relatively new and distinctly Christian concept: caritas. These terms and the interrelations of meaning that they acquired during these centuries would become essential components of Carolingian ideologies of masculine authority in the centuries that followed.
The chapter begins with the highly influential exegesis of Augustine of Hippo (d. 430), who wrote passionately about the radicalism of early Christian ethics and the ways in which the New Testament founded Christian identity upon a bedrock of boundless other-oriented emotional care. The chapter then shows how, after the slow conversion of the Roman Empire during the fourth century CE, this extreme form of affective connection became increasingly associated with monks and the monastic cloister. Augustine would again be an authoritative voice, arguing that worldly Christianity had to adopt a more metaphoric understanding of New Testament ethics in order for society to thrive. A final section explores the writing of another towering pre-Carolingian intellect, Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604). Gregory sought to reconnect monastic and worldly Christianity through the articulation of a universal ideology of Christian power. For Gregory, the ascetic male remained the paragon of Christian manhood and authority. Yet bishops and priests, whose duty it was to live and to work within the secular world—the saeculum—could gain vital access to this authority through the embodiment of deep emotional connection and care for the souls over whom they governed. Fellow-feeling became the bridge by which the secular Christian elite would ideologically traverse an ever-widening gap between the countercultural ideals of the first Christian sects and the new hegemonic exigencies of Christianity’s expansion throughout Europe.
Caritas, Pietas, Clementia, Misericordia: Stoic Philosophy and Early Christian Moral Discourse
The earliest Christians of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean separated themselves from the dominant Roman and Roman-Judean cultures of the region by advancing fierce, public critique of contemporary moral assumptions. Since Jewish law advocated loving one’s neighbor, early Christians asked why one’s neighbor should be the fixed limit. Why not love a stranger? Why not even love an enemy? Since Greco-Roman culture advocated a balance between compassion and firmness in the exercise of justice, Christians asked why justice should be the limit. Why not be compassionate and indulgent even toward those who deserved to be punished? Why not, instead of seeking justice against criminals for their wrongdoing, turn the other cheek and accept without retaliation the injuries inflicted by others? New Testament ethics identified the “natural” limits of traditional moral thinking and proposed that such limits might not be natural at all.8
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ ” preaches Jesus of Nazareth in his Sermon on the Mount; “But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.”9 This famous passage from the Gospel of Matthew is nothing less than a direct salvo against the most fundamental moral presumptions of the ancient world. Jesus of Nazareth quotes the Old Testament maxim “an eye for an eye” not as a call to vengeance, which is how we commonly misunderstand the phrase in today’s discourse. Rather, he invokes the phrase as a reference to the ancient social ideal of balanced justice.10 The Sermon preaches that true justice only exists in the heavenly realm and can never be achieved on earth. Worldly society should therefore build itself upon a different principle: agape.
In Christian writing, the Koine Greek word agape (α̉γάπη) signified more than its simple denotation of “love.” It represented a particular kind of lovingness—an unmitigated, boundless form of emotional identification with the other that was designed directly, in its expression, to break free from traditional moral limits and expectations.11 Early Christian writers seem to have chosen the word precisely because of its rarity in ancient usage. And in the Vulgate, St. Jerome (d. 420) translated agape into Latin with a similarly rare term in Western Roman usage: caritas.12
Augustine of Hippo, whose exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount would be authoritative for the duration of the European Middle Ages, took great interest in the underlying structures and mechanisms by which New Testament ethics worked. For Augustine, pre-Christian moral philosophy was not wrong; it was simply incomplete. As he explained, the ancient limit to violence that “an eye for an eye” represented was “a great step” (magnus gradus), for it kept revenge from exceeding injury. This was only the beginning of peace, however. “Perfect peace,” he continued, “is to have no desire at all for such revenge.”13
He described the dynamic between victim and attacker as a series of progressive increments that ultimately link the two together. The person who inflicts injury upon another without cause occupies the lowest step. On the next step is the person who refrains from inflicting unprovoked injury but who, when provoked, returns injury greater than what was inflicted. This is what “eye for an eye” is meant to correct, says Augustine. And it is an enlightened advance, he argues, because it requires restraint not to retaliate beyond due measure. The next two steps logically involve returning less than the injury inflicted and, finally, exacting no retribution at all.14 This act of exercising no retribution at all approaches what Jesus of Nazareth teaches, Augustine wrote, but even it does not suffice:
For it still appears a small matter to the Lord if you do not pay back the evil that you have received with no evil in return, unless you are prepared to receive more. For this reason he does not say, “But I say to you not to repay evil for evil,” even though this is a great command. Instead he says, “Do not resist evil in such a way that you not only do not repay the injury done to you but even so that you do not resist for fear that something else may be inflicted on you.” This is what he goes on to explain: But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, offer him the other as well. He does not say, “If anyone strikes you, do not strike back,” but, “Present yourself again to the one who strikes you.”15
The call here, Augustine explains, is for a “perfected” morality in the same sense of the Latin that Dhuoda invoked for her son: a morality carried out to its fullest possible extreme, moving beyond the limits of “common” ethics toward ultimate completion.16 Humans were not only supposed to exact less vengeance or punishment than equal justice demanded; they were also not to exact any vengeance or punishment at all. Instead, they were to give further. If struck on the cheek by an offender, they were not to strike back, as balanced justice would sanction. They were to turn their other cheek toward their attacker and face a potential second attack. If an offender wished to take something by force, the victim was not supposed to take something from the offender in retaliation; the victim was to offer the offender even more in addition.
This state of perfection involved the achievement of deep emotional connection between the self and all others. “You have heard that it was said,” continues the Sermon on the Mount,
“You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.17
Many learn how to offer the other cheek to an attacker, Augustine wrote in reference to this passage, but few understand how to exhibit lovingness toward the one who wrongs them. For Augustine, the solution involved collapsing the boundaries between self and other entirely, allowing all human beings to recognize themselves as fellow creatures, regardless of station, regardless of friendship or enmity. To do so, one had to recognize, like a physician, an enemy’s ill will as a symptom of the soul’s sickness, finding connection through this recognition
