Abstract
On October 25, 745, Pope Zacharias (r. 741–752) met in Rome with seven bishops and seventeen priests to consider the case of a “false priest,” “heretic,” “schismatic,” and “pseudo-prophet” named Aldebert. The “Apostle of the Germans” St. Boniface (c. 670–754) had furnished the Synod of 745 with a dossier of materials to establish the guilt of this problematic “Gaulish” bishop. In a lengthy cover letter read before the synod and incorporated within its preserved protocol, Boniface accused Aldebert, among other things, of possessing a “sacrilegious prayer” (oratio sacrilegia) that “conjured” (coniuro) angels named Uriel, Raguel, Tubuel, Michael, Adinus, Tubuas, Sabaoc, and Simiel. Hearing this invocation of seemingly fantastical names, the members of the synod cried out in great consternation that, aside from Michael, the other angels were in fact “demons” whom Aldebert had “admitted” “under the pretext of angels.” The Synod pronounced anathema on the “false priest,” ordered his writings burned, and declared the angelic names of Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael the only ones to be known by “divine (i e., scriptural) authority.” To utter the names of nonscriptural angels allowed for the covert introduction of demons and thus constituted the extremely dangerous crime of sacrilege.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
The bibliography on this topic is enormous. For a recent summary of the major concepts, see Thomas F. X. Noble, Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), pp. 230–242; and The Republic of St. Peter, the Birth of the Papal State 680–825 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), pp. 61–98.
Also, Rosamond McKitterick, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms, 789–895 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977), pp. 80–154;
Walter Ullman, The Carolingian Renaissance and the Idea of Kingship (London: Methuen & Co, Ltd., 1969), pp. 43–110; J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, “The Via Regia of the Carolingian age,” Early Medieval History (London: Basil Blackwell, 1975), pp. 181–200. Felice Lifshitz rightly discerns the demonic as a perversion of the ordo pursued by Carolingian rulers and discusses a political discourse that embodied these concerns to emanate from Carolingian circles during the early eighth century (The Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria, pp. 56–71).
Raoul Manselli, “Resistenze dei culti antichi nella pratica religiosa dei laici nelle campagne,” Cristianizzazione ed organizzazione ecclesiastica delle campagne nell’alto medioevo: espansione e resistenze, Settimane di studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo 28.1 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 1982), pp. 90–94. Geary also construes him as one of “the numerous wandering bishops who opposed the strongly pro-Roman ecclesiastical structure espoused by Boniface,” “The Ninth-Century Relic Trade,” p. 11. Nicole Zeddies is rather too quick to dismiss Manselli’s contentions as pushing the evidence too far, “Bonifatius und zwei nützliche Rebellen: die Häretiker Aldebert und Clemens,” in Ordnung und Aufruhr im Mittelalter, edited by M. T. Fögen, Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte 70 (Frankfort am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1995), pp. 225–226, n. 25 [pp. 217–263].
For penance and its insular connections, see Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom, second edition (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 241–260;
and Cyril Vogel, La Discipline pénitentielle en Gaule des origines à la fin du VII siècle (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1952).
Lutz E. von Padberg, Bonifatius, Missionar und Reformer (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2003), p. 98.
Russell makes the suggestion, “Saint Boniface and the Eccentrics,” p. 238, drawing upon Henri Leclercq’s linkage of these names with Gnostic sects, s. v. Anges, in Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, edited by Fernand Cabrol and Henri Leclercq, vol. 1 (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1903), cols. 2153– 2157 [2080–2161]. Certainly Irenaeus of Lyon’s second-century treatise Adversus haereses meticulously catalogued lists of suspect angels when identifying and refuting “Gnostic” sects, but the small number of early medieval manuscripts would point to its exceptionally limited circulation. E. A. Lowe did not index Irenaeus in his comprehensive study of pre-ninth-century manuscripts: Codices Latini Antiquores, Supplementum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966). Dominic Unger notes only a ninth-century manuscript prepared at Corbie and another dating from 1166, but copied from an earlier version known to Florus of Lyon, for it retains his preface: St. Irenaeus of Lyon: Against the Heresies, vol. 1, Ancient Christian Writers Series 15 (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), pp. 11–14. Karen. L. King’s What is Gnosticism (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2003), maps the current scholarly dilemma as to overarching definitions of “Gnostic-ism.”
Louis Gougaud discusses the genre and provides a bibliography of known loricae, “Étude sur les ‘Loricae’ celtiques et sur les prières qui s’en approchent,” Bulletin d’ancienne littérature et d’archéologie chrétiennes 1 (1911): 265–281, with further discussion of structure in vol. 2 (1912), 33–41 and 101–127. Both Thomas Hill, “Invocation of the Trinity and the Tradition of the Lorica in Old English Poetry,” Speculum 56 (1981): 259–267;
and Kuno Meyer, “Scuap Chrabaid or Besom of Devotion,” Otia merseiana 2 (1900–1901): 92–105, prove helpful here.
The Laidcenn appears in The Book of Cerne, Cambridge UL L1.I.10, ff. 43r–44v; edited with introduction and notes by A. B. Kuypers, The Prayer Book of Aedeluald the Bishop Commonly Called the Book of Cerne (Cambridge: University Press, 1902), pp. 85–88. A translation of the Laidcenn appears in Gildae, De Excidio Britanniae, Fragmenta, Liber de Paenitentia, Accedit et Lorica Gildae, edited and commentary by Hugh Williams (London: David Nutt 1899), pp. 305–313.
Cambridge UL L1.I.10 f. 77r and Kuypers, The Prayer Book, pp. 153–154. See as well Michelle Brown, The Book of Cerne: Prayer, Patronage and Power in Ninth-Century England (The British Library: University of Toronto Press, 1996), p. 138;
and Kathleen Hughes, “Some Aspects of Irish Influence on Early English Private Prayer,” Studia Celtica 5 (1970): 48–61.
Valerie Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 169. Flint likens Aldebert’s prayer to an exorcism published as a supplement to Béluze’s edition of the Formulary of Marculf, in
Giovan Domenico Mansi and Philippe Labbe, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, vol. XVIIIB (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1901), pp. 661–664: Insuper invocamus te, Deus Deorum, omnipotens rex aeterne, qui sedis in medio duos Cherubin as Seraphin. The exorcism to which Flint compares the angelic petition, however, only calls upon the specific angels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, along with the “celestial virtues and angels of God,” the Cherubim, and the Seraphim. It makes no recourse to a more exotic nomenclature.
Waldemar Deonna, “Abra, Abraca: la croix-talisman de Lausanne,” Genava 22 (1944): 116–137.
Berlin 5565; Walter Belz, “Die koptischen Zauberpapyri der PapyrusSammlung der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin,” Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete 29 (1983): 61–63; translated by Meyer, Ancient Christian Magic, p. 93.
Ep. 50, pp. 84–85; Emerton, The Letters of Saint Boniface, pp. 59–60. Also, Walter E. Crum, “Magical Texts in Coptic—II,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 20 (1934): 197–200, translated by David Frankfurter, Ancient Christian Magic, p. 171; Skemer, Binding Words, pp. 27–29.
For the importance of Jewish communities in early medieval Francia, see Bernard S. Bachrach, Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977), pp. 44–65;
also Bernhard Blumenkranz, Juifs et Chrétiens dans le monde occidental 430–1096 (Paris: Mouton & Co, 1960), particularly pp. 55–64.
Jan Frederik Niermeyer, Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus (Leiden: Brill, 1976);
Du Cange et al., Glossarium mediæ et infimæ latinitatis (Niort: L. Favre, 1883–87).
The Calendar of St. Willibrord from MS Paris Lat. 10837, edited by Henry Austin Wilson, HBS 55 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1918). Also, Nancy Netzer, “Willibrord’s Scriptorium at Echternach and Its Relationship to Ireland and Lindisfarne,” in St. Cuthbert, His Cult and Community, edited by Gerald Bonner, D. W. Rollason, and Clare Stancliffe (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1989), pp. 205–206 [pp. 203–212].
Walderdorffer Kalendar-Fragment, Berlin lat. fol. 877 + Regensburg Gräflich Walderdorffsche Bibliothek, in Missale Francorum, RED, Fontes II, edited by Leo Eizenhöfer, Peter Siffrin, and Leo Cunibert Mohlberg (Rome: Herder, 1957), pp. 79–85. For further commentary and bibliography, see Bernhard Bischoff, Die Südostdeutschen Schreibschulen und Bibliotheken in der Karolingerzeit 1/Die bayrischen Diözesen (Leipzig: Harassowitz, 1960), pp. 183–184. For opinions on the type of sacramentary used by Boniface, Hieronymus Frank opts for a Gelasian-type sacramentary, “Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius und das von him benutzte Sakramentar,” in Sankt Bonifatius: Gedenkgabe zum zwölf-hundertsten Todestag (Fulda: Parzeller, 1954), pp. 58–88, while Christopher Hohler would favor a Gregorian, “The Type of Sacramentary Used by St. Boniface,” ibid., pp. 89–93. Either type used similar Roman texts for a celebration on September 29.
Mayke De Jong, “The Empire as ecclesia : Hrabanus Maurus and Biblical historia for Rulers,” in The Uses of the Past in the Middle Ages, edited by Yitzhak Hen and Michael Innes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 191–226;
Janet Nelson, “Kingship and Empire,” in Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, edited by Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 55 [pp. 52–87].
Copyright information
© 2013 John Charles Arnold
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Arnold, J.C. (2013). Michael Contained: The Carolingian Cultus . In: The Footprints of Michael the Archangel. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137316554_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137316554_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-46712-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-31655-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)