Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T07:24:44.779Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Church’s Military Service in the Ninth Century: A Contemporary Comparative View?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Janet L. Nelson
Janet L. Nelson*
Affiliation:
King's College London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

‘Comparisons are odorous’. Modern historians, far from sharing Dogberry’s repugnance, have found the scent of the comparative method irresistible. ‘Perhaps even the future of our discipline’ depended on its pursuit, wrote Marc Bloch in 1928. Since then, comparison has become fashionable enough, and hardly remarkable in our contemporaries’ work. Remarkable it certainly is, however, in the ninth century. I would like to begin by quoting a passage written in 857 or 858 by Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims:

In the regions [of the English] the bishoprics and monasteries are not so endowed with ecclesiastical property as they are in these Gallic regions; and for this reason, military services are not rendered from the bishoprics of those [English] regions, but [instead] the costs of rewarding those who fight (stipendia militiae) are allocated from public resources (ex roga publica). Here, on the other hand, in our regions, our clergy, instead of being given a fourth part of the bishopric’s income from renders and offerings, have an appropriate share (pars congrua) assigned them; then another share is assigned for lighting of churches, and another share goes to the hospices for the poor; but then a share goes to the fighting-men who are listed under the name of ‘housed ones’ (casati); and finally a share goes to the bishop and those who are under his direct command. Thus, at the dictate of necessity and the urging of reason, the rulers of provinces and churches have established customary arrangements appropriate to the respective qualities of provinces and quantities of church property.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 20: The Church and War , 1983 , pp. 15 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 ‘A contribution towards a comparative history of European societies’, in Land and Work in Medieval Europe (London 1967) pp 44-81. This paper originally appeared in the Revue de Synthèse Historique in 1928.

2 De Ecclesiis et Capellis, ed Gundlach, W. in Zeilschrift für Kirchengeschicke 10 (1889) pp 92–145 Google Scholar at p 135. (I cite this hereafter as dEC.) A new edition is being prepared by the MGH. Hincmar’s covering letter sending the work to Charles the Bald is printed in MGH Epp 8 pp 52-5. The division of episcopal revenues into four (?equal) parts (for bishop, clergy, the poor, and church buildings) was laid down by Gelasius I: Decretum Gelasti in the Dionysio-Hadriana, Decreta Gelasii c 27, in PL 67, col 310. On the application of these arrangements in Gaul, see M. Rouche, ‘La matricule des pauvres, évolution d’une institution de charité du Bas-Empire jusqu’à la fin du Haut Moyen Age’, in Mollat, M. ed, Etudes sur l’Histoire de la Pauvreté. 2 vols (Paris 1974) pp 83–110 Google Scholar, esp 86-7, also J. Devisse, ‘“Pauperes” et “paupertas” dans le monde carolingien: ce qu’en dit Hincmar de Reims’, in Revue du Nord 48 (1966) pp 273-87, esp 277 with n 15. Hincmar contrasts the Gelasian four-way division with the contemporary practice of a five-way division ‘in these Gallic regions’.

3 ‘Until Gundlach’s edition from Leyden Universitätsbibliothek MS 141, the work was known of only from Flodoard’s mention, Historia Remensis ecclesiae III, 18 in MGH SS 13 p 508. It is therefore not printed with the bulk of Hincmar’s works in PL 125 and 126. The work’s interest was appreciated by de la Tour, Imbart P., Les origines religieuses de la France: les paroisses rurales du IXe au Xle siècle (Paris 1900)Google Scholar, and by Lesne, [E.], Histoire [de la propriété ecclésiastique en France, 6 vols (Lille 1905-43)] 2 Google Scholar part ii (1926) who discussed part of the passage quoted above at pp 272-3 without, however, distinguishing between land and income from land. That Hincmar had both in mind is clear from his re-examination of the subject ten years later in the Pro Ecclesiae Lihertatum Defensione, PL 125, cols 1050-1. See also the fine commentary on the dEC in Devisse, [J.], Hincmar [Archevêque de Reims, 845-882, 3 vols (Geneva 1975-6) 2 pp 829–45 Google Scholar, noting the interest of the comparative passage (pp 839-40) but without any discussion of its relevance to the military service of the ninth-century church.

