Richard Kay
Ten years after the death of Charlemagne, a monk named Wetti had a vision in which he saw the late emperor standing in hell, “and his genitals were being mutilated by the gnawing of a certain animal.”1 At about the same time, two other visionaries also encountered Charles in the afterworld, and although both agreed that prayer could save the emperor, neither report suggests why the emperor did not go directly to heaven.2 Naturally, all three accounts have provoked scholarly investigation, but to my knowledge no one thus far has inquired why (and how) an obscure monk at Reichenau came to be obsessed with Charles’s sex life.3 To answer this question, we must first review the circumstances and sources for Wetti’s vision; from these materials we can next attempt to reconstruct what Wetti himself reported about his vision; and then we will be well placed to inquire why Wetti had his amazing vision of Charlemagne in hell.4
Wetti’s vision is attested by two extant sources, both in Latin: first, a prose account written soon after the event, late in 824 or early 825, by Heito, the emeritus abbot of Reichenau; and second, a poem by Walafrid Strabo, completed at Reichenau5 three years later, in 827, when he was just 18.6 Both authors were close to the events they narrate, but most of Walafrid’s account is derived from Heito’s, to which he occasionally adds new and sometimes important details.7 Further details are supplied in a preface and table of contents to Heito’s account, most probably composed by Walafrid himself.8 The reliability of these accounts can best be established by reviewing briefly the circumstances of Wetti’s vision.
Wetti was a learned monk of Reichenau. On Saturday, October 30, 824 he and several other monks drank a “customary” potion for their health,9 which caused him to vomit for two days; he was able to eat again on Monday, however, but on Tuesday his nausea returned at the evening meal, so he was bedded down alone in a warm room next to the refectory, where he remained for the remainder of his short life.10 While the rest of the monks finished their Tuesday dinner, Wetti experienced a brief, horrifying vision that came to him as he dozed between sleep and waking. The devil appeared, disguised as a monk, and announced that he would torture Wetti when he died the next day; then a horde of demons filled the room and threatened him until they were driven off by good monks, one of whom declared that the time had not yet arrived when Wetti would get what he deserved. Then his guardian angel appeared, dressed in purple,11 and Wetti assured him that he was prepared to accept God’s judgment but suggested that he, like all humankind, needed special help from the saints and angels “because we are more fragile (fragilliores) in these times.”12 With this thought—that sins of the flesh were now especially prevalent—the first vision ended abruptly.
When he woke up, Wetti found that Tatto, the prior of Reichenau, and another monk were now with him, and he told them what had happened. He was afraid that he would be damned, so they prayed for his (unstated) sins, sang psalms, and finally, at his request, read a passage from Gregory the Great’s Dialogues.13 Then, at Wetti’s suggestion, they all lay down to rest.14 When Wetti had fallen into a deep sleep, the same angel returned to him (dressed now in white) and escorted him first to hell and then to heaven.15 After this tour, the angel told Wetti that if he wanted to save his soul, he must publicly declare what sins he had seen punished, including monastic laxity and illicit lay sexuality, but especially sodomy.16 Therefore, when Wetti awoke shortly before dawn on Wednesday, he was frantic to make his report. First he told it all to the prior and his companion; then he wanted the abbot to come, but since this was not immediately possible, he insisted that it all be written down on wax tablets, lest he be unable to communicate it before he died. Finally Abbot Erlebald did come and heard the whole story from Wetti in the presence of at least three other trustworthy witnesses, including Heito the ex-abbot, Tatto the prior, and Thegmar, a senior monk.17 The whole of the next day, Thursday, November 4, Wetti spent alone with Walafrid Strabo, to whom he dictated 15 farewell letters to friends; when night came, he died, as had been foretold to him.
Consequently we can be sure that Wetti’s visions were well attested, first by his oral reports to Tatto and his associate, which they immediately wrote down, and then by his retelling of the story to the abbot and other witnesses, including Heito. Moreover, Walafrid himself had an extended opportunity to ascertain further details. Therefore the content of Wetti’s dreams was attested well beyond the expectations of modern psychoanalysts, for it was not only recorded promptly and exactly but also could be controlled by the recollections of six or seven witnesses, at least four of whom were experienced and responsible observers. Although, as we shall see, Heito did suppress some details, still he insisted that what he did record was an unembellished account of Wetti’s reports.18 Thus for our purpose, Heito’s Visio Wettini, especially when corroborated by Walafrid, is as trustworthy a source as a historian could hope to find.
Wetti’s state of mind between his first and second visions largely explains why he saw what he did. Having heard that he was about to die and go to hell, he was desperate to resume the interrupted conversation with his guardian angel in order to learn how he might be saved. The second vision provided him with the answer he sought, proceeding in three stages: first he was shown the torments inflicted on certain sinners; next he was taken to heaven, where he learned that God would pardon him if he corrected the evil he had done by his life and teaching; and finally his guardian angel told him in practical terms precisely what he had to do. The dream begins where the first vision left off, with the sins of humanity that are a current problem because, as Wetti had protested, “we are more fragile in these times.”19 Nothing in the first stage suggests that the sins punished in hell are Wetti’s own, and indeed Wetti’s personal faults are never explicitly stated.
Nonetheless, the general nature of Wetti’s sins is made apparent in the second stage, when God, speaking from his throne in response to three sets of blessed intercessors, makes the monk’s offenses progressively clearer by describing them three times. The interceding sainted monks, including Benedict of Aniane,20 are simply told that Wetti “should have given edifying examples to others but did not.” The martyrs at first are told that he misled others “by teaching badly (male) by the example of his depravity,”21 but when God explains how Wetti can make amends, it becomes apparent that he has been teaching his brothers at Reichenau by words as well as deeds.22 Finally, the virgins interceding for Wetti are told that there is hope for him “If he teaches good things and provides good examples and corrects those to whom he offered bad examples ….”23
Wetti the dreamer was evidently concerned that he had offended not only in his conduct as a monk but also in his capacity as a teacher. As it happens, his teaching career at Reichenau is well attested. Walafrid introduces him with the following sketch:
Wetti was a teacher of great renown, instructed in the seven arts in the manner of our ancestors. Fortune granted that he be charged with those scholarly pursuits which it is usual for fresh-faced and frivolous youth to enjoy. But, nevertheless, so far as we can judge from the outside, he humbly conducted his life with unstained morals. Men’s praises of him reached many ears.24
Indeed, Wetti was certainly Walafrid’s own teacher, his “wise master (sapiente magistro),” whose death left him without a mentor.25 This relationship explains why, during Wetti’s last day, Walafrid served as his amanuensis and companion.26 But Wetti was more than just a teacher; he was Reichenau’s outstanding intellectual, as the preface to the prose vision makes clear:
Here [at Reichenau], Wetti humbly led the true monastic life, as was made clear in the end. By his erudition, he made progress in the monastic life; moreover, in his teaching efforts, he displayed a grasp of theology and the liberal arts that surpassed that of any one else living in the neighborhood at that time.27
Wetti’s stature as a scholar is all the more impressive because this was Reichenau’s golden age as a center of learning.28 His reputation and authority as a teacher explains why the judgments God delivered in the vision insisted that Wetti must correct his false doctrina. Since Wetti was the monastery’s outstanding intellectual, his opinions had the power to lead (or mislead) not only his students but all of the monks.
But what were these false doctrines? The voice from God’s throne had declared only that Wetti must correct his life and doctrine; to discover in what specific ways he had offended, we must listen to Wetti’s guardian angel, who spelled it out for him. This final stage of Wetti’s vision consists of three well-defined sections, which we shall consider in turn.
1. Putting first things first, the angel begins by treating the sexual offenses of mankind: he “began to explain in how much evil filth humanity was groveling.”29 Nothing offends God more, he declares, than “sins contrary to nature,” which he equates with the sin of Sodom (scelus sodomiticum). This sin, the angel explains, is not only committed by males but also by married couples.30 Having explained this somewhat diffusely, the angel gets to the point:
“So you are ordered by divine authority to proclaim this publicly. Also (etiam) do not hide how much danger there is in the luxury of concubines. In the end, those polluted in this obscenity will never deserve entry to the kingdom of heaven.” Wetti said to him, “Lord, I do not dare to pronounce this in public, since I do not consider nor feel myself suited to this on account of the baseness of my person (propter vilitatem meae personae).” The angel responded with great indignation, “What God wishes and commands you to do, through me, do not dare put off.”31
From this it is clear that one purpose of Wetti’s vision was to make known to mankind that certain sexual acts are especially offensive to God. One of these sins surely is concubinage, but it is distinguished from sodomy by being the subject of a second and separate command, introduced by etiam. Strictly speaking, what these two sins have in common is that both are instances of the “evil filth [in which] humanity was groveling,” which Heito states was the general subject of this discourse, but concubinage is nonetheless associated with sodomy for rhetorical effect. As James Brundage has remarked, Carolingian authors “assumed that linking other sexual aberrations to homosexual practices would impress their readers forcefully with the wickedness of the particular sin they were denouncing.”32 To what extent these revelations were unprecedented novelties remains to be seen, but there can be no doubt that a mission was being imposed on Wetti to report what had been revealed to him by the angel. The sins in question do not seem to be Wetti’s own, because there are few opportunities in the monastic life for concubinage or marital sodomy.
2. Having charged Wetti to reveal the dangers of concubinage and sodomy, the angel turned to a new topic: “After this he began to warn him in a different way for his conversion (de emendatione sua).”33 Wetti has displeased his guardian angel by “selling his religious dedication (consecrationem suam) to a harlot,” as Samson did to Delilah.34 Just in what ways Wetti had been less than a perfect monk is not stated expressly, perhaps because his confession was regarded by Heito as confidential, but their general nature can be inferred from the offenses against which Wetti is told to warn other monks, since we know that to be forgiven he not only had to mend his ways but also to correct those to whom he had been giving a bad example.35 Monks should be admonished, the angel explains in a long, rambling list, that the spiritual life is endangered by things of this world. Specifically, the angel warns against avarice, gluttony, fancy dress, and pride; moreover, he recommends that monks should only drink water, “since it is natural.” Monks, especially in Gaul and western Germany, should be told that their salvation depends on leading the life of apostolic poverty and humility in imitation of Christ.36 In response to this tirade, Wetti asks, “Where is the rule of the apostolic life preserved uncorrupted?” “In regions across the sea,” is the angel’s reply.37
3. After Wetti’s guardian angel had assigned him the twofold task of denouncing the worst sexual sins and of warning monks to live the apostolic life, he went on to add “almost innumerable other things,” which Wetti apparently reported in detail, although Heito omitted most of them for the sake of brevity.38 The angel began by condemning sodomy again; then he went on to name the other vices one by one, although he kept coming back to sodomy until he had mentioned it “five times or more.”39 To this summary Heito appended three other highlights excerpted from the angel’s final discourse: the plague of 823 was both a punishment of sin and a sign that the end of the world was at hand; religious services should be conducted diligently without boredom or negligence; and count Gerold, a great benefactor of Reichenau, where he was buried, was usefully revealed to be among the martyrs in heaven.40 In sum, the third and last of Wetti’s vision, or at least Heito’s account of it, lacked the cohesion of the first two parts. Except for the repeated condemnations of sodomy, it was unrelated to Wetti’s mission and need not concern us further.
