Ego enim iter illud nec approbo nec inprobo

Introduction

^[*]In one of his shortest surviving poems, Theodulf, Bishop of Orléans ( c. 798 to 818 ), expounded on his views of pilgrimages to Rome. In terms of personal salvation, he wrote, “it does not help so much to have gone to Rome as to live well, / whether a man’s life is lived at Rome or anywhere else.” Furthermore, “it is not the road your feet take, I think, but the road of your conduct that leads to the stars”, especially since God sees and judges individual behaviour regardless of physical location ^[1]. The text’s date is uncertain, but it was most probably written in connection with Theodulf’s involvement in a series of debates about sacred images during the final decade of the 8^th century, when Charlemagne commissioned him to compose a treatise ( the ‘Opus Caroli regis’ ) refuting the Byzantine and Roman positions on the matter ^[2]. His minimisation of the spiritual value of pilgrimages to Rome may have been caused by these debates and the doctrinal criticisms levied against Roman bishops ^[3]. Theodulf’s poem suggests a hierarchy of practices and religious conduct that placed pilgrimages beneath a morally exemplary life. It is notable that both pilgrimages and moral living are presented as roads ( viae ), one walked physically and the other metaphorically. This short text therefore reflects how during the Carolingian age, imagery and discursive themes linked to mobility were considered effective instruments for conveying moral lessons and even for expressing a position on important doctrinal issues.

As Janet Nelson has rightly pointed out, Theodulf’s views “cannot actually be read as opposition to pilgrimage as such.” ^[4] However, his beliefs – especially those about the hierarchy of spiritual and devotional movement – were later revived and merged with those of another Carolingian intellectual who, like Theodulf, had Iberian origins and an education shaped by Visigothic traditions, and who criticised a whole range of contemporary religious practices that he considered corrupt and in urgent need of reappraisal. In the 820s, Claudius, Bishop of Turin from 817 to 827, became the centre and focus of a renewed Carolingian debate on iconoclasm ^[5]. Along with the cult of images, the objects of his attacks were the cults of the saints and their relics, the veneration of the cross, and pilgrimages, especially to Rome ^[6]. Standing against him was a campaign of refutation initiated by the Emperors Louis the Pious and Lothar I, who enlisted two of the most influential figures in their respective fields of political influence: Jonas, who became Bishop of Orléans after Theodulf, for the Carolingian heartlands, and Dungal, an Irish scholar then living in Pavia who later retired to Bobbio, for Lothar’s kingdom of Italy ^[7]. Even if Claudius’s views on pilgrimages were not much different from Theodulf’s ( in that he did not completely condemn them ), they were interpreted as anti-pilgrimage ideas by Jonas and Dungal, who did their best to reaffirm the legitimacy of devotional mobility. These themes were therefore once again at the centre of in-depth reflections and discussions, and still in the context of broader debates that involved the relationships between Carolingian emperors and Roman bishops. Theological considerations and biblical and patristic citations were the key tools that all the authors involved deployed to support their claims and arguments.

What motives had driven Claudius to lash out against pilgrimages to Rome in the first place? What was at stake? How were his positions received, reformulated, and criticised by Jonas and Dungal? In this contribution, I will concentrate on the arguments related to religious and devotional movement and mobility as elaborated by those who took part in these debates. Although the disputes surrounding Claudius and his iconoclastic opinions have been the subject of other, deeper analyses, the specific subject of pilgrimage has attracted limited attention from scholars ^[8]. An examination of Claudius’s opinions and those of his opponents will allow to better comprehend not only the works of each author, the cultural tools they used in their arguments, and the traditions in which their views were based, but also the various roles they assigned to mobility of all kinds in their texts. According to Thomas Noble, in Carolingian times “[ a ]rt-talk [ … ] both masks and reveals other important discussions.” ^[9] One of my goals is to point that the same is true of pilgrimage and mobility-talk, and that these were considered effective tools for conveying various kinds of messages. They were part of a shared, flexible vocabulary that Claudius, Jonas, and Dungal mastered and utilised within a common dialectical context, each in unique ways and for different purposes.

A Limited Circulation?

The framework for the representations of mobility explored here is closely linked to, and provided by, the conditions of the composition, conservation, and circulation of the texts in which they appear. I will therefore first take these conditions into account. Claudius clarified his positions on sacred images, the cults of saints and relics, Christ’s cross, and pilgrimages to Rome in a letter he sent in the early 820s to Abbot Theodemir of Psalmody. The letter has not survived in its original, integral form. Theodemir had already engaged in heated doctrinal disputes with Claudius on behalf of the latter’s works of biblical exegesis, especially his commentaries on Genesis and Kings, that the abbot forwarded to the court of Louis the Pious for a close scrutiny of their orthodoxy ^[10]. Claudius’s letter was equally presented to the court of Aachen by Theodemir, who expected its contents to be condemned ( which they were ). At the emperor’s request, the court’s intellectuals isolated the letter’s most controversial passages and those most indicative of Claudius’s ideas and goals, then collected them into a selection of ‘Excerpta’, which was subsequently sent to Jonas and Dungal to be used as a basis for their refutations. This is the only form in which the text survives; it is not only incomplete but was explicitly and carefully engineered by the imperial court to highlight the most extreme and objectionable of Claudius’s thoughts ^[11]. The resulting text is preserved in a single manuscript ( BAV, Reg. lat. 200, dated to the 820s ), in which it bears the title ‘Apologeticum atque rescriptum Claudii episcopi adversus Theutmirum abbatem’ ^[12]. This codex is one of only two existing copies of Dungal’s ‘Responsa’, which immediately follows the ‘Apologeticum’ and was reproduced by the same hand ^[13]. In other words, Claudius’s views have survived only after being filtered twice over. The contents of his letter first underwent a selection process ( and possibly a re-elaboration ) at the hands of the imperial court, which prevents us from fully reconstructing not only Claudius’s logic and arguments, but also the sources he had selected as supports to his ideas. Furthermore, the only manuscript that contains these Exerpta assigns them the specific role of serving as the premise and introduction to Dungal’s work. Analyses of the ‘Apologeticum’ must therefore take into consideration the altered, amputated, and instrumental nature of this transmission.

Some of these characteristics also apply to the rebuttals by Dungal and Jonas. Both these authors were highly esteemed and influential intellectuals. Most importantly, and probably driving the choice to assign them with the task of refuting Claudius, they had given proof of their loyalty to Carolingian rulers – and, in the case of Jonas, gave further proof in the years after Claudius’s controversy. Before his period as a schoolteacher in Pavia, the Irishman Dungal spent a long time in Saint-Denis and established close contacts with the Palatine School ^[14]. Charlemagne consulted him in two letters on doctrinal and theological issues ^[15]. Even though the date of his arrival in Italy is unknown, the high appreciation he enjoyed in Lothar’s eyes looks reflected in the Capitulary of Olona of 825, reforming the school system in the kingdom of Italy ^[16]. In this text Dungal is the only school master individually mentioned by name ^[17]. Jonas, of Aquitanian origins and formation, enjoyed an especially close connection to Louis the Pious throughout his lifetime. He was appointed as bishop of Orléans in 818 most probably with the emperor’s active support and in the aftermath of the deposition of Theodulf from his episcopal duties due to his participation in the revolt of King Bernard of Italy in 817/818 ^[18]. In 830/831, Jonas addressed Pippin of Aquitaine with a moral treaty for rulers ( ‘De institutione regia’ ) in which he rebuked the king for his participation in the revolt against his father in the previous year. His act of disobedience, Jonas stated, turned the normal and God-given hierarchies between both rulers and ruled and between fathers and children upside down ^[19]. Dungal and Jonas were highly reasonable choices as the spokesmen of the imperial campaign of refutation of Claudius’s ideas, but their texts likely experienced a circulation as limited as that of the ‘Apologeticum’. As mentioned above, the ‘Responsa’ survives in two manuscripts, both from the first half of the 9^th century and both produced under the direct supervision of the author, although neither can be identified as the autograph. One is the Vatican copy, and the other now resides in Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana ( B 102 sup. ) ^[20]. Dungal brought the latter to the Bobbio monastery when he retired there during his final years ^[21]. Though it is always possible – if unlikely – that more and now lost copies of the ‘Responsa’ were produced, the text seems to have experienced an editorial history and diffusion limited exclusively to the specific needs for which it was conceived, thus remaining enclosed within the environs of its author and, at most, the imperial court that had commissioned it.

