Download PDF | Mayke De Jong_ Justin Lake - Confronting Crisis in the Carolingian Empire_ Paschasius Radbertus' Funeral Oration for Wala of Corbie-Manchester University Press (2020).
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INTRODUCTION
The Epitaph of Arsenius Confronting crisis The ‘epitaph’ or funeral oration for Abbot Wala of Corbie (d. 836), a cousin of Charlemagne who was also known as Arsenius, is a confrontation with political crisis at various levels, and at different moments in time. Its focus is on Wala’s different roles during the reigns of Charlemagne (768–814) and his successor, Louis the Pious (814–40). As the only remaining son when his father died, Louis, who had hitherto been king of Aquitaine, had already been made co-emperor by Charlemagne in 813. At this time Wala was the most important layman at Charlemagne’s court, while his older half-brother Adalhard was abbot of Corbie.
Louis’ take-over of the palace in Aachen meant the introduction of a new group of trusted counsellors and the removal of the old guard. Powerful kinsmen such as Wala and Adalhard were sent off to monasteries, along with their sister Gundrada and other women of the family who had become influential during the last decade of Charlemagne’s reign. In due course, however, Louis, who had been crowned emperor in October 816 in Reims by Pope Stephen IV, felt secure enough to reconcile himself with his two formidable cousins. From 821 onwards Wala once more became a central figure at the Frankish imperial court, as the mentor and deputy of Louis’ eldest son, Lothar, co-emperor and king of Italy, and, from 826, when Adalhard died, as abbot of Corbie.
In 819 the widower Louis had remarried with an aristocratic daughter from Alemannia, Judith, who in 821 bore him a son, with the significant name Charles: this was a boy destined to rule. Fitting this newcomer into the succession arrangements set up in 817 contributed to the already growing tensions between Louis and his three elder sons, and especially with the co-emperor, Lothar. Deciding to distance himself from Lothar, in August 829 Louis put his godson Bernard, count of Septimania, in charge of the imperial household.
The backlash followed in the spring of 830. Accusations of adultery between Bernard and Empress Judith, fuelled by fear of the chamberlain’s competition, were the pretext for this first revolt, in which the two elder sons, Lothar and Pippin, joined forces with a group of courtiers elbowed out by Bernard. Wala was one of the leaders, and paid for it by being exiled to a series of monasteries in the empire. Louis’ quick comeback and highhanded dealing with his elder sons in the aftermath of the first rebellion sowed the seeds for a second revolt in the summer of 833, which led to the old emperor’s infamous public penance in the autumn of that year. Yet within half a year Louis was back in charge, and in August 834 Lothar was forced to retreat to Italy and remain there. He was followed by some loyal supporters, including Wala, by now abbot of Bobbio, who died there in 836.1
These events provide the backdrop to the Epitaphium Arsenii. Yet its context should be extended further, well into the period after the death of Louis the Pious and the struggle for succession among his three remaining sons. While the emperor, Lothar (840–55), still commanded loyalty in Corbie, this monastery became part of the kingdom of Charles the Bald (840–77).2 This in itself created considerable tension, yet it only surfaces in the Epitaphium’s second book, in the context of a full-scale assessment of the rebellions of the early 830s from a later perspective. Its author, Paschasius Radbertus (c. 790–c. 860), a monk of Corbie, wrote this spirited defence of his beloved master in two phases.
The Epitaphium’s first book originated not long after Wala’s death in 836, when Radbert (as we shall call him) was a prominent member of his community, but also in a difficult position because of his close ties with Wala, who was accused of having been disloyal to his emperor, Louis the Pious. Radbert only added a second book about two decades later, in the mid-850s. By then, he was an elderly man who had been forced to resign as abbot of Corbie, an illustrious position he had only managed to hang on to for about seven years. These were the two crises of Radbert’s life. The first was Wala’s involvement in the two rebellions against Louis the Pious in 830 and 833, and his punishment by exile, which also meant dishonour to his monks and his closest associates; the second was Radbert’s own loss of the abbacy of Corbie, sometime between 849 and 853. His Epitaphium Arsenii not only defended his abbot’s motives and reputation but also served to support the author’s own shaky position. When he wrote the first book, Radbert kept his head down, and concentrated on Wala/ Arsenius’ many virtues as a perfect monk and abbot. Without any strict, linear chronology, his first part covers the period from Wala’s training at Charlemagne’s court until his succession as abbot of Corbie in 826, with only oblique references to his part in the rebellions against Louis.