Consequently, the first two parts present a coherent whole, the purpose of which was to prepare Wetti for two distinct missions: one to make public God’s displeasure with sodomy and concubinage, the other to admonish monks to live the apostolic life. Together they fulfill the object of Wetti’s dream, which was to show him how he might be saved by correcting his poor conduct and false teaching. We now have established the key principle that will enable us to understand in retrospect why Wetti saw certain sins and sinners punished in hell.
Wetti’s vision of hell is remarkably short, taking up only two of seven pages of Heito’s prose version in Dümmler’s edition. Yet, coming as it does at the beginning of Wetti’s dream, it reflects most vividly his subconscious concerns, which, as we have seen, were focused on his sins as a teacher and monk. The vision came to him as a revelation in the most literal sense, showing him that certain of his opinions, about which he must have had some doubt, had in fact been wrong. Sex and monastic laxity, the two subjects of his mission, are the predominant, familiar themes, but what Wetti learned about them was surprisingly new, and thus sufficient to cause him to reform his teaching and conduct. The novelties that were revealed to Wetti in hell can best be identified by first considering in turn each of the five scenes he reported.
a. The first scene is a river of fire in and around which “an innumerable multitude of the damned” were punished, including many of Wetti’s unnamed acquaintances. Only one group is described and explained:
He saw among these many clerics,41 both in major and minor orders, who were standing in clinging fire, tied in back with straps. The women defiled by them were tied in a similar way in front of them. They were immersed in the same fire up to their genitals. The angel said that every other day42 without fail they were beaten on their genitals with rods. Wetti said that he knew many of them.43
Although their sin is not named, it may best be termed clerical concubinage.44 This is evident because the males are all clerics who are paired with their female partners, and lest there be any doubt that the sin was sexual intercourse, their genitalia are punished in accordance with the principle that the punishment should fit the crime.45
It was no news to Wetti that clerical concubinage was a sin;46 instead, the novelty is revealed in his escort’s commentary. The occasion of the sin, he explains, is high living at the Carolingian court. “Most clerics covet the rewards of this world and devote themselves to the affairs of the palace,” where they lead a life of luxury, with fine clothes, feasts, and finally with loose women.47 The point of the first episode, then, is to warn the clergy by a worst-case scenario that they can be damned by leading a courtier’s life, especially with courtesans. The angel explains, moreover, why the palace is such a perilous place for those in holy orders: because its delights distract them from their duties as intercessors, so they seek profit (lucrum), not for the souls of others but only for themselves.48
b. That is almost all Wetti has to say about the torments of those who are eternally damned, for the next three episodes deal with temporary punishments inflicted on those who will eventually be saved. Since Wetti eventually is shown another example of eternal damnation (e), it appears that in his afterworld, purgatory is a specialized region of hell rather than an independent realm.49
Wetti is first shown the place where monks from all over are gathered together “in one congregation for their purgation.” This place is a roughly constructed stockade (castellum) from which sooty clouds emerge, suggestive perhaps of fumigation, though tradition suggests a more ardent affliction.50 All forms of monastic laxity are apparently expiated here, but only one is specified, namely the use of community funds for personal purposes, which is appropriately punished by being shut up in a lead strongbox until the Last Judgment.51
c. While common monks are purged in the smoking stockade, the abbots, who are their superiors, are fittingly assigned to a loftier place. The angel shows Wetti a high mountain and tells him that on its top the most recently deceased abbot of Reichenau, Waldo by name, is exposed to constant wind and rain in order to purge him of his sins, which seem to be those of a negligent supervisor.52 Moreover, and most significantly, the angel indicated that Waldo’s sufferings could be alleviated by prayer, and that a bishop named Adalhelm, who three years ago had refused to pray for Waldo, was therefore guilty of negligence, for which he himself is now being punished on the other side of the mountain of negligent administrators.53
d. Wetti sees one more scene in purgatory, and it is the one we have been waiting for—Charlemagne in hell. But before analyzing it in detail, however, let us place it in context by seeing how Wetti’s tour of hell ended.
e. In the last scene, Wetti is shown a vast collection of precious objects, such as textiles, horses, and vases of gold and silver, which were the possessions of avaricious counts, who had accumulated them either by seizure or as bribes. These treasures are waiting in hell for the counts as their eternal reward, and the spectacle prompts the angel to denounce the unjust behavior of the counts at length.54 Evidently Wetti had passed from purgatory to another section of hell that in his dream was linked to Charlemagne by a loose association of ideas.
f. At this point, Heito pauses between his accounts of hell and heaven to remark that he has omitted much more that Wetti saw in both places: “Wetti recalled that he also saw a countless number of lay people and others from the monastic orders, from different regions and convents, some of them in glory and others sunk in punishment … and innumerable other things—which we have excluded as unsuited to the cursory style of a compendium ….”55 While this admission is susceptible of various interpretations, I think it most likely that Wetti’s account was reproduced by Heito pretty much as he received it until the end of the Charlemagne episode (a–d); thereafter Heito abridged the account drastically, but he retained the revelation concerning the counts (e), placing it at the end as a sort of appendix. This seems likely because Heito similarly preserved a fragment concerning the good count Gerold, which he likewise placed at the end of the vision of heaven.56 Therefore I am inclined to regard the episode of the counts’ treasures as an isolated fragment that does not reflect the same concerns as the scenes that preceded it.
The structure of Wetti’s vision of hell becomes apparent once its extraneous last scene has been set aside. It begins with the inexpiable sins punished in the river of fire, which are exemplified by men in holy orders who, distracted by the pursuit of personal profit and pleasure, fail to perform the function for which they were consecrated. After these unforgivable faults come those that can in time be expiated in purgatory, starting with what seemed to Wetti the worst and proceeding progressively to the least: first, failure to observe monastic vows, next negligence in abbatial administration, and finally, the sexual peccadilloes of Charlemagne, which did not impede his effectiveness as a ruler. The order presupposes a descending hierarchy of responsibility created for the clergy by consecration, personal vows, and administrative duties, and finally, for laymen, by Christian morality. In other words, Charlemagne’s sex life was the least of Wetti’s concerns.
Nonetheless it did trouble Wetti’s dreams, and we want to know why. A major clue emerges from the foregoing survey of his vision: what he sees in hell forms the basis of the twofold mission that was assigned to him in heaven, namely to correct his life and doctrine concerning monastic laxity on the one hand and on the other sodomy and concubinage. Since the monastic elements of Wetti’s vision are obviously irrelevant to Charlemagne’s sin, we must concentrate for the moment on concubinage pure and simple, for none of the examples in hell concern sodomy, which must accordingly be considered to have been nothing more than a rhetorical red herring.57 Let us then pursue the theme of concubinage by at last confronting Heito’s account of Charlemagne in hell.58
He also said that he saw a certain prince standing there who formerly ruled the kingdoms of the people of Rome and Italy. His genitals were mangled by the bites of a certain animal, while the rest of his body remained immune from laceration. Wetti was stunned by a strong stupor and wondered how such a man, who seemed to be very special among others in defending the Catholic faith and the rule of the Holy Church in the modern world, could be afflicted by a punishment so degrading. Immediately he was answered by the angel, his guide, that although he did many things admired and praised and accepted by God—and he would not be deprived of the recompense for them—he was demoralized by the charms of illicit sexual intercourse. He wished to finish his life by offering his other good deeds to God so that, because of the freedom conceded to human frailty, a somewhat minor obscene act might be buried and destroyed by the greatness of so many good deeds. He said, “Nevertheless, he is predestined to the fate of the elect in eternal life.”59
Heito knew the sinner’s name but suppressed it, as his “quendam principem” makes clear;60 nonetheless he indirectly indicated the prince’s identity, since in modern times (“moderno seculo”) there was only one deceased ruler of both Rome and Italy—Charlemagne himself. Moreover, Wetti recognized him without any prompting, as is evident both from his amazement and from his recitation of the emperor’s distinctive achievements.61 In Walafrid’s versified version of the passage, the least doubt was removed by using the opening letter of each verse to spell out the acrostic CAROLVS IMPERATOR.62
As for Charles’s sin, the angel identifies it plainly: he was “demoralized by the charms of illicit sexual intercourse—stupri inlecebris resolutus.” But the manner of his punishment expresses the fault more vividly, for it is concentrated solely on his verenda, the external sexual organs that normally are treated, as their name indicates, with awe or reverence, which decidedly is not the case in hell. The punishment fits the crime, since the organs that in life led him astray are now themselves being bitten and lacerated “by the bites of a certain animal— cuiusdam animalis morsu.” Again, cuiusdam indicates an identity known to the author but not stated, so Wetti’s dream must have been more specific, though we can only guess what animal would have been appropriate.63
Charles’s tormented genitalia serve to link his sin with that of the concubinary clerics and their concubines, who were immersed in the river of fire up to their genitals, which were beaten with rods intermittently. The different timing of the punishment suggests that the courtier clerics were guilty of only casual encounters, whereas Charlemagne’s illicit sexual activity was continuous.64 Although the emperor’s torment is more severe, it is only temporary, since he will eventually go to heaven, in contrast to the clerics, who are irremediably damned. Why the clergy are judged more harshly is not made explicit, but as we have seen (n. 47, above), the angel provided a likely reason, namely that their luxurious life at court distracted them from doing their job as intercessors, while Charles’s sex life manifestly did not interfere with his role as protector and director of the Church. Nonetheless Wetti discovered from Charlemagne’s example that lay concubinage was a sin that entailed grievous, if not permanent, consequences in the afterlife.
Why was Charlemagne the example of lay concubinage that came to Wetti’s mind? We are now ready to propose an answer to that question, which is the object of the present investigation. The answer, as I have already suggested, must be understood in Wetti’s terms, which can be discovered by careful reading of his account of the vision. Specifically, the key to the Charlemagne episode lies in Wetti’s surprise. When he recognized Charlemagne and observed his punishment, Wetti was thunderstruck and tremendously bewildered (“Stupore igitur vehementi attonitus”), which is remarkable because nothing else he saw or heard in the afterworld—not even God himself—elicited so strong a reaction. What surprised him was that he could not see “how it was possible (quomodo)” that a ruler who had done so much good could be subjected to such a disgraceful punishment. What was uppermost in Wetti’s mind were the virtues of Charlemagne, not his weaknesses. Almost certainly it was no news to Wetti when the angel explained that the emperor had been “demoralized by the charms of illicit sexual intercourse—stupri inlecebris resolutus,” because, unless we are prepared to believe that Wetti only learned this by divine revelation, the fact must have already been known to him, or else it would not have played a part in his dream.65 But Charlemagne’s lubricity did not surprise him, which is my point. Instead, he had apparently known of Charlemagne’s concubines but had discounted them. The rationale that the angel attributes to Charlemagne was most probably Wetti’s own before the vision: that the emperor’s good deeds canceled out his sexual misdeeds, especially since they were minor as such things go and could be excused “because of the freedom conceded to human frailty” (n. 58, above). This seems especially likely because Wetti in his first vision had told the angel that mankind needed all the help it could get from heaven “since we are more fragile in these times.”66 Contemporary human fragility seems to have been a stock excuse for him.
