MONASTIC PRISONERS OR OPTING OUT?

POLITICAL COERCION AND HONOUR IN THE

FRANKISH KINGDOMS*

Mayke de Jong

In 818, in the aftermath of Bernard of Italy’s revolt against Louis

the Pious, the initial death sentence for Bernard — the emperor’s
nephew — and other ringleaders was converted into blinding, a pun-
ishment which cost Bernard his life.1 But as the Royal Frankish
Annals put it, most of Bernard’s followers were treated more leniently.
All the bishops involved were deposed, and ‘mancipated’ to monas-
teries as a matter of course; as for the laity, those most guilty were
exiled, while those deemed to be more innocent were to be ‘ton-
sured, to live in monasteries’.2 Only three years later, however, the
tide had turned. At the assembly of Diedenhofen in 821 the emperor
declared a general amnesty, allowing all insurgents to leave their
monasteries as well as their involuntary clerical state. Most of the
former rebels probably availed themselves of this opportunity, although
one author noted that some chose to stay, now giving freely to God
what they had been forced to offer ignominiously and against their
will.3 The rebellion of 830 elicited a similar response. According to

* This chapter is dedicated to my friend and colleague Piet Leupen: a belated

gift for his 60th birthday, and a contribution to the Festschrift he did not want us
to write. But something of the sort emerged all the same; see also Frans Theuws’
chapter in this book. Furthermore, I am grateful to Barbara Rosenwein, Albrecht
Diem and Rosamond McKitterick for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.
Rosamond McKitterick also kindly checked my English. With regard to the ‘rhetoric
of the sources’ I have learned a lot from Philippe Buc.
1
About this revolt, see J. Jarnut, “Kaiser Ludwig der Fromme und Bernhard
von Italien. Die Versuch einer Rehabilitierung”, Studi Medievali 30 (1989), pp. 637–48.
2
Annales regni Francorum, ed. R. Rau, Quellen zur karolingischen Reichsgeschichte
I (Darmstadt, 1974), s.a. 818, p. 148: ‘. . . coniurationis auctores . . . iussit orbari, episco-
pos synodali decreto depositos monasteriis mancipari, caeteros, prout quisque vel nocentior vel inno-
centior apparebat, vel exilio deportari vel detondi atque in monasteriis conversari.’ Cf. Anonymus
(Astronomer), Vita Hludowici, c. 30, ed. E. Tremp, MGH SRG 54 (Hannover, 1995),
p. 386.
3
Paschasius Radbertus, Vita Adalhardi, c. 50, Migne PL 120, col. 1534: ‘Tum
deinde quorumdam tonsura propter furoris saevitiam illata transiit ad coronam, et dant Deo sponte,
quod dudum inviti quasi ad ignominiam susceperant.’
292   

the Astronomer, Louis the Pious displayed a truly imperial leniency

towards his opponents: ‘He ordered the laymen to be tonsured in
appropriate places, the clerics to be locked up in suitable monas-
teries’.4 Only three months later, however, Louis decided to become
even more lenient, returning their property to the insurgents and
giving those already tonsured a choice between remaining clerics or
returning to the lay state.5
The use of religious communities as places of internal exile was
no Carolingian novelty. For centuries Frankish kings had despatched
dangerous rebels to monasteries: sons, relatives, bishops and lay aris-
tocrats. In German legal history this phenomenon has become known
as ‘Klosterhaft’ (monastic imprisonment), ‘Zwangstonsur’ (forced ton-
sure), or ‘politische Mönchung’ (making someone a monk for polit-
ical reasons).6 Behind these overlapping concepts is the idea that
monasteries were the prisons avant la lettre of early medieval states,
and that kings controlled monastic space, to the extent that they
could turn them into something resembling a prison. There is a gen-
eral assumption that the monasteria that harboured such political exiles
were ‘royal’ ones, even to the extent that monastic exile has become
one of the ways of identifying royal monasteries.7
‘Monastic imprisonment’ is a misleading notion: this is the point
I want to get across in this chapter. This holds true even for the
Carolingian age, when rulers and bishops had more control of mon-
astic space than ever before. Heavy-handed Carolingian protection

4
Anonymus, Vita Hludowici, c. 45, p. 464: ‘. . . sed usus, ut multis visus est, leniori
quam debuit pietate (. . .), laicos quidem praecepit locis opportunis attundi, clericos vero in con-
venientibus itidem monasteriis custodiri.’
5
Anonymus, Vita Hludowici, c. 46, p. 338: ‘Ipso denique tempore consuetae non immemor
misericordiae, quae sicut de se ait Iob, ab initio crevit cum illo, et de utero matris videtur cum
ipso egressa, eos quos dudum exigentibus meritis per diversa deputaverat loca, evocatos bonis pro-
priis restituit; et si qui attonsi fuerant, utrum sic manere, an in habitum redire pristinum vellent,
facultatem contribuit.’
6
K. Sprigade, Die Einweisung ins Kloster und in den geistlichen Stand als politische
Massnahme im frühen Mittelalter (Heidelberg, 1964); W. Laske, Das Problem der Mönchung
in der Völkerwanderungszeit; Rechtshistorische Arbeiten 2 (Zürich, 1973); idem, “Zwangsau-
fenthalt im frühmittelalterlichen Kloster. Gott und Mensch im Einklang und Wider-
streit”, Zeitschrift der Savignystiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, kanonistische Abteilung 95 (1978),
pp. 321–30; K. Bund, Thronsturz und Herrscherabsetzung im Frühmittelalter; Bonner
Historische Forschungen 44 (Bonn, 1979).
7
Cf. I.N. Wood, The Merovingian kingdoms, 450 –751 (London, 1994), p. 195;
F. Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum im Frankenreich. Kultur und Gesellschaft in Gallien, den Rheinlanden
und Bayern am Beispiel der monastischen Entwicklung (4. bis 8. Jahrhundert) (2nd ed.,
Darmstadt, 1988), p. 155.
         293

(tuitio) of royal monasteries implied their self-evident use as places

where political opponents might be banished, and with greater expec-
tations of permanence, for monastic exile was now perceived as a
public penance, which, according to some, entailed life-long obligations.
As becomes clear from the reports on the rebellion of 818 just cited,
however, older and more more flexible forms of monastic exile con-
tinued to exist in the ninth century, so even for this period, the con-
cept of ‘monastic imprisonment’ remains an inadequate one. It evokes
an eminently modern institution,8 and, moreover, it takes it for
granted that early medieval rulers possessed the powers of coercion
usually associated with the modern state. But what kept these ‘pris-
oners’ inside the monastic confines? Unless we imagine abbots and
monks as jailers, rattling their keys, or members of the abbot’s sec-
ular retinue keeping constant guard, some measure of co-operation
from those exiled to religious communities must have been involved.
What made monastic space suitable as a location for ‘inner exile’?
We shall see that this was connected not to the development of monas-
teries as royal prisons but rather as sacred places. Their sacrality
was formally recognized, at least at times, by royal immunities and
episcopal exemptions. These created ‘hands-off’ zones that enhanced
royal authority by allying the king to sacred spaces out of bounds
to secular power, including the representatives of royal might.9 If
monasteries enjoying a royal immunity or royal protection (tuitio) —
immunity’s Carolingian successor — were indeed the ones where
prominent political opponents ended up, and this seems to have been
the case, this is difficult to reconcile with the notion of Klosterhaft.
There are other problems. The implicit assumption of those writing
about ‘politische Mönchung’ is that prominent rebels exiled to monas-
teries received a clerical tonsure as a preparation for monastic vows
or a promotion to higher ecclesiastical orders; their clerical tonsure
was meant to be irrevocable, and their return to the world there-
fore amounted to apostasy.10 Clerical tonsure was a more open-ended
affair, however. Clerici, the lowest order of the ecclesiastical hierarchy,
were betwixt and between; as long as they were not admitted into

