sources are different, too. Although he certainly drew on the same kinds of patristic authorities that Paulinus did (including, importantly, Gregory the Great), Alcuin seems to have favored more direct use of scripture: the Old Testament books of Psalms and Prophets and the New Testament Gospels (Matthew and John) and letters of St. Paul. Clearly influencing Alcuin as well was the work of Augustine and, perhaps but not necessarily through Augustine, Cicero.102 Finally, Alcuin’s work has a different structure and flow than Liber exhortationis. Divided into thirty-six short capitula, his book still begins with caritas as the guiding theme and ends on salvation, but De virtutibus et vitiis presents less of a narrative arc from creation to end of days and is rather focused more intently, as the title indicates, upon the explication of various aspects of virtus (which, once again, we should understand both in its modern sense of “virtue” and its gendered etymological sense of “manly vigor”) and their corresponding negative vices.
Still, the term that Alcuin used to describe the contents of his book is precisely the one that Paulinus used—exhortatio. And just as with the relationship between Paulinus and Eric, Alcuin wrote for Wido as his spiritual advisor, not as a hierarchical superior. If we can take Alcuin at his word (we have no reason not to do so), Wido is neither a reluctant recipient nor stricken with feelings of inferiority. Alcuin states only that he wrote his book in response to Wido’s direct request for brief advice regarding his occupation as a warrior.103 These words have received many different interpretations in modern scholarship, leading some to wonder whether Wido would have been happy with what he received. The book does not truly discuss war much at all.104 To make sense of the text’s logic, we must picture more generously that Wido, like Eric, wished to know how to make his religion apply more directly to his secular duties. Alcuin’s reply, like Paulinus’s, was to teach the nature of worldly power itself—how Wido could perform his worldly duties in a manner that would grant him greater access to God’s protection and authority.
The most important parallels between the two texts, therefore, involve their ideological themes and arguments, which are effectively the same. Alcuin argues that both spiritual and lay power derive from exactly the same source, caritas. He argues that caritas involves cultivating an emotional connection with both equals and subordinates and acting upon that emotional connection with good deeds. He therefore claims that laymen and clergy have equal power and duty within the secular world because they are engaged in the same duties toward their fellow Christians and the same fight against evil. Finally, he teaches that the emotional bonds created by caritas are what connect the Christian layman to the heavenly realm, allowing him to rise above the corruption of the secular world and to see it more clearly. Just as with Liber exhortationis, Alcuin’s book espouses quite traditional Christian ideologies of ascetic masculinity, yet it would be a mistake to interpret this as urging Wido to retire from the world. While Alcuin describes the imagined ideological link between caritas and ascetic authority, he also shows Wido how to access that authority while still living and working as a secular lord and military commander.
An Ideology of Power: “Neither Martyrdom nor Contempt of the Secular World… Could Accomplish Anything Without the Duty of Caritas”
De virtutibus et vitiis begins with a discussion of true wisdom and the obscurity of worldly knowledge. Meditation on true wisdom—correct knowledge—so central to the moral philosophies of Augustine and Gregory the Great sets the tone for Alcuin’s book as a whole. Citing 1 Cor 3:19, Alcuin writes that what seems to be wisdom in the world is stultitia (“folly” or “stupidity”) in the eyes of God. To achieve perfect wisdom, one must achieve cognitio divinitatis. Translated woodenly, this means “recognition of divinity,” yet Alcuin’s use of the pregnant phrase suggests not only contemplation of God’s nature but also recognition of the divinity that exists within the manly self. “ Cognitio divinitatis,” Alcuin continues, “is the virtus of good work, and the virtus of good work is the reward of eternal blessing.”105 All is intertwined and interconnected. As with Paulinus, nothing that Alcuin writes is theologically new per se, but he innovates by applying a traditional Gregorian ideology of spiritual authority to lay power.
Caritas is Alcuin’s foundation for all service to God. Caritas is the first principle, he writes, because nothing pleases God without it.106 Caritas is so fundamental, in fact, that “neither martyrdom nor contempt of the secular world … could accomplish anything without the duty of caritas.”107 This is a remarkable statement to flow from the pen of an abbot. In claiming that the physical acts of the ascetic and martyr accomplish nothing without the foundation of caritas, Alcuin makes caritas the key component of ascetic authority. This, in turn, allows him to build further ideological connections between caritas and Wido’s comital authority.
Alcuin defines caritas as loving God and neighbor with complete conviction. It is the great leveler, the glue that binds Christian society together into one unified whole. “If by chance anyone asks what a neighbor is,” Alcuin writes, “let him know that every Christian is rightly called neighbor, because all are sanctified in the baptism of the son of God, so that we are brothers spiritually in perfect caritas.”108 To our modern eyes, Alcuin’s exclusion of non-Christians in his definition is distasteful at best. Yet the thrust of the passage is not so much to advocate Christian exclusivity as it is to teach a philosophy of aristocratic inclusivity. By claiming that all Christians are spiritual brothers in caritas, he is explaining to Wido that all men, highborn or low, lay or clergy, are part of the same harmonious community. “Our spiritual family is nobler than the fleshly one,” he adds in support.109 His words seek not to enforce boundaries between Christian and non-Christian but rather to perforate fixed boundaries of familial identity and partisanship.
From this discussion, Alcuin moves toward a methodical explication of the manly qualities—the virtutes—that lead directly from caritas. Hope for salvation compels men toward good works. Good works lead to peacemaking. Peacemaking leads to just and righteous judgment. Alcuin’s emphasis on peacemaking and judicial justice has led interpreters to claim that his text perhaps pays more attention to the duties of a secular lord than the mirror of Paulinus.110 Reading these sections in the context of the entire book’s structure, however, suggests more that Alcuin was simply interested in outlining a standard hierarchy of qualities that descend from the love of God. Caritas is his integrating precept, and in the secular world, caritas manifests in emotional connection with others, both superiors and inferiors, and the performance of caring, loving deeds.
An Ideology of Secular Ascetic Sacrifice: “We Can Be Martyrs Without Sword and Flames If We Observe Patience with Our Neighbors Honestly in Our Soul”
The virtus that was to be of particular use to Wido in performing love of God and neighbor was misericordia, or mercy.111 Carolingian writers did not make the same semantic distinctions as the Stoics between clementia and misericordia.112 However, Alcuin certainly knew Augustine’s discussions in De civitate dei and very likely read Seneca’s De clementia as well.113 Alcuin mirrors Augustine’s discussion of “an eye for an eye” in that he presents mercy as the first step on a path that leads to an inner disposition of truly unmitigated love and emotional connection with the other.114
Just as Seneca had written about clementia, Alcuin had no illusions that in the secular world, mercy must work in tandem with penalty. If there is only mercy, his text explains, it gives subjects license to sin, but if there is always only discipline, the soul is turned toward delinquency out of despair.115 “Everyone who judges properly holds the scales in hand,” he writes in a later passage on the role of the secular judge; “in another sense, he holds justice and mercy, so that for justice he returns sentence for sins and for mercy he tempers the penalty for the sinner.”116 Misericordia, therefore, helps the Christian lord achieve justice—balance and fairness—in his governing duties. This