What came to Wetti as a revelation in the case of Charlemagne was that little sins count, even against outstanding benefactors of religion. He had already learned that monks, abbots, and bishops had to pay for their minor sins in purgatory, and the encounter with Charlemagne served to extend the principle to lay benefactors. It is only at the end of his journey that Wetti learned that “the luxury of concubines” is totally unacceptable to God, being tantamount to sodomy, and since he declared that this sin cannot be purged in hell, it seems likely that the angel was speaking of clerical rather than lay concubinage.67 Nonetheless, Wetti does learn from Charlemagne’s case that God will not overlook lay concubinage but instead will cause it to be punished horribly, though not permanently, in purgatory.
In consequence, my thesis is that Wetti’s vision is a palinode, that is “a work in which one attacks what one had previously praised (or vice versa).”68 Wetti, we know, was Reichenau’s leading intellectual, with an outstanding command of both the liberal arts and theology, which he used to interpret the monastic life; he was also one of the monastery’s principal teachers, who certainly taught Walafrid and perhaps the abbot Erlebald as well.69 During the last decade of his life, he composed an undistinguished life of Saint Gall.70 Despite these attainments, what impressed observers was his modesty,71 not to say humility, such as he displayed in his first vision when he learned that he was going to hell for his sins. But although he did not question God’s judgment, he was eager to avert his own damnation and hoped that intercessors in heaven would help him.72 The second vision provided the answer he was anxiously seeking: he had been teaching false doctrines, which he could correct by making his vision known to others. It follows that what the angel told and showed him were revelations that contradicted his former opinions. The Visio, then, is primarily a retraction on Wetti’s part, in which controversial issues were settled by divine revelation.
If this view of the Visio Wettini is correct, its revelations should take a stand on issues that were controversial in 824. In order to confirm my interpretation, and to understand the thrust of the vision in general and the function of the Charlemagne episode in particular, let us therefore seek to determine the ways in which Wetti’s vision settled questions that the monks at Reichenau and elsewhere in the Carolingian empire were debating.
Heito was moved to record Wetti’s vision because it proved the value of revelation made in dreams, and especially when they revealed that prayers were urgently needed by a soul that was in purgatory contrary to all expectation. Abbot Waldo had been seven years dead before a cleric named Adam dreamt that he saw him suffering in purgatory. Waldo instructed Adam to report his predicament to bishop Adalhelm: “Ask him to send around the monasteries, requesting prayers of intercession (which they offer free) ….”73 The bishop, however, dismissed Adam’s vision as “deliramenta somniorum” and refused to comply. Three years later, Wetti was told that bishop Adalhelm was suffering in purgatory for his negligence because he “did not help by providing the comfort of his prayers, not even to the dead from his community.”74
This episode reflects an important contemporary development in the history of purgatory. By the end of the patristic period, Latin theologians, led by Augustine and seconded by Gregory the Great, were agreed that those Christians who died after a life of faith and good works would be purified from the taint of their lesser sins, and that this purgation would occur before the Judgment Day in a manner similar to the torments of the damned and probably in much the same place. Furthermore, it was believed that these temporary afflictions could be alleviated and the sufferers advanced in their spiritual life by the prayers of the living.75 In Wetti’s day such prayers were becoming organized and institutionalized, a process which began in 762, when Frankish bishops and abbots at the council of Attigny pledged to pray for any one of them that died.76 This concept of a prayer confraternity soon spread to the monastic sector, where monasteries exchanged lists of those to be prayed for. At the time of Wetti’s vision, Reichenau was on the verge of compiling its first such Liber memorialis, usually dated 826, which, though not the earliest of such compilations, proved to be the most famous and influential.77 Without Wetti’s vision, Waldo would not have received the prayers he deserved, and his case may well have prompted the monks of Reichenau to provide a system of widespread intercession for all their dead that would be independent alike of episcopal negligence and occasional divine revelations.
During Wetti’s lifetime, for all monks in Frankland no issue was as momentous as the monastic reforms of Benedict of Aniane (d. 821). As is well known, he began life as a courtier first of Pippin III, then of Charlemagne, but in 774 he left the palace to become a monk, and about 782 he founded his own monastery at Aniane, where he sought to return to the ideals of ancient, and especially eastern, monasticism. Eventually he persuaded Louis the Pious to reform monasticism in Francia, which was done at the synods of Aachen in 816 and 817 by requiring all monasteries to observe the Rule of Saint Benedict and furthermore to conform to the custom (consuetudo) of Inden, the monastery five miles from Aachen that Louis founded for Benedict in 815 to keep him in the vicinity of the court.78
The extent to which Reichenau was affected by these reforms is a matter of record, for we have a detailed list of the differences between the customs of Reichenau and a reformed house, which was drawn up by two monks who had been sent to observe the new model.79 Wetti’s attitude towards them, however, must be inferred from his vision, and there can be no doubt that it favors both Benedict of Aniane and his reforms, for one of the most striking revelations is that the controversial reformer is himself in heaven, in the company of the principal saints of Gaul; indeed, except for Reichenau’s own martyr, Count Gerold, “the man of Aniane” is the only blessed contemporary to be mentioned by name in either version of the vision.80 Coming three years after Benedict’s death in 821, this revelation was perhaps the earliest indication that he was truly a saint.81 Wetti’s admiration for the abbot of Aniane was so great that in his last hours he imitated Benedict’s example by announcing his impending death to friends in letters that are closely modeled on the saint’s.82
Furthermore, the vision endorses a number of the saint’s distinctive preferences. The angel, like Benedict, stressed the centrality of the divine office;83 moreover, he especially recommended that Wetti frequently recite and intend Psalm 118 (AV 119), a penitential psalm that Benedict especially favored, having added it to the horae minores.84 In addition to these particular indications of Aniane’s influence, the angel summarized with approval the whole rationale of Benedict’s reform program: monks should always be on guard against deviations from “the life of apostolic order.”85 Significantly, Wetti had to ask, “Where is the rule of the apostolic life preserved uncorrupted?” “Overseas,” was the angel’s reply, which echoes Aniane’s special emphasis on the models of eastern monasticism.86 The fact that Wetti had to ask strongly suggests that he did not at that time share Benedict’s admiration for practices of eastern monasticism, and consequently that the angel’s reply came to him as a revelation that converted him to Benedict’s point of view. Another small detail confirms that Wetti was converted by his vision to the ideals of Benedict of Aniane. Walafrid records that after Wetti’s second vision, “he vowed that if life remained in his body, he would henceforth lead a sober life; he would drink water, never overpowering drinks.”87 His immediate motivation was the angel’s recommendation that “Water should be praised as a drink, since it is natural.”88 Although Benedict of Nursia had made a similar recommendation,89 the angel’s pronouncement would seem to reflect the agenda of Benedict of Aniane, since it is embedded in the angel’s endorsement of that program. Thus it now appears that Wetti’s vision converted him into an ardent supporter of Benedict of Aniane, and the Visio in both its versions validated the reformer’s program by a divine revelation.
Benedict of Aniane, the courtier turned monk, insisted that the palace was no place for a monk, and when Louis the Pious wanted him permanently available at court, he had to build the monastery of Inden for him near (but not too near) Aachen.90 Wetti, however, painted the problem with a broader brush; for him, the palace was a pitfall for all those in holy orders, being an occasion for the sins of avarice and every form of luxuria.91 He took his lead from Carolingian moralists who warned prelates about the dangers of high living. Alcuin had urged a newly appointed bishop to dress with moderation and to dine, “not in luxuria and drunkenness, but soberly and as is appropriate for the occasion and company.”92 Theodulf of Orléans, in his poem Ad episcopos, stressed the need for exemplary behavior, since a drunken bishop cannot preach sobriety with any plausibility.93 Louis the Pious, under the influence of Benedict of Aniane, favored a puritanical dress code for the clergy, and especially the bishops, so that from 817 on they no longer wore golden belts, jeweled daggers, spurs, and exquisite garments.94 None of these admonitions were expressly directed at the clergy at court, but their motives, if not their lifestyle, were denounced in no uncertain terms by the reformers at Louis’ court. Benedict of Aniane deplored the Carolingian practice of using abbacies and monastic revenues as rewards for royal service, so that “some men panted with all their might to acquire monasteries of monks and strove not only with petitions, but also with money, to obtain them ….”95 His successor as Louis’ reform-minded minister, Abbot Wala of Corbie,96 was even more explicit in denouncing the worldly ambitions and avarice of office-seeking court capellani. According to his biographer, Wala “especially censured the army of clerics in the palace, who commonly are called ‘chaplains’ because they do not live as clerics usually do. Most of them [he said] serve for nothing other than for possession of churches, for pursuit of profit in this world, for lucrative reward without proven mastery, and for worldly ambitions.”97 Moreover, several councils in Louis’ reign attempted to regulate the clerics at court. In 829, the council of Paris urged the emperor to prevent his capellani from engaging in secular pursuits when they should be celebrating Mass;98 furthermore it urged that Louis deter monks and priests from coming to the palace with complaints against their superiors.99 The latter problem was formulated more vividly in 836 by the council of Aachen, which complained that parish priests were coming to the palace, frequenting it, and lingering there without their bishops’ consent.100
The temptations of the palace were a real issue at Reichenau, because its monks, abbots, and alumni not only served the court, sometimes residing there for long periods of time, but also advanced their careers by such service. Wetti’s close relative101 and protector, Waldo, for instance, though abbot of Reichenau from 786 to 806, spent about 15 of those 20 years in Italy (c. 786–801) as tutor to Pippin, the young king of the Lombards, who kept his court at Pavia, and also as bishop of the city.102 Charlemagne eventually rewarded Waldo by making him abbot of the prestigious royal abbey of Saint-Denis (806–814).103 Wetti himself, I would suggest, accompanied Waldo to Italy and studied there, which would explain why he was later regarded as better educated than anyone else at Reichenau. That Wetti was familiar with things Italian appears from his description of the attacking demons’ shield wall seen in his first vision, which he likened to an Italian military formation.104 Wetti’s extended residence at Pavia is also suggested by the presence of Saint Sebastian among his intercessors, since contemporaries believed that the saint’s remains had been translated from Rome to Pavia in 680.105 Furthermore, that Wetti was an experienced traveler is evident from his assignment to accompany the young Erlebald on his journey to study with an Irish monk.106 Although Heito, the next abbot of Reichenau (806–822/823), was infrequently at court, he was there in 811 to witness Charlemagne’s will,107 and in 811–812 he served as Charlemagne’s ambassador to Constantinople, accompanied by his successor, Erlebald (abbot 823–838).108 At the time of Wetti’s vision, Grimald, his relative (proximus)109 and Reichenau alumnus, was already a chaplain at the court of Louis the Pious; later he served Louis the German as chancellor, and was rewarded by being made abbot, first of Weissenburg (by 833) and later of Saint Gall (c. 840).110 Walafrid solicited Grimald’s patronage immediately after Wetti’s death (n. 25, above) and dedicated his versified Visio Wettini to him, most probably in the hope that the work would secure him a position at court, as it apparently did when he was appointed tutor to prince Charles the Bald in 829.111
For Wetti himself, the temptations of life at the palace were evidently a pressing issue, for their dire consequences for clerics came into his mind before anything else in his second vision. Given Reichenau’s close relations with the court, Wetti and his brethren must have discussed the problem often, and most likely his years at the Carolingian court in Pavia, together with the successful careers of his relatives Waldo, Grimald, and Hetti112 had disposed Wetti to view court life with the tolerance of the worldly-wise. The vision revealed his error by showing him that luxury could lead courtier clerics into mortal sin.