8
M. Foucault, Surveiller et punir. La naissance de la prison (Paris, 1975).
9
The two recent fundamental discussions are: W. Davies and P. Fouracre eds.,
Property and power in the early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1995); B.H. Rosenwein, Negotiating
space. Power, restraint and privileges of immunity in early medieval Europe (Ithaca, 1999).
10
Sprigade, Einweisung, pp. 44–5; Bund, Thronsturz, pp. 342–3.
294   

higher orders or made monastic vows, a return to the world outside

remained possible. To my mind, this flexibility was an integral part
of a practice that I would prefer to call ‘monastic exile’ rather than
monastic imprisonment. The high-born happy few that were allowed
to leave the political arena unscathed, retreating into monastic space,
were never meant to become monks immediately, or, for that mat-
ter, monastic prisoners. Both parties kept their options open; this
was the aim of the operation.
Monastic exile represented the honourable option out of a polit-
ical predicament, on both sides. Recent historiography has concen-
trated on the opposition between political and religious motives. Did
the powerful who withdrew into a monastery do so because of polit-
ical coercion, acting under pressure, or was it a matter of a reli-
gious conversion? This either/or question has proven notoriously
difficult to answer, for often early medieval authors are far from
unanimous on this point. There is a reason for this: early medieval
authors reconstructed or construed such events post-hoc, and they
had honour on their minds. Whether a retreat into a monastery was
voluntary or not mattered deeply to the reputation of the political
actors involved. After the event, reputations might be made or bro-
ken by portraying it either as a voluntary and honourable decision,
or as its despicable opposite. The rhetoric of early medieval authors
intent on portraying monastic exile, one way or the other, should
be taken into account. It will bring us no closer to ‘what actually
happened’ or to the actors’ personal motivation, but it will shed
some light on the values — religious and secular — that informed
monastic exile, and on monastic space as a political ‘time-out zone’
allowing conflicts in the outside world to be suspended or resolved.

C  ?

The discussion about so-called monastic imprisonment intersects with

a debate concerning supposedly decreasing levels of political violence
in the Frankish kingdoms. Were Carolingian rulers less inclined to
kill their political opponents than their Merovingian predecessors?
Jörg Busch has recently answer this question in the affirmative.11

11
J.W. Busch, “Von Attentat zur Haft: Die Behandlung von Konkurrenten und
Opponenten der frühen Karolinger”, Historische Zeitschrift 263 (1996), pp. 561–88.
         295

From Charles Martel onwards, Busch argues, rulers were wary of

killing competitors and powerful opponents, resorting to ‘Klosterhaft’
instead. According to Busch, this increasing leniency cannot be ex-
plained by the fact that that many Carolingian insurgents came from
the ruling family itself, for Merovingians had their relatives killed
without any qualms.12 Supposedly, it was the ‘increasing Christian-
isation of actual relations of power’ that was the main cause of the
Carolingian mildness towards opponents.13 In Busch’s view, monas-
teries played a crucial role in this process, not only as the recipients
of ‘monastic prisoners’, but also — from Charles Martel’s sons
onwards — as the educators of young princes and the mediators of
Christian norms.14 In other words, Carolingian kings were less vio-
lent because they were better Christians than their predecessors.
In any long-term view, the notion of ever decreasing levels of
violence — due to Christianisation, ‘civilisation’, or both — is unten-
able. It derives from nineteenth-century evolutionist dreams of peace
and order that were rudely interrupted by the massive state-directed
violence of the twentieth century.15 If Carolingians used less politi-
cal violence, what about subsequent and presumably even more
Christian medieval dynasties? Furthermore, those who credit Christian-
ity with autonomous powers capable of containing political violence
seem to treat a complex and historical religion as a supra-historical
and unchanging phenomenon. To love one’s neighbour as oneself is
indeed a central Christian tenet, but so is the command to fight
valiantly against Israel’s enemies, an injunction foremost in the minds
of those ruling the New Israels of the early medieval West.16 Many

12
Busch, “Vom Attentat zur Haft”, p. 571.
13
Busch, “Vom Attentat zur Haft”, p. 576: ‘. . . eine zunehmende Verchristlichung
des tatsächlichen Herrscherverhaltens und nicht bloß eine Verchristlichung der ein-
schlägigen Normen’. In a similar vein, ibid., p. 584: ‘Verchristlichung und damit
schließlich einhergehend Verrechtlichung sind allgemeine Phänomene des 8. Jahr-
hunderts.’
14
Busch, “Vom Attentat zur Haft”, pp. 584–5.
15
This kind of evolutionism is certainly a problem in Norbert Elias’s Über den
Prozess der Zivilisation, 2 vols. (Bern/München, 1969). This was the second edition;
a first had appeared in 1939, but remained largely unnoticed. For a thoughtful cri-
tique, see B.H. Rosenwein, “Controlling paradigms”, in eadem ed., Anger’s past. The
social uses of an emotion in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1998), pp. 233–47.
16
About the ramifications and limits of the Frankish “New Israel”, see M. Garrison,
“The Franks as the New Israel? Education for an identity from Pippin to Charle-
magne”, in: Y. Hen and M. Innes eds., The uses of the past in the early Middle Ages
(Cambridge, 2000), pp. 114–61.
296   

different Christianities have existed, and few of those happened to

comply with modern notions of what ‘real’ Christianity should look
like. If the Carolingians indeed killed fewer of their powerful oppo-
nents than their Merovingian predecessors had, explanations should
be looked for in a different direction. To begin with, which options
did rulers have to suppress insurgence, and what was to be gained
from either killing political opponents or from sparing their lives?
The answer varies according to specific political circumstances. Exec-
ution or murder was not necessarily the safest method of eliminat-
ing the competition, certainly not if rulers needed to win the loyalty
of the aristocratic backers of the insurgents. A need to accommo-
date, and a sharp eye for the long-term consequences of an irrevo-
cable killing may have guided the decision to refrain from eliminating
the opposition. Paul Fouracre has suggested that the Carolingian
rulers’s more lenient treatment of political opponents might be ex-
plained by ‘a lingering precariousness in their position as kings’, which
made violence — especially within the royal family — particularly
dangerous.17 After all, the Carolingians were usurpers. One might
perhaps add that within this huge empire a loyal Reichsaristokratie was
a scarce commodity, so it may have been expedient to spare insurgents
who in due course might become loyal fideles once more. Yet the
Carolingian rulers themselves did not think they had moved beyond
killing their opponents, including members of their own family —
or should we take the Divisio regnorum of 806 as an example of the
self-control of Christian kings, as Busch seems to do?18 This capitu-
lary shows what Charlemagne thought his sons capable of: he for-
bade them to kill, blind, maim or forcibly tonsure their younger
kinsmen.19 These remained the options open to any early medieval
ruler, the Carolingians not excepted; if the latter resorted to politi-
cal coercion by means of forcibly tonsuring their enemies and exil-
ing them to monasteries, this must have been politically expedient,
even if this happened to conform to Christian principles of forgive-
ness. To complicate the argument even further: in the Divisio regnorum

