Saint Agobard | |
---|---|
Archbishop | |
Born | c. 779 Spain [1] |
Died | 840 (aged 60–61) |
Feast | 6 June |
Agobard of Lyon (c. 779–840) was a Spanish-born priest and archbishop of Lyon, during the Carolingian Renaissance. The author of multiple treatises, ranging in subject matter from the iconoclast controversy to Spanish Adoptionism to critiques of the Carolingian royal family, Agobard is best known for his critiques of Jewish religious practices and political power in the Frankish-Carolingian realm. He was succeeded by Amulo of Lyons.
A native of Spain, Agobard moved to Lyon in 792. He was ordained as a priest c. 804, and was well-liked by the archbishop of Lyon, Leidrad (r. 799–816). At some point, Agobard was ordained as a chorbishop, or assistant bishop. Controversy arose in 814, when the aging Leidrad retired into a monastery, appointing Agobard as his successor. While Carolingian emperor Louis the Pious did not object to the appointment, some of the other bishops did, calling a synod at Arles to protest the elevation of a new bishop while the old bishop still lived. Archbishop Leidrad died in 816, and the controversy fizzled out, leaving Agobard as the new archbishop. Soon after taking office, he confronted several issues, which included opposing trials by ordeal, [2] and, in 818, writing against Felix of Urgel's Spanish Adoptionist Christology. [3]
Agobard is notorious for his vocal attacks on the local Jewish population and their religious practices. Jewish communities living in the Frankish or Carolingian realm had been granted considerable freedoms under Louis the Pious son of Charlemagne, including a prohibition on Christian proselytizing. Louis appointed a magister Iudaeorum to ensure Jewish legal protection, and did not force Jews to allow baptism for their slaves. Agobard found this last provision particularly galling, and wrote his first anti-Jewish tract on the matter: De Baptismo Judaicorum Mancipiorum (c. 823). [4] For the rest of the decade, Agobard campaigned against what he saw as the dangerous growth in power and influence of Jews in the kingdom that was contrary to canon law. [5] It was during this time that he wrote such works as Contra Praeceptum Impium [6] (c. 826), De Insolentia Judeorum [7] (c. 827), De Judaicis Superstitionibus [8] (c. 827), and De Cavendo Convictu et Societate Judaica [9] (c. 827). [10] Agobard's rhetoric, which included describing Jews as "filii diaboli" ("children of the devil") was indicative of the developing anti-Jewish strain of medieval Christian thought. As Jeremy Cohen has claimed, Agobard's response was paradoxically both stereotypical and knowledgeable (he showed a great knowledge of contemporary Judaism, while maintaining and perpetuating stereotypes). [11]
In the 820s, a controversy emerged over the iconoclastic policies of bishop Claudius of Turin. [12] This stance was opposed by Dungal of Bobbio at the request of Louis the Pious. Agobard, in his Book on Paintings and Images, came out in opposition to Dungal's method of using secular knowledge to justify veneration of images. [13]
In the 820s, Agobard had already shown his willingness to challenge Louis the Pious on the subject of Jews and on secular holdings of church land. [14] Agobard continued to confront the emperor, particularly on the issues of royal succession and the matter of land ownership. Agobard accused the emperor of abandoning his 817 Ordinatio imperii decree, which promoted an all-encompassing unity of church and empire. [15] In both of the two rebellions against Louis, 830 and 833, Agobard supported the ill-fated revolt of Louis' son Lothair I. In 833, when Lothair launched his second revolt, Agobard published his support for Lothair once more in several works: A Comparison of Ecclesiastical and Political Government and Wherein the Dignity of the Church Outshines the Majesty of Empires and the Liber Apologeticus in defense of the rebelling sons of Louis. [16]
After Louis was restored to his power, backed by his sons Louis the German and Pepin I of Aquitaine, Agobard was suspended from his episcopate by the Council of Thionville and exiled, replaced by the chorbishop Amalarius of Metz (c. 775 –c. 850). [17] During his tenure in Lyon, Amalarius worked to impose liturgical reforms upon the archdiocese of Lyon. Amalarius' reforms were characterized by a heavy reliance upon allegorical and symbolic representations within the Mass. Agobard, on the other hand, disdained Amalarius' reforms as "theatrical" and "showy" and favored a more plain liturgy. [18] Amalarius' reforms were also opposed by Agobard's disciple Florus of Lyon; Amalarius was deposed and accused of heresy in 838. [19] Agobard wrote three works against Amalarius: On Divine Psalmody, On the Correction of the Antiphonary, and Liber officialis. When he returned to Lyon, Agobard worked to roll back Amalarius' actions, with the support of Florus. [20]
During his life, Agobard wrote more works on other issues, including several against pagan practices, [21] two on the role of clergy, [22] and a treatise on icons. [23]
Agobard also wrote a treatise arguing against weather magic called De Grandine et Tonitruis ("On Hail and Thunder"). A passage in it mentions the popular belief in ships in the clouds whose sailors were thought to take crops damaged by hail or storms to their land of Magonia.