The ‘De cultu imaginum’, i. e. Jonas of Orléans’ response to Claudius, has experienced an equally ( or perhaps even more ) peculiar history of revision and circulation. No contemporary copy of the treatise has survived. The ‘Patrologia Latina’ edition was produced on the grounds of a single copy that survived until the 16^th century but then disappeared ^[22]. The original text was itself composed in several stages. As he states in his prefatory letter to King Charles the Bald, Jonas began the work between 825 and 827 in response to the imperial request but didn’t complete it, as the death of Claudius in 827 seemed to bring a natural resolution to the problem ^[23]. Between 840 and 843, however, he decided to finish the project and dedicated it to Charles the Bald ( Louis’s son ), whom Jonas perhaps hoped to encourage in royal initiatives against heresy by offering him the example of the recently deceased emperor and his campaign against Claudius. In this case, then, the text was started during the years of Claudius’s controversy, but it then underwent further revisions on the part of its author and became a tool to influence and instruct the new ruler. So, the texts in which the debate on mobility for the purposes of pilgrimage found expression were conceived – and not always completed – within a narrow readership and composed exclusively for those most directly involved: namely, the authors and the imperial authorities. Notwithstanding the many filters and distortions through which these voices have reached us, this communicative framework – as I hope to demonstrate – reflects at least some of the choices and strategies of their authors, who knew the audiences they were addressing ( and the most effective ways to address it ) and shared both a common vocabulary and understanding of what was at stake.

Pilgrimages in the ‘Apologeticum’: A Contribution to Correctio?

In the form in which Claudius’s voice has been preserved – that is, filtered and reworked according to the needs of those who aimed to refute it – the final issue discussed in the ‘Apologeticum’, the theme of pilgrimages to Rome, appears to have been developed around some specific ideas. The first is that a trip to Rome was intended, apparently not just by Claudius, to be penitential ( poenitentiae causa ). Poenitentia appears five times in the space of a few lines, in which Claudius denied that he disapproved of such pilgrimages or had prevented his flock from undertaking them, as Theodemir had accused him of doing. By saying that “I neither approve nor condemn that journey” ( Ego iter illud nec adprobo nec inprobo ), Claudius indicated he had a neutral view of pilgrimages as a penitential practice, as he was convinced quod nec omnibus obest, nec omnibus prodest ^[24]. In other words, this practice could neither benefit nor harm anyone – not in the same way. From this perspective, Paolo Zanna’s translation of this passage sounds a little misleading. He translated: “I neither approve nor disapprove that journey, since I know that it does not injure, nor benefit, nor profit, nor harm anyone”, but the bishop’s idea was seemingly not that devotional journeys had no effect whatsoever on the people’s spiritual health, but rather that they had different effects on different categories of people, as I will try to show ^[25].

Claudius’s next strategy was to turn the same accusations that Theodemir had addressed to him back on the abbot. If Theodemir was so convinced of the spiritual efficacy of that journey ( iter illud ), Claudius asked, then why had he always prevented the group of monks ( monachorum caterva ) he supervised as abbot from undertaking pilgrimages themselves ^[26]? Theodemir’s prohibition to undertake a path that could lead to everlasting joys ( pergere viam, per quam possit ad gaudia pergere sempiterna ) was thus presented – according to Theodemir’s own convictions – as grounds for the highest reprobation ( scandalum majus ) ^[27]. Claudius thus made use of the same associations between spiritual and physical movement formulated by Theodulf some 20 years or so before, in the short poem recalled above.

Claudius’s argument left itself open to easy refutations. The Rule of Saint Benedict, that the synods held in Aachen in 816–819 and presided by Louis the Pious established as the rule for all the male monasteries in the Carolingian Empire, imposed the principle of stabilitas on monks and gave abbots the exclusive responsibility of approving their movements outside monastic spaces ^[28]. In forbidding pilgrimages to his monks, Theodemir was obviously following the Benedictine Rule, thus showing his adherence to the imperial purpose of establishing harsh limitations and a close control on monks’ possibilities to move. Claudius, who as Bishop of Turin had enjoyed the support of Louis the Pious for years and exchanged letters with multiple episcopal and monastic correspondents across the Carolingian Empire, was no doubt aware of this weakness in his argument ^[29]. But was it really a weakness? Claudius was certainly also aware of the possibility that Theodemir could decide to present the ‘Apologeticum’ to the imperial court for an evaluation of its orthodoxy, just as he had done in the past with Claudius’s other exegetical works.

If one views the court – and indeed the emperor himself – as the ultimate recipients and interlocutors of Claudius’s text, his strategy takes on a different meaning. Under the Benedictine Rule, mobility was ideally denied, or strongly limited, to monks, while remaining a possibility open to secular clerics and laypeople. The result was that different regimes of mobility were formulated for the various groups that composed Carolingian society. As Claudius argued, it was therefore the Carolingian imperial authorities who had established in the first place that pilgrimages ( whether to Rome or anywhere else ) were not in themselves spiritually helpful to everyone – nec omnibus obest, nec omnibus prodest – in the same way. He may as well have been telling Theodemir that he was equally adhering, probably even more than the abbot was doing, to the guidelines laid down by the emperor. Theodemir was challenged to show the ‘Apologeticum’ to the imperial court and hear the verdict. The authority to which Claudius appealed – other than that of the Bible or Benedict – was that of the Carolingian emperors and the representations of society they fostered, according to which the Christian people they ruled were divided into distinct groups ( ordines ), each with its own way of life ^[30]. The most comprehensive expression of this way of understanding and representing society was probably conveyed by the ‘Admonitio ad omnes regni ordines’ issued by Louis the Pious in those same years ( 823–825 ), in which all the emperor’s subjects, according to their social ranking and groupings ( unusquisque vestrum in suo loco et ordine ), were called to actively cooperate in safeguarding peace, harmony and justice in the empire ^[31]. In short, Claudius was declaring his full adhesion to the fully Carolingian, recently, and imperially stated principle of a regulated society, while implicitly and ironically accusing Theodemir of not doing the same, as the abbot demonstrated that he had not really understood the true meaning of the emperors’ decisions. As we will see, the ( not so ) subtle irony instilled in these accusations was defused by Jonas and Dungal, who read them literally and turned them into powerful tools in their hands.