17
P. Fouracre, “Attitudes towards violence in seventh- and eighth-century Francia”,
in: G. Halsall ed., Violence and society in the early Medieval West (Woodbridge, 1998),
pp. 60–75, esp. p. 70. Fouracre has also noticed a decrease of political violence at
the highest political level, but attempts to connect this to changing literary tradi-
tions and political structures—a much more sensible approach.
18
Busch, “Vom Attentat zur Haft”, p. 575.
19
Divisio regnorum (806), c. 18, MGH Cap. I, no. 45, pp. 129–30.
         297

of 806, forcible tonsure figures as the weakest form of agression

against royal kinsmen, but it also could be the result of an act of
royal pardon that enhanced the king’s authority; as such, monastic
exile functioned in the aftermath of the revolts against Louis the
Pious — or, at least, in the court-oriented historiography portraying
Louis’s leniency in this light. Similarly, in 788 at Ingelheim ‘the
Franks’ unanimously (una voce) sentenced Duke Tassilo of Bavaria to
death for treason. Charlemagne, however, moved by mercy and love
of God and conscious of the fact that Tassilo was his kinsman,
decided otherwise. As the Royal Frankish Annals put it, Charlemagne
asked Tassilo what he wished to do; the latter ‘requested to be given
leave to be tonsured, enter a monastery and do penance for his
many sins, so he might save his soul’.20 This rendering of the event
enhanced the king’s reputation in various ways, according to values
that were not wholly identical, but happened to correspond and
mutually reinforce each other: mercy and the love of God, an emi-
nently royal self-control, the capacity of the king to pardon where
others had called for revenge, restraint in dealing with one’s kinsmen,
respect for a high-born adversary, hope of salvation.21 Contradictory
biblical precepts were embedded in new and complex cultural con-
texts; rather than invoking ‘Christianisation’ as the inevitable agent
of civilisation, we should concentrate on historical varieties of Chris-
tianity — in short, on Christianities, plural.

M,    

Without any doubt there were royal prisons in the Frankish king-
doms; these tend to surface in hagiographical texts, for the liberation
of prisoners was one of the favourite miracles of Merovingian saints.
Three decades ago, Frantisek Graus gathered a wealth of texts doc-
umenting these liberation miracles, a body of evidence that still awaits

20
Annales regni Francorum s.a. 788, p. 56: ‘Ille vero postolavit, ut licentiam haberet sibi
tonsorandi et in monasterio introeundi et pro tantis peccatis paenitentiam agendi et ut suam sal-
varet animam’. About political violence in the aftermath of insurgence against Charle-
magne, see Fouracre, “Attitudes towards violence”, pp. 68–70.
21
These dynamics are fully present in the difficult years 828–833, and in Louis
the Pious’s dealings with prominent enemies, such as his kinsmen Adalhard and
Wala; these issues will be explored in my forthcoming book The penitential state.
298   

further analysis.22 We should be wary of turning a hagiographical

cliché into a straightforward report on early medieval prison condi-
tions, but some features are too recurrent to be merely stereotypical.
Merovingian royal prisons were located in ‘cities’ (civitates), and they
contained the more deplorable specimens of humankind: helpless
men in chains who were about to be executed, without honour or
recourse to powerful friends — except the saints to whom they cried
out from their dungeons. This must have been not unlike the dis-
honourable imprisonment against which Visigothic members of the
political élite vociferously protested in 683: they did not deserve dis-
honourable incarceration and humiliation, and demanded the libera
custodia, either at the court or in the monastery, that was fitting to
their high status.23 By early medieval definitions, imprisonment in a
carcer was a grievous defamation. When St Paul remained in Rome
for two years, he enjoyed libera custodia, that is, a liberty of move-
ment within certain restrictions; he could not leave the city, but he
could write his letters and lived in the style befitting an apostle. This
was Bede’s view, and it was reiterated by Hrabanus Maurus.24 It is
difficult to get a good idea of the restraints suffered by high-born
monastic exiles, but these comments — admittedly from an entirely
different context — on the honourable nature of libera custodia are
more informative in this respect than the vast hagiographical dossier
on prisoners liberated by saints. For the Carolingian aristocrat Nithard,
for example, the notion of libera custodia was intricately connected
with a retreat to the monastery, and the same was true of Hincmar
of Rheims.25

22
F. Graus, “Die Gewalt bei den Anfängen des Feudalismus und die ‘Gefange-
nenbefreiung’ der merowingischen Hagiographie”, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1
(1961), pp. 61–156.
23
XIII Conc. Tolet. c. 2, ed. J. Vives, Concilios visigóticos e hispano-romanos (Barcelona,
Madrid, 1963), p. 417: ‘. . . hos sine aliquo vinculorum vel inuriae damno sub libera custo-
dia consistere oportebit . . .’
24
Hrabanus Maurus, Enarrationes in Epistolae B. Pauli, Migne PL 111, col. 1378D.
Also: Haymo of Halberstadt, In epistolam II ad Thimotheum, Migne PL 117, col. 810B:
‘Nam cum venisset Romam, duobus annis mansit in libera custodia, et in suo conductu, et postea
transivit ad alias nationes quae erant in circuitu Romae. Nam quando ista scribebat, in libera
custodia erat: et quia statim ut adductus est, non est interfectus idcirco dicit se liberatum’.
25
Nithard, Historiae I, c. 2, ed. Ph. Lauer (Paris, 1964), p. 8: ‘Hinc autem metuens
ne post dicti fratres populo sollicitato eadem facerent, ad conventum publicum eos venire praecepit,
totondit, ac per monasteria sub libera custodia commendavit’; ibid., I, c. 3, p. 10 ‘Et Lodharius
quidem eo tenore republica adepta, patrem et Karolum sub libera custodia servabat. Cum quo
monachos, qui eidem vitam monasticam traderent, et eamdem vitam illum assumere suaderent, esse
         299

