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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 I I I I 77-2527 WALDRON, Harry Neff, III, 1943- EXPRESSIONS OF RELIGIOUS CONVERSION AMONG LAYMEN REMAINING WITHIN SECULAR SOCIETY IN GAUL, 400-800 A.D. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1976 History, church Xerox University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48ioe © Copyright by Harry Neff Waldron. III 1976 EXPRESSIONS OF RELIGIOUS CONVERSION AMONG LAYMEN REMAINING WITHIN SECULAR SOCIETY IN GAUL, 400-800 A.D. DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Harry Neff Waldron, III, B.A., ffl.A, • # # • * The Ohio State University 1976 Reading Committee Approved By Franklin J* Pegues Joseph H. Lynch Marilyn R. Ualdman ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the members of my reading committee, Professors Joseph H. Lynch, Franklin J. Pegues, and Marilyn R. Waldman, who have assisted me in preparing this dissertation. I am especially grateful to Professor Lynch, who has guided me in both research and writing. The errors of the work are my own. My mother-in-law, Mildred M. Talmadge, has typed and re-typed this manuscript with enormous patience. I am deeply thankful for their help. ii VITA 28 March 1943 . • • Born - New Orleans, Louisiana 1970. .......»• B.A., Northwestern State University of Louisiana, Natchitoches, Louisiana 1970-1971 University Fellowship, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1971-1973 ....... Teaching Associate, Department of History, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1972 . Kl.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1973-1974 >•••••• Research Associate, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1974-1975 ....... Dissertation Year fellowship, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1975-1976 • Teaching Associate, Department of History, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: History of Medieval Europe* Professors Franklin J. Pegues and Joseph H. Lynch History of Ancient Rone. Professor Cyrus F. St.Clair History of Ancient Israel. Piofessor Marc L. Raphael History of Byzantium and Medieval Islam. Professors Timothy E. Gregory and Marilyn R. UJ aid man ill TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS il VITA lii INTRODUCTION 1 NOTES TO INTRODUCTION 9 Chapter I. CONVERSIO 11 NOTES TO CHAPTER I 15 II. DISCERNIBLE EXPRESSIONS OF LAY CONVERSION . 18 1. In domibus propriis 18 2. Living in Churches and Shrines 19 3. Continence 21 4. Clothing 25 5. Secrecy 30 6. Companions and Spiritual Directors . • . • 35 7. Alms 38 8. Fasts and Diet 41 9. Vigils, Prayers, and Readings 45 10. Other Austerities and Activities 53 11. Redeeming Captives, Freeing Slaves .... 56 12. Tendency to Become Monks 57 13. Conversi as Hermits and Pilgrims 6B 14. Voluntary Servitude 72 15. Occupations 79 NOTES TO CHAPTER II 84 III. DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN VOLUNTARY PUBLIC PENITENTS AND OTHER CONVERSI . 120 1. Conversio as a Form of Penance 120 2. Existence of Voluntary Publiu Penance . 124 3. Communion and Church Attendance 133 4* Duration of Observance 139 5. Eligibility for Clergy 143 6. Reconciled Public Penitents and Other Conversi ..... 149 NOTES TO CHAPTER III 154 iv V IV. CONDITIONS OF ENTRY 174 1* Motives and Inducements 174 2. Age at Entry 188 3. Vows 196 4. Tonsure 207 5. fflutare v/estimentum 218 6. Veiling 235 7. Summary of Conditions of Entry 243 NOTES TO CHAPTER IV 247 V. POSSIBILITIES OF WITHDRAWAL AND DISABILITIES. 280 NOTES TO CHAPTER V 291 VI. POSSESSION AND DISPOSAL OF PROPERTY BY CONVERTS AND HOW THEY SUPPORTED THEMSELVES 296 NOTES TO CHAPTER VI 313 VII. EPISCOPAL SUPERVISION 321 NOTES TO CHAPTER VII 328 VIII. NUMBERS AND DISTRIBUTION 332 NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII 343 IX. CONCLUSION 349 NOTES TO CONCLUSION 366 BIBLIOGRAPHY 367 INTRODUCTION The Church entered the Middle Ages having already de fined specializations of the religious life. By the Fifth century, Christians could think of the function of the laity in the economy of salvation as different from that of the clergy and of the rapidly emerging order of monks. Vet it is a mistake to see the laity of the pre-Carolingian western Church as a purely passive substratum. 1 The layman as well as the cleric and monk could manifest a total self-dedication to the divine, which he perceived as utteily different from his ordinary worldly experience. More explicitly, it is a mistake to see him as having no recourse but to avoid the extremes of contamination with his secular environment. A turning toward God, an internal resolve to adhere more closely to religion, could find expression within a secular environment in the tradition of conversio. Though it is convenient to translate the term sometimes as "conversion", one must beware of reading an anachronistic, less passionate meaning into it. In the specialized sense in which we shall use the word, conversion did not refer to a mere assent to the doctrines of a different faith and an 2 enrollment among its followers. Nor shall we use it to refer primarily to adult entry int i a monastic community* i 2 though that is the sense in which it has been most often 3 studied. It was instead a tradition of active expression of a heightened religiosity which might vary in individual manifestations but which maintained a common core of devotional and ascetic practices based on a spiritual transformation experienced by laymen. It is convenient to restrict a study of lay religiosity to a particular time and geographical area in order to minimize confusions over regional variations and different patterns of evolution and to make the most efficient use of the available evidence, which consists mainly of brief allusions scattered through a variety of written genres. Gaul has been chosen because its primary sources are avail able in good editions and because the few previous general studies of this aspect of conversio which have been done have tended to draw evidence primarily from that region. The choice of Gaul has determined the chronological starting-point of the study because there is almost no useful evidence on Gallican lay conversion prior to the fifth century. The terminal date is more arbitrary. The Carolingian ecclesiastical reforms of the ninth century caused significant changes in expressions of lay religiosity, chiefly by enforcing a stricter concept of the division between the laity and the supervised modes of religious life. It would doubtless be valuable to discuss that period of change, but it has seemed wiser to restrict 3 the present study to the earlier period of slower development. The trends of changes under the Carolingians are already visible in sources from the eighth century. Nevertheless, one cannot be held to chronological limits too strictly. A few allusions must be made to sources before 400, and more to those after 800 as they assist in the interpretation of evidence within our period. Historical recognition of lay conversio is certainly not new. Du Cange's dictionary included a definition of the word as a stricter kind of religious life for laymen; the definition was based on some obvious references to laymen in early Gallican conciliar canons* By the middle of the nineteenth century, the general concept of early lay conversion was well known to Church historians, if imperfectly understood. Hefele commented on some of the conciliar 5 allusions to lay conversion as distinct from public penance. In commenting on the Visigothic ordo for blessing converts, Ferotin was fully aware in 1904 of the tradition of lay conversion as separate from monastic conversion. Howeverf the first extensive treatment of lay conversi as a general class of laymen observing a special religious 7 regimen was by Poschmann in 1928. He devoted a brief chapter of his book on canonical penance in the west to conversi as a class of religious laymen who had adopted conversion as an alternative to canonical public penance.