, the Merovingian abbess Monegund supposedly gave her nuns miracle-working salt and oil for the convent to use after she died.116 Aldebert was perhaps retrograde, but he was not absurd. If Aldebert’s enemies had stumbled upon anything unorthodox or immoral in the bishop’s writings, they would have quoted it against him at his excommunication. Nothing could be found. Instead, most of Boniface’s objections to Aldebert are mere quibbles. The holy man owned an apocryphal letter from Christ that he averred dropped from heaven—a letter that soon became a medieval bestseller.117 Aldebert did not use the new manuals of tariffed penance that contemporary reformers imported from the British Isles. Aldebert saw visions of angels, who helped him discover and translate 110 Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini 26–7, in Vie de Saint Martin, SC 133, ed. Jacques Fontaine, (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1967); cf. William of St. Thierry’s hagiography of Bernard of Clairvaux; Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?: Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), pp. 244–8. 111 Boniface, Ep. 57, 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, pp. 104, 111. 112 Et sanctitatis nomine se uocari censuit et in suo nomine aecclesias consecraret, Boniface, Ep. 57, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 104. 113 For instance, Gregory of Tours, Historiae 18.15–16, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 380–1; Hen, Culture and Religion, pp. 82–4, 173–4. 114 Peter Brown, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 184–6; Bartlett, Why Can the Dead, pp. 6, 16–19, 40–1. 115 Matthew Dal Santo, Contesting the Saints’ Cults in the Age of Gregory the Great (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 195–205. 116 Gregory of Tours, Vita Patrum 19.4, MGH SRM 1.2, p. 290; two-handled flasks (ampullae) of blessed oil, usually with an image of the saint stamped on the front, were often distributed as pilgrimage tokens. 117 Boniface, Ep. 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 115; cf. Dorothy Haines, Sunday Observance and the Sunday Letter in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewster, 2010), pp. 15–16, 36–9, 43–5, 54–6, 201–5, 211–12; Robert Priebsch, Letter from Heaven on the Observance of the Lord’s Day (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1936), pp. 3–7.

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relics. In the language of Peter Brown, “Aldebert represented an older strain of Christianity—the Christianity of the charismatic holy men”; he created a new “micro-Christendom” just as the Carolingian rulers started to replace micro-Christendoms with a cross-continental system.118 Like Columbanus, his mother received a vision before his birth.119 Like Cuthbert, he foreknew the hidden sins of his congregants.120 Like Wilfrid, he built and consecrated churches filled with Roman relics, including St. Peter’s, and encouraged people to visit these local pilgrimage shrines, rather than risk traveling the long road to Italy.121 If these are signs of heresy, sorcery, and psychosis, then virtually every early medieval saint was mad. Boniface’s most vehement protest was Aldebert’s behavior at processions. In fact, this dispute may have inspired Boniface’s battle with the holy man, for while many complaints occur in later letters in the Bonifatian corpus, the first epistle about Aldebert in the collection concentrates almost exclusively on processions.122 Like other early Carolingian reformers such as Chrodegang of Metz and Angilbert of Saint-Riquier, Aldebert instituted a stational liturgy for his diocese, involving communal processions—seemingly including, but not limited to, Rogationtide—to new holy places he had dedicated.123 Yet, to his critics, Aldebert was a “pseudo-Christian” who “led the people away from the church of God and from the Christian law.”124 Although Boniface and Zacharias never call Aldebert a Judaizer, they imply this charge; Aldebert espoused a form of Sunday observance that other early medieval clergymen saw as Judaizing.125 Aldebert’s wealthy lay supporters enabled the bishop to erect and consecrate shrines, small oratories, and standing crosses in fields and at springs all

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Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom, pp. 362–3, 421–3; Boniface, Ep. 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 111. 119 Other early medieval saints whose mother received pre-partum visions include Praejectus, Nicetius, and Arialdus of Carimate; Boniface, Ep. 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, pp. 111, 114; cf. Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini 19, 21; Willibald, Vita Bonifatii 8, MGH SRG 57, p. 53; Bartlett, Why Can the Dead, pp. 39, 525–6. 120 Boniface, Ep. 59, 80, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, pp. 112, 175; for a saint’s foreknowledge of sin, cf. Dal Santo, Contesting the Saints’ Cults, pp. 46–52, 197, 216–17; Bartlett, Why Can the Dead, pp. 46, 373–5. 121 Boniface, Ep. 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 111. 122 Boniface, Ep. 57, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 104. 123 Cf. Claussen, The Reform of the Frankish Church, pp. 41, 211, 277; Rabe, Faith, Art, and Politics at Saint-Riquier, pp. 129–32, 143. 124 Pseudochristianos . . . seducens populum per falsitates, ita ut eum ab aecclesia dei subtraheret et a christiana lege discordaret, Boniface, Ep. 57, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 104. 125 For instance, the sixth-century Spanish bishop Licinian—the first author to mention the heavenly letter that Aldebert used—claimed that the heavenly letter’s author was a Judaizer: nouus iste praedicator hoc dicit, ut nos iudaizare compellat, Licinian of Cartagena, Ep. 3, PL 72.669C; cf. Council of Orléans (538), 31; Ecgred, Letter to Wulfsige, Haddan, vol. 3, p. 615; Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori, 32.14; Haines, Sunday Observance, pp. 11–12, 37–40; Priebsch, Letter from Heaven, pp. 1–3.

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over his diocese and beyond.126 Aldebert “led away the people” and ordered his many followers “to celebrate the public prayers, assembled together there” at his new buildings, rather than at the old baptismal churches and cathedrals of “the scorned other bishops.”127 These liturgies involved episcopal preaching, communal prayer, a large gathering of laity, and baptisms. Moreover, the people at these public prayers processed, carrying Aldebert’s relics through the countryside.128 Pope Zacharias probably intended a pun: Aldebert led the people astray (seducens) spiritually by physically leading them (ducens) to his own churches and crosses. Boniface and Zacharias never state what liturgical seasons occurred at Aldebert’s novel holy places, but they must refer to a major processional feast of the Christian year. During the early Middle Ages, only three annual feasts—Candlemas, Palm Sunday, and Rogationtide—entailed an outdoor march. And other medieval sources evince that rural standing crosses—like those that Aldebert built—frequently served as stations for prayer and preaching on the Rogation Days in particular.129 Nonetheless, Boniface and Zacharias likely objected to suspect behavior at all three processional feasts, rather than at Rogationtide alone. Aldebert’s church building and his devotion to the liturgical year routinized his holiness for his followers. The holy man’s enthusiasm for the apocryphal “Letter of Christ from Heaven” signals what his processions would have entailed. In its origins, the Heavenly Letter had no connection to Rogationtide, for its author was likely a mid-sixthcentury Spaniard, perhaps an associate of Martin of Braga (d. 579).130 Outside 126

Et cruces statuens in campis et oratoriola . . . in suo nomine aecclesias consecraret, Boniface, Ep. 57, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 104; in proprio honore suo dedicauit oratoria . . . fecit cruciculas et oratoriola in campis et ad fontes uel ubicumque sibi uisum fuit, Boniface, Ep. 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 111; illas cruciculas, quas Adlabertus per parrochia plantauerat, Council of Soissons (744), 7, MGH Concilia 2.1, p. 35. 127 Seducens populum et inania predicans . . . ab aecclesia dei subtraheret . . . illic populum seducebat relinquens aecclesias publicas, concurrens ad illa signa, quae ab eo false fiebant, Boniface, Ep. 57, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 104; iussit ibi publicas orationes celebrare, donec multitudines populorum spretis ceteris episcopis et dimissis antiquis aecclesiis in talibus locis conuentus celebrabant, Boniface, Ep. 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 111. 128 In campis et ad fontes . . . ungulas suas et capillos dedit ad honorificandum et portandum cum reliquiis sancti Petri . . . capillos et ungulas suas populis pro sanctualia tribuebat, seducens populum, Boniface, Ep. 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, pp. 111, 118; the locations near springs imply baptisms. 129 Neuman de Vegvar, “Converting the Anglo-Saxon Landscape,” pp. 413–24; Cluse, “Stories of Breaking,” pp. 403–5, 430–1; Karen Louise Jolly, Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: ElfCharms in Context (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), pp. 25, 29–31; like the cross in the Vita Turiaui, some of Aldebert’s crosses were made of wood; cf. Council of Soissons (744), 7, MGH Concilia 2.1, p. 35; Vita Secunda Turiaui 4, AASS Jul 3, p. 617. 130 The original redaction of the Heavenly Letter—textually close to Aldebert’s version—dates to the sixth century. Licinian knew that text by the end of that century. This epistle was not written prior to 492, for it mentions St. Michael’s shrine on Mount Gargano, built in that year; Haines, Sunday Observance, pp. 8–13, 36–8, 44–6; Priebsch, Letter from Heaven, pp. 19–34; John Charles Arnold, The Footprints of Michael the Archangel: The Formation and Diffusion of a Saintly Cult, c. 300–c. 800 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 67–76, 80, 86–7, 90–2.

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Catalonia, most of Spain probably did not celebrate Rogationtide until the fifth Council of Toledo in 636. But an eighth-century Frank like Aldebert would have linked many sections of the letter to Rogationtide. After all, the apocryphon starts by portraying the city of Rome celebrating three days of fasting, penance, and prayer.131 While concentrating on Sunday observance, the apocryphon exhorts Christians to a variety of proper behaviors (e.g. almsgiving, godparenthood, tithing, confession) in order to ward off a hailstorm and ensure agricultural fertility. In addition to hail, Christ threatens to punish disobedient Christians with wolves, locust, plague, fire, famine, and even dragons in some versions of the letter—all dangers that medieval Rogation preachers also addressed.132 The Heavenly Letter stresses that priests, deacons, and monks alike should preach these ritual duties to the laity. In fact, manuscripts reveal that clergymen often adapted the letter into a Quando Volueris homily: a “whenever you want” sermon designed for no particular feast; preachers usually employed Quando Volueris texts for instructional holidays like Lent or Rogationtide.133 The letter insists that Christians ought to “observe the three-day fast just like the Ninevites” by “prayers, walking to churches, and placing the cross before all the houses.”134 The text imagines the whole city celebrating a three-day penitential procession— much like Rogationtide. This passage likely inspired Aldebert to construct standing crosses in the fields and to direct his own distinctive processions. Aldebert and his new shrines were direct rivals to the collegiate clergy of the older baptismal churches of the plebes. The holy man conducted competing processions and baptisms—perhaps Pentecost baptisms soon after Rogationtide or Easter baptisms after Palm Sunday—and persuaded many Franks to switch congregations. Angered rival clergymen and neighboring bishops must have accused Aldebert before Boniface. One of the papal letters against Aldebert advises that Boniface and his people hold a penitential procession in order to seek divine favor against their adversaries.135 For Zacharias, the best solution to bad ritual is good ritual. 131 Aldebert’s copy of the Heavenly Letter resembled the redaction edited by Haines in Appendix IIb; qui sunt in Romana ciuitate, triduanas fecerunt uigilias in ieiuniis, in orationibus per diebus et noctibus, Boniface, Ep. 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 115; Haines, Sunday Observance, pp. 201–5. 132 Propter hoc perit mundus et iudicium domini super cunctum uenerit populum presentem . . . liberauit uos dominus . . . super uos lapides pensantes pondera quinque . . . dabit uobis frumentum uindemiam et pomam arborum . . . quia Christiani estis, quia pagani non reddunt decimas et me colere nesciunt, Haines, Sunday Observance, pp. 118–25, 201–5, 211–12; Lynch, Christianizing Kinship, pp. 124–8, 148–50. 133 Haines, Sunday Observance, pp. 64–5; Priebsch, Letter from Heaven, pp. 9–11. 134 Expergiscimini in oracionibus, in uigiliis, in ieiuniis, in oracionibus ad ecclesias meas ambulate; crucem per omnes domos ponite; super capita uestra cinerem spargite. Triduanas sicut Nineuite fecerunt agite, Haines, Sunday Observance, pp. 118–25, 178, 181, 201–5. 135 Zacharias focuses on pagan raiders, but notes that the procession assists against all foes: sed populis tibi commissis, reuerentissime frater, predica ieiunium, supplicationes apud deum

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Because Aldebert’s enemies could not convict him of any heterodox teachings or moral lapses, they strove instead to portray him as a magician—a new Simon Magus, whose communion with demons allowed him to work mighty signs.136 An eleventh-century hagiographer of Boniface, for instance, decries Aldebert’s “false healings and magical words.”137 Aldebert’s practice of processing to churches near springs must have alarmed reformers like Boniface, for early medieval churchmen often distrusted holy springs and groves as signs of enduring paganism.138 Of course, while Boniface probably mentions Aldebert’s springs to imply pagan ties, Christian holy springs abounded and Aldebert’s fonts likely had a straightforward baptismal purpose. Rogation preachers often warn their congregation not to confuse the procession with weather magic—implicitly admitting that the two practices shared structural components. In one of his Rogation sermons, for instance, Ratherius of Verona contrasts the licit power of Elijah to bring rain by prayer, discussed in the day’s epistle lection (James 5:16–20) with the sinful foolishness of those who believe that demons or weather magicians cause storms of weather magic.139 A mid-ninth-century episcopal statute from the diocese of Milan, similarly, condemns “unlawful observances and incantations” such as “processions never decreed.”140 This denunciation occurs right after a canon requiring that all churches celebrate the Rogation Days and other liturgical feasts; the bishops feared uncanonical—and possibly magical—marches that aped the Rogation Days. Likewise, early medieval charms contain litanies and ceremonial marches as acts of ritual power.141 Consider, for instance, one laetaniarum . . . Te autem, ut prediximus, nullatenus aduersa conturbent, Boniface, Ep. 60, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 121; cf. Boniface, Ep. 118, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 254. 136 Boniface, Ep. 59, 80, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, pp. 109–10, 116. 137 Fallendo daret sanitatem . . . uenenosa colloquia, Anonymous of Mainz, Vita Quarta Bonifatii 2, MGH SRG 57, pp. 93–4; uenenosa could mean “poisonous.” But ueneficium is a standard term for witchcraft. In the context of false miracles, a magical implication is likely. 138 Boniface, Ep. 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 111; cf. lucorum uel fontium auguria . . . omnino respuentes, Boniface, Ep. 43, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 69; alii etiam lignis et fontibus clanculo, alii autem aperte sacrificabant . . . alii quippe auguria et auspicia intendebant, Willibald, Vita Bonifatii 6, MGH SRG 57, p. 31; Bartlett, Why Can the Dead, pp. 618–21; Filotas, Pagan Survivals, pp. 22–3, 145–8, 195–9. 139 Ratherius of Verona, Serm. 3.4; cf. Ælfric, Lives of Saints 17.74–183; Agobard of Lyon, De Grandine et Tonitruis 10, 15–16, CCCM 52, ed. L. Van Acker (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981); Rob Meens, “Thunder Over Lyon: Agobard, the tempestarii, and Christianity,” in Paganism in the Middle Ages: Threat and Fascination, ed. Carlos Steel et al. (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2012), pp. 157–66; Filotas, Pagan Survivals, pp. 270–5; for generic condemnations of magic in Rogationtide homilies, cf. Vercelli Homilies 10.44–54, 21.210–18; Bazire and Cross 6.192–205; Ælfric, Supplemary Homilies 29. 140 Per parrochias uestras nullas inlicitas alias obseruationes et incantationes nec auguria uel aliqua maleficia, ad arbores uel ad fontes . . . iniussas letanias . . . quae mergunt homines cum diabolo in infernum, Capitula Eporedensia (second quarter of the ninth century), 10, MGH CE 3, p. 242. 141 Cf. Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 34–5, 46, 56–8, 64–74; Jolly, Popular Religion, pp. 15–18, 86–90, 116–17, 141–3, 160–1; Kramer, Between Earth and Heaven, pp. 175–86.

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Anglo-Saxon cure from the Lacnunga or “Remedies” (London, BL Harley 585), a disorderly commonplace book from c. 1000 filled with medicinal recipes warding off demons and elf-magic. This recipe instructs the healer to walk with a virgin to a stream to brew a potion out of herbs and consecrated wine and then to bear the tonic to church for mass.142 During this circuit, the healer must chant various songs, such as psalms, litanies, and the Lord’s Prayer.143 This charm functions like a Rogationtide procession in miniature, with similar gestures, recitations, and apotropaic goals. Such structural parallels between Rogation processions and less accepted folkloric practices triggered suspicions. For instance, as proof of his improper rituals, Aldebert’s critics quoted from a prayer that the preacher had written and distributed to his followers.144 Aldebert composed this prayer in the first person so that his Christian followers could recite it on their own behalf. The prayer contained common features of apotropaic adjurations and incantations during the early Middle Ages: invocations, names of power, lists of intercessory figures like archangels, supplication for safety. Far from unorthodox, it was a standard apotropaic prayer written by a pastor for his congregation to recite—suited for Rogationtide or another festival averting communal threats. Despite these commonplaces, Pope Zacharias railed against the prayer’s list of eight intercessory archangels and denied that any except Michael were the names of true angels, rather than demons in disguise.145 But Aldebert was better informed about angelic names than the pope. At least four of the appellations—Uriel, Raguel, Tubuel, and Simiel—are all normal names for angels in late antique apocrypha as well as in early medieval liturgies and ritual formulae.146 Critics like Zacharias only succeeded in suppressing the veneration of non-biblical angels after the turn of the millennium. 142 Lacnunga, no. 29, in Edward Pettit, Anglo-Saxon Remedies, Charms and Prayers from British Library Ms Harley 585: the Lacnunga, (Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press), vol. 1, p. 16; cf. Pettit, Anglo-Saxon Remedies, pp. xxvii, xliii, 134–5; Stephen Pollington, Leechcraft: Early English Charms, Plant Lore, and Healing (Norfolk, England: Anglo-Saxon, 2000), pp. 71–4, 461. 143 For comparable charms containing marches, formal gestures (such as placing crosses on all four sides of infertile land or livestock), and the recited texts like the litany, Lord’s Prayer, and creed, see Lacnunga, no. 63, 133, Pettit, pp. 30–6, 96; Bald’s Leechbook I, no. 45, 63, in Thomas Oswald Cockayne, Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England (Wiesbaden: Kraus Reprint, 1965), vol. 2, pp. 112, 138; Bald’s Leechbook III, no. 62, 68, Pollington, pp. 400–2, 406; G. Storms, Anglo-Saxon Magic (New York: Gordon Press, 1974), pp. 172–6, 222–4, 287, 306; Burchard of Worms, Decretum 19.5, PL 140.976C–976D. 144 Pater sanctorum angelorum . . . te inuoco et clamo et inuito te super me miserino . . . A te peto, a te clamo, a domino Christo confido animam meam . . . Praecor uos et coniuro uos et supplico me ad uos, angelus Uriel, Boniface, Ep. 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 116. 145 For instance: solent aliquit dicere Heuel, Salathiel, Raguel, sed haec non nomina angelorum sed demoniorum sunt, Pauca problesmata de enigmatibus ex tomis canonicis, Textus breuior, Praefatio 14–17, CCCM 173, ed. Gerard MacGinty (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000); cf. Ordines iudiciorum dei 28, MGH Formulae, ed. Karl Zeumer (Hanover: Hahn, 1882), p. 632. 146 Although Carolingian synods recognize only three named angels (Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael), late antique apocrypha name more including Oriel/Uriel, Raguel, Tobiel/Tubuel, and

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Aldebert may have written an invocation of these angels so that his followers could replace the traditional charms with a clerically approved, Christian apotropaic. Aldebert’s prayer, for instance, is contemporaneous with penitential canons telling Christians to recite the Lord’s Prayer and creed in the place of profane incantations.147 While Aldebert’s prayer does not survive complete, it may have concluded with the repeated recitation of liturgical prayers like the Lord Prayer’s, the Gloria, or a Lorica, as many medieval Christian incantationes do. Aldebert was behaving like a good pastor. But because the line between licit and illicit rituals of power was vague, the holy man could be denounced as a sorcerer. Even the most pious could see their devotional practices banished into the outer darkness of paganism. As a church-building preacher, Aldebert was far from as eccentric as either Boniface or many modern scholars have professed. The holy man had the support not only of his popular followings but also of wealthy laymen and bishops. He worked hard to establish new institutions of pastoral care— baptismal churches, oratories, standing crosses—all over the countryside. He celebrated public liturgies, led processions, and promoted lay devotion. Aldebert was a pillar of the traditional Christian order in Francia that Boniface wished to overturn. Indeed, Aldebert likely earned himself the most trouble by brazenly consecrating shrines and leading ceremonies outside his own diocese: “scorning other bishops and dismissing the ancient churches.”148 A medieval bishop had a lot of leeway in his own province, but none when he interfered in somebody else’s. Splitting the Rogation procession would have been particularly controversial, assuming that is one of the “public prayers” at issue. After all, Rogationtide embodied the local community as a single unified march. Aldebert had transformed processions focusing on the solidarity of a baptismal church or cathedral into rites detaching his own transdiocesan following from their local congregations. No one in eighth-century Francia mirrors Aldebert as closely as Boniface himself, who won himself many enemies by constantly intervening in other bishops’ domains. Aldebert was exactly the sort of educated ascetic pastorbishop that Boniface wanted the disreputable clerics of Francia to become. The Simiel/Samael; Katelyn Mesler, “The Liber iuratus Honorii and the Christian Reception of Angel Magic,” in Invoking Angels: Theurgic ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries, ed. Claire Fanger (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University, 2012), pp. 119–21, 129–31, 147; cf. Arnold, The Footprints of Michael, pp. 12–13, 71, 105–6, 117–18, 121–31; Bartlett, Why Can the Dead, pp. 163–7. 147 Cf. Martin of Braga, De Correctione Rusticorum 16, 18, ed. Gennaro Lopez (Rome: Herder, 1998); Penitential of Silos 7.106, CCSL 156A, ed. F. Bezler (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998); Radulf of Bourges, Capitula 38, MGH CE 1, pp. 255–6; Sermo de Sacrilegia, 14, 27, PLS 4, pp. 971, 973; Burchard of Worms, Decretum 10.20, 19.5, PL 140.836B, 961B; Filotas, Pagan Survivals, pp. 256–9. 148 Spretis ceteris episcopis et dimissis antiquis aecclesiis, Boniface, Ep. 59, MGH Epp. Sel. 1, p. 111.

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holy man built holy places, consecrated churches, preached publicly, composed liturgies, and celebrated processional feasts. Aldebert probably intervened in the dioceses of other bishops for the same reason that Boniface did: because he derided neighboring prelates for their ignorance and immorality. Even his foes could not deny that Aldebert was an ordained bishop, beloved by his congregation. But Boniface, Zacharias, and other critics objected because Aldebert had re-focused rituals of Christianization like baptism and communal procession on his own wonder-working authority rather than on the mediation of the church hierarchy. Aldebert and Boniface were both charismatic holy men and institutionalizing bishops. They diverged, though, because one was part of the conventional power structure, the other a foreigner, trying to alter local customs with the support of foreign popes and far-off nobles. While Boniface cultivated high-level lay and ecclesiastical authorities, Aldebert’s allies were regional, and he managed to offend the Roman pope and Merovingian mayors alike. The form of community Aldebert embodied was traditional, but it lost its place in the more organizational world of the Frankish kingdom.

HOLIDAY PENANCE AND HOLIDAY CHEER On multiple occasions during the early Middle Ages, holy men like the Spaniard or Aldebert and their followers challenged the form and purpose of the Rogation Days. Such challenges were not restricted to marginal groups. Many people—lay and clerical alike—diverged on their understanding of the feast. Indeed, two rival interpretations of the holiday gathered wide support across the Latin West during the early Middle Ages: a celebratory Rogationtide and a penitential one. Some modern scholars have disparaged the celebratory version as popular exuberance, lewd amusements, or even remnants of paganism.149 But, in the eyes of many, Rogationtide penance was problematic theology. The Patarenes, a reform movement of the eleventh century, certainly thought so. Modern historians criticize Rogation revelry as semi-Christian because many medieval churchmen did the same. Rogation banquets arose all over Latin Europe: in England by the middle of the eighth century, in Francia by the ninth century, and in Italy by the tenth. And as soon as such banqueting appears in the sources, numerous medieval preachers, councils, and reformers began to decry groups within their local Christian community who treated the Rogation Days as an occasion for feasting. These protests grew so common 149

For instance, Filotas, Pagan Survivals, pp. 154, 173–5, 178, 184–90; Gittos, Liturgy, Architecture, pp. 12–13.