Many of his works were lost until 1605, when a manuscript was discovered in Lyons and published by Papirius Masson, and again by Baluze in 1666. [24] Agobard's complete works can be found in Volume 104 of J.P. Migne's Patrologia Latina , and, in a more recent edition, in Van Acker's Agobardi Lugdunensis Opera Omnia. [25]
Louis I, better known as Louis the Pious, also called the Fair and the Debonaire, was King of the Franks and co-emperor with his father, Charlemagne, from 813. He was also King of Aquitaine from 781. As the only surviving son of Charlemagne and Hildegard, he became the sole ruler of the Franks after his father's death in 814, a position that he held until his death except from 833 to 834, when he was deposed.
Pope Gregory IV was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from October 827 to his death. His pontificate was notable for the papacy’s attempts to intervene in the quarrels between Emperor Louis the Pious and his sons. It also saw the breakup of the Carolingian Empire in 843.
Ratramnus a Frankish monk of the monastery of Corbie, near Amiens in northern France, was a Carolingian theologian known best for his writings on the Eucharist and predestination. His Eucharistic treatise, De corpore et sanguine Domini, was a counterpoint to his abbot Paschasius Radbertus’s realist Eucharistic theology. Ratramnus was also known for his defense of the monk Gottschalk, whose theology of double predestination was the center of much controversy in 9th-century France and Germany. In his own time, Ratramnus was perhaps best known for his Against the Objections of the Greeks who Slandered the Roman Church, a response to the Photian schism and defense of the filioque addition to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed.
Lothair I or Lothar I was emperor, and the governor of Bavaria (815–817), King of Italy (818–855) and Middle Francia (840–855).
Lotharingia was a medieval successor kingdom of the Carolingian Empire. It comprised present-day Lorraine (France), Luxembourg, Saarland (Germany), Netherlands, and the eastern half of Belgium, along with parts of today's North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany), Rhineland-Palatinate (Germany) and Nord (France). It was named after King Lothair II, who received this territory after the Kingdom of Middle Francia of his father, Lothair I, had been divided among his three sons in 855.
Paschasius Radbertus (785–865) was a Carolingian theologian and the abbot of Corbie, a monastery in Picardy founded in 657 or 660 by the queen regent Bathilde with a founding community of monks from Luxeuil Abbey. His most well-known and influential work is an exposition on the nature of the Eucharist written around 831, entitled De Corpore et Sanguine Domini. He was canonized in 1073 by Pope Gregory VII. His feast day is April 26. His works are edited in Patrologia Latina vol. 120 (1852) and his important tract on the Eucharist and transubstantiation, De Corpore et Sanguine Domini, in a 1969 edition by B. Paulus, published by Brepols.
East Francia or the Kingdom of the East Franks was a successor state of Charlemagne's empire ruled by the Carolingian dynasty until 911. It was created through the Treaty of Verdun (843) which divided the former empire into three kingdoms.
Bernard was the King of Italy from 810 to 818. He plotted against his uncle, Emperor Louis the Pious, when the latter's Ordinatio Imperii made Bernard a vassal of his cousin Lothair. When his plot was discovered, Louis had him blinded, a procedure which killed him.
