§ 91.3. The Eucharistic Controversy, A.D. 844.—Vacillations about the doctrine of the Supper (§ [58, 2]) lasted down to the 9th century. Paschasius Radbertus, monk at Corbie, undertook in A.D. 831, in his treatise De Sanguine et corpore Domini, theologically to justify, and on all sides to develop the doctrine of the Supper, which had long ago struck its roots in the practice of the church and the faith of the people. The air of genuine piety which meets us in this work impresses us favourably, and it cannot be denied that he had a profound perception of fulness, power, and depth of the Sacrament. It was, therefore, quite in accordance with popular belief. He could, also, refer to facts from the Vitæ Sanctorum, where the inner Veritas had come to outer manifestation. He thinks that the fact that this did not always happen is to be accounted for partly by this, that the Supper in its very nature is a Mysterium for faith and not a Miraculum for unbelief, partly by the divine condescendence which takes into account the natural horror at flesh and blood, and would take away from the heathen all occasion for blasphemy. At this time, A.D. 831, the Scriptures were not appealed to. Meantime Radbertus was made abbot of Corbie, and in this important position he revised his work, and presented it to Charles the Bald in A.D. 844. The king called upon the learned monk, Ratramnus of Corbie, to express his opinion on the subject, and he was only too ready to do an injury to his abbot. Without naming him, he contested his doctrine in his treatise, De corp. et sang. Domini ad Carolum Calvum, with bitter criticism, and subtly developed his own view, according to which the body and blood of Christ are enjoyed only spiritualiter et secundum potentiam. Rabanus Maurus, Scotus Erigena, and Florus of Lyons also opposed the magical transformation doctrine of Radbertus in favour of a merely spiritual enjoyment. Hincmar and Haymo, on the other hand, took the side of Radbertus, while Walafrid Strabo, and the able, energetic Christian Druthmar, found in the idea of impanation and consubstantiation a more fitting expression for the solemn mystery. But Radbertus had spoken the word which gave clear utterance to the ecclesiastical feeling of the age; the protest of so many great authorities might delay, but could not destroy its effects. Continuation, § [101, 2].
§ 91.4. Controversy about the Conception of the Virgin.—This notion of the magical operation of the Divine prevailed with Radbertus when soon afterwards he undertook in his own way, and also in accordance with Ps. xxii. 10 and Jer. xxxi. 22, in the tract, De partu virginali, to establish the opinion already expressed by Ambrose and Jerome (§ [57, 2]), that Mary brought forth utero clauso, and without pain. Ratramnus also has left a treatise on this theme: De eo quod Christus ex Virigine natus est. He maintains equally with Radbertus that during conception as well as in bearing, the Virgin did not lose her virginity. But while Radbertus contended against those who taught less than this, i.e., that though Mary conceived as a virgin, she bore after the manner of all women, Ratramnus directed his attack against those who affirmed more than that, i.e., that Christ at His birth did not leave His mother’s womb in the usual, natural manner, by His mother bearing Him. Further, while the former was angry at the profaning of the mystery of the birth of Christ, by ranking it under the laws of nature, the latter emphasized the fact that in no case should it be regarded as in itself ignominious to be placed under the laws of nature. Finally, while Radbertus unconditionally repudiated the position, Vulvam aperuit, Ratramnus felt compelled by Luke ii. 23 to admit it in a certain sense. C. v. “Utique vulvam aperuit, non et clausam corrumperet, sed et per eam suæ nativitatis ostium aperiret, sicut et in Ezech. xliv. 3 porta et clausa describitur et tamen narratur Domino aperta; non quod liminis sui fores dimoverit ad ejus egressum, sed quod sic clausa patuerit dominanti,” and c. viii. “Exivit clauso sepulchro (?) et ingressus foribus obseratis (Jo. xx. 9) ... ut et clausam relinqueret et per eam transiret ... nec haureundo patefecit.” The polemic, therefore, was most probably occasioned not by anything in the writings, but rather in their oral utterances. Neither understood the other’s view, and the one drew consequences from the other’s statements that were not warrantable. But when Ratramnus pretends to be debating, not with his abbot but with an unnamed German opponent, this can only be regarded as a literary artifice.
