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This chapter discusses the earliest medieval writers who mentioned impotence magic, and whose discussions formed the basis for later ideas about the subject. The first of these was Hincmar of Rheims. Hincmar was the first writer to distinguish impotence magic from other forms of love magic, when he argued that, unlike love magic, it was a ground for annulling a marriage. His discussion of annulment was the basis for later medieval canon law on the subject. Hincmar also seems to have included information gathered from his own observation, as did other early medieval discussions of impotence magic, such as the penitential of Burchard of Worms. The chapter also discusses Constantinus Africanus, the earliest medieval medical writer to suggest cures for impotence magic. All of these writers associated impotence magic with women.

This chapter traces how impotence magic found a recognized place in the canon law and theology of marriage. This happened because it was incorporated into two works that became standard university textbooks on canon law and theology: the Decretum of Gratian and the Sentences of Peter Lombard. The chapter argues that 12th-century commentators focused mostly on whether the canon law for impotence magic (established by Hincmar of Rheims) was valid, under what circumstances an annulment could be granted, and how allegations of impotence could be proved, although a few also claimed to have encountered real cases. It also surveys the few 12th-century medical writers who discussed impotence magic, including Urso of Salerno, who offered a physical explanation for a phenomenon that other authors ascribed to magic.

The tenth century is very ill-served. Whether through civil war, alien aggression, or simple loss of self-confidence, the habit of recording events wore sadly thin. In fact, the period 888–987 in West Frankish history is almost as much a dark age as the seventh century. The historian's task therefore consists of piecing together tiny snippets of information, often ambiguous in import, to create a picture that makes sense when put against the much fuller view derived from the ampler sources of the late tenth and eleventh century. The pitfalls in his path are substantial, the challenge great. Many of the chronicles on which historians have to rely for tenth-century West Francia were compiled in the eleventh century; because of the lateness of their testimony, their use involves more complex value judgements. However, there are two tenth-century chronicles that provide a starting-point for the construction of political history, those of Flodoard of Rheims and Richer.

The eleventh century is richer in source material than the tenth. A slow intellectual revival, centred on the Loire valley, Chartres, and Rheims, spread into Normandy, Burgundy, and Aquitaine, reinvigorating monastic chroniclers, inspiring learned bishops, creating among princes a new desire to be immortalized in the written word. And as more came to be recorded, slowly the emphasis changed: the hand of the Almighty began to recede a little from the affairs of men, liturgical needs ceased to provide the commonest framework for literary endeavour, secular interests intruded more forcefully into the narrative. The barrier between Dark Age annalists and hagiographers and their twentieth-century interpreters begins to dissolve. The most remarkable fact about the chronicles and histories of the period is that kings no longer played a central role.

This chapter studies the significance of a nota mark placed in the margin of the three known modern copies of the polyptych of the monastery of St-Remi of Rheims. This nota, very probably marked on the original of the polyptych, was perhaps added by Archbishop Hincmar himself. It must have served to attract the attention of readers of the polyptych to the list of witnesses of a judgement, which authorised the bringing back into servitude of a third of the servi from St-Remi’s estate at Courtisols, in 847 or a little after. The nota’s presence witnesses to the seriousness of the affair and the stakes involved in the seigneurial use of writing at Rheims in Hincmar’s era.

This chapter tells the story of how the Gospel of John and its interpretive traditions and trajectories functioned in the culture of polemic surrounding the Trinity, particularly how exegeses of specific texts were contested, and became a liminal space where multivalent notions of orthodoxy and heresy were formed and controlled. It analyzes the exegetical and theological disputes surrounding the Gospel of John in early modern Europe, with particular attention to the way these debates further shaped the culture of English Christianity. It examines the politics of translation in which disputes over the Geneva Bible glosses, the Douay–Rheims New Testament, and a number of Annotations on the Gospel of John simultaneously clarified and clouded the issues surrounding Trinitarian orthodoxy. After a detailed analysis of a few key Trinitarian treatments of the Gospel of John, the chapter focuses on the various interpretive trajectories of the anti-Trinitarian Johannine exegesis, both Continental and English. It shows how a Huguenot pastor in London, Jacques Souverain, managed to synthesize previously radical ideas which saw the Gospel of John itself as a departure from primitive Christianity, and how the influence of the putatively Platonizing divinity, which he saw as an unbridled abuse of allegorical hermeneutics, further corrupted Christianity.

Randolph Bourne, a youthful intellectual, was bitterly opposed to America's intervention in the Great War. The fervor behind America's entrance into the conflict had unmistakable religious overtones, with a majority of American clergymen resolutely defending the preservation of democracy as a noble enterprise that justified the taking up of arms. Many of the issues that had been debated by Romain Rolland, French intellectuals, and the Catholic Church had found a new nesting ground. Resounding throughout most of the American tracts on morality in relation to the current struggle was the belief that the issues at stake were universal and that the war had touched people everywhere and had dissolved forever all possible claims of isolationism. Paradoxically, the dissolution of isolationism was now joined to the concepts of patriotism and national identity. Many popular American songs of the day played to the power of prayer and, especially after the series of bombings of Rheims Cathedral, addressed the destruction that had visited sanctuaries large and small.