Claudius’s second argument to support his scepticism about pilgrimages was founded on his belief that the mainstream interpretation of Matthew 16:18 ( “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” ) was incorrect. Among his many exegetical works, towards 813–815 he also wrote a commentary on Matthew, dedicated to Abbot Justus of Charroux, so he had already had the chance to think about these topics ^[32]. The desire of the faithful to visit Rome was based on the special authority that this passage seemed to attribute to Peter. Claudius’s reading, however, differed. In his eyes, Peter was the mere symbol of the responsibility ( ministerium ) over the faithful that God had assigned to all bishops. They exercised it throughout their whole lives ( usque dum ipsi peregrinantur in hoc mortali corpore ) before passing it on to their successors ^[33]. It was not the intercession of dead bishops that the faithful needed, but rather the power to judge ( iudiciaria potestas ) of active, living bishops. Claudius’s criticism was therefore not so much aimed at devotion to Peter in and of itself, but rather stemmed from his strong investment in the role of living bishops in guiding and caring for their flocks. His choice of words and images is of the utmost significance. Claudius deployed specific terms taken from the Carolingian political vocabulary, such as the definition of episcopal duties as ( public ) service, ministerium, an idea that exactly in the 820s was reaffirmed ^[34]. At the same time, he insisted on peregrinatio as a metaphor for human life, described as a journey toward the eternal and real life after death. This image, once again imbued of penitential meanings, was deeply connected with Irish monastic traditions and had been especially developed by the 7^th-century ‘Vita Columbani’ by Jonas of Bobbio ^[35]. The purpose of this multi-layered vocabulary, built from different sources of authority, was that of uplifting one kind of authority in particular, that of bishops – the group Claudius belonged to. From this point of view, Claudius appears perfectly in line with the self-representations of Carolingian bishops in the 820s and 830s, when they claimed the role of moral supervisors of society alongside – and eventually above – the Carolingian emperors themselves ^[36]. Paradoxically, it was Jonas of Orléans who made a fundamental contribution to this new vision that the bishops were creating of themselves ^[37]. Claudius’s objectives appear quite similar and were also based on a new understanding of the moral and political role that bishops were claiming in Carolingian society. One more time, his positions also seem to adhere to and support the principles and rhetoric with which the Carolingian rulers legitimised their power, all while using the same language through which this legitimisation was conveyed.

Claudius then questioned the reasons that pushed those seeking Peter’s intercession to go to Rome. Using a quote from Augustine’s ‘De trinitate’, he criticised the dilectio of the faithful for Saint Peter propter humanam speciem, that is, in his corporeal form rather than his soul, which was now severed from the body and ( unlike his body ) still lived in heaven ^[38]. Moreover, in his eyes, the intercession of saints was not to be taken for granted, nor did it come to all. Rather, only someone who cultivated the same faith, justice, and truth as they ( the saints ) pursued was entitled to rely on their help; that is, saints were to assist only those who followed their example, rather than limiting themselves to begging for help ^[39]. Claudius’s original argument was likely more complex than this and was probably considerably abbreviated in the creation of the ‘Excerptum’, as is indicated by a notation of item ad locum that separates the Augustinian quote from the rest of the discussion. In any case, these themes appear to be connected to each other and related to Claudius’s earlier theses. The cult of the saints and their intercession – much like penitential and devotional journeys toward their tombs – did not automatically bring advantage or harm in and of themselves. Rather, they could be of spiritual help only when coming together with an exemplary life, and in this sense the fides, iustitia and veritas of the saints were models to be imitated. Claudius seems one more time to assess his position in highly important debates of those years, perhaps pursuing goals that were paradoxically similar to those of his opponents. The distinction of society into ordines also entailed the identification of specific rules for life around which each group was supposed to model itself and its members’ behaviour. If monks followed the guidance of the Benedictine Rule and secular clerics adhered to the ‘Regula ( or Liber ) pastoralis’ by Gregory the Great, a variety of models existed for the laity, including legal texts ( such as law codes and capitularies ) ^[40], saints’ lives ^[41], and specula explicitly addressed to them by authors like Alcuin, Paulinus of Aquileia, Dhuoda, and Jonas of Orléans himself ^[42]. Despite the découpage work on the part of the abbreviators, the ‘Excerptum’ of the ‘Apologeticum’ seems to reflect Claudius’s knowledge about these attempts to define the rules of life for the ordines, and perhaps even his intention to take his own contribution in this imperially driven endeavour.

The ‘Excerptum’ continues with Claudius’s response to the quinta obiectio raised by Theodemir: that of having incurred the anger ( indignatio ) of the late Pope Paschal I ^[43]. Although the text in its current form has a break between the discussion on pilgrimages and this new subject ( which is treated as a separate obiectio ), the bishop’s criticisms of devotional journeys to Rome could certainly have been among the reasons for his tempestuous rapport with the Papal authority. These subjects thus again appear to be connected. This is supported by the fact that Claudius’s reasoning here also revolved around the veneration of Peter and the function of the pope, dominus apostolicus, as ( in a play on words ) the guardian of the apostle or of the apostle’s seat ( apostoli custos ), understood not as one who simply sat on Saint Peter’s throne, but as one who efficiently fulfilled the apostolic duties ^[44]. Claudius’s argument strikingly recalls the question that in 749, according to the ‘Annales regni Francorum’, Pippin, at that time Mayor of the Merovingian Palace, addressed to Pope Zachary about who should claim royal authority over the Franks between the ( Merovingian ) king, ruling in name only, and Pippin himself, who truly held the reins of power ^[45]. In his reply, the Pope argued for the latter choice. By underlining the need for a pope to be an effective successor of Saint Peter, and not just someone sitting on his chair, Claudius was depicting Paschal as a sort of papa inutilis. In other words, his attitude appears openly scornful not towards papal authority in general, but towards the specific figure of Paschal I. Claudius perhaps knew he could express criticisms toward this pope, especially if we consider the possibility that he was actually addressing the imperial court of Louis the Pious.

The final years of Paschal’s life and reign saw ‘rising tension in Rome between papal and Frankish allegiance and governance’, as Caroline Goodson has observed ^[46]. Though Lothar was crowned emperor in Rome by the same Paschal on 5 April 823, he sided with Abbot Ingoald when the latter denounced Paschal’s misappropriation of the properties and rights of the Abbey of Farfa ^[47]. Lothar’s father, Louis the Pious, also intervened following the execution of Roman bureaucrats who had been accused of treason ( and perhaps excessive loyalty to the Carolingian emperors ). Paschal was forced into an oath of purgation similar to that with which an earlier Pope, Leo III, had exonerated himself before Charlemagne ^[48]. The election of Paschal’s successor, Eugene II ( perhaps with the intervention and support of Lothar ), raised disputes and created further divisions within Roman society ^[49]. Claudius was therefore writing at a time when the relationships between the pope and the Carolingians were being re-evaluated. His willingness to point out that the dominus apostolicus from whom he had attracted criticism was Paschal – a figure who apparently had significant tensions with the emperors – could have a role in his decision to address his self-defence directly to the imperial authorities, as they were the first to have had issues with this pope. In a sense, Claudius’s message to Theodemir ( and the emperors ) was that earning the indignatio of an opponent who had unworthily occupied Peter’s chair and carried out less than duly the officium apostolicum was in fact a compliment and proof of his arguments’ validity ^[50].