§ 91.5. The Predestinarian Controversy A.D. 847-868.—The earlier predestinarian controversy (§ [53, 5]), was, so far from being brought to a conclusion, that all the gradations of doctrinal views, from that of Semi-Pelagianism to a doctrine of predestination to condemnation that went far beyond Augustine, could find representatives among the teachers of the church. In the 9th century the controversy broke out in a passionate form. Gottschalk, the son of Berno, a Saxon count, had been placed by his parents when a child in the monastery of Fulda. A Synod at Mainz in A.D. 829 allowed him to go forth, but the abbot of Fulda at that time, Rabanus Maurus, got Louis the Pious to annul this dispensation. Transferred to the monastery of Orbais, in the diocese of Soissons, Gottschalk sought comfort in the study of the writings of Augustine, and was an enthusiastic defender of the doctrine of absolute predestination. In one point he even went beyond Augustine himself, for he taught a two-fold predestination (Gemina prædestinatio), a predestination to salvation and a predestination to condemnation, while Augustine had spoken of the latter mostly as a giving over to deserved condemnation. He took advantage of two journeys into Italy in A.D. 840 and A.D. 847 for spreading his doctrine. Impelled with a vehement desire to make converts, he made an attempt upon bishop Noting of Verona. Through him Rabanus, from A.D. 847 archbishop of Mainz, obtained information thereof, and issued to Noting, as well as to Count Eberhard of Friaul, with whom Gottschalk was living, threatening letters which distorted Gottschalk’s doctrine in many particulars, and drew from it unfair consequences, making the Prædestinatio ad damnationem a Prædestinatio ad peccatum. Rabanus’s own doctrine distinguished prescience and predestination, and placed the condemnation of the wicked under the former point of view. At the same time, in A.D. 848, he convened a Synod at Mainz, before which Gottschalk stated his doctrine without reserve, in the joyous conviction that it was in accordance with the doctrine of the church. But the Council excommunicated him, and assigned him for punishment to his metropolitan Hincmar of Rheims. Hincmar had him anew condemned at the Synod of Quiersy in A.D. 849, then, because he steadily refused to recant, had him savagely scourged and consigned to imprisonment for life in the monastery of Hautvilliers. Gottschalk offered to prove the justice of his cause by submitting to an ordeal; but Hincmar, though in other instances a defender of the ordeal, denounced this as the proposal of a second Simon Magus. The inhuman treatment of the poor monk, and the rejection of the doctrine of Augustine by two church leaders, occasioned a mighty commotion in the Frankish church, which was mainly directed against Hincmar. At first, bishop Prudentius of Troyes took the condemned monk’s part. Then Charles the Bald asked the opinions of Ratramnus of Corbie and the abbot Servatus Lupus of Ferrières. Both of these took the side of Gottschalk. Hincmar’s position threatened to become very serious. He looked out for supporters, and succeeded in finding champions in the deacon Florus of Lyons, the priest Amalarius of Metz, and the learned Joannes Scotus Erigena. But the latter’s advocacy was almost more dangerous to the metropolitan than the charges of his accusers. For the speculative Irishman founded his objections to the doctrine of predestination on the position, unheard of before in the West, that evil is only a μὴ ὄν, and condemnation therefore not a positive punishment of God, but consisting only in the consciousness of a defect. Hincmar’s position was now worse than ever, for his opponents made him responsible for the heresies of Scotus. And not only an old objector, Prudentius of Troyes in his De prædest. c. Joh. Scotu, but even archbishop Wessilo of Sens and the deacon Florus of Lyons, who had hitherto supported him, now put on their armour against him. But Charles the Bald took the part of the sorely-beset metropolitan, and summoned the national Synod of Quiersy of A.D. 853, where in four articles (Capitula Carisiaca), a modified Augustinianism, rejecting the gemina prædestinatio, was set forth as the orthodox faith. The Neustrian objectors were now compelled to keep silence, but archbishop Remigius of Lyons set a Lothringian national Synod of Valence of A.D. 855 over against the Neustrian Synod. This Synod expressly condemned the decisions of the Synod of Quiersy, together with the Scottish mixture (pultus Scotorum), and laid down six conflicting articles as the standard of orthodoxy. Finally the rulers of the West Franks combined their forces and called an Imperial Synod at Savonnières, a suburb of Toul, in A.D. 859. But harmony was not yet secured, and they were likely to part with bitter feelings, when Remigius made the proposal to reserve decision for a subsequent assembly to be convened in a less agitated time, and meanwhile to maintain the peace. This was agreed upon, and so the controversy put out of view, for the proposed assembly was never brought about. Gottschalk, left in the lurch by his former friends, now turned for help to the powerful pope Nicholas I. The pope ordered Hincmar to answer before the papal plenipotentiaries for his proceedings against the monk at the Synod of Metz in A.D. 863 (§ [82, 7]). Hincmar preferred not to comply to this demand, and to his delight the pope himself annulled the decisions of the Synod because his legates had been bribed. Moreover the metropolitan succeeded by intercession and well-planned letters in winning over the pope. Thus then Gottschalk was cheated out of his last hope. For twenty years he languished in prison, but with his latest breath he rejected every proposal of recantation. He died in A.D. 868, and by Hincmar’s orders was buried in unconsecrated earth.
§ 91.6. The Trinitarian Controversy, A.D. 857.—From his prison Gottschalk had accused his metropolitan of a second heresy. Hincmar had removed from a church hymn, Te trina Deitas unaque poscimus, the expression, trina Deltas, as favouring Arianism, and substituted the words, sancta Deitas. His opponents therefore charged him with Sabellianism, and Ratramnus made this accusation in a controversial tract no longer extant.Ratramnus, on the other hand, to whom Hincmar applied, supported the change, but would not commit himself to a written approval of it, whereupon Hincmar himself undertook a defence of the expression substituted in his treatise, De una et non trini Deitate.[262]
§ 92. Endeavours After Reformation.
