INTRODUCTION (by Richard Barton):
This account of the deeds of Joseph, bishop of Le Mans (c.784-793),
comes from a famous mid ninth-century collection of bishops' lives and
associated charters known as the Actus Pontificum Cenomannis in Urbe
Degentium (Deeds of the Bishops living in the city of Le Mans).
As it stands today, the Actus appears as a continuous history of
the diocese of Le Mans from its founding by the evangelizing Bishop Julian
in the 3rd century. Proceeding chronologically, scribes associated
with the episcopal chancery wrote lives of each of the bishops of Le Mans
up to the middle of the ninth century (and the episcopacy of Bishop Robert).
Because the collection was written and compiled in the mid ninth-century,
the lives of those bishops who were not as removed from the present of
the composers are understandably more vivid and realistic in appearance
and detail. It is perhaps not necessary to point out that this collection
sheds considerable light on the history of the diocese of Le Mans, on episcopal
affairs and practice of the ninth century, on property law and property
transactions, and on everyday life near the end of the Carolingian Empire.
Yet, as Walter Goffart has so notably demonstrated, the collection was hardly a work of impartial history. In a masterpiece of textual scholarship and historical analysis, Goffart has shown how the texts compiled into the Actus were written in an effort to promote and justify a particularly episcopal belief in the universal property rights of the bishop within his diocese. In particular, these scribes wished to limit and/or eliminate the property immunities claimed by the abbey of St Calais within the diocesan boundaries. The result, Goffart argues, was a masterpiece of creative propaganda that provided a mostly fictitious historical basis and justification for the bishops' claim to authority over the abbey and its properties. The modern reader must thus approach these texts with a careful and critical eye. While they still stand as a monument to late Carolingian ecclesiastical writing and ideology, their particular claims must still be weighed and judged within the context of the struggle for power within the diocese. Nota Bene: in the eleventh century members of the cathedral clergy in Le Mans resumed the tradition of composing accounts of the deeds of their bishops. These Continuations to the Actus are clear attempts to continue what these later scribes saw as a true account of their church's early history; the later continuations, lack, however, the consistency of purpose and the more overt polemical tendencies of the original Actus. For a discussion of the composition and dating of the later continuations to the Actus, see Robert Latouche, "Essai de critique sur la continuation des Actus Pontificum Cenomannis in Urbe Degentium," Le Moyen Age 11 (1907): 225-275.
This particular episcopal life, of Bishop Joseph, is of interest for several reasons. One is evident in the third and fourth paragraphs of the text. In this section we are treated to the assertion of the formerly absolute and unquestioned rights of the bishop over the lands of the abbey of Saint Calais. Indeed, the anonymous scribe piously states that this state of affairs had been ordained and approved by Saint Calais himself, the eponymous founder of the abbey involved in the ninth-century power struggle. According to this interpretation, those episcopal rights over the abbey of St Calais had existed unchallenged until the episcopacy of Joseph (c.784-793), that is, until the very recent past (remember that the scribe was writing in the 850s or 860s). So one of the major goals of the author of Joseph's life is to make him a scapegoat for the collapse of this allegedly traditional set of rights. Joseph, the unworthy man of low birth, is made to bear the onus for the shocking lapse in current episcopal authority. The second point of interest in this life is the account of Joseph's birth, treatment of the clergy, and unfortunate demise. While clearly designed to explain what was of much greater importance to the scribe - ie., Joseph's unwillingness to collect the traditional rents due the bishop - the opening paragraphs of the life reveal much about the social stratification of the ninth century. In this way, we are led to suppose that it was Joseph's low birth and his consequent tyrannical rule over his clergy that naturally caused both his demotion from the episcopate and the sad negligence of traditional episcopal rents. In a word, low birth and low social status were revealed through tyranny, mismanagement, and the abandoning of wise tradition. We could not ask for a more blunt description of the typical medieval equation of one's essential status and nature with the justice and efficacy of one's actions.
Given Goffart's analysis and the clearly polemical nature of this particular bishop's life, the cautious reader may well wonder how much credence may be attributed to the following account of Joseph's life. Here I must confess to some ignorance. My own period of expertise lies some centuries closer to the present, in the 11th and 12th centuries. I cannot, therefore, confirm (or deny) the account of Joseph's birth, tyranny, punishment and demotion. I would instead refer such a reader to Goffart's excellent analysis and suggest that even if the facts of the matter are in question, the general portrait of Carolingian attitudes towards hierarchy, episcopal rights and status, property, and punishment are not.
