Be a Perfect Man. Andrew J. Romig
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the sixty-six small chapter sections that are preserved in its most recent published version, a scholarly edition from the early eighteenth century.42 Paulinus uses the word caritas and the phrase “love of God and neighbor” interchangeably throughout his text, and the phrase provides a loose structural frame for the book itself. Early chapters dwell on “love of God,” the theme introduced by the first capitulum. Lessons involve human nature and its relationship to divinity, followed by a long section excerpted directly from Julianus Pomerius concerning the secular world and its corrosive influences.43 Paulinus then expands upon the general themes of the Pomerius section, shifting the book toward “love of neighbor,” the theme introduced explicitly in capitulum 22. In this section of the book, he encourages Eric to cultivate virtutes animae, a phrase that we should certainly read in the modern sense of “the soul’s ‘virtues’ ” but also in its more explicitly gendered etymological sense, which would have been clear to any Latin speaker: “manly vigor of the soul.” Lessons about virtus cover a range of worldly behaviors, from confession, to prayer, to care of household, but they also address the states of mind and being that are conducive to salvation, such as humility and patience. Subsequent lessons expand more directly upon the meanings of salvation and redemption, describing both the reward to come for all who create good in this life and the sadness that all men must feel for the inevitable destruction of those souls who seek only evil. The work ends with a series of meditations on mala carnis—“evils of the flesh”—presented not as a condemnation of the secular world or of the body but rather as a warning for Eric always to be aware of the secular distractions that might keep him from maintaining focus on salvation and the heavenly otherworld.
Reading with greater attention to structure allows us to see how effectively the text creates an image of secular Christian life that not only encourages Eric toward salvation but, more importantly, explains and naturalizes his power as an aristocratic male—a power that he and Paulinus equally share. In the service of this image, the book advances at least four interwoven ideological arguments. Paulinus argues that a man’s true power comes from his cultivation of correct knowledge—knowledge about who he truly is and about God’s loving nature. Paulinus argues that laymen and clergy are at essence the same; they have the same complementary duty, which is to protect and to care for souls through the cultivation of emotional bonds with others. He argues that the deeds that flow from “love of God and neighbor” are what earn a man access to his authority from God, expressing the relationship between the aristocracy and God as precisely the same type of relationship that earthly vassals have with their lords. And finally, he argues explicitly that worldly pleasures are empty and corrosive, but caritas and the emotional interconnection that it entails can keep worldly Christian men safely linked to the heavenly realm. This last argument does not advocate monastic withdrawal from the world. Quite the opposite, it renders normative and perfectly natural the ideological connections between worldly and divine authority upon which the Carolingian aristocracy relied in the exercise of their power.
An Ideology of Mind: “To Your Head, God Has Added the Grace of Spiritual Knowledge”
The treatise begins with an exhortation that to love God and to cling to him with one’s entire will is the highest good and the greatest beatitude.44 Paulinus writes in the rhetorical style of the learned pastor, making clear the duty of laypeople to obey the clergy in matters of the Christian faith.45 Yet to think of Liber exhortationis as little more than a preacher’s sermonizing is to misread the text entirely. In the opening section and throughout the book, Paulinus addresses Eric as charissime frater (“dearest brother”)—a monastic address that levels authority and establishes an egalitarian tone.46 The exchange between author and reader evokes not hierarchy, in other words, but brotherhood. Paulinus acts as the doctor of souls that Gregory the Great described. He responds to a direct request for knowledge about the physics of moral behavior itself, and from his learned vantage, suspended between worlds, he passes on what he can more clearly see. None of what he teaches is new doctrine; all is quite standard theology. Paulinus simply explains to Eric how he, too, can achieve the traditional vantage of Gregory the Great’s pastoral leader and properly judge right and wrong behavior for himself.47
For Paulinus, understanding the love of God begins with a lesson in human biology. Eric’s interior homo (“interior man”) bears the image of its Builder, God; for inside the body the intellect, will, and memory all imitate the Holy Trinity.48 Still, wrote Paulinus, now alluding to the second half of caritas upon which he would expand later in the book, love of God is insufficient unless there is also work—action. “Understanding God alone is insufficient,” the Liber explains, “if our will is not made in his love; nay, even this does not suffice unless work is added along with memory and will.”49 Right action, just as Gregory the Great explained, depends on the cultivation of right knowledge.
“To your person” (capiti—literally “to your head”), Paulinus’s biology lesson continues, God has added “the grace of spiritual knowledge, that it may illuminate your judgment and lead you toward eternal life.”50 Following the long exegetical tradition of original sin, Paulinus wrote later in his book that the “human race” (genus humanum) is damned because of the actions of its first parents. Adam and Eve’s sins were lust and pride, but importantly, their pride stemmed from their “damnable” neglect of the likeness of God in which they were made.51 Eric must always remember that he is not simply a count with secular duties of office and family; he is a “work of divine majesty,” formed in divine likeness. The metaphor of construction is invoked again and again throughout the text; the more Eric loves his Builder, says Paulinus, the more he will understand himself to be built by God.52
An Ideology of Equality: “Persona Has No Meaning in the House of God”
After explaining to Eric his true nature, the remainder of the book expands on the emotional bonds that a man must strive to create in order to earn salvation. Paulinus taught that, because the inner self is far more important than the outer in the eyes of God, all persons, regardless of their rank or way of life, must follow the same rules and guidelines for living, which center on emotional interconnection with and care for other souls. Eric must develop feeling for all others, whether they are of his station or below. “I beg you,” Paulinus entreats him, “although a layman, be prompted to all work of God, kind to the poor and sick, consoler to the dying, compassionate to the miseries of all people, generous in alms, mindful of the widow’s two mites in the Gospel, and of the prophet saying, ‘Break your bread with those who are hungry,’ but on the other hand foreseeing discretion of alms, so that everyone, namely giver and receiver, might have solace.”53 The key term in the passage is quamvis: “although.”54 Although a layman, Eric must perform God’s work. Although not a priest, Eric must be kind to the sick and to those less fortunate than he. Although not a monk, he is to console the dying and to show compassion for the woes of others. The moral burden of God’s work, the passage claims, is shared equally by all Christians.
Through comparative statements about relative duty, Paulinus placed particular emphasis in his book on the equality of professional religious and lay aristocratic men. Paulinus urges Eric at a later point in Liber exhortationis to command the members of his household and all those subject to him to live a life of sobriety while at the same time not taking too much pride in their abstinence. With God’s help, they are to do all things “temperately, justly, kindly, and religiously” because, Paulinus explains, Christ poured out his blood “not only for us clerics, but also for the whole human race, who are predestined for eternal life.”55 The Kingdom of Heaven was promised not only to “us” (by which, again, Paulinus refers to himself and his “professional” religious identity—that is to say, his identity as a man who has professed formal vows) but to all laypersons who serve God’s precepts “with their whole heart.”56 The message is for all, he says; no laypersons, clerics, or sacral virgins should neglect the salvation of their souls.57
Paulinus’s comparative diction directly calls into question what he perceives to be a prevalent assumption among laypersons—namely, that the lay Christian life requires fundamentally different