Paschasius Radbertus and the Song of Songs

chapter 6 “Love’s Lament”: Paschasius Radbertus and the Song of Songs

The Song of Songs was understood by many Carolingian exegetes as the great- est, highest, and most obscure of Solomon’s three books of wisdom. But these Carolingian exegetes would also have understood the Song as a dialogue, a sung exchange between Christ and his church: in fact, as the quintessential spiritual song. Like the liturgy of the Eucharist and the divine office, the Song of Songs would have served as a window into heavenly realities, offering glimpses of a triumphant, spotless Bride and a resurrected, glorified Bridegroom that ninth- century reformers’ grim views of the church in their day would have found all the more tantalizing. For Paschasius Radbertus, abbot of the great Carolingian monastery of Corbie and as warm and passionate a personality as Alcuin, the Song became more than simply a treasury of imagery. In this chapter, I will be examining Paschasius’s use of the Song of Songs throughout his body of work. Although this is necessarily only a preliminary effort in understanding many of the underlying themes at work in Paschasius’s biblical exegesis, I argue that the Song of Songs played a central, formative role in his exegetical imagina- tion and a structural role in many of his major exegetical works. If Paschasius wrote a Song commentary, it has not survived; nevertheless, the Song of Songs is ubiquitous in the rest of his exegesis, and I would suggest that Paschasius’s love for the Song and its rich imagery formed a prism through which the rest of his work was refracted. Paschasius’s understanding of the “ecclesiological interpretation” of the Song of Songs and the role of the doctores in particular has much in common with the work of Bede, whom he knew, and the commen- taries of other Carolingian exegetes. Paschasius’s work is evidence of the reach and impact of Song exegesis in the Carolingian world at this time, particularly in its influence on Carolingian ecclesiastical culture. In fact, precisely because Paschasius had deeply internalized so much of the tradition, in particular the allegorical interpretation of certain images from the Song lifted from the for- mal commentary tradition, he was free to innovate, to apply the principles and images of Song exegesis in new contexts, and to push at the boundaries of what Song exegesis could be made to express. Paschasius Radbertus is best known to scholars for his contributions to the Carolingian eucharistic controversy in the 840s and 850s, particularly his treatise on the eucharist, De corpore et sanguine Domini. Paschasius’s

De corpore was originally written in 822 for the monks at Corbie’s daughter- house of Corvey, attempting to impress upon newly converted Saxons the significance of the Eucharist. However, the work incited such a firestorm of distortions, exaggerations, and miscommunications in its readers that Charles the Bald and many of the most senior theologians in the Carolingian world would ultimately intervene to restore consensus.1 A fascinating and complex personality, Paschasius seemingly had a talent for polarizing political and theological opinion: a touchy hybrid of social insider and voluntary exile, a consummate communicator, an innovative and occasionally rebarbative styl- ist, and an obsessive perfectionist who revised several of his works continually until his death.2 A foundling raised by the nuns of Soissons, Paschasius owed his position to natural talent but even more to social connections, particularly to Abbess Theodrada, cousin to Charlemagne, and her brothers Adalhard and Wala of Corbie. Paschasius would be fiercely loyal to these mentors, even when they in turn dug in their heels against Louis the Pious, and he would retain his affection for Theodrada, her daughter Emma, and the nuns of Soissons, writing several works particularly for them. Over the course of his life, Pas- chasius faced opposition from within Corbie as well as from without, and not only to his eucharistic theology. Confronted with financial squabbles over the management of Corvey, factionalism within Corbie itself, and possibly with a temporary lapse in royal favor, he would spend several years in voluntary exile at the monastery of St. Riquier from around 852, before returning to the abbacy at Corbie at the end of his life.3 Paschasius’s withdrawal may not have been

1 See Chazelle, Crucified God, 209–38; eadem, “Figure, Character, and the Glorified Body in the Carolingian Eucharistic Controversy,” Traditio 47 (1992): 1–36; Thomas F. X. Noble, “Kings, Clergy, and Dogma,” 250–52; Patricia McCormick Zirkel, “The Ninth-Century Eucharistic Controversy: A Context for the Beginnings of Eucharistic Doctrine in the West,” Worship 68.1 (1994): 2–23; A. Bisogno, Il Metodo Carolingio (Brepols: Turnhout, 2008), 307–10. For a brief comparison of the two positions of Ratramnus and Paschasius, see Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, 12–16, 41–59; Stock, The Implications of Literacy, 259–72; Willelmien Otten, “Between Augustinian Sign and Carolingian Reality: the Presence of Ambrose and Augustine in the Eucharistic Debate between Paschasius Radbertus and Ratramnus of Corbie,” in Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis 80 (2000): 137–56. 2 In his ability to create controversy, his sensitive personality, colorful literary style, and theological interests—deep interest in biblical exegesis, eucharistic teaching, and Marian exegesis of the Song of Songs—Paschasius bears some resemblances to Rupert of Deutz. See John Van Engen, Rupert of Deutz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). 3 David Ganz notes several letters between Paschasius and Lupus of Ferrières concerning the monk Ivo, a relative of Charles the Bald, who had escaped from Corbie to the king’s displea- sure, but it is not clear what Paschasius’s attitude to or role in the escape might have been, or how he might have gone against the king’s wishes in the matter. See Ganz, Corbie in the Carolingian Renaissance (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1990), 32.