out New Testament moral extremity in very literal ways in defiance and protest of imperial authority.38 These Christians were, of course, the holy martyrs—witnesses to God’s love who willingly suffered, even sought out persecution through their strict adherence to pacifism, nonviolence, and nonresistance toward their oppressors and executioners. They were quite literal incarnations of caritas to the absolute letter of the Gospel. As the Western Roman imperial elite slowly converted to Christianity over the course of the fourth century CE, however, Christianity had to adapt to its new majority status. Martyrdom could no longer signify discipleship in the same manner that it once did. This sea change in circumstance rendered the performance of unlimited love to the letter of the Gospel far more theologically complex.39
Sulpicius Severus wrote his story of St. Martin and the Beggar during precisely this transitional moment in the history of Christian social thought. At the turn of the fifth century CE, he and a remarkable concentration of talented contemporaries—not just Augustine and Jerome but also Ausonius of Bordeaux (d. c. 395), Ambrose of Milan (d. 397), and Paulinus of Nola (d. 431), among others—contemplated what Christian society and practice should become. Christianity was now the “official” spiritual affiliation of the Empire, and as the fifth century continued, political, social, and economic distress made redefinition of its worldly identity imperative. Wealth poured into churches like never before, and the Christian elite needed to reconcile their new political and social power with the countercultural energy of early Christian moral philosophy.40
The story of St. Martin and the Beggar depicts one of the most prominent developments: the association of caritas with new Christian figures who lived beyond the borders of society and chose to escape the normative structures of worldly life. These new types of Christians actively defined themselves in separation from the general population and elected to live their lives within artificial societies that were designed to resemble more closely the Kingdom of Heaven in their laws and structures. These were the hermitages and cells of the first cenobitics. Ascetics withdrew from society not only because they wished to live beyond the structures that governed it but also because they believed that these structures themselves created sin. Monastic spaces became testing grounds for new social rules, spaces constructed specifically to allow “true” and literal New Testament ethics to be performed freely.41
The rule that the Carolingians would adopt and propose as the standard for all monastic life was the Rule of St. Benedict (d. 547), compiled originally for his abbey at Monte Cassino.42 According to this rule, a true monk is humble in all action. He “turns the other cheek” and patiently endures all injuries without retaliation.43 Benedict’s Rule orders monks to follow the commandments of the Lord: to refrain from murder, adultery, and theft.44 A brother ought to live by the Golden Rule.45 Furthermore, he ought not indulge his anger or seek revenge; he ought not return evil for evil and instead love his enemies.46 He ought to hate no one nor be contentious; he ought to pray for his enemies, treat them with misericordia, and make peace with them without delay.47
This rule makes clear that true Christianity is rooted in caritas but, importantly, that this Christianity can only exist within the “workshop” of the monastery.48 Caritas guides the abbot in the fair and just discipline of his fellow monks.49 It affords him the capacity to care for wayward brothers with compassion and without despair.50 Caritas is the final destination of the monk’s twelve steps of humility.51 Caritas is the product of the brothers’ mutual service within the community.52 It is the foundation of a brother’s obedience.53 And it is the binding affect that all brothers are to show toward each other, toward their abbot, and even toward visitors.54
The notion that true Christian discipleship might require escape from the world became an issue of fervent debate. For Christians who wished to command the authority of God and yet still serve society itself as its leaders, New Testament moral extremes posed real and significant difficulties. An act of misericordia could indeed turn into an act of harm toward innocent Christians; forgiving a murderer his crimes could place a society of men and women who now self-identified as Christian in danger of discord. And in what were increasingly unstable political times, Christian soldiers had to reconcile their devotion with their duty to fight and to kill; Christian leaders had to reconcile their commitment to misericordia with their duty to protect. Martin’s solution of pacifism could not serve as a practical solution for all.55
Augustine is yet again a key theological source. In his letter against Faustus the Manichean, which likely dates from around the year 410 CE, Augustine refutes a heterodoxy with which he himself had identified as a young man.56 It is a document best known to the modern world for its articulation of Christian “just war” theory, which sanctioned certain kinds of violence in the service of God and the protection of Christian society.57 The letter is important for the purposes of this discussion, however, because Augustine founded his arguments for just war upon a principle of interiorized and thus metaphoric New Testament morality. This would endure as a central component of Christian secular male ideology for the remainder of the Middle Ages.
We only know Faustus’s arguments, which had likely been written some decades earlier, from their rearticulation by Augustine in the letter itself. Part of Faustus’s challenge seems clearly to have involved exposing the inconsistencies between the moral precepts of God as described in the Old Testament and the ethical demands of Jesus in the New Testament. Why, Faustus had asked, does the Old Testament praise the patriarchs as righteous men when they marry multiple wives, a clear ingression against the New Testament? Why do Moses and the Israelites wage war and kill when the New Testament calls for unmitigated love of neighbor, stranger, and even enemy? How can a Christian Rome wage war against its enemies and protect its citizens when the New Testament advocates nonviolence and nonresistance?
Augustine’s response had profound implications for the later Christian cultures that drew directly from his teachings. He proposed, revealing the Platonic influences within his theology, that the morality described in the New Testament refers in fact to ideal forms that can only exist completely in the Kingdom of Heaven. Here on earth, form must vary in accordance with need. Sometimes moral righteousness requires a passivity and attitude of nonresistance that closely resembles the letter of the New Testament ideal; at other times, it requires ferocity and force. The reason that these forms can seem opposite and confusing to humans is because the nature of earthly life renders the human mind imperfectly able to discern between the moral “rightness” and “wrongness” of specific actions. Moral action on earth is always subordinate to its required end, according to Augustine, and humans simply cannot always see that end.
Augustine grounded his arguments against Faustus in repeated assertions that God is and can only be a purely benevolent power. Thus, while the Old Testament might describe, for example, God’s jealousy when the Israelites worship the Golden Calf, God’s anger when humans transgress his command, or God’s vengeance when he wreaks havoc upon the enemies of Israel, Augustine claimed that these are not emotionally negative responses. They are evidence of God’s “quiet goodness” (tranquilla bonitas) in desiring to protect souls from corruption and exploitation through the service of false gods. God does not kill in retribution for offenses inflicted upon him, Augustine wrote. God kills so that the world may benefit from fear of him and act rightly because of it. He punishes both sinners and the righteous for the purpose of perfecting both, based upon what he deems necessary for a given soul to achieve the Kingdom of Heaven in the end.58
This is, Augustine admits freely in making his argument, difficult at best for humans to comprehend. Humans live, according to Augustine’s philosophy, in a continual state of confusion about morality and moral behavior. God’s reality (true reality) and human comprehension of that reality are fundamentally disconnected. The virtues of great minds, Augustine explains, can resemble quite closely the vices of lesser ones “in appearance, but not in reality” (nonnulla specie, sed nulla aequitatis comparatione). Those who condemn