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that they devolved into a topos. Some clerics may have objected to Rogationtide banquets not because they had ever witnessed them, but because they had read earlier canonical documents mentioning the meals. Nonetheless, these complaints contain almost all of the criteria that Rudy Künzel and Bernadette Filotas have proposed for testing the reliability of medieval witnesses to a popular practice—for instance, multiple attesting genres, competing interpretations, and independent sources from the same area.150 In fact, Rogation banquets remained standard even in the better-sourced late medieval and early modern periods.151 According to the first text to bewail Rogation banquets—the canons of the Anglo-Saxon Council of Clovesho in 747—“it is the custom of many” to celebrate the feast “contaminated with vanities, indifference, or ignorance: that is to say, with games, horse-rides, and overly large meals.”152 The Clovesho divines saw these foul practices as novelties, contrary to the ascetic “customs of our ancestors.” Later English preachers lambast those who transgress during the three days by gossiping, gaming, feasting, drinking, shoe-wearing, linenwearing, sword-wearing, hunting, horse-back riding, and breaking the fast before the consecration of the Eucharist at the ninth-hour mass.153 Celebrants on the Continent differed little. If anything, Frankish behavior was worse, for it allegedly had a sexual component. Carolingian churchmen grumble against lewd jesting, profane songs, and parades of singers headed by prostitutes, rather than by clerical leaders.154 One eighth-century conciliar 150

For these criteria, Filotas, Pagan Survivals, pp. 45–9. For instance, Thiery, Polluting the Sacred, pp. 68–79. 152 Secundum morem priorum nostrorum . . . uenerantur; non admixtis uanitatibus, uti mos est plurimis, uel negligentibus, uel imperitis, id est in ludis et equorum cursibus, et epulis maioribus, Council of Clovesho (747), 16, Haddan, 3.368; a few translations treat cursibus as “horse racing.” But cursus more easily refers to the circuit of the procession itself. Instead of walking as they ought, some healthy Christians rode horses. Cf. Bazire and Cross 6.38–40; Neuman de Vegvar, “Converting the Anglo-Saxon Landscape,” p. 421; Hutton, Stations of the Sun, p. 282; Kramer, Between Earth and Heaven, p. 153. 153 Hie on ælcere tide forbodene syn . . . idele spaeca 7 taeflunga 7 gebeorscipas . . . ne geþristlæce ænig man ætes oððe wætes to onbyrigenne ær þære nigoðan tide & ær he mæssan hæbbe gehyred, Vercelli Homilies 19.88–91; his fæsten abræc ær þa halgan reliquias eft into þam temple comon, and on ælc þæra manna þe an fodspor gesceod eode mid þam halgan reliquium oððe mid linenum hrægle oððe mid wæpne oððe on horse geride oððe huntian ongunne . . . oððe fram mæsse gange ær he hæfde hlam genuman æt þæs prestes handum, Bazire and Cross 4.31–7; ne sy ænig man swa dyrstig þæ he on þysum ðrym dagum ride mid þisum halignessum buton hwa mid mættrumnessum abisegod . . . ne ænig man huntige ne ne ærne, Bazire and Cross 6.19–40. 154 Absque pretiosarum uestium ornatu uel etiam inlecebroso cantico et lusu saeculari cum laetaniis procedant, Statuta Rhispancensia Frisingensia Salisburgensia, 33, MGH Concilia 2.1, p. 211; absque turpibus canticis, iocis et uerbis celebretur. Ut nullus in eis prandia, commessationes diuersasque potiones per diuersa loca facere praesumat, Herard of Tours, Capitula 95, MGH CE 2, p. 148; nullus autem his diebus uestimenta pretiosa induatur . . . prohibeantur ebrietates et commessationes quae fiunt in uulgari plebe. Nemo ibi equitare praesumat . . . nequaquam mulierculae choros ducant . . . dies enim abstientiae sunt, non laetitae, Andrieu, Les ordines romani, Ordo 50.36.2; cf. Ratherius of Verona, Serm. 3.1; Atto of Vercelli, Serm. 5, 6, PL 151

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document, for example, denounces Christians who participate in “superstitions” such as “the pagan march dressed in torn rags and shoes,” venerating “the corpses of pretend saints,” and “carrying a statue on procession through the fields.”155 Because these canons envision an illicit outdoor procession, complete with relics and penitential clothing, Bernadette Filotas has hypothesized that Rogation revelers are the target.156 If so, then in the mind of the document’s authors, Rogation merrymaking was pagan idolatry. The size of the Rogation meals had also grown by the ninth century. After all, the Clovesho canon only bewailed epulis maioribus: “meals bigger than is allowed during a time of fasting.” But when later objectors speak of conuiuia, ebrietates, commessationes, and gebeorscipas, they must mean formal banquets.157 Hrabanus Maurus, for instance, warns his congregation not to imitate those who “live even more shamefully” on the three Rogation Days than at normal times.158 For they “prepare their houses for banquets and proceed—men and women alike—combed and ornamented as if these are days of merriment, not penance.” They “canter their caparisoned horses around the countryside,” laughing and impeding the prayers.159 “Then afterwards, they come home and call together not the poor or disabled, but rather their neighbors and allies to banquet:” wasting the rest of the day and night with feasting, imbibing, all sorts of musical instruments, and demonic songs. Hrabanus contrasts these Rogation revelers with the pagan Ninevites, who all, king and pauper equally, rejected rich food and clothes and humbled themselves before God.160 134.840, 841; Regino of Prüm, De Synod. Causis I.C.279–80, Hartmann, pp. 146–8; Burchard of Worms, Decretum 13.6–7, PL 140.886A–886B; Liber Quare, Additio 2.25; Bernold of Constance, Micrologus 57, PL 151.1018C–1018D; Rom. 13:13. 155 De pagano cursu quem yrias nominant scisis pannis uel calciamentis. De eo quod sibi sanctos fingunt quoslibet mortuos. . . . De simulacro quod per campos portant, Indiculus superstitionum et paganiarum, 24–5, 28, MGH CRF 1, ed. A. Boretius (Hanover: Hahn, 1883), p. 223; Ristuccia, “The Rise of Spurcalia,” pp. 56–60, 66–71; the simulacrum is perhaps a reliquary, for reliquaries often took the shape of whatever part of the saint’s body they housed. 156 Filotas, Pagan Survivals, p. 185. 157 In the tenth century, some guilds may have held a banquet at Rogationtide, as guild members were supposed to gather then to give a tithe; Whitelock, English Historical Documents, no. 138. 158 Prae caeteris diebus turpius uiuunt, sceleratius agunt . . . instruunt sibi conuiuia, praeparant domos, ut luxuria in eis diligentius exerceatur . . . compti et ornati in publicum uiri feminaeque procedunt, quasi dies sint laetitiae et non magis poenitentiae . . . super phaleratos resiliunt equos, discurrunt per campos, ora dissoluunt risu . . . alios ab intentione precum impediunt: postquam autem domum ueniunt, conuocant ad conuiuium non pauperes, uel caecos aut debiles . . . sed uicinos ac sodales suos . . . uacant epulis studentque calicibus epotandis; acquirunt si possunt musicorum instrumenta, tympanum, citharam, tibiam et lyram. Inter quae nimia pocula, cantant carmina daemonum arte confecta, sicque diem totum cum nocte consumunt, Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 19, PL 110.38B–38C. 159 For similar behavior at the Palm Sunday procession, cf. Ps-Haymo, Homiliae 94, PL 118.354C–354D; Radulfus Ardens, Hom. 46, PL 155.1832A. 160 Abiectis copiosis epulis . . . et diuitiarum ambitione deposita, humilitatem se paupertatis induerent . . . iram diuinitatis, quam luxuriando prouocauerant . . . rex deposita imperiali

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The most famous Rogation merrymaker of all was the fictitious ninthcentury Pope Joan, who—disguised as a man—supposedly gave birth to an illegitimate son while riding a horse at the Rogation procession and was lynched immediately for her sins. According to the later medieval legend, papal processions avoided walking by her cursed place of death thenceforth.161 While the Pope Joan legend arose in the thirteenth century, it reflects centuries-old fears about the hazards of improper clothing, horseback riding, lascivious women, and popular violence at the Rogation Days. The irreverent Christians of early medieval plaints are elite, for they can afford to ride horses, carry weapons, wear fancy clothing, hunt, and participate in the culture of feasting and song that marked the early medieval lord’s hall. Critics present these post-Rogationtide banquets as rival rituals to the procession itself: competing gatherings, limited to prideful elite feasters rather than the whole Christian body.162 One Carolingian preacher, for instance, employs the common Rogationtide phrase “come together into one” (in unum conuenire) to describe these exclusive feasts, rather than the procession.163 These churchmen were horrified that—instead of giving alms and showing hospitality to the poor— the rich turned the Rogation Days into an opportunity to cement elite bonds. The merrymakers’ behavior, moreover, was an ostentatious repudiation of penitential solemnity. They wore soft linen instead of sackcloth; their feet were clad instead of bare; their waist girded with a sword belt, rather than divested of it.164 References to hunting imply that the revelers ate game meat, rather than the food of Lent-like fasting. But non-penitential does not mean impious, let alone pagan. Such behavior was not necessarily an expression of apathy towards the holiday. The church calendar had its celebratory seasons—times when a good Christian was not allowed to fast—as well as its penitential ones. Rogationtide, after all, falls within the seven weeks of Eastertide: the central period of celebration in the liturgical year.165 Many patristic and medieval

purpura, regali ambitione submota, Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 19, PL 110.37D; cf. Maximus of Turin, Sermones 81.1. 161 Although the earliest accounts just maintain that Pope Joan died on procession, fifteenthcentury versions specify Rogationtide; Thomas F. X. Noble, “Why Pope Joan?” Catholic Historical Review 99, no. 2 (2013): pp. 219–38; Alain Boureau, The Myth of Pope Joan, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 47, 81–2. 162 Hen, Culture and Religion, pp. 246–8. 163 Tam uiros quam feminas . . . quia quantum plus pretiosa uestimenta habere possunt, semetipsos ornant et induunt se, et diliciosa sibi conuiuia preparant et ebrietatem sectantur . . . in unum conueniunt, Pembroke Homiliary 40.63–71, Cross, p. 116; cf. Ps. 102(101):23, 1 Cor. 11:20, 14:23. 164 For penitential divestment of the sword belt (cingulum militiae), see Jonas of Orleans, De institutione laicali 1.10, PL 106.138; Hamilton, The Practice of Penance, pp. 6–7, 21. 165 For Eastertide, see Patrick Regan, “The Fifty Days and the Fiftieth Day,” in Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year, edited by Maxwell E. Johnson (Collegeville, MN: Pueblo, 2000), pp. 223–46.

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authors forbid fasting on these fifty days between Easter and Pentecost. Ambrose of Milan, for instance, claims that during Eastertide “all days are like Sunday,” a “perpetual enjoyment” of the resurrection, when none should fast.166 Other authors call the season “continual merriment,” “the sweet yearly feast famous for its joys and praises,” “a single Sunday jubilee,” “the glad Paschal days.”167 Eastertide was a season of relaxation (remissio) in penance, when many penitential books specify that penitents should eat meat and drink wine.168 Nonetheless, already in the fourth century, some Christians ignored this restriction and fasted during Eastertide. The Italian bishop, Filastrius of Brescia, for instance, indicates that fasting between Easter and Ascension was the norm for his fourth-century congregation.169 The Rogation fast awkwardly juts out of the middle of Eastertide. Even its chant reflects this ambivalence; in all other penitential seasons (e.g. Lent, the Ember Days), both alleluias were left out of the mass, but in Rogationtide, only one of these alleluias was removed.170 Many early medieval clerics felt some discomfort over these contradictions and tried to justify the fasting against its detractors. The tenth-century bishop Ratherius of Verona, for instance, promised that Rogationtide fasting “does not harm the paschal joy,” anticipating objections.171 In a letter from the early 1060s, similarly, the Italian reformer Peter Damian criticized a group of monks who substituted “multi-course dinners” for the fasts of the Rogation Days and the Greater Litany; according to Peter, these monks excused their behavior by pointing to Eastertide

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Per hos quinquaginta dies ieiunium nescit ecclesia sicut dominica, qua dominus resurrexit, et sunt omnes dies tamquam dominica . . . tunc ergo cessabit ieiunium, quoniam in perpetua iocunditate fatigatio cura lassitudo cessabit, Ambrose, Expositio secundum Lucam 8.286–92, CCSL 14, ed. M. Adriaen (Turnhout: Brepols, 1957). 167 For instance: continuata festiuitas, Maximus of Turin, Sermones 44.1–2; gaudiis potius laudibus . . . celebrem quatenus annuis eius festis dulcius, Bede, Homiliae 2.16.148–52; omnes illi L dies . . . sunt quasi unus dominicus dies iubeleus id est remissionis in quibus luctum nec ieiunia licitum agere est, Ademar of Chabannes, Sermo de septiformi gratia Spiritus sancti, Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbiblio., MS Lat. Phillipps 1664, f. 81v. I am grateful to Dr. Michael Frassetto, for use of his transcription; exultandum atque letandum post pascha . . . in his paschalibus commisimus gaudiis, Ratherius of Verona, Serm. 3.1–2; cf. Amalarius of Metz, On the Liturgy 1.36.2–3, Knibbs, vol 1, p. 324; Heiric of Auxerre, Homilarius super euangelium 2.12.184–90. 168 For meat and wine in Eastertide, see Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori, 49.11; Paenitentiale Oxoniense, 46, ed. Raymond Kottje, CCSL 156 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994); Old Irish Penitential, 2.3, The Irish Penitentials, ed. Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: Institute for Advanced Study, 1975), p. 262; Preface of Gildas, 1, Bieler, p. 60; Paenitentiale Cummeani, 2.2, Bieler, p. 112; Council of Tours (567), 18. 169 Filastrius, Diversarum Hereseon 149, CCSL 9, ed. V. Bulhart (Turnhout: Brepols, 1957). 170 Stephen J. Harris, “The Liturgical Context of Ælfrics’s Homilies for Rogation,” in The Old English Homily: Precedent, Practice, and Appropriation, edited by Aaron J. Kleist (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 150–2; on the custom of leaving out the Alleluia, cf. Bede, Homiliae 2.16.198–200; Isidore, De Ecclesiasticis Officiis 1.13.15; Ps-Germanus, Expositio Antiquae Liturgiae Gallicanae, 2.2d, 3e, CCCM 187, ed. P. Bernard (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007). 171 Paschali gaudio quale dampnum ingerimus, Ratherius of Verona, Serm. 3.1–2.

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celebration.172 The Carolingian liturgist Walahfrid Strabo explained that Spanish Christians delayed their Rogation processions until the week after Pentecost for this very reason.173 Amalarius of Metz hints that Westerners should switch to following “the practice of the greater apostolic fathers” and the Byzantine church, rather than of Mamertus, by not fasting.174 Although some churchmen vilified Rogationtide revelers, such merrymakers likely followed an alternate Rogationtide tradition, growing out of this principled clerical opposition to Eastertide fasting. Even the complaints admit that, while these revelers may not have dressed in sackcloth and ashes, they also did not march in regular clothes. Instead, they wore uestimenta pretiosa—that is, their Sunday best.175 They joined in three days of six hour processions: a significant expenditure of effort, even if the merrymakers rode just like the sick and elderly. Reference to songs (cantica, choros) implies that the celebratory version of Rogationtide involved a liturgy. Complaints that such songs were lascivious may just mean that they were not the standard Rogation chants appearing in early medieval sacramentaries. Likewise, Rogation banquets were defensible. Critics bemoan that feasters left to dine before the concluding mass at the ninth hour.176 If so, then before they departed, the revelers had already finished the whole circuit and returned with the congregation to the originating church. They likely saw the mass as an optional addition, rather than an intrinsic part of the Rogation Days. Moreover, early medieval ordines reveal that communal refreshment was expected after certain Christian rites.177 While Rogation marchers had to skip prandium, the dinner occurring around the sixth hour, they broke

172 In prandiorum epulas mutata dolemus . . . ut laetania maior obseruanda sit a cunctis christianis . . . non equitando, non preciosis uestibus induti, sed cinere aspersi, et cilicio induti ieiunemus, nisi infirmitatis impedierit . . . solemnitatem pentecostes in excusationem suae dissolutionis opponunt, dicentes non debere quemquam sub ieiuniorum tunc censura constringi, cum tempus dictet pascalibus potius gaudiis epulari . . . nec uigiliae pentecostes poterunt ieiunio mancipari, Peter Damian, Ep. 118.2, 16–19, MGH Epp. kaiserzeit 4.3, pp. 330, 336–8. 173 Walahfrid Strabo, De Exordiis 29, Harting-Correa, p. 186. 174 Amalarius differentiates Rogationtide and the Roman Greater Litany by stating that only the former includes fasting: miror quomodo inoleuit consuetudo praesentis ieiunii . . . tamen maiorum patrum ide est apostolicorum usus sequendus est, Amalarius of Metz, On the Liturgy 1.37.1–7, 4.24, Knibbs, vol. 1, pp. 332–4, vol. 2, p. 476. 175 Cf. Statuta Rhispancensia Frisingensia Salisburgensia, 33, MGH Concilia 2.1, p. 211; Pembroke Homiliary 40.63–71, Cross, p. 116; Bazire and Cross 4.31–7; Andrieu, Les ordines romani, Ordo 50.36.2. 176 On people leaving before the mass, see, for instance, Bazire and Cross 4.31–7; Vercelli Homilies 19.88–91. 177 For refreshments after a solemnity, see Andrieu, Les ordines romani, Ordo 4.95–6, Ordo 15.65, Ordo 27.78–9, Ordo 30B.81–2; Gregory of Tours, Vita Patrum 3.1, MGH SRM 1.2, p. 222; Bedingfield, Dramatic Liturgy, p. 116; Ferdinando Dell’Oro, “Il vino nella liturgia latina del Medioevo,” in La civiltà del vino: Fonti, temi e produzioni vitivinicole dal Medioevo al Novecento, ed. G. Archetti (Brescia: Centro Culturale Artistico di Franciacorta e del Sebino, 2003), pp. 421–56.

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fast after the procession at cena: the smaller supper of the medieval day at the ninth hour. The Carolingian bishop Radulf of Bourges, for example, tells fasters on Rogationtide to reserve the food and drink they would normally have at prandium and distribute it to the poor for cena. Radulf expected a postprocessional communal feast—although one with rich and poor banqueters.178 Many medieval churchmen and lay elites envisioned a different format for Rogationtide than the penitential version inherited from Late Antiquity. Nonetheless, they honored the sacrality of the holiday. Feasting can be as pious as fasting. Debates about the canonicity of a penitential fast in the middle of Eastertide caused one eleventh-century Italian procession to fall into violence. Between 1045 and 1086, a mass reform movement known as the Pataria split the Christians of the archdiocese of Milan and its suffragan sees (e.g. Brescia, Cremona, Piacenza).179 The Patarenes were a mixed group of artisans, lowlevel clergymen, and lesser nobles who denounced simony and clerical concubinage and boycotted—or even violently disrupted—the allegedly invalid sacraments of unreformed clerics.180 The Pataria and its sympathizers were a diverse movement, with many practices and doctrines which had no relation to processions and which this chapter will not discuss. Already in 1057, Arialdus and the other Patarene leaders began preaching various reforms and set up a separate congregation, the canonica, where the laity could receive the sacraments from celibate non-simoniac priests.181 The Patarenes viewed their canonica as the only true ecclesiastical authority in Milan. Unlike simony and celibacy, Rogation practices were not one of the original Patarene concerns. For instance, Peter Damian, papal legate to Milan in 1059, was in general a supporter of the Pataria even though he esteemed Rogation fasting.182 As legate, Peter advocated a compromise position which banned 178 A carne triduo abstinendum . . . cibum siue potum, quo quisque uti uellet, si non ieiunaret, pauperibus eroget, quia ieiunare et cibos prandii ad cenam reseruare, non mercedis, sed ciborum est incrementum, Radulf of Bourges, Capitula 30–1, MGH CE 1, pp. 257–8; cf. Liber tramitis aevi Odilonis, p. 106; Walahfrid Strabo, De Exordiis 20, Harting-Correa, p. 114; Rauty, “Litaniae maiores et minores,” pp. 90, 98. 179 For the Pataria, see Alzati, Ambrosianum, vol. 2, pp. 20–4, 73; Borella, Il rito, pp. 420–6; Marco Navoni, Andrea da Strumi: Passione del santo martire milanese Arialdo (Milan: Jaca Book, 1994), pp. 9–49; Paolo Golinelli, “I Vallombrosani e i movimenti patarinici,” in I Vallombrosani nella società italiana dei secoli XI e XII: Colloquio vallombrosano: Vallombrosa, 3–4 settembre 1993, edited by Giordano Monzio (Vallombrosa: Edizioni Vallombrosa, 1995), pp. 35–56. 180 Arnulf of Milan, Liber Gestorum Recentium 3.10, MGH SRG 67, p. 178; Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Languages and Models of Intepretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 151–240; Hamilton, Church and People, pp. 79–82, 186. 181 Arnulf of Milan, Liber Gestorum Recentium 3.9, MGH SRG 67, p. 177; Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society, pp. 17–18, 65, 97–8. 182 Peter Damian, Ep. 118.17–18, MGH Epp. kaiserzeit 4.3, pp. 337–8; Peter Damian, Ep. 65, MGH Epp. kaiserzeit 4.2, pp. 228–47; Arnulf of Milan, Liber Gestorum Recentium 3.12, MGH SRG 67, p. 182; Bonizo of Sutri, Liber ad amicum 6, MGH De Lite 1, ed. E. Dümmler (Hanover: 1891), p. 593; Kathleen G. Cushing, Reform and the Papacy in the Eleventh Century: Spirituality and Social Change (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 74–7, 100–5.

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simoniac clergy from officiating in church but not clergy who simoniacs ordained; critics on both sides hated this compromise. Around the time of Peter’s visit, Arialdus of Carimate, a leader of the Patarenes, expanded on the original Patarene criticisms and began to view Rogationtide as an ecclesiastical abuse on par with simony. Indeed, Peter Damian’s letter from the early 1060s defending Rogation fasting may have had Arialdus’ objections in view. Much of the debate between Arialdus and his foes centered on conflicting interpretations of Ambrosian tradition. The four main sources for the Arialdus’ life continue these disputes. Members of the anti-Pataria faction—for instance, the Milanese chroniclers Landulf Senior and Arnulf of Milan—considered practices like a married clergy as local customs inherited from St. Ambrose.183 In fact, Landulf, a married priest himself, wrote his history as “effectively an extended defense of clerical marriage . . . as part of the city’s unique Ambrosian tradition.”184 From this perspective, the reform disguised a papal plot to rob Milan of its independence and unique rituals. Some of the same reformist popes, for instance, Nicholas II and Gregory VII, who backed the Pataria also supposedly tried to suppress the Milanese rite.185 Writers favorable to Arialdus—especially the Gregorian reformer-bishop Bonizo of Sutri and Arialdus’ hagiographer Andreas, the abbot of Strumi— countered their opponents’ assertions by presenting Arialdus as a zealot for Ambrosian tradition. According to these sources, Arialdus was a deacon from the lower nobility (ualuassores, equestri), well-educated in the liberal arts, scripture, and the works of Ambrose; he was probably a schoolmaster, for Landulf calls him an artis liberae magister.186 On the first day of the Rogationtide of 1066, Arialdus supposedly came before his congregation at the canonica. There, he began preaching against the penitential season and warning his followers not to join those gathering to process at the cathedral.187 Until that year, despite their boycott of all masses performed by unreformed clerics, the Patarenes had apparently joined with non-Patarenes at the Rogation procession: an annual hiatus from sectarian divisions.

183 For anti-Paterenes appeals to Ambrosian tradition, see Bonizo of Sutri, Liber ad amicum 6–7, MGH De Lite 1, pp. 591, 604; Arnulf of Milan, Liber Gestorum Recentium 3.13, MGH SRG 67, pp. 184–5. 184 Cushing, Reform and the Papacy, pp. 103–4. 185 Cf. Borella, Il rito, pp. 121–30; Alzati, Ambrosianum, vol. 2, pp. 3–5, 77; Landulf Senior, Historia Mediolanensis 2.2, 2.10–13, MGH SS 8, pp. 46, 49–50. 186 Andreas of Strumi, Vita Arialdi 2–4, Navoni, Andrea, pp. 54–60; Bonizo of Sutri, Liber ad amicum 6, MGH De Lite 1, p. 591; cf. Arnulf of Milan, Liber Gestorum Recentium 3.8, MGH SRG 67, p. 174; Landulf Senior, Historia Mediolanensis 3.5 (4), MGH SS 8, p. 76. 187 Arialdus fecerat in populo, dicens non licere ieiunare in diebus pentecostes, sedicionem mouent in populo, quasi hoc esset contra beati Ambrosii letanias, domum clericorum simul uiuentium diripiunt ipsumque post paucos dies a ciuitate expellunt, Bonizo of Sutri, Liber ad amicum 6, MGH De Lite 1, p. 596; Landulf Senior, Historia Mediolanensis, 3.30 (29), MGH SS, p. 95.

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Now, for the first time, Arialdus condemned Rogation fasting as contrary to the teachings of the fathers; he forbade his followers from fasting between Easter and Pentecost.188 As earlier mentioned, the Rogation Days in Milan fell on the Wednesday through Friday of the week between Ascension and Pentecost—a different time than in Francia but still part of Eastertide. The holy man cited a quotation from St. Ambrose as his chief evidence against the Rogation Day. The feast was just one of many ways that the church in Milan had fallen away from the legacy of its great bishop.189 Arialdus may have consumed meat and wine publicly, to demonstrate his rejection of penance. News of his sermon spread to the congregation at the cathedral.190 Andreas of Strumi claims that, after preventing the crowd from processing, Arialdus went to pray before the body of Ambrose in the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio, exhibiting before hostile onlookers his loyalty to the great saint.191 Strikingly, Arialdus was not the only churchmen during the eleventhcentury papal reform to employ the Rogation Days as an occasion for dividing local communities between papalist and imperialist factions. In 1085, two rival abbots fought over control of the Flemish monastery of Sint-Truiden, one supported by Gregory VII and the other by Henry IV.192 The abbey was under siege during Rogationtide, and both abbots processed with their supporters, blurring the line between congregations and armies. In eleventh-century

188 Arialdus . . . nouitates letanias illas, quas Ambrosiani post ascensionem dominicam antiquitus deuotissime celebrant, suis predicabat auditoribus execrandas, Arnulf of Milan, Liber Gestorum Recentium 3.15, MGH SRG 67, p. 188; cf. Andreas of Strumi, Vita Arialdi 17, Navoni, Andrea, p. 112; Paolo Golinelli, La Pataria: lotte religiose e sociali nella Milano dell’XI secolo (Milan: Europía-Jaca Book, 1984), pp. 18–19, 89–90, 122, 136, 159–60. 189 Ambrose, Expositio secundum Lucam 8.286–92; Andreas of Strumi, Vita Arialdi 17, Navoni, Andrea, pp. 112–16; Arialdus, cum inter paschalia solempnia ecclesia Mediolanensium letanias deuote celebraret, praedicando ac cum clericis rixando, nullum ieiunium in istis diebus sancto asserente Ambrosio fieri debere, et carnem et uinum legaliter his tribus diebus posse comedere, firmabat, Landulf Senior, Historia Mediolanensis, 3.30 (29), MGH SS 8, p. 95. 190 Una omni iam ecclesia congregata . . . locum e quo docere solebat . . . quidam enim illico currentes ad ecclesiam maiorem ubi iam ciuitas erat omnis congregata, Andreas of Strumi, Vita Arialdi 17, Navoni, Andrea, pp. 112, 116. 191 Post haec autem plebem dimisit et ad sancti Ambrosii corpus causa orandi perrexit, Andreas of Strumi, Vita Arialdi 17, Navoni, Andrea, p. 116. 192 The bishops of Metz and Liege, with the support of the papacy, had chosen Abbot Lanzo of St-Vincent-de-Metz to be the new abbot in 1082. As an outsider, Lanzo was unpopular with the brothers and in 1085 a disaffected monk named Luipo convinced Emperor Henry IV to appoint him abbot. Luipo’s forces—eventually victorious—besieged Lanzo in the abbey during the Rogation Days: in pompa magna militum, qua die secunda feria fuit rogationum . . . Lanzo interea letanias rogationum intra parietes templi agebat cum paucis monachis, Luipo per campos, ut mos est, cum multis de fratribus nostris et turba laicali, Rodulf of Sint-Truiden, Gesta abbatum trudonensium 3.2–3.3, CCCM 257, ed. P. Tombeur (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013); Wood, The Proprietary Church, pp. 430–1; Hans-Werner Goetz, Geschichtschreibung und Geschichtsbewußtsein im hohen Mittelalter (Berlin: Auflage Akademie Verlag, 2008), pp. 400–9; for the Rogation Days during a siege, cf. Brown, Civic Ceremony and Religion in Medieval Bruges, pp. 55, 87–9.