In the Frankish kingdoms, a small number of religious communi-

ties — for example, St Marcel in Chalon and St Symphorian in
Autun, St Maurice d’Agaune, Luxeuil, St Wandrille, St Denis and
Chelles — became places where powerful political opponents might
be sent to — or retreat to of their own volition — in the expecta-
tion that their lives would be spared as long as they remained within
the monastic confines. Yet such expectations are only possible if
monastic space is perceived by all concerned as a separate territory
with clear boundaries. Royal immunity and/or episcopal exemptions
helped to reinforce this sense of integrity, but before monastic com-
munities could become the beneficiaries of such privileges guaran-
teeing the inviolability of monastic space, they first had to become
identified with well-defined places that enjoyed a measure of stability
through time. A monastic community moving elsewhere to retain its
ascetic standards, leaving its unsatisfactory abbot behind,26 was of no
use to the rulers and bishops granting such privileges. They had
sacred places in mind, not saintly people.
This type of monasticism, so familiar to those dealing with the ninth
century and beyond, gradually emerged in the West from the mid-
sixth century onwards. It was a monasticism that did not favour free-
floating ascetiscism, but instead, well-defined sacred places with an
army of prayer that was guaranteed to remain in situ for the duration
of its members’ lives.27 This place-bound religious life, enhanced by
the presence of powerful relics within the monastic confines, enabled
the powerful to have a stake in sanctity, and to control these precious
resources to a greater or lesser extent by showering monasteries and

praeceperat.’ Cf. also Hincmar, Consilium de poenitentia Pippini regis, Migne PL 125, col.
1122B: ‘Reconciliatus autem benigne tractetur, et tali loco sub libera custodia misericorditer cus-
todiatur, ut custodes monachos ac bonos canonicos habeat, qui eum exhortentur, et quorum doct-
rina et exemplo bene de caetero vivere et praeterita peccata plangere discat.’
26
Regula cuiusdam patris ad monachos c. 20.5, ed. F. Villegas, “La ‘Regula cuiusdam
patris ad monachos’. Ses sources littéraires et ses rapports avec la ‘Regula monachorum’
de Columban”, Revue de l’histoire de la spiritualité 49 (1973), pp. 3–36—cf. p. 26.
27
M. de Jong, “Carolingian monasticism: the power of prayer”, in: R. McKitterick
ed., The New Cambridge Medieval History II, c. 700 –c. 900 (Cambridge, 1995), pp.
622–53; for a perceptive discussion about the emergence of this kind of place-bound
sanctity, see P. Fouracre, “The origins of the Carolingian attempt to regulate the
cult of the saints”, in: J. Howard-Johnston and P.A. Hayward eds., The cult of the
saints in late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Essays on the contribution of Peter Brown
(Oxford, 1999), pp. 143–65. About very different patterns of insular and Breton
sanctity, see J.M.H. Smith, “Saints, miracles and relics in Brittany”, Speculum 65
(1990), pp. 309–43.
300   

nunneries with lavish gifts, exemptions, immunities and protection

(tuitio). The members of religious communities became sanctified by
the purity of the sacred location they had entered, rather than by
their individual asceticism. The rise of child oblation as the pre-
dominant way of recruiting new monks and nuns is the most telling
symptom of this development. The innocent children that entered a
locus sanctus were pure, and expected to retain this purity as long as
they remained isolated within the monastic confines, guarded against
contaminating contact with the world outside.28 This type of monas-
ticism, with its sharp boundaries delineating the inner sanctum of the
monastery and the liminal zones surrounding this so-called claustrum,
became increasingly harnessed to the salvation of the world outside.
The rulers were the first to avail themselves of the benefits of these
stable sacred resources; grants of immunity or exemption were aimed
at safeguarding the sanctity of a specific place, where the purity of
prayer might enhance the wellbeing of the rulers and their families,
and the ‘stability of the realm’.
There is nothing self-evident about this development, except with
the hindsight informed by the Carolingian order, which had come
to depend on the power of monastic prayer to an even greater extent.
The background and context of royal immunities and episcopal
exemptions has recently been explored and re-interpreted by Barbara
Rosenwein; Albrecht Diem has now provided us with a detailed view
from ‘within’, that in many ways complements Rosenwein’s analysis.29
Diem has charted the transformation of monasticism in late antique
Gaul and the Frankish kingdoms, revealing how informal congrega-
tions of individual ascetics striving for personal salvation gradually
turned into ‘sacred places’ (loci sancti) filled with monks and nuns
who had entered the community in childhood. These places retained
their purity as long as their inner domain (septa secreta) remained inac-
cessible to the laity. This inviolabitity of the inner domain ensured
the efficacy of a monastic prayer mediating between God and those
who supported the community and its resident saints by their gifts
and protection. ‘Distance’ was therefore not a geographical concept,

28
M. de Jong, In Samuel’s Image. Child oblation in the early medieval West (Leiden
etc., 1996), esp. pp. 126–55.
29
Rosenwein, Negotiating space; A. Diem, Keusch und Rein. Eine Untersuchung zu den
Ursprüngen des frühmittelalterlichen Klosterwesens und seinen Quellen (Amsterdam, 2000). See
also Rosenwein’s contribution to this volume.
         301

for such sacred places were situated within a world that increasingly
came to depend on monastic mediation; so it was all the more essen-
tial to preserve the separateness of monastic space, lest the power
of prayer would be lost. Privileged outsiders — first bishops, then
kings — protected the inner domain from contamination; by impos-
ing restrictions of physical access on themselves as well, they ensured
direct access to the benefits of monastic prayer.
The Council of Chalcedon (451) firmly put ‘the monks of each
city or region’ under episcopal authority,30 but where Gaul was con-
cerned, this largely remained wishful thinking on the part of bishops;
monasticism never became fully integrated into diocesan structures.
Bishops did play an important part in creating the place-bound
monasticism just mentioned, however. One decisive stage in this
process occurred after the death of Bishop Caesarius of Arles (524);
his powerful model of secluded and cloistered female monasticism was
extended to male communities as well, by bishops intent on safe-
guarding their foundations against malicious gossip in the world out-
side.31 It was this kind of monasticism that first attracted royal interest:
in 547, under Caesarius’ successor Aurelian, a male monastery —
well furnished with relics — was dedicated in Arles with the sup-
port of King Childebert and his wife Ultrogotha.32 A next crucial
phase occurred in the seventh century, in the wake of Columbanus’
brief but important impact on Frankish monasticism. A rigid control
of speech, thought and dreams became the hallmark of cloistered
life, with daily confession and penance operating as a ‘self-cleansing’
mechanism that ensured the virtus of prayer and the purity of what
had become a sacred place.33
In order to discipline its members, religious communities developed
elaborate strategies for punishing wayward monks and nuns,34 but
these centered upon excluding the culprits from prayer and communal

30
Cf. Rosenwein, Negotiating space, p. 33.
31
About Merovingian bishops and their strategies to safeguard the reputations
of religious communities, see Diem, Keusch und Rein, pp. 174–183; for later develop-
ments, M. de Jong, “Imitatio morum. The cloister and clerical purity in the Carolingian
world”, in: M. Frassetto ed., Medieval purity and piety. Essays on medieval clerical celibacy
and religious reform (New York/London, 1998), pp. 49–80.
32
All this is an all too brief summary of Diem’s extensive analysis; see also W.E.
Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles. The making of a Christian community in late antique Gaul
(Cambridge, 1994), p. 263.
33
Diem, Keusch und Rein, pp. 196–98, 224–29.
34
Diem, Keusch und Rein, pp. 216–29.
302   

life, rather than on disciplinary incarceration. Significantly, the first

explicit mention of a monastic carcer in Frankish sources dates from
the 840s. By then, the increasing differentiation of monastic space
had yielded the architectural concept of the claustrum, the inner space
only accessible to the members of the community itself and a few
privileged outsiders.35 Also, Benedict’s Rule had become the text gov-
erning monastic life; for his own sixth-century Italian monastery,
Benedict had still reckoned with the need to exile monks from the
community, but a Carolingian commentator on the Rule amended
this in a significant way. The nutriti, that is, those who had grown
up within the monastic confines since childhood, had never been ‘of
the world’ and should therefore not be sent back to it; instead, they
should be incarcerated, to better their lives.36
This is a monastic prison indeed, but one meant for internal use,
and emerging much later than monastic exile with its enduring con-
notations of honourable libera custodia.37 Where did monastic exiles
reside, once they had entered the monastic confines: within the septa
secreta itself, or within a more liminal zone of the community? As
far as I can see at present, it was the monastery in its entirety,
including its inner and liminal zones, that might serve as a location
of exile and/or refuge. Merovingian asylum, another understudied
topic, of course comes into it. Those who ran to monasteries to save
their lives may well have made a beeline for the most sacred part
of the monastic precincts, the main altar and its resident saint, but
detailed descriptions of the kind Gregory of Tours furnished with
regard to those seeking the protection of St Martin are lacking when
it comes to monastic exile and/or asylum.38 Gregory wrote about