4 See Brooks, [N.], [’The] development [of military obligations in eighth- and ninth-century England’, in Clemoes, P. and Hughes, K. edd, England before the Conquest: Studies . . . presented to Dorothy Whitelock (Cambridge 1971)] pp 69–84 Google Scholar: a fine study that does justice to previous scholarship on this subject. Equally indispensable is E. John, Orbis Britanniáé (Leicester 1966) pp 128-53, esp 139-42, placing military organisation firmly in social context.

5 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle edd Earle, J. and Plummer, C., Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel (Oxford 1892) s.a. 894 for 893 pp 85–6.Google Scholar

6 Brooks, ‘Development’ p 70 and passim.

7 See John, Orbis Britanniae pp 118-22. There is no direct evidence before the late tenth century, however, that the fyrd was organised on the lines of ealdormanic followings writ large.

8 Asser, Life [of King Alfred ed W. Stevenson (Oxford 1904 repr 1959)] c 100, p 88.

9 Asser, Life cc 77, 81, pp 62, 67-8. The monasteries given to Asser by Alfred were evidently royal proprietary churches.

10 Asser, Life cc 53, 55, pp 41, 44, mentions Alfred’s fossetti. In C 76, p 60, listing the many peoples (including pagani - Danes!) from whom Alfred’s following was recruited, Asser says the king ‘endowed them all with money and estates’. (For the likely meaning of potestas here: ‘power over lands’, see Whitelock, D., EHD vol 1 (2nd edn London 1979) p 293, n 1.Google Scholar) Alfred’s few surviving charters include two that perhaps represent grants to members of his following: CS 2 nos 581, 568. (For their likely genuineness see Whitelock, D., ‘Some charters in the name of King Alfred’, in King, [M.H.] and Stevens, [W.M.] edd Saints, Scholars and Heroes, [Studies in Honor of Jones, C.W. (Collegeville Minnesota 1978)] pp 77–98.Google Scholar) The argument of Finberg, H.P.R., West Country Historical Studies (Newton Abbot 1969) pp 11–28 Google Scholar (even allowing for the reservations noted by Whitelock, EHD p 522) suggests that some of the lands which Æthelwulf booked to himself in CS no 451 may have been intended for distribution to his following.

11 The evidence is ably discussed by P. Wormald in a forthcoming study, ‘Bede, the Bretwaldas and the Origins of the Gens Anglorum’ (1983).

12 This is implied in CS no 421. For very interesting comments on the political context of this charter, see Wormald in Campbell, J. ed The Anglo-Saxons (London 1982) p 140.Google Scholar

13 I quote from Whitelock’s translation of this letter in EHD p 882.

14 » Anglo-Saxon Chronicle s.a. 823 for 825, 845 for 848, 871, pp 60, 64, 72.

15 For example, for the Canterbury evidence, see Brooks, The Early History of Christ Church Canterbury (forthcoming, Leicester 1983); for Winchester, see Finberg, The Early Charters of H’essex (Leicester 1964) pp 218-20; for Worcester, see Wormald in Campbell ed, The Anglo-Saxons pp 122-3 and the map ibid p 71 showing the large number of minster endowments up to c850.

16 See Stafford, P., ‘Charles the Bald, Judith and England’, in Gibson, M. and Nelson, J. edd, [Charles the Bald: [Court and Kingdom, B.A.R. International Series 101 (Oxford 1981)] pp 137–51 Google Scholar. Hincmar was closely involved personally in these contacts: he performed Judith’s consecration in 856 for which he remodelled an English ordo (see Nelson, ‘The earliest surviving royal Ordo’, in Tierney, B. and Linehan, P. edd, Authority and Power: Studies presented to Walter Ullmann (Cambridge 1980) pp 29–48)Google Scholar and he had a hand in the Capitulary of 864 in which Charles the Bald’s imposition of a new obligation to build fortifications was almost certainly influenced by recent West Saxon developments (see Brooks, ‘Development’ p 81; and for the capitulary see Nelson, ‘Legislation and consensus in the reign of Charles the Bald’, forthcoming).