This chapter examines female migrant behaviour in eighteenth-century Rheims. Using the evidence of family reconstitution, tax and census listings, it reconstructs and presents the lives of migrant women in a rapidly developing textile town. The chapter also characterises the working life of the following categories of urban women: dowried young spinsters, undowried spinsters, married women (housewives), young widows without children, young widows with children, older widows without children, older widows with children and older spinsters.

Hincmar’s treatise De raptu, written in the 850s, is the only early medieval moral text which tackles raptus, the abduction of women, but it also forms part of a new and wider discourse on marriage. Hincmar depicts raptus as the negation of the social peace that a king must create, and demands that he plays a key role in its suppression. The king ought to obey divine law: Hincmar presents a serious of positive and negative images of the king and his counsellor working together or in opposition. He is keen, however, to ensure that the interpretation of Old Testament images of raptus remained the prerogative of bishops rather than laymen. A model is produced in which the authority of fathers and kings mirrors each other: obedience to these ensures the creation of unity both within marriage, where there is an increased emphasis on consent, and in wider society. Respect and fidelity are the key values in this imagined ideal society; Hincmar justifies stern punishment by Charles the Bald against those who fail to show due respect to him as a king and father.

Of all Carolingian writers, it was Hincmar of Rheims who had most to say about the rural parish church of the ninth century. This chapter draws attention to the tensions that characterised Hincmar’s views on the matter – that parishes were both ancient and evolving, that their priests were both separated from and part of the community they served, and that the parish was both under attack and unchallenged. Rather than seeking to resolve these tensions in favour of one side or another, it argues that they reflected Hincmar’s view of the parish as a microcosm of the church as a whole. It further suggests that such an approach helps us understand the Carolingian parish not simply in teleological fashion as an underdeveloped version of an institution that would only later be properly perfected, but as bearing a quite specific significance and role in Hincmar’s own time.

This chapter examines the intersections between the career of the controversial theologian and missionary Gottschalk of Orbais, condemned for heresy at the Council of Mainz (848) and the Council of Quierzy (849), and the reign of the reforming archbishop Hincmar of Rheims, who sought to contain the danger of Gottschalk’s outlawed teachings. Beginning with a focus on Gottschalk’s teachings on predestination and his subversive methods as a missionary and preacher in Italy and southeastern Europe in the 830s and 840s, the chapter then explores the synods that condemned him, and Gottschalk’s startling resistance to episcopal correction, when he refused to recant despite being severely punished and sentenced to monastic incarceration for the rest of his life. Thereafter, the investigation considers both Gottschalk’s role in the 850s and 860s as a religious outlaw and figure of dissent, encouraging resistance to Hincmar’s reforms and doctrines among young clerics and monks through texts smuggled out of his prison, as well as Hincmar’s repeated efforts to defend Gottschalk’s condemnation as canonical and to prove that his doctrines were heretical.

In a letter written to Pope Hadrian II in the autumn of 871, Hincmar defended the canonical procedure he had followed in the case of a delinquent priest called Trising. The latter had been accused of violence and sexual transgression, and failed to appear as summoned by Hincmar at various synods. Instead, he went to Rome and came back after two years with a papal letter that ordered Hincmar to explain himself. Meanwhile, the archbishop of Rheims had already ordained a new priest in Trising’s place. Although all we have is Hincmar’s side of the matter, social historians have been fascinated by this case, for the light it sheds on the relation between rural parishes and their archbishop in the diocese of Rheims. This chapter approaches the text from a different perspective. Trising’s immediate and successful appeal to Rome may well indicate that the ideas contained in Pseudo-Isidore’ forgeries not only bolstered the position of bishops, but also the self-confidence of enterprising local priests. This included an increasing orientation towards papal Rome as a source of truly canonical and therefore superior justice.

The many works written by Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims are inextricably intertwined with his own life history. Hincmar did not write in a vacuum but in response to events, attempting through these to re-order the world to suit his vision of a Christian society. This introductory chapter therefore focuses on his biography, from his days as a promising student at St-Denis through to his death while escaping from Viking raiders. It outlines the different networks within which Hincmar worked, discussing his interactions with the clerics of his own diocese, with kings and other laymen, and with popes, especially Nicholas I. It also demonstrates how long-standing and intractable many of his disputes were. The chapter also highlights recurring themes in the book, such as Hincmar’s working practices and the intensely personal nature of political culture. Hincmar appears within a wider context of scholarly men in the ninth century “fighting with words” and trying to establish social norms by appeals to varied authorities. Finally, Hincmar’s legacy is briefly considered, especially how he has shaped historians’ view of the early Middle Ages.

Hincmar of Reims wrote a great deal, and often self-referentially. More is knowable about his life than about most other lives in the ninth century, in part because Hincmar inserted himself into his historical writing. But this paper’s focus is not biographical: its purpose is to contextualize and understand his historical writings, with biographical information used as a means to that end. ‘Historical writing(s)’ is an elastic term. Capitularies are usually classed as administrative, regulatory and strongly ideological texts, addressed ad hoc to particular contemporary problems; but in several cases, capitularies are historical writings as well and can be credited to Hincmar’s account. Several of Hincmar’s expert legal opinions, notably the De ecclesiis et capellis, and the De divortio, include rich historical content. Indisputably historical are the so-called Annals of St-Bertin, whose author from 861-882 was Hincmar. He himself called them Deeds of Kings, writing them up more or less contemporaneously; but he also made them a depository of highly personal opinions and autobiographical insights, sometimes adding retrospectively to earlier sections of the annals. Not despite but because of this, Hincmar’s historical writings are an exceptionally interesting source of information on his times.

This chapter focuses on how Hincmar of Rheims as an author deliberately used varied genres of text as media to publicise his position in political conflicts. This is investigated via Hincmar’s presentation of his conflict with his nephew Hincmar of Laon in the Annales Bertiniani. Hincmar found himself in conflict with his nephew from 868, who had also provoked Charles the Bald by his disobedience. Their conflict over the question of the power of metropolitans was characterised by an enormous production of texts, with voluminous polemics surviving from both sides. Writing at the time, Hincmar of Rheims presented the case in his Annales Bertiniani, from 861 onwards. The annals developed into a key medium for persuading the king, court opinion and those around Rheims of his point of view, as a comparison with the legal texts and polemics shows. Hincmar knew the “rules of the game” of textual genres and made strategic use of exaggerations and silences. His style of presentation points both to his orientation towards his audience, and to the deployment of texts in conflicts. Such analysis clearly shows the connections between Hincmar’s life and work.

The Treaty of Verdun (843) left the archdiocese of Rheims divided between the West Frankish kingdom of Charles the Bald (843-77) and the Middle Kingdom of Emperor Lothar I (843-55). After 845, Hincmar of Rheims faced the unfortunate necessity of establishing a relationship with Lothar, while giving his primary loyalty to Charles the Bald. Hincmar’s vision of dual loyalty to his two Carolingian masters was not initially acceptable to Lothar. Scholars have long recognised 847 as the particular turning point when Hincmar’s relations with Lothar warmed. The role of personality has previously been emphasised in this change; religious factors, however, were significant in the process, especially the sack of Rome in 846, which encouraged Lothar’s rapprochement with Charles and Hincmar. On Hincmar’s side, Lothar’s control of Rome and ability to support or block his applications to the pope, were amongst the many practical factors making a better relationship with the emperor valuable to the archbishop. The largely retrospective (and sometimes falsified) evidence for Hincmar’s contacts with Lothar complicates the evaluation of their developing relations, and the problematic papal letters of Leo IV in the Collectio Britannica are discussed in an appendix.

This chapter analyses Hincmar's letter De fide, sent to the bishops of the province of Rheims in November 875. Following Louis the German’s invasion of his brother Charles the Bald’s kingdom, Hincmar was faced with a difficult choice: should he recommend submission to Louis, or opposition? This chapter reveals the ambiguity of the archbishop’s position. In fact, Hincmar’s deliberative treatise was intended not to lead the bishops of the province to a normative answer, but to help them make a practical decision. The chapter concludes by highlighting the text’s broad vision of Christian society, based on the episcopal order.

Hincmar was archbishop of Rheims at Louis the Stammerer's accession and was involved in Louis’s affairs, conducting Louis’s coronation and advising him during his reign. This paper will investigate how much influence Hincmar had on Louis during the years 877-879. It first examines the motivations behind Hincmar’s involvement in West Frankish government and asks how to measure his influence using the existing sources. To start the investigation, this paper looks at Hincmar’s pre-coronation letter Ad Ludovicum Balbum Regem: Novi regis instructio ad rectam regni administrationem, and the archbishop’s role in the coronation as the composer of the ritual and a key participant. It then considers Hincmar’s involvement in Louis’ personal life and various events in Louis the Stammerer’s reign, such as the papal Council of Troyes in 878 and negotiations with Louis the Younger at Meersen later that year. The conclusion is that while Hincmar demonstrably remained involved in West Frankish affairs after the death of Charles the Bald, it is difficult to isolate specific examples of Hincmar significantly influencing royal policy.

Hincmar is notable for citing Roman legal texts more extensively than his contemporaries. However, the range of sources available to him was limited, mostly deriving from the tradition of the Breviary of Alaric, especially in a form augmented by religious material from Theodosian Code Book 16. Much of this material was mediated through two of his “working” manuscripts (Berlin SB Phillipps 1741 and its derivative BN Par. Lat. 12445), whose contents reflect two active periods of collecting and use, the later 850s and 868-871. The other significant source in the latter period was Julian’s Epitome of the Novels, the principal way Justinianic law was known in the early mediaeval west. For Hincmar, the Roman legal materials were always less important than Biblical or canonical texts, often gaining status only as being laws the church had approved; he was generally less interested in the substantive law of Rome than its procedural rules, which were key tools in his legal disputes, especially in that with Hincmar of Laon. Hincmar was canny at selective quotation to suit his purposes, even to the extent of minor textual emendation.