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Arezzo, likewise, Rogation marching was one of the practices differentiating the old cathedral canons from new reformed clergymen.193 In Milan, Arialdus cleverly deployed Rogation traditions in his attack on the feast itself. The holy man preached at the procession—the standard moment for Rogation sermons—before a gathering of pious clergy and laity. Arialdus may have anticipated that the Rogation processors would visit Sant’Ambrogio as a station during the march and went there so that they would see him refusing to participate. Arialdus cited the authority of a church father (Ambrose) for his interpretation of the feast—a father, moreover, who was more famous than Mamertus. The anti-Patarene faction, in contrast, claimed that not fasting was a heretical violation of Ambrosian custom.194 Arialdus’ fiery preaching and his opponents’ jeers led to an outbreak of street violence between two different crowds (turbae) in which six people died. An abbey supportive of the Pataria was ransacked, the Archbishop of Milan was beaten, and Arialdus himself fled the city for his own safety.195 Arialdus’ foes caught up with him and killed him a few weeks later. The next year, the new Patarene head Erlembald and a troop of his supporters threatened the archbishop with violence if the bishop did not allow them to translate the relics of the martyred Arialdus to a church in Milan. Erlembald arranged to celebrate Arialdus’ translation during the Rogationtide of 1067, deposing his relics at the monastery of San Celso—the main Patarene monastery.196 Erlembald appropriated the ceremonies of Rogation procession to promote the divisive new cult of a Patarene martyr, rather than to stress diocesan unity. A decade later, his opponents would do the same. Erlembald was killed in a street riot on April 15, 1075, a few weeks before Rogationtide. Just as Arialdus’ death came soon after he had prevented the celebration of a major holiday (the Rogation Days), so Erlembald supposedly lost his support and was killed after 193

Historia custodum Aretinorum, MGH SS 30, p. 1473. Qui tam sanctum opus damnat, esse hereticum deique inimicum, Andreas of Strumi, Vita Arialdi 17, Navoni, Andrea, p. 116. 195 Unde ipso instante triduo, discidentibus inter se turbis factus est in urbe conflictus . . . in die sancto pentecosten procedens, Arnulf of Milan, Liber Gestorum Recentium 3.15, 3.18, MGH SRG 67, pp. 188, 193; quibus per ciuitatem auditis atque dictis letaniis interruptis, praelium magnum a partibus utrisque adorsum est, Landulf Senior, Historia Mediolanensis, 3.30 (29), MGH SS 8, pp. 95. 196 From Ascension (May 17), Arialdus’ body was publicly displayed. Erlembald then translated Arialdus’ relics into church on Pentecost (May 27): Bonizo of Sutri, Liber ad amicum 6, MGH De Lite 1, p. 597; Andreas of Strumi, Vita Arialdi 25, Navoni, Andrea, p. 154; for the Patarene affiliation of this monastery, cf. Arnulf of Milan, Liber Gestorum Recentium 3.15, 3.20, MGH SRG 67, pp. 188, 198; Landulf Senior, Historia Mediolanensis, 3.30 (29), MGH SS 8, p. 96; Cinzio Violante, “Riflessioni storiche sul seppellimento e la traslazione di Arialdo e di Erlenibaldo capi della Pataria milanese,” in Pascua Medievalia: Studies voor Prof. Dr. J M De Smet, edited by R. Lievens et al. (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1983), pp. 66–74. 194

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disrupting Easter baptism. The anti-Patarene faction forbad Erlembald’s funeral procession and, instead, held an Eastertide procession to Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio, complete with music and prayers.197 The traditional Ambrosian march had outlasted its Patarene rival. In 1066 and 1067, then, the once-unified Rogation procession divided Milan into two hostile groups: those who Arialdus convinced to leave and those who desired to continue the customary penitential holiday; those who translated Arialdus’ relics and those who rejected the new saint. Instead of modeling the solidarity of the community under the authority of the church hierarchy, this Rogationtide only emphasized the factions within Milan—loyal to two rival sources of clerical authority, the Patarenes and the bishop, with two different interpretations of the city’s tradition. Both sides saw themselves as the true adherents of St. Ambrose and the other as a dangerous novelty. Arialdus and the Milanese Patarene were only the most notorious of a wide group of early medieval clergymen and laity who reinvented Rogationtide as a holiday of celebration, not penance. While the Patarenes arose only at the end of the early Middle Ages, their repudiation of Rogation penance was the climax of much older tensions dating from the Carolingian period. Eventually, their innovation birthed festive Rogation Days like the Anglican parish perambulation or the contemporary folkloric rite of spring. For Rogation revelers were not apathetic syncretists, but people who saw themselves as pious Christians performing a celebratory Christian ritual for theological reasons. Far from static, Rogationtide was always potentially multiple, allowing different groups to contest the feast by providing their own interpretation. Different performances of the feast embodied different visions of community. The celebratory Rogationtide was a ritualized version of a lord’s aduentus: the formal reception of an arriving notable.198 According to one critic, celebratory Rogation marches were “a depraved custom utterly unseemly for Christians,” “more like the sallies of knights and the tricks of catamites” than like penance.199 The holiday manifested the community of the noble hall with its conspicuous consumption, heroic songs, mounted warriors, and cornucopian banqueting. Penitential Rogationtide, on the other hand, ritualized the experience of exile. All Christians, regardless of their original status, were forced to leave their 197 Ciues omnes triumphales personant hymnos deo ac patrono suo Ambrosio, armati adeuntes ipsius ecclesiam. In crastinum simul cum clero laici in letaniis et laudibus ad sanctum denuo procedentes Ambrosium, Arnulf of Milan, Liber Gestorum Recentium 4.10, MGH SRG 67, p. 216; cf. Arnulf of Milan, Liber Gestorum Recentium 5.2, MGH SRG 67, p. 221; Bonizo of Sutri, Liber ad amicum 7, MGH De Lite 1, p. 605. 198 For the medieval aduentus, Susan Twyman, Papal Ceremonial at Rome in the Twelfth Century (London: Boydell Press, 2002), pp. 1–21, 41–87; McCormick, Eternal Victory, pp. 329–32, 365; Dey, The Afterlife of the Roman City, pp. 57–63, 166–9. 199 Prauissima consuetudine . . . quasi militantium excursiones et mollium iuuenum lasciue circumuentilationes . . . non decere . . . nullius que prorsus christiani esse, ut in equo penitentiam ageret, Gislebertus of Sint-Truiden, Gesta abbatum trudonensium 8.10.

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homes, poorly dressed and hungry; they marched out, fearing impending war, plague, and famine, led by their clergy, rather than by lay lords. Invasion, civil war, infertility, and plague were all common experiences in the early Middle Ages, and refugees fleeing from their damage were a common sight. Begging refugees threw themselves on the generosity of the people they encountered, just as the penitent depended on the mercy of God and his saints. The Rogation march asked the whole community to experience exile—if only for three days.

CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE BORDERLANDS The events of the Rogation Days at Paris in 580, around Rheims in 743, and at Milan in 1066 were not happy. In all three, the unity of the procession collapsed into violence, repression, and inter-clerical squabbling. In all three, the ecclesiastical hierarchy and ascetic sanctity ended up at odds, pitting two different forms of Christian piety against each other. In all three, the ritual failed; it only worked to stress the divisions and factions within the local congregation, rather than their oneness. Nevertheless, the Spaniard, Aldebert, and Arialdus shared little in common in terms of their specific devotional practices and goals. Arialdus, for instance, hated the Rogation Days, while Aldebert’s movement embraced the feast. The Spaniard adhered to the local traditions of his Spanish micro-Christendom, while Arialdus sought the support of the distant Roman pope against local customs. Aldebert was an institution builder, who constructed churches, allied with other bishops, and strove to improve pastoral care in his diocese; the Spaniard, in contrast, was a wandering ascetic who pitted the cult of saints against the local diocesan leaders. Despite their differences, all three holy men appropriated the Rogation procession as a strategy for making Christians; they embodied a new communal order in the gestures of the feast. Because the Rogation Days played a central role in Christianization, the risk of ritual failure always loomed. Multiple types of failure occurred. Participants skipped the closing mass. Violence broke up processions midway. Abnormal procedures reduced the holiday to magic. The wrong people—heretics and Jews—joined the march or led opposing ceremonies against it. Rogationtide failure was never merely deviation from routine practice.200 Rather, theological discernment was required. Clerical critics had to judge when deviations were sins marring the feast: at times, even sins invalidating it. Paradoxically, when Rogationtide failed, then its role creating an exclusive Christian commonwealth was starkest. In the short term, Aldebert, Arialdus, 200 Not all mistakes in a ritual are failures of that ritual. For failures “in ritual” vs. “of ritual,” Grimes, Ritual Criticism, pp. 199–205, 208–9; McClymond, Ritual Gone Wrong, pp. 36–7.

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and the Spaniard succeeded in overturning the local church structure in favor of their own charismatic power. In the long run, all three were ousted, consigned to forbidden categories like “magician,” “heretic,” or “Judaizer,” and expelled from the institutional authority of the church. “The activity at the core of persecution is classification,” and rituals of Christianization classify above all else.201 Sectarian distinctions were often not operative in the medieval world; they became operative when there was some pragmatic reason for them to be so. This oscillation between fixed and fluid borders is why a new paradigm for Christianization is necessary. The topics of Rogation homilies, from doomsday and the fleetingness of human existence to ad status moral behavior, from the various origin stories to the Lord’s Prayer, expound what the ritual itself acts out: the submission of each individual into a uniform people of God, placed under the guidance of his clergy. But the Rogation Days were also always a ritual of exclusion as well as inclusion; it marked who and what was not part of the community. The rite banished deer and earthquakes, demons and disease, heretics and pagans and Jews. In the end, it mainly banished pious Christians, who discovered that once-flexible borders were now demarcated so as to place them outside the commonwealth of God.

201

Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society, p. 184.

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5 Praying Orthodoxy Mandatory rituals fashioned the Christian commonwealth as a body separate from its non-Christian contemporaries and ancestors. But, in the early Middle Ages, mandatory rituals rarely happened alone. Basic Christian instruction accompanied these same rites. Becoming Christian in the early Middle Ages was not solely a ritual performance. Christianness brought an expectation of doctrinal knowledge and conviction, and churchmen and lay rulers alike labored to accomplish this expectation. Christianization was neither just a transfer of knowledge nor a public event; it was a nexus between rite and preaching, a performance through which Europeans learned what it meant to be Christian. As a multi-day feast with widespread lay participation and public preaching, Rogationtide was an ideal occasion for Christian formation. During Late Antiquity, the baptismal catechumenate—not the Rogation Days—was the framework for Christian instruction. In contrast, beginning in the eighth century, preachers like the Venerable Bede, Hrabanus Maurus, and Ælfric of Eynsham centered their Rogation sermons upon basic instruction. Churchmen at Rogationtide expected participants to know the two fundamental Christian texts—the Lord’s Prayer and Apostles’ Creed—and they often explained the Lord’s Prayer during the feast. The knowledge of these two texts demarcated boundaries between the Christian commonwealth and those beyond. Knowledge both proved right doctrine and enabled right praxis. Rogationtide instruction cannot be separated from the larger context of the holiday itself—from the gathering of the community, the music, postures, formality, and devotions. The audience that heard Rogationtide preaching understood it within the context of these ritual practices. The Rogation Days existed along a continuum of sacred and profane acts.1 No activity is a ceremony innately; instead, activities are ritualized to a greater or lesser degree as they accumulate rules, formalities, orderings, symbols, and

1

For this continuum, Bell, Ritual Theory, pp. 88–93, 101–8, 140–2, 218–23; Bell, Ritual: Perspectives, pp. 76–83, 139–69; McClymond, Ritual Gone Wrong, pp. 3–7.

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specialized objects. Holiness is set apart.2 As medieval authors knew, the Latin word sacer (holy) did not primarily denote goodness or badness—only that the holy thing was devoted to a god.3 Something could qualify as “holy” by being accursed or unnaturally altered.4 Thus, baptism, for instance, is on a continuum with bathing, and the Eucharist with feasts. Rogationtide was not categorically different from a military march, a pilgrimage, a mass emigration, or even just church attendance. Misinterpretations and appropriations—such as the conflicts surrounding Aldebert or Arialdus—were always possible. As a result, preaching was a strategy through which the clergy could increase the separateness of the rite and guide a congregation’s experience of its meaning and through it of the meaning of Christianness. Today, sermonic evidence and liturgical orders can seem detached—extant, as they are, in different manuscripts and published in disparate volumes. But during the early Middle Ages, the vocalized content of the preaching and the symbolic content of the practices reinforced one another. Early medieval Rogationtide preachers often present the Lord’s Prayer as a distillation of themes of the feast itself: themes like repentance, communal solidarity, and dependence on God. Through their penance, Christians both trusted in a holy God, who judged the misdeeds of their local congregation, and felt themselves sinful and punished, confirming the truth of that faith.5 Praying for divine mercy was not only a model of what Christians believed; it was a model for believing it—for being Christianized. The holiday’s preaching and its performance were a dialectical whole, for “every liturgy is an education.”6 Churchmen shaped Christian minds by moving Christian bodies. The Rogation procession taught people not just that they were sinners, but that as Christians they could be saved. 2 For the sacred as “things set apart and forbidden,” cf. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms, p. 47; Latin writers defined “profane” as “things which must be far outside the shrine, not among sacred things”: profanus autem, cui sacris non licet interesse . . . porro, id est, longe a fano, Isidore of Seville, Differentiae 1.423, PL 83.53A; cf. Isidore, Etymologiae 10.224; Macrobius, Saturnalia, 3.3.3, Kaster, vol. 2, p. 18. 3 For instance, sacrum uocamus quod ad deum pertinet . . . sacrum uero duo significat, et bonum, et malum, Isidore of Seville, Differentiae 1.341, 498, PL 83.45C, 59C; cf. supplicium . . . ita damnatur ut bona eius consecrentur . . . sacrae enim res de rebus execrandorum fiebant, Isidore, Etymologiae, 5.27.3, 6.19.82; Nathan J. Ristuccia, “The Image of an Executioner: Princes and Decapitations in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus,” Humanitas 29, nos. 1–2 (2016): pp. 171–2. 4 For sacer as “accursed” (execrabilis), see, for instance, Servius, In Vergilii carmina, Aeneid 3.57, Thilo, p. 346; Humbert of Silva Candida, Adversus Simoniacos 1.14, MGH De Lite 1, ed. F. Thaner (Hanover: 1891), 123; classical etymologists asserted that a word’s meaning could be κατὰ ἀντίφρασιν—that is, the opposite sense of its root. From Jerome onwards, exegetes interpreted Hebrew kadesh in this way to mean either something holy or something warped (mutatus) from its natural condition such as a castrated male prostitute; cf. Hrabanus Maurus, Expositiones in librum Numerorum 2.10, 4.8, PL 108.669, 821. 5 Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 44–9, 90–8, 112–18, 126–7; Buc, The Dangers of Ritual, pp. 227–30. 6 Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, pp. 25–6.

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TH E TRANSFORMATION OF PATRISTIC CATECHESIS The Rogation Days captured this interdependence between doctrine and praxis. As multiple scholars have noted, by the later Middle Ages, churchmen frequently used Rogationtide as a time for basic Christian instruction, especially on the Lord’s Prayer.7 This link between formation and procession, though, was not immediate or unavoidable. None of the sermons extant from the first two centuries of Rogationtide display any interest in teaching on these two texts. And for good reason: the late antique church already had two special dates—the traditio symboli and the traditio orationis dominicae—designated for instruction in the Lord’s Prayer and Creed. There was no need to harness Rogationtide to such teaching. Over the course of the early Middle Ages, though, as the Patristic catechumenal system decayed, clerics began to link the Rogation Days with basic Christian instruction. During Late Antiquity, basic Christian instruction in the Latin West centered on the Lenten catechumenate.8 The late ancient catechumenate was a three-stage pre-baptismal preparation and instruction, developing in Christian churches already by the second century at the latest and reaching its classical form at the end of the fourth century. Those interested in joining a church first became catechumens—believers who had pledged their formal commitment to Christianity and entered a lengthy, often three-year, period of spiritual instruction. Although officially Christian, catechumens could neither witness certain rituals like communion nor learn certain doctrines, like the text of the Lord’s Prayer and Creed; catechumens and other unbaptized observers had to exit church services before the Liturgy of the Eucharist. As long as their behavior during these years met clerical approval, catechumens could enroll for baptism and become competentes (“co-seekers”). Over the few weeks before their baptism, competentes participated in examinations of their faith, theological instruction, ascetic exercises, exorcism, and rites like the traditio symboli and the traditio orationis dominicae: ceremonies in which the competentes learned the formerly secret texts.9 Since most baptisms occurred at 7 Cf. Robinson, “Sermons on the Lord’s Prayer,” pp. 441–62; Bazire and Cross, Eleven Old English Rogationtide Homilies, pp. xxiv–xxv; G. R. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England: An Introduction to Sermon Manuscripts of the Period, c. 1350–1458 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926), pp. 146, 200–2, 214; for Pater Noster exegesis in later medieval Rogation sermons, see John Wycliff, Wyclif ’s Latin Works, Sermones I, ed. Iohann Loserth (London: Trübner, 1887), no. 29, pp. 192–9; A Macaronic Sermon Collection from Late Medieval England: Oxford, MS Bodley 649, ed. Patrick J. Horner (Toronto: PIMS, 2006), no. 16. 8 For the catechumenate, Bradshaw, Reconstructing Early Christian Worship, pp. 55–68; Finn, From Death to Rebirth, pp. 137–238. 9 For the traditiones, Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals, pp. 109–33; Monti, The Week of Salvation, pp. 60, 306–7, 360; Suzanne Poque, “Au Sujet d’Une Singularite Romaine de la ‘Redditio Symboli’,” Augustinianum 25 (1985): pp. 133–43; Paul Force, “L’place et signification

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Easter, the season of Lent may have originated in order to supply a period for these examinations and only later acquired penitential and ascetic purposes.10 Normally, the Patristic catechumenate culminated with the pageantry of Easter Vigil itself, including anointings, exorcism, the renunciation of Satan, investing with white robes, and a procession to the altar. After baptism, the competentes became neophytes: fully initiated members of the Christian community. The Patristic catechumenate was both basic instruction and liturgical act. It integrated doctrinal transmission and ritual initiation into the cycle of the liturgical year. Unfortunately, essentially all surviving evidence for the catechumenate comes from major bishoprics like Jerusalem, Rome, Hippo Regius, and Constantinople. But, at least at these sees, bishops taught on the meaning of the Creed and Lord’s Prayer at the traditiones and delivered mystagogical sermons on the sacraments in the days after baptism. Ambrose of Milan, for instance, explained to the neophytes that they could only understand their baptism afterwards, once the grace of baptism had infused them so that they could perceive its meaning.11 The baptized first experienced the spectacle of the catechumenate on their own; then after, they supplemented their own interpretation with the official exegesis of the bishop. The traditiones of the Lord’s Prayer and Creed functioned as the primary form of Christian instruction in the Latin West through the sixth century. Numerous sermons for these rites survive from the years between 450 and 550.12 Despite this long persistence, the traditiones gradually shifted from a rite of passage to a ritual marker with little instructional role. Various causes contributed to this transfiguration: demographic and economic decline, deurbanization, and the group conversion of non-Roman peoples. The rise of infant baptism—the norm across Europe by the eighth century—probably had the greatest impact.13 After all, in its original design, the catechumenate integrated

de la redditio symboli dans l’initiation chrétienne des premiers siècles de l’Église,” L’Initiation (1992): pp. 293–304. 10 Nicholas V. Russo, “The Early History of Lent,” Christian Reflection (2013): pp. 18–27; Maxwell E. Johnson, “Preparation for Pascha? Lent in Christian Antiquity,” in Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year, ed. Maxwell E. Johnson (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), pp. 207–22; Paul F. Bradshaw and Maxwell E. Johnson, The Origins of Feasts, Fasts, and Seasons in Early Christianity (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2011), pp. 89–119. 11 Ambrose, De mysteriis 1.1–4, De Sacramentis 1.1.1–3, CSEL 73, ed. O. Faller (Vienna: Tempsky, 1955); Bradshaw, Reconstructing, pp. 59–63; Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals, pp. 109–33; Akeley, Christian Initiation, pp. 155–60. 12 For a few examples, Caesarius, Serm. 9, 147, 200–1; Eusebius Gallicanus, Serm. 9–10, 76, De Symbolo; Homiliary of Vienna 20, PLS 3.1370–6; Ps-Maximus, Hom. 83, PL 57.432–40; Westra, The Apostles’ Creed, pp. 410–538; Milton McC. Gatch, “Basic Christian Education from the Decline of Catechesis to the Rise of Catechisms,” in Eschatology and Christian Nurture: Themes in Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Religious Life (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Pub., 2000), pp. 79–91. 13 Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, pp. 457–63, 498; Phelan, The Formation of Christian Europe, pp. 43–6, 73, 178–80, 230–1; Lynch, Godparents and Kinship, pp. 143–204; Lynch, Christianizing Kinship, pp. 56–98.

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adult converts into a small sectarian group within a larger society; it was not a mass instructional system for all members of the realm. As the candidates for baptism increasingly became infants, the instructional force of examinations, traditiones, and mystagogy declined—although such teaching may have partly shifted direction towards parents or baptismal sponsors instead. Even as the catechumenate disappeared, though, early medieval clerics and rulers remained committed to universal Christian knowledge of the Lord’s Prayer and Creed. Numerous eighth- and ninth-century canons, for instance, demand that priests ensure that “everyone counted under the name Christian” in their congregation could recite these two texts from memory.14 “All Christians” must learn: old and young, male and female, lord and serf, free and unfree, married and single, for they are a single kindred under one father in heaven, baptized into one mother church.15 According to Charlemagne’s own bishop Ghaerbald of Liège, failing to memorize them was “hostile to the Christian law” and “contrary to Christian worship.”16 For the early tenth-century preacher Atto of Vercelli, “all the foundation of Christian faith” rested in these two texts and ignorant people “who do not believe them whole-heartedly and recite them frequently are not able to be in the universal church.”17 Medieval churchmen understood the first words of the Creed, “I believe (credo) in God, the Father almighty,” to entail more than just assent to his existence.18 As one Frankish liturgist expressed it, “to believe God is to believe

14 Omnes, qui christiano censentur nomine, Capitula Frisingensia Tertia (c. 840), 24, MGH CE 3, ed. Rudolf Pokorny (Hanover: 1995), p. 228; cf. Council of Mainz (813), 45, MGH Concilia 5.1, p. 271; Capitulare missorum speciale (802), 28–30, MGH CRF 1, p. 103; Council of MeauxParis (845), 77, MGH Concilia 3, p. 124; Burchard of Worms, Decretum 4.27, PL 140.732; Ælfric, Ep. 1.12, 61–4, in Die Hirtenbriefe Aelfrics in altenglischer und lateinischer Fassung, ed. Bernard Fehr (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1966), pp. 3, 14–15; Wulfstan, Canons of Edgar, 17, 22. 15 For such paired antonyms, see, for instance, Council of Friuli (796/7), MGH Concilia 2.1, p. 189; Radulf of Bourges, Capitula 23, MGH CE 1, p. 251; Council of Chalons-Sur-Saone (813), 51, MGH Concilia 2.1, p. 283; Capitula e conciliis excerpta 9, MGH CRF 1, p. 313; Collectio Capitularium Ansegisi 2.39, MGH CRF n.s. 1, p. 560. 16 Christianae legi aduersa sunt, ea proponimus, scilicet qui orationem dominicam et symbolum fidei christianitatis . . . catholicae fidei plenitudo continetur, Ghaerbald of Liège, Capitula 2.1–3, MGH CE 1.26; christiane religioni contraria esse uidentur, Capitula Silvanectensia Prima (c. 840), 2–4, MGH CE 3, ed. Rudolf Pokorny (Hanover: 1995), p. 80; cf. Capitula Treverensia (830/900), 1, MGH CE 1, p. 55. 17 Commonendi sunt omnes fideles, ut generaliter a minimo usque ad maximum orationem dominicam et symbolum discant. Et dicendum eis est, quod in his duabus sententiis omne fidei christiane fundamentum incumbit. Et nisi qui has duas sententias memoriter tenuerit et ex toto corde crediderit et in oratione saepissime frequentaverit, catholicus esse non poterit, Atto of Vercelli, Capitula 97, MGH CE 3, p. 301; cf. Theodulf of Orléans, Capitula 1.22–3, 29, MGH CE 1, pp. 119–20, 126; Capitularia Regum Franciae Occidentalis Additamenta (845), 293, MGH CRF 2, p. 219. 18 Medieval authors often cited an Augustinian distinction between “trusting in God” (credere in deum) and merely “believing God” (credere deo); cf. Jam. 2:19; Eusebius Gallicanus, Serm. 10.37–40; Heiric of Auxerre, Homiliae 1.51; Ratherius of Verona, Serm. 3.4, 5.40; Interpolated Paul the Deacon, Hom. 99, PL 95.1289.

