by the flesh in the secular world entails the opposite: indulging in pleasures, going where one wants, sleeping when one wants, speaking what one wants and to whomever one wants, seeking whatever pleases the senses, and taking delight in “beautiful clothing and cavalry and weapons” just as one wants. Being dead to the world, according to Paulinus, is to live by God’s will; to live carnally is to live by one’s own.86
Underlining further the correct prioritization of mental before physical renunciation of worldly things, the Liber reminds Eric that worldly joy is not in and of itself evil. Paulinus affirms that jubilation is quite acceptable as long one simply refrains from rejoicing in sin.87 God seeks only spiritual gifts from humans and nothing more, Paulinus teaches in another passage.88 “I beg you, my brother, that you never let the love of the flesh block celestial love from you,” he tells Eric.89 “Always, always,” Paulinus urges with rhetorical repetition in a later section, “let our flesh be subject to the soul like a handmaid to her mistress.”90 In other words, Eric must never allow illicit forces to command his body lest it commit war against his spirit, and the flesh must always be subject so that it can properly obey the orders of the Holy Spirit.91 But subjection of the flesh does not mean renunciation for Paulinus.
When Paulinus does suggest physical asceticism to Eric, he always takes into account Eric’s situation within the world. He understands perfectly well, that is, that Eric does not live in the cloister and therefore cannot renounce his worldly life entirely. He must give to the less fortunate, but Paulinus also urges him do so with discretion, “so that everyone, namely giver and receiver, might have solace.”92 When Paulinus discusses the excesses of indulging in too much food, he appeals not so much to Eric’s inner spirituality as he does to his sense of health: “excessive dishes” hurt the body as well as the soul. Too much food and drink weaken the stomach. An abundance of blood and cholera leads to a number of “table diseases.” He encourages Eric to avoid delicacies and over-opulence of food—if not all the time, then as much as he can, and at the very least on days of fasting and atonement.93 Likewise, when Paulinus warns Eric to refrain from “superfluous speech,” he is not recommending monastic silence. Rather, he is reminding Eric that the tongue is meant to bless and to praise God and not to speak badly of anyone. “Let us not,” he says, “grow accustomed to our worst habits in our every act, or even thought, because a habit that has been greatly prolonged and affirmed is avoided and rejected with no small labor.”94 In his injunction against drinking too much, Paulinus declares that God gave wine to humanity “for the happiness of the heart, not for drunkenness.” Eric is to drink only as is dictated by “natural weakness,” but Paulinus does not ban drinking altogether; Eric must simply use alcohol for its positive medicinal effects and not assign to the soul’s ruin what God gave for bodily healing.95 Discussing Eric’s earthly parents, Paulinus explains that Eric’s devotion to God should always supersede his allegiance to his family, yet he does so through an appeal to the filial loyalties that he knows Eric will always have. “If we love our earthly parents, who sustained labor on our behalf for a short time, with so much feeling (affectu),” he writes, “should not our celestial Father, who was nailed to the cross for us, be loved all the more?”96
These are not specific injunctions or practices that Paulinus teaches Eric to follow so much as they are variations on the same ideological theme. Paulinus understands Eric’s worldly status completely, just as well as he understands his own worldly status. He makes no suggestion whatsoever that Eric should renounce the world, nor does Paulinus frame the conduct that he teaches as a “lesser evil.” Eric simply needs to conduct his worldly life with the proper priorities and an inner will oriented toward the right kind of manliness. In this, he and Eric are effectively partners, bound to the same earthly duty. The key to our unlocking of Liber exhortationis as a historical artifact is to recognize the ways in which, textually, the book does far more than simply present a pragmatic listing of Eric’s Christian obligations. It tells an ideological tale of who a Christian man is and whence his authority derives.
At the end of the book, Paulinus vividly describes the drama of final judgment. It is a courtroom scene in which God weighs all of the evidence of a man’s life in order to make his decision. The chief prosecutor is the “Demon Accuser” who “will throw in our face whatever we have done, and on what day we have sinned, and in what place, and what good work we ought to have done then in that time.”97 If a man is guilty, the Demon Accuser will plead convincingly. Paulinus brings to life the demon’s voice and the speech that he will make before the divine judge:
For then the devil will have to say, “Most Fair Judge, judge that man, who did not wish to be yours through grace, to be mine on account of his guilt. He is yours through nature; he is mine through misery. He is yours because of your Passion; he is mine because of my persuasion. He is disobedient to you; to me he is obedient. From you he received the stola of immortality; from me this tattered tunic in which he is clothed. He casted away your clothing; he arrived here in my clothing. What sexual perversion did he commit? What intemperance? What avarice? What anger? What pride? What of the rest of my parts? He sent you away; he sought refuge in me.… Judge that man to be mine and to be damned along with me!”98
The function of the scene is not to scare the reader with fire and brimstone. It is rhetorically so frightening precisely because of its procedural cool. The Accuser addresses God, the judge, in the respectful tone of the most well-trained legal scholar. His airtight arguments list sin after sin, error after neglectful error of obliviousness and disloyalty. All are unassailable. And most tragically, all could have been easily avoided. Structurally, the theater of this final moment makes perfect sense as a performed end to the guiding life narrative that the book lays forth. The narrative begins with human origins and concludes with the two possible outcomes of human existence: salvation and damnation. In salvation, the soul rejoices from at last reconciling with God and returning home. In damnation, the reader must hear the demon’s voice and feel the cold terror of him speaking not lies but hard and sad truths.
Far from a simple manual of conduct, therefore, we can see just how fundamentally the text serves as an explanation of Eric’s humanity and what it specifically entails. It warns Eric to do everything within his power to avoid damnation but also provides him with the macroscopic view that will help him to do so—knowledge about who he is, where he is going, and how the secular world in which he lives compares to the heavenly world to which he truly belongs. This macroscopic view, the same view that Gregory the Great advocated for the Christian bishop, is where we must focus our interpretative energy when reading the text. Paulinus does not just describe traits and practices to which Eric should or should not adhere. He also narrates the philosophy of mind—the correct orientation of the will through caritas—that enfranchises Eric’s power, his purpose, and his ultimate authority to lead those under his care to their own eventual salvation.
Alcuin and Wido
Alcuin refrained from writing for Eric of Friuli, advising him to turn instead to Paulinus. Yet in 799 or 800, the abbot of Marmoutier did write a lay mirror of his own for the march-lord closer-by, Count Wido of Brittany—the same post held by the tragic hero Roland, who may have been Wido’s close relative.99 Alcuin’s book, De virtutibus et vitiis, would become his most well-known work after his death, achieving significantly more popularity during the Middle Ages than anything else he wrote and certainly more than any of the other lay mirrors. The book would be translated into no fewer than four vernacular languages during the later Middle Ages and is extant today in more than 140 surviving manuscripts.100
The composition, brevity, and relative stylistic simplicity of De virtutibus et vitiis lend Alcuin’s book its own distinctive flavor when compared to Liber exhortationis. Unlike Paulinus’s text, Alcuin’s work contains an introductory address, clarifying both author and recipient. Even with this opening nuncupatoria, however, Alcuin’s book is shorter than Liber exhortationis by more than two thirds. Alcuin’s Latinity is also less ornate than Paulinus’s, favoring