The sequel, added after Radbert stepped down as abbot, starts in the late 820s and ends with Wala’s death in Italy in 836. It is a fierce diatribe against Wala’s enemies, with the narrative of the two rebellions at its core. Modern historians have mostly been interested in the Epitaphium’s shorter second book and its vivid narrative about the rebellions against Louis the Pious. Because of its emphasis on Wala as a monk and abbot, the first book was largely ignored, or at best cherry-picked for a few supposedly non-monastic stories.3 This has meant missing rather a lot, and not just because this was an age in which political discussions were conducted within a religious framework. Big monasteries such as Corbie were closely connected with the Frankish royal court, and provided both spiritual support and material sustenance to the ruler and the governing elite.4 Wala’s religious reputation, therefore, was crucial to the overall judgement of his qualities as a leader of his people.
Nor can the outspoken second book be understood as a narrative of political history in the modern sense of the word. Its loud lamentations about a dismal present turn the work into a retrospective prophecy, reminiscent of the prophet Jeremiah, who recorded the tribulations of his people with hindsight, as an exile. This was how Radbert portrayed Wala, and by association, also himself, especially in the second book: as a prophet whose warnings went unheeded, and who had therefore to witness and suffer the exile of his people. It is no wonder that the second book has become one of the main ingredients of modern grand narratives about a decline of the Carolingians that began with the two revolts against Louis the Pious;5 yet Radbert’s account of the crisis of Louis’ reign was written two decades later, with considerable hindsight. To a large extent, it reflects Radbert’s experiences as abbot of Corbie in the 840s, followed by his own sort of exile: an enforced retirement and exclusion from the circle of counts, bishops and abbots who governed together with their ruler. This does not make the second book less valuable as a historical source, but it is vital that it is situated in its proper context: the reign of Charles the Bald, the youngest son of Louis the Pious.
A daring experiment Paschasius Radbertus, as is he is known (we call him Radbert for short), was one of the most prolific biblical commentators of his age, whose opinion was sought by the great and good, including King Charles the Bald, who in 843 wanted Radbert’s views on the nature of the Eucharist, a matter of current debate that had also involved the royal court.6 To this treatise, and to his vast commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, Radbert owes most of his posthumous fame, yet he also composed two funeral orations (‘epitaphs’) for the men he thought of as his monastic fathers, the half-brothers Adalhard and Wala, abbots of Corbie. The Life of Adalhard was composed shortly after the abbot’s death in January 826.7 Even though Radbert himself called it an epitaph, and declared his boundless admiration for Cicero,8 this earlier work still had some of the conventional structure of the Life of a holy man.9 By contrast, the Epitaphium Arsenii is the daring experiment of an even more accomplished author. Once more the funeral orations of the church fathers Ambrose and Jerome served as an example, and by the time he started on the Epitaphium, Radbert’s classical learning had clearly progressed by leaps and bounds.10 In this case, the real experiment was that Radbert now drew upon a long classical and late antique tradition of literary dialogue.
Three monks of Corbie, with Radbert himself only thinly disguised as the narrator Pascasius, discuss their deceased abbot’s many virtues and exploits. At first they grieve about his death in Italy, so far away from his own community, but soon their lament turns into a spirited defence of Arsenius against his many enemies. The second book is even more polemical, not just because it covers the two rebellions against Louis, but also because it was written when, after only seven years of being abbot of Corbie, Radbert had to step down from this prestigious office, because both at the court and in his monastery his position had become untenable. By structuring his defence of Wala as an at times antagonistic debate between ‘Pascasius’ and his fellow monks, the author managed to articulate the views of his adversaries before thoroughly refuting them. It is difficult to pinpoint one particular model for this strategy, for Radbert was nothing if not eclectic, but Sulpicius Severus’ dialogue (c. 400) on the virtues of St Martin, between the author himself and two of his monastic friends, seems a likely source of inspiration.
