Be a Perfect Man. Andrew J. Romig
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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 is of vital importance, Alcuin argues, because “the people are battered almost more severely by wicked judges than they are by the cruelest enemies. No robber among strangers is as greedy as an unfair judge among his own. Unfair judges are worse than enemies. Enemies can often be escaped by flight; judges cannot be avoided because of their power.”117
Still, the higher purpose of misericordia for Alcuin is that it helps the judge to receive mercy from God in final judgment. “No sinner can hope for mercy from God,” Alcuin writes, “who does not himself exercise mercy toward the sinners among him.”118 Alcuin moves Wido quickly from a discussion of public caritas in the form of balanced mercy and justice to a discussion of private, interpersonal connections of affect through the virtutes of patience and tolerance. A judge who does not balance mercy and discipline will not merit the mercy of God, “but,” Alcuin continues, “a man ought to begin this mercy with himself.”119 Flipping Stoic clementia on its head, mercy becomes not about indulging criminality or reducing penalty for others. It involves the regulation of the self, making right decisions in the first place and avoiding the need for penance or restitution altogether. “How can he who is cruel to himself be merciful to others?” Alcuin argues.120 Through rhetorical repetition of the word “himself” (“seipso … seipso … seipso”), he narrows the focus of his lesson from judicial acts of mercy to the person of the individual Christian lord: “He who prepares for himself perpetual flames with his sins is cruel to himself. He who begins with himself, and diligently guards himself lest he be punished along with the devil, is truly merciful. And thus he may offer to others what he observes to be good for himself.”121 Wido exercises mercy upon himself by refusing to sin and to invite damnation. And this is precisely what gives him his authority, because it proves that he understands the good well enough to bestow it upon others.
As Alcuin’s focus continues to narrow, the sections that follow his discussion of misericordia begin to address more personal issues as well. Alcuin explains that the merciful act of pardon (indulgentia) is important not just in the public forum but also in personal relationships: “He who knows how to pardon sins with clementia receives the clementia of divine pietas in return. For it is granted to us so that we may grant it to those who harm us with whatever malice.”122 Pardon, in turn, leads to patience (patientia) in the face of personal injury. This, according to Alcuin, is the virtus that completes mercy for it ends injury. He is careful to explain that patience is not the art of lying in wait for the next opportunity for revenge. True patience involves pardoning from the heart, with no intention of later retaliation or vengeance. True patience, the passage suggests, will provide Wido with the facility to pardon others their transgressions against him. Yet patience also leads to something even greater. It is better to deflect injury with silence than with a response, Alcuin writes. What is best, in other words, is to make no judgment at all and to endure without retaliation or penalty. “We can be martyrs without sword and flames,” Alcuin’s text proclaims triumphantly, “if we observe patience with our neighbors honestly in our soul. It is more praiseworthy to deflect injury by being silent than to overcome it by responding. He who patiently tolerates evil will deserve the everlasting crown in the future.”123
It has been suggested that Alcuin’s “martyrs without sword or flame” is nothing more than cynically grandiose and hyperbolic.124 I am not persuaded by this reading. Alcuin would have understood completely the implications of his words. The gravity of his diction conveys not grandiosity, not naivety, not guilelessness or concession to “secular” laxity but rather the force of Alcuin’s ideological claim. Caritas links to asceticism in a series of logical steps that move from peacemaking to mercy to pardon to patience and, finally, to complete acceptance and nonretaliation. Followed to its end, caritas offers the worldly man the same prestige and divine authority as the martyrs of old.
An Ideology of Merit: “Each Will Be Crowned in Perpetual Glory According to the Merit of Good Work”
Because caritas is the source of all Christian power and authority, Alcuin argues that laymen and clergy are both called equally to the same dedication to God’s service and to the protection of his chosen people. Salvation is the common goal of all humanity, and thus it is the duty of society’s leaders to guide those over whom they rule toward that goal. “Let not the nature