17 Historia Ecclesiastica Centis Anglorum ed Plummer (Oxford 18% repr 1975) 1, 27, p 48. The best discussion of this letter in its historical context is Mayr-Harting, H., The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England (London 1972) pp 60–4, 269-71Google Scholar. Gregory’s position and missionary concerns gave him in some ways a genuinely relativist outlook. Whether Hincmar cited Gregory’s letter from Bede is uncertain: Devisse, Hincmar 2 p 822, n 696 shows there is no evidence for Hincmar’s having a text of the Ecclesiastical History before the 870s. Hincmar could have cited from Pseudo-Isidore though again his use of this is late, and sparing, or from the Register of Gregory’s letters (Devisse, Hincmar 3 p 1434, n 2): though Hincmar’s own references to a Regestum are only from 870 onwards (ibid, p 1495, n 4), this seems his likeliest source in this passage in the dEC where he also refers to two other letters of Gregory.

18 Lesne, Histoire, 2(ii) pp 456 seq remains indispensable. See also [F.] Prinz, Klerus und Krieg [im früheren MitteL•lter (Stuttgart 1971)] and idem, ‘King, clergy and war at the time of the Carolingians’, in King and Stevens edd, Saints, Scholars and Heroes, pp 301-329, though both the book and the article are patchy in their treatment of the ninth century.

19 MCH Capit 1, no 74, C 10, p 167. The obligation of abbesses is rightly insisted on for the tenth century by L. Auer, ‘Der Kriegsdienst des Klerus [unter den sächsischen Kaisern’, in] MIOG 79 (1971) pp 316-407; 80 (1972) pp 48-70 at 63-4.

20 The term is Prinz’s, Klerus und Krieg pp 65, 91. See also Nelson, , ‘Charles the Bald and the Church[in town and countryside’, in SCH 16 (1979)] pp 103–18.Google Scholar

21 MCH Capit 2, no 291, C 8, p 385. In the same year, the Council of Thionville, ibid no 227, C 3, p 114, complained about lay-abbots, but acknowledged that monasteries served not only ‘divina religio’ but also ‘utilitas rei publicae’.

22 See e.g. Annales Regni Francorum ed Kurze, F. MCH SSRG (Hannover 1895) s.a. 753, p 11 Google Scholar; Annales Laureshamenses, s.a.791, MGH SS 1 pp 34-5; Annais of St Bertin, ed F. Grat et al (Paris 1964) s.a. 833, 834, 844, 876 pp 9 (with note g.), 13, 46-7, 209; Archbishop Hetti of Trier to Bishop Frothar of Toul, MGH Epp 5 pp 277-8; Lupus [of Ferneres,] Correspondance, [ed L. Levillain, 2 vols (Paris 1927-35)] 1. Epp 15, 17, 34, 35, 45, and 2. Epp 72, 83; Hincmar, MGH Epp 8 p 206, and a vivid passage in dEC, p 132, on the need for an efficient commissariat.

23 MGH Capit 2, no 300, cc 6-7, 14 pp 452-3. The euphemism appears already in the reign of Childebert II: MGH Capit 1, no 7, p 16.

24 Nelson, ‘Charles the Bald and the Church’ pp 115-6.

25 MGH Capit 2, no 274, C 13, p 331. The mention of banners in relation to ecclesiastical contingents is noteworthy (and overlooked by C. Erdmann, Die Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens (Stuttgart 1935) in his important chapter on holy banners). This seems to be the earliest recorded instance of the word guntfanonarius.

26 East Francia: e.g. Annals of Fulda, ed Kurze, , MGH SSRG (Hannover 1891) s.a. 872, 883, pp 76, 100Google Scholar; Notker, Gesta Karoli, ed Haefele, H., MGH SSRG (Berlin 1959) bk 2, C 17, p 83 Google Scholar: a description, perhaps drawn from his own experience rather than from historical evidence, of Charlemagne’s bishops, abbots and chaplains ‘cum comitibus suis’ at the siege (Pavia in 774. (It is clear from the context that the reference is to military followings rather than ‘attendants’ as translated by Thorpe, L., Two Lives of Charlemagne (Harmondsworth 1969) p 163.)Google Scholar Italy: e.g. MGH Capit 2, no 221, C 13, p 103 (‘episcopi. . . in suis domibus cum suis vassallis’); no 218, C 4, p 96: ‘. . . abbates vel abbatissae si pienissime hommes suos non direxerint, ipse suos honores perdant (!) et eorum bassalli et proprium et beneficium amittant.

