Mayke de Jong. The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious,
814-840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Acts of public humiliation may not often be seen as a strength, but that is what Mayke de Jong argues in her 2009 book, The Penitential State. Calling for a reevaluation of Louis the Pious’ infamous humiliation in the presence of God and country in 833, de Jong takes on the claims that this was a simple coup and argues instead for a complex system of admonition and penance in nine-century Frankia. By mining primary sources in an attempt to establish an understanding of Carolinian opinion of the day, de Jong builds up a world where politics and awareness of sin were inextricably entwined.
The Penitential State functions very well as a narrative, thanks to De Jong’s great interest in the tales themselves, allowing her to present a story rather than relying on mundane critical analysis. Largely a text-based work, the book uses histories and the written results of synods and capitularies to discover their authors’ views, preserving the living narrative and keeping the book moving. The depth of de Jong’s analysis and the name-dropping, both ancient and modern, should appeal to experts in the field, and the flowing readability makes the book palatable to interested newcomers. However, despite her best efforts to the contrary, de Jong’s use of categories does occasionally wander off into confusing date-hopping and her sources, while excellent on the literary plane, remain lacking in other respects, with little-to-no reference to archeology or paleography (that is, the study of writing and the treatment of documents as objects for study), which would probably have worked well in conjunction with her study of piety.
The sources de Jong does choose to utilize are many and varied. Telling her story of sin and penance through contemporary eyes, these so-called “ninth-century narratives” were chosen based upon their authors’ political clout, as all were involved (or claimed to be) with Louis’ court and many placed themselves into the story as players in the great affairs of the state. Admirably, de Jong remains careful to place arguments in the mouths of those who made them, but occasionally she seems to let her pro-Louis bias take the lead, as when she turns to the Astronomer for justification of an aging Louis as hardy peacemaker. Besides this otherwise nameless cleric (author of the Vita Hludowici imperatoris), de Jong draws upon the Royal Frankish Annals, Einhard’s Vita Karoli, the bishop Thegan’s Deeds of Louis, Ermold the Black’s attempt to “literally … write himself back into Aquitaine,” from his exile in Strasbourg, Nithard’s dour Historiae, angry Radbert (author of the Vita Adalhardi and Epitaphium Arsenii) and the omnipresent Walahfrid Strabo, often used as a cross-reference to join together the primary sources. Far from being merely windows into the past (albeit occasionally close) these sources are mined to determine what was said in the ninth century and to ascertain the tone of political life. On the modern end of the spectrum, de Jong takes care to not isolate herself from the historical narratives of today, citing the opinions of Christina Pössel, Julia Smith, Janet Nelson, Matthew Innes, and Rosamond McKitterick, among others.
In keeping with its subtitle, The Penitential State focuses a great deal of attention upon authority and atonement and how they influenced one another throughout the reign of Louis. Upon succeeding his father, Charlemagne, Louis demonstrates his kingly authority through “assemblies and councils [which] were ideal platforms for the representation of royal authority. Here, Louis publicly became the Christian emperor, responsible for the salvation of his people.” De Jong delves into the Latin, beginning with the notion of constructive criticism, or “constructive admonitio” which introduces the Carolingian notions of authority and correction. Having been granted ministerium (divinely bestowed office) kings often engaged in admonitio, as when Louis called upon the bishops gathered at Aachen in 816 “to look into the lack of hospitality in religious communities, and into the insufficient learning of canons.” But with ministerium came the weighty responsibility of promoting the public good, as well as the sin of neglect, or negligentia. To combat neglect and faulty ruling, good Carolingians were willing to suffer naysayers at court, provided their admonitions remained within reasonable bounds – consequently, admonitio was most often carefully crafted to avoid the appearance of “brazen presumption.” From admonitio the criticisms grew harsher in the forms of correptio (akin to reproach or blame), increpatio (“morally charged rebukes or wrath”), and the furious invectio. Corresponding to this hierarchy of admonition went the “vocabulary of sin,” featuring such niceties as iniquitas, scandalum, and negligentia, this latter used frequently, says de Jong, in the Carolingian context. Indeed, these Carolingians took their admonitio very seriously, especially when it occurred in a religious context, as de Jong speculates is the case in the instance of Charlemagne’s purgatorial torment, as recounted in the Visio Wettini – just criticism was not to be lightly brushed aside.
Atonement enters the narrative three years after Louis restored his authority following an ugly family squabble in 830 that resulted from his sons’ irritation over Louis’ redrawing of the royal inheritance to make way for the newest son by way of a new queen, Judith. Once more at violent odds with his boys in 833, Louis’ actions (again redrawing the succession map to punish his wayward sons and reward those previously faithful) were used against him under claims of forcing perjury upon his subjects by way of multiple, conflicting oaths. In addition, the political situation was primed for such a coup: in the years previous, Frankia had been struck by a series of unsettling events and reports of unnatural phenomena bespeaking of divine wrath, culminating in the disturbing admonitio from none other than a demonically possessed child. The author of this account was undoubtedly as distraught as the exorcist on site and de Jong interprets his tale as one incriminating not only the Frankish people but also their king as chief minister of the flock. When Judith was accused of adultery during the row of 830, priests had been described as armed with “penitential literature, which presented the [holy men] as the ‘good doctor’ ready to cure his patient of the illness caused by sin.” And as events fell out on the Field of Lies, wherein the followers of Louis went over to the rebellious Lothar, the clergymen prepared themselves with the strong-arm of church doctrine. In the official Relatio produced by the bishops to defend their position (and provided by de Jong in an appendix) the authors invoke the authority granted to the church by Christ through Matthew 18:18 and the warning related in Ezekiel 3:18 that a man would suffer for keeping quiet in the face of another’s sin. In light of this, the bishops claimed the authority to condemn Louis’ sin of negligentia and to speak admonitio to him, upon which the monarch – in their words – “willingly took their redeeming admonition and their fitting and apt rebuke to heart.”
Louis was no stranger to penance, as he had already committed an act of public humility with regards to fraternal strife in 822, an action that had only enhanced his Christian standing and placed him on par with his spiritually imperial predecessor, Theodosius I, famous for his own penitentiary demonstration some four hundred years prior. In the case of this latter display, de Jong argues that context is everything, that the penance undergone by Louis “makes sense only if one accepts that there was an emperor who, together with his bishops and magnates, feared divine retribution as the inevitable consequence of sin, and directed his policies accordingly.” In any event, the outcome of the public humiliation remained unclear, as evidenced by the bishops’ attempts to finalize the episode with oaths. However, Louis still had room to wiggle and consequently refused to take up a permanent monastic retirement, and in time his rebellious sons had so fallen out that he was able to return to power and put Lothar in his place: ironically, it was the son who finally came to his father as a supplicant. Predictably, Louis then went on the offensive, claiming that it was all coercion and abuse, and up to the very end, Louis continued to punish his sons by re-dividing the empire.
The Penitential State is a remarkably readable and authoritative work. Through extensive use of her primary sources, de Jong builds a case for a Carolingian polity that was genuinely religious, even at their most extreme. “Rather than a police state, we are dealing with a political elite that was markedly preoccupied with sin and salvation – their own and those of the ‘Christian people’ that made up the Frankish polity.”