The court clerics that Wetti saw and recognized in hell were being punished, not for high ambition and simple luxury, but for having sex with women. No doubt such liaisons were available at Charlemagne’s court, where Wetti had been on at least one occasion, when he saw the emperor (n. 138, below); but did the temptation persist into the reign of Louis the Pious? Certainly Louis had attempted to reduce the number of women at Aachen. Immediately after his accession in 814, “the emperor decreed that the whole female band, which was extremely large, was to be excluded from the palace, except for a very few, whom he deemed to be appropriate for service in a royal household.”113 At the same time, Louis exiled his sisters, although they, the biographer pointedly remarks, “did not deserve such treatment.”114 Although women were excluded from court in both provisions, Louis’ primary concern in the latter case was to disperse the clique of princesses who had been Charlemagne’s political helpers,115 while in the former he was attempting to insure private morality at court by banning concubines.116
For our purpose, the most important aspect of Louis’ attempt to reduce illicit sex at his court is that it did not succeed. About six years later he issued the capitulary de disciplina palatii Aquisgranensis that, among other things, instituted a systematic inspection of all households in the vicinity of the court in order to apprehend male criminals in hiding and female prostitutes (meretrices). An offender of either type, if found, was to be carried to prison on the shoulders of the host; a woman was borne first to the marketplace, where she was publicly whipped (and so was her host if he refused to carry her).117 Obviously, the palace had not been effectively cleansed in 814, and fornicating court clerics figure so prominently in Wetti’s vision that the problem would seem to have persisted despite Louis’ capitulary.118
The sin of Sodom loomed large in Wetti’s vision; after condemning it both between men and in marriage, the angel returned to the theme “five times or more,” although Heito edited these repetitions out as being redundant.119 Yet such condemnations cannot have been controversial, for Christian moralists had long prohibited anal intercourse.120 How, then, can the angel’s insistence on sodomy have revealed to Wetti some error in his life or doctrine? We can rule out homosexuality as a personal problem for Wetti because the voice from God’s throne demanded that he present a better example for others, whereas we are assured that to all outward appearances his life as a monk had been one of purity and humility.121 The error corrected by the vision must accordingly have been one of doctrine. Since Wetti was the best theologian at Reichenau, he must have known the Bible and its patristic commentators extremely well, and consequently I think it most probable that Wetti was aware that the sin of Sodom in the biblical tradition is not specifically sexual. Instead, Sodom in the Bible is the image of a more generally perverse society that is not governed by natural law.122 Bede, for example, in his commentary on Genesis maintained that:
[The writer of Genesis] praises the fertility of the land and notes at the same time the impiety of its inhabitants, that they might be understood to deserve greater damnation because they turned God’s greatest presents not to the fruit of piety but to the increase of luxury … The sins to which the Sodomites were subject— except that unspeakable one recorded below [Gen. 19.4–11]—are sufficiently expounded by the prophet Ezekiel, who said, speaking to Jerusalem: “Behold this was the iniquity of Sodom thy sister, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance, and the idleness of her, and of her daughters: and they did not put forth their hand to the needy, and to the poor. And they were lifted up, and committed abominations before me” [Ezech. 16.49–50].123
The emphasis on Sodom as a community committing social injustice was developed at length by the prophets of the Old Testament. Saint Jerome was more specific; for him, sodomitical disobedience to divine law was exemplified by Israel and heretical Christians.124 The sex life of the men of Sodom, in short, was not foregrounded by the prophets, or even by Jesus, who represented the men of Sodom as the type of all who enjoy benefits from God but neglect their concomitant duties.125 Thus Wetti in his teaching may well have criticized the widespread tendency to identify the scelus sodomiticum with unnatural sex, and especially with anal intercourse.126 Obviously, such an attempt to reconstruct the current sexual concept of sodomy along biblical lines, however technically correct, might mislead the unsophisticated, and I would argue that the angel was urging Wetti to correct any such misapprehension. Thus the vision is a revealed endorsement of the view that the sin of Sodom was neither more nor less than unnatural sexual intercourse, and it came as a personal correction to Wetti, for whom it was a doctrinal issue. No one else would profit from the angel’s repeated references to sodomy, which is why Heito felt justified in omitting them.
Unlike Wetti’s doubts about the scope of sodomy, which were not widely shared, lay concubinage was a genuine public issue in 824, albeit a delicate one. Well informed churchmen, such as Wetti, had no doubt that bigamy had been forbidden to Christians since the early days of Christianity.127 As far as the Church was concerned, all forms of Roman marriage were valid and binding, but it was not so obliging in its interpretation of Germanic conjugal relationships. The only Germanic form of marriage recognized by the Church was the so-called Muntehe, a formal contractual relationship between families; it did not consider less formal sexual relationships to be valid, even long-term ones formed by mutual consent.128 Nevertheless polygamy was tolerated by the church throughout the reign of Charlemagne.129 Heito, who in his capacity as bishop of Basel, issued 25 capitula for his diocese in 813 or shortly thereafter, prudently ignored the issue.130 Not long after Wetti’s vision, however, the issue was finally raised in 826 by Pope Eugenius II, who admonished his fall synod to affirm the sanctity of marriage “because without doubt reckless men exist who, though admonished, prove to have closed ears.”131 The assembled bishops obliged with a canon that explicitly condemned lay concubinage: “Let no one have two wives at one time, and also never a concubine at any time.”132 Three years later, in 829, the bishops of France, whom Louis assembled to reform the church, declared that in principle “those men who have wives ought not to have either a casual liaison or a concubine.”133 The rationale for this pronouncement was provided by bishop Jonas of Orléans, who had marshaled over a dozen biblical and patristic texts in support of the thesis. Before 830, Halitgar of Cambrai was implementing these decrees by providing penalties for lay concubinage in his penitential.134 Hence it is clear that in the 820s the elimination of lay concubinage was a desideratum both in papal and imperial circles. This is enough to explain Wetti’s concern, but still the importance of the issue should not be exaggerated. The campaign against lay concubinage died out in the next generation, having proved unpopular, if not impracticable, and it never had been pressed with anything like the vigor or rigor with which the Frankish church opposed incestuous unions and divorce.135
In all likelihood, the angel’s denunciation of lay concubinage revealed to Wetti that he had been on the wrong side of this issue as well, although just what his position had been is not clear. He probably had maintained that lay concubinage, though admittedly a sin, was excusable because of the “fragility of human flesh,” especially when outweighed by good deeds. What the angel stressed was not just that the practice was wrong but that it was extremely dangerous, perhaps even a mortal sin, and that Wetti now must make this revelation public. Wetti’s reaction was that he did not dare denounce lay concubinage publicly because he was of inferior social status.136 Since this is the only occasion on which Wetti objected to the angel’s commands, the issue must have been an especially difficult moral crux for Wetti: he now knew the truth about lay concubinage, but he felt it was not his place to publicize these unpalatable revelations. Fortunately for him, perhaps, he died soon after performing his risky mission, leaving Heito and Walafrid to pass on his message as innocent reporters.
Who, then, did Wetti fear to offend? Not Louis the Pious, who had repeatedly attempted to cleanse his court of lay concubinage. More likely Wetti had in mind the Frankish nobility, who were best able to bear the considerable expense of supporting multiple mates. In 824 the Frankish church had not yet condemned lay concubinage, and the emperor had prohibited it only in the vicinity of the court, so elsewhere nobles could practice it with impunity, as indeed they continued to do despite the subsequent, short-lived campaign against it. If so, Wetti’s plea of vilitas must refer, not to his birth family, which was undoubtedly both noble and powerful, but rather to his perceived position as a simple monk who lived mediocriter.137
Now it should be evident why Wetti saw Charlemagne in hell. Before his vision, he was aware of a movement to prohibit lay concubinage, and through his extensive connections with the Carolingian palace he no doubt also knew about Charlemagne’s numerous concubines. Indeed, Wetti probably had witnessed them himself, since he evidently recognized Charlemagne when he saw him, which implies that Wetti had himself been at the emperor’s court at some time.138 At any rate, his inner doubts about the issue were resolved by the revelation that even the Church’s greatest modern benefactor must pay for this sin. In other words, the issue for Wetti was the gravity of lay concubinage, and Charlemagne’s punishment only served to prove that there were no exceptions to the rule.
1 Heitonis Visio Wettini 11, ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH Poetae, 2 (Berlin, 1884), pp. 267–275 (my translation here, and hereafter unless otherwise stated). Cf. Visio Guetini, ed. Migne, PL, vol. 105, cols 771–780. English translation (omitting the preface and capitula) as “Wetti’s Vision” by Eileen Gardiner in her Visions of Heaven and Hell before Dante (New York, 1989), pp. 65–79, with notes on pp. 244–245. For a catalogue of manuscripts, testimonia, and editions: Clemens Müller, “Wettinus–Guetinus–Uguetinus: Ein Beitrag zur Überlieferungsgeschichte von Heitos ‘Visio Wettini’,” in Hans F. Haefele, et al. (eds), Variorum munera florum: Latinität als prägende Kraft mittelalterliche Kultur; Festschrift für Hans F. Haefele zu seinem 60. Geburtstag (Sigmaringen, 1985), pp. 23–36. My references to the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH) are abbreviated in accordance with the Repertorium fontium historiae Medii Aevi, vol. 1: Series collectionum (Rome, 1962), pp. 466–479.
2 The other contemporary visions featuring Charlemagne are: (i) Visio Rotcharius, ed. W. Wattenbach, “Aus Petersburger Handschriften,” Anzeiger für Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit, n.s. 22 (1875), pp. 72–74, and (ii) Visio cuiusdam pauperculae mulieris, ed. Hubert Houben, “Visio cuiusdam pauperculae mulieris: Überlieferung und Herkunft eines frümittelalterlichen Visiontextes (mit Neuedition),” Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins, 124 (1976): pp. 31–42; English translation in Carolingian Civilization: A Reader, ed. Paul Edward Dutton (Peterborough, ON, 1993), pp. 179–180. In (i) Charlemagne is seen in heaven, having been rescued from purgatory by the prayers of the faithful; in (ii) he is still in purgatory. Neither vision can be dated precisely; Traill (n. 6 below) is inclined to place them prior to 824 (p. 15); I am inclined to agree with Paul Edward Dutton, The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire (Lincoln, NE, 1994), who argues that both came after Wetti’s vision (p. 69). Because the nature of Charlemagne’s sin is not indicated in either vision, both are in any case irrelevant to the subject of the present study.
3 The most recent substantial discussions are: Dutton, The Politics of Dreaming, pp. 50–80, with abundant bibliography, esp. pp. 277–278, n. 88; Knittel, Die Vision Wettis (n. 6 below); and Claude Carozzi, Le voyage de l’âme dans l’Au-delà d’après la littérature latine (Ve–XIIIe siècle), Collection de l’École française de Rome, 189 (Rome, 1994), pp. 319–324.
4 I am indebted to John J. Contreni for inadvertently stimulating this study and to Richard R. Ring for effective criticism and an abundant bibliography.
5 Dutton says it was written at Fulda (The Politics of Dreaming, p. 65), but Reichenau seems to be indicated by Walafrid’s stated intention of submitting the work to his abbot and preceptor there (prefatory letter, MGH Poetae, 2, pp. 302–303). Significantly, none of the copies of Walafrid’s version come from Fulda; instead, most are from St. Gall (MGH Poetae, 2, pp. 263–265) and Reichenau itself: Erich Kleinschmidt, “Zur Reichenauer Überlieferung der ‘Visio Wettini’ im 9. Jahrhundert,” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 30 (1974): pp. 199–207.