Two books, one work Only one manuscript of the Epitaphium survives. It was produced in Corbie not long after the mid- to late 850s, the time when Radbert completed his second book (Paris, BnF lat. 13909).12 This manuscript, written by at least three scribes and carefully corrected by a contemporary hand, contains only Radbert’s Epitaphium Arsenii, which is the work’s original title (see Figure 5). The author’s name, however, is not mentioned, except as the narrator in the text itself who is identified as ‘P’ (Pascasius).13
Although the transition from the first to the second book is clearly marked, the same hand continues the text halfway down the page (f. 62r). Whether the first book ever circulated on its own is anybody’s guess. The chapter headings used in modern editions were added by the Epitaphium’s first editor, Jean Mabillon (1632–1707).14 In the manuscript itself the text runs continuously, and is structured only by a change of interlocutor, indicated by the first letter of their name. This is only the case with the main participants in the confabulation, three in each book. The additional two interlocutors in the first book, Allabigus and Cremes, have their names spelled out.
The questions concerning the intended audience and the date of its composition can only be answered from its contents. There is no doubt that Radbert meant this to be a work in two books, just like De excessu fratris sui Satyri, the funeral oration that Ambrose of Milan composed in 378 upon the death of his brother. This served as Radbert’s main model.15 Especially in the earlier part of the first book, and towards the end of the second, the Epitaphium remains close to Ambrose’s text. These densely Ambrosian sections provide a framework for the entire Epitaphium, pulling the two books together through their central theme: the grief of the monks of Corbie over the demise of their Arsenius in faraway Italy, while they were unable to be present at his deathbed. This funeral oration proper introduces and finishes the bigger central part of the Epitaphium, which, stretching across the two books, relates the events and misfortunes of Wala’s life as a courtier, monk and latter-day Jeremiah, who warned his people about impending disasters, all to no avail. It is here that Radbert, in his guise as the narrator ‘Pascasius’, develops his defence of his abbot against a chorus of nameless enemies. The first book counters the allegation that Wala was not a real monk, and that as an abbot he had neglected his community because of his long absences in imperial service.
The other and most grievous accusation, that by rebelling against Louis the Pious in 830 Wala had been disloyal to his emperor, already surfaces in the introduction to the first book, but is only developed fully in the second, together with the identification of Arsenius with Jeremiah, the prophet of doom. All this shows that the Epitaphium was planned and executed as one work. Nonetheless, there are substantial differences between the two books, which are underlined by the author himself. Radbert emphatically states that the second book was only added at a later stage, when he himself had left behind ‘countless anxieties of duty within the monastery and the weighty issues to attend to outside of it’.16 In other words, he resumed his work on the Epitaphium after he was forced to step down as abbot of Corbie, sometime between 849 and 853, having only held this office since late 843 or early 844 .
Judging by the considerable differences between the two books, the first was not substantially adapted when the second was added, with the possible exception of some editing of the preface to the entire work, and the transition from the first to the second book. Radbert seems to have left the earlier book largely intact, using its reticence as a foil for its more explicit and polemical successor. At regular intervals the interlocutors warn each other to hold back from speaking the full truth about their abbot: there would be a time when this was possible, however, when the great man’s enemies would no longer hold sway.
The second book, on the other hand, is situated in a later age, when the disasters of which Arsenius warned had become a dire reality. This dismal present (hodie) is emphasised throughout, as the vantage point in time from which the monks reflect on their abbot’s role in the rebellions against Louis, now well in the past. If only those in charge had heeded Arsenius’ warnings; but they were deaf. ‘This is why, up to the present day, none of the rulers can show the respublica the ways towards justice.’18 Frank speech governs the monks’ discussion, interspersed with fierce bouts of invective.
The time to tell the truth about the injustices committed against Wala had come. Or was the contrast between the two books the rhetorical device of a clever author, who actually wrote everything in one go at the final stage of his life? Such a deliberate deception is not the most obvious explanation, and there are other dissimilarities that suggest a different context for the Epitaphium’s two parts. Whereas the dialogue of the first book is lively, full of banter and punctuated by citations from the classics in general, and Terence in particular, the second features long monologues by the narrator, Pascasius. Devoid of explicit references to classical authors, it is composed with the thunderous voices of Old Testament prophets in mind. It is not only Wala who is the object of grief and lamentation, but also the recent past, when all could have been set right, but went so horribly wrong
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