CHAPTER FOUR

EMPIRE AND

Th e absence of procedures in the that would permit clergy to discipline laity eff ectively and the prominence of those procedures in the helps to locate a moment and dynamic of change. It was during the period of Carolingian imperial expansion and the enlist- ment of clergy as imperial agents, especially on the dangerous frontiers of the empire, that the discourses of penance and law merged. Th e first and second chapters of this book proposed that by the middle of the 9th century, mingled political and religious perspectives set the stage for the political manipulation of penance and law in the mid-century trial of Th eutberga, framed by the constructs of corruption and purga- tion. Th e present chapter traces the antecedents of that trial to a radical re-orientation of jurisprudence that occurred during ’s reign, when court and episcopate allied to promote education in a new framework for penitential analysis and prescribed it in law as a device for interrogation of the laity. Temporarily substituting religious disci- pline for an eff ective system of secular law, court and clergy harnessed and directed popular piety toward practices that could help to secure peace, order, obedience to imperial and clerical authority, and trust in the moral quality of both the governors and the governed. Th is chapter focuses on the application of that penitential framework, expressed in the scheme of the virtues and vices, and on the rationales for the exercise of penitential authority newly articulated in imperial circles. Th e seven or eight vices, oft en presented without reference to their opposing virtues, enabled confessors and penitents to scrutinise souls in systematised confession to be practiced by the laity, with two notable consequences. First, formalised confession and penance expanded cleri- cal authority to judge the character and behaviour of others. Second, instruction in penitential practices had implications for the dominion of lay over their subordinates, and also for the distribution of pastoral authority within the ranks of the clergy, as priests became entrusted with activities previously delivered by . Such develop- ments were, understandably, accompanied by debate as well as acqui- escence. To recover some of the concerns of those experiencing the 160 chapter four changes caused by organised penitential instruction, this chapter turns to the decades of the late 8th and early 9th centuries in the regions, especially Saxony and , for it appears that in those areas, “penitentialism” became prominent in pastoral care in concert with Carolingian assertion of political control. Whereas the previous chapter presented evidence that before the Carolingian project of reli- gious reform, as in 8th-century Austrasia, or in regions where it was less aggressively promoted, as in 9th-century southern Gaul, popular piety could venture beyond the content of authorised doctrine, this chapter off ers evidence that, beginning in the 790s, both episcopal instruction and lay piety converged in a consistent penitential piety; this conver- gence suggests that the imperial program supporting such instruction had fairly immediate success, at least in some regions of the empire. Furthermore, whereas the previous chapter showed bishops lacking either the legal expertise or expectation that canon law could be used to discipline the laity (as in the case of Boniface) or the imperial support to promote their agendas (as in the case of Agobard and Amulo), this chapter traces the infi ltration of clerical and imperial expectations for penitential orientation and administration into the ranks of the secular nobility and governing assemblies. Th at infusion of penitential into political discourse had profound eff ects on the formation of law in the Carolingian period, in particular in the legislative assemblies convened across the empire in an ambitious eff ort to integrate imperial and religious social renova- tion. As Charlemagne sought to secure greater control in previously autonomous zones by installing bishops and who owed him allegiance, thus shift ing the center of political gravity from the Gallic provinces of the Roman empire to the northern and eastern regions taking shape as the heartlands of Carolingian authority, members of his court circle expounded theories of pastoral care that emphasised penitential perspectives. Concerted episcopal eff orts extending from the imperial court to the borderlands produced both new texts and new interpretations of standard texts that supported an intensely penitential vision of Christian society. Th e wide dissemination of that penitential vision in writing and preaching to all levels of society was tightly linked to the redistribution of political and judicial authority in the newly annexed eastern domains of Charlemagne’s hegemony. Th ere, penitential perspectives and practices overtook many of the conven- tions of secular jurisprudence, by off ering new modes of accusation, new domains of guilt, and new forms of punishment. While it seems