6 Visio Wettini Walahfridi, ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH Poetae, 2, pp. 301–333. I shall quote the slightly improved edition by David A. Traill, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini: Text, Translation, and Commentary, Lateinische Sprache und Literatur des Mittelalters, 2 (Frankfurt am Main, 1974), pp. 187–207 (differences from Dümmler’s text, mostly in punctuation, listed on pp. 34–35). With few exceptions, Traill’s English translation (pp. 36–74) is reliable; his commentary (pp. 75–186) has been invaluable. For further clarifications, largely philological in character, see the introduction and notes to Hermann Knittel’s German translation, Die Vision Wettis (Sigmaringen, 1986).
7 Walafrid, in his letter prefatory to the verse Visio, acknowledges his dependence on Heito’s prose version, saying that he used it “furtim,” which I take to mean that he borrowed extensively, not to say “plagiarized.” Traill, however, understood him to mean that he composed his work “in secret” (Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, p. 36).
8 Surmised by Traill, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, p. 79, and now persuasively argued by Johanne Autenrieth, “Heitos Prosaniederschrift der Visio Wettini–von Walahfrid Strabo redigiert?,” in Karl Hauck and Hubert Mordek (eds), Geschichtsschreibung und geistiges Leben im Mittelalter: Festschrift für H. Löwe zum 65. Geburtstag (Cologne, 1978), pp. 172–178. Knittel, however, is unconvinced: Die Vision Wettis, pp. 105–106, n. 4. Carozzi misrepresents Autenrieth as thinking that Walafrid, not Heito, “est le veritable rédacteur du texte” (Le voyage de l’âme, p. 325); she only suggests that he may have somewhat revised the prose version (pp. 175–176).
9 Ironically, it may have been intended as a physical purge.
10 Traill, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, p. 114.
11 That the angel is Wetti’s guardian is only revealed much later (Heito, Visio 20; cf. Traill, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, pp. 164–165).
12 Heito, Visio 3: “Nam patriarchae, prophetae et apostoli, omnisque dignitas caelestis sive terrestris pro genere humano laborabant, et vos modo magis laborare debetis, quia istis temporibus fragiliores sumus.” Not “we are in most fragile times” (Gardiner, p. 66). Heito stresses that this speech reproduces Wetti’s words just as he reported them. Walafrid paraphrases: “Nunc etiam maiora petit solamina praesens / Tempus, ab hac fragili quoniam plus carne gravamur” (pp. 258–259)—“but the present age needs even greater efforts on its behalf, since we are more burdened by the weakness of the flesh.” Traill, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, p. 48.
13 Heito says that the first nine or ten folios of book four of the Dialogues were read to him (Visio 4). Chapters 1–6 explain the immortality of the soul and only incidentally touch on the fate of a bad soul, which is “led to hell after death and continues to live even in death”: Gregory the Great, Dialogues 4, ed. Adalbert de Vogüé, Sources chrétiennes, 265 (Paris, 1980); The Fathers of the Church, trans. Odo John Zimmerman (Washington, DC, 1959), p. 195; cf. c. 3, p. 192. The reading probably was broken off at the point where Gregory begins to illustrate his doctrine with anecdotes; it certainly did not extend to Gregory’s treatment of purgatory (e.g. cc. 31, 37, 42, and esp. 45).
14 Heito, Visio 4.
15 Ibid. 5–27.
16 Ibid. 19–24.
17 Walafrid names three witnesses (vs. 864 and vs. 873); Heito says there were four (c. 29), but apparently Walafrid counts Wetti as the fifth person in the room: see Traill, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini ad vs. 866.
18 Heito, Visio 3, 4, 15, 24, 28, 29.
19 Ibid. 3; see n. 12 above.
20 Ibid. 16; see n. 80 below.
21 Ibid. 17: “male docendo exemplo suae pravitatis ….”
22 Ibid.: “‘Convocet,’ inquit [Deus], ‘omnes, quos suo exemplo aut doctrina ad inlicita agenda inlaqueaverat, prosternat se ante eos et profiteatur se male egisse aut docuisse, et postulet veniam ipsosque petat … ut hae mala ulterius nec agant nec doceant’.” Evidently, the offended parties are all at Reichenau, where they can be conveniently assembled. Aut, of course, indicates exclusive alternatives; Walafrid treats them as two distinct activities: “Si quos prava docens peccati felle fefellit / Deque via in praeceps inlex commisit abire, / Hos iterum revocat, solventur debita gratis” (Visio, vss 581–583).
23 Ibid. 18: “Si bona doceat et exempla bona agat et eos, quibus mala exempla praebuit, corrigat ….”
24 Walafrid, Visio 176–182 (trans. Traill, altered): “Nam Wettinus erat celebri rumore magister / Artibus instructus septem de more priorum, / Cui fortuna dedit scolis adnecteri illis, / Quis gaudere solet nitida et lasciva iuventus. / Sed tamen, exterius quantum discernere nostrum est, / Moribus in castis vitam mediocriter egit / Laudibus ex hominum multas vulgatus ad aures.” Traill (p. 45) renders “nitida et lasciva iuventus” as “sleek, light-headed youth,” and line 181 as “he lived a life of modesty and restraint.”
25 Walafrid, Ad Grimaldum cappellanum de morte Wettini, ed. MGH Poetae, 2, p. 334.
26 Walafrid, Visio 912–930.
27 Praefatio in visionem Wettini, ed. MGH Poetae, 2, p. 267: “Hic in sanctae conversationis eruditione proficiens, vitam quidem monasticam, ut in fine claruit, mediocriter duxit, studio autem discendi scientiam divinarum necnon et liberalium disciplinarum prae ceteris tunc temporis circa manentibus est consecutus.”
28 Emmanuel Munding, Abt-bischof Waldo, Begünder des goldene Zeitalters der Reichenau, Texte und Arbeiten, Abt. 1, 10–11 (Beuron, 1924), pp. 26–41; Die Kultur der Abtei Reichenau, ed. K. Beyerle (2 vols, Munich, 1925), placing Wetti in his context at pp. 87–90 and pp. 622–630. Heito’s life and works are the subject of a projected study by Christian Wilsdorf (Colmar).
29 Heito, Visio 19: “coepit ei angelus exponere in quantis vitiorum sordibus volutatur humanitas” (trans. Gardiner, p. 74).
30 Ibid. 19: “in nullo tamen deus magis offenditur, quam cum contra naturam peccatur. Et ideo multa vigilantia certandum est omnibus in locis, ne in scelere sodomitico dei habitaculum vertatur in delubra daemonum. ‘Non solum enim,’ inquit, ‘hic morbus virulenta contagione inrepens inficit animas inter se concubitu masculorum pollutas, sed etiam in coniugatis multiplici peste concretus invenitur, dum in rabiem vexatione libidinis versi et instinctu daemonum agitati, naturae bonum a deo concessum in uxoribus propriis perdunt, ita ut toro immaculato in stupri maculam verso ambo coniuges prostituti daemonibus fiant’.”
31 Ibid. 19: “Unde praecipio tibi ex auctoritate divina, ut haec publice praedices; etiam quantum discrimen in luxu concubinarum hereat, non celes. Quamdiu enim in illa obscenitate polluuntur, regni caelorum aditum numquam merentur. Cui ait: ‘Domine, haec proferre in medium non audeo, quia propter vilitatem meae personae ad hoc me aptum non aspitio, non sentio.’ Cui angelus cum magna indignatione respondit: ‘Quod deus vult et per me tibi iubet, tu non audes proferre’?” Gardiner’s translation (pp. 74–75), but altered for the Latin texts given parenthetically.
32 James Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago, IL, 1987), p. 149, n. 106. He was refuting the argument “that sodomy was loosely used in the vocabulary of this period to designate any type of sexual activity that an author particularly loathed,” maintained by J. Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago, IL, 1980), pp. 176–178, p. 202. Knittel, however, points out (Die Vision Wettis, n. 91) that in Prudentius’ Psychomachia (c. 400), the allegorical Virgo Pudicitia defeats her enemy Sodomita Libido (vs. 40.), a figure of lust in general. The episode was often illustrated, once at Reichenau (saec. ix, 3/3): Knittel, fig. 2, pp. 94, pp. 101–102.
33 Heito, Visio 20: “Post haec coepit eum ammonere modo diverso de emendatione sua” (trans. Gardiner, p. 75).
34 Ibid. 20: “consecrationem suam scorto vendens” (trans. Gardiner, p. 75). Traill (Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, p. 165) observes that the allusion does not seem to fit the case because in Judges 16 Delilah is not expressly called a harlot but only “a woman he [Samson] loved” (“amavit mulierem,” vs. 4), unlike the “mulierem meretricem” with whom he had earlier consorted in Gaza (vs. 1). For Wetti and his reporters, however, the fact that Delilah often engaged in promiscuous sex (vss 4–20) was enough to qualify her as a scortum, since in patristic usage scortari signified “to live in debauchery”: Dictionnaire latin-français des auteurs chrétiens, ed. Albert Blaise (Strasburg, 1954), p. 744, s.v. scortor; cf. s.v. scortatio and scortator.
35 Ibid. 18; see n. 23 above.
36 Ibid. 21 (trans. Gardiner, p. 76).
37 Ibid. 23: “‘Et ubi,’ inquit, ‘illius vitae apostolicae formula incorrupta servatur?’ ‘In transmarinis,’ ait, ‘regionibus’…” (trans. Gardiner, p. 76).
38 Ibid. 28: “His igitur et aliis pene innumeris ab eodem angelo ostensis et auditis, quae huic scripto causa compendii exclusimus ….”
39 Ibid. 24: “His dictis iterum atque iterum de scelere sodomitico verbum intulit. Cetera enim vitia vitanda semel tantummodo notavit, hunc vero pestiferum animae morbum contra naturam commento diaboli suggestum, quinquies et eo amplius vitandum repetivit.”
40 Ibid. 24–27 (trans. Gardiner, p. 77). On the plague of 823, see Annales regni Francorum ad an. 823, ed. Friedrich Kurze, MGH Script. rer. Germ, 6 (Hannover, 1895), pp. 163–164. On Gerold, see James Bruce Ross, “Two Neglected Paladins of Charlemagne: Erich of Friuli and Gerold of Bavaria,” Speculum, 20 (1945): pp. 212–235.
41 Although sacerdos often signifies a priest or bishop, here it evidently includes lower clerical orders, as was common at this time: e.g. Admonitio generalis an. 789, c.4, ed. Alfred Boretius, MGH Capit., 1 (Hannover, 1883), p. 54. See J.F. Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis lexicon minus (Leiden, 1984), p. 926, s.v. sacerdos, 4. Wetti himself was identified as a priest in one Reichenau list: Beyerle, Die Kultur der Abtei Reichenau, p. 1163 (no. 192).