TEXT:
Lord Joseph, bishop of the city of Le Mans and successor to the blessed Merolus, whose archdeacon he was, came from the race of the men of Chartres or of Le Mans, and was born into the household [familia] of the church of the metropolitan city of Tours. Once elected by the clergy and people [of Le Mans], he was consecrated as bishop. Afterwards, however, a certain conflict [seditio] grew up between him and his priests or clergy. Certain of these men complained about [accusantes] bishop Joseph before the royal household of King Charles; but they were unable to convict him according to canonical authority. But then the said bishop Joseph, goaded on by human cunning, commanded those priests who had accused him to be whipped and, what is even worse!, ordered some to be blinded and castrated.
Hearing this, the glorious Charles, king and emperor, was extremely angry; and he began to beat Joseph and ask him how he dared to do such a thing within Charles' kingdom, and why he had permitted such evil in his own parish. The matter was recounted, yet with Joseph constantly denying it and stating that he had never perpetrated or consented to such things. For a long time the matter was argued in these ways before the bishops; but with him constantly denying it, nothing could be resolved. With the date of his punishment drawing near, Joseph fled, slipping away from the army and from a synodal gathering at night, dressed in lay clothing and bearing a sword. But he, still wearing layman's dress and bearing arms, was recognized in his flight as he bore a double-edged axe in his hand [Note 1]. Still dressed in this way, he was dragged into the presence of Lord Charles and was presented to him. On account of his deed, Joseph was degraded from the episcopate and was handed over to the custody of the bishop of Tours, from whose household he derived. This bishop placed Joseph in a cell in the pagus of Tours, named Condeda, under penitence; and there he later died and was buried.
While he was bishop the aforesaid Lord Joseph took from the treasury of the church of his see certain goods which ought to have been possessed through ineluctable right by the bishops of this church and their successors; he took, namely, a certain hamlet [villula] in the pagus of Hainau called Durn, along with its appurtenances; and in the pagus of Worms he took other small estates [renulas - for reculas] in a villa whose name is Haspen-Gow. And he bought in the pagus of Chartres other small estates [reiculas], in a villa named Cipidus on the Lidus, just as contained in the records of his charters enrolled up to the present date.
And the rent [census] which Lord Calais [founder of the monastery of St-Calais] and Saint Innocent, bishop of the city of Le Mans, had sanctioned in writing to be paid from the monastery of the same Lord Calais to the mother church of the senior city under the strictest oath and divine testimony, that is, 4 greater pounds of wax for lighting the mother and senior church of the city; and 1 crozier [camburtam] for the use of the bishop of the see; and 2 noble slippers [nobiles subtalares]; and 2 full portable barrels [flascones] of the best wine, made of silver; and 1 measure of chicken eggs to be collected on the Feast of the Lord. Up until the time of Bishop Joseph, all these things had been lovingly collected from the abbey of St Calais by the bishops or canons of the city of Le Mans; all of which had been received without contention up to this point by Jacob the priest or by other ministers and canons of this church. Yet when the aforesaid Joseph was embroiled in the aforementioned controversy, he, out of fear over the charges against him, did not demand this rent from that monastery; and so Ebroinus, abbot of St Calais, neglected to pay it; and for this reason and in such a way the aforesaid rent, due to chance and negligence, was not paid to the church of St Mary and St Gervais [the patron saints of the cathedral of Le Mans]. But great danger awaits for those who neglected or neglect to render the aforesaid census, and they will be harshly judged before the tribunal of the Strict Judge [ie., Christ], where they will be invited by these very saints - namely St Innocent and St Calais - to produce reasons for this negligence, just as is contained in their writings. For, we think, the evangelical precept will not pass them by: "Whoever shall bind on the earth shall be bound in the heavens, and whoever shall loose on earth shall be loosed in the heavens."
And the said Joseph sat in the see for about nine years. And we pray
to the Lord God that He unite his soul forever with us and with his saints
and elect. Amen.
NOTES:
1. I am not completely comfortable with my rendering
of this sentence. Here is the Latin: "Qui in ipsa fuga, cum laicalibus
vestimentis indutus et arma succinctus, ancipitremque in manum deferens
comprehensus est; et usque in praesentiam domni Karoli, talibus vestimentis
indutus." In particular I would appreciate any advice on the precise
translation of 'ancipitrem', which I have taken as a variant of 'anceps'.
Suggestions? email me.
SOURCE:
Actus Pontificum Cenomannis in Urbe Degentium, ed. Gustave Busson
and Ambrose Ledru (Le Mans, 1900), pp. xxx-yyy. Translated by Richard
Barton
REFERENCES:
Walter Goffart, The Le Mans Forgeries: A Chapter From the History
of Church Property in the Ninth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1966)