Hincmar of Rheims: Life and work

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Introduction: Hincmar’s world

Rachel Stone

Life and times

When Flodoard, a canon of Rheims cathedral, came to write his history of the church of Rheims in the mid-tenth century, he had no doubt about the dominant figure in the see’s story. It is not the numerous saintly bishops of Late Antiquity who take up most of the Historia Remensis ecclesiae, but a far less holy and more controversial figure: Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims between 845 and 882.¹ Hincmar’s predominance is partly due to the large quantity of information about him that Flodoard had access to, above all Hincmar’s numerous letters. It is mainly from Hincmar’s own writings that Flodoard constructed his history of Rheims.

Our own view of the Carolingian empire is also greatly shaped by Hincmar’s work. Hincmar was born within a decade of Charlemagne’s acceptance of the imperial title in 800; he died in 882, six years before the death of the last undisputed Carolingian emperor, Charles the Fat. His long life therefore encompassed the greater part of the Frankish empire’s existence. But Hincmar was not just a witness to the Carolingian ninth century. As archbishop of Rheims, he was one of its leading political figures, closely involved in most of the urgent issues of the time. Above all, he was one of the pre-eminent commentators of his day. His voluminous writing encompasses many genres: history (notably the Annals of St-Bertin between 861 and 882), theology, hagiography, political tracts, letters, moral treatises, regulations for the priests of his archdiocese, legal opinions, Church council acta, liturgical texts, administrative documents, poetry and exegesis.² Much of what we know about this period we know, directly or indirectly, from Hincmar;³ as Janet Nelson comments, ‘It has … proved hard to view the ninth century other than through Hincmar’s eyes’.⁴

Hincmar has therefore been a vital source for historians of the early Middle Ages. Indeed, given the scale of his production, almost anyone looking at ninth-century Francia engages with the archbishop at some point. His works are cited by studies on topics ranging from magically induced impotence via lordship to the legal right to confront one’s accuser.⁵ However, as a direct consequence of this breadth of interest, most historians consider only one element of Hincmar’s activities, thereby breaking the coherence of his activities. The exceptions are two biographies of Hincmar: one by Heinrich Schrörs from 1884 and one by Jean Devisse published in three volumes in 1975–76.⁶ Although these remain important resources, there has been much scholarship on Hincmar since Devisse, both drawing on neglected texts and re-examining some of Hincmar’s well-known works.

This book therefore seeks to overcome the current fragmentation of scholarship by bringing together historians currently working on Hincmar in a range of fields. It is intended as a road-marker, showing how recent research has altered our understanding of the archbishop, and of the world he did so much to shape. Above all, as the subtitle indicates, it connects together Hincmar’s life and work.

Hincmar’s works are overwhelmingly anchored to a specific time, place and context: he wrote in response to events, not as an abstract theorist or secluded in a monastic cell. He was on the front line of politics, serving four successive rulers of western Francia (Louis the Pious, Charles the Bald, Louis the Stammerer and Carloman) and interacting with several more from the other Frankish kingdoms. His role as an archbishop was no sinecure: he was repeatedly embroiled in disputes both within his diocese and further afield, sometimes theological, but more often concerning practical matters of Church discipline and the preservation of Church property. Several of these disputes dealt with issues that touched him at a personal level, such as his claim to the archbishopric of Rheims and his bitter struggles with his nephew, Hincmar, bishop of Laon. To understand Hincmar and his work fully, therefore, we need an overview of the political and ecclesiastical worlds in which he moved,⁷ so this first chapter concentrates on outlining Hincmar’s career. It then looks briefly at what we can learn from him of Carolingian culture and society, and at Hincmar’s legacy, as background for the more detailed studies in the rest of this book.