35
M. de Jong, “Internal cloisters: The case of Ekkehard’s Casus sancti Galli”, in:
W. Pohl and H. Reimitz eds., Grenze und Differenz im frühen Mittelalter, Forschungen
zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 1 (Wien, 2000), pp. 209–29.
36
Hildemar of Corbie/Civate, Expositio regulae S. Benedicti, ed. R. Mittermüller,
Expositio regulae ab Hildemaro tradita et nunc primum typis mandata (Regensburg etc., 1880),
c. 28, p. 363: ‘si autem ille, qui expellendus est, fuit ab infantia in monasteria, sicut diximus,
nutritus, non debet expelli, sed magis in carcerem mitti, quoadusque malum suum emendet et
bonum etiam facere vellet’. See also ibid., c. 2, p. 109 and c. 71, p. 627; M. de Jong,
“Growing up in Carolingian monastery: Magister Hildemar and his oblates”, Journal
of Medieval History 9 (1983), pp. 122–23.
37
There is only one ‘Frankish’ exception: the Regula cuiusdam patris ad monachos
(c. 6.2, p. 15) did envisage a carcer, but as Diem explains (Keusch und Rein, pp. 230–
236), this rule is very quite exceptional, and probably represents a version of Irish
monasticism that was not integrated into the mainstream of Frankish religious life.
38
For a summary of the passages in Gregory of Tours’ work referring to asy-
lum, see M. Weidemann, Kulturgeschichte der Merowingerzeit nach den Werken Gregors von
Tours I (Mainz, 1982), pp. 306–9.
         303

the episcopal church in Tours, a public place by definition; monas-

tic exiles moved into a monastic inner sanctum, a place inaccessible
to outsiders or to be treated with circumspection, also by the authors
writing about such a delicate transition. This is my explanation for
the time being, but there may be better ones.

M    

From the early sixth century onwards, bishops in Gaul had disci-
plined incorrigible clergy — including fellow-bishops — by dispatching
them to a monastery in order to do penance.39 In fact, a deposition
followed by ‘penance in the monastery’ was the punishment par excel-
lence for higher clerics guilty of severe crimes. These men — and some-
times women, widows of clerics — were to be spared the shame of
submitting to an excommunication or of performing a penance under
public scrutiny, which would reflect badly on the entire clergy’s rep-
utation, and therefore did so secretius, in the secrecy of the monas-
tic confines. This practice not only required a measure of episcopal
control over monasteries, but also that such communities were per-
ceived as ‘secret’ places, removed from the public gaze. Significantly,
it was an episcopal council in 533 chaired by Caesarius of Arles, a
bishop deeply involved in the creation of monastic separateness, that
condemned Bishop Contumeliosus of Riez for sexual misconduct and
alienation of church property, sending him to a monastery to do
penance. Predictably, Caesarius maintained that Contemuliosus was
deposed, and should remain in in Casinenso monasterio (location unknown)
forever; other bishops begged to differ, however, and the question
of the duration of Contumeliosus’ penance was left undecided.40
For centuries, monasteries were to remain the secluded locations
where bishops, priests and deacons guilty of capital crimes made
their amends in relative secrecy. Yet the debate and incertainty about

39
K.L. Noetlichs, “Das Kloster als ‘Strafanstalt’ im kirchlichen und weltichen
Recht der Spätantike”, ZRG, kan.Abt. 80 (1994), pp. 18–40; C. Vogel, La discipline
pénitentielle en Gaule des origines à la fin du VII e siècle (Paris, 1952), pp. 139–40; M. de
Jong, “What was public about public penance? Paenitentia publica and justice in the
Carolingian world”, La giustizia ne’ll alto medioevo (secoli IX–XI) II, Settimane 42,
(Spoleto, 1997), pp. 875–6.
40
M. de Jong, “Transformations of penance”, in: F. Theuws and J.L. Nelson
eds., Rituals of power. From late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages (Leiden/Boston/Cologne,
2000), pp. 200–1; Klingshirn, Caesarius, pp. 247–49.
304   

the duration of such amends continued as well. Had such penitents

actually ‘converted’ to monasticism forever, or was their penitence
a temporary affair? Given that those who had committed grave and
notorious sins increasingly gave ‘satisfaction’ by retreating into a reli-
gious community, this question was difficult to answer. When in 834
Archbishop Ebo of Rheims, the scapegoat of the rebellion against
Louis the Pious, had performed seven years of penance in Fulda, he
felt this sufficiently exonerated him to return to his former see; his
political opponents, however, insisted that Ebo had been irrevoca-
bly deposed, and that his penance in fact amounted to a conversion
to monastic life. The public penance imposed on Louis the Pious in
833, for that matter, gave rise to a similar debate.41
Bishops were the first to avail themselves of monasteries as means
to discipline their clergy, but kings soon followed suit, usually with
episcopal support. Bishop Gregory of Tours saw nothing wrong with
King Guntram (561–592) resorting to monastic exile in his efforts
to curb the insurgence of two bloodthirsty brothers, Bishops Salonius
of Embrun and Sagittarius of Gap. The king was the one to con-
vene the synod that deposed the two culprits, but then granted them
an appeal to Pope John III, and accepted the papal verdict that they
should be restored to their bishoprics. When the brothers proved
incorrigible and once more showed contempt of the king, Guntram
had them shut up in monasteries far removed from each other, to
do penance; he instructed his counts to keep the twosome under
armed guard, and not to allow them any visitors.42 During a subse-
quent trial at the council of Chalon (579), some bishops felt the
brothers had performed a sufficient penance and should be restored
to their former office; it took fresh charges — of offending the king
and betraying the patria — to get a new verdict of deposition. The
two criminal bishops were deposed once more, and taken into cus-