The independence which Charlemagne gave to the German church first awakened in it the consciousness of its vocation as a reformer. This consciousness was maintained throughout the Middle Ages, though hampered indeed by much narrowness, one-sidedness, and error. Charlemagne himself stood first in the series of reformers with his energetic protest against image worship. Louis the Pious too persevered in this same direction, and encouraged Agobard of Lyons and Claudius of Turin when they contested similar forms of ecclesiastical superstition.
§ 92.1. The Carolingian Opposition to Image Worship, A.D. 790-825.—On the occasion of an embassy of the emperor Constantinus Copronymus (§ [66, 2]) Pepin the Short convened a Synod at Gentiliacum in A.D. 767 (§ [91, 2]) where the question of image worship was dealt with. We have no further information, as the acts of this Synod have been lost. Then in A.D. 790 Hadrian I. sent to Charlemagne the acts of the 7th occasional Synod of Nicæa (§ [66, 3]). Charles, as emperor-elect, regarded himself as grievously wronged by the assumption of the Greeks, who, without consulting the German court, sought to enact laws that were wholly antagonistic to the Frankish practice. He published under his own name a state paper in 4 bks., the so-called Libri Carolini, in which the Byzantine proceedings were censured in strong terms, the synodal acts refuted one by one, every form of image worship denounced as idolatry, while at the same time the position of the iconoclasts was repudiated and, with reference to Gregory the Great (§ [57, 4]), the usefulness of images in quickening devotion, instructing the people and providing suitable decoration for sacred places was admitted. Veneration of saints, relics, and the cross is, on the other hand, permitted. Charlemagne sent this writing to the pope, who in the most courteous language wrote a refutation, which, however, made no impression upon Charlemagne. On the contrary he now hastened preparations for calling a great œcumenical Synod of all German churches that would outdo the Synod of the Byzantine court. Alcuin utilized his visit to England for securing a representation at this Synod of the Anglo-Saxon church. The Synod met at Frankfort in A.D. 794 and confirmed the positions of the Caroline books. The pope found it prudent to yield to the times and the people. Under Louis the Pious the matter was brought forward anew on the occasion of an embassy from the iconoclast emperor Michael Balbus. A national Synod at Paris in A.D. 825 condemned image worship sharply, in opposition to Hadrian I., and affirmed the positions of the Caroline books. Pope Eugenius II. kept silent on this subject. In the Frankish empire down to the 10th century no recognition was given to the 2nd Nicene Council, and official opposition was continued against image worship.
§ 92.2. Soon after the Parisian council of A.D. 825, Agobard of Lyons made his appearance with a powerful polemic: Contra superstitionem eorum, qui picturis et imaginibus sanctorum adorationis obsequiem deferendum putant. He goes much further than the Caroline books, for not only does he regard it as advisable, on account of the inevitable misuse on the part of the people, to banish images entirely, but with image worship he also rejects all adoration of saints, relics, and angels. Man should put his trust in the omnipotent God alone, and worship and reverence only the one Mediator, Christ. He comes forward also as a reformer of the liturgy. He finds fault with all sensuous additions to Divine service, would banish from it all non-Biblical hymns, urges to earnest study of Scripture, contends against the folly of the ordeal (De Divinis Sententiis), the popular superstitions about witchcraft and weather omens (Contra insulsam vulgi opinionem de grandine et tonitruis), and the idea that by presents to churches a stop can be put to epidemics and pestilences. Also on inspiration he entertained very liberal opinions (§ [90, 9]). No one thought on account of these views to charge him with heresy. Claudius of Turin went still further than Agobard. By the help of Augustine he was able to grasp more profoundly than any of his contemporaries the essential core of saving truth, that man without any merit of works is justified and saved by the grace of God in Christ alone. Louis the Pious appointed him to the bishopric of Turin with the express injunction that he should contend against image worship in his Italian diocese. He found there image worship along with an extravagant devotion to relics, crosses and pilgrimages carried on to such a degree that he felt himself constrained reluctantly because of the condition of affairs to cast images and crosses out of the churches altogether. The popular excitement over this proceeding rose to the utmost pitch, and his life was saved and his office retained only through dread of the Frankish arms. When pope Paschalis intimated to him his displeasure, he said the pope is only to be honoured as apostolic, when he does the works of an apostle, otherwise Matt. xxiii. 2-4 applies to him. Against the views of his early scholar and friend the abbot Theodemir, regarding monastic psalmody, he vindicated himself in A.D. 825 in his controversial tract Apologeticus, which is now known only from the replies of his opponents. A Scotchman, Dungal, teacher at Pavia, entered the lists against him and accused him before the emperor, who, however, contented himself with calling upon bishop Jonas of Orleans to refute the apologetical treatise. This refutation appeared only after the death of Claudius. It assumed the position of the Frankish church on the question of image worship, as also Dungal had done.