Early years: to 843

Hincmar was of noble birth and related to several counts, but we do not know exactly where or when he was born; suggested dates range from 802 to 810, and northern France is the most plausible location for his birthplace.⁸ Hincmar himself states that he was ‘raised from the beginnings of infancy’ at the monastery of St-Denis.⁹ He was probably a child oblate, and thus may have been barely weaned when he first entered religious life.¹⁰

Hincmar obviously won favour with the abbot of St-Denis, Hilduin, who took him to Emperor Louis the Pious’s court, where Hilduin was arch-chaplain (head of the palace clergy), to continue his education.¹¹ This was at some point during the early or mid-820s, a formative moment in Hincmar’s life, when he met figures like Adalard, Charlemagne’s cousin, who died in 826.¹² He may also have witnessed Louis’s voluntary public performance of penance at Attigny in 822 to atone for the blinding of his nephew Bernard of Italy;¹³ Hincmar’s later writings are certainly full of reported conflicts over the meanings of royal gestures, as well as moralising over the significance of rituals.¹⁴

At Attigny, Louis’s confession brought a response from the bishops highlighting their own sins and negligence.¹⁵ A political theory was developing in the mid-820s which stressed the interaction of the emperor, bishops and ‘people’, rather than focusing solely on secular rulers. Each social group (ordo) had its own ministerium (divinely bestowed office or function), but also shared in the emperor’s ministerium of caring for the Church and empire. The bishops in particular saw themselves as jointly overseeing the empire; indeed, they not only shared power with the ruler, but their responsibility was even greater than his, since they were answerable to God for the sins of all those in their flocks, commoners and kings alike.¹⁶ This theory found its fullest expression in the Council of Paris in 829, and Hincmar frequently repeated its key messages throughout his life.¹⁷

In 830, Louis the Pious’s sons Pippin and Lothar led a revolt against their father, but Louis was soon able to regain control of his empire. Hilduin, who had supported the rebels, was briefly sent into exile in Saxony in 831.¹⁸ Hincmar’s precise activities are difficult to establish in this period. He claimed to have been Louis the Pious’s confidant for eight years, but although he spent at least two periods at court, the dates are very uncertain.¹⁹ In a letter to Pope Nicholas of July 867, Hincmar says vaguely that, after a period at the royal court, he returned to St-Denis:

After the brothers in the monastery of St-Denis, where I had been raised, had converted to a regular life and habit, I dwelled there for a long time, fleeing the world without hope or appetite for a bishopric, or any prelateship. Taken from there by friends for the service of the emperor and the meetings of the bishops, serving from the obedience alone that was enjoined to me, after some years I sought again the quiet of the monastery. But the anchoring line with which I had negligently bound myself in port was broken, as my sins demanded, and, persuaded by exhortations in the guise of the salvation of the many, by those whom I trusted more readily than I perhaps should have, I was thrown back to the tempests of the huge and wide sea, in great peril.²⁰

Flodoard is more specific, saying that Hincmar worked with Hilduin and Louis to restore monastic life in St-Denis, and that he accompanied Hilduin into exile. Hincmar then managed to gain favour with Louis and his magnates, and helped ensure Hilduin’s recall. However, a charter from Louis the Pious in 832 concerning reform at St-Denis makes no specific mention of Hincmar.²¹ Hincmar’s return to St-Denis, therefore, may have been as early as 829 or as late as 832, either interrupted by Hilduin’s exile or following it, and his exact role in the reform of St-Denis is not clear.

Nor does Hincmar say anything to Pope Nicholas about the next events in which he was almost certainly involved: those surrounding the second rebellion of Louis the Pious’s sons Lothar, Pippin and Louis the German against their father, in 833/834.²² This time, Louis was formally removed from his throne and made to carry out a ‘voluntary’ penance that prevented him acting as a ruler. Louis’s deposition was ceremonially reversed when support for the rebels ebbed away and he regained power. Although Hilduin again supported the rebels, Flodoard states that Hincmar refused to abandon his loyalty to the emperor, even when Pope Gregory IV, who had come to Francia in support of Lothar, appealed to him.²³ Hincmar’s close relations with both Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald makes this statement plausible, and Hincmar may not have wished to mention in his letter of 867 this dubious involvement of a pope in Frankish politics.

Another outcome of the second rebellion was to have long-term consequences for Hincmar. Archbishop Ebbo of Rheims was made a scapegoat for the penance that the bishops had imposed on Louis. He was forced to confess to a capital crime at the Council of Thionville in February 835 and resigned from his office of archbishop as ‘unworthy’.²⁴ The procedural complications and irregularities around his resignation or deposition, however, meant that his claim to the province of Rheims was not conclusively extinguished. No successor to the see was appointed for ten years, and Ebbo remained a problem for Hincmar even beyond the grave.²⁵

Hincmar does not seem to have drawn immediate political advantage from his loyalty to Louis the Pious in 833–34. His activities in the later 830s are hard to trace, although his comments to Nicholas imply that he returned to St-Denis again and a list of monks from there in 838 includes his name.²⁶ Flodoard says that he was responsible for care of the relics (custos sacrorum pignerum) and Hincmar may have assisted Hilduin in promoting the cult of St Denis and contributed to the writing of the Miracula sancti Dionysii.²⁷ He also probably continued acquiring a formidable knowledge of patristic authors: he claimed to have read the letters of Pope Leo many times in this period.²⁸

On Louis’s death in 840, a civil war broke out between his surviving sons, Lothar, Louis the German and Charles the Bald; Lothar claimed the whole empire and attacked Louis and Charles in turn. Hincmar’s role during the war is unclear: Nithard, our most detailed source for the events of the war, makes no mention of him.²⁹ Hincmar presumably remained loyal to Charles the Bald, who at some time between 840 and 845 gave him control of one or more monasteries.³⁰ He was clearly affected emotionally by the civil war, recalling more than thirty years later the particularly bloody battle of Fontenoy.³¹ He may also have made a more intellectual response to the conflict. The mid-ninth-century manuscript Paris BnF lat. nouv. acq. 1632A contains a collection of patristic citations known as the Capitula diversarum sententiarum pro negociis rei publice consulendis (CDS) on the topics of warfare and the duties of princes. This compilation has usually been attributed to Jonas of Orléans, though Phillip Wynn, who is currently editing the text, has suggested that it may have been produced by Hincmar, possibly in the spring of 842, as part of Charles’s attempts to justify his actions against Lothar.³²

The events of 840–43 also had several major effects on the ecclesiastical province of Rheims. Firstly, while Lothar controlled the area, Ebbo returned briefly to his archbishopric and ordained a number of clerics before fleeing again. The legitimacy of the ordination of ‘Ebbo’s clerics’ remained a problem for Hincmar for decades to come.³³ Secondly, the division of the empire into three by the Treaty of Verdun in 843 meant that the province of Rheims now lay across a border: the majority of it was in West Francia (held by Charles the Bald), but part of it, including the whole diocese of Cambrai, lay within Lothar’s Middle Kingdom.³⁴ There was also property belonging to the church of Rheims in East Francia (held by Louis the German) and in Aquitaine, which Pippin II still claimed to rule. This meant that any archbishop of Rheims needed an outlook that extended beyond the West Frankish kingdom. Finally, while the see had been left vacant, Charles the Bald had given away some of its property to reward his followers.³⁵ These events laid the foundations for three key themes of Hincmar’s archepiscopate: arguments about the status of some of the clergy within his province, a concern for peace between rival Carolingian kings and an obsession with Church property.

An intellectual in religious politics, 843–855

As Janet Nelson has shown, the Treaty of Verdun did not end Charles the Bald’s struggles within West Francia. Pippin II remained a threat: a major defeat inflicted on Charles’s army in the Angoumois in June 844 meant that in 845 Charles had to agree to Pippin’s continuing lordship in Aquitaine.³⁶ Periodically there were also severe difficulties with the Bretons and with Viking raiders, while the existence of rival kingdoms gave powerful magnates the ongoing possibility of switching allegiances.³⁷

Charles was only in his early twenties, but already had considerable political experience and showed himself keen to recruit scholars to support his rule.³⁸ Hincmar’s early involvement in such politically-motivated scholarship has also been suggested. Nelson argues that his hand can be detected both in the capitulary produced at Coulaines in 843 and in the capitula of Toulouse from 844.³⁹ Hincmar certainly played a prominent role in the Council of Ver in December 844, although the capitula from this meeting were written up by Lupus of Ferrières.⁴⁰ One of the demands at Ver was that the see of Rheims, ‘destitute’ and ‘despoiled’, should be given a bishop.⁴¹ Charles responded by appointing Hincmar four months later.

Hincmar’s first years in his see were difficult. He had to attempt to restore property of Rheims lost during the long episcopal vacancy (835–45); several early letters request assistance in this from Empress Ermengard (wife of Lothar I) and Pippin II of Aquitaine.⁴² He also needed to ensure the effective management of property still held. Josiane Barbier provides evidence that Hincmar took a personal interest in ensuring that Rheims dependants remained tied to their existing unfree status and were not allowed to escape from the Church’s control.⁴³

Hincmar also needed to negotiate treacherous post-war politics. Emperor Lothar I had previously supported the attempt of Ebbo to return to Rheims, and was therefore not well disposed to Ebbo’s would-be replacement. As Elina Screen shows, Hincmar was eventually successful in cultivating Lothar’s favour as well as Charles’s, but Hincmar was never able to monopolise influence at any royal court.⁴⁴ Indeed, he was theoretically opposed to a ruler’s favour being monopolised in such a way.⁴⁵

Ebbo’s direct threat to Hincmar’s position was soon greatly lessened, but Hincmar’s authority in his own province came under threat from a different source after 848: the controversial Saxon monk Gottschalk.⁴⁶ Although initially an oblate of Fulda in the eastern kingdom, Gottschalk had become a monk at Orbais in the diocese of Soissons in the early 830s and has been ordained as a priest by a chorbishop of Rheims while the see was vacant. As a result, Archbishop Hrabanus of Mainz was able to argue that he was Hincmar’s responsibility, and so Gottschalk arrived in Rheims in 848. Gottschalk’s views on predestination posed intellectual challenges that Hincmar could not ignore, and he produced three different works on the topic: Ad reclusos et simplices in Remensi parrochia contra Gothescalcum in 850, a now-lost treatise in 856 and finally De praedestinatione Dei in 859–60.⁴⁷

In attempting to deal with Gottschalk, Hincmar probably alienated himself from many of the other intellectuals active at the same time. Prudentius of Troyes, John Scottus Eriugena, Lupus of Ferrières and Ratramnus of Corbie all ended up proposing views contrary to Hincmar’s. Indeed, there seems to have been an overlap between opponents of Hincmar over predestination and supporters of the clerics ordained by Ebbo.⁴⁸ Ebbo of Grenoble, for example, the nephew of Ebbo of Rheims, was prominent at a council held in Valence in Lotharingia in 855 which condemned the Council of Quierzy’s statement on predestination.⁴⁹

Other bishops developed theories that attacked Hincmar’s status in a different way. Theutgaud of Trier claimed, probably around 852/53, that he should be the primate over the province of Rheims. He based this on the argument that Trier, as the capital of the former Roman province of Belgica prima, was superior to Rheims, the capital of Belgica secunda.⁵⁰ It is not clear how seriously Theutgaud’s claims were taken, but they were based on what became an important authority in disputes involving the province of Rheims: the Pseudo-Isidorian forgeries. It now seems clear that some version of this set of forgeries was being created at Corbie in the mid-830s, in reaction to the deposition of Ebbo, but the process of forgery was a long one, extending past 847.⁵¹ Eric Knibbs has recently reasserted the traditional argument that Hincmar was a specific target of the forgers; certainly several of Hincmar’s opponents, such as Rothad of Soissons and Hincmar of Laon, made use of the texts.⁵²

Nevertheless, by the early 850s Hincmar could begin to feel more secure. Ebbo died in 851, and the Council of Soissons in April 853 decreed as invalid the orders of all clerics ordained by him after his deposition in 835.⁵³ At Quierzy in June 853 Charles the Bald, Hincmar and some of the other West Frankish bishops agreed a four-point formula on predestination, which they hoped would put an end to the problems caused by Gottschalk.⁵⁴ As for Pseudo-Isidore, the breadth of topics covered makes a targeted attack on Hincmar unlikely, and he cited the texts himself on occasions.⁵⁵ Indeed, although Hincmar of Laon was one of the most determined users of Pseudo-Isidorian texts, his subordinate clerics also used them against him.⁵⁶

From the 850s onwards, Hincmar was able to focus more on ensuring correct religious practice within the province of Rheims. He restored the church of St-Remi and organised the translation of the body of St Remigius in 852. Marie-Céline Isaïa has also suggested that Hincmar may have begun work on a first version of the Vita Remigii in this period.⁵⁷ It was also now that Hincmar produced his first two sets of diocesan statutes. The many chapters concerning expectations of priests in his province confirm Hincmar’s attention to detail and his concerns with the practicalities of parish life. Much of his time was still taken up with trying to enforce discipline locally.⁵⁸ Letters from throughout Hincmar’s years in office discuss a wide variety of administrative, pastoral and legal questions, from his arranging the election of suffragan bishops to his attempts to block the remarriage of Lothar I’s vassus Fulcric.⁵⁹ A letter to Bishop Lupus of Châlonsen-Champagne, for example, discusses a man who had mistakenly supported his own child at confirmation, and thus according to the Carolingian understanding of godparenthood as creating kinship ties, was now incestuously married to his own wife.⁶⁰ Other letters concern the penance for a monk who had committed homicide and Hincmar’s attempts to discipline a runaway ministerialis.⁶¹

Province and kingdom, 855–860

In 855, Lothar I died and his kingdom was divided between his three sons. The eldest, Louis II, held onto the kingdom of Italy, which he had controlled since around 840. Lothar’s second son, Lothar II, received the northern part of the kingdom, while the youngest brother, the sickly teenager Charles, received Provence. Lothar I’s Middle Kingdom, which had stretched from Frisia down to Italy, was no longer a threat to Charles the Bald. Instead Charles and Louis the German sought parts of it for themselves, or were able to cross through the region in order to attack each other.

Hincmar was more prominent among Charles’s advisers from 856 onwards than he had been during the first decade of his episcopacy.⁶² He composed a coronation ordo for Charles’s daughter, Judith, on her marriage to King Æthelwulf of Wessex, and also produced several texts for Charles on a topic that particularly concerned the archbishop: ecclesiastical property.⁶³ The Collectio de raptoribus, promulgated by the Council of Quierzy in 857, collected biblical, patristic and canonical quotes to condemn those who misappropriated Church property.⁶⁴ The Collectio de ecclesiis et capellis from 857/58 was a much longer and more complex work, which tried to untangle different rights over churches.⁶⁵ As often with Hincmar, it may also reflect more personal quarrels. The two opponents of Hincmar’s views mentioned in the preface are Prudentius of Troyes (with whom Hincmar had quarrelled over predestination) and Rothad of Soissons, one of Hincmar’s suffragans, whom Hincmar deposed in 861 after years of tension.

Charles the Bald’s concerns about orderly control of Church property came at a time when he himself was facing major political difficulties. While he and Lothar II were besieging a Viking army in Oissel in Normandy in the summer of 858, his brother Louis the German, invited by magnates of Charles’s own kingdom, invaded. Some bishops went over to Louis on his invasion, most notably Wenilo of Sens. In contrast, Hincmar was among the most prominent of those resisting him. Louis summoned the West Frankish bishops to a synod at Rheims in November 858; they met at Quierzy instead, and Hincmar drafted a long letter to Louis on their behalf. In this the bishops politely declined to become Louis’s fideles, while exhorting him to restore the status of the Church and to consider the divine punishment that awaited someone who attacked an anointed king (like Charles).⁶⁶ These delaying tactics meant that Louis was unable to legitimise his coup, and gave Charles time to rally his supporters. Louis was forced to retreat in January 859 and Charles celebrated the restoration of his kingdom.⁶⁷

Hincmar’s prestige and influence were further increased by the events of 858, and he played a prominent part in subsequent diplomatic negotiations between Charles, Louis and Lothar II, who was acting as a peacemaker. These negotiations dragged on until a meeting at Koblenz in June 860, but meanwhile, a new matter was dominating attention. Soon after their marriage, Lothar II had become alienated from his wife, Theutberga. He ‘put her aside’ in 857, and accused her of incest with her brother Hubert. Forced to take her back in 858, after her champion had successfully endured the ordeal of boiling water, Lothar tried again in 860.⁶⁸ She confessed – almost certainly under coercion – to ‘unnatural’ intercourse with Hubert and asked at a synod to be allowed to retire to a monastery to do penance.

Although the case did not concern events in his province, Hincmar became involved because some Lotharingian bishops appealed for his advice on the case. The result was his treatise De divortio Lotharii regis et Theutbergae reginae, a complex piece of work built up in several phases during 860 and tackling a wide range of legal, penitential and moral questions.⁶⁹ Hincmar’s opinions on the divorce were by no means automatically accepted, but the commission shows an appreciation of Hincmar’s expertise beyond his own province. At the Council of Tusey in the autumn of 860 Hincmar was asked for his advice on two other long-running marital disputes: Count Stephen of the Auvergne; and Engeltrude, who had abandoned her husband, Boso.⁷⁰

Hincmar was not, however, the most senior churchman to consider Engeltrude’s case: Pope Nicholas I had already sent several letters to the synod concerning her.⁷¹ Nicholas I was not the first pope to be involved in Engeltrude’s case or the first with whom Hincmar had contact, but his interventions in Francia were to become far more frequent and far-reaching than those of his predecessors, and he and Hincmar often clashed.

The archbishop and the pope, 861–867

From 861 onwards much of our basic historical narrative is supplied by Hincmar himself, who took over writing the Annales Bertiniani (the most substantial historical work from the period) after Prudentius’s death in 861.⁷² We are thus very well informed both about Carolingian family politics and Frankish relations with the papacy for 861–82, but we often see them predominantly through Hincmar’s eyes, and he may conceal as much as he reveals.⁷³

Conflicts within East Francia lessened the direct threat that Louis the German posed to Charles the Bald after 859.⁷⁴ He was therefore able to go more on the offensive and attempted unsuccessfully to take over the kingdom of the sickly Charles of Provence in 861.⁷⁵ Charles the Bald also tried to exploit Lothar II’s marital difficulties. Lothar, however, had now gained enough support from his own bishops to hold a synod in Aachen in April 862; this decided that he could repudiate Theutberga and marry Waldrada and he did so later that year.⁷⁶

Lothar in turn tried to take advantage of problems with West Frankish royal marriages. In 862, three of Charles the Bald’s children attempted to marry without his permission. Judith eloped with Count Baldwin; Charles the Younger, still under age, married ‘the widow of Count Humbert’ and Louis the Stammerer married Ansgard, sister of Louis’s favourite Odo.⁷⁷ The fate of Charles the Younger’s marriage is not known; Charles himself was badly injured in an accident in 864 and died in 866 from his injuries.⁷⁸ Louis the Stammerer remained married to Ansgard for long enough to produce at least three children. At some point, however, he repudiated her, either voluntarily or under pressure from his father. Hincmar’s role in accepting or even justifying this repudiation has been suspected, but cannot be proved.⁷⁹ At the very least, Hincmar made no sustained protest about Louis’s second marriage.⁸⁰

Hincmar was definitely deeply involved in Baldwin and Judith’s case, which turned on a social topic of major concern to him: raptus, the abduction of women for the purpose of marriage.⁸¹ Charles had Baldwin condemned by a secular judgment and then anathematised by his bishops, while Hincmar wrote letters warning people not to receive Baldwin.⁸² At a meeting of Charles the Bald, Louis the German and Lothar II at Savonnières in late 862, Hincmar records Charles denouncing Lothar both for his own marriage to Waldrada and for his support of Baldwin and Engeltrude.⁸³ A year later, however, Charles allowed Baldwin and Judith to marry, thanks to the intercession of Pope Nicholas on their behalf. Theutberga too appealed to Nicholas for support in regaining her position as Lothar II’s wife.⁸⁴

Nicholas I (r. 858–67) was one of the most significant popes of the early Middle Ages. His determined view of the extent of papal authority led him to become involved in long-running conflicts with both eastern and western churches,⁸⁵ but his own political position remained vulnerable, since it depended on the current ruler of Italy. Louis II briefly took military control of Rome in 864.⁸⁶ Louis could also restrict travel to and from Rome: in 864 he refused permission to Nicholas to send legates to Charles the Bald, and Hincmar describes at one point sending messengers disguised as pilgrims to Rome, so that they would not be intercepted.⁸⁷

The papacy’s role in ninth-century politics was essentially reactive: responding to those appealing for the pope’s judgment in what could be seen as ecclesiastical matters, which included marriage disputes. Nicholas, however wanted to push such authority further. He claimed the right to judge bishops, even if there had not been an explicit appeal to Rome, and the exclusive right to call or confirm Frankish synods.⁸⁸ Both these claims were opposed by Hincmar, who argued that conciliar canons established only more limited rights for the papacy on such matters.⁸⁹

Hincmar also clashed with Nicholas and his advisers over the more general question of the relative priority to be given to papal decretals (letters setting out the pope’s decisions on matters of Church order) as against conciliar canons.⁹⁰ While Nicolas claimed the right to amend the decisions even of ecumenical councils, Hincmar argued that the texts of decretals had less authority than that of conciliar canons, comparing decretals to the Old Testament law and councils to the gospels.⁹¹

Papal claims to authority in judicial matters rested largely on the general grounds of being successors to St Peter.⁹² Frankish bishops, such as Hincmar, in turn claimed to be the successors to the apostles, and did not therefore automatically regard themselves as bound to blind obedience to the pope.⁹³ Two different concepts of the Church are visible: the Roman view tended towards a papal monarchy; the view taken by Hincmar and other Frankish bishops instead stressed the autonomy and authority of metropolitans and the theoretical importance of consensus in decision-making (although Hincmar in practice had just as many absolutist tendencies towards his own subordinates as Nicholas had towards his).⁹⁴

Although appeals by clerics and laypeople at all levels to the papacy multiplied in the second half of the ninth century, the mechanisms for papal judgments remained rudimentary.⁹⁵ Papal legates were regularly sent to Francia but they could be ineffective or subverted. There were also worries about letters to and from popes being intercepted or forged.⁹⁶ Yet the alternative, holding synods at Rome to deal with cases, was not necessarily more satisfactory. As Hincmar pointed out, dealing with cases in the provinces made it easy to produce witnesses, while it was extremely hard to assemble both parties to a case in Rome simultaneously.⁹⁷

Papal interventions in Francia ultimately relied on the pope’s authority being accepted both in theory and practice, which had more to do with politics than purely legal arguments; nor was it a simple matter of the theoretical ‘power’ of the parties concerned. For example, Engeltrude successfully avoided Nicholas’s attempts to make her return to her husband, but the pope was able to force Lothar, at least temporarily, to take Theutberga back. Nicholas also deposed two archbishops (Gunther of Cologne and Theutgaud of Trier) for their role in Lothar’s divorce.⁹⁸

Hincmar was thus not the only archbishop to have bruising encounters with Nicholas, but his relations with the pope were peculiarly complex, as shown by a long letter of Hincmar to Nicholas in early 864.⁹⁹ In turn, the letter discusses the case of the bishopric of Cambrai, Baldwin and Judith’s marriage, the deposition of Rothad of Soissons and Gottschalk’s heresy. Nicholas’s interest in Gottschalk confirms just how long-running a problem the monk was for Hincmar.¹⁰⁰ In contrast, Nicholas supported Hincmar over the election of a new bishop for Cambrai, rejecting Lothar II’s choice of Hilduin, the brother of Archbishop Gunther of Cologne. It was only in 866, however, that an alternative bishop to Hincmar’s liking was finally installed.¹⁰¹

Hincmar’s dealings with Nicholas over Baldwin and Rothad were less satisfactory for him. Hincmar expressed unhappiness at Nicholas’s decision that Baldwin should not have to do penance for his elopement with Judith, but was nevertheless forced to accept it.¹⁰² The case of Rothad of Soissons, however, brought Hincmar into major conflict with Nicholas, because it concerned papal intervention in how Hincmar dealt with the bishops of his own province – his understanding, in other words, of what it was to be an archbishop.

Rothad was a senior bishop, who had probably anointed Hincmar himself in 845, but long-term disagreements between them came to a head in 861, when Rothad deposed a priest for unknown reasons.¹⁰³ The priest appealed to Hincmar, who ordered him to be reinstated. Rothad’s refusal to do so eventually led to him being deposed at the Council of Soissons in June 862. Before the sentence of this synod was pronounced, Rothad appealed to Nicholas I. Hincmar, however, claimed that Rothad in fact had later withdrawn his appeal, and that the whole matter was being stirred up by his own opponents in Lotharingia, who were angry with Hincmar for having opposed Lothar’s divorce.¹⁰⁴

Hincmar may also not have had the full support of his other suffragans, as subsequent events showed.¹⁰⁵ Nicholas ordered Hincmar to reinstate Rothad and to send him to Rome along with his accusers. Rothad reached Rome in the summer of 864. but no accusations were formally made; Nicholas therefore ceremonially reinstated him as a bishop and then cleared him of charges.¹⁰⁶ The papal envoy Arsenius subsequently brought Rothad to Charles the Bald and had him restored to his see in mid-865, ‘not according to the rules, but according to an arbitrary and overbearing decision’ as Hincmar put it.¹⁰⁷

Once again, royal politics intersected with more specifically ecclesiastical matters. Charles and Louis the German had made an alliance directed against Lothar in early 865, with Hincmar as one of its guarantors.¹⁰⁸ Another action of Arsenius in West Francia was collecting Theutberga, whom he then restored to her role as Lothar II’s queen, thus obstructing Lothar’s efforts to ensure his succession. Johannes Haller argued that Charles the Bald accepted Rothad’s restoration precisely because he wanted Nicholas I’s support against Lothar.¹⁰⁹

Hincmar had made enough enemies to be vulnerable, and he could not invariably count on Charles’s support. He was still used by Charles to produce key royal documents, such as the Capitulary of Pîtres in June 864, a detailed discussion of government practice, coinage reform and the military measures to be taken against the Vikings. It was also at Pîtres that Pippin II was condemned to death, and Hincmar drew up the indictment against him.¹¹⁰ But Hincmar was not the only powerful churchman whom Charles found useful, and that led to the archbishop facing a potentially far more dangerous conflict with Nicholas over Wulfad of Sens.¹¹¹

Wulfad was one of ‘Ebbo’s clerics’, those ordained during Ebbo’s reclamation of the see in 840–41. Their ordinations had been declared invalid by the Council of Soissons in 853, but Wulfad had continued to seek advancement and had become a favourite of Charles the Bald. In 866 Charles was anxious to make Wulfad archbishop of Bourges in order to strength his own control of Aquitaine; the validity of Wulfad’s ordination was thus raised again. Despite the fact that he had confirmed the decisions of the first Council of Soissons, Pope Nicholas ordered Hincmar to re-open the case. A second Council of Soissons in 866 proposed a compromise: that the ordinations of Wulfad and the other should be graciously accepted as valid, but without overthrowing the decisions made in 853. Nicholas, however, now made ominous threats that Ebbo’s deposition thirty years previously might not have been valid, raising questions about Hincmar’s own position.¹¹² It was only shortly before Nicholas’s death in December 867 that he was finally reconciled to Hincmar.¹¹³

These ecclesiastical disputes were not easily settled by ‘canon law’ – a misleading term, since it suggests modern concepts of a legal system, with an established framework of fixed legislation and formal procedures. Although canons (rulings on Church organisation) had been promulgated from the third century, in the Carolingian period there was still no agreed corpus of canons or consensus on what types of sources could be counted as canonical.¹¹⁴ A number of different collections of canons circulated and the texts of the canons themselves were not necessarily fixed.¹¹⁵ Vaguely worded canons were interpreted flexibly by all parties.¹¹⁶ There was also no settled court procedure or system of appeals; instead, elements from penitential practice and more formal legal proceedings were blended together. Ebbo, for example, had supposedly not been judged but had voluntarily withdrawn from his office as unworthy.¹¹⁷ Few judgments were definitive: decisions made by one pope could be reversed by his successor.¹¹⁸ While it is unlikely that Nicholas in 866 actually wanted Hincmar deposed, he may have wanted the chance graciously to allow a humiliated Hincmar to remain as archbishop.

Charles the Bald still valued Hincmar’s abilities: at the end of the Council of Soissons in 866, Charles’s queen Ermentrude was ritually consecrated by Hincmar and the other bishops, perhaps in the hope of her bearing further healthy sons.¹¹⁹ But Charles also expected to get his way, regardless of ecclesiastical judgments. The Council of Troyes in October 867 declared that in future no bishop would be deposed without consultation with the pope.¹²⁰ In their letter to Nicholas I, however, probably written by Hincmar himself, the bishops also asked for the pallium, a ceremonial vestment, to be sent to Wulfad, who had already been ordained as archbishop at Charles’s command.¹²¹ Control of bishoprics, and their large resources of land and men, was too important to rulers to be left as a purely internal Church matter.

Towards empire, 868–877

In the late 860s, Hincmar again asserted his rights as archbishop over his suffragans, eventually falling into bitter conflict with his own nephew, Bishop Hincmar of Laon.¹²² Hincmar of Rheims initially supported his nephew when, in June 868, Charles the Bald summoned the bishop of Laon to answer charges of depriving men of their benefices unfairly. The older Hincmar at this point wrote several treatises, collectively known as Pro ecclesiae libertatum