27 Constable, G., ‘Nona et decima’ Speculum 35 (1960) pp 224–50.Google Scholar

28 Nelson, ‘Charles the Bald and the Church’ pp 107, 116, with further references. The exceptionally-rich evidence for the see of Laon is discussed by McKeon, P., Hincmar of Laon and Carolingian Politics(Urbana-Chicago-London 1978)Google Scholar esp pp 179-85; but there is no reason to think the arrangements here unusual.

29 As in the case of Hincmar of Laon: PL 124, col 981. Cp below p 27, n 47.

30 The distinction between the bishop’s military familia in this narrower sense, and the larger body of vassals whom he led to war is impossible to document directly from ninth- century sources. But Hincmar seems to refer to the former in dEC p 135; and there may be another reference in Lupus, Conespondance, 1, Ep 16, p 96: ‘Homines nostri . . . censu rei familiańs in . . . servitio effuso, onere paupertatis gravantur (though Levillain translates: ‘. . . revenu de leur patrimoine’).

31 Lupus, Conespondance vol 2, Ep 106 p 138. I have tried in my translation to bring out the play on words and ideas between Odo’s monastic profession (propositum) and the profession of the armati (‘quod instrument!! bellici; profitentur’).

31 >Prinz, Klerus und Krieg p 166.

33 dEC p 127, quoting VII Toledo, C 4 presumably via the Hispana, PL 84 col 407-8. (For the versions current in the ninth century, see Devisse, Hincmar vol 3 p 1409). But Hincmar asserted (dEC p 136) that his fellow bishops regularly violated this limit, travelling around their dioceses ‘cum hoste collectai

34 Mansi 16, col 663.

35 Lesne, Histoire, 2, ii, pp 481-2. Cp Werner, K.F., ‘Heeres-organisation und Kriegführung im deutschen Königreich des 10 und 11 Jhdts.’, in SS Spoleto 15 (1968) pp 791–843 Google Scholar, esp pp 820-30 (repr in Werner, Structures politiques du monde franc (London 1979)), Auer, ‘Kriegsdienst des Klerus’ in MIOG 79 (1971) pp 376-7, and 80 (1972) p 68, nn 31-3. These figures will include members of episcopal familiae along with beneficial vassals.

36 The implication of Hincmar’s De Ordine Palatii, C 22 is that the West Frankish king’s military following were paid annual gifts in cash. Asser C 100 explicitly mentions annual cash payments by Alfred to his bellatores, and Alfred in his will (Whitelock, p 536) left 2001b, to ‘those who follow (folgiad) me’. For the abbot of Fleury’s annual gifts to his vassalli, see Tessier, G., Receuil des Actes de Charles II le Chauve, 3 vols (Paris 1943-55) 1, no 177, p 468 Google Scholar. See also below, p 25, n 39.

37 Prestwich, J.O., ‘The Military Household of the Norman Kings’, in EHR 96 (1981) pp l–35 Google Scholar; Gillingham, J.B., ‘The introduction of knight service into England’, in Brown, R.A. ed, Proceedings of the Battle Conference 4 (1982) pp 53–64.Google Scholar

38 Werner, Cp, ‘Untersuchungen zur Frühzeit des französischen Fürstentums (8.-10. Jdts)’, in Die Welt als Geschichte 18 (1958) pp 256–89 Google Scholar; 19 (1959) pp 146-93; and the important contribution of Bouchard, C.B., ‘The Origins of the French Nobility: a Reassessment’, in American Historical Review 86 (1981) pp 501–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Condemnations of the practice of usury by ecclesiastics are frequent in the ninth century. (There is a good example in dEC p 121). The taking of cash-payments by clergy of all ranks but especially bishops is also condemned. (Again, the dEC offers several examples: pp 107, 113, 123-4, 127). Both the bishops attacked by Hincmar (Rothad of Soissons, and Hincmar of Laon) were accused of simony, and one of pawning church plate. For the scale of the church’s cash-contribution to successive Danegelds in Hincmar’s time, see Lot, F., ‘Les tributs aux Normands et l’Eglise de France au IXe siècle’ in BEC 85 (1924) pp 58–78 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. All this should be set in the context of the relatively extensive monétisation of the economy of Charles the Bald’s kingdom demonstrated by D.M. Metcalf, ‘A sketch of the currency in the time of Charles the Bald’ in Gibson and Nelson edd, Charles the Bald pp 53-84, and of the increasing tendency for the renders of peasants on ecclesiastical estates to be paid in cash.