Bodo was a Frankish deacon at the court of Emperor Louis the Pious, who caused a notorious case of apostasy in the Europe of his day.
The Archdiocese of Lyon, formerly the Archdiocese of Lyon–Vienne–Embrun, is a Latin Church metropolitan archdiocese of the Catholic Church in France. The archbishops of Lyon serve as successors to Saints Pothinus and Irenaeus, the first and second bishops of Lyon, respectively, and are also called primates of Gaul. He is usually elevated to the rank of cardinal. Bishop Olivier de Germay was appointed archbishop on 22 October 2020.
Amalarius (c. 775–c. 850) was a Frankish prelate and courtier, temporary bishop of Trier (812–13) and Lyon (835–38), and an accomplished liturgist. He was close to Charlemagne and a partisan of his successor, Louis the Pious, throughout the latter's tumultuous reign.
Florus of Lyon, a deacon in Lyon, was an ecclesiastical writer in the first half of the ninth century. A theologian, canonist, liturgist, and poet, he ran the scriptorium at Lyons. He was considered one of the foremost authorities on theological questions among the clergy of the Frankish kingdom. He died about 860.
The Capitulary for the Jews is a set of six short legal prescriptions concerning Jews in the Carolingian Empire. They were gathered together and published under the title by which they are now known by Alfred Boretius in 1883, but only the first three and possibly the fourth are derived from a single source; the fifth and sixth are from an unrelated source. In one manuscript, the sixth "chapter" (capitulum) is said to have been taken "from Emperor Charles' statutes", indicating either Charlemagne or Charles the Bald. Its content, however, is inconsistent with the known Jewish policies of these emperors.
Claudius of Turin was the Catholic bishop of Turin from 817 until his death. He was a courtier of Louis the Pious and was a writer during the Carolingian Renaissance. He is most noted for teaching iconoclasm, a radical idea at that time in Latin Church, and for some teachings that prefigured those of the Protestant Reformation. He was attacked as a heretic in written works by Saint Dungal and Jonas of Orléans.
Wala was a son of Bernard, son of Charles Martel, and one of the principal advisers of his cousin Charlemagne, of Charlemagne's son Louis the Pious, and of Louis's son Lothair I. He succeeded his brother Adalard as abbot of Corbie and its new daughter foundation, Corvey, in 826 or 827.
Moduin, Modoin, or Mautwin was a Frankish churchman and Latin poet of the Carolingian Renaissance. He was a close friend of Theodulf of Orléans, a contemporary and courtier of the emperors Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, and a member of the Palatine Academy. In signing his own poems he used the pen name Naso in reference to the cognomen of Ovid. From 815 until his death he was the Bishop of Autun.
Magonia is the name of the cloud realm whence felonious aerial sailors were said to have come, according to commonly-held beliefs denounced in the polemical treatise by Carolingian bishop Agobard of Lyon in 815, where he argues against weather magic. The treatise is titled De Grandine et Tonitruis .
Spanish Adoptionism was a Christian theological position which was articulated in Umayyad and Christian-held regions of the Iberian peninsula in the 8th- and 9th centuries. The issue seems to have begun with the claim of archbishop Elipandus of Toledo that – in respect to his human nature – Jesus Christ was adoptive Son of God. Another leading advocate of this Christology was Felix of Urgel. In Spain, Adoptionism was opposed by Beatus of Liebana, and in the Carolingian territories, the Adoptionist position was condemned by Pope Hadrian I, Alcuin of York, Agobard, and officially in Carolingian territory by the Council of Frankfurt (794).
Amulo Lugdunensis served as Archbishop of Lyon from 841 to 852 AD. As a Gallic prelate, Amulo is best known for his letters concerning two major themes: Christian–Jewish relations in the Frankish kingdom and the Carolingian controversy over predestination. He was ordained as archbishop in January 841.
Leidrad was the bishop of Lyon from 797 and its first archbishop from 804 until 814. He was a courtier of Charlemagne before he was a bishop. As bishop, he helped resolve the adoptionist controversy. He also began a programme of building and renovation in his diocese, turning Lyon into a centre of learning. Of his writings, two letters and a treatise on baptism survive.