The ‘Excerptum’ thus closes with Claudius’s criticisms of Paschal and the compilers’ harsh observation that the original text ‘is as long as the Book of the Psalms [ would be ] with 50 more psalms’ ( tantae magnitudinis est, quantum liber Psalmorum et quinquaginta Psalmi plus ) ^[51]. Despite being the result of re-elaborations ( though it is impossible to say how invasive these were ), even the ‘Apologeticum’ known to us allows to focus not only on Claudius’s wider rhetorical strategies but also on his ways of understanding the functions of devotional mobility toward Rome, as well as the messages he hoped to communicate to the imperial authorities about these issues ^[52]. In the ‘Apologeticum’, pilgrimages became an instrument allowing Claudius to convey his views on, and make his own contribution to, some of the key issues connected to Carolingian representations of society and political legitimacy. He understood and presented different kinds and degrees of mobility as something that could distinguish different social groups, characterised by different ways of accessing and using mobility. In his eyes, mobility could potentially be a guiding principle in framing society into ordines according to the elaborate images developed by Carolingian intellectuals for enabling rulers to fulfil their own ministerium. Claudius did not prohibit pilgrimages to Rome tout court; rather, he established limits and distinctions in their uses, purposes, and benefits. He also argued that respect was owed not to a holy bishop from the past ( Peter ), but to his successors in the present, pilgrims in this life and, in the meantime, the reservoirs of iudiciaria potestas on earth. So, the peregrinatio experienced by all living Christians acquired a deeper meaning for bishops through the link thus established to their office and responsibilities. It also became a foundation of their position – and their assertion of that position – at the head of the Carolingian Church. Claudius’s criticisms of devotional movements toward Rome and the authority of the popes were therefore coherently expressed by the means of a political vocabulary and social representations in use in the Carolingian world at the time of Louis the Pious, aimed at supporting the role of bishops as the moral guides of society. For Claudius, this was not only self-defence, but possibly a broader attempt ( perhaps via some consciously provocative positions ) to join debates of vital importance to the imperial authorities. In other words, his self-defence was knowingly structured according to issues he knew to be of extreme urgency for his interlocutors.

Dungal’s refutation: social hierarchies and ministeria

The arguments isolated by the abbreviators were those they considered sufficient and best suited for Jonas and Dungal to compose their refutations. On the surface this may appear to have been an easy task, focused, as it was, on gathering materials ( especially biblical passages and patristic writings ) for the two scholars’ attacks. In fact, the very deployment of these intellectual resources to counter Claudius’s views serves to demonstrate not only the relevance of the issues, but also ( if indirectly ) the difficulty of the task ^[53]. The first step for both Jonas and Dungal was to strip the ‘Excerptum’ of the irony and innuendoes that permeated the text. In order to do that, they took it literally, and this was the foundation for their deconstruction. These authors’ modus operandi, the sources they used, and their rhetorical techniques have been closely examined in a series of studies that have brought to light both their common traits and their differences ^[54]. Their treatises are largely composed of biblical and patristic citations, interspersed with their own thoughts and interpretations ( though this is more conspicuous in Jonas’s text ) ^[55]. Both included citations from the ‘Excerptum’ in their texts, though they sometimes furtherly reshaped Claudius’s words to make them even more vulnerable to criticism. All the questions raised by Claudius and the arguments he brought up in support of his positions were, in any case, taken up by Dungal and Jonas, who nevertheless reserved for themselves the right to revise the order of the topics ( though Jonas remained more faithful to the original ) according to their wider projects in support of images, the cult of the saints and relics, and the veneration of the cross. Their discussion about pilgrimages was also the result of this treatment. It is therefore difficult to isolate it from the rest of their discussions, as it was through this interweaving of themes and issues that they ensured the argumentative strength of their ideas.

First, Dungal and Jonas reworked Claudius’s position on devotional and penitential movement in order to present their opponent as unconditionally condemning and rejecting that practice, even though the ‘Apologeticum’ draws distinctions between different groups based on their opportunities for mobility. According to Dungal, Claudius “forbids to visit the shrines of saints, and especially Peter’s church, to seek intercession.” ^[56] This brief ( and baseless ) declaration was primarily conceived for the purpose of hurling accusations of heresy at Claudius, an argument recurring throughout the ‘Responsa’ ( and ‘De cultu imaginum’ as well ) as a whole. As Warren Pezé has shown, the bishop’s ideas were even graphically labelled as heretical in the manuscript witnesses of Dungal’s text ^[57]. Claudius’s alleged aversion toward pilgrimages was presented as a corollary to his criticisms of the cult of relics, which in Dungal’s eyes placed him in the company of two heretical figures of the past, Eunomius of Cyzicus and Vigilantius ^[58]. A defence of the miraculous virtue of the saints and their remains – or rather of God’s capacity to intervene miraculously on Earth through them – constitutes much of the rest of the work ^[59]. Dungal proceeded by accumulating multiple meaningful episodes from Augustine’s ‘De civitate Dei’, Paulinus of Nola’s ‘Epistolae’ and ‘Carmina’ in honour of Saint Felix of Nola, Aurelius Prudentius’s ‘Liber Cathemarinon’ and ‘Peristephanon’, and Venantius Fortunatus’s ‘Carmina’ ^[60]. There are dramatically few additions from Dungal himself: rather, it was his sources that ‘spoke’ and opposed Claudius’s theses, if only by virtue of their strength in numbers. The long sequence in fact serves as an account of the many testimonies from patristic writers about the supernatural attributes of relics and their beneficial effects for the faithful. By allegedly denying the intercession of the saints, Claudius had challenged and vilified all these authorities. In so doing he showed that he was driven by that “spirit of most vicious pride” ( malignissimo superbiae spiritu ) that Dungal mentioned at the beginning of his text, and which required an “especially harsh punishment” ( validiori [ … ] castigatione ) in order to avert its spread ^[61]. Indeed, Dungal’s accusation of superbia and call for castigatio were included in the frame of the direct connection he established between Claudius and another heretic of the previous generation, Felix, bishop of Urgell, one of the key figures in the adoptionist controversy that spread especially in the South-Western regions of the Carolingian Empire ( Northern Iberia ) in the late 8^th century ^[62]. Felix, described by Dungal as a “viper”, was “smashed on the head” by Charlemagne “with the most powerful iron rod.” ^[63] Dungal’s reference here is clearly to the council of Frankfurt, gathered by Charlemagne in 794, when adoptionism was condemned as heresy ^[64]. Claudius, who had Iberian origins and was trained in that hub of Visigothic traditions that was Carolingian Lyon, was presented as Felix’s pupil, one who “attempted not only to equal but even to outdo his wicked master by corruption and blasphemy.” ^[65] Heretical figures of both the late antique and a more recent and already Carolingian past ( Eunomius, Vigilantius, Felix ) were thus associated with Claudius in an ideal chain of religious dissent. The emperors of the present, Louis the Pious and Lothar, were called to act against Claudius in the same way as their predecessor Charlemagne had done some thirty years before. According to at least some authors of the 820s, such as Agobard ( of Lyon! ), adoptionism was not yet completely defeated, or was seen in any case as a still powerful argument for political purposes ^[66].

The accumulation of quotations from the Church Fathers in the ‘Responsa’ equally responded to Dungal’s purpose of presenting Claudius as a heretic. In this perspective, references to Augustine’s works, in both the ‘Responsa’ and Jonas’s ‘De cultu imaginum’, were especially meaningful, as Claudius had strongly relied on those texts in his ‘Apologeticum’. The goal was to rob Claudius of one of the patristic pillars he was using to support his views, but about which he had made ( according to his opponents ) unsustainable interpretations ^[67].

In this string of patristic citations, Dungal’s own thoughts, while rare, are nonetheless not entirely absent. An initial response on the specific question of pilgrimages called into question the “many offerings” ( votiva plurima ) that flowed into Rome “as a result [ … ] of the renown of the saints and of the innumerable martyrs lying there” ( propter excellentiam scilicet apostolorum et innumerabilium martyrum ibidem requiescentium ) ^[68]. Claudius’s criticisms, in Dungal’s view, were motivated by greed and avarice. If those same offerings had been brought to the Church of Turin instead, he argued, then the local bishop would have been very happy to support that practice ^[69]. Claudius’s attacks on pilgrimages to Rome therefore led to his denying of Saint Peter’s capacity for intercession and ability to loosen and bind. Claudius’s arguments, aimed to emphasise the authority of living bishops – even if this was to the detriment of those who were dead and venerated as saints –, served to confer upon himself and his colleagues an unprecedented centrality in Carolingian political and social hierarchy.

It is precisely this language of hierarchies that Dungal now brought into play. Dungal highlighted that according to Claudius’s interpretation the spiritual authority bestowed on Peter, even though he had ascended to heaven to stand before God, was lower than that of the bishops still residing on Earth. In other words, it was as if the “pilgrims, the most miserable, powerless and insignificant of all people” ( peregrini quique, miseri abjectissimique pauperculi ) had a greater right to ask and obtain concessions from their ruler ( ab imperatore ) than the latter’s gloriosissimi principes et honoratissimi seniores, that is, the apostles and saints ^[70]. The Christian and Irish-connected idea of peregrinatio as a penitentially-charged condition of estrangement from the earthly world that lasted throughout an individual’s life was here associated with a vocabulary that would have been especially familiar to Dungal’s audience. The relationship between God and his saints was described as one that tied an emperor to the political and social elites of his kingdom. The latter enjoyed ( and expected to enjoy ) access to the ruler and the resulting possibility to be granted gifts and other benefices from him ( impetrare/obtinere ). As highlighted by many scholars, these were the key ideals, ideas and practices that regulated the relationships between the Carolingian rulers and their aristocracies ^[71]. Dungal chose his words carefully. Pauperculi were an ambiguous category, especially when they were women, pauperculae, as Cristina La Rocca has recently highlighted ^[72]. Precisely in the times of Louis the Pious, poor and powerless women ( especially widows ) became prominent figures in moral and visionary literature. They were presented as the group that most depended on the kings’ protection and, probably as a result, could deliver him messages of moral warning, as in the ‘Vision of the poor woman of Laon’ ^[73].

On the other end of his oppositions, Dungal’s use of the term senior finds correspondences in contemporary Carolingian capitularies. The ‘Capitulare de disciplina palatii Aquisgranensis’, a set of rules for court conduct that was probably issued in the early 820s ( and therefore contemporaneous to these debates ), refers to seniores as a collective category that included the bishops, abbots, counts, and vassi who possessed mansions in Aachen ^[74]. In a text produced specifically for the court environment, seniores were identified as all the politically and socially relevant figures who gravitated around it. Dungal’s choice of this term to represent the heavenly court as reflected in the imperial court thus seems far from accidental and reinforces the hypothesis that the ‘Responsa’ was written for the specific, restricted audience gravitating around the emperor.

The specific context in which Dungal was operating at the time – the kingdom of Italy – may have also played a role in this sense ^[75]. In the capitularies especially issued in and for Italy, the term senior begins to appear with some frequency from at least 787, when – just as in the ‘Capitulare de disciplina’ – bishops, abbots, and counts were collectively designated as seniores, although they were apparently distinct from the vassalli ^[76]. In the configuration of society sketched by Claudius, or rather in the interpretation that Dungal gave of it, the usual social balances and hierarchies, that saw the aristocracies competing for closeness to the emperor, were turned upside down. The peregrini and pauperculi enjoyed a higher intimacy with the emperor of Heaven, God, than his principes and seniores. To combat Claudius’s arguments, Dungal sought to demonstrate their potentially dangerous repercussions on social stability. Both Claudius and Dungal drew from Carolingian representations of society, underlining their internal divisions and placing them at the foundations of their respective arguments – albeit for opposing reasons.

The emphasis Claudius placed on the transmission of Saint Peter’s ministerium to all bishops as his successors was therefore highly reduced in the ‘Responsa’ and substituted with a stark contrast between the living and the ( special ) dead, presented as a reliable reflection of the hierarchies that existed – and needed to keep existing – between Carolingian social groups. However, Dungal also added his own reflections on the role and responsibilities of living bishops, an issue that not only lay behind the ‘Apologeticum’s’ discourse on pilgrimages, but which was also at the centre of some of the most intense debates of the period. Dungal touched on it while giving his reading of Matthew 16:18, in which Peter is described as the stone on which Christ built the Church. To reaffirm Peter’s centrality, Dungal associated him to Saint John the Evangelist, whom he presented as a symbol of contemplative life within the Church, while Peter represented active life ^[77]. What follows is an exhortation to humility addressed to all bishops – and especially to Claudius, of course – and expressed by retracing the chain of transmission of authority that connected them back to Peter. Living bishops needed to consider themselves all the more unworthy and unsuitable ( indignos et minus idoneos ) to the ministerium they had inherited because even some “spiritually most prominent men” ( spiritales et excellentissimi viri ) of the past did not feel up to the task ^[78]. Above all, they should not allow themselves to criticise the apostles as Claudius had. Among the departed excellentissimi viri that had held up episcopal authority, Dungal named Pope Gregory. Quoting a passage from the pope’s ‘Homiliae in Evangelia’, he recalled the heavy responsibility of judging others that bishops held as the apostles’ successors, especially in the case in which bishops themselves were unable to “uphold restraint in their lives” ( tenere moderamina vitae suae ) ^[79]. Peter’s episcopal authority and the role entrusted to him by Christ, that bequeathed living bishops with the responsibility to judge individual behaviour, should therefore not be called into question. In this sense, Dungal and Claudius seem to share a common position on the actual and/or desired role of bishops in Carolingian society. Even in this case, however, the two authors used the same argument for diametrically opposed purposes.

Dungal’s discussion on devotional journeys was diluted throughout his whole work, only surfacing at certain points and always remaining in service of his wider arguments. The legitimacy of pilgrimages was reasserted in the first place with a large swath of testimonies on the miraculous power of the saints, its concentration in the sanctuaries preserving their bodies, and the care shown to such places by authoritative figures of the Christian past ^[80]. Dungal did not rigidly follow the order of issues raised by Claudius; instead, he worked selectively, focusing only on some of them. Claudius’s attacks on the Roman iter were defused without ever questioning their specific target, Paschal I, and instead defending the figure of Saint Peter and his role as the head of episcopal succession. The penitential character of pilgrimages and their function in the definition of different social groups were also set aside. However, despite Dungal’s and Claudius’s opposing objectives, they shared commonalities of language and rhetorical instruments, such as the vocabulary of Carolingian hierarchy that Dungal developed in his specific focus on the relationship between emperors and their principes and seniores. Episcopal ministerium, whose relationship with the royal and imperial ministerium was another hotly debated issue in the 820s, was equally key in both Claudius’s and Dungal’s reflections ^[81]. While in Claudius’s view it conferred ( or should have conferred ) great power on the bishops, for Dungal it primarily entailed their heavy-weight responsibilities toward the ecclesia. The two writers knew they were simultaneously addressing the same audience – the imperial court – and were also aware of how language could be used to capture this audience’s attention. Furthermore, both imbued their arguments with wider reflections on the functioning of Carolingian society, its imagery, its power dynamics, and perhaps even their own positions within it, along with the contribution they wished to take to the imperial efforts of correctio. From this perspective, the case made by Jonas in his ‘De cultu imaginum’ appears even more explicit.

Jonas’s Rebuttal: Social Hierarchies and ordines

Pilgrimages to Rome are discussed in Book Three of Jonas of Orléans’s ‘De cultu imaginum’, which is dedicated to a general defence of the cult of the saints and their intercessory ability for the faithful. Like Dungal, Jonas therefore placed his discourse on devotional mobility within a broader framework. Unlike the ‘Responsa’, however, the argumentations of ‘De cultu’ rigorously follow those of the ‘Excerptum’, commenting on and criticising them one by one.

To immediately clarify his position, after quoting Claudius’s first sentence on pilgrimages ( Quod vero ais quod ego prohibeam homines poenitentiae causa pergere Romam, falsum tu loqueris ), Jonas began his rebuttal by accusing him of stabilitatis nescia levitas, a lightness ( of opinion and thought ) that is lacking in stability, much like a tree that does not sink its roots into the ground and is destined to die and be reduced to dust ( flatui levitatis raptabilis ) ^[82]. In his mirror for the laity, Jonas quoted Bede to associate levitas with the activities of the devil. The antiquus hostis whispered “all sorts of futile thoughts” ( multimoda cogitationum leuium ) in the ears of those who entered churches not for praying but for meeting other people and gossiping ^[83]. So stabilitas, an absence of movement ( understood here in an intellectual sense ), was immediately framed, with a positive meaning, within a contrast of terms ( stabilitas/levitas ) that was an integral part of the language and rhetorical tools with which Jonas expounded his own opinions while condemning those of his adversary. Claudius proved to be levis, Jonas argued, because later in the ‘Apologeticum’ the bishop of Turin positively condemned and forbid pilgrimages, thus contrasting his own previous statement. Jonas could say that only because in his quotations from the ‘Excerptum’, to further facilitate his task, he reworked Claudius’s words. In ‘De cultu’ Claudius’s declaration that he neither approved of nor condemned all pilgrimages took the form of Ego enim iter illud non approbo, a succinct and knowingly unfounded formulation ^[84]. As we have seen, Dungal did the same. However, contrarily to the ‘Responsa’, in ‘De cultu’ Claudius’s distinctions were not entirely lost, but rather reshaped by Jonas, who made them one of the pillars of his argument. The distinction made in the ‘Excerptum’ that pilgrimages neither profited nor harmed everyone automatically was ( also ) reworked into a contrast between the practice itself and the intentions of those who undertook it. In a similar way to the treatment Jonas proposed for marriage in his ‘Instiutio’ for the laity, he now added devotional movement to his list of practices that are good in and of themselves, but which can be used in the wrong ways or for the wrong reasons ^[85]. In fact, pilgrimages were associated with other media bona, like chastity and alms, that could be sought after for the sake of the people’s praise ( propter aurae popularis appetitum ), but that in themselves had the power to raise one to the angels ( in futura beatitudine angelis coaequabit ) ^[86]. So, for instance, it was not because of the misuse or disordered intentions of those that practiced it that chastity was condemned ( reprobatur ). The same was true of pilgrimages, which in Jonas’s writing acquired – when carried out with the right intentions – a potentially salvific value: pilgrims “will obtain the reward for the effort and the journey they undertake when they are pushed by the love for God.” ^[87] The journey to the limina apostolorum was then placed in a tradition of devotional mobility that could be traced back to the Old Testament and the places where Scripture locates the manifestations of God to the patriarchs. Together, they created a history and a geography of salvation in which Saint Peter’s sepulchre was set alongside the Arc of the Covenant. In the face of Biblical testimony, Claudius’s arguments appeared to Jonas like an unreasonable argument ( inrationabilis ratio ) only meant to twist the minds of – mostly young and ignorant – women ( muliercularum sensibus persuadere ). Among Jonas’s rhetorical tools, a gendered characterisation of the only audience that, in his opinion, could have possibly accepted the ideas proposed in the ‘Apologeticum’ was equally included. This audience was composed of mulierculae, a category of women who were presented in Carolingian sources as particularly prone to gossip, gullibility, and superstition ^[88].

In his response to Theodemir, Claudius had accused him of preventing his monks from departing to Rome on pilgrimage. As we have seen, his words were not simply a personal criticism of his interlocutor, but an indirect appeal to the Carolingian authorities, who had imposed the Benedictine Rule and its principle of stabilitas on the monastic communities of the empire, making it one of the cornerstones of their division of society into ordines. Claudius knew that monks’ movements were subjected to rigid control, so he could point at that as an example of the distinction he argued between groups for whom pilgrimages were suitable, and those whose spiritual salvation required – as much as possible – a lack of movement. All this followed from the initial declaration that he neither approved nor disapproved of pilgrimages in principle. By re-elaborating from this statement, reshaped in ‘De cultu’ as a full-fledged condemnation of pilgrimages, and so eliminating the distinction that was at the foundation of Claudius’s views, Jonas was able to appropriate the arguments that the Bishop of Turin had developed and turn them against him. The division into ordines thus also became central to Jonas’s discourse, albeit with the aim of accusing his adversary of not having taken it in due consideration. The image of Carolingian society as framed in distinct ordines was one of Jonas’s favourites. Among Carolingian authors he was one of the most actively involved in the effort to give it form and definition. This representation recurs in most of his texts, and always responded to the need of establishing limits and possibilities of action for each group – and their identities in the first place ^[89]. In this part of ‘De cultu’, he deployed the entire Carolingian vocabulary of subdivisions and social hierarchies to refute Claudius. The groups identified by Jonas were distinguished first by their means of self-reproduction, either through marriage or abstinence from conjugality, a distinction he equally emphasised in his ‘Institutio’ and already established by Carolingian rulers ^[90]. In 811, when asking the bishops of his empire to clarify the characteristics of the laity as a distinguished group, Charlemagne mentioned the access to marriage and the right to bear arms as the key features ^[91]. Another hierarchical distinction addressed in ‘De cultu’ was between the praelati, who were owed obedience, and the subditi, over whom the former exercised authority ^[92]. This opposition was both part of the Carolingian language of power in general, and that of Jonas in particular. In his rewriting of the ‘Life of saint Hubert’, commissioned by Bishop Walcaud of Liège shortly after 825, he recalled it as a key principle driving the holy man’s pastoral activities ^[93].