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that he is. To believe in God is to love him by trusting in him.”19 Faith was a change of allegiance.20 Through the creed, Christians did not state propositions, but swore loyalty. At the same baptism that a Christian pledged trust (credo) in God, that person also renounced (abrenuntio) the devil and his processions. Just as the Israelites in Judges 12 proved their loyalty by pronouncing the word “shibboleth,” so the Lord’s Prayer and Creed were the verbal “sign” (signaculum) and “token” (indicium) of the Christian people.21 A few Frankish churchmen even adapted the contractual language of fealty oaths and lordship to depict the recitation of these two texts.22 Recitation demarcated the members of christianitas from those who were faithful to another set of rituals. Thus, reformers exhorted their flock to employ the Lord’s Prayer and Creed in the place of older non-Christian incantations when, for instance, gathering medical herbs or blessing the start of a journey.23 By teaching the Lord’s Prayer and Creed, the clergy illustrated the difference between pagan and Christian. In Francia, clerics and lay rulers established various means of enforcing basic Christian instructions. According to a couple canonical documents, government officials had the ignorant thrashed or forced them to fast until they memorized the two texts.24 Social shunning may also have occurred.25

19 Aliud est credo deo et aliud est credo deum et aliud est credo in deum. Credo deo deum esse, credo deum uera dicere, credo in deum credendo illum diligo, Ps-Alcuin, De diuinis officiis 41, PL 101.1271; cf. Liber Quare, Additio II.35.14–15. 20 For the historical usage of credere, see Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Faith and Belief (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979). 21 The Shibboleth comparison occurs in a late antique homily transmitted in Paul the Deacon’s homiliary; Ps-Maximus, Hom. 83, PL 57.433; cf. Isidore, De Ecclesiasticis Officiis 2.22–3; Phelan, The Formation of Christian Europe, pp. 169–78. 22 Ore profiteri quod corde credit ut alii audiant quomodo credat et quomodo deo fidelis . . . si seruum quis habeat et interroget eum utrum ei fidelis sit . . . et post professionem fidelitatis si non demonstratur in opere non placet domini solis uerbis profiteri fidelitatem si opus non sequatur et in opere demonstretur qualiter fidelis sui domini existat seruus, Ghaerbald of Liège, Epistula ad parochianos, Eckhardt, 108; iubeatur a sacerdote orationem dominicam et simbolum dicere et spiritum suum in manus dei commendare et signaculo crucis se munire, Theodulf of Orléans, Capitula 2.10.33, MGH CE 1, p. 183; cf. Hildegar of Meaux, Capitula 2, MGH CE 1, p. 198; Keefe, Water and the Word, vol. 2, p. 423; Gerd Althoff, Family, Friends, and Followers: Political and Social Bonds in Medieval Europe, trans. Christopher Carroll (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 102–35. 23 For instance, Martin of Braga, Capitula 74, Vives, p. 103; Martin of Braga, Pro castigatione rusticorum 16, 18, ed. Gennaro Lopez (Rome: Herder, 1998); Sermo de Sacrilegia, 14, 27, PLS 4.971, 973; 328; Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 43, 45, PL 110.81, 84; Hrabanus, Ad Otgarium 24, PL 112.1418; Radulf of Bourges, Capitula 38, MGH CE 1.255–6; Burchard of Worms, Decretum 1.94.I.51, 10.20, 49, 19.5, PL 140.577, 836, 851, 961; Ælfric, De Auguriis, Lives of Saints 17.94–104; Amos, The Origin and Nature, pp. 214–15; Ristuccia, The Transmission of Christendom, pp. 392–459. 24 Council of Mainz (813), 45, MGH Concilia 5.1, p. 271; Capitula duo incerta (813), 2, MGH CRF 1, p. 257; Burchard of Worms, Decretum 2.156, PL 140.651. 25 Those ignorant of the Pater Noster and Creed were sometimes treated as penitents. In theory, penitents could not enter church or share meals with Christians until their formal reconciliation; Meens, Penance in Medieval Europe, pp. 93–4, 152–6.

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But banishment from church rituals—and the accompanying public shaming— was the main danger. Priests, for instance, kept records of those congregants who could not recite the Creed or Lord’s Prayer.26 Since godparents had the duty of teaching the two texts to children, priests examined godparents before they could sponsor at baptism.27 Godparenthood was a major social institution in the early Middle Ages—a means of forming fictive kin and cementing familial alliances—so non-participation was costly. Likewise, when on visitation, bishops supposedly tested the knowledge of both priests and laity and refused to confirm anyone ignorant of these texts.28 Once Lenten confession became normal from the tenth century forward, many confessors began to examine penitents and to refuse to commune them if they had not learned the Pater Noster and Creed by Easter.29 Mastering these two texts enabled people to partake in church rituals. In a circular fashion, the failure of Christians to know the Lord’s Prayer and Creed denied them access to the sacraments that defined them as Christian in the first place—and thus necessitated learning these two texts. Ideally, recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and Creed was not merely an external act. Recitation brought doctrinal commitment. For example, the first capitula of Ghaerbald of Liège, one of the most copied episcopal statutes, claims that by teaching the Lord’s Prayer and Creed, the clergy display to the minds of the laity “eagerness for all piety and Christian worship.”30 Likewise, Haito of Basel maintained that by professing these two texts, people grew to understand “the entire orthodox faith” and “all things necessary for human life.”31 In these 26

Ghaerbald of Liège, Capitula 2.1, MGH CE 1, p. 26; Capitula Cordesiana (c. 850), 3, MGH CE 3, p. 97. 27 For instance, Council of Clovesho (747), 10–11, Haddan, vol. 3, p. 366; Alcuin, Ep. 3.2, MGH Epp. 4.21; Charlemagne, Ep. ad Ghaerbaldum, MGH CRF 1, p. 241; Lynch, Godparents, pp. 300–1, 323–6; Caesarius, Serm. 1.12, 6.3, 13.2, 16.2, 19.3, 54.1, 130.5, 229.6. 28 Theodulf of Orléans, Capitula 1.22, MGH CE 1, p. 119; Walter of Orléans, Capitula 1, MGH CE 1, pp. 191–2; Capitula Moguntiacensia (c. 810), 1–2, MGH CE 1, ed. Peter Brommer (Hanover: 1984), p. 179; Capitula Treverensia (830/900), 1, MGH CE 1, p. 55; Regino of Prum, De Synod. Causis II.I.74, Hartmann, Sendhandbuch, p. 248; Burchard of Worms, Decretum 1.94.72, PL 140.578; Capitulare missorum speciale (802), 28–30, MGH CRF 1, p. 103; Capitula Silvanectensia Secunda (c. 840), 24, MGH CE 3, ed. Rudolf Pokorny (Hanover: 1995), p. 88. 29 For example, Capitula Helmstadensia (c. 950), 11, MGH CE 3, p. 186; Capitula Rotomagensia (tenth century), 20, MGH CE 3, ed. Rudolf Pokorny (Hanover: 1995), p. 371. 30 Ut unusquisque sacerdos orationem dominicam et symbolum populo sibi comisso curiose insinuet ac totius religionis studium et christianitatis cultum eorum mentibus ostendant, Ghaerbald of Liège, Capitula 1.6, MGH CE 1, p. 18; Geelhaar, Christianitas: Eine Wortgeschichte, pp. 255, 326–7; Van Rhijn, Shepherds of the Lord, pp. 13–48, 101–12, 139–45, 218–31; cf. discat . . . mystica sacramenta christianae religionis et tunc discat fidem sanctae trintatis et symbolum et cetera christianae ammonet lex, Magnus of Sens, in Keefe, Water and the Word, vol. 2, p. 266. 31 Ut oratio dominica, in qua omnia necessaria humanae uitae comprehenduntur, et symbolum apostolorum, in quo fides catholica ex integro comprehenditur, ab omnibus discatur tam latine quam barbarice, ut, quod ore profitentur, corde credatur et intellegatur, Haito of Basel, Capitula 2, MGH CE 1, p. 210.

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texts, the laity learned the ritual practices to which they were bound. Priests were to teach the laity not only the words of these texts but also their explanation (expositiones) according to the writings (traditiones) of the orthodox fathers.32 The ambiguity of such statements is deliberate; the clergy had an obligation both to teach the interpretation handed down (tradere) from the fathers and to employ the short expositio documents—themselves based on the teaching of the fathers for the rites of the traditiones—which circulated across the Carolingian realm as aids in pastoral care. Translations of the Creed and Lord’s Prayer into Old English and Old High German were another common pastoral aid.33 Although the catechumenate had extinguished by the eighth century, knowledge of the Lord’s Prayer and Creed remained linked to Christianness. As a result, early medieval reformers searched for a new context for basic instruction—a novel way to tie Christian formation to the ceremonies of the liturgical year. Since the standard medieval lectionary included neither text, a weekday holiday served better than a normal Sunday.34 Preaching on the Lord’s Prayer and Creed blossomed again from the Carolingian era forward once penitential seasons like Lent and Rogationtide became this new context.35 Basic instruction was no longer baptismal preparation; it was an element of larger rituals of expiation.

ROGATIONTIDE F ORMATION AN D P ATER NOSTER Although Rogationtide increased in popularity in the two centuries after Mamertus, no evidence indicates that any late antique preacher used this feast as an occasion for the basic instruction on the Pater Noster or the 32 Admonitio Synodalis 85, Amiet, p. 65; Waltcaud of Liège, Capitula 2, MGH CE 1, p. 46; Hildegar of Meaux, Capitula 2, MGH CE 1, p. 198; Hincmar of Rheims, Capitula 1, MGH CE 2, p. 35; Radulf of Bourges, Capitula 8, MGH CE 1, p. 239. 33 For translation, Haito of Basel, Capitula 2, MGH CE 1, p. 210; Herard of Tours, Capitula 55, MGH CE 2, p. 140; Council of Mainz (813), 45, MGH Concilia 5.1, p. 271; Burchard of Worms, Decretum 4.27, PL 140.732; Wilhelm Braune, Althochdeutschen Lesebuch (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1965), nos. 6–9. 34 The Apostles’ Creed is extrabiblical, but the Lord’s Prayer appears twice in the Bible: Matt 6:9–13, and Luke 11:1–4. Neither is a normal Sunday lection. Perhaps teaching on the prayer outside of a mass context was so common that there was no need to include these passages as lections. For the development of the lectionary, see Old, Reading, vol. 2, pp. 143–60, 277–95, 428–37, vol. 3, pp. 67–72, 81–95, 99–108, 143–84; Vogel, Medieval Liturgy, pp. 299–356. 35 For preaching on the Lord’s Prayer and Creed, cf. Gatch, “Basic Christian Education,” pp. 81–99; Norman P. Tanner and Sethina Watson. “Least of the Laity: the Minimum Requirements for a Medieval Christian,” Journal of Medieval History 32, no. 4 (2006): pp. 399–400, 404; Van Engen, “Faith as a Concept,” pp. 23–5, 36; Hamilton, Church and People, pp. 163–4, 187, 193, 213, 238, 327.

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Apostles’ Creed. The catechumenate and traditiones still functioned passably in the sixth century.36 The first Rogationtide sermon to tie the holiday with the Lord’s Prayer is the sole Rogation text in the homiliary of the Venerable Bede, and it dates from the 720s—long after the death of the Patristic catechumenate.37 As teaching on the Lord’s Prayer grew increasingly vital to Rogation preaching over the next two centuries, churchmen like Bede, Hrabanus Maurus, and Ælfric of Eynsham emphasized the communal and sacramental aspects of the Lord’s Prayer, as a manifestation of the communal and sacramental aspects of Rogationtide itself. Expounding the Pater Noster was a means of interpreting the format and ethos of the wider feast to the Christian body which performed it. The Venerable Bede was the first preacher to link Rogationtide and the Lord’s Prayer, because basic Christian instruction was foundational to Bede’s larger project of church reform. In his famous 734 letter to Archbishop Egbert of York, for instance, Bede bemoans how large dioceses and clerical corruption impeded pastoral care in England.38 Bede pleads that clerics regularly visit every village and estate to celebrate the sacraments and preach on the Lord’s Prayer and Creed.39 The people of God must chant these texts each morning while genuflecting, so that they long to seek the virtues that the texts depict.40 Bede’s letter employs military language to represent these two texts as apotropaics. By knowing them, the Christian becomes a loyal retainer (fidelis) of God, armed (armare, munire) for spiritual warfare (certamen) with demons.41 Later in his jeremiad, Bede described the church and the military as the only legitimate occupations for elite men.42 While not all can serve in God’s true army—the clergy—even the laity must be equipped against demonic powers. 36

For instance, Martin of Braga, Capitula 49, Vives, p. 101; Martin of Braga, De Correctione Rusticorum 16, 18; Second of Braga (572) 1, Vives, p. 81; Lynch, Christianizing Kinship, pp. 56–98. 37 For Bede’s homilies, see Lawrence T. Martin, “Bede and Preaching,” in The Cambridge Companion to Bede, edited by Scott DeGregorio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 156–69; Old, Reading, vol. 3, pp. 120–5. 38 Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, pp. 101–2, 108–11; Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History, pp. 239–40, 255–6, 273–4, 325–32. 39 Ut fidem catholicam, quae apostolorum symbolo continetur, et dominicam orationem . . . omnes, qui Latinam linguam lectionis usu didicerunt . . . sed idiotas, hoc est, eos qui propriae tantum linguae notitiam habent, haec ipsa sua lingua discere, ac sedulo decantare facito, Bede, Epistola ad Ecgbertum 5, Plummer, pp. 408–9. 40 Ut uerba symboli matutinis semper horis fideles quique decantent . . . orationem uero dominicam saepius decantari ipsa etiam nos consuetudo sedulae deprecationis ac genuum flexionis docuit . . . utpote qui populum dei per crebram symboli uel orationis sacrae decantationem ad intellectum, amorem, spem, fidem, et inquisitionem eorundem, quae decantantur, caelestium donorum, Bede, Epistola ad Ecgbertum 5–6, Plummer, p. 409. 41 Ut caetus omnis fidelium, quomodo fidelis esse, qua se firmitate credendi contra immundorum spirituum certamina munire atque armare debeat, discat . . . et hoc se quasi antidoto spirituali contra diaboli uenena, Bede, Epistola ad Ecgbertum 5, Plummer, p. 409; cf. PsMaximus, Hom. 83, PL 57.433. 42 Bede, Epistola ad Ecgbertum 11, Plummer, p. 414.

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Bede’s sermons echo his concern for basic Christian instruction, because his audience included both clergy and laity.43 The churchman probably composed his gospel homilies to serve as a supplement to the popular sermon collection of Gregory the Great, providing homilies on lections which Gregory had not covered. Rogationtide had not arrived in Rome yet in Gregory’s time, so the pope’s homiliary lacked sermons for both Rogation Sunday and the weekday feast itself.44 In addition to his homiliary, Bede also distributed Old English translations of the Lord’s Prayer and Creed to uneducated clergymen as teaching aids; presumably, he translated them himself and had the Wearmouth–Jarrow scriptorium manufacture copies.45 Bede’s Rogationtide homily—interpreting the standard Rogation lection (Luke 11:5–13), the parable of the friend at night—appeals to his congregation to pursue salvation by prayer and holy living.46 Bede emphasizes seeking the medicine of penitence through confession and intercession, even quoting the command to mutual confession in the epistle lection for Rogationtide (James 5:16–20).47 Bede explains the three gifts mentioned in the Luke passage— bread, fish, and egg—as typologies for the three spiritual virtues of faith, hope, and love.48 Throughout this sermon, Bede quotes from the Lord’s Prayer, evidently believing that his congregation would recognize the scattered allusions.49 Bede’s choice to introduce the Pater Noster is reasonable. Not only is the Pater Noster the paragon of Christian prayer, but it also appears in Luke 11:1–4, the biblical passage directly before the Rogation lection. The text of the Lord’s Prayer in Bede’s sermon combines from both Matthew’s and Luke’s redaction of the Pater Noster, indicating that Bede’s mixed audience knew an oral version of the prayer, more than either of the gospel texts.50 Bede’s exegesis of the Pater Noster serves as a commentary on the Rogation rite. Bede claims that the lection illustrates how the daily recitation of the Lord’s Prayer cares for daily faults.51 Unfortunately, not all supplications are genuine. Those who recite “forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors”

43 For his mixed audience, cf. Bede, Homiliae 1.7.104–15; Thacker, “Monks, Preaching and Pastoral Care,” pp. 137–70. 44 Cf. Bede, Homiliae 2.13–2.16; Gregory I, Homiliae 28, 29. 45 Propter quod et ipse multis saepe sacerdotibus idiotis haec utraque, et symbolum uidelicet, et dominicam orationem in linguam Anglorum translatam optuli, Bede, Epistola ad Ecgbertum 5–6, Plummer, p. 409. 46 On the Rogation lections, see Old, Reading, vol. 3, pp. 84, 93–4, 157. 47 Bede, Homiliae 2.14.31–63, CCSL 122; cf. confitemini ergo alterutrum peccata uestra, et orate pro inuicem ut saluemini, James 5:16. 48 Bede, Homiliae 2.14.140–89. 49 Bede, Homiliae 2.14.73–83, 135–9, 193–8, 228–33. 50 Bede employs Matthew for the fifth petition (sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris) but Luke for the fourth (panem nostrum cotidianum). 51 Cotidianos electorum erratus . . . cotidianis orationum studiis docet debere curare, Bede, Homiliae 2.14.230–3.

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must actually have pardoned others.52 Without prior forgiveness, the Pater Noster—and implicitly Rogationtide as well—is a lie which threatens ritual failure. While this prayer is good for daily sins, larger sins need the stronger medicine of penance.53 Through penance, sinful men participate in the divine goodness; they “become worthy of our father and preserve the mystery of baptismal regeneration through which they are made children of God in body and mind.”54 The Lord’s Prayer is a simple form of penance: an easy solution to sin that even a layman could perform on his own on a daily basis. While a penitential season like Rogationtide only occurs once annually, the Lord’s Prayer is a penitential discipline for the rest of the year. According to Bede, another group who pray wrongly are those who speak long prayers in a Pharisaical manner: a clear allusion to the passage on the Pater Noster in Matt. 6:5–8 where Christ contrasts the length of pagan and Pharisaical supplications to the shortness of the Lord’s Prayer.55 During the Rogation liturgy, lay people would have only spoken such short prayers: especially the Pater Noster. For instance, as an earlier chapter notes, Angilbert’s ritual order required lay people on procession to recite the Lord’s Prayer and—if they could—the Creed, even as clergymen intoned various long psalms and litanies instead.56 A third group of Christians pray badly by focusing on worldly goods, rather than by living like pilgrims on this earth.57 Christians may ask for peace, health, agricultural fertility, calm weather, and other life needs, as long as they do so in moderation.58 Originally, Rogationtide penance focused on worldly threats to health, peace, fertility, and other necessities. Bede could hardly reject such prayers in a sermon occurring directly after a penitential procession for these goods.59 Nonetheless, Bede 52

Non omnes qui coram hominibus orare videntur . . . regni aditum pulsare probentur . . . inuocant quippe dominum in ueritate qui in hoc quod orando dicunt uiuendo non contradicunt, Bede, Homiliae 2.14.68–83. 53 Grauibus peccantium reatibus grandiora paenitendi medicamenta demonstrat, Bede, Homiliae 2.14.228–32. 54 Cum tantum participatione eiusdem diuinae bonitatis rationabilis creatura bona fieri posse cognoscitur . . . ne tanto patre simus indigni quin potius mysterium regenerationis quo in baptismate filii dei sumus effecti inlibato semper corpore pariter et mente seruemus, Bede, Homiliae 2.14.235–7, 261–5. 55 Bede, Homiliae 2.14.104–7. 56 Pueri et puella quae canere sciunt orationem dominem et fidem . . . et tunc fratres psalmos eorum alternis uersibus cantare incipiant. Scola siquidem puerorum et ceteri qui possunt simbolum Apostolorum protinus cantare incipiat, Bishop, Liturgica Historica, pp. 324–5; Institutio sancti Angilberti, Hallinger, pp. 298; cf. ut ante oblationem presbiter moneat preces fundere pro diuersis necessitatibus, pro regibus, rectoribus, pro pace, peste, pro infirmis, pro nuper defunctis, in quibus plebs “Pater noster,” sacerdos uero orationes conuenientes dicat, Capitula Helmstadensia (c. 950), 10, MGH CE 3, p. 186. 57 Bede, Homiliae 2.14.104–23. 58 Bede, Homiliae 2.14.112–16. 59 Compare, for example, the topics of the prayers mentioned in Haymo, Homiliae 2.13, PL 118.527–8; Heiric, Homiliae 2.12.154–205.

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warns against desiring over-abundant food, drink, and fleshly concupiscence. Bede’s audience may already celebrate the Rogationtide feasting and revelries that so annoyed the Clovesho divines a generation later.60 According to Bede, when a Christian prays for “daily bread,” the believer is asking not for mere carnal needs like fertility, but for the three spiritual virtues: eminently nonworldly gifts.61 Although Bede’s homily is the first Rogation sermon to examine the Lord’s Prayer in detail, it never supplies a full exposition. Most of the homily is on prayer in general, rather than the Lord’s Prayer in particular, and it contains no line-by-line exegesis. Indeed, only two of the seven petitions receive much comment. Nonetheless, Bede’s homily set an important precedent for later preachers by interpolating the opening of Luke 11 on the Lord’s Prayer into his comments on the gospel lection later in the chapter. Bede influenced many later Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian preachers, for his sermons were widely copied and served as a major source for the two most influential homiliaries in Latin and Old English respectively—the homiliaries of Paul the Deacon and of Ælfric of Eynsham.62 Medieval clergymen devoted a great time and expense to writing, distributing, and copying homiliaries, and episcopal legislation regularly demand that all priests have access to homiliaries.63 Bede clearly thought Ascension season was an ideal time for basic instruction. Just as his Rogation homily emphasizes the Lord’s Prayer and confession, so his Ascension homily immediately after stresses the sacraments and the preaching of repentance.64 Bede developed the liturgical season into something approaching an instructional program. And, as discussed below, later preachers often followed Bede’s example. Strikingly, Bede’s sermon on Rogation diverges from his treatment of the same lection in his commentary on Luke, written roughly ten years earlier.

60

Bede, Homiliae 2.14.118–16; cf. Council of Clovesho (747), 16, Haddan, vol. 3, p. 368; Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 19, PL 110.38. 61 Uerba domini et saluatoris nostris quibus nos . . . ad rogandum deum patrem hortatur diligenter . . . quae iter nobis regni caelestis aperiat, Bede, Homiliae 2.14.135–9, 184–98; Bede’s language here parallels the first and third petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. 62 Paul, for instance, directly copied thirty-four of the fifty Bedan homilies while twenty of the fifty are major sources for Ælfric; Martin, Bede the Venerable, pp. xiv–xxiii; Grégoire, Homéliaires, pp. 427–78. 63 Canons often list types of books—sacramentaries, lectionaries, penitentials, and so forth— that all priests must use. For example, Haito of Basel, Capitula 2, 6, MGH CE 1, pp. 210–11; Ghaerbald of Liège, Capitula 3.9, MGH CE 1, p. 39; Riculf of Soissons, Capitula 8, MGH CE 2, pp. 103–4; Radulf of Bourges, Capitula 1, 5, 13, MGH CE 1, pp. 234, 237, 243; Capitula Florentina (820s), 7, MGH CE 1, p. 225; Ælfric, Ep. I.52, 2.137, II.157, Fehr, pp. 13, 51, 126; for booklists containing homiliaries, Gustav Becker, Catalogi bibliothecarum antiqui (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1973), nos. 4–8, 11, 15–18, 21–3, 27; Carl I. Hammer, Jr. “Country Churches, Clerical Inventories and the Carolingian Renaissance in Bavaria,” Church History 49 (1980), pp. 11–19. 64 Bede, Homiliae 2.15.19–32, 69–77, 134–46, 280–98.