41
R. Kottje, Die Bußbücher Halitgars von Cambrai und des Hrabanus Maurus. Ihre Über-
lieferung und ihre Quellen, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters
8 (Berlin/New York, 1980) pp. 216–40; M. de Jong, “Paenitentia publica and jus-
tice”, pp. 885–7. About Louis the Pious’s public penance, see M. de Jong, “Power
and humility in Carolingian society: The public penance of Louis the Pious”, EME
1 (1992), pp. 29–52.
42
Gregory of Tours, Decem libri historiarum, MGH SRM 5, c. 20, p. 228: ‘His
auditis, rex commotus valde, tam equos quam pueros vel quaecunque habere poterant abstulit;
ipsosque in monasteriis a se longiori accessu dimotis, in quibus paenitentiam agerent, includi prae-
cepit, non amplius quam singulos eis clericos relinquens: iudices locorum terribiliter commonens, ut
ipsos cum armatis custodire debeant, ne cui ad eos visitandos ullus pateat aditus.’
         305

tody in the basilica of St Marcel in Chalon (in basilicam beati Marcelli

sub custodia detruduntur). This site was obviously considered a more
effective place to contain the likes of Sagittarius and Salonius than
the two monasteries, far removed from each other, where they had
been kept earlier — but St Marcel in Chalon was no foolproof
‘prison’ either, for the two escaped, to become wanderers on the
face of the earth.43
On the one hand, Gregory’s pages about Sagittarius and Salonius
reveal a king who high-handedly used monastic space in order to
control two powerful clerical opponents, just as bishops had been in
the habit of doing; on the other, this is a story of surprising royal
lenience, of which Gregory patently disapproved. The two bishops
received chance upon chance to rehabilitate themselves, but sank
ever further into a morass of sin. Guntram’s counts were make sure
the brothers remained inside the nameless monasteries where they
had been initially sent, checking on their visitors as well; by implica-
tion, this duty could not be left to the responsible abbots. Presumably
Sagittarius and Salonius were equally well guarded in St Marcel, but
all the same, they managed to escape. What turned this basilica into
a place where King Guntram thought he might safely confine two
formidable political opponents? St Marcel had been Guntram’s foun-
dation, favoured by gifts from the king, his wife and his daughters,
but before we turn St Marcel into an evident ‘state prison’, it is
worth pointing out that only four years or more after the trial of the
two criminal bishops, Guntram confirmed his gifts to St Marcel and
to St Symphorian, safeguarding the property of these two commu-
nities against possible violations by ‘the bishops and royal power’.
He did so at the Council of Valence (583–583), with seventeen bish-
ops co-signing the conciliar record, including the bishop of Chalon
himself.44 Guntram’s gesture are an early sign of the self-imposed
limits bishops and kings set against their own encroachment upon
monastic space, but it did not yet amout to a full-blown immunity
or exemption.45 Did such privileges, when they emerged in the course

43
Gregory, Decem libri historiarum, V, c. 27, p. 233. Cf. De Jong, “Transformations
of penance”, pp. 210–2.
44
See about this important ‘immunity avant la lettre’ A. Diem, “Was bedeutet
regula Columbani?”, in: M. Diesenberger and W. Pohl eds., Integration und Herrschaft.
Ethnische Identitäten und soziale Organisation im Frühmittelalter (Wien, 2001; forthcoming);
also, cf. Barbara Rosenwein’s chapter in this volume.
45
Rosenwein, Negotiating space, p. 45.
306   

of the seventh century, turn monastic communities into places even

better equipped to lock up royal ‘prisoners’? Or did a royal immu-
nity instead preclude the matter-of-fact use of monastic space with
which Gregory of Tours credited King Guntram? I would argue for
the latter.
There is one powerful layman in Gregories Histories who counts
as a monastic prisoner: Merovech (d. 578), the rebellious son of King
Chilperic I (561–584). As Friedrich Prinz expressed it, the fact that
Merovech was tonsured, made a priest and packed off to St Calais
at his royal father’s command no doubt meant that this monastery
‘had close connections with the royal house, otherwise it could not
have served as a kind of ‘state prison’.46 But according to Gregory,
Merovech never made it to to St Calais. Only lightly guarded, he
escaped en route, put on secular clothes, and sought asylum in the
church of St Martin in Tours, where Gregory just happened to be
celebrating mass. Some state prison! The passage about Merovech’s
so-called imprisonment deserves some closer scrutiny.47 Held in cus-
tody by his father, he was tonsured and had his clothes changed for
‘those customarily used by clerics’, then ordained a priest; he then
was sent to St Calais near Le Mans in order to be instructed in the
way of life of a priest (regula sacerdotalis). In other words, the court —
or wherever Chilperic happened to be — was the place of custodia,
not the monastery. At the court, Merovech was instantly transformed
into a priest, with the necessary earlier stages — the reception of a
clerical tonsure and habit — thrown in for good measure. But it was
Merovech’s priestly consecration that mattered most, for — at least
in theory — this was an irrevocable measure disqualifying the prince
from the throne forever.48 Of course Merovech had no idea what it
took to be a priest — or perhaps a bishop, eventually — so he was
sent to St Calais for further instruction. Was he meant to remain

46
Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum im Frankenreich, p. 155.
47
Gregory, Decem libri historiarum, V, c. 14: ‘Post haec Merovechus cum omni custodia
a patre retineretur, tonsuratus est, mutataque veste, qua clericis uti mos est, presbyter ordinatur,
et ad monasterium Cenomannicum, quod vocatur dirigitur, ut ibi sacerdotali erudiretur regula.’
48
For Carolingian example of royal son who was gradually excluded from the
throne, see Charles the Bald’s treatment of his son Carloman, discussed by De
Jong, In Samuel’s Image, pp. 257–8. Carloman first became a child oblate, then a
deacon; upon his revolt and bid for power in 870 he lost ecclesiastical rank and
was imprisoned in the castrum of Senlis. Further rebellion led to his blinding and
exile to Corbie. From there, Carloman fled to his uncle, Louis the German; he
died as the abbot of Echternach in 881.
         307

in this community? There is no way to tell, but surely Gregory’s

neutral dirigitur should not be translated tendentiously as ‘packed off’;
according to Gregory, Merovech travelled with a minimal guard and
easily escaped, an indication — perhaps — of some confidence in
the effectiveness of the new priest’s ordination. From whichever side
one looks at this story, it does not qualify as an instance of Klosterhaft.

D    :  VITA COLUMBANI

The seventh century was the ‘heyday of Merovingian immunities’,

as Barbara Rosenwein expressed it,49 and therefore an age of even
stricter — and subtler — definitions of the boundaries of sacred
space. In his celebrated Life of Columbanus, written between 639 and
643, Jonas of Bobbio spelled out the rules of the game according to
the monastic point of view: these boundaries were not to be set by
rulers. One of Jonas’ stories to this effect revolves around interde-
pendent ‘places of power’ and their limits: the sacred space repre-
sented by Columbanus’ foundation Luxeuil, as opposed to the unholy
space of a contaminated court. At the centre of this episode is Queen
Brunhild, the Jezebel of Jonas’ hagiography. After the death of her
son Childebert II (596) she ruled together with her grandsons
Theudebert II (592–612) and Theuderic II (596–613). The latter is
the other villain of the piece; together with his grandmother, Theuderic
drove Columbanus from Luxeuil and sent him into exile. The story
discussed here leads up to these dramatic events.50
In the royal villa Bruyères-le-Chatel, Brunhild presented Columbanus
with the illegitimate sons of King Theuderic II, ordering him to give
then his blessing, but the saint flatly refused and left; when he crossed
the threshold of the court (aula regia), a terrifying earthquake occurred.
In revenge, Queen Brunhild instructed Luxeuil’s neighbours to stop
any monk who wished to leave the monastery, and to withold all
material sustenance and other support from the community. Colum-
banus retaliated by going to Theuderic’s court, residing in another
villa, but refusing to enter the royal establishment; he planted him-
self outside, and refused to budge. Theuderic, wishing to keep his