Finally, Jonas also placed different mobility regimes as one more foundation in a correctly structured society. He conceived a contrast between those “who freely roam to different parts of the world” ( qui libertate generali quaquaversum pro libitu suo per diversa orbis clymata discurrunt ) and “others who are forbidden to travel by rules and canons.” ^[94] The stabilitas Jonas previously invoked as a symbol of intellectual honesty was taken up and directly connected to the Praecepta beati Benedicti, reinforced with a reference to Canon IV of the Council of Chalcedon ( 451 ), binding monks to immobility and obedience to local bishops ^[95]. The definition of monastic immobility proposed here therefore put Benedict’s authority and episcopal deliberations on the same level, reinforcing each other. At any rate, mobility thus became an effective parameter for identifying different ordines; in other words, it brought order to society. To be sure, Claudius had expressed a very similar concept, albeit in a less explicit form ( or one that had been rendered as such by the compilers of the ‘Excerptum’ ). Jonas, like Dungal on other issues, ironically once again appears to have been basically in agreement with Claudius. At the very least, they both recognised the value of ordered mobility, and ordering mobility, in representations of society. Jonas managed to appropriate this idea with a mixture of rhetorical techniques grounded, in some cases, on highly loose re-elaborations of the ‘Apologeticum’ ( eliminating the initial distinction of adprobo/inprobo ) and, in others, on very literal readings of its contents. In this way the irony of Claudius’s responses to Theodemir was defused.

In point of fact, monks were not totally forbidden from any form of mobility. In the Carolingian era, since at least the council of Ver of 755, the possibility for monks to leave their monastery, even for going to Rome on a pilgrimage, was rigidly and increasingly controlled by the abbot, who was the only one capable of approving his monks’ journeys ^[96]. However, the motives for travel were many and often inevitable. Notwithstanding the insistence on the ideal of stabilitas in the normative sources, the testimonies of monks’ travels – including those of a devotional character – are numerous, as has been recently and effectively demonstrated by Eleonora Destefanis ^[97]. This is not, however, what Jonas apparently meant. His idea of monastic mobility appears much more limited and unidirectional: a single movement, accomplished once and for all, from outside to inside the walls of the monastery. At the same time, it was a movement from within to without the saeculum, like an escape from Babylon, with a penitential character and purpose. Jonas downplayed the penitential aspect of pilgrimages, emphasised instead by Claudius in his ‘Apologeticum’, and nevertheless he used it to reflect on the relationship between Theodemir and his monks. Assuming the point of view of the abbot of Psalmody, Jonas claimed that those who entered a monastery poenitentiae causa “didn’t come, as you say, to me, but rather spread their wings to God’s mercy.” ^[98] Theodemir’s authority was not personal, nor did he impose any form of servitus onto the monks, who had renounced the world not to please him, but for the sake of their own salvation ( non mei causa, sed salutis suae ). The immobility imposed on them was therefore not the fruit of an abbot’s arbitrariness, but of the rules of monastic life, to which they had freely agreed.

That said, the practice of pilgrimage was still supported by so many testimonies, and of such high prestige, that there could be no room left for doubt on its legitimacy. Like Dungal, Jonas laid out a series of patristic episodes and citations on devotional journeys and the cult of the saints and their relics. His arguments gradually shifted to a broader and more general level, so to include reflections on Peter, his intercession, the power of the Keys of Heaven, and the play on words ( apostolicus/apostoli custos ) with which Claudius had justified his personal conflict with Paschal I. However, before making this shift, the Bishop of Orléans made sure to reiterate what, in his opinion, was the underlying guiding principle for the whole question. The Roman iter in and of itself did not constitute the highest form of perfection ( summa perfectionis ). Nevertheless, devote illuc properantes plurimum juvantur, quibus professio non reluctatur ^[99]. Pilgrimages were useful and even salvific when practiced with good intentions, and only if they were not in conflict with one’s professio. In other words, they did not have the same beneficial effect for all. Jonas thus reached the same conclusions as Claudius had done, while showing to be in total disagreement with him.

On one issue, however, Jonas had very little reason to disagree with Claudius. The latter’s strong emphasis on the moral and spiritual authority of living bishops and their moral responsibility to the Christian people could not but find support from Jonas, who was a bishop himself after all. This commitment in the redefinition of episcopal authority is in fact one of the recurring themes in Jonas’s writings ^[100]. His ‘Vita secunda’ of saint Hubert, which is almost contemporary with the first stage of composition of ‘De cultu’, was shaped as a sort of speculum episcoporum, a model of life designed to reform the behaviour of Carolingian bishops and allow them to present themselves as morally exemplary figures, and therefore able and worthy to dictate the correct ways of living for other social groups ^[101]. As Gerda Heydemann has underlined, in the ‘Vita secunda’ Hubert carries on duties and activities of moral supervisor or speculator ^[102]. Jonas then personally gave proof of being able to give instructions on the correct conduct for various categories of audience throughout the ‘Institutiones’ he wrote for the laity and Pippin of Aquitaine ^[103]. In 829, he was among the protagonists of the Council of Paris, and perhaps also the drafter of its acts, in which materials drawn from his other texts converged ^[104]. The council, as requested by Emperors Louis the Pious and Lothar, had the explicit goal of reforming and moralising Carolingian society, struck by minor military defeats and political turmoil ^[105]. In order to do this, the bishops who gathered established principles for the self-reformation of the episcopal body, collected in the first part of the council’s acts. The purpose was that of assessing bishops as worthy of reforming and supervising the conduct of other social groups, including the imperial authorities, equally addressed with moral warnings. Jonas was therefore at the forefront of what Steffen Patzold has called the “redefinition of the episcopal office” debated in the 820s ^[106]. That is most probably why he remained cautious in his criticisms to Claudius on this topic, giving them the form of a reminder to bishops on moral exemplariness, a necessary and preliminary condition for them to be truly considered worthy of collecting their predecessors’ authority ( percipere praedecessorum dignitatem ) ^[107]. Their iura iudiciaria – that is, the capacity to loosen and bind attributed to their office and transmitted through apostolic succession – were inextricably linked to their behaviour: iniusti sacerdotes, as he underlined by quoting Gregory the Great’s ‘Commentaries’ on the Gospels, were known to lose them ^[108]. Their very identity as pastores was therefore strictly dependent on their personal conduct. Like Dungal, Jonas focused more on the responsibilities than the powers that were derived from episcopal authority. The ultimate target was something he could freely criticise in Claudius’s approach: the denial of the efficacy ( and even the necessity ) of the intercession of the saints, which was eclipsed, in Claudius’s eyes, by living bishops’ responsibilities. Jonas argued that the saints maintained their full judicial prerogatives ( iudicandi praerogativa ) even after their deaths, as sustained by a series of scriptural testimonies, including those of Paul, Isaiah, Solomon, and Matthew. Finding himself in the complicated position of needing to defend both the intercession of deceased saints and the authority of living bishops, Jonas seized the opportunity to base the latter on the correct use of the episcopal office and its prerogatives.