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Bede’s homilies and commentaries often differ greatly, reflecting their diverse contexts: private clerical study vs. oral proclamation to a mixed audience. For example, while Bede’s commentaries quote Patristic sources at length, his sermons focus on the Bible exclusively.65 His commentaries abound with scholarly virtuosity—numerology, etymology, historical minutiae, and so forth—while his sermons keep to textual analysis. While Bede’s interpretation of Luke 11:1–13 takes up less than four pages of text in the standard edition, his Rogation homily—nominally only on Luke 11:9–13—fills roughly double that.66 In his commentary, Bede adapts Augustine’s Enchiridion, explains the differences between the Lukan and Matthaen redactions of the Pater Noster, and examines biblical typology, but he never links the Lord’s Prayer in Luke 1:1–4 with the parable of the friend at night later in the passage.67 Instead, Bede contrasts the two halves of the passage—one supposedly on prayer structure (forma) and the other on its attitude (instantia).68 Bede’s choice in his Rogation sermon to treat Luke 11:1–13 as a single passage centered on Lord’s Prayer reflected the particular circumstance of preaching during a penitential season to a mixed audience somewhat familiar with the Lord’s Prayer as a text of basic instruction. Bede’s precedent of connecting Rogationtide and the Lord’s Prayer inspired followers throughout the Carolingian period. Paul the Deacon, for instance, extracted the section of Bede’s commentary on Luke just mentioned to serve as a Rogationtide reading for the Night Office in his homiliary.69 Additional examples appear in the Rogationtide homilies of the school of Auxerre. Haymo of Auxerre, schoolmaster at the monastery of Saint-Germain d’Auxerre during the middle of the ninth century, and Heiric of Auxerre, his student and later successor as schoolmaster, both composed lengthy homiliaries. These homiliaries each contain around 100 sermons for the major feasts of the year, and they survive in whole or in part in over a dozen manuscripts.70 Both Haymo and Heiric employed a homiletic method based on combining and summarizing various Patristic sources and adding their own comments to form relatively novel sermons.71 For both preachers, the main source for their Martin, Bede the Venerable, pp. vii, xiii–xiv; Eric Jay Del Giacco, “Exegesis and Sermon: A Comparison of Bede’s Commentary and Homilies on Luke,” Medieval Sermon Studies 50 (2006): pp. 13–14, 22–3, 28. 66 Cf. Bede, Homiliae 2.14; In Lucam 3.2378–520. 67 Augustine, Enchiridion 30.114–116; Bede, In Lucam 3.2393–428. 68 69 Bede, In Lucam 3.2432–3. Grégoire, Homéliaires, pp. 456–7. 70 For the homiliaries of Haymo and Heiric, Henri Barré, Les homéliaires carolingiens de l’école d’Auxerre: authenticité, inventaire, tableaux comparatifs, initia (Vatican City: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1962), pp. 1–6, 12–30, 33–48, 139–42; Amos, Origin, pp. 198–9; Hall, “The Early Medieval Sermon,” pp. 225–6, 243; Rudolf Cruel, Geschichte der Deutschen Predigt im Mittelalter (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1966), pp. 56–69; Old, Reading, vol. 3, pp. 216–18. 71 Barré, Homéliaires, pp. 139–42; Clayton, “Homiliaries,” pp. 211–13. 65

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Rogation Monday sermons on Luke 11:5–13, for instance, was the spiritual interpretation of the parable of the friend at night in Bede’s commentary on Luke.72 Haymo and Heiric probably composed their homilies for monastic preaching at the Night Office, rather than for lay preaching during the mass. But nothing prevented a pastor from using a monastic sermon collection as an aid for public preaching. Later copyists, for instance, adapted the works of Haymo and Heiric for oral proclamation: for instance, supplementing Paul the Deacon’s homiliary with sermons by both preachers.73 Popular preachers such as Ælfric, Abbo of Saint-Germain, or Ps-Eligius adapted excerpts from numerous sermons by Haymo and Heiric when writing their own homilies aimed at mixed lay and clerical audiences.74 Indirectly, Haymo and Heiric’s sermons influenced many people beyond Frankish monks. In many of his homilies, Haymo expects that “all who are in Christ” know the Lord’s Prayer and recite it daily.75 Haymo’s Rogation Monday sermon, for example, appears after a Rogation Sunday homily discussing the ask-seekknock passage in Matthew 7—a parallel passage to Luke 11—which claims that “the universal church begs God each day” by praying the Pater Noster.76 By the time that they encountered his homily for Rogation Monday, Haymo’s monastic audience would have had the Lord’s Prayer on their minds, since they had presumably recited it during the procession. Haymo’s Rogation homily begins by asserting that the fall of man caused the loss of free will, so that humans now are no longer able to do anything good except by prayer.77 Thus, Christ taught the Lord’s Prayer to his disciples, which “contains within it briefly what principally we should seek in prayer.”78 72

Haymo, Homiliae 2.13, PL 118.531–2, 527–8; Heiric, Homiliae 2.12. While Barré argued that these two homiliaries aimed at private devotional reading, later scholars have suggested the Night Office is a more likely setting. Regardless of original intent, both homiliaries were later used for the Night Office, for private devotions, and as sources for public preaching; Clayton, “Homiliaries,” pp. 211–13; The Blickling Homilies, pp. xix–xx; Barré, Homéliaires, pp. 50–66, 72–8, 153–4, 172–3. 74 See Fontes Anglo-Saxonici: World Wide Web Register, http://fontes.english.ox.ac.uk/, accessed April 14, 2017; James McCune, “Rethinking the Pseudo-Eligius Sermon Collection,” Early Medieval Europe 16, no. 4 (2008): pp. 449–59; Old, Reading, vol. 3, p. 219; Clayton, “Homiliaries,” pp. 216–20; McKitterick, The Frankish Church, pp. 92, 102; for example, compare Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.18 and Haymo, Homiliae 2.13. 75 For instance: omnes quoque qui in christo regenerati sumus, unum patrem habemus deum, cui quotidie in oratione dicimus: pater noster, qui es in coelis, Haymo, Homiliae 2.50, PL 118.749C–749D; cf. Haymo, Homiliae 2.36, 2.52, 2.55, PL 118.684, 796, 801. 76 Sicut uniuersalis ecclesia quotidie in oratione deum postulat, dicens: adueniat regnum tuum. Quod regnum, etsi non mox finita oratione aduenit, tamen post uniuersale iudicium sine dubio creditur uenturum; Haymo, Homiliae 2.12, PL 118.523C. 77 Sciens dominus iesus christus post amissionem liberi arbitrii, nullum bonum a nobismetipsis nos habere posse, non solum ad orandum deuotissimos, sed etiam instantissimos hortatur et admonet, ut quod minus natura possibilitatis in nobis habet, orando ab illo impetretur, Haymo, Homiliae 2.13, PL 118.530D. 78 In quibus uerbis, quid principaliter in oratione petere debeamus, breuiter comprehendit, Haymo, Homiliae 2.13, PL 118.531A. 73

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Haymo later alludes to various petitions of the Pater Noster—exhorting his congregation to pray for bread, for instance, and telling them to seek God’s kingdom.79 The sermon also describes the origins of “the Christian devotion” of Rogationtide, asserting that it grew out of the time of fasting and prayer which the apostles entered after Christ’s Ascension and before Pentecost, but that the holiday is now celebrated before Ascension due to the precedent of Vienne.80 The sermon ends with an exhortation to fasting, almsgiving, and prayer for peace, fertility, good weather, and on behalf of the kings and rulers.81 Heiric’s Rogation sermon covers much the same ground as Haymo’s. Heiric quotes the Lord’s Prayer from Luke 11:1–4, provides essentially the same interpretation of the parable, and ends with the story of Mamertus and admonition to prayer.82 Both of these churchmen reveal how common the connection between Rogationtide, Christian formation, and the Lord’s Prayer had become by the later Carolingian period. One final Frankish example occurs in the first homiliary of Hrabanus Maurus. Hrabanus wrote two homiliaries during his life.83 At the request of Archbishop Haistulf of Mainz (813–825), Hrabanus—then still a monk-priest at the monastery of Fulda—composed around 820 a collection of sermons “for preaching to the laity about everything necessary to believe.”84 According to Hrabanus, “necessary” preaching meant either homilies for key annual feasts or generic exhortations on the virtues and vices.85 Hrabanus’ first homiliary circulated far; indeed, Hrabanus himself, before he became a bishop, had copies sent to two German bishops: Humbert of Wurzburg (832–42) and Reginharus, a chorbishop in Thuringia (d. 853).86 Hrabanus’ second homiliary dates from his time as archbishop of Mainz around 855. He dedicated the work to Emperor Lothar I and designed it 79 Tres panes in oratione petere debemus . . . quae autem sunt, quae principaliter in oratione petenda sint, deus alibi manifestat, dicens: primum quaerite regnum dei et iustitiam eius, Haymo, Homiliae 2.13, PL 118.531C, 532D–533A; cf. Matt 6:33; Luke 12:31. 80 Et inde deuotio christiana eius annua religione celebrare coepit, Haymo, Homiliae 2.13, PL 118.533B–534A, 527D–528C. 81 Non solum pro nostris, sed etiam pro totius ecclesiae necessitatibus supplicare debemus, pro pacis scilicet tranquillitate, pro frugum ubertate, pro aeris temperie, pro regibus et gubernatoribus, Haymo, Homiliae 2.13, PL 118.528D. 82 For instance: cum oratis nolite multum loqui, sed dicite: pater noster, qui es in caelis . . . saluator noster et uerba orandi tradidit, Heiric, Homiliae 2.12.10–14. 83 On Hrabanus’ two homiliaries, Barré, Homéliaires, pp. 3–6; Amos, Origin, pp. 198–9, 203, 247–8; Cruel, Geschichte, pp. 56–69; Clayton, “Homiliaries,” pp. 212–15; Old, Reading, vol. 3, pp. 200–16; McKitterick, The Frankish Church, pp. 93–101. 84 Sermonem confeci ad praedicandum populo, de omnibus quae necessaria eis credidi, Hrabanus, Epistolae 6, MGH Epp. 5, p. 391. 85 In festiuitatibus praecipuis, quae sunt in anni circulo, ut uacantes ab opere mundano . . . praedicationem illis de diuersis speciebus uirtutum, id est de fide spe et caritate, de castitate, continentia et caeteris speciebus uirtutum . . . Postea uero alium adiunximus sermonem de uariis errorum et uitiorum seductionibus, Hrabanus, Epistolae 6, MGH Epp. 5, pp. 391–2. 86 Hrabanus, Ep. 26, MGH Epp. 5, pp. 439–41; Epistolarum Fuldensium fragmenta 21–2, MGH Epp. 5, ed. Dümmler (Berlin: 1899), pp. 526–7.

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primarily “to be read at the appropriate hours” of the Divine Office to Lothar and his court.87 But Lothar later commanded that parts of this second homiliary be read aloud “to the laity in church” on Sundays and at key feasts such as Rogationtide.88 A devotional sermonary, thus, became a popular one. Hrabanus’ homiliaries are a testimony to the interdependence between Carolingian regular and secular clergy. Early in his life Hrabanus the monk wrote sermons for bishops and priests to use in pastoral care; later in his life, Hrabanus the bishop wrote sermons for monks and elite laity to read in the Office. Both of Hrabanus’ homiliaries contain multiple Rogationtide homilies. Between the two homiliaries, however, these sermons share little.89 In his later work for Lothar, Hrabanus supplies sermons on both the gospel and epistle for Rogation Monday (Luke 11:5–13, James 5:16–20), as well as on both lections for the vigil of Ascension on the late day of Rogationtide (John 17:1–11, Eph. 4:7–13). The sermons for Rogation Monday are slightly revised extracts from Bede’s commentaries on these passages.90 They touch on regular Rogationtide topics such as confession, doomsday, supplication for good weather and fertility, almsgiving, hospitality, and the three theological virtues.91 The Lord’s Prayer, however, never appears. Hrabanus’ two Rogation sermons in his first homiliary, on the other hand, are highly instructional, fitting their more popular audience. The first sermon narrates the story of Nineveh and describes the format of Rogationtide: three days of fasting, almsgiving, confession, psalmody, litanies, laudes, prayer, and procession, led by clerics carrying relics and crosses.92 Hrabanus anticipated that at Rogationtide “all the kindred, male and female, young and old, come together into one” to fast, pray, and hear the sermon.93 The Ninevites themselves exemplified such penitential unity. As a result, Hrabanus repeats standard

87 Primam partem homiliarum in lectiones euangelicas atque apostolicas mihi scribere iussistis, . . . ut haberetis quod in praesentia uestra tempore ueris et aestatis, si uobis ita placeret, horis competentibus legeretur, Hrabanus, Ep. 51, MGH Epp. 5, p. 506. 88 Diebus dominicis uel precipuis tantum festiuitatibus catholico in unum populo confluente leguntur, pretermissis feriis, ieiuniis, rogationibus . . . sermonibus diuersorum temporum et ieiuniorum seu festiuitatum a sanctis patribus in ecclesia ad populum habitis, ut nulla omnino in toto lectionario possit repperiri lectio, Hrabanus, Ep. 49, MGH Epp. 5, pp. 503–4. 89 Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 19–20, PL 110.37–42; Homiliae ad Lotharium 42–5, PL 110.223–31; cf. Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel, Collectiones, PL 102.303–5, 571. 90 Bede, In Lucam 3.2378–520, In Epistolas Septem Catholicas 1.5.16.185–1.5.20.252. 91 Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Lotharium 42–3, PL 110.223–5; for such topics, Bazire and Cross, Eleven Old English Rogationtide Homilies, pp. xxiv–xxv; Abbo of Saint-Germain, Homiliae 20, in Abbo von Saint-Germain-des-Prés: 22 Predigten: kritische Ausgabe und Kommentar, ed. Ute Önnerfors (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1985); Homiliary of Angers 19–20, Conti, pp. 263–5; Pembroke Homiliary 36–40, Cross, pp. 102–22. 92 Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 19, PL 110.37C–38D; Hrabanus borrows on a sermon by Maximus of Turin; cf. Maximus, Sermones 81.1; Grégoire, Homéliaires, pp. 169, 209, 318, 456. 93 Oportet, fratres charissimi, ut conuentus istius causam non ignoretis, quo, secundum patrum praecedentium constituta, omnes in unum uiri et feminae, pueri et senes, conuenistis, Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 19, PL 110.37C.

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complaints about sinful lay Christians who observe celebratory Rogation days— complete with banquets and song—rather than a penitential season. Hrabanus’ first sermon makes only two allusions to the Lord’s Prayer, in the middle of a longer section exhorting his listeners to supplicate for forgiveness, good health, rain, fertile fields, and peace, and protection from plague and heathens.94 Nonetheless, Hrabanus expected that the Pater Noster was the primary content of his audience’s prayers that day, for he claims that the congregation at the march was asking God not to lead them into temptation and to forgive them as they forgive.95 These brief allusions to the Pater Noster set the stage for his Rogation Tuesday homily: a line-by-line exposition of the Lord’s Prayer. This second sermon is a creative rearrangement of extracts from two Augustinian works, with some additions.96 In this second sermon, Hrabanus— just like Bede and Haymo—introduces the Lord’s Prayer from earlier in Luke 11 in order to explain the gospel lection.97 Hrabanus diverges from these prior authors, though, by launching into an extended interpretation of the Pater Noster, expounding the text in terms of sacramental unity and communal solidarity, rather than private devotion.98 Hrabanus starts by stressing “all faithful Christians” must pray the Pater Noster together as a “united brotherhood” under one Father in heaven, regardless of wealth, rank, or profession, from a serf up to the emperor.99 Such language directly reflects Carolingian canonical legislation on mandatory rituals, discussed earlier. Elsewhere, Hrabanus maintains that such divine fatherhood was not part of Judaism, but a special gift to the populus christianus: a sign of the difference between the Christian people and those outside.100 The Lord’s Prayer enshrines the social leveling of the penitential season—a leveling which the fasting Ninevites exemplified, but Hrabanus’ banqueting 94

Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 19, PL 110.38D–39C. Si, inquit, dimiseritis peccata eorum, dimittet et uobis pater uester coelestis peccata uestra . . . Oremus ut non intremus in tentationem, Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 19, PL 110.39A, 39C. 96 Cf. Augustine, De sermone Domini in Monte 2.3.12, 2.9.35, CCSL 35, ed. A. Mutzenbecher (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967); Sermones 59, PL 38.400–2. 97 Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 20, PL 110.40. 98 Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 20, PL 110.40B–41; for early medieval exegesis of the Pater Noster, see Ristuccia, The Transmission of Christendom, pp. 119–41. 99 Ad magnum genus pertinere coepistis . . . omnes enim docet fratres unanimes esse qui unum patrem deum uolumus habere. Sub isto patre, fratres sunt, dominus et seruus, imperator et miles, diues et pauper. Omnes christiani fideles diuersos habent patres in terra, alii nobiles, alii ignobiles, unum uero patrem inuocant, qui est in coelis; et si ibi est pater noster, ibi nobis praeparatur haereditas, Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 20, PL 110.40A–40B; cf. De Ecclesiastica Disciplina 2, PL 112.1222; Hrabanus, De modo poenitentiae 3.17, PL 112.1324. 100 Nusquam inuenitur praeceptum populo Israhel, ut diceret “Pater noster” . . . de futuro autem populo Christiano . . . magnum ergo donum per gratiam dei accepimus, quod sinamur deo dicere “Pater noster,” Hrabanus, In Matthaeum II(6:9), CCSL 174, ed. B. Lofstedt (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), pp. 178–9. 95

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congregation repudiated. For Hrabanus, the first three petitions of the Pater Noster emphasize the communion between the baptized on earth and the saints and angels in heaven.101 Sin threatens to separate Christians from the “daily bread” of Christ’s body partaken together in the Eucharist.102 All Christians, therefore, must memorize the prayer and recite it daily, rather than just on holidays like Rogationtide.103 For the Lord’s Prayer is a daily washing of sin, mirroring unrepeatable baptism.104 The same prayer which levels social divisions enables even the poor and uneducated to gain remission for all their sins. Hrabanus also seems to connect the Lord’s Prayer and Rogationtide in another work, De Institutione Clericorum: a pastoral compendium on liturgy, basic instruction, and preaching. In the midst of this treatise, Hrabanus includes a line-by-line exposition of the Lord’s Prayer excerpted from various patristic texts.105 The closing of this section, however, is original and focuses on how effective prayer should be accompanied with fasting and almsgiving.106 The linkage between these three devotional acts was important to Hrabanus. While fasting, prayer, and almsgiving were all central to Rogationtide, they are also part of many Christian feasts; Hrabanus does not have to be referring to the Rogation Days. However, the section in Hrabanus’ treatise directly before this exposition of the Pater Noster depicts of the meaning and origin of processions (letaniae, rogationes).107 By mentioning processions, almsgiving, fasting, and the Lord’s Prayer so close together, the clergyman likely alludes to the Rogation Days—especially as Hrabanus describes Rogationtide later in his treatise.108 The line-by-line exposition in the De Institutione Clericorum probably served as an aid for Rogationtide preaching on the Lord’s Prayer—another witness to this prominent practice. Eighth- and ninth-century preachers, therefore, often integrated discussion of the Lord’s Prayer into Rogation homilies. The feast was ideally suited for basic instruction because large numbers of lay people attended Rogation processions, where they prayed, heard sermons, and listened to a gospel 101 Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 20, PL 110.40C; cf. Hrabanus, De Ecclesiastica Disciplina 2, PL 112.1223; De Sacris Ordinis 19, PL 112.1189. 102 Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 20, PL 110.40D–41A. 103 In memoria omnes teneamus, et intellectu cordis eam habere festinemus; puro ore et pacifica mente illam proferamus, ac bonis operibus ipsam commendemus, Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 20, PL 110.42; cf. Hrabanus, In Matthaeum II(6:9).180. 104 Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 20, PL 110.41B. 105 Augustine, Enchiridion 30.114–16, CCSL 46, ed. D. E. Dekkers and J. Fraipont (Turnhout: Brepols, 1956); Bede, In Lucam 3.2393–428; Cassian, Conlationes 9.25, CSEL 13.2, ed. M. Petschenig (Vienna: Tempsky, 1886), pp. 272–3; Isidore, De Ecclesiasticis Officiis 1.43.15. 106 Hrabanus, De Institutione Clericorum 2.16, Zimbel, vol. 2, pp. 278–80; cf. De Rerum Naturis 5.13–15, PL 111.136–8. 107 Hrabanus, De Institutione Clericorum 2.15, Zimbel, vol. 2, p. 274; cf. Isidore, Etymologiae, 6.19.64, 81; Admonitio Synodalis 61–2, Amiet, p. 58. 108 Hrabanus, De Institutione Clericorum 2.40, Zimbel, vol. 2, p. 358.

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lection devoted to prayer that comes directly after the text of the Pater Noster. Moreover, by the Carolingian period, the original purpose of Rogationtide in the late Roman world was largely forgotten. Clergymen adapted the holiday to a new function more relevant for their own time: the formation of the Christian people. The other text of basic instruction, though—the Apostles’ Creed—almost never appears in Rogation sermons from the early middle Ages. In multiple extant sermons, Hrabanus Maurus portrays the Lord’s Prayer and Creed as a single instructional unit, urging his audience to memorize the two texts, to recite them together, and to teach them both to children.109 Anyone who does not is unworthy of the title “Christian.” Nonetheless, Hrabanus’ one extant sermon providing a line-by-line exposition of the Creed is for Lent, not Rogationtide.110 Hrabanus may never have actually taught the two texts at the same time. Only the work of Ælfric of Eynsham would make the connection between Rogationtide and basic Christian instruction complete. The voluminous homiletic productions of the Anglo-Saxon priest and abbot, Ælfric of Eynsham—like his biblical translations, hagiographies, and pastoral letters—are a monument to the diligence with which the late Anglo-Saxon church sought to reform the instruction and morals of clergy and laity alike. Although later abbot of Eynsham, Ælfric wrote most of his works while a monk at Cerne Abbas between 987 and 1005.111 His two homiletic cycles certainly stem from this time; the First Series of Catholic Homilies around 990 and the Second Series perhaps from 992. The two series each contain forty homilies on the gospel lections for the major feasts of the Temporal and Sanctoral. As his prefatory letters declare, Ælfric designed them as a single program of vernacular sermons to be widely promulgated so that uneducated priests could read them to a mixed audience in church. Ælfric acknowledges that the two series overlap—both, for instance, supplying sermons for the Rogation Days, Palm Sunday, and Easter—so that congregations would not hear the same sermons every year.112 If a church was wealthy enough to own both that is. Together, the two series provide texts for every Sunday from Septuagesima to Easter and most—but not every—Sunday in the rest of the year. Ælfric hoped that his two homiliaries would circulate widely throughout England, and his

109

For instance, Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 43, 44, PL 110.81, 82. Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 13, PL 110.27–9. 111 Hill, “The Benedictine Reform,” pp. 157–9; Clayton, “Homiliaries,” pp. 216–17, 235–9; Jonathan Wilcox, “Ælfric in Dorset and the Landscape of Pastoral Care,” in Pastoral Care in Late Anglo-Saxon England, edited by Francesca Tint (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2005), pp. 57–62. 112 Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.P.6–12, 56–9, 128–31, 1.10.1–4, 1.27.198–9, Catholic Homilies 2.P.19–49, 2.16.102–4; Malcolm Godden, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: Introduction, Commentary, and Glossary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. xxix–xxxvi; Ælfrics Grammatik und Glossar, ed. Julius Zupitza (Berlin: Weidmann, 1880), Grammatica 2.13–18. 110

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dreams were fulfilled. Of the forty-two extant manuscripts designated as homiliaries in Ker’s standard catalogue of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, thirtysix entirely or primarily contain Ælfrician sermons, demonstrating the massive influence that Ælfric had on English preaching.113 Because of the centrality of Rogationtide to early medieval Christianity, Ælfric composed seven complete Rogation sermons for his two series, as well as a few Rogation homilies in other collections.114 Ælfric borrowed heavily from three Frankish homiliaries: those of Haymo of Auxerre and Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel—both based largely on Bede’s biblical commentaries—and the collection of Paul the Deacon: an anthology of patristic texts mainly by Augustine, Jerome, Bede, and Gregory the Great.115 Haymo inspired Ælfric’s three Rogation sermons in the first series of Catholic Homilies.116 Just like Haymo’s sermon, Ælfric’s Monday homily splits down the center—half on the origins of Rogationtide, half on the gospel lection—supplies the same information, cites biblical fasting precedents, exhorts the congregation to proper behavior at the feast such as prayers for health, peace, fertility, and forgiveness, and even starts with a near translation of Haymo’s opening.117 Nonetheless, Ælfric’s sermon for Rogation Monday lacks the most obvious Haymonian feature: allusions to the Lord’s Prayer presenting it as the exemplar of petition to God. Instead, Ælfric devotes his Tuesday sermon to a lineby-line commentary on the Pater Noster.118 Ælfric does not appear to have known Hrabanus’ sermon.119 The Lord’s Prayer had grown so associated with Rogationtide that Ælfric did not need Hrabanus’ precedent to compose something similar. While Ælfric’s Tuesday address interprets all seven Wilcox, “Ælfric in Dorset,” pp. 60–1. Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.18–1.20, Catholic Homilies 2.19–2.22; Harris, “The Liturgical Context,” pp. 143–69. 115 Ælfric’s copies of Paul the Deacon and Haymo were augmented with additional sermons; Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.P.14–17; Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel, Collectiones, PL 102.303–5, 571; Haymo, Homiliae 2.13; Ps-Haymo, Homiliae 90–4, PL 118.527–540; Joyce Hill, “Ælfric’s Manuscript of Paul the Deacon’s Homiliary,” in The Old English Homily: Precedent, Practice, and Appropriation, edited by Aaron J. Kleist (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 67–96; Godden, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, pp. xxxviii–lxii. 116 Cf. Haymo, Homiliae 2.13, PL 118.527–8, 533–4; Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.18.1–5, 40–4, 104–9, 145–50; in these Rogation sermons, Ælfric also draws on other sources, such as Augustine, Amalarius of Metz, and a sermon by Maximus of Turin in Paul the Deacon’s homiliary; Godden, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, pp. 145–66, 519–48; Grégoire, Homéliaires, pp. 456–7, 478. 117 Cf. sed quia dies litaniarum, id est supplicationum, Haymo, Homiliae 2.13, 118.527–8; þas dagas sind gehatene. letanie. þas sind gebeddagas, Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.18.1; Haymo’s sermon begins awkwardly because the later interpolater cut his single long sermon into two shorter homilies. Ælfric knew this interpolated version; Barré, Homéliaires, pp. 50–4; Ps-Haymo, Homiliae 90–4, PL 118.527–540. 118 Like Bede, Ælfric employs an oral Pater Noster text mixing Lukan and Matthaean elements; Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.19.8–17. 119 Ælfric never cites Hrabanus. The format and contents of their Lord’s Prayer sermons differs; cf. Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.19; Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 20, PL 110.40–2; Godden, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, pp. 154–5. 113 114

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petitions, it concentrates on communal aspects such as the fatherhood of God and “brotherhood of all Christian men.” This brotherhood includes both powerful and poor, noble and ignoble, lord and slave, rich and poor, men and women; it resists the brotherhood of Satan in the world.120 For Ælfric, the three heavenly and four earthly petitions of the prayer acknowledge the need to petition for both worldly and heavenly goods—such as good health, food, and the Eucharist.121 “Christ established this prayer” so that “all Christians pray in common” for all needs, for “all Christians are together, like a single man”—one body of Christ, reliant on each other for collective preservation.122 The powerful must remember their dependence on the labor of the poor and their accountability before God for the use they make of their power. All should consider an injury to each individual as harmful to the whole community.123 Ælfric clearly envisions penitential procession against communal sins. Through prayer and rite, the private problems of another become the concerns of both the group as a whole and of each member within it. The Christian body is a frequent topic in Ælfric’s exegesis of the Lord’s Prayer. For example, he exhorts his congregation to look towards the east when praying, advises them on how to properly receive the Eucharist, chides the rich who sit at feast—perhaps a Rogation banquet—without a thought for the busy servants standing around toiling, and warns his listeners about the transience of all bodily things.124 Ælfric explicitly asserts that right ordering of the body causes right thinking; “when we turn to face the east, when the sun rises, then shall our minds turn to God.”125 Marching by a graveyard should encourage Christians to remember that the rich and poor alike decay into identical piles of bones.126 Rogationtide for Ælfric acts out the solidarity and the obligation between rich and poor. Praying the Lord’s Prayer is the central act in forming this communitas, as it contains within it the brotherhood and interdependence of the body of Christ. The body is a tool for Christianization, through which the mind and the community can be formed into the image of God.127 120 For þi nu ealle cristene men ægđer ge rice ge heane ge æþelborene ge unæþelborene 7 se hlaford 7 se þeowa ealle hi sind gebroðra & ealle hi habbað ænne fæder on heofonum. Nis se welega . . . se þearfa . . . his gebrođru 7 his gesweostru, Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.19.30–3, 40–52, 144–5; cf. Augustine, Serm. 59.2, PL 38.400; Caesarius, Serm. 147.2; Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 20, PL 110.40. 121 Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.19.186–213. 122 Þis gebed he sette eallum cristenum mannum gemænelice . . . ealle cristene men sceoldon beon swa geþwære. swilce hit an man wære, Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.19.27–8, 213–43. 123 Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.19.229–40. 124 Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.19.57–63, 106–23, 230–1. 125 Þonne we wendađ ure neb to east-dæle, þær heofen arist . . . þonne sceal ure mod beon mid þam gemyngod, þæt hit beo gewend to đam hehstan and þam fyrmestan gecynde, þæt is, God, Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.19.61–3. 126 Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.18.191–2; cf. Blickling Homilies 8.10–66, Kelly, pp. 68–70. 127 Cf. “rituals work on the body politic through the symbolic medium of the physical body,” Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger, p. 159.

