This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Augustine of Hippo and the Art of Ruling in the Carolingian Imperial Period Mösch, Sophia Cornelia Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 25. Sep. 2021 Augustine of Hippo and the Art of Ruling in the Carolingian Imperial Period Sophia Cornelia Mösch King’s College London September 2014 A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History. Abstract This thesis investigates how the political thought of Augustine of Hippo was understood and modified by Carolingian-era writers to serve their own distinctive purposes. The research concentrates on Alcuin of York and Hincmar of Reims, advisers to Charlemagne and Charles the Bald, respectively. The analysis focuses on Alcuin’s and Hincmar’s discussions of empire, rulership and the moral conduct of political agents, in the course of which both made extensive use of Augustine’s De civitate Dei, though each came away with a substantially different understanding of its message. By applying a philological-historical approach, this thesis offers a deeper reading that views their texts as political discourses defined by content and language; it also explains why Augustine, despite being understood in such different ways, remained an author that Carolingian writers found useful to think with. Methodological problems are outlined in the Introduction. Chapter One contains an analysis of selected concepts of Augustinian thought, chosen both for their prominence in the De civitate Dei and relevance to the Carolingian material. Chapter Two explores the range of Augustinian influences in Alcuin’s Epistolae, with emphasis on political thought. Chapter Three studies the impact of Augustine on Hincmar’s Epistolae, Expositiones ad Carolum Regem and De regis persona, with a focus on political ethics. The Conclusion contextualises the findings on Augustinian influence from the previous chapters and attempts to show more clearly why Alcuin’s and Hincmar’s versions of Augustinian thought are so different. In particular, it considers the differences between Augustine’s, Alcuin’s and Hincmar’s understandings of ‘church’ and ‘state’ and the distinctive ways in which each of them interpreted the relationship between religion and political power. A comparison of Alcuin’s and Hincmar’s uses of Augustine sheds light on the differences between Charlemagne’s reign and that of his grandson. Contents List of Abbreviations 5 Note on the Text 6 Acknowledgements 7 INTRODUCTION 12 CHAPTER ONE Augustine of Hippo 37 CHAPTER TWO Alcuin of York 98 CHAPTER THREE Hincmar of Reims 189 CONCLUSION Contextualisation of the Findings on Augustinian Influence 331 Bibliography 346 List of Abbreviations JThS Journal of Theological Studies LLT-A Library of Latin Texts - Series A MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Series Latina by Jacques-Paul Migne 217 vols. 1844-1855 + 4 index-vols. 1862-1865 AN Poet. Lat. Antiquitates Poetae Latini aevi Carolini Capit. Capitularia regum Francorum Capit. N. S. Capitularia regum Francorum Nova Series Conc. Concilia Epp. Epistolae (in Quart) Fontes iuris Fontes iuris Germanici antiqui in usum scholarum separatim editi SS rer. Germ. Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi SS rer. Merov. Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum PL Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Series Latina by Jacques-Paul Migne 217 vols. 1844-1855 + 4 index-vols. 1862-1865 5 Note on the Text The thesis refers to many primary sources, most of which are in Latin. Citations in the main text from Latin (or, occasionally, Greek) material are given in English translation, which is my own unless otherwise indicated. The original text is given in the footnotes. Wherever I draw significantly on primary sources without quoting them in the body of the text, I provide the excerpts in the footnotes, in the original language. Paragraph breaks in all quotations correspond to the original text (as rendered in the editions I adhere to). 6 Acknowledgements After graduating from the University of Basel in 2010, I decided to embark on a Ph.D. in England at King’s College London. Since I proposed the subject of this thesis to Professor Peter Heather and Dr Alice Rio, I could, of course, foresee reasons for enjoyment. However, I could hardly imagine that Augustine of Hippo, Alcuin of York and Hincmar of Reims – three authors similar in prolificacy but fundamentally different in their understanding of ecclesiastical and secular power – would become so enmeshed with my professional and personal life. I am very glad that Peter Heather and Alice Rio both had enough faith to accept my proposal from abroad, and that I had enough initiative to make it. In reaching the final stage of my Ph.D., I feel fraught, perhaps unsurprisingly, with the sense of an end. More than a feeling of achievement, though, the completion of this project carries (for me) the redolence of memories from the past few years – and, somewhat more painfully, the whiff of possibilities, of opportunities that did not materialise. But perhaps in the latter lie this project’s promises for the future: its invitation to look forward to new paths in this very same or related research; to believe in refreshed encounters with people never met or not deeply enough understood. In many ways it was the people this Ph.D. brought into my life that made the whole experience meaningful to me. Many have contributed to this research. I am grateful to King’s College London for providing the infrastructure for completing such a formidable task. Back in Switzerland, vielen Dank to the Swiss National Science Foundation 7 (SNSF), for awarding me with a Doc.Mobility fellowship and for supporting this project; vielen Dank also to the librarians at the Universitätsbibliothek Basel who never failed to assist me. Several people, at various stages, have read and commented on many drafts, and each of them has also enriched this experience in other ways. Thanks to Professor Julia Crick for chairing the upgrade panel, for identifying weaknesses and options for improvement in my abstract and draft chapter on Alcuin, for encouraging my enthusiasm for palaeography through her teaching and, last but not least, for encouraging me to deliver my paper at Revealing Records V; to Daniel Hadas for teaching me Latin, for his kind assistance with my translations of Latin passages from Alcuin and Augustine, for his constructive criticism during my upgrade and afterwards, in my abstract and draft chapters on Alcuin and Augustine; to Dr Carsten Schmieder for providing me with a second opinion on an intricate passage in Hincmar’s Expositiones ad Carolum Regem; to Dr Hazel Johannessen for her advice on the work of Eusebius of Caesarea; to Hilary Davies (Royal Literary Fund Fellow), for proofreading my entire upgrade material; and to Sarah Sharp for her excellent proofreading work in the conclusion and the chapters on Alcuin and Hincmar (including the translations from the Latin sources). My deepest gratitude above all, of course, to Peter Heather and Alice Rio: for their continuous support throughout this project; for their mixture of rigorous pickiness and sensible pragmatism; and for the comments of encouragement they never forgot to scatter alongside their criticisms in any of my drafts. To other people I owe a lot also for helping me to develop my research skills, which have contributed to the progress of my Ph.D. In Switzerland, thanks to 8 Professor Achatz von Müller (University of Basel), for being my thesis supervisor and examiner for the lic. phil. degree and for encouraging me to devote myself to the history of political thought by running a seminar on Political Theories from Augustine to Machiavelli. In London, thanks to Professors Edith Hall and Roland Mayer (Department of Classics), for welcoming me to their MA course on Hellenistic Poetry, for piquing my interest in mythology and deepening my knowledge of ancient Greek literature, translation and interpretation; to Dr Alessandra Bucossi (Department of Classics), for bearing my presence at her MA course on Greek Palaeography & Textual Criticism; to Dr Charalambos Dendrinos (Royal Holloway), for allowing me to participate in his highly engaging Working Seminar on Editing Byzantine Texts at the Warburg; and, finally, to both Dr Nicola Devlin and Dr Fiona Haarer (Department of Classics), for teaching me in rigorous courses the basics of ancient Greek. At the Modern Language Centre, I am highly indebted to Silvia Colaiacomo and Paolo Nelli who have taught me throughout my doctoral studies at KCL: I feel fortunate to have sat in many of their language classes and to have shared a tiny bit of their great passion for the Italian language, literature and culture.