The ideas on devotional mobility conveyed in Jonas’ ‘De cultu imaginum’ present clear similarities with those of the ‘Responsa’, especially from the point of view of the rhetorical strategies used by their authors, although they did not always share positions or textual devices. Contrary to Dungal, Jonas took pains to refute the ‘Apologeticum’ point by point, or rather sentence by sentence. However, his higher adherence to the contents of the ‘Excerptum’ and their order is only surface level. When necessary, Claudius’s text was strategically reformulated by Jonas and made easier to attack. Above all, the ‘Responsa’ and ‘De cultu imaginum’ share a common language, in which the authority of the Church Fathers was associated with the Carolingian vocabulary of social structures, hierarchies, and the exercise of power. Jonas perfectly mastered this language. He used it in many of his texts, as he knew it was suitable for the audience he was addressing, be it composed of bishops ( the ‘Vita secunda Hucberti’ ), counts and other secular aristocrats ( the lay ‘Institutio’ ), or the Carolingian court ( the royal ‘Institutio’ and ‘De cultu’ ). Both Dungal and Jonas were also called to reflect on the foundation of Claudius’s ideas: the role of bishops in the ecclesia, their position, and responsibilities. Jonas especially did not want to devalue his own authority too much, while at the same time not wanting to concede to too many of his adversary’s positions. The solution he developed was part of a wider strategy. He demonised a single bishop to preserve the dignity of the entire episcopal body. Claudius was thus presented as a model of anti-bishop, the incarnation of everything a bishop should not be or do: a heretic, a disseminator of discord, a teacher of evil, an ignorant interpreter of the Scriptures and Church Fathers ^[109]. The ‘De cultu imaginum’ therefore appears to be in dialogue with the ‘Vita’ of Hubert, which was composed in the same years ( or perhaps months ) ^[110]. Both present models of episcopal conduct: one positive ( Hubert of Liège ), the other negative ( Claudius of Turin ). Dungal had also painted Claudius as a heretic and a follower of Eunomius and Vigilantius, envious of the donations made by pilgrims who went to Rome, and unable to correctly carry out his liturgical duties due to his disagreement with the commemoration of saints in litanies and prayers. The issue of devotional journeys allowed Jonas and Dungal to have their say on what Carolingian bishops ought to be and do, partly because Claudius himself had invoked these topics, and partly because they found them advantageous to support their own needs and strategies. The arguments about pilgrimages thus became an arena for broader reflections on Carolingian society and its representations, its hierarchical structuring and the proper position of all its components. This was perhaps the true significance of the debate on devotional mobility conducted by the authors and texts examined here.

Conclusions: A Competition for ‘Carolingianity’?

The apparently limited circulation of the ‘Apologeticum’ ( in the form of ‘Excerptum’ ), the ‘Responsa’, and ‘De cultu imaginum’ can possibly provide an overall key to better understand the debate on pilgrimages raised by Claudius of Turin in the 820s. The audience to which these texts were addressed was likely limited to the imperial court, the milieu where the ‘Excerptum’ was prepared and whence it was sent to Dungal and Jonas as the starting point for their refutations. In any case, the diffusion and use of these texts apparently did not go beyond their authors and most direct recipients. The language and rhetorical strategies of the three authors reflect their knowledge and familiarity with the Carolingian vocabulary of correctio, morality, and social hierarchies ^[111]. Although the use of terms related to these semantic fields was by no means limited to the sections of their texts devoted to pilgrimages, which were only one of the Christian practices criticised by Claudius, the theme of devotional journeys was perhaps better suited than others to engender more general reflections, since it questioned the role of mobility tout court, not just for religious reasons, in Carolingian society’s framing and working. In the eyes of all the three authors, the possibility of travelling to holy places constituted an effective parameter for establishing distinctions between social groups, grounding them on different levels of access and approach to mobility. The point of departure, and perhaps of arrival, did not differ by much in their individual reflections. Whether it was a question of reframing or reaffirming the spiritual and/or penitential uses of itinera ( especially to Rome ), the three texts all insisted on the different effects of pilgrimages depending on who practiced them. The Carolingian subdivisions of society – above all in the ecclesia – marked the framework within which they placed and developed their arguments about pilgrimages. In order to be fully appreciated and understood, they need to be cast back to and read in the light of this framework.

Claudius challenged Theodemir on the difficult balance between peregrinatio and stabilitas in the monastic world. His purpose was apparently not that of totally denying the legitimacy of pilgrimages but to highlight that there were groups whose specific penitential practices excluded or limited mobility. In addition, he linked this discussion to a strong investment in episcopal authority and the claim – both for himself and for the group of specialists in the pastoral care to which he belonged – of an exclusive responsibility to mediate between the faithful and the divine ^[112]. Both these positions were technically sound in theological terms, especially from the point of view of the Carolingian rulers, that Claudius implicitly addressed. The imposition of the Benedictine Rule and its principle of stabilitas on all the male monasteries in the empire was declared at the Council of Aachen in 816/817, convened and presided over by Louis the Pious. The specialisation of bishops in pastoral care was one of the capstones of the Carolingian religious reforms since the end of the 740s and entailed a growing understanding and interiorisation of these tasks on the part of the bishops themselves ^[113]. This is demonstrated by the efforts of many bishops toward the improvement of the cultural preparation and endowment of the local clergy ^[114]. Above all, these positions went along the same lines in which other Carolingian episcopal and intellectual figures active in the same years were developing their views. Among these was, for example, the same Jonas of Orléans, whose argument on the issue of devotional mobility had to be put into terms that were even more consonant with the political and social Carolingian vocabulary than what Claudius had done – and Claudius had already worked hard to perfect it. The rhetoric of ordines and social stratification was expounded by Jonas in all its forms and ramifications. At the end, the Bishop of Orléans arrived at a result much like that of his adversary: pilgrimages were suitable, or even salvific, only when they did not conflict with other practices and norms of life and were therefore only accessible for those groups that could experience mobility. In the same way, Dungal made extensive use of the vocabulary of Carolingian representations of society and dwelled on the duties of bishops, calling them to the utmost prudence in the exercise of their pastoral and intellectual abilities by using Claudius as an example of what to avoid.

The debate raised by Claudius of Turin on penitential and devotional mobility thus offered an occasion to discuss and take a stand on wider questions that were close to the hearts of the Carolingian rulers. In other words, it was shaped as a debate about the correct way of understanding correctio and actively participating in it. Between Claudius of Turin, Dungal, and Jonas of Orléans a shared language, style of argumentation, and even quite similar opinions on some basic points emerge ( though they never would, nor could, admit it ). Their opposition therefore appears more formal than substantial, and more like a competition between different points of view on the interventions that should be made to reform society. Debates over pilgrimages became a means of placing themselves alongside the rulers in the fulfilment of a common ministerium. Perhaps they were also involved in a competition to be seen as culturally prominent figures by the rulers, and worthy of being part of the cultural élite of their closest and most intimate advisors. To be true, these intellectuals were already involved in the court environment – that of Louis’s Aachen and Lothar’s Pavia – and could count on personal relationships with emperors, but these connections always needed to be renewed, renegotiated, and possibly improved.

Claudius’s ideas on pilgrimage and the replies by Dungal and Jonas probably had some impact on later Carolingian reflections over devotional mobility. In the early 840s, precisely when Jonas addressed his ‘De cultu imaginum’ to Charles the Bald, Rabanus Maurus took a cautious position on pilgrimages undertook for penitential purposes, even when serious crimes, such as fratricide and parricide, were involved ^[115]. In the penitential booklet prepared for Archbishop Otgar of Mainz, Rabanus stated that forms of penance excluding mobility and casting the guilty under a tighter control by their bishops were to be preferred to long journeys that could give the chance to perpetrate even more crimes ^[116]. In a letter sent to a certain Bishop Donno and King Charles the Bald ( 858–867 ), Pope Nicholas I requested that a pilgrim who had gone to Rome for penance be reintegrated in the possession of his goods on the grounds of his apparently sincere repent ^[117]. Pilgrimages to Rome for penitential purposes were thus still practiced in the 850s–860s. Yet anxieties and ambiguity were probably growing around them. Even after the conclusion of Claudius’s polemics ( and life ), debates over pilgrimages did not entirely stop.