40 « MGH Epp 8, no 198, p 206. In dEC p 135, Hincmar cites two letters of Gregory 1 to Italian bishops alongside the letter to Augustine: conditions in England and Italy are alleged to be the same and contrasted with the military service owed by the church in ‘these Gallic regions’. But for the real situation in Italy, see above p 21, n 26, and Wickham, C., Early Medieval Italy (London 1981) pp 137, 140-2.Google Scholar

41 Devisse, Hincmar 2 p 603.

42 Hincmar shows his awareness of the contrast in a torrent of appeals to St. Paul and the age of the Apostles: ¿EC pp 125-36. He also attempts to rationalise the transition from apostolic arrangements to the acquisition of landed wealth by the Church: ibid pp 135-6. For similar concerns in Pseudo-Isidore and their specific ninth-century context, see the penetrating comments of Goffart, W., The Le Mam Forgeries (Cambridge, Mass. 1966) ch 1 esp p 20.Google Scholar

43 MGH Capit 2, no 297, pp 440-1.

44 dEC pp 129-32.

45 Such complaints were not new in the ninth century; nor was Hincmar then the only one to make them. But the depth of his concern in the dEC is very striking.

46 Constable, ‘Nona et decima’.

47 Cp above p 20-1, nn 21, 26: and Hincmar of Laon’s self-justification in PL 124, col 981, admitting that he had granted benefices on episcopal lands to his own kinsmen, but insisting that this benefitted both church and state.

48 dEC, prefatory letter, MGH Epp 6, no 108, pp 53-4. For this theme in Hincmar’s political thought, see Nelson, ‘Kingship, law and liturgy [in the political thought of Hincmar of Rheims’, in EHR 92 (1977)] pp 241-79.

49 MGH Capit 2, no 259, C 8, p 269. The foreshadowing was noticed by Devisse, Hincmar 1 p 499 n 166. See also Wallace-Hadrill, J.M., ‘War and Peace in the Early Middle Ages’, in his collected essays, Early Medieval History (Oxford 1975) pp 19–38 Google Scholar, esp 31-5, for a fairly optimistic assessment of the Carolingian Church’s success in preaching peace (though I cannot share his view that ‘Frankish bellicosity’ had come to be in need of reactivating in the ninth century: there is too much evidence not only for inter-Frankish violence, but also - and contrary to a currently-fashionable view—for local and spontaneous resistance to the Vikings! Cp Lupus’ letter, above p23).

50 PL 125, col 966. For the Vikings as pagani, see Wallace-Hadrill, ‘The Vikings in Francia’, in Early Medieval History pp 222-7 (though in my view exaggerating the ‘positive force’ of Viking paganism in reality).

51 Translatio Sanai Germani Parisiensis, cc 29, 30, ed C. de Smedt, Analecta Bollandiana 2 (1883) pp 90-1, 92.

52 So, one of the prayers in time of war in the Gelasian Sacramentary ed Mohlberg, L.C., Liber Sacramentorum Romanae Aeclesiae Ordinis Anni Circuii (Rome 1960) p 215.Google Scholar

53 Prayer at the handing over of the sceptre, Ordo of Louis the Stammerer (877), MGH Capit 2, no 304, p 461. For Hincmar’s authorship, see Nelson, ‘Kingship, law and liturgy’, pp 246, 260.

54 MGH Epp 6, no 38, pp 309-10.

55 MGH Epp 8, no 198, p 206.

56 Ed F. Warren (Oxford 1883) p 232. See Nelson, ‘Earliest surviving royal Ordo, esp pp 36, n 37, and 38, n 41.

57 Duby, G., Les Trois Ordres (Paris 1978) p 358.Google Scholar This point is missed by J. Fiori, ‘Chevalerie et liturgie’ in Le Moyen Age 84 (1978) pp 245-78, 434-8.

58 Robinson, I.S., ‘Gregory VII and the Soldiers of Christ’, in History 58 (1973) pp 169–92 esp 179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar