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As a result of the conversion of the Arian Visigoths to orthodox Christianity toward the end of the sixth century, the amalgamation of the barbarian and Ibero-Roman populations proceeded rapidly in the seventh century. Another lasting result of the struggle to convert the Arian Visigoths in Spain was the local orthodox catholic churchmen's insertion of the Latin term filioque into the Latin text of the Nicene Creed. The role of this obscure event in broad history of Christianity ever since has been unusually significant and will be noted in several connections.
The Nicene Creed had been a product of the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Constantinople in the fourth century. Western bishops participated in both assemblies but the preponderance of the council came from the eastern areas. All participants were relatively highly educated individuals. Furthermore, the fifth century Council of Ephesus (431) had condemned all who amended the Creed. It was the declining level of education in the west augmented by the spread of Arianism among the barbarian inhabitants of the Empire that made it difficult for western Churchmen to explain the Creed's statement relative to the Holy Spirit. In particular they needed to correct the Arian notion that Christ was a creature and emphasize the Son's equality in all obvious respects with the Father. They found a ready solution first of all in Augustine of Hippo's characterization of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as "Lover, Loved and Love" Augustine explained how love proceeded from the Father to the Son and how likewise love proceeded from the Son to the Father.
However, this analogy of the double procession of love (i.e. the Holy Spirit) was not compatible with the Creed's brief statement that the Holy Spirit "proceeded from the Father". Struggling to remove this impediment to the conversion of illiterate Arian Visigoths to catholic orthodoxy, the clergy resolved the apparent contradiction. At a synod of Spanish churchmen at Toledo in 589 approved the insertion of a single compound Latin word, filioque, "and [from] the Son," into the Creed. This amendment made the Creed assert that the Holy Spirit "proceeded from the Father and the Son." This amendment was never approved by any council where eastern Churchmen were present, and never at any general council.
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The Church leadership in Spain with its five archepiscopal provinces gained great influence with the Visigothic dynasty subsequent to their conversion, and in the seventh century churchmen like Isidore of Seville were spokesmen for an advancing recovery of cultural activity. Isidore was archbishop of Seville for 40 years (died in 636). He was at that time the greatest Latin scholar in Western Europe. In addition to his ecclesiastical obligations he wrote many works. He was the author of twenty books of Etymologies, studies of the meaning of words from the standpoint of their origin, which comprised a kind of dictionary of the available knowledge in the arts and sciences. He also wrote a kind of "Who's Who" of ecclesiastical writers entitled De viris illustribus, and his Chronica maiora was a history of the world from creation down to AD 615 dividing total history into six eras. Historia Gothorum Wandalorum Suevorum, The History of the Visigoths, Vandals and Suebians, traces the barbarians from AD 256 to 624 and is a more significant historical work. He also published a number of theological and philosophical works.
Another important product of the scholarship of Spanish Churchmen was a collection of canons produced late in the seventh century. It included the canons of eleven Greek councils, eight African councils, thirty Spanish councils up to the seventeenth council of Toledo in 694, and seventeen Gaulic councils. It also included 103 decretals of the Bishop of Rome through those of Gregory I (590-603). This collection is called the Hispana or Isidoriana. It is not to be confused with the Pseudo-Isidoriana collection that appears in the ninth century in Frankland.
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Arian missionaries had evangelized the Vandal tribes between 409 and 417 AD while they lived in Spain. Driven from Spain the Vandals established their kingdom in northwest Africa around Carthage and became politically independent of the Imperial government by about 430 under the leadership of King Geiseric. He and his successors maintained their independence overcoming numerous imperial attempts to subjugate them until the sixth century.
The Arian Vandals actively persecuted the orthodox catholic Christians because of their alleged disloyalty during the repeated attacks on the Vandals by imperial forces. Fulgentius, Bishop of Ruspe (d. 533), a disciple of Augustine of Hippo, was the spokesman for the orthodox catholic Christians under Vandal rule. The Vandal regime was defeated by Justinian's forces in 533 AD restoring Imperial control to that northwest African region.
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Arian missionaries converted the Burgundian peoples between 412 and 436/37 while they were resident along the west bank of the upper Rhine River in the province of Upper Germania. In about 436 or 437 the Burgundians were relocated in southeastern France, particularly in the upper valleys of the Rhone and its tributaries. They occupied and ruled this area from about 437 until the Franks conquered the region and them in 534. Avitus, Bishop of Vienne (d. 518) was the orthodox catholic leader who was largely responsible for the conversion of the Burgundians to catholic orthodoxy about 516. It should be noted that this was in part the result of long standing Burgundian policies encouraging the assimilation of Gallo-Roman and Burgundian populations. The published laws of King Gondebaud (474-516) reveal an advanced degree of equity between Gallo-Roman and Burgundian peoples. For example, intermarriage was neither prohibited nor penalized and both groups had the same military obligations. Sometimes the common laws were based on Roman practice such as accepting criminal confessions only under torture, while others were based on barbarian custom such as the customary fines (wergild) charged for bodily injury or murder.
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The Franks in this period experienced expansion both to the southeast and to the west from their homeland near the mouth of the Rhine River. Frankish immigrants into the Empire in the area of the Netherlands were recruited as foederati by Aëtius to fight against Attila in the fifth century. The descendants of their chief, Merovius, known as the Merovingian family, eventually consolidated several other Frankish tribes under their control. In c. 496, Clovis (481-511), the pagan Merovingian ruler of the Franks, was baptized directly into catholic orthodoxy without having first known Arian Christianity. Although the nominal conversion occurred quickly the deeper conversion of the mass of Frankish tribesmen from paganism would require centuries. Yet, because the Franks had nominally orthodox leadership the Gallo-Roman bishops favored them over the other barbarians in Gaul who at the time were associated with Arianism. Caesarius, Bishop of Arles, 502-542, was the most important orthodox catholic churchman in that area in his day. Aided and abetted by the orthodox church leaders like Caesarius the Franks managed to gain control of all France, Switzerland and substantial parts of western Germany by 550. Much of the eastern part of the Frankish kingdom was still completely untouched by Christianity. Yet, because of their nominal orthodoxy, Emperor Justinian recognized the Merovingian rulers and considered them his allies.
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What is now France, the Netherlands and western and central Germany was in the period between the sixth and the middle of the eighth centuries usually divided among from two to six Frankish rulers of the Merovingian family. The Frankish aristocracy had begun to intermarry with the Gaulo-Roman aristocratic population without evident hindrance by the middle of the sixth century. By the end of the time period the rest of the resident population was almost totally amalgamated. The ratio of Franks to Gaulo-Romans varied from the lowest concentration of Franks in the south to the highest concentrations in the northeast (the Netherlands region). Latin was almost totally submerged in those areas of heaviest Frankish population where Dutch and Flemish is spoken today. Latin and the non-literate Germanic dialects existed side by side in the rest of Gaul and gradually melded by the end of this period into regional non-literate dialects we would recognized as anticipating later French dialects.
As the Merovingian rulers wasted the dynasty's resources struggling with one another and attempting to purchase favors from the various Frankish and Gaulo-Roman nobles they came to be known as "do-nothing kings". The leading member of the Frankish nobility in the king's service in each kingdom held the honorable office of Mayor of the Palace. Mayors began regularly to exercise the royal powers by default during the seventh century.
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The Church was the only major institution that utilized Latin in any form by the end of the period, and the lamp of literate culture burned very dimly in the Frankish kingdom. Anyone who was able to secure an education (available only in Latin) or who seemed to posses scholarly talent, no matter how little, would find himself propelled into the highest posts in the church sooner or later. Only the higher clergy were likely to be literate enough to read and write effectively. Very few of them had powers of comprehension effective enough to read many of the rotting Latin manuscripts collecting dust in their storerooms. There were at least three authors in the ranks of the clergy in Frankland in the sixth century whose works have survived.
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Caesarius, Bishop of Arles (502-542), had been reared in east-central France at Chalon-sur-Saone where he served at least two years in the clergy before going downstream to attach himself to the island monastery near the mouth of the Rhone at Lérins. A relative of his, Aeonius, served as metropolitan bishop of Gaul (just a small part of the former region) at Arles (c. 485-502). In the early 490's Caesarius, perhaps for health reasons, retreated upstream to Arles. He was there ordained a priest under Bishop Aeonius, but was then selected as Abbot of a monastery at Arles in 499. As Aeonius approached the end of his life he gave Caesarius his blessing as the man to fill the soon-to-be-vacant bishopric. His election was not only approved by the clergy but even King Alaric of the Visigoths who not only ruled over his own people but over a substantial portion of southern and southwest Gaul at the time gave his consent. Caesarius had many powerful contacts in high places. For example, his personal friend, Liberius, became the Praetorian Praefect for Gaul (in this case, just Provence in southeast Gaul east of the Rhone River) after 510 in the service of Ostrogothic King of Italy, Theodoric.
Caesarius is remembered for the rule he prepared for a women's monastery that he and his sister founded about 512. This monastic rule, known simply as Regula monachorum cast a long shadow of influence over sixth and seventh century monastic life in Merovingian Gaul. In addition it has been assumed that the surviving anonymous record of all the canons of all the provincial councils he presided over including the Council of Orange in 529 originated from his pen. Nearly 250 of his sermons have survived, noteworthy for their practical emphasis on Christian values and behavior. His education was evidently Christian but not classical.
The canons of the Synod of Orange focused almost exclusively on the condemnation of the earlier semi-Pelagian views that had prevailed in Gaul during the century since Augustine of Hippo's death. The canons partially reaffirmed Augustine's emphasis specifically on the priority of God's Grace in initiating salvation and enabling mankind to respond to that Grace. They condemned the semi-Pelagian notion that man retains sufficient free will to respond to and cooperate with God's extended Grace. The semi-Augustinian position of the Synod is further evidenced in that they did not mention Augustine's notion of predestination to salvation (i.e. his doctrines of election and the irresistability of God's Grace), and specifically rejected the contrary implication of a predestination to evil and condemnation (which Augustine, himself, had carefully attempted to avoid) as incompatible with God's justice and mercy. It is noteworthy that the canons of the Council were signed not only by the fourteen bishops in attendance, but also by seven powerful laymen from the region including Liberius who was honored by the Council for having just donated a new basilica for the congregation at Orange.
Another unusual feature of these canons is to be noted. Pope Boniface II (530-532) also approved them amplyfying their impact in centuries to come.
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Gregory of Tours (d. 594), son of a Gaulo-Roman Senatorial ranked Christian family living in south central France left several written works. He became Bishop in 573, the thirteenth member of his family to hold that office at Tours. He was apologetic for his simple, rustic Latin, even more loosely and simply structured and than that of his younger contemporary, Bishop Gregory I of Rome; yet, he could occasionally cite the Classical Latin poets. He wrote Ten Books of History, sometimes called a History of the Franks because the last nine books focus on Merovingian times from c. 397 to 591. He is also the author of a number of saint's lives and biographies of earlier church leaders, sermons and other short treatises.
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Venantius Fortunatus (d. c. 601) was born near Venice in Itlay, educated at Ravenna and a pilgrim to the tomb of St. Martin's at Tours in 566. He was employed at Poitiers as Chaplin in the service of Radegunde, widow of a Merovingian king, and the nuns she had gathered about her. Eventually he became Bishop of Poitiers. Meantime he wrote considerable religious poetry and saints lives.
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The powerful leaders of the Frankish nobility, the Mayors of the Palace in the various Merovingian kingdoms, were frequently able to consolidate their power in more than one of the petty kingdoms by the beginning of the eighth century. Notably, Carolus Martellus (Charles Martel), inherited such powers in the two northern kingdoms, 714-741, and extended his control over the other Merovingian regions.
The Carolingians gained rather sudden advantage because of their response to the Saracen invasion from Spain. The Saracens (Northwest African Berber and Spanish converts to Islam) advanced into France under Arab leaders beginning in 718 by circumventing the Pyrenees Mountains, capturing Narbonne and raiding Toulouse in the Garonne River valley. The Muslim force was badly beaten at Toulouse and driven back. In 725 the Muslims marched from Narbonne eastward, took Nimes and raided up the Rhone valley to Autun. In 732-33 they took Toulouse and pushed on down the Garonne River to Bordeaux. From Bordeaux they launched overland north along the road from Bordeaux to Tours in October 733. The Arab commander with a small scouting detachment separated from the bulk of his army, was killed in ambush by an equally small detachment of Frankish warriors guarding the road about 12 1/2 miles north of Poitiers. Leaderless and frostbitten, the Muslims rapidly retreated to Bordeaux. (This was the so-called "battle" of Tours!) The Saracens tenaciously held to southwest France, but were gradually forced out as a result of the increasing power of Charles Martel and his successors.
Martel, like his mayoral predecessors, had no royal treasury to draw on to defray the expense of defending Frankland from the invaders. To meet this emergency Martel created a new class of heavily armed troops to deploy across southern Frankland against the Saracen advances out of Spain. In the urgency of the moment he exercised a royal prerogative and confiscated lands from the wealthiest class of landowners in that region, the churches, in order to provision his new army.
It has been estimated that the church possessed about one-third of the area making up the entire Merovingian realm. Charles Martel and his predecessors had appropriated lands by royal prerogative (verbo regis, "on the king's word") most of which was in turn conveyed by the king to his supporters in precaria, that is as leaseholds on the produce not the ownership of the land. Martel's agents were to collect the rents from the warrior-leaseholders but sometimes it did not get to the owners, that is the church. The churches justly complained about the loss of income, so Charles Martel authorized the churches in the regions effected to collect the tithe as a tax from all non-church lands in their regions to compensate for the lost income. But this would not satisfy many churchmen who insisted that the church's lands be restored.
In 741 Charles Martel died leaving his mayoral authority in the hands of two sons, Carloman and Pepin. Both young men had been educated at the monastery of St. Denis in Paris. Both were more conscientious about ecclesiastical affairs than their father had been. Pepin soon emerged as the single heir to all Frankish mayorships but still without the royal title. Superstitious fear prevented Pepin from simply declaring himself king. Finally, with the sanction offered by the church Pepin was at length persuaded to assume the royal title in AD 751. The Carolingian dynasty, the descendants of Charles Martel, thus became royalty over
the whole Frankish realm.
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The Benedictine Rule was one of the least used rules in Frankland in the early seventh century. Although a Synod of the Frankish Church at Autun in 670 recognized the value of the Benedictine Rule and attempted to make it mandatory for all monasteries, that canon carried little weight against the strong deleterious and divergent currents in Frankish church life.
In the area of Gaul (Frankland west of the Rhine) the surviving monastic foundations at Marseilles, Lerins, Tours, Arles, and many other once flourishing locations had suffered sadly from the effects of the enduring decline of culture. The increasing violence of life in the late sixth, seventh centuries, the lax discipline and cultural isolation were taking a costly toll by the beginning of the eighth century.
The majority of monks in seventh and eighth century Frankland were not noted for even rudimentary literacy. A great number of the older monasteries did not even have a scriptorium, a writing room or library. Consequently, many monks were and remained either marginally or profoundly illiterate.
Nevertheless, such literacy as existed in the region by the eighth century was to be found in those occasional monasteries where scriptoria, did exist and were utilized. In these monastic institutions the concern for literacy and the manual labor of copying manuscripts had gradually assumed a greater priority.
The clergy in Frankland during the seventh and early eighth centuries still bore the marks of the very indifferent approach of the Merovingian rulers. They would as soon leave a rich bishopric vacant in order to reap its income as to fill it with some dependent royal relative or loyal trustee in need of a suitable reward. Qualifications for the position were often the least and last consideration. What some lacked in training others lacked in moral character and this in an age when standards of education and morals were unbelievably lax. For every conscientious bishop who did his best to keep the parochial clergy in line there was a discouragingly large number who didn't, or who wandered about the land neglecting their parochial duties for other adventures.
Hence, clergy in seventh century Frankland approached the theoretical ideal of moral and spiritual competence from a very unfortunate distance. Canonical procedures were all too frequently ignored. Some clergy came to office simply by default. Some served without ever being officially invested with symbols of the office or without ever seeking consecration from neighboring churchmen. It was generally every churchman for himself, the devil take the hindmost. The custom of priests sharing in a common life had rapidly disappeared with the disintegration of society. Only the churches in northern Spain preserved the institution into the eighth century. The shift to Barbarian leadership in the Church in Frankland had just begun by 590. No more than fifteen percent of the known clergy in Frankland have names of barbarian origin in the sixth century, but by the eighth century the evidence indicates that fusion between Roman and barbarian stock was accomplished everywhere except the Mediterranean coastal region.
Frankland west of the Rhine River together with northern Italy was divided into seventeen provinces, each ruled over by a metropolitan bishop or archbishop and each containing several parochiae or dioceses, under bishops. In this geographic area the dioceses closely resembled the Late Roman political subdivisions called counties. The counties in many cases perpetuated the dimensions of the ancient Roman city regions. The ecclesiastical provinces similarly reflected the former Roman provincial regions. Frankland east of the Rhine River and north of the Alps was not divided into provinces until later. There seems to have been only a few surviving churches between the Danube and the Alps, but north of the Danube Churches are yet to be organized.
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Churches that had been founded in Gaul before the fifth century were classed as official churches, i.e. ecclesia. They were protected by the Roman Government, and were an integral part of the larger Church organization. In the Visigothic and Frankish kingdoms the buildings and lands pertaining to the bishoprics were under the ban of protection extended by the King at the beginning of this period. Church buildings in Italy and Africa after Justinian's reconquest were correspondingly under the protection of the Emperor at Constantinople through the respective Exarchs. Orthodox catholic church properties in the Lombard realm did not always fare well, but Arian church properties were protected by the local chief.
The particular church building that served as a bishop's headquarters was called a "cathedral church". In Latin usage both sedes and the Latinized Greek, cathedra, had the meaning "seat", "chair", or "office" and by extension "authority", "seat of authority" (building) or "realm of authority" (diocese and province). Within the region of the bishop's authority there were sometimes other church buildings where the bishop or his designated resident assistant held services and performed baptisms. These were termed "baptismal churches". In addition to these official church buildings there were an increasing number of other buildings pertaining to Christianity located in the typical bishop's diocese. These may have been founded by laymen or monks, and were usually designated by other names since they were not considered churches.
The government was not always capable of adequately protecting church buildings and property endowments founded by monks or laymen as private individuals. Such foundations are called ecclesia propria, oratoria propria, and monasteria propria, that is, proprietary churches, chapels or monasteries. According to barbarian custom (law) when a private individual built and endowed a church, monastery or chapel on his property and endowed it with his property he not only fully owned the buildings, he and his heirs had the sole right to administer the utilization of these structures. That meant that the proprietor could, if he choose to do so, appoint and dismiss the officiating churchmen as he pleased without regard to any outside rules or regulations.
Proprietary foundations were much more numerous in Frankland during the seventh and eighth centuries than they had been in the previous period. By the middle of the eighth century they far outnumbered the churches subject to the hierarchy. Individual proprietors, including the king, great nobles, bishops and abbots, were joined in this period by corporate bodies such as monasteries and collegiate chapters. The vassals of Charles Martel and Pepin who held church lands by lease on the authority of the king, in precaria verbo regis, often attempted to usurp proprietary rights over the church their precarial lands ultimately pertained to.
Proprietary rights were valuable income-producing personal possessions so it is not surprising that powerful but unprincipled men often usurped then. One of these rights was beneficium, the income from the endowment for the upkeep of the buildings and the living expenses of the officiating churchman. The proprietor administered the beneficium often keeping a share of it, or all of it during a vacancy, for himself. Another right was jus spoli, the right to the spoils. Spoils consist of the remainder of the gifts and offerings and tithes accumulated during the churchman's tenure. These became the property of the proprietor when the churchman died. The spoils also included any gifts, tithes and offerings received while the office was vacant. Another special category of spoils was the frequent bequests of additional lands for the endowment.
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Under Mayors Carloman and Pepin efforts were made to restore church properties that had been secularized whether by lay proprietors who usurped church lands or those churches whose properties had been appropriated by royal prerogative. The real problem in the latter case was the inefficiency of the government in collecting the rents and conveying the agreed upon portion of the rent to the churches. Under pressure from the church Carloman and Pepin in 742 announced their intentions to restore all secularized lands under their administration and they demanded that others who have usurped (that is, without royal prerogative) proprietary jurisdiction over formerly church owned lands to likewise surrender them. I find no evidence of any attempt by the government in this period to encourage those who have founded churches and monasteries and become hence proprietors of them, to surrender ownership over their institutions to the hierarchy. And, so far as the church itself was concerned, the papacy approved proprietary ownership in synods in 826 and 853.
The Mayors discovered, moreover, that some leaseholders by royal prerogative in the west and south had never paid any rent. Now they claimed that their possession of the lands being rent free automatically made them owners. There were doubtless also cases where government agents had absconded with rent collections. In any case the Mayors soon realized the impossibility, given their military dependence on these leaseholders, of evicting them from their leases. A compromise was struck. Leaseholders would pay rents directly to the local church and enjoy the use of the church lands until their deaths. But the catch was that church lands were then immediately leased to a new royal vassal in precaria verbo regis. Ruling by himself after 747 Pepin made an agreement with the church to set a limit on the amount of church lands subject to royal prerogative in any given region of Frankland. Furthermore, when it became obvious that local churches could not enforce the collection of precarial rents, Pepin acted again in 765 making it a law that a tithe tax be paid to the local bishop based on all the produce of non-church-owned lands throughout the Frankish realm.
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