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The macrocosm of the whole Christian commonwealth is substantiated in the microcosm of each individual body, which is a part again of the body of Christ. Ælfric’s Rogation cycle moves beyond all earlier examples by using the holiday not only to teach the Lord’s Prayer, but also the Creed. In other pastoral writings, Ælfric stressed the need for “all Christian men” to recite the Creed and Lord’s Prayer in order to “preserve their faith and Christianness.”128 Since Ælfric understood the two texts as a united program of Christian formation, he likely thought it strange to teach the Pater Noster without following it up with a commentary on the Creed. Ælfric, thus, chose to devote his Wednesday sermon to the Apostles’ Creed, instead of to exegesis of the gospel lection for the vigil of Ascension. No earlier Rogation preacher extant did this, although a couple composed short creedal sections, such as a discussion of the baptismal vows.129 Ælfric begins his Wednesday address by asserting that “all Christians” must know the Lord’s Prayer and Creed, so that they “can pray and confirm their faith.”130 Rather than supplying a line-by-line exposition of the Creed, Ælfric delves into a lengthy explanation of Trinitarian theology and the doctrine of the soul. The sermon is so theologically detailed that his lay public may have had trouble understanding.131 The churchman compresses his minimal comments on the other articles in the Creed (e.g. the resurrection, the holy universal church, the forgiveness of sins) into only ten lines.132 Popular Rogationtide topics like the fruitfulness of the earth, God’s power over the natural world, and doomsday appear briefly in passing.133 Unlike his tour-de-force on Tuesday, Ælfric’s creedal homily for Rogation Wednesday feels somewhat awkward and experimental—focusing on only part of the Creed, discussing theology likely too complicated for lay people. Rogation homilies on the Lord’s Prayer had arisen naturally out of the nature of the feast 128 For instance: and be þam pater nostre and be þam credan eac, swa he oftost mage, þam mannum to onbryrdnysse, þat hi cunnon geleafan and heora cristendom gehealdan, Ælfric, Ep. 1.12, 62, Fehr, pp. 3, 15; ælc cristen man sceal cunnan his paternoster and his credan. Mid þam paternostre he sceal hine gebiddan, and mid þam credan he sceal his geleafan getrymman. Se lareow sceal secgan þam læwedum mannum þæt andgyt to þam paternostre and to ðam credan, þæt hi witon hwæs hi biddað æt Gode, and hu hi sceolon on God gelyfan, Ælfric, Lives of Saints 12.254–67; cf. Ælfric, De Penitentia 48–9, in The Sermones Catholici or Homilies of Ælfric, ed. Benjamin Thorpe (London: Ælfric Society, 1844), vol. 2, p. 604; Old English Homilies from MS Bodley 343 2.85–102, ed. Susan Irvine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. xlvii–xlix, 40–1. 129 Cf. Ratherius of Verona, Serm. 3.2; Blickling Homilies 10.50–63, Kelly, p. 78. 130 Mid þam pater nostre he sceal hine gebiddan. mid þam credan he sceal his geleafan getrymman, Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.20.1–6; for this common medieval topos, Augustine, Serm. 56.1, 228.3, PL 38.377, 1102; Wulfstan, Homilies 7.6–9, 8c.15–18, Bethurum, pp. 157, 175–6. 131 For complex theology in Ælfric’s sermons, compare, for instance, his treatment of predestination in an Epiphany homily (Catholic Homilies 1.7) or of the Eucharistic presence in one for Easter (Catholic Homilies 2.15). 132 Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.20.134–45. 133 Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.20.7–16, 164–86, 270–7.

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itself. In contrast, Ælfric’s introduction of the Creed was a deliberate attempt to reshape the feast into an entire program of basic Christian instruction. No wonder it had no predecessor. The impact Ælfric had on later Anglo-Saxon homilists and sermon manuscripts, though, suggests that it had successors. Ælfric recognized the novelty of his Rogationtide cycle in the First Series, because his later sermons for Rogation days never try anything similar. None of his other Rogation sermons grapple with the Apostles’ Creed. But a couple of his later Rogation sermons allude to the Lord’s Prayer and its relationship to Christian brotherhood. The Monday homily in the Second Series, for example, is on Christ’s two love commands. There Ælfric emphasizes the brotherhood of all Christians and delivers a long ad status section, exhorting people to fulfill the moral obligations particular to their own unique estates: judges to protect the poor, merchants to keep their oaths, the rich to give alms, and so forth.134 The clergyman describes how the Lord’s Prayer exemplifies this brotherhood, because both slave and master pray to the same father and in this act express the temporal nature of earthly ranks.135 Ælfric exhorts clerics to preach the faith to the laity; presumably, such instruction included the Lord’s Prayer and Creed.136 Ælfric concludes the sermon warning his audience to endure patiently the chastisement of God—illness, loss of wealth, drought, and infertility—and he also condemns people who eat meat and fish during the Rogation fast—likely meaning Rogationtide banqueters.137 De Auguriis, a homily that Ælfric wrote c. 1000, was never part of the two series, but it survives in four manuscripts as a Rogation Wednesday sermon.138 The original text was probably a Quando Volueris, adaptable to the Rogation Days or to other instructional occasions like Lent. Regardless of Ælfric’s intent, some Anglo-Saxon clergymen must have felt it appropriate to the Rogation Days. De Auguriis is mainly moral exhortation—listing various vices, but focusing on idolatry and witchcraft.139 But as part of the warning, Ælfric 134 Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 2.19.11–12, 63–77, 91–260; ad status social morality remains central to the following Tuesday and Wednesday sermons, cf. Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 2.20.127–45, 172–99, 213–27, 2.21.45–9, 160–6; Godden, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, pp. 519–20. 135 Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 2.19.221–7; cf. Ælfric, Homilies of Ælfric. A Supplementary Collection 24, EETS o.s. 260, ed. J. A. Pope (London: 1967–8); Ælfric, Old English Homilies 10, EETS o.s. 29, ed. Richard Morris (London: 1867), pp. 100–19; Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.3.149–51. 136 Biscopas and mæssepreostas sind to bydelum gesette þæt hi læwedum folce geleafan bodion. and him eac geðingion. to ðam ælmihtigum gode, Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 2.19.1–3, 100–27, 221–7. 137 Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 2.19.247–84, 290–301. 138 These codices are Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 303; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 419; London, BL, Cotton Julius E.vii, and Oxford, Bodleian, Hatton 115. Other manuscripts have quando uolueris as its heading; Ælfric, Lives of Saints 17; Pope, Homilies of Ælfric, pp. 139, 147–9, 612–37, 786–98. 139 De Auguriis is based on Caesarius, Serm. 54 and likely also on some penitential source similar to the Penitential of Egbert. See Ælfric, Lives 17 at Fontes Anglo-Saxonici: World Wide Web Register, http://fontes.english.ox.ac.uk/, accessed April 14, 2017.

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orders Christians to avoid saying journey charms or prognostics. Instead, when starting a trip, a Christian should cross himself and recite the Lord’s Prayer and Creed, “if he knows them.”140 Otherwise, “he is no Christian but an apostate” who has “abandoned his Christianness.” Ælfric’s sermon insists that God causes all misfortunes, such as plague and agricultural failure, for the devil has only the authority that God has given him.141 Protection from trouble must come not from magic but from repentance and prayer to God. Ælfric’s contrast, in De Auguriis, between the pious protection of Rogation penance with the illicit protection of magic rites mirrors sections in other Rogation sermons. One of Ratherius’ homilies, for instance, derides foolish believers in weather magic.142 Other Rogation texts describe the torment of magicians in hell and urge congregants to abandon such diabolic ceremonies before it is too late.143 The significance of these directives to the feast of Rogationtide is plain. Rogation supplication in general and the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and Creed in particular, served as rival rituals of protection over against various magical rites. Christians had to alter their ritual behaviors into the prescribed actions of the church. As these sermons witness, medieval homilists from Bede onwards often employed the Rogation Days as an opportunity to teach the Lord’s Prayer by integrating it within a larger ritual framework. Past scholars have demonstrated the centrality of the Pater Noster in later medieval Rogation preaching.144 Yet this relationship was not immediate or destined; Rogationtide arose as an instructional holiday at a particular moment—the Carolingian period—for specific reasons. This new purpose for Rogationtide was partly an attempt to fulfill canonical regulations about the universal knowledge of the Lord’s Prayer in an age when the catechumenate had shrunk. But explaining the Pater Noster was also a way for churchmen to interpret the significance of the holiday itself and guard it against reappropriations. The sermons on the Lord’s Prayer functioned much like a Passover Haggadah, answering “why is this night different from all other nights.” In the course of discussing the Lord’s Prayer, preachers could delve into other topics central to the feast—such as 140

Forðan se ðe þys deð, se forlysð his Cristendom . . . ne bið he na Cristen, ac bið forcuð wiðersaca . . . Ac seðe hwider faran wille, singe his paternoster, and credan, gif he cunne and clypige to his Dryhten, and bletsige hine sylfne, and siðige orsorh þurh godes gescyldnysse, Ælfric, Lives of Saints 17.78–98; sed quotiens uobis in quacumque parte fuerit necessitas properandi, signate uos in nomine christi, et symbolum uel orationem dominicam fideliter dicentes, securi de dei adiutorio iter agite, Caesarius, Serm. 54.1; cf. Sermo de Sacrilegia, 14, 27, PLS 4.971, 973; Hrabanus, Homiliae ad Haistulfum 43, PL 110.81. 141 Ælfric, Lives of Saints 17.166–84, 208–15. 142 Ratherius of Verona, Serm. 3.4. 143 Cf. Vercelli Homilies 10.44–54, 21.210–18; Bazire and Cross 6.192–205. 144 Robinson, “Sermons on the Lord’s Prayer,” pp. 441–62; Bazire and Cross, Eleven Old English Rogationtide Homilies, pp. xxiv–xxv; Owst, Preaching in Medieval England, pp. 146, 200–2, 214.

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solidarity, penance, earthly blessings, and illicit rival ceremonies like magic and banqueting. Basic Christian instruction and liturgical exegesis were not separate from the Rogation procession; they were part of the march.

LAW OF P RAYER, LAW OF F AITH A skeptic might wonder if this conception of Rogationtide formation imposes Reformation Era concerns about doctrinal comprehension and conviction on the medieval church. In fact, a prominent strand of scholarship contends that early medieval clerics cared little about lay knowledge.145 Supposedly, orthopraxy, “right action,” not orthodoxy, “right belief,” was what mattered— external performance, not internal ideas or emotions.146 The church historian Arnold Angenendt, for instance, has argued that the early Middle Ages saw a re-archaization, during which latent pre-Christian mentalities replaced the complex theology of the Patristic period. According to Angenendt, early medieval Christianity was magical, mythopoetic, ritualistic, and collectivist, until the new book culture of the twelfth century replaced this archaic worldview.147 If the arguments of Angenendt and similar scholars convince, then speaking of basic Christian instruction through mandatory ritual is foolhardy. Although Rogation procession can be reconstructed, the minds of those who marched remain inscrutable. Whenever a ritual cuts across social levels— performed by laity and clergy, commons and elites, from the most devout to the most worldly—participants often differ greatly in how they understand that practice. To cite to one modern example, when the Anglican clergyman Henry Moule became the vicar of Fordington, in Dorset, in 1829, he asked all the adults in his parish who Christ was and why they christened their children.148 The consensus was only partial. His parishioners agreed that Christ was the greatest of the angels, but split over baptism. Some thought 145 For this orthodoxy/orthopraxy distinction, cf. Russell, The Germanization, pp. 154–5; Janet L. Nelson, “Society, Theodicy, and the Origins of Heresy: Towards a Reassessment of the Medieval Evidence,” in Schism, Heresy, and Religious Protest, Studies in Church History 9, edited by Derek Baker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 69–70; Hamilton, Church and People, pp. 163–4, 224–5, 355–9. 146 For example, older historians of penance (e.g. Cyrille Vogel and Bernhard Poschmann) claimed that early penitentials concentrate on mechanistic acts rather than intentions. For a refutation of this view, Meens, Penance in Medieval Europe, pp. 2–4, 121, 200–3. 147 See Arnold Angenendt, Geschichte der Religiösität im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Primus, 1997), pp. 1–45, 626–44; Arnold Angenendt, “Religion zwischen Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit,” in Viva vox und ratio scripta: mündliche und schriftliche Kommunikationsformen im Mönchtum des Mittelalters, edited by Clemens M. Kasper and Klaus Schreiner (Münster: Lit, 1997), pp. 37–50; for a refutation, Noble, “Carolingian Religion,” pp. 287–307. 148 Kilvert’s Diary: Selections from the Diary of the Rev. Francis Kilvert, ed. William Plomer (London: Jonathan Cape, 1977), vol. 2, pp. 437–43.

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that all major life changes required rites of passage in church, while others thought that those who died without a Christian name became ghosts. Many communicants supposedly believed that communion was a toast to the health of Christ and his clergy. Moule was shocked to realize that, despite lives of conventional Anglican practice, most of his parishioners were unwittingly Arians and unaware of sacramental grace. Later in life, the disillusioned Moule wrote a tract entitled Our Home Heathen: How Can the Church of England Get at Them (1868). For Moule, Victorian England was a pagan mission field. High medieval theologians recognized the same problem as Moule and crafted the doctrine of implicit faith as a response.149 Scholastic authors affirmed that the people had saving faith through their loyalty to the church and its sacraments, even if most lay people knew little about Christian dogma. In this restricted sense, modern skeptics have grounds for asserting that medieval churchmen valued the implicit faith of orthopraxy over explicit orthodoxy. Nonetheless, strong reasons endure for interpreting Rogationtide and other rituals of Christianization as moments joining orthopraxy and orthodoxy. Medieval clergymen themselves talked about Christian ritual in exactly these terms—as instruction in true doctrine through the medium of proper ritual. Frankish liturgical theology repeatedly conveyed this idea. A famous maxim of medieval canon law, for instance, states “let the law of imploring establish the law of faith” (legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi)—that is to say, may the accepted practices of Christian prayer express theological truths, and by expressing them, justify them. Today, this adage is often quoted as “the law of prayer is the law of faith” (lex orandi, lex credendi), although this syntax never occurs in medieval authors; it first appeared among Catholic Romantics in Britain in the early nineteenth century.150 In fact, the modern version misunderstands the original proverb, by implying that the verb esse links the two nominatives. Such grammar equates the two leges and imagines a bi-directional relationship between faith and practice. Thus, contemporary theologians—including, for instance, many calling for the renewal of Rogationtide celebration—cite this maxim to justify changing the liturgy in order to better symbolize some doctrinal or ethical position.151 The original Latin syntax, in contrast, employs For implicit faith, see Van Engen, “Faith as a Concept,” pp. 32–47. I know of no usage of this maxim without the subjunctive verb until William Poynter, the Catholic vicar apostolic in London, employed lex credendi est lex orandi, close to the familiar modern phrase. The exact form lex orandi lex credendi seems to have arisen about a decade later; cf. William Poynter, Christianity, Or, The Evidences and Characters of the Christian Religion (London, Keating and Brown, 1827), pp. 97–8; Kenelm Henry Digby, Mores Catholici: Or Ages of Faith (Cincinnati: J. A. James, 1841), vol. 2, p. 367. 151 For Rogation renewalists employing this maxim, see Michael J. Woods, Cultivating Soil and Soul: Twentieth-Century Catholic Agrarians Embrace the Liturgical Movement (Collegeville, MN: Pueblo, 2009), pp. xix, 24, 112, 209–11, 223; Sharon K. Perkins, “Blessing Fields and Repelling Grasshoppers: Rogation Days in American Catholic Rural Life,” in God, Grace, and 149 150

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statuere in the subjunctive: the law of imploring ought to establish the law of faith. Far from equating the leges, this language assumes that worship and dogma are presently at disjuncture and gives priority to the law of prayer. Much like the Rogation Days, the lex credendi maxim arose out of the social breakdown and ecclesiastical factionalism which marked fifth-century Gaul.152 Around the year 450, the theologian Prosper of Aquitaine, then living in Rome, composed a short treatise entitled Auctoritates de gratia dei defending Augustinian predestination against the Semi-Pelagians in Gaul such as Vincent of Lerins.153 Most of the treatise extracts sections from conciliar acta and papal letters on the need for prevenient grace, but Prosper also cites the authority of common worship practices—such as exorcism, infant baptism, and the catechetical exsufflatio—against his foes.154 For Prosper, these liturgical acts already proclaimed the doctrine of prevenient grace, even if Vincent of Lerins and his supporters were too blind to see this unspoken doctrine without Prosper’s exposition. In the longest chapter of the Auctoritates de gratia dei, Prosper declares to his reader: “let us inspect the sacraments of priestly supplications, which are handed down from the apostles and celebrated uniformly through the entire world and in every orthodox church, so that the law of imploring may establish the law of faith.”155 Next, Prosper expounds how bishops everywhere lead their congregations in entreating God to give faith to pagans, Jews, and heretics—to reveal the gospel to them and bring them to penance and baptism.156 If, as the Semi-Pelagians claimed, saving faith begins through human free will rather than grace, then these ubiquitous prayers are “careless and in vain.”

Creation, edited by Philip J. Rossi (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2010), p. 202; David N. Powers, “Worship and Ecology,” Worship 84, no. 4 (2010): p. 300. 152 For the history of this adage, see Paul De Clerck, “ ‘Lex orandi, lex credendi’: The Original Sense and Historical Avatars of an Equivocal Adage,” Studia Liturgica 24 (1994): pp. 178–200; Daniel G. Van Slyke, “Lex orandi, lex credendi: Liturgy as locus theologicus in the Fifth Century?,” Josephinum Journal of Theology 11 (2004): pp. 130–51; Michael G. L. Church, “The Law of Begging: Prosper at the End of the Day,” Worship 73 (1999): pp. 442–53; Maxwell E. Johnson, Praying and Believing in Early Christianity: The Interplay Between Christian Worship and Doctrine (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2013), pp. 2–23. 153 For these debates, see Mathisen, Ecclesiastical Factionalism, pp. 119–40; Alexander Y. Hwang, “Prosper, Cassian, and Vincent: The Rule of Faith in the Augustinian Controversy,” in Tradition and the Rule of Faith in the Early Church: Essays in Honor of Joseph T. Lienhard, S. J., edited by Ronnie J. Rombs and Alexander Y. Hwang (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), pp. 68–88. 154 Prosper of Aquitaine, De gratia dei 9, PL 51.210B–210D. 155 Obsecrationum quoque sacerdotalium sacramenta respiciamus, quae ab apostolis tradita, in toto mundo atque in omni catholica ecclesia uniformiter celebrantur, ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi, Prosper of Aquitaine, De gratia dei 8, PL 51.209C. 156 Haec autem non perfunctorie neque inaniter a domino peti, Prosper of Aquitaine, De gratia dei 8, PL 51.209C–209E.

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In a parallel passage in his work On the Call of the Nations, Prosper speaks of how all clerics and believers observe “the rule of apostolic teaching” and “the law of imploring” (lex supplicationis) when they intercede for all people before God.157 Indeed, Prosper cites 1 Tim. 2:1–4 to demonstrate that such evangelistic prayers are not only universally practiced, but scripturally commanded.158 He likely had the criticism of the Semi-Pelagian author Vincent of Lerins in view, for Vincent had argued that Augustinian predestination was false because it was not “believed everywhere, always by all.”159 Prosper counters that Augustinian theology, even if only now stated explicitly, had been practiced everywhere from apostolic times. For Prosper, then, a worship practice ought to articulate and justify implicit beliefs, so long as that worship practice is both scriptural and universal. Earlier, Augustine himself had employed a similar argument, maintaining that the Lord’s Prayer vindicated his doctrines of grace and predestination.160 After all, the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer was a paradigmatic example of a practice both scriptural and universal which taught implicit doctrines (e.g. divine fatherhood, forgiveness of sins, the coming apocalypse). Early medieval canon law collections quoted Prosper’s lex credendi maxim frequently: usually ascribing its authorship to Pope Celestine I, an ally of Prosper in his defense of Augustinianism.161 The influential Frankish bishop Hincmar of Rheims, for example, repeated this aphorism frequently in various works he wrote against the Predestinarian teachings of Gottschalk of Orbais.162 Early medieval liturgical theologians often defend a comparable educational vision of Christian ritual. During the Carolingian era, numerous authors— such as Amalarius of Metz, Hrabanus Maurus, Walahfrid Strabo, and John Scottus Eriugena—wrote works discussing Mosaic worship, the sacraments and liturgies of Christianity, and even pagan rituals. In such treatises, Frankish churchmen adapted exegetical tool originally invented to interpret Israel’s 157 De hac ergo doctrinae apostolicae regula . . . quam legem supplicationis ita omnium sacerdotum, et omnium fidelium devotio concorditer tenet, Prosper of Aquitaine, De Vocatione Gentium 1.12, PL 51.664B–664C. 158 Obsecro igitur primum omnium fieri obsecrationes, orationes, postulationes, gratiarum actiones, pro omnibus hominibus, 1 Tim. 2:1. 159 Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est, Vincent of Lerins, Commonitoria 2.6, PL 50.640. 160 Augustine, Ep. 177.4, 215.3, 217.2, 6, CSEL 44, 57, ed. A. Goldbacher (Vienna: Tempsky, 1898); cf. Amalarius of Metz, On the Liturgy 1.13.16–17, Knibbs, vol. 1, p. 164; Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion, pp. 44–50. 161 See, for instance, Gennadius of Marseilles, De ecclesiasticis dogmatibus 30, PL 58.987D; Dionysus Exiguus, Collectio Decretorum, PL 67.273A; Cresconius, Breuiarum 296, PL 88.940D; Bonizo of Sutri, De sacramentis, PL 150.859D. 162 Hincmar of Rheims, De praedestinatione dei 24–5, 34–5, Ep.5–6 PL 125.213D, 214B, 253A, 260D, 362A, 379C, 442D, 473A; cf. Hincmar of Rheims, De una et non trina deitate 9, PL 125.614C; Ep. 10.4, 31.13, PL 126.73C, 224A; Opuscula in causa Hincmari Laudunensis, PL 126.339C, 529C, 613B; Council of Douzy (871), 28, MGH Concilia 4.B, p. 467.

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temple cult in order to expound Christian worship.163 They stressed the role of rites in Christian formation, because figures disclose truths. Walahfrid Strabo, for instance, states that originally the “true worshippers of God” venerated him with simple prayers “in suitable places under the open sky.”164 Temples and burnt offerings were the invention of demons and their worshippers. But God recognized that “because of the weakness of the flesh” humans clung to their old pagan customs. As a result, God conceded such complicated rituals to his people and even enabled Christians to “sense in those material structures” edifying spiritual lessons.165 Many of the rites of the church, therefore, are not eternal patterns of behavior, but rather merciful condescensions that God has granted for the instruction of fallen humans.166 Indeed, Walahfrid supplies the standard medieval pseudo-etymology for the Latin word prayer (oratio) from “the reason of the mouth” (oris ratio) and concludes that prayer is “not only a humble entreaty but also a rational utterance.”167 Walahfrid posits a theory of natural religio, for the liturgist insists that unlike the “erroneous rites (superstitiosos)” invented by demons, “whatever moral principles derive from natural law are common in all correct worship (religio),” whether that religio is observed by Christians, Jews, or classical philosophers.168 Proper ceremony—even if not Christian—is instructional. Other Carolingian liturgists voice similar sentiments. After explaining the relationship between sensible figures and insensible truths, for instance, Hrabanus Maurus proclaims that “all holidays were instituted by wise men lest the people decrease their faith in Christ and so that all people should gather into one and their faith grow.”169 John Scottus Eriugena refers to ecclesiastical 163 During Late Antiquity, clergy altered the minimalism of pre-Nicene worship by introducing objects from the temple cult, such as incense, candles, and vestments. This process integrated biblical typologies into the Christian liturgy, as Patristic mystagogical preachers noted. 164 Primis quidem temporibus tam ueros dei cultores . . . in locis congruis suae religionis cultum sub diuo celebrasse, Walahfrid Strabo, De Exordiis 2, Harting-Correa, p. 52. 165 Quia propter fragilitatem carnalium omnes consuetudines pariter tolli non posse sciebat . . . ut, quae prioribus propter infirmitatem concessa sunt ad exclusionem erroris, nobis sequentibus per Christi passionem patefacta proficerent ad causam perfectionis, dum et in illis materialibus structuris aedificium ecclesiae spiritale . . . et uirtutum documenta sentimus, Walahfrid Strabo, De Exordiis 2, Harting-Correa, pp. 52–4. 166 Cf. Walahfrid Strabo, De Exordiis 23, 26, Harting-Correa, pp. 126, 154. 167 Quia oratio est oris ratio et non tantum humilis postulatio, uerum etiam rationabilis intellegitur hoc nomine locutio, Walahfrid Strabo, De Exordiis 10, Harting-Correa, p. 84. 168 Superstitiosos errores . . . esse omni religioni communia, ut est: ‘Quod tibi non uis fieri, alii ne feceris,’ et quicquid ex naturali lege . . . quod quidam illa propter honestatem, ut philosophi, quidam propter timorem, ut Iudaei, alii propter dilectionem, ut christiani obseruant, Walahfrid Strabo, De Exordiis 2, Harting-Correa, p. 54. 169 Quantum autem distat ab umbra ueritas . . . et quantum praestat insensibili sensibile . . . sed quia omnia in figuram contingebant illis . . . Omnes autem festiuitates . . . a uiris prudentibus instituta sunt, ne forte rara congregatio populi fidem minueret in Christo. Propterea ergo dies aliqui constituti sunt, ut in unum omnes pariter conuenirent, et ex conspectu mutuo, et fides crescat, Hrabanus Maurus, De Institutione Clericorum 2.45, Zimbel, vol. 2, p. 384; cf. Isidore of Seville, De Ecclesiasticis Officiis 1.36.2.

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rituals as “a likeness of the celestial” in which “the symbols and veils of the visible sacraments” express eternal spiritual truths to those who investigate them.170 After the resurrection of the dead, Eriugena says this sacramental veil will be lifted and humans will contemplate the truth directly, but for now most humans must approach the truth through ritual. And Amalarius of Metz begins one of his many works dedicated to expounding the figural significance of the church liturgy by praying “may God, who illuminated the heart of the fathers to institute all things in church for a reason, open our hearts to sense what is in these things and why we do them.”171 Carolingian liturgists viewed ritual—even the sacramental rites of the church—as temporal, man-made, and limited: a divine concession to humans occurring at a specific moment in history and one day to end.172 Just like the Israelite temple cult, church ceremonies were figural. They revealed doctrines through physical signs and strengthen via the senses the faith of those not yet ready for unmediated access to the intelligible world of the spirit. Strikingly, by the ninth century, the same Latin word (symbolum) could mean both a symbol and a creed; both were condensed “tokens” of larger truths.173 As long as Christians remained in this earth and body, they needed the grace of sensory rites. By the logic of these liturgists, no account of early medieval Christianization can set orthodoxy against orthopraxy. Christian formation was both ceremony and teaching. For correct rituals (orthopraxy) carry a form of understanding (orthodoxy). When early medieval churchmen taught the laity how to recite the Lord’s Prayer and Creed, for instance, or led the people on a Rogation march, they also enacted the unspoken doctrines contained in those rituals.

170 Ad similitudinem uidelicet caelestis sacerdotii . . . partim symbolis uisibilium sacramentorum dispositam, partim uero ueritatis contemplatione perfectam . . . quando uisibilium sacramentorum uelaminibus sublatis ipsam ueritatem perspicua . . . quoniam non solum aeternarum rerum symbola peragit et uisibiliter considerat, ut legalis praeterita, sed et spiritualem eorum intelligentiam inuestigare inuenireque non cessat, John Scottus Eriugena, Ep. 14, MGH Ep. 6, ed. E. Dümmler et al. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1925), pp. 160–1; cf. John Scottus Eriugena, Expositiones in hierarchiam caelestem 1.403–16, CCCM 31, ed. J. Barbet (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975); Paul Rorem, Eriugena’s Commentary on the Dionysian Celestial Hierarchy (Toronto: PIMS, 2005), pp. 83–92, 128–32; John Scottus Eriugena, Commentarius in Euangelium Iohannis 1.30.67, CCCM 166, ed. E. Jeauneau (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008). 171 Nichil agere in aecclesia imitando patres nostros secundum constitutionem illorum nis omni ordinate et rationem habentia. Vnde orandus est deus qui eorum cor illuminauit ut sic ea componerent rationabiliter . . . cordi nostro aperire . . . quid in eis sentire oportet, cur sic et sic agamus, Amalarius of Metz, A Lost Work by Amalarius of Metz: Interpolations in Salisbury, Cathedral Library, MS. 154 (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 2001), 183; cf. Amalarius, A Lost Work, pp. 187–8, 200; Amalarius, On the Liturgy 1.P, 3.P, Knibbs, vol. 1, pp. 24–6, vol. 2, p. 2; Amalarius, Ep. 5, MGH Epp. 5.245. 172 For a similar high medieval vision, see Ristuccia, “The Image of an Executioner,” pp. 160, 164–5, 174–6. 173 For this double-meaning, Stefania Bonfiglioli and Costantino Marmo, “Symbolism and Linguistic Semantics. Some Questions (and Confusions) from Late Antique Neoplatonism up to Eriugena,” Vivarium 45, no. 2 (2007): pp. 238–52.

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To adapt a phrase that medieval liturgists applied to the tonsure, Rogationtide was “a sign figured in the body but performed upon the mind.”174 Ælfric’s sermon suggests, for example, that praying the Pater Noster on an outdoor Rogation procession while facing the eastern sun was supposed to turn the mind to God through the media of the body and the sky.175 Natural signs experienced through the senses (e.g. hunger, sunlight, exhaustion) reinforced the conventional signs of sermon and chant. The gradual development of Rogationtide into an occasion for basic Christian instruction is a superb of example of how theological ideas on the nature of rituals shaped church practice. For Rogationtide was temporal and man-made: the putative invention of an unimportant father at a specific moment in the fifth century to deal with short-lived local problems. Yet through the Rogation Days—and through the teaching and recitation of the Pater Noster on those days—larger doctrines of divine fatherhood, human vulnerability and dependence, repentance, and salvation took physical form. Rogationtiontide— and presumably other mandatory rites—could be a hermeneutic. Church leaders believed that Rogationtide could shape how people interpreted themselves and their world, but only when leaders manage those rituals in specific ways, hence the threat of ritual failure. As Prosper of Aquitaine insisted, the correct performance of Christianizing rites ought to establish the doctrines of faith. Liturgies not only communicated doctrines, they substantiated them to the worshiper. In the same act of penance, Christians could both state they were sinners and feel themselves wretched and ready to be saved.

PERFORMING THE CHRISTIAN During Late Antiquity, the Rogation Days played a minimal role in Christian instruction. Despite Rogationtide’s import for the Christianization of local communities, teaching on basic texts like the Lord’s Prayer and Creed remained tied to the catechumenate. At the end of Late Antiquity, though, as the catechumenate declined, new occasions for Christian formation arose in the Latin West—Rogationtide among them. The Rogation Days was not necessarily unique within the liturgical year; Lent and perhaps Advent also served as instructional seasons.176 But Rogationtide surpassed these other holidays in the closeness of its connection with the Lord’s Prayer. 174 Signum quoddam quod in corpore figuratur sed in animo agitur, Isidore of Seville, De Ecclesiasticis Officiis 2.4.3; cf. Hrabanus Maurus, De Institutione Clericorum 1.3, Zimbel, vol. 1, p. 134. 175 Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 1.19.61–3. 176 For instruction during Lent, see Ristuccia, The Transmission of Christendom, pp. 276–391.

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The Lord’s Prayer gradually emerged as a dominant theme of Rogationtide preaching from the eighth century forward. Clergymen like Bede, Hrabanus, and Ælfric integrated allusions to and exegesis on the Pater Noster into larger sermons or sermonic cycles devoted to other forms of basic Christian teaching: on the virtues and vices, on the duties of the laity, on doomsday, on the sacraments, and so forth. The reasons for this connection between Rogationtide and the Pater Noster were many, including the proximity of the Lord’s Prayer to the standard gospel lection Luke 11:5–13 and the tendency for penitential season like Rogationtide or Lent to attract instructional and Quando Volueris materials. However, Rogation sermons themselves indicate that the most important reason for the connection is the parallel nature of the two rituals themselves. The communal nature of the Pater Noster complimented the Christian solidarity of the Rogation procession. The Creed received little attention in Rogation preaching, because it lacked such parallelism. As important as the Pater Noster became, Rogationtide sermons centered on the feast itself and the prayers and repentance that the whole Christian community must perform in order to gain the mercy and blessings of God. Explicit teaching on the Lord’s Prayer and Creed was part of a larger liturgical ceremony of Christian formation. This was true during Late Antiquity, when catechesis was central to the Lenten preparation for baptism, and remained true in the early Middle Ages, as instruction shifted to other festivals like Rogationtide. For early medieval theologians, doctrinal transmission and proper ritual practice interpenetrated. Medieval people never encountered one denuded of the other. Rather, they listened to teaching interpreting their ritual experience even as they underwent the experience itself. The ritual, in turn, embodied these teachings in its pageantry and format. For medieval churchmen, the act of saying the Lord’s Prayer was a distillation of the ceremonies of Rogationtide—of Christianization itself. The procession performed an ethos which its preaching verbalized, especially when that preaching focused on the Pater Noster. The clergy’s instructions on the Lord’s Prayer explained the practice of Rogationtide and sought to prevent congregants from mindless participation. By reciting this single prayer, the medieval laity expressed the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of all Christian men, their dependence on God for bread and other necessities of life, and their plea for divine forgiveness and deliverance from a vast array of evils. The Lord’s Prayer was a ritual of communitas in the same way that Rogationtide was. Both the clergy and the laity, of all classes, were supposed to know and recite the prayer daily, just as the whole community was supposed to join in the procession and unite around the sacraments. Indeed, those who could not recite or would not march were not really Christians at all. Christianization occurred at the intersection between ritual and instruction. Learning doctrine was a means of experiencing and understanding rite. Through the prayer and the feast together, Christians enacted their status as the forgiven people of God.

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Conclusion Ritual and Christianness

A Latin West between the polis and the parish had its own institution—the Rogation procession—for organizing local communities. Rogationtide arose in Late Antiquity as an attempt to strengthen civic bonds in the aftermath of imperial collapse. The holiday flourished during the early Middle Ages because it supplied a time for community formation, doctrinal instruction, and social ranking; it acted out an ethos of unity and solidarity for the Christian commonwealth. As the evolution of the Rogation Days exemplifies, Christianness is not transcultural and transhistorical. Who is and is not a Christian was always contested theology and could change greatly across eras. Narratives of Christianization cannot float in the abstract world of doctrines, sacred or secular. For it is in the particulars, the pragmatics, the often obsessive details of specific rituals like baptism, Lenten confession, Easter communion, and Rogationtide that the task of Christianizing happened. Three arguments have interlaced this book: one each about the institutional, liturgical, and hermeneutic sides of Christianization. First, that Rogationtide supplies an excellent case study for examining how local Christian congregations formed and ordered themselves during the early Middle Ages. The holiday enacted Christianness. It separated a Christian people from the wilderness, foreigners, demons, and sins outside. European communities did not develop from the Roman city to the medieval parish directly. Another local institution—the church procession—linked these two. And like both the parish and the polis, this institution entailed local holy places, a set group of clergy and laity, ceremonies of membership, and a minimum level of instruction. Second, that modern historians must revise their paradigms of Christianization; they must envision Christianization without religion. Christianization was not a process through which one religious system replaced another. It was primarily a ritual performance. Sectarian identity is socially constructed and subjectively perceived. People employed concepts like Christian and pagan as tools to shape their world, and in the act of using these concepts, created them.

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Such concepts are not objects, but lenses for understanding the people who employed them. Contemporary historians no longer search the past for “true” Germans. Now, we must stop looking for true Christians. The boundary dividing Christian from non-Christian was in the mind, not in the material world. It is not something that a codicologist’s ruler or an archaeologist’s spade could ever uncover. Yet, just because it was imagined, this boundary was not any less real.1 Whenever people celebrated the mandatory rituals that were Christianization, they made this boundary real. Finally, that the centuries of reinterpretation by pastors, preachers, heretics, theologians, historians, and folklorists—even when they were erroneous—are essential for comprehending Rogationtide. Disputes about mandatory ritual are debates about Christianness. Medieval rituals never existed free from interpretation. The Rogation Days did not first happen and then receive an explanation, as a justification after the fact. Contested hermeneutics was part of the rite itself. Christianization was primarily a ritual performance, but never exclusively that; it was more than marking boundaries. Faith, basic instruction, theological reflection, community formation, and polemic were always instilled into Rogationtide and other mandatory rituals. The Rogation liturgy and its accompanying interpretations encouraged people to view themselves and the world differently. The continuous reshapings of Rogationtide after its early medieval height corroborate all three of these arguments. After 1100, Rogation declined in prominence. Yet the holiday remained a charged moment for Christianization. From the fall of Rome to the Carolingian Renewal, from the papal reform to Protestant Reformation, from the French Revolution to modern scholarship, debates around the correct performance of Rogationtide remained disputes about what it means to be Christian and who belongs in a Christian commonwealth. The import of the Rogation Days already waned in the high Middle Ages, long before Protestant reformers or French republicans belittled the holiday. Chronicling this decay is easier than explaining its cause. Multiple social changes undermined the feast: its dubious apostolic authority, concerns about abuses, the rise of new holidays like Corpus Christi, and even the systemization of the parish. As the legal-bureaucratic structure of the parish hardened, the Rogation rite no longer seemed as indispensable. The Rogation procession was long, exhausting, humiliating, and sometimes dangerous. Once its role in community formation ended, clergy and laity alike stopped promoting the feast. The evidence for this decline appears already in the twelfth century—a period when Rogation celebration on the ground still flourished. Until that 1

Cf. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, pp. 19, 128–42; Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness, pp. 341–2.

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century, medieval terminology made little distinction between Rogationtide and the Roman Greater Litany; sources called both rogationes and litania maior. In the twelfth century, though, churchmen began regularly to distinguish between the “Greater Procession” (litania maior) and the “Lesser Procession” (litania minor)—that is, the Rogation Days.2 The tag maior originally served to differentiate both Rogationtide and the Greater Litany from other processions and litanies of the saints. Once the maior/minor distinction arose, however, medieval authors sought to explain what made the Roman feast “greater” than Rogationtide. In terms of number of days and visibility in the sources, the Rogation Days were certainly the greater of the two. Clergymen, thus, pointed to two other criteria which granted the Greater Litany with superior prestige: (1) auctoritas, a pope established the feast, rather than a mere bishop, and (2) locus, the feast began at Rome, rather than in a small Gallic town. Such dismissive attitudes towards the Rogation Days appear in many high medieval works, including in widely read treatises like the Golden Legend or Durandus’ Rationale. These disparagements likely dampened enthusiasm for Rogationtide and its arduous penitential exercises. During the twelfth century, moreover, the parish system completed its slow development in Western Europe. Parish churches, rather than baptismal churches, were now the axis of the local sacred geography. Eventually, especially after the Reformation, the Rogation liturgy altered to reflect this transformation in the sacred space. In England, at least, the march began to beat the geographical bounds of the parish, rather than to visit key shrines.3 But, for much of the high Middle Ages, the Rogation procession was an anachronism—a manifestation of an ancient pre-parishional order that had disappeared. The marginalization of the Rogation Days parallels a broader shift in Christian devotion, from an early medieval piety concentrating on the relics of saints and on initiation rites such as baptism to a high medieval piety focused on the Eucharist.4 Early medieval theologians dedicated little attention to the communion rite, at least relative to their voluminous writings on baptism and penance. From the ninth century, for instance, Ratramnus’ and Radbertus’ two famous treatises on communion are dwarfed by the over sixty Frankish tracts on the baptismal rite.5 From the late eleventh century onwards,

2

For this dichotomy, Liber Quare additio 25.c; Jean Beleth, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis 122.a–c; Praepositinus of Cremona, Tractatus de officiis 2.128–9, 2.131, Corbett, pp. 196–8; Martin of León, Serm. 28–9, PL 208.1035–6; Liber de Computo, PL 129.1299; William of Malmesbury, De gestis pontificum anglorum 1, PL 179.1445; Sicard of Cremona, Mitralis 7.6.571; Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea 70, Graesse, p. 313; Guillelmus Durandus, Rationale diuinorum officiorum 6.102.2. 3 Tratman, “Beating the Bounds,” pp. 318–23; Harte, “Rethinking Rogationtide,” pp. 32–4; Hindle, “Beating the Bounds of the Parish,” pp. 205–28. 4 Cf. Snoek, Medieval Piety, pp. 220–1, 250–77, 384–6. 5 See, Keefe, Water and the Word, vol. 2.

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in contrast, the Eucharist became the undisputed center of worship and theological meditation, at least for the Christian clergy. Rogationtide was not a Eucharistic procession. Although it did serve partly as a miniature Lent before communion at Pentecost, it had many other purposes. Rogation marchers bore relics, banners, crosses, and even gospel books, but no extant early medieval source indicates that they ever carried the body and blood with them. Preachers at the holiday rarely mention the Lord’s Supper. By the thirteenth century, new Eucharistic processions—such as Corpus Christi and the Procession of the Holy Blood—began to crowd out Rogationtide celebration.6 For instance, in late medieval Bruges, if May 3 fell on one of the three days before Ascension, the local churches would postpone Rogationtide until another day, a sign that they considered the Holy Blood more important. These Eucharistic marches occurred at much the same time of year as the Rogation Days: Holy Blood on May 3 and Corpus Christi three weeks after Ascension. Moreover, such holidays directly borrowed from the liturgy and processional route of the earlier Rogation Days. Sometimes they were little more than the Rogation march with the Eucharist added. Processional dragons, which had originated in Rogationtide, popularized all over France for a variety of festal occasions: famously, the Tarasque of Tarascon at Pentecost.7 Some late medieval synods, such as the Council of Cologne in 1452 and the Council of Passau in 1470, even banned outdoor processions except for Corpus Christi, requiring that Rogation assemblies march within the walls of the church itself.8 Rogationtide had lost its uniqueness. It was one of many processions and not the most important. Because the Rogation Days embodied the Christian commonwealth, the feast could not endure the rise of a new totem for the commonwealth: the corpus mysticum.9 Rogationtide’s decline during the later Middle Ages demonstrates the holiday’s bond with community formation and the pre-parishional church. The fortunes of the holiday after the Middle Ages reveal how debates around licit and illicit rituals solidified modern religious borders. Consider, for instance, the Rogation Days in revolutionary France. On September 21, 1792, the newly elected National Convention convened in Paris. That day, its immediate task was the abolition of the French monarchy and the establishment of the Republic. But on the very next day, the Convention began a process that was 6 For such processions, Brown, Civic Ceremony and Religion in Medieval Bruges, pp. 8–11, 64–7, 84–91, 126–7; Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 164–212, 243–71; Bruhn, “The Parish Monstrance of St. Kolumba,” pp. 17–27. 7 Le Goff, Time, Work, and Culture, pp. 178–85; Vauchez, The Laity, pp. 135–7. 8 Scribner, Popular Culture, pp. 34–6, 42. 9 Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 193–231.

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arguably more sweeping—that would influence the daily lives of every person in France from the wealthiest Parisian to the poorest peasant—the revision of the calendar. Henceforward, all documents would be dated from the Year I of the Republic. A new age of the world had begun. Despite this bold proclamation, it was more than a year before the Convention approved a new calendar: on November 24, 1793, now called 4 Frimaire, Year II. The legislature left the drafting of the calendar to a small committee, headed by the mathematician Charles-Gilbert Romme and the dramatist Philippe-François-Nazaire Fabre d’Églantine.10 Within two years, both men were dead—victims of the factional upheavals of the early Republic—but their calendar outlived them by a decade, until Napoleon abolished it in 1805. The structure of the Revolutionary Calendar reflected the opposing backgrounds of its creators. Romme decimalized the year: twelve equal thirty-day months, beginning on September 22, the autumnal equinox. Each month had three ten-day weeks; each day had ten hours, divided into a hundred minutes and ten thousand seconds. Instead of Sunday, workers rested every tenth day at a weekly fête. Rarer rest meant greater productivity, to the displeasure of many. This chronological metric system was not cheap; it committed the French to producing new clocks, new almanacs, new documents, new history books, and memorizing anew all the dates of the past. People had to relearn their own birthdays. In contrast to Romme, Fabre d’Églantine added poetry to the year, inventing months like Germinal and Messidor titled for the weather, days named for plants and animals, and a series of carnivalesque festivals.11 In his report to the National Convention, Fabre d’Églantine explained his reasoning for such whimsy.12 The new calendar could not hope to drive out the Gregorian one if it remained “abstract, dry, prolix, and confused.”13 Long tyrannical priestly control of the calendar had engraved false images on the minds of the French people.14 The French must liberate their minds with new images which connect the

10 Sanja Perovic, The Calendar in Revolutionary France: Perceptions of Time in Literature, Culture, Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 110–17, 187–8; Matthew Shaw, Time and the French Revolution: The Republican Calendar, 1789–Year XIV (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2011), pp. 1–4, 10, 40–2, 59–61, 87–8; Buc, The Dangers of Ritual, pp. 203–6. 11 Perovic, The Calendar, pp. 120–6; Shaw, Time and the French Revolution, pp. 1–2, 43–4, 62–3, 77–8, 89–90; Taylor, A Secular Age, pp. 51–2, 204–8, 412–13. 12 Fabre d’Églantine, “Rapport sur le calendrier républicain,” in Œuvres politiques de Fabre d’Églantine, edited by Charles Vellay (Paris: Librairie Charpentier et Fasquelle, 1914), pp. 165, 172–203; translation adapted from The Old Regime and the French Revolution, edited by Keith Michael Baker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 362–8. 13 “Abstraite, sèche, vide d’idées, pénible par sa proxilité, et confuse,” Fabre d’Églantine, “Rapport sur le calendrier,” p. 181. 14 Fabre d’Églantine, “Rapport sur le calendrier,” pp. 173–4; Cf. Perovic, The Calendar, pp. 28–31.

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seasons of the earth and sky to republican freedom, rather than to saints and Sundays and priestcraft. Fabre d’Églantine proclaimed a Christianization narrative focused on the development of the liturgical calendar. During the Middle Ages, some pagan groups such as the thirteenth-century Livonians developed sacraments for reversing Christianization: anti-baptisms, reburials, and so forth.15 Fabre d’Églantine would not have known this precedent, but the logic of his narrative is similar. New secular rites would unmake Christians. According to Fabre d’Églantine, Christian clerics “had always the universal goal of subjugating and enchaining humanity…to inspire disgust in us for earthly wealth in order to enjoy abundance themselves.”16 In order to terrify once-happy pagans with their sins, priests instituted holidays at times when the weather would reflect a mood: somber All Souls’ in grey November, triumphant Corpus Christi around the solstice. The Rogationtide is Fabre d’Églantine’s foremost example of this plot. In May, with the fields just planted and the sun beautiful, churchmen directed the people on procession, seeming to say “we, the priests, green the countryside, fertilize the fields, and pack your granaries. Believe us and enrich us, or we will punish you with storms.”17 For an anti-Christian revolutionary such Fabre d’Églantine—even more than for a Christian theologian such as Prosper of Aquitaine—ritual practice established belief. The secret goal of Rogationtide was so obvious that any skeptic could see it, yet so potent that it could enslave centuries. Ritual would combat ritual. The National Convention could only emancipate the French if it borrowed on church practice and fashioned a new liturgical calendar full of republican images for the country. Eventually, the Revolutionary Calendar and the larger dechristianization campaign failed. Napoleon’s 1801 Concordat with the Vatican restored Sunday as a day of rest, and the full church calendar soon followed. Nonetheless, for nearly a decade, Christian practices in France could occur only with the narrow walls of the few churches that remained open. Symbols that intruded on the secularized spaces of the exterior world—such as church bells or high crosses or outdoor processions like Rogationtide—were banned across the country.18

15

Colish, Faith, Fiction and Force, pp. 252–4, 272–4, 313. “Les prêtres, dont le but universel & définitif est & sera toujours de subjuguer l’espèce humaine & de l’enchaîner sous leur empire, les prêtres instituoient-ils la commémoration des morts ; c’étoit pour nous inspirer du dégoût pour les richesses terrestres & mondaines,” Fabre d’Églantine, “Rapport sur le calendrier,” pp. 174–5. 17 “C’est là que, sous le nom de Rogations, leur ministère s’interposoit entre le ciel & nous…‘C’est nous, prêtres, qui avons reverdi ces campagnes; c’est nous qui fécondons ces champs d’une si belle espérance, c’est par nous que vos greniers se rempliront: croyez-nous, respectez-nous, obéissez-nous, enrichissez-nous; sinon la grêle & le tonnerre, dont nous disposons, vous puniront’ ”; Fabre d’Églantine, “Rapport sur le calendrier,” pp. 177–8. 18 Vovelle, The Revolution against the Church, pp. 28–30, 40–1, 56–7, 143–4. 16

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Outside a few areas of France—for instance, Brittany—the Rogation Days never regained the prominence they had formerly held.19 In many ways, the disappearance of Rogationtide in the United States followed a similar path, though less abruptly. Over time, Americans reinterpreted the penitential feast as an essentially agricultural occasion, minimized the importance of the procession itself, and replaced the feast with the secularized holidays of the national calendar. Rogation celebration in the United States dates back to the colonial period.20 But even before independence, the walk was usually simplified and perfunctory with none of its medieval pomp. By the nineteenth century, Rogation celebration in America occurred mainly in agrarian regions in the West with congregations of Central European immigrants.21 Liturgical reforms gradually reduced the feast to an optional observance in Protestantism and Roman Catholicism alike: often little more than an alternate rubric for the fifth Sunday after Easter.22 In the last quarter of the twentieth century, some American Christians— inspired by the environmentalist movement and the New Agrarianism of Wendell Berry—have sought to revitalize the Rogation Days across denominations.23 Renewing Rogationtide is one piece of a larger project of establishing community that is “organic,” “sustainable,” and marked by “symbiotic mutuality.”24 In place of petitions against wild beasts, war, plague, and bad weather, modern theologians repent new sins like pesticides, inhumane slaughtering practice, corporate farming, and the abuses of migrant workers.25 These contemporary advocates for Rogationtide often dispense with the march itself and offer alternative means of performance. A professor, for instance, suggests that Roman Catholics sprinkle their houses and gardens

19 Marie-France Gueusquin-Barbichon, “Organisation sociale de trois trajets rituels (les Rogations, la Fête-Dieu, et la Saint-Roch) à Bazoches, Morvan,” Ethnologie française, nouvelle serie 7, no. 1 (1977): pp. 29–44; Marquis de Chambrun, “Village Life in France,” Methodist Magazine and Review 56 (1902), pp. 492, 497. 20 For Rogationtide in America, Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer Book, pp. 40–7, 110, 154–6, 214; John R. Stilgoe, “Jack-O’-Laterns to Surveyors: The Secularization of Landscape Boundaries,” Environmental Review 1, no. 1 (1976): pp. 14–30. 21 Perkins, “Blessing Fields,” pp. 201, 206–9; Michael P. Foley, “Rogationtide,” The Latin Mass 17, no. 2 (2008), pp. 36–9; Martin Hellriegel, “Merely Suggesting,” Orate Fratres 15, no. 7 (1941): pp. 298–9. 22 Esther Mary Nickel, “Rogation Day, Ember Days, and the New Evangelization,” Antiphon 16, no. 1 (2012), pp. 21–36. 23 Woods, Cultivating Soil, pp. 1–27, 61–2, 119–22, 191–218; Robert W. Dahlen, “Prayer on the Prairies: Rogation Days in Changing Times,” Word and World 20, no. 2 (2000): 197–200; Perkins, “Blessing Fields,” pp. 202, 206–9, 215; Jack Fabian, “Rogation Days…Sort Of,” Modern Liturgy 13, no. 7 (1986), p. 9. 24 Powers, “Worship,” pp. 290–1, 301–2. 25 Dahlen, “Prayer on the Prairies,” pp. 194, 198; Foley, “Rogationtide,” pp. 36–9; Claire Foster and David Shreeve, Don’t Stop at the Lights: Leading Your Church Through a Changing Climate (London: Church House Publising, 2008), pp. 93–7.