42 Not “every third day” (Gardiner, p. 68); see Traill, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, p. 128.
43 Heito, Visio 6: “in quibus [locis] plurimos tam minoris quam maioris ordinis sacerdotes stantes, dorso stipitibus inhaerentes in igne stricte loris ligatos viderat; ipsasque feminas ab eis stupratas simili modo constrictas ante eos, in eodem igne usque ad loca genitalium dimersas. Dictumque est ei ab angelo, quod sine intermissione, uno die tantum intermissio, die tertia semper in locis genitalibus virgis caederentur. Plures eorum suae agnitioni notos dicebat” (trans. Gardiner, p. 68, altered; see esp. the two preceding notes).
44 By “concubine” I mean a female bedmate other than one’s wife. Moralists often used the term interchangeably with meretrix (e.g., n. 132, below). See Knittel, Die Vision Wettis, p. 34.
45 Although equality in retributive justice was a concept recognized by classical authors (e.g. Virgil, Aeneid, vol. 6, p. 654), it was especially familiar to Christians from the Bible (Exodus 21:23–36; Levit. 24:17–20; Deut. 19:21; Matt. 5:38, 7:1–2, 12) as the lex talionis. Cf. Hans Joachim Kamphausen, Traum und Vision in der lateinischen Poesie der Karolingerzeit, Lateinische Sprache und Literatur des Mittelalters, 4 (Bern, 1975), p. 72, n. 29. Dante, who made extensive use of the principle in his Inferno and Purgatorio, called it contrapasso (Inf. 28.142), a term that he derived from Aquinas (contrapassum, Summ. theol. 2–2 q. 61 a. 4). The principle was occasionally applied to souls in the afterlife by visionaries before Wetti, notably the Visio Sancti Pauli, where fire, which was the only form of torment specified by the church fathers (n. 50, below), is applied appropriately. Traill, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, pp. 126–127, and Lino Pertile, “Contrapasso,” in Richard Lansing (ed.), The Dante Encyclopedia (New York, 2000), pp. 219–222, with bibliography.
46 On clerical concubinage: Henry Charles Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church (2 vols, 3rd edn, New York, 1907); E. Jombart, “Concubinage,” Dictionnaire de droit canonique (Paris, 1942), vol. 3, pp. 1513–1524.
47 Heito, Visio 7: “‘Sacerdotum,’ inquit angelus, ‘maxima pars mundanis lucris inhiando et palatinis curis inserviendo, cultu vestium et pompa ferculorum se extollendo questum putant esse pietatem. Animabus lucrandis non invigilant, deliciis affluentes in scorta proruunt …’.” Walafrid versifies this passage (Visio 327–333) and then, speaking in his own voice, allegorizes the adultery: “How will you dare to commit adultery with the Lord’s betrothed? Will you bring her into the King’s chamber and brazenly enter the marriage bed before him?” (342–344, trans. Traill, p. 51). The sex in Wetti’s vision was literal, as the presence of real concubines attests.
48 Ibid. 7; see n. 47, above.
49 Since at this period the geography of the afterworld lacked definition, it seems misleading to treat spiritual states such as “heaven,” “hell,” and “purgatory” as if they were place names by capitalizing them. On the other hand, I use the term “purgatory” without hesitation, because I am unconvinced by Le Goff’s arguments that the concept of purgatory did not exist before the word purgatorium appeared in the twelfth century: for his thesis: Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, IL, 1984), pp. 2–5.
50 Heito, Visio 8. For the church fathers, both punishment and purgation were inflicted in the hereafter by some sort of fire: Le Goff, Birth of Purgatory, pp. 54–56, 82–85.
51 Heito, Visio 9. Wetti here confirms the vision of “a certain pilgrim” ten years ago, as Heito notes, adding that this reiteration indicates that the earlier vision should have been recorded.
52 Heito hinted that it was Waldo (d. 814) by stating that he was ten years dead in 824 (Visio 9); he is positively identified by Walafrid’s acrostic (Visio 394–399) and the title later provided for Heito’s chapter 10: “De Waldone abbate in purgatione laborante” (MGH Poetae, 2, p. 267). Although abbot of Reichenau 786–806, Waldo was nonresident most of that time (see n. 102, below); probably Walafrid is alluding to this abbatial absenteeism when he says that Waldo was guilty of some kind of neglect: “Abluit, incauto quicquid neglexerat actu” (Visio 396). Negligence is also indicated as the sin punished on the mountain by the placement of the neglectful bishop Adalhelm on its other side (Heito, Visio 10). For the life of Waldo, see Munding, Abtbischof Waldo, who does not, however, explain his punishment (p. 109).
53 Heito digresses to provide background. Three years ago (821), a cleric named Adam had a vision in which Waldo begged for the prayers of as many monasteries as possible, but Bishop Adalhelm was not impressed by the vision and refused to cooperate. In Adam’s vision, Waldo complains that he is tormented by the stench of the bathwater being shared in this life by two counts, Odalrih and Ruadrih. This bizarre but obscure contrapasso is no longer comprehensible, although contemporaries could apparently be expected to get the point, especially since Walafrid’s acrostics carefully identified all the persons involved (Visio 394–427). For modern attempts to elucidate the passage, see Traill, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, p. 142, and now Schmid, “Bemerkungen,” p. 33, n. 41, noting several possible bishops named Adalhelm.
54 Heito, Visio 12–13.
55 Ibid. 14–15: “Innumerabiles etiam se vidisse retulit tam de plebeio, quam de ordine monachico diversorum coenobiorum et regionum, aliquos in gloria, quosdam eorum in poena depressos … et ceteris innumeris conspectis, quae causa compendii stilo currente exclusimus …” (trans. Gardiner, p. 72, except last clause).
56 Ibid. 27. See n. 40, above.
57 See n. 32, above.
58 Heito, Visio 11: “Illic etiam quendam principem, qui Italiae et populi Romani sceptra quondam rexerat, vidisse se stantem dixerat, et verenda eius cuiusdam animalis morsu laniari, reliquo corpore inmuni ab hac lesione manente. Stupore igitur vehementi attonitus, ammirans quomodo tantus vir, qui in defensione catholicae fidei et regimine sanctae ecclesiae moderno seculo pene inter ceteros singularis apparuit, inuri tanta deformitate poenae potuisset. Cui ab angelo ductore suo protinus responsum est, quod, quamvis multa miranda et laudabilia et deo accepta fecisset, quorum mercede privandus non est, tamen stupri inlecebris resolutus, cum ceteris bonis deo oblatis longevitatem vitae suae in hoc terminare voluisset, ut quasi parva obscenitas et concessa fragilitati humanae libertas mole tantorum bonorum obrui at absumi potuisset. ‘Qui tamen,’ inquit, ‘in sorte electorum ad vitam praedestinatus est’.”
59 Text in n. 58, above; trans. Gardiner, pp. 70–71 (altered). Her omissions include the specification that it was a “certain” animal and the theologically significant term “predestined” (not simply “destined”).
60 Heito regularly uses quiddam when he knows the name for certain, as is the case here (Visio 11 Charlemagne by acrostic) and elsewhere: “de quodam abate” (Visio, p. 10, Waldo by acrostic); “quidam episcopus nuper defunctus” (Visio 10, Adalhelmus by acrostic); “quibusdam fratribus” (Visio 29, four—including Heito himself—named by Walafrid, Visio 864–869). Presumably Heito also knew the identity of “cuiusdam animalis” (p. 11) not to mention the monk in a lead strongbox, whom Wetti had “particularly named” (Visio 9).
61 The list of capitula provided by a later hand, most likely Walafrid’s, was explicit: “XI. De Carolo imperatore” (MGH Poetae, 2, p. 267); see n. 8, above.
62 Walafrid, Visio 446–461, emphasized by boldface letters in Dümmler’s edition. Moreover, in the preface to his poem, Walafrid alerted the reader to the presence of acrostics in the poem (MGH Poetae, 2, p. 303).
63 Romanesque reliefs often show a woman’s genitals bitten by a snake, the symbol of lust (Knittel, Die Vision Wettis, p. 109, n. 72); also appropriate would be a lupa (she-wolf = prostitute) or perhaps even a bitch.
64 This circumstance assures us that Wetti did not have in mind a single incident, such as those that later legend, inspired no doubt by rumors of Charlemagne’s lust, related. Charles was supposed to have attempted to rape St. Amelberge, though he only managed to break her arm (vita composed at the end of the ninth century); moreover, incestuously with his sister Gisela, he was believed to have conceived the paladin Roland (e.g. Karlamagnús Saga, based on a twelfth-century French source): see Baudoin de Gaiffier, “La légende de Charlemagne: Le péché de l’empereur et son pardon,” in his Etudes critiques d’hagiographie et d’iconologie publiées à l’occasion du 70me anniversaire de l’auteur, Subsidia hagiographica, 43 (Brussels, 1967), pp. 260–275, at pp. 274–275.
65 Charlemagne’s concubines do not seem to have greatly interested his contemporaries; at least no one bothered to keep score. The accepted list is given by Karl Ferdinand Werner, “Die Nachkommen Karls des Grossen bis um Jahr 1000,” in Wolfgang Braunfels (ed.), Karl der Grosse: Lebenswerk und Nachleben (5 vols, Dusseldorf, 1965–1967), vol. 4, pp. 403–482, and especially the accompanying table, which lists six concubines: Himiltrud, Madelgard, Gersvind, Regina, Adallind, and one whose name Einhard could not recall (Vita Caroli, p. 18). A seventh may have been the ancilla Sigrada, who was freed c. 777 for an unknown reason, but Werner rightly refuses to jump to the conclusion that it was because she was the king’s concubine. Nonetheless, he points out that we do not know all the women with whom Charles had relations but only those who, as far as Einhard knew, bore him children (Karl der Grosse, vol. 4, p. 410, n. 15). See also Siegfried Rösch, Caroli Magni Progenies, part 1: Genealogie und Landesgeschichte, 30 (Neustadt a. d. Aisch,1977), pp. 63–64.
66 Heito, Visio 3; see n. 12, above.
67 Ibid. 19.
68 Bernard Dupriez, A Dictionary of Literary Devices: Gradus, A–Z, trans. and ed. Arthur W. Halsall (Toronto, 1991), p. 303.
69 Wetti was at least Erlebald’s companion when he went to study with a learned Irishman (Walafrid, Visio 123–126); see n. 106, below.
70 Vita Sancti Galli, dedicated to Gozbert, abbot of Saint Gall 816–837: ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH Script. rer. Merov., 4 (Hannover and Leipzig, 1902), pp. 256–280. For a recent (1998) summary of Wetti’s role in a complex tradition, see F.J. Worstbrock, “Wetti von Reichenau OSB,” in Karl Längosch et al. (eds), Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon (14 vols, 2nd edn, Berlin, 1981), vol. 3, pp. 972–975.
71 Wetti conducted himself “mediocriter” according to both Walafrid (Visio 181) and the preface to Heito’s Visio (MGH Poetae, 2, p. 267). Traill renders this as “modesty and restraint” (p. 45) and Knittel as “in massvoller Weise” (p. 53); Carozzi surprisingly takes it to mean that Wetti lived “une vie monastique moyenne” (Le voyage de l’âme, p. 325).
72 Heito, Visio 3.
73 Walafrid, Visio 423–424: “Ad loca sanctorum pete mittat ut ille virorum, / Deposcens, quod gratis agunt, solatia ferre” (trans. Traill, p. 54); cf. Heito, Visio 10.
74 Heito, Visio 10: “episcopus solatia precum suarum etiam a mortuis conventus non subministravit” (trans. Gardiner, p. 70).
75 The development of patristic notions about purgation are conveniently summarized by Le Goff, Birth of Purgatory, pp. 52–95. Le Goff sees no significant change in the concept of purgation between c. 600 and 1100 (p. 96), and characterizes the attitude of Carolingian theologians to it as indifferent and traditional (p. 103). For a less tendentious treatment of the developing concept, see A. Michel, “Purgatoire,” Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (Paris, 1936), vol. 13, pp. 1163–1326.
76 MGH Conc., 2.1 (Hannover and Leipzig, 1906), pp. 72–73, ed. Albert Werminghoff; Wilfried Hartmann, Die Synoden der Karolingerzeit im Frankenreich und in Italien, ed. Walter Brandmüller, Konziliengeschichte, ser. A (Paderborn, 1989), pp. 79–81.
77 Verbrüderungsbuch der Abtei Reichenau, eds Johanne Autenrieth, Dieter Geuenich, and Karl Schmid, MGH Libri memoriales et necrologia, n.s. 1 (Hannover, 1979). Karl Schmid has suggested that the plague of 823 prompted Heito’s resignation and subsequent interest in the afterworld, as well as (and especially) Reichenau’s concern to provide lists of the dead who were to be remembered in prayer: “Bemerkungen zur Anlage des Reichenauer Verbrüderungsbuches: Zugleich ein Beitrag zum Verständnis der ‘Visio Wettini’,” in Kasper Elm et al. (eds), Landesgeschichte und Geistesgeschichte: Festschrift für Otto Herding zum 65. Geburtstag (Stuttgart, 1977), pp. 24–41.
78 On Benedict and his reforms, see Philibert Schmitz, “Benoît d’Aniane,” Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, vol. 8, pp. 177–188; a brief account in C.H. Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism (New York, 1984), pp. 68–73. On Benedict’s relationship with Louis, see Philippe Depreux, Prosopographie de l’entourage de Louis le Pieux (781–840), Deutsches Historisches Institut (Paris), Instrumenta, 1, (Sigmaringen, 1997), pp. 123–129. Philibert Schmitz stressed that the reforms of 817 did not apply to Italy: “L’influence de Saint Benoît d’Aniane dans l’histoire de l’ordre de Saint-Benoît,” in Il monachesimo nell’alto medioevo e la formazione della civiltà occidentale, Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 4 (Spoleto, 1957), pp. 401–415, at pp. 414–415.
79 MGH Epist., 5 (Berlin, 1899), pp. 305–307; new edition in Corpus consuetudinum monasticarum, ed. Kassius Hallinger (Siegburg, 1963), 1, pp. 329–336, dated between 817 and 821 and addressed to the abbot of Reichenau, who at that time was Heito. Benedikt Paringer has rightly rejected the identification of the house as Inden and of the monks as Tatto and Grimald: “Le manuscrit de Saint-Gall 914 représente-t-il le latin original de la Règle de Saint Benoît?,” Revue bénédictine, 61 (1951): pp. 81–140, at 120–121.
80 Heito, Visio 16: “In illo ergo tam praeclaro ordine sacerdotum sanctos Dionisium, Martinum, Anianum Hilariumque cognovisse se asseruit.” Gardiner’s translation conflates Benedict and Hilary: “Hilary of Aniane” (Visions, p. 73). Cf. Walafrid, Visio 564–565: “Ipse Dionisium, Hilarium sanctosque ferebat / Martinum Anianumque suas cognosse fenestras.” Benedict of Aniane was intended, according to Traill, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, p. 158; instead, Knittel thinks the reference is to the bishop Anianus (Aignon) who defended Orléans against Attila the Hun (Die Vision Wettis, p. 110, n. 85, and p. 116, n. 230; cf. Carozzi, Le voyage de l’âme, p. 338). The relative obscurity of St. Anianus does not match the prominence of the others, however, and the use of antomasia is appropriate to avoid confusion between two prominent Benedicts.
81 Ardo, writing soon after Benedict’s death, includes without comment only two miraculous occurrences: the event was revealed to the bishop of Maguelonne in a dream, and the brothers at Inden reported that the corpse’s face was much redder (“tantum ruborem”) than usual: Vita Benedicti abbatis Anianensis et Indensis 41–42, ed. W. Wattenbach, MGH SS, 15.1 (Hannover, 1887), pp. 218–219.
82 Ardo appends to the Vita Benedicti the text of two of Benedict’s letters written from his deathbed to the abbot of Aniane (43) and the archbishop of Narbonne (44); Benedict is also reported to have sent similar admonitions to other monasteries and to the emperor (42): MGH SS, 15.1, pp. 218–220. For Wetti, see Heito, Visio 30 and Walafrid, Visio 918.
83 Heito, Visio 26; P. Schmitz, Histoire de l’ordre de Saint-Benoît (7 vols, Maredsous, 1942–1956), vol. 1, pp. 109–110; Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism, p. 71.
84 Heito, Visio 5; Traill, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, p. 125. According to Ardo, Benedict derived this novelty from Roman usage: Vita Benedicti 52, ed. MGH SS, 15.1, p. 216 = Ordo diurnus Anianensis, in Corpus consuetudinum monasticarum, ed. Hallinger, vol. 1, p. 315. The novelty is stressed by Schmitz, “L’influence de Saint Benoît d’Aniane,” p. 407.
85 Heito, Visio 21; trans. Gardiner, p. 76. Traill, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, pp. 168–169.
86 Heito, Visio 23; trans. Gardiner, p. 76, altered: “‘In transmarinis,’ ait ‘regionibus …’.” Traill, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, pp. 172–173, takes this to mean the East. Walafrid uses similar phrases to describe Heito’s voyage to Constantinople: “maris trans aequora vasta profundi” (Visio 71; cf. vss 136–137).
87 Walafrid, Visio 893–896; trans. Traill, p. 71. Cf. Traill, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, p. 181, who speculates that he was an alcoholic.
88 Heito, Visio 21: “‘Aqua,’ inquit, ‘valde ad potandum laudabilis est, quia naturalis potus est’.”
89 Regula Benedicti 39 reluctantly allows a monk a half bottle more or less of wine per diem, though it cites with approval an eastern tradition that “monks should not drink wine at all”: RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English with Notes, ed. Timothy Fry (Collegeville, MN, 1981), pp. 238–241.
90 Ardo, Vita Benedicti 35, ed. MGH SS, 15.1, p. 215.
91 Heito, Visio 7; see n. 47, above.
92 Alcuin, Ep. 40 (between 793 and 795?), ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH Epist., 4 (Berlin, 1895), p. 83: “Sint tibi, fili mi, mores cum honestate et temperantia, vestimentorum moderatus cultus, convivia non in luxoria et ebrietate, sed in sobrietate et congruentia temporibus et personis.” Alcuin’s dress code was evidently more flexible than was later the case; see n. 94, below.
93 Theodulf, Ad episcopos 89–92, ed. MGH Poetae, 1 (Berlin, 1881), p. 454.
94 Astronomer, Vita Hludowici 28, ed. G.H. Pertz, MGH SS, 2 (Hannover, 1829), p. 622 = ed. Ernst Tremp, MGH Script. rer. Germ., 64 (Hannover, 1995), p. 378.
95 Ardo, Vita Benedicti 39, ed. MGH SS, 15.1, p. 217: “nonnullos totis nisibus anelare in adquirenda monachorum coenobia, eaque non tantum precibus, ut obtineant, verum etiam decertare muneribus ….” Trans. A. Cabaniss in Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints’ Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, eds Thomas F.X. Noble and Thomas Head (Philadelphia, PA, 1995), p. 248.
96 On Wala, see Depreux, Prosopographie, pp. 390–393.
97 Paschasius Radbertus, Vita Walae abbatis Corbeiensis 2.5, ed. G.H. Pertz, MGH SS, 2, p. 550: “Praesertim et militiam clericorum in palatio, quos capellanos vulgo vocant, quia nullus est ordo ecclesiasticus, denotabat plurimum, qui non ob aliud serviunt, nisi ob honores ecclesiarum, et questus saeculi, ac lucri gratiam sine probatione magisterii, atque ambitiones mundi.” My translation adopts Depreux’s interpretation, that by ordo ecclesiasticus Paschasius meant “que les chapelains ne vivaient pas selon un ‘ordre ecclésiastique’ classique (il s’agissait d’un collège de clercs qui n’étaient ni moines ni chanoines)”: Prosopographie, p. 17. At this period the term capellanus designated a cleric serving in the imperial household, as a spiritual vassus. = See Walafrid’s definition, quoted by Josef Fleckenstein, Die Hofkapelle der deutschen Könige, Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 16 (2 vols, Stuttgart, 1959–1966), vol. 1, p. 30; discussion, vol. 1, pp. 30–37; definition, vol. 1, p. 25: “Geistliche, die an einen Herrn gebunden sind.” Cf. Depreux, Prosopographie, pp. 13–21.
98 MGH Conc., 2.2 (Hannover and Leipzig, 1908), p. 676, c. 86; cf. Alfred Boretius and Viktor Krause, MGH Capit., 2 (Hannover, 1897), p. 39, c. 32. Cf. Fleckenstein, Hofkapelle, vol. 1, p. 111, n. 435.
99 MGH Conc., 2.2, p. 675, c. 81; cf. MGH Capit., 2, p. 37, c. 26.
100 MGH Conc. 2.2, p. 722, c. 22: “de presbiteris, qui hincinde de diversis parrochiis veniunt et in palatio morantur, ut sine proprii episcopi consensu ibi locum consistendi … palatinas aedes frequentent ….”
101 On Waldo’s relation to Wetti, see Munding, Abt-bischof Waldo, pp. 5–16; Fleckenstein, Hofkapelle, p. 89.
102 Munding, Abt-bischof Waldo, pp. 70–84, dating the episcopate most likely 791–801.
103 Traill, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, pp. 94–95; Munding, Abt-bischof Waldo, pp. 94–105. Waldo had been Charlemagne’s chaplain and confessor: Fleckenstein, Hofkapelle, vol. 1, pp. 65, 107.
104 Heito, Visio 2: “aedificium quoddam facturi in modum armariorum Italicorum praefiguratum.” The comparison was not supplied by Heito, for he declares that he has recorded the first vision “adding nothing of our own and taking nothing away” (§3, trans. Gardiner, p. 67).
105 Wetti said he “recognized (agnovisse)” Sebastian among the martyrs (Heito, Visio 17). The translation to San Pietro ad vincula in Pavia is reported by Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum 6.5, eds L. Bethmann and G. Waitz, MGH Script. rer. Lang. (Hannover, 1878), p. 106.
106 Walafrid, Visio 123–124: “Mittitur [Erlebaldus] ad quendam socio comitatus abinde, / Cuius multa viret sapientia dogmate, Scottum.” Walafrid obliquely identified the socius as Wetti in vss 125–127; cf. Traill, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, p. 105. Munding guessed that the scottus might have been Alcuin (Abt-bischof Waldo, p. 44); Dümmler had suggested Clement the Scot (MGH Poetae, 2, p. 308, n. 3); most likely is conjecture of Julian Reinhard Dieterich that the Scot was a monk at St-Fursy (Péronne, diocese of Noyon), from which house Reichenau obtained manuscripts and information on current Irish history down to the year 817 (Beyerle, Die Kultur der Abtei Reichenau, vol. 2, pp. 776–777).
