among the eldest of his entourage and could never have realistically guessed that he would rule for another twenty-five years and die quietly, surrounded by loved ones, in his own luxurious bed.7 His reign had also not been exclusively a success. A decade earlier, a band of recalcitrant Basques had ambushed and decimated the Frankish rear guard in the infamous Pyrenees mountain pass at Roncesvalles.8 And a particularly violent revolt had taken place only months before, when Duke Tassilo of Bavaria had led an armed rebellion against his king. The chronicles tell us that all ended well for Charlemagne—Tassilo was captured and the insurrection extinguished—but it could just as easily have gone badly.9 These military and political challenges would certainly have lingered at the forefront of Charlemagne’s mind, for during the same time in which he and his court were composing Admonitio generalis, they were also in the process of planning a campaign against the Slavic lands to the east and south for that very summer.10
Worldly stresses would have been compounded further by spiritual uncertainties. In calling for correctio, Charlemagne followed an ancient tradition of Roman emperors and Frankish kings, who saw it as their duty to eradicate scelus—sin and crime—in order to ensure the continued health and prosperity of society. In Admonitio generalis, he famously compares himself to the Old Testament King Josiah, who had been responsible for restoring his people to the correct faith and for decreeing the commandments of Moses as law for his people.11 The moral reforms of Admonitio generalis cast this traditional duty in a distinctly millenarian hue, however. As leader of the Franks who dreamed of his people as the new Israel, it was Charlemagne’s solemn responsibility not simply to root out sin but also to ready the world for the end of days. Admonitio generalis suggests a degree of urgency on this issue, describing how a certain “letter from heaven” with an apocalyptic message had apparently circulated throughout the land but was not to be believed; “in the last days” (presumably very much at hand), Admonitio generalis warns, “there will appear false teachers, as the Lord himself foretold in the gospel.”12
The broad social and cultural ramifications that we now attribute to Admonitio generalis were thus most certainly beyond even Charlemagne’s considerable ambitions. To be sure, he and his court were interested in social renewal and correction, but their aim would have been to address far more immediate concerns. We must recognize Admonitio generalis and the entire program of Carolingian correctio itself as a prophylactic, designed to shield Charlemagne and, by extension, the Frankish people under his dominion against an unknown future.13 The document is a pledge from the Franks to redouble their efforts to enact righteous behavior in exchange for the continued favor and protection of the divine. This was indeed its expressed purpose. Its preface declares that God had shown more favor to the Franks than to any other civilization in history. Simple thanks would not suffice. Bishops and parish priests needed to work harder in their efforts to lead souls to salvation while also corralling “the erring sheep”—men who did not wish to devote themselves to the protection and health of Frankish society—back into the fold. All Frankish men, laity and churchmen alike, had to follow the precepts of God with more devout energy and passion. The consequence of failure was nothing less than the unchecked rampage of the devil on earth.14
Admonitio generalis thus placed the burden of responsibility for the continuation of Frankish prosperity squarely on the shoulders of Frankish aristocratic men. It reminded them of this burden by laying forth the cooperative duties and jurisdictions that they were required to observe in order to please their God. The first three quarters of the document consist of regulatory dicta from the most important ecumenical councils of centuries past.15 Rules address different groups of aristocratic men (“to bishops,” “to priests,” “to clerics and monks,” “to all,” etc.—the last including laymen) and outline the correct hierarchies of power that are to exist among them.16 Priests are to be subordinate to bishops, monks subordinate to abbots; “professional” religious—that is to say, men who had professed either priestly or monastic vows—are not to be subject to most secular legal jurisdiction; monks in particular are to avoid secular engagement as much as they are able. Lay and professional religious men are defined, in this section, as separate but equally important cogs of a well-oiled social machine. If maintained in good order, the capitula imply, this machine will lead the Franks toward further divine favor.
The last twenty-two capitula continue to define the ideal workings of society but break free from conciliar tradition and bear the distinctive stamp of Charlemagne’s court itself. Historians frequently emphasize capitulum 72, which asks for the correction of liturgical books and scripture, along with the creation of schools for educating young men not only in grammar but also in music and computation.17 The majority of this last section, however, actually advances far more abstract social ideals—ideals that intensify bonds of collective identity and diminish local and professional affiliations. There is to be peace and concord “between bishops, abbots, counts, judges, and all persons everywhere, of greater or lesser status.”18 Judges are to judge justly, petitioners and oathtakers are to swear honestly, hatred is to be outlawed, unlawful killings are to be anathema, and all children henceforth are to honor their parents.19 Here Admonitio generalis decrees not specific behaviors so much as ideal states of mind that all Franks are to cultivate, regardless of station, regardless of person. It is an updated Ten Commandments, a collection of universal rules for membership among God’s chosen people, newly augmented with New Testament moral principles.
It is no surprise, therefore, that in the final summary capitulum of Admonitio generalis, we find the shorthand phrase “love of God and neighbor,” which would be invoked throughout the ninth century and the rest of the Middle Ages in reference to caritas. Capitulum 82 commands bishops and priests to remind their flocks, “with all urgency,” “about love of God and neighbor (dilectione Dei et proximi), about faith and hope in God, about humility and patience, about chastity and continence, about kindness and mercy (misericordia), about giving alms and the confession of their sins, and that they forgive their debtors their debts according to the Lord’s prayer, knowing most certainly that because they do such things they will possess the kingdom of God.”20 This call for love of God and neighbor reveals nothing of the deep philosophical concerns that so worried men such as Augustine and Gregory the Great. It simply recalls the affective interconnection between self, deity, and other that the Gospels demanded and upon which the Book of Pastoral Rule had founded its ideology of worldly masculine authority.
It might be tempting, especially in light of Charlemagne’s campaigns against the pagan Saxons and Avars that he launched at exactly this same moment of his reign, to read the absence of “love of enemy” in this formulation as a cynical misrepresentation of the doctrine that caritas represents—an intentional omission of the more difficult-to-follow aspects of New Testament ethics by priestly members of the Church who were interested less in directing Christian fellow-feeling inward than in directing Christian aggression outward. Jonathan Riley-Smith made precisely this argument for the discursive invocation of “love of God and neighbor” three hundred years later, during Urban II’s preaching campaign for the first crusade.21 Such a reading, especially for the Carolingian world, would be the wrong inflection. Not only would it overestimate the power that spiritual leaders held within the governing structures of Carolingian society, but it would also fail to recognize the discursive power that caritas had come to hold within Christian culture.
In Admonitio generalis (and the call to crusade, for that matter), the phrase “love of God and neighbor” serves rhetorically, first and foremost, as a common denominator of collective identity. It passes unassumingly and unproblematically as the first among a summary list of behaviors and qualities that the document promises will lead any Frank to salvation. In so doing, it diminishes allegiances to professional or local affiliation. It furthermore renders the document’s constructed associations between cooperative aristocratic behavior and divine favor not only logical but also perfectly natural. Since all Franks learn the same core values—values that will lead to salvation, the very essence