49
Rosenwein, Negotiating space, pp. 74–96.
50
Jonas, Vita Columbani I, c. 19, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 4, pp. 87–90;
Rosenwein, Negotiating space, pp. 70–3.
308   

peace with the redoubtable man of God, ordered his servants to

bring Columbanus food and gifts ‘fit for a king’ (regio cultu oportuna).
But Columbanus, surveying this splendour, declared that they were
an abomination: the servants of God should not contaminate their
mouth with food sent by those who barred them from entering ‘their
own place and that of others’. All the vessels broke, wine and food
dripped to the floor, and all who witnessed this miracle were fright-
ened out of their wits. As a result, Theudebert and Brunhild came
to the saint, asking for forgiveness and promising to reform their
lives. ‘Pacified by these promises, the saint returned to the monastery’.
This is a story about a saint establishing his authority by defining
the nature of monastic and royal space, turning the tables on his
royal adversaries by means of inversion. Brunhild did not dare to
interfere with Luxeuil’s inner domain; instead, she attempted to sever
the monastery from the indispensable support of its ‘neighbours’
(vicini ). This was an effective threat to Luxeuil’s existence, for no
religious community could survive in total isolation. But there was
another side to this coin: a royal court (aula regia) cut off from the
benefits of prayer and blessing was also in danger of disintegration.
By refusing to enter, Columbanus declared the aula regia to be out
of bounds, a contaminated place. Theuderic then attempted to shift
the boundaries of the court; by giving the saint a royal welcome in
a place Columbanus had defined as being ‘outside’ the court, the
king tried to include the saint in royal space by extending its para-
meters. These tactics miserably misfired; even when Theuderic moved
the aula regia to the saint — the mountain came to Mohammed —
it remained a source of pollution by which a man of God should
not contaminate himself. Of course Columbanus emerged victorious
from this battle of wits, for Jonas was intent to show that the saint
was the one who most effectively controlled the nature of royal and
monastic space; to make his point, Jonas implicitly contrasted the
foot-loose nature of the royal court with Luxeuil’s stability. The scene
is set in two royal villae, both explicitly mentioned by name, to which
the saint travels; the court can be here, there and everywhere, but
at the background hovers the monasterium, always in one place. It is
Columbanus who has freedom of movement and entry, inflicting a
terrifying tremor on one aula regia, and refusing to set foot in the
other. Conversely, all that Brunhild and Theuderic could manage
was some unsuccessful manipulation in the margins of places with
boundaries over which they had no control. The implication of the
         309

story is that monastic space was firmly integrated into the topogra-
phy of political power, and would sustain and strengthen the might
of kings as long as the latter respected the integrity of the monas-
tic confines. If the they violated the integrity of the locus sanctus, how-
ever, the aula regia would suffer as well — measure for measure.
But Jonas’s narrative about defining royal and monastic space did
not end here. Theuderic persisted in his concubinage, and a renewed
confrontation with the saint ensued, with Brunhild still at the back-
ground as the evil genius inspiring strife: she intimated to bishops
that Columbanus had ‘polluted’ the very rule he had instructed his
monks to live by. Significantly, it was now the king who travelled
to Luxeuil, to berate Columbanus for departing from the custom of
allowing all Christians access to the ‘very secret enclosure’ (septa secre-
tiora). What better way to ridicule a hated king than by putting patently
ridiculous words in his mouth? By the time Jonas wrote his Life of
Columbanus, any statement about such a ‘custom’ must have seemed
ludicrous. From the mid-630s onwards, the saints’ disciples began to
issue episcopal exemptions, in unison with kings granting immuni-
ties;51 regardless of such privileges, it had already been self-understood
for several generations that one could not simply enter the ‘very
secret enclosure’ of any religious community. But here is a king who
declares the monastic enclosure accessible to all, thus being turned
into a laughing stock for Jonas’ contemporaries: the man obviously
had no idea what he was talking about. Columbanus, who did know
how to organise a proper monastery, countered that the dwellings
of the Lord’s servants were out of bounds for laymen and those
unfamiliar with religious life, but of course the monastery had suit-
able quarters where guests received a warm welcome. In other words,
monastic space was made up of concentric circles, with an inner
enclosure surrounded by a liminal area accessible to outsiders. This
spatial division had become customary in prominent monasteries with
royal connections in Jonas’ day and age, as is revealed by the next
stupid move from a king oblivious to custom. Briefly put, their alter-
ceration amounted to the following. Theuderic said to Columbanus,
open up your monastery, or you will receive no gifts or support from
me. This yielded Columbanus’ predictable reply: if you violate our

51
Rosenwein, Negotiating space, p. 66, rightly concludes that Jonas’ Vita Columbani
represents the views of ‘the next generation’, i.e., that of Columbanus’ pupils.
310   

inner space, I shall not accept your gifts or support. And if you have
come to destroy our community, rest assured that your kingdom and
progeny will be destroyed as well. This was a powerful malediction,
and also a crystal-clear statement of the kind of interdependence
between monastic prayer and royal power Jonas believed in. What
Theuderic should have said, of course, was: please make sure your
monastery is sacred and inaccessible, and therefore worthy of my
patronage. Jonas made him say precisely the opposite, and carried
his portrait of ‘a king who did not know custom’ to an even more
vicious level. Theuderic tried to enter the refectory, very much a
part of the septa secretiora, but, terrified by the saint’s malediction, he
retreated. The king could not resist a taunt and a threat: ‘you prob-
ably hope to get your martyr’s crown through me, don’t you?’.
Theuderic went back to the court, but made another attempt at iso-
lating Luxeuil, inciting his leading men to declare they wanted no
community in their territory did not make everyone welcome. Colum-
banus repaid this in kind: he would no longer leave the confines of
his community (caenubii septa), unless they dragged him out by force.
Jonas’ story still continues. Columbanus was left in Luxeuil, in the
custody of one of the king’s proceres, who made him leave the monastery
for Besançon. Here the saint was to remain until a royal verdict had
been pronounced. This ignominous episode called for yet another
installment of Columbanus turning the tables on the king: the saint
went out into the city and liberated all the king’s prisoners, accord-
ing to time-honoured hagiographical principles.52 Good Merovingian
saints freed prisoners by droves, but in Jonas’ narrative, this familiar
topos took on a new meaning. Theuderic restricted Columbanus’ free-
dom of movement, so the saint retaliated by setting the king’s pris-
oners free. As usual, chains dissolved miraculously, but Jonas’ version
of the saintly liberation of prisoners had some special features:
Columbanus called upon the king’s prisoners to do penance, guid-
ing them to a church with locked doors. These were duly opened
by divine power, but then closed once more, in front of the amazed
guards chasing their fugitive charges.
Several important messages were transmitted at once. To begin
with, there was no question of Columbanus himself being anything
remotely resembling a ‘prisoner’; the saint moved about the city

52
Graus, “Die Gewalt bei den Anfängen des Feudalismus”, passim.
         311

freely, in search of prisoners to liberate. Second, this particular pas-

sage is the only instance where Jonas uses the words carcer or ergas-
tulum; locking up miserable prisoners was the business of kings,
mercifully freeing them that of saints. Third, against a royal model
of incarceration, Columbanus posited his superior means of punish-
ment: sinners should do penance. Given Jonas’ definition of the
medicamenta paenitentiae elsewhere in his Life of Columbanus,53 this meant
as much as, come to the monastery and save your souls. And last
but not least, any king attempting to wrest a saint from his locus
sanctus would be confronted with doors that opened and closed at
unpredictable moments, guided by God rather than by royal com-
mand. Columbanus triumphantly returned to his monastery ‘through
the centre of town’, without anyone hindering his passage.
To the two rulers whose reputation Jonas intended to dismantle
as thoroughly as possible, this was a challenge they could not allow
to go unnoticed; the truth still did not sink in. Brunhild and Theuderic
sent soldiers who entered Luxeuil’s inner domain (septa), where the
saint sat in the atrium of the church, quietly reading a book. The
soldiers rushed past Columbanus, occasionally touched him, even
stumbled over him, but they could not see him. It was a lovely
scene, Jonas said.54 The man in charge, however, looking through a
window, suddenly saw the saint sitting there, and realised he was in
the presence of a miracle. Was there better proof of this place being
sacred? From then on, the narrative develops, revolving around a
saint who did not wish to leave his community, but did not want
to endanger the lives of the soldiers who came to carry him off, and
the soldiers themselves, torn between obedience to their king and
deep fear for the divine punishment they might incur because of
their subservience to earthly powers.
This is Jonas’ background to Columbanus’ exile in 610: a truly
impressive hagiographical narrative, meant to explain to the next
generation — Columbanus’ pupils — why the saint who had created a
sacred domain deeply respected by kings had nonetheless been chased
out of his septa secretiora, leaving Luxeuil and part of his monastic flock
behind. By damning Brunhild and her progeny, Jonas implicitly
extolled the virtues of other rulers, the good kings (and bishops) who

53
De Jong, “Transformations of penance”, pp. 215–7.
54
Jonas, Vita Columbani I, c. 20: ‘ipsum nequaquam viderent, eratque expectaculum pul-
cherrium’.
312   

respected and protected monastic space, making better use of its

divine uses than Brunhild/Jezebel and her bungling son had done.55
Jonas was writing in better times, at the very start of the heyday of
Merovingan immunities. His Life of Columbanus is very much a doc-
ument that belongs to his own day and age, when the interdepen-
dence between royal and monastic space — and the separateness
essential to their mutual benefits — were first formulated in the
juridical documents known as ‘immunities’. Jonas’ elaborate narra-
tive reveals a topography of power into which Luxeuil was fully inte-
grated, provided it remained a locus sanctus. The monastery as a
‘prison’ does not not enter into the discussion. On the contrary, the
real carcer was located in the city (urbs) and guarded by the king’s
soldiers; the monastery was a place where prisoners might go vol-
untarity, to do penance, after having been liberated by a saint.

O    ?

In a stimulating article on ‘kings who opted out’ Clare Stancliffe

argued that the involuntary retreat to a monastery was typical of
the Romanised continent. ‘In Merovingian circles the tonsuring of
a prince or king and his confinement within a monastery was simply
a political act, designed to remove a rival king’.56 By contrast, in the
early medieval insular world kings opted out of their own accord,
freely exchanging their royal office for the monastery or a life-long
pilgrimage. This difference, Stancliffe maintains, can be explained
by different religious traditions. Irish ascetism took a bleak view of
the possibilities of rulers to achieve Christian goals while remaining
in the secular domain; on the Continent, however, a more optimistic
attitude to Christian kingship prevailed. In other words, Continental
rulers had no reason or incentive to renounce kingship of their own
volition: they could be kings and good Christians at the same time.

55
Cf. J.L. Nelson, “Queens as Jezebels: the careers of Brunhild and Balthild in
Merovingian history”, Studies in Church History, Subsidia I (1978), pp. 31–77; repr.
in eadem, Politics and ritual in early medieval Europe (London/Ronceverte, 1986), pp.
1–48. For an in-depth exploration of Jonas’ Life of Columbanus, see I.N. Wood,
“The Vita Columbani and Merovingian hagiography”, Peritia 1 (1982), pp. 63–80.
56
Clare Stancliffe, “Kings who opted out”, in P. Wormald (with D. Bullough
and R. Collins) ed., Ideal and reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon society. Studies presented
to J.M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, 1983), pp. 154–76 (esp. p. 158).
         313

A decade earlier, Karl-Heinz Krüger had discussed the puzzling con-

version of two rulers opting out, the Frankish maior domus Carloman
(747) and the Langobard king Ratchis (749), who both retreated to
Monte Cassino. Krüger came to the conclusion that these two con-
versions followed Anglo-Saxon models.57 In Carloman’s case, Krüger
argues, it was clearly the Anglo-Saxon missionary Boniface who was
behind his conversion, but even for Ratchis, Krüger manages to
come up with some Anglo-Saxon connections: Bishop Wilfrid of York
and King Caedwalla of Mercia had once visited the Langobard court
in Pavia.58
Did it take Anglo-Saxons to inspire eighth-century Frankish and
Langobard rulers with religious fervour? This view seems a bit insular,
to say the least, but there is a more fundamental problem. Throughout,
the question is whether a given conversion was either voluntary or
forced. Though well aware of the contradictory nature of the sources,
Krüger feels compelled to decide in favour of Carloman’s ‘religious
motivation’, and then proceeds to build a context for Carloman’s
and Ratchis’ supposedly voluntary entry into Monte Cassino.59 For
Stancliffe, Carloman and Ratchis are the two exceptions that prove
the rule: kings voluntarily abandoning secular power are only found
in England.60 An essential element is left out of the argument, how-
ever: the particular rhetoric of the sources that ‘describe’ these events.
The obvious disagreement among early medieval authors about what
exactly happened to Carloman and Ratchis should be taken into
account. Was there perchance a debate after the event, and a wish
to portray a retreat into monastic space as an eminently honourable
conversion — or as its opposite? And what about the sources offering
‘proof ’ that the tonsuring and monastic confinement of continental
princes or kings was merely a political political act?
We are back with Jonas’ Life of Columbanus once more, for this
contains the key text upon which such arguments are built: that the
kings on the Continent did not opt out voluntarily, that no religious
motivation was involved until Boniface and so-called insular inspi-
ration came along, and that Merovingians aimed for murder, not

57
K.-H. Krüger, ‘Königskonversionen im 8. Jahrhundert’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien
7 (1983), pp. 169–222.
58
Krüger, “Königskonversionen”, pp. 216–17.
59
Krüger, “Königskonversionen”, p. 185.
60
Stancliffe, “Kings who opted out”, p. 158.
314   

for monastic exile. But as we have seen, Jonas’ cleverly constructed

narrative was meant to destroy the reputation and honour of Brunhild
and Theuderic, the evil instruments of the saint’s exile from his locus
sanctus — and Jonas managed quite successfully. This is not a text
from which to glean straightforward information about Merovingian
custom of any sort. After his departure from Luxeuil, Columbanus
was welcomed in the realm of Theudebert II, the other of Brunhild’s
grandsons he once had refused to bless. Theuderic then attacked his
half-brother, and the two kings fought a war aimed at mutual destruc-
tion, vaunting the invinciblity of their peoples. It is at this point that
Columbanus prevailed upon Theudebert — the most sensible of the