107 Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni 33, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger, MGH Script. rer. Germ., 23 (Hannover and Leipzig, 1901), pp. 37–41.
108 Walafrid, Visio 71–77; Traill, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, pp. 98–99; Depreux, Prosopographie, pp. 234–235.
109 Thus Walahfrid, in his poem to Grimald on Wetti’s death (MGH Poetae, 2, p. 334, vs. 33); cf. Traill, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, p. 79, correcting Dümmler’s punctuation of the passage.
110 On Grimald, see Depreux, Prosopographie, pp. 221–222, and Dieter Geuenich, “Beobachtungen zu Grimald von St. Gallen, Erzkapellen und Oberkanzler Ludwigs des Deutschen,” in Johanne Autenrieth, Michael Borgolte, Herrad Spilling (eds), Litterae Medii Aevi: Festschrift für Joanne Autenrieth zu ihrem 65. Geburtstag (Sigmaringen, 1988), pp. 55–68.
111 Depreux, Prosopographie, pp. 393–394; Trail, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, p. 6; Fleckenstein, Hofkapelle, p. 73. When Charles came of age in 838, Louis the Pious made Walafrid abbot of Reichenau; Strabo died in 849 while on a mission to Charles the Bald.
112 Grimald’s uncle Hetti (d. 847) was archbishop of Trier at least since 819; his successor was Grimald’s brother, Thietgaud (847–868): Fleckenstein, Hofkapelle, p. 89. Munding noted further family associations with Trier; he concluded that the family certainly belonged to the upper nobility and conjectured that it might even have been related to the Carolingians (Abtbischof Waldo, pp. 10–14, 16). Cf. Geuenich, “Beobachtungen,” pp. 56–58.
113 Astronomer, Gesta Hludowici 23, ed. MGH Script. rer. Germ., 64, p. 352: “imperator omnem coetum—qui permaximus erat—femineum palatio excludi iudicavit praeter paucissimas, quas famulatio regali congruas iudicavit.”
114 The Astronomer says that they were exiled to the lands they received from their father (preceding note), but Nithard says they were sent to “their monasteries”: Historiarum libri quatuor 1.2, ed. P. Lauer, Histoire des fils de Louis le Pieux, Les classiques de l’histoire de France au Moyen Age, 7 (Paris, 1964), p. 6: “sorores suas a patre justo matrimonio susceptas … quas et instanter a palatio ad sua monasteria abire praecepit.” The evidence is collected by Bernhard Simson, Jahrbücher des fränkischen Reiches unter Ludwig dem Frommen (2 vols, 1874–1876; rpt Berlin, 1969), vol. 1, pp. 17–19. What happened to Charles’s concubines is not known. The monks at Reichenau strongly disapproved of the practice of placing Carolingian women, and especially widows (i.e. sexually experienced women), in charge of a religious community of virgins: the angel condemns it (Heito, Visio 22) and Walafrid emphasized his disapproval in an extraordinary apostrophe addressed to the emperor (Visio 762–768).
115 Janet L. Nelson, “Women at the Court of Charlemagne: A Case of Monstrous Regiment?,” in John Carmi Parsons (ed.), Medieval Queenship (New York, 1993), pp. 42–61, esp. at p. 59. Similarly, Matthew Innes, for whom Louis’ reason for the banishment “was to ensure his control of the palace complex and of Carolingian family charisma”: “Charlemagne’s Will: Piety, Politics and the Imperial Succession,” English Historical Review, 112 (1997): pp. 833–855, at p. 845.
116 The members of the coetus femineus (n. 113, above) “were probably not professional prostitutes but women of questionable sexual conduct, namely, the concubines of court officials and servants”: Suzanne Fonay Wemple, Women in Frankish Society (Philadelphia, PA, 1981), p. 244, n. 41.
117 MGH Capit., 1, p. 298. Whipping is specified for “gadalibus et meretricibus.” Boretius cites Du Cange: “Armoricis gadal est libidinosus,” but Niermeyer, citing only this text, translates: “putaine / harlot” (Lexicon, s.v. gadalis).
118 Since Boretius, the Capitulare de disciplina palatii has usually been dated “circa 820?,” e.g. most recently by Depreux, Prosopographie, pp. 22–25. Tremp, however, thought it to be contemporary with the Astronomer’s account of the “cleansing” (ed. cit., p. 353, n. 288). I think it more likely to date from the early 820s, since it mentions two officials—Louis’ baker Peter and his cook Gunzo—both of whom are attested as still being in his service in 826 (Depreux, Prosopographie, pp. 227–228, 349).
119 Heito, Visio 19, 24.
120 Derrick S. Bailey, Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition (London, 1955), p. 25; Boswell, Christianity, pp. 137–182; Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, p. 61, p. 71, p. 108, p. 149, p. 166, p. 174.
121 Heito, Visio 16–18; Walafrid, Visio 181: “Moribus in castis vitam mediocriter egit ….”
122 Richard Kay, Dante’s Swift and Strong: Essays on “Inferno” XV (Lawrence, KS, 1978), pp. 208–289.
123 Bede, Libriquatuor in principium Genesis ad Gen. 13:10–14, ed. Charles W. Jones, Corpus Christianorum Latinorum [= CCL], 118A (Turnhout, 1967), pp. 178–179: “Fertilitatem terrae laudat, simul et incolarum notat impietatem, ut eo maiori damnatione digni esse intellegantur, quod maxima Dei munera non ad fructum pietatis sed ad incrementum vertere luxuriae … Quibus autem peccatis Sodomitae fuerint subiugati, excepto illo infando quod in sequentibus scriptura commemorat, Iezechiel propheta sufficienter exponit, loquens ad Hierusalem … [quotes Ezech. 16.49–50].” Bede adds that this interpretation is confirmed by 2 Peter 2:7–8.
124 See especially Jerome’s commentaries on Amos 4:11 and Hosea 11:8–9, ed. CCL, vol. 76, pp. 267–268, 126; also on Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, analyzed in Kay, Swift and Strong, pp. 237–248.
125 Matth. 10:15, 11:23; Luke 10:12, 17:28; Kay, Swift and Strong, pp. 267–274.
126 The sexualization of Sodom’s sin is traced by Bailey, Homosexuality, pp. 1–25. Philo Judaeus (d. c. 50 C.E.) was the first who “expressly associates Sodom with homosexual practices” (p. 21), in which he was followed by Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Augustine, and Gregory the Great. Taking Bailey as his point of departure, Boswell has also surveyed the biblical tradition of Sodom: Christianity, pp. 93–117.
127 Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, p. 37, p. 87.
128 The thesis of Herbert Meyer (1927) that such unions were a valid, and indeed older, form of Germanic marriage—the so-called institution of Friedelehe—has now been repeatedly refuted, most recently by Andrea Esmyol, Geliebte oder Ehefrau: Konkubinen im frühen Mittelalter, Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 52 (Cologne, 2002). Cf. Wemple, Women, pp. 12–14, pp. 34–35, and passim; Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, pp. 128–130, p. 145.
129 An unlikely exception is a series of five capitula (MGH Capit., 1, pp. 202–203) of Italian provenance that were drawn up by bishops for approval by an unnamed king. Boretius tentatively dated the group “790–890?” but Werminghoff omitted them from MGH Conc., 2, since there is no entry in his index s.v. brunaticus (c. 3), a haplax legomenon according to Niermeyer’s Lexicon, though Boretius ad loc. cites a cognate form from a Roman synod of 743. In fact, all but the last capitulum derive from the reign of Liutprand; c. 5, which perhaps was added to the series after the council of Rome in 826 (see next note), reads: “Et hoc etiam scribimus, ut cunctis diligentes [rex] inquirat: ut si est homo uxorem habens, et supra ipsa cum alia adulterans et concubinam habuerint, a tali igitur inlicita perpetratione faciat eos cum omni sollicitudine separari.” The king responded (c. 6) that anyone guilty of such offenses should pay his wergeld to the crown if he did not comply.
130 MGH Capit., 1, pp. 362–366. He was concerned, however, to regulate remarriage within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity (c. 21, p. 365). Heito’s tolerance of lay concubinage was typical; for a tabular comparison with his contemporaries, see Jean Gaudemet, “Les statuts épiscopaux de la première décade du IXe siècle,” in Stephan Kuttner (ed.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Toronto, 21–25 August 1972 (Vatican City, 1976), pp. 303–349.
131 MGH Conc., 2.2, p. 558 (c. 11): “quia qui aures clausas admoniti habere noscuntur sine dubio desperati existunt.” On the council, see Hartmann, Synoden, pp. 173–177.
132 MGH Conc., 2.2, p. 582 (c. 37, short version): “Nulli liceat uno tempore duas uxores habere, sed neque unquam concubinam.” Cf. the long version, given there and in MGH Capit., 1, p. 376, c. 37: “Nulli liceat uno tempore duas habere uxores sive concubinas [var. uxores uxoremve et concubinam], quia, cum domui non sit lucrum, animae fit detrimentum. Nam sicut Christus castam observat ecclesiam, ita vir castum debet custodire coniugium.” Even more explicit is the title in the summary prefixed to the pope’s admonition: “De castitate coniugatorum et a concubinis abstinendum vel a meretricibus abstinendum” (MGH Conc., 2.2, p. 554, c. 12).
133 Council of Paris, June 829, c. 69, ed. MGH Conc., 2.2, p. 671: “uxores habentes neque pelicem neque concubinam habere debeant ….” The following August this was incorporated into the Episcoporum ad Hludowicum imperatorem relatio 54, ed. MGH Capit., 2, p. 45. On the reform councils of 829, see Hartmann, Synoden, pp. 179–187, who points out (p. 185, n. 16) that *Georges Duby jumped to an unjustified conclusion in citing the passage quoted above as proof that “In 829 the Frankish bishops … were prepared to tolerate concubinage as a poor substitute for full marriage”: The Knight, the Lady and the Priest, trans. Barbara Bray (New York, 1983), p. 41 (cf. p. 30, n. 4).
134 Halitgar of Cambrai, De vitiis et virtutibus et de ordine poenitentium 4.12, ed. Migne, PL, vol. 105, cols 651–718, at col. 683. He distinguished concubinage from adultery (4.9; seven years of penitence) and imposed no penalty on an unmarried man who had a concubine; the married offender is to be excommunicated. See Pierre J. Payer, Sex and the Penitentials: The Development of a Sexual Code, 550–1150 (Toronto, 1984), pp. 65–67. Renewed interest in lay concubinage is evinced by a ninth-century manuscript from St. Gall (Stiftsbibliothek MS. 150) that copied one of Caesarius of Arles’ diatribes against the practice, without indicating the source (Payer, p. 160, n. 2; cf. p. 168, n. 91).
135 Wemple, Women, pp. 76–83.
136 Heito, Visio 19; see n. 31, above.
137 Knittel regards Wetti’s plea as a humility topos (Die Vision Wettis, p. 35, n. 93) and cites similar disclaimers by Moses, Gideon, Isaiah, and Jeremiah (Exod. 3:11, 4:10, Judg. 6:15, Isa. 6:5, Jer. 1:6).
138 Wetti must have gone to the court, for Charlemagne certainly never came anywhere near Reichenau: see A. Gauert, “Zum Itinerar Karls des Grossen,” in Karl der Grosse, vol. 1, pp. 307–321, esp. map facing p. 312.