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with holy water.26 One Lutheran pastor recommends that rural churches walk in the church yard “if the weather is nice,” but judges it enough for city congregations to merely open the windows for some fresh air during worship.27 Even national holidays can substitute for Rogationtide. For instance, in 2003, the Committee on Divine Worship of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops allowed dioceses to treat civic holidays like Independence Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving as “equivalents to Rogation Days.”28 A Protestant minister, likewise, speaks of melding Rogationtide with Arbor Day.29 Planting trees and eating hamburgers replaces fasts and barefoot processions. Medieval Christians would never recognize Rogation Days of this sort, yet the changes are sensible. Present-day liturgical reformers could not realistically hope that busy congregants—with their lives structured around the calendar of offices and schools—would attend multiple weekday masses, wear penitential garb, fast for three days on bread and water, or march for six hours: all standard in the Middle Ages. The medieval festival was penitential; the modern is agricultural. Rogation Days arose in late ancient cities; the holiday now focuses on the countryside. Medieval Christians feared divine chastisement; modern agrarianists dread human pollutants. Nature threatened medieval people; modern Christians long to return to nature from their urbanized lives. Medieval Rogation Days were vertical, focused on man’s relationship with God and the church, but the contemporary versions are horizontal, focused on man’s relationship with other creatures. In the past, Rogationtide beat the bounds of the Christian commonwealth. Now, it revolves around the entire created world. French revolutionary secularists and American liturgical reformers would have hated each other. But their attempts to remake Rogationtide are surprisingly similar. Both shifted the feast from penance to agriculture, from outdoor procession to indoor prayer, from the church’s calendar to the national one. As different as their motives are, revolutionaries and liturgical reformers alike express the dechristianization of time and landscape that marks the modern West. Contemporary Christians may bewail this secularization, but they cannot avoid conceding it, even in their liturgies. For, as these two Rogation examples suggest, Christianization and secularization paralleled each other. A historian can almost write the history of secularization as medieval Christianization in reverse. Unlike Christianization, there is no way to imagine secularization without religion; the invention of

26 27 28 29

Foley, “Rogationtide,” p. 39. Dahlen, “Prayer on the Prairies,” p. 200; cf. Powers, “Worship,” pp. 294–7, 300, 306. D. D. Emmons, “God’s Mercy on Creation,” Catholic Answer 25, no. 1 (2011), pp. 30–3. Dahlen, “Prayer on the Prairies,” p. 198.

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religion in early modernity was a necessary precursor to secularization.30 Yet secularization too needed its mandatory rituals, its liturgical calendar, its occasions on which all people must commune. In different times and places, modern secularists built new universal rituals: from saluting the flag to attending a state school, from being vaccinated to denouncing a counter-revolutionary, from watching a parade—rather than marching in a procession—to walking through a shopping mall on Sunday.31 Conflicts about the form and purpose of these rituals were contests about what it meant to be secular. Re-envisioning the Christianization of the early medieval West is not just altering terminology in order to stay closer to medieval thought. It is also reimagining how people became Christian on the ground. According to a popular older model, for instance, political and economic motivations caused mass baptisms all over Europe. As thousands of untaught new converts entered the church, the Patristic catechumenate collapsed, lay doctrinal knowledge disappeared, syncretisms and pagan survivals abounded, and churchmen had to spend centuries gradually building a genuinely Christian society out of the resulting mess. According to the new model, in contrast, Christianization occurred through mandatory penitential seasons like Lent and Rogationtide. As pastoral institutions spread, local people participated in compulsory rituals and were accepted as Christian as a result. These holidays must have stirred participant’s minds and emotions, for such rites combined ceremonial pageantry with doctrinal instruction, community formation, and devotional exercises like fasting and prayer. In a way, these seasons were a new catechumenate. They were mandatory for a reason—because early medieval clergymen believed that only rituals of such power could remake souls. Throughout this book, I have employed a paradoxical catchphrase for this new model—Christianization without religion. Christianization without religion does not refer to Christianization without theology, without churches, without faith, without doctrines and devotional practices and gods. This phrase does not mean that ideas are mere superstructure, appearing after the fact to justify material and economic change. Instead, this model insists that we understand medieval people in their own terms and not assume that fixed systems of core beliefs and practices—analytically separable from other religions and from other spheres like politics or culture—existed when no medieval Christian said these did. What did it mean to be a Christian? It 30 Nongbri, Before Religion, pp. 85–131; Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence, pp. 123–80. 31 Taylor, A Secular Age, pp. 4–5, 482–3; Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, pp. 18–27; Loren J. Samons, What’s Wrong with Democracy: From Athenian Practice to American Worship (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 14, 168–78, 183–5; Carolyn Marvin and David W. Ingle, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 24–5, 69–72, 168.

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meant joining a local church community through ritual. People affiliated with new local institutions without converting from one faith group to another. Religious borders were in the making. These borders emerged complete only as modern critics such as Protestant reformers and French republicans extirpated Rogationtide. Secularization changed what it meant to be a Christian. Pre-modern people did not have religious identities. They performed mandatory rituals. When later Europeans crossed over from ritual to identity, they walked away from an older world.

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Index Aachen 88, 103, 105n.38 Abbo of Saint-Germain, monk 191 Acacian schism 32 Adalhard of Corbie, St 122 aduentus ceremony 25, 144, 175 Advent, liturgical season 36, 113, 123n.131, 208 Ælfric of Eynsham, abbot 22, 121, 178, 186, 189, 191, 196–9, 208–9 on Judaizing 143 on magic 200–1 Agobard of Lyon, bishop 131 agrarianism 52, 216–17 Alberic of Rheims, scholastic 140 Alcuin of York, St 88 Aldebert, ascetic 21, 153–64 compared with other holy men 165, 176, 179 Alleluia, liturgy 169 almsgiving 53, 106, 138, 161, 192, 193, 195 at Rogationtide 121, 124, 126, 168, 200 Amalarius of Metz, liturgist 92, 131, 170, 197n.116, 205, 207 ambarvalic sacrifice 20, 77–83, 140 in medieval thought 84–7, 90–1, 93–5 in Reformation polemic 64–6, 73–6 Ambrose of Milan, St 169, 172–5, 181 amburbial sacrifice 80, 82, 85, 90–1, 93 Amiens 122 anachronism 34, 86n.94, 123, 141, 212 Andreas of Sturmi, hagiographer 172–3 Angenendt, Arnold, historian 202 Angilbert of Saint-Riquier, St 108–12, 159, 188 Anglicanism 64, 66, 70–4, 76, 175, 202–3 Ankersmit, Frank, philosopher 9n.28, 96n.138 Aper, aristocrat 44, 46, 50, 52–3 apotropaic rituals 2, 26, 69, 72–3, 117, 144, 186 equated with magic 68, 163–4 Aquileia 37, 56 Arezzo 132, 174 Arialdus of Carimate, Patarene leader 159n.119, 171–6, 179 Arianism 32, 51, 54–5, 60–1, 203 Armagh 42 Arnulf of Milan, writer 136, 172 Arval Brothers 77, 80, 83

Ascension 1–2, 20, 69, 90, 119–20, 130, 150, 169, 189, 213 and the timing of Rogationtide 28, 33–8, 56–7, 59–62, 173–4 Vigil of 146–7, 192–3, 199 Ash Wednesday 3, 93, 103–5 Asiago 99 Athanasius of Alexandria, St 96 Athens 8, 88–9, 218 Aubrey, John, folklorist 75 Augustine of Canterbury, St 34, 38 Augustine of Hippo, St 9, 17, 20, 54–5, 148, 190, 197, 205 Augustinianism 17–18, 55, 182n.18, 194, 204–5 Aurelian, Roman emperor 82–3 Austrasia 155, 157 Autun 44 Avitus of Clermont, bishop 145–8 Avitus of Vienne (Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus), bishop 20, 26–7, 31–3, 38–43, 100 rivalry with Arles 54–62 Bach, Johann Sebastian, composer 70 banqueting, at Rogationtide: complaints about 67, 124, 165–8, 194, 198, 200, 202 justification for 170–1, 175 “beating the bounds” 21, 77, 97, 99, 104, 116, 119, 217 Bede, the Venerable, monk 13–14, 34, 87, 100–1, 143, 156, 178 and the Lord’s Prayer 186–91, 193–4, 197, 201, 209 on the calendar 91–3, 95–6 Beleth, Jean, liturgist 31, 38, 93–5, 105, 109, 129 Belisarius, Flavius, general 29 Bell, Catherine, theorist of religion 27 benandanti, Italian movement 68 Bertha, queen of Kent 34 Bewcastle Cross 128 Boniface, St 136, 138, 143–4 rivalry with Aldebert 153–65 Bonizo of Sutri, bishop 172 Book of Common Prayer 64, 70 Brioude 115 Brittany 34, 216 Brown, Peter, historian 10, 94, 159

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Bruges 213 Buc, Philippe, historian 4–5 Burgundians 1, 32, 35, 37, 45, 51, 58, 60–2, 127 Caesarius of Arles, bishop 9, 32, 39, 105, 108, 111, 124 and the timing of Rogationtide 33, 36–7 rivalry with Vienne 60–1 Calixtus, George, Protestant theologian 76 Cambrai 115, 127, 133 Camillo, Don, fictional priest 135 Candlemas 25–6, 28, 30, 90–3, 160 Canterbury 34, 101, 113 Cantor, Peter, scholastic 85–6, 140–1 Carcassonne 50 Carloman, mayor of the palace 157 Carolingian Renewal 88, 94, 211 Catalonia 161 catechesis 6, 12, 14–15, 37, 180–1, 209 catechumenate 11, 24, 45, 143, 145–6 in Late Antiquity 178, 180–2, 185–6 Rogationtide as a partial replacement for 22, 201, 204, 208, 218 Cato the Elder, Roman consul 78 Cato the Younger, Roman senator 24 Cautinus of Clermont, bishop 145 Charlemagne, Frankish emperor 38, 88, 105, 152, 182 charms 68, 162–4, 201 Chesterton, G. K., writer 63, 65 Childebert I, king of the Franks 152 Chilperic I, king of the Franks 45, 142 Chlothar I, king of the Franks 152 chorbishop 45, 101, 155–6, 192 christianitas 16, 22, 183, 194 Christianization paradigm 7, 9, 15, 20, 63, 65, 95, 177, 215 “Christianization without religion” 2, 5, 10, 23, 97, 210, 218 christianizare 10–15, 141–2 Christmas 3, 38, 96, 104, 120–1, 123 Chrodegang of Metz, bishop 116n.99, 159 Chromatius of Aquileia, bishop 56 circumcision 11–12, 65, 142, 144 city, see polis Claudianus Mamertus, priest 1, 40, 45 Clovis I, king of the Franks 33, 38, 56, 127 Columbanus, St 159 communitas 53, 108, 112, 129, 198, 209 Constantine I, Roman emperor 25, 82, 111 Constantinople 17, 32, 181 conversion: compared to Christianization 5, 7, 9, 12–15 en masse 75, 142, 147, 181 of monarchs 25, 56

Corbie 88, 122 Corpus Christi 22, 31, 68, 211, 213, 215 Council of Clovesho (747) 34, 166–7, 189 Cranmer, Thomas, archbishop 70 Creed, Apostles’ 10, 18–19, 22, 152, 163–4 and the plebs 103–6, 112–13 in Rogationtide preaching 178, 180–8, 196, 199–201, 207–9 Creed, Nicene 32, 141–3 curia, of a Roman city 27, 60, 62 Damian, Peter, St 169–71 dechristianization 122, 215, 217 demons 25, 52, 87, 117, 167, 177, 186, 206, 210 as cause of false miracles 140, 148, 150, 162–3 disguised as fairies, elves, etc. 74, 126, 163 driven away by procession 68–9, 112, 125–6 deurbanization 47, 54, 181 Diocletian, Roman emperor 82 Dionysius the Areopagite, biblical character 13, 88–90 Donatus, Aelius, grammarian 81, 83 dragon 57, 99, 127–9, 151, 161, 213 Durandus, William, liturgist 131, 212 Durkheim, Émile, sociologist 104, 134n.187, 136 Easter 3, 92, 101, 120–1, 146–7, 161, 184, 196, 216 communion at 103–4, 210 improper date for 141n.20, 143 Vigil of 1, 58, 181 Eastertide 33, 36, 90, 140, 168–71, 173, 175 Eck, Johann von, theologian 69 Edward VI, king of England 70–1 Egbert of York, bishop 186, 200n.139 Egica, king of the Visigoths 142 Eichstatt 132 Elijah, prophet 52, 140, 162 Elizabeth I, queen of England 71–2, 74 Eriugena, John Scottus, monk 205–7 Erlembald, Patarene leader 174–5 Ervig, king of the Visigoths 142 Etherius of Arles, bishop 34 Eucharist 23, 93, 100–1, 121, 141, 166, 179, 195, 198 Liturgy of 145, 180 processions bearing 67, 212–13 Eugenius, Flavius, usurper 25 Euric, king of the Visigoths 50–1 Eusebius Gallicanus, preacher 39, 50–3 exemplum, sermonic 85, 112, 126, 140

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Index Fabre d’Églantine, Philippe-François-Nazaire, French revolutionary 214–15 fasting 1, 28, 47–8, 53, 57, 106, 108, 113, 120, 143, 152, 161, 192–5, 197, 217–18 during Eastertide 33, 36, 167–74 Fast of Vienne 28, 30, 39–41, 43, 45–6, 49 February 78, 87, 90–4 Felix of Gerona, St 150–1 Ferreolus, St 41 fertility ritual 68–9, 72, 119, 161, 188–9, 192–4, 197, 215 ambarvalic sacrifices 20, 64, 77–8, 90–1 not applicable to Rogationtide 52, 131–2 Festus, Sextus Pompeius, grammarian 80–1, 83, 91 Filastrius of Brescia, bishop 169 folklore 75, 77, 97, 126n.152, 128, 163, 175, 211 Fontenelle 115 Fortunatus, Venantius Honorius Clementianus, writer 133, 145–6 Freising 101 French Revolution 112, 211–15, 217 Friuli 68 Fulda 116, 157, 192 Galatians, Epistle to 11–12, 141 Gallican rite 34n.43, 152 Gallus of Clermont, bishop 59, 115, 145–6 Gaugericus of Cambrai, St 133 George of Jerusalem, patriarch 140 Germanus of Auxerre, St 41 Germanus of Paris, St 133 Ghaerbald of Liège, bishop 182, 184 Gilbert of Limerick, liturgist 35 Glycerius, Roman emperor 45 Godegisel, king of the Burgundians 1, 58 godparenthood 142, 161, 182, 184 Gomorrah 49 graveyard 24, 102, 124, 198 Greater Litany, Roman 33–4, 38, 52, 87n.98, 109, 131, 140, 144, 169–70 called litania maior 28, 30, 212 origins of 28–31, 127, 129, 135 Gregory of Tours 114, 117n.107, 119, 136, 138–9, 141 on the origins of Rogationtide 32, 38, 41, 59 struggle against heresy 144–9, 151–2 Gregory I, pope 34, 43, 54, 64, 92, 94, 149, 158, 187, 197 and the Greater Litany 29, 31, 127–9, 135 on Judaizers 143–5 Gregory VII, pope 118, 172–3 Grimes, Ronald, theorist of ritual 4n.5, 136 Grindal, Edmund, bishop 71, 73 Grotius, Hugo, theologian 76

257

Guareschi, Giovannino, writer 135 Gundobad, king of the Burgundians 55–6 Haistulf of Mainz, bishop 192 Haymo of Auxerre, monk 126–7, 190–2, 194, 197 Heiric of Auxerre, monk 92, 190–2 Henry of Huntingdon, writer 13–14 Henry III, king of England 139 Henry IV, Holy Roman emperor 173 Henry VIII, king of England 70 Heraclius, Byzantine emperor 141–2 Herbert, George, writer 71–2 Hesychius of Vienne, bishop 42 high cross 15, 112, 117–19, 129, 139, 154, 215 Hilary of Arles, St 147 Hincmar of Rheims, bishop 103, 153n.87, 205 Historia Augusta 79, 82–3, 91 Hobbes, Thomas, philosopher 20, 64, 74–5, 77 Honorius Augustodunensis, scholastic 1 Hrabanus Maurus, St 22, 87n.98, 89, 106, 167 Rogation sermons 178, 186, 192–7, 205–6, 209 Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, writer 89 Hubert of Liège, St 117 Ice Saints 131 incantations 162–4, 183 inquisition 68, 126n.151 Ireland 34–5, 100 Isembert of Poitiers, bishop 118 Isidore of Seville, bishop 55, 67, 92 Israel 65, 183, 205, 207 Jerome of Stridon, St 138n.9, 156, 197 Jerusalem 37, 140, 181 Jewishness (iudaismus) 11, 141, 143 Joan, fictional pope 168 Jonah, prophet 25, 43, 48, 64, 89, 123–4, 129, 138 Judaizing (iudaizare) 138–9, 153, 159, 177 origin of term 11–12, 141 in Gregory of Tours 142–4, 147–8 Julian of Brioude, St 41, 115 Kildare 42 Kirchenpostille, Lutheran homiliary 69 labarum, military standard 111 de Laboulaye, Édouard René Lefèbvre, folklorist 126 Lacnunga, commonplace book 163 Landulf Senior, writer 172 Lanfranc of Canterbury, St 113

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lectionary 70, 88, 129n.167, 131, 140, 162 and Rogation preaching 185, 187, 189, 193, 196–7 early Rogationtide lections 29, 37, 48, 52, 56, 61n.193 Lent 3, 18, 58–9, 103, 115, 121, 144, 161, 210, 213 and the catechumenate 180–1, 184, 196, 200, 208–9 one of the penitential seasons 22, 26, 113, 168–9, 185, 218 Leo III, pope 38 Lewis, C. S., writer 63, 65 lex orandi, lex credendi 203–5 Liber Diurnus 17 Licinian of Cartagena, bishop 159n.125, 160n.130 Liège 111, 116n.99, 173n.192 lions 57, 125, 128–9 Liutwine, St 156 Livonians 215 Lord’s Prayer 72, 103–6, 112–13, 122, 143, 163–4 in Rogation sermons 22, 177–201, 205, 207–9, 213 Lothar I, Frankish emperor 192–3 Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus), writer 47–8 Lupercalia 79, 91–2 lustration, purification ceremony 48, 77–85, 87, 91–4 Luther, Martin, Protestant reformer 13, 68–70, 96 Lutheranism 66, 69–70, 76, 217

maypoles 73 Merovingians 12, 32, 59–60, 104, 107, 144, 147, 152, 158, 165 Metz 107, 116n.99, 173n.192 Miaphysites 32 micro-Christendoms 30, 159, 176 Milan 21, 37, 136, 162 Pataria at 171–6 Milanese rite 37, 172 Milo of Trier, bishop 156–7 Milton, John, writer 76 Minorca 147 Monegund, abbess 158 Mosaic law 65, 96, 137, 141, 143–4, 205 Moses, lawgiver 141, 144 mother church 101, 118–20, 129 Moule, Henry, parson 202–3 Muslims 8, 16, 18, 131, 139–40 myth 2, 4, 43, 60, 65, 95, 124

Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, writer 79–82, 92 magic (maleficium) 4, 21–2, 140, 201–2 accusations against Aldebert 162–3, 176–7 accusations against the Spaniard 148–9, 150–2, 176–7 Mamertus of Vienne, St 20, 26, 51, 53, 83, 86, 91, 149, 170, 174, 185, 192 and the origins of Rogationtide 30–1, 35, 38–48 in later medieval legend 1–4, 64, 122, 125–7, 129, 131 in the Reformation Era 72, 75, 77 in the sermons of Avitus 55–62 Map, Walter, writer 139 Marcellus of Paris, St 128–9 Marcion, heretic 10–11 Marcsuith, abbess 85–6 Marseilles 44, 147 Martin of Braga, St 160

Old Spanish rite 36–7, 152 omens 2, 46–8, 57, 149–50 Origen of Alexandria, theologian 12 orthopraxy 202–3, 207 Ostrogoths 32, 37, 60 Oswald of Worcester, St 116–17 Ottonian dynasty 85, 100

Napoleon I, emperor of France 214–15 Neoplatonism 88 Neuman de Vegvar, Caroline, historian 75, 117 Neustria 153–5 New Covenant 65–6, 96, 141, 146 Nicomachus Flavianus, Virius, Roman senator 25 Niger, Ralph, writer 14, 94n.130, 141–2 Nineveh 25, 64, 123–4, 129, 139, 161, 167, 193–4 and supersessionism 86, 88–90 in Sidonius Apollinaris 48–50 Novatian, schismatic 141

Pact of Umar 112 pagani, term 8–9, 94, 161 paganize 76 pagan survival, see syncretism Palm Sunday 28, 30, 56n.162, 160–1, 167n.159, 196 parable of the friend at night 187, 190–2 parish 21–2, 85–6, 126, 130, 133–5 in the high Middle Ages 97–104, 119–20, 210–13 in Modernity 71–3, 77, 175, 202–3 parochial rights 73, 100–1 Passover 143, 201

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Index pastoral care 6, 103–4, 176, 185–6, 193 infrastructure for 2, 15, 19, 97–8, 101, 133, 154–5, 164 Pataria, reform movement 21, 165, 171–5 Pater Noster, see Lord’s Prayer Patrick, St 3, 42 Paul, apostle 8, 11, 88–90, 108, 141 Paul the Deacon, theologian 28, 80, 85, 189–91, 197 Pentecost 59, 85, 90, 104, 121, 169–70, 173, 213 and the timing of Rogationtide 28, 33, 36, 37, 192 baptism at 147, 161 Peter, apostle 43, 87, 91, 94 Piacenza 171 Pippin III, king of the Franks 155, 157 plague, inguinal 1, 125, 129 processions for 26, 29n.22, 135, 114–15, 119 plebs (baptismal church) 21, 107, 110, 114, 118–20, 130, 132, 161 terminology of 101–5, 117 compared with parish 98–9, 133–4, 210 polis 2, 20–1, 27, 29, 49, 100, 133, 210 institutions of 27, 54–5, 60, 62 pompa (procession) 24–5, 62, 152 popery 71, 73 Praetextatus, Vettius Agorius, Roman senator 80–2, 96 prandium (midday meal) 170–1 Procopius of Sazava, St 133 Prosper of Aquitaine, theologian 204–5, 208, 215 Protestantism 12, 95, 139, 211, 219 alterations to Rogationtide 64, 66–70, 73, 74, 76–7 present-day 8, 216–17 pseudo-Christian 9, 143, 148–9, 153, 156, 159 purification, see lustration Purification of the Virgin, see Candlemas Puritanism 64, 66, 71, 73, 75, 77 Pyrenees 36, 149 Quando Volueris sermons 122n.131, 123n.132, 124n.136, 161, 200, 209 Quentovic 115 Radulf of Bourges, bishop 171 Radulfus Ardens, theologian 128 Ragnemod of Paris, bishop 150–2 Raguel, angel 163 Ratherius of Verona, bishop 162, 169, 201 recognition procession 119 Reformation 4, 8–9, 20, 99, 104, 202, 211–12 debates around Rogationtide 64, 66, 70, 72, 74

259

Regensburg 116 Reginharus of Thuringia 192 religio, Latin term 4, 8, 67, 89, 92, 206 religion, modern concept of 7–10, 15–16, 218 Remaclus of Stavelot, St 132 Remigius of Cambrai 127 renunciation (abrenuntio), baptismal 25, 142, 152, 181, 183 res publica christiana (Christian commonwealth) 8, 16–18, 22, 112, 183, 199, 213 ritual failure 21–2, 147, 151, 188, 208 contemporary theory of 136–7, 176 Rheims 21, 85, 119, 140, 155–6, 176 Rhineland 155–6 Rhône 50 Romanization 18, 20, 27, 39, 62 Romme, Charles-Gilbert, French revolutionary 214 Ruthwell Cross 128 Sabbath 13, 141–4 Saint-Amand, monastery 138 Saint-Denis, monastery 88 Saint-Germain-des-Prés, monastery 152 Saint-Hilaire, church 118 Saint-Riquier, monastery 108–12, 119, 159 Salathiel, angel 163 Salisbury 118–19 Samael, angel 164 Sant’Ambrogio, cathedral 173–5 Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, basilica 25 Saragossa 150, 152 Sastrow, Bartholomew, writer 67 Saturnalia 63, 78, 80–1 Scandinavia 35, 117 Schildesche, convent 85–6 Second Council of Nicaea (787) 13, 141 secularization 4, 8, 22, 77, 85, 215–19 Semi-Pelagianism 204–5 Septiform Litany 29n.22, 109, 129 Servius Honoratus, Maurus, grammarian 79, 81–2, 84–6, 91, 93, 96 Severus of Minorca, bishop 147n.54 Severus, Sulpicius, hagiographer 158–9 shibboleth, password 183 Sidonius Apollinaris, Gaius Sollius 20, 84, 100, 125 letters on first Rogationtide 26–7, 30–1, 36, 38–53, 57, 62 Sigeberht, king of East Anglia 13 Sigismund, king of the Burgundians 56 signs (signum) 148–9, 183, 208 Simon Magus, heretic 156–7, 162 simony 157, 171–2 Sint-Truiden, monastery 115, 173

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260 Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel, monk 197 social imaginary 18–19 societas 8, 16, 55n.160 Sodom 49 soundscape 112 Spain 35–7, 61, 149, 152, 161 Speyer 67 Strabo of Amasia, geographer 79–80, 83 St-Winnoc’s, priory 114 suovetaurilia 78, 82, 83 supersessionism 20, 65, 76, 86, 88–9, 93, 95, 141 superstition (superstitio) 64, 67–9, 73–4, 88n.106, 92, 167, 206 Symeon the Younger, St 158 syncretism 7–9, 175, 218 and the Ambarvalia 20, 65–6, 74, 76, 86, 94–6 Syracuse 82 Tarasque of Tarascon 213 Taylor, Charles, philosopher 18, 218n.31 Tertullian, theologian 10–14, 24–5, 141 Thanksgiving 96, 217 Thaumastus of Vienne, aristocrat 44, 51 Theodosius I, Roman emperor 25–6, 80 Theudarius, priest 61 Tírechán, hagiographer 42 tithes 100–2, 106, 161, 167 Toledo 36, 161 Toulouse 36 traditiones, ceremony 143, 180–2, 185–6 transubstantiation 66 Trier 101, 156 túath (Irish petty kingdom) 102 Turiau of Dol, St 118

Index Tyndale, William, Protestant reformer 70 typology 20, 66, 89, 95, 122, 187, 190, 206n.163 and the treatment of Jews 141, 146 Uriel, angel 163 Valentinian II, Roman emperor 58 Vandals 32 Van Engen, John, historian 7, 144 Vergil (Titus Vergilius Maro), poet 44n.92, 80–1, 84, 91, 93 Vermigli, Peter Martyr, Protestant reformer 20, 64, 73–4, 77, 95 Vienne, see Mamertus of Vienne Vigilius, pope 29 Vincent of Lerins, theologian 204–5 Vincent of Saragossa, St 150–2 Visigoths 32–3, 35–7, 44, 48–51, 60, 142 Vouillé 36 Walahfrid Strabo, writer 36, 95, 101, 170, 205–6 Wales 34, 100, 102 Waltcaud of Liège, bishop 105 Wandrille, St 115 Wearmouth–Jarrow, monastery 187 Wilfrid of York, St 159 Winnoc of Wormhout, St 114 witchcraft 68, 162n.137, 200 wolves 1, 57, 125, 126, 161 Wood, Ian, historian 6, 40–1, 59 Zacharias, pope 154, 156, 159–61, 163, 165 Zeno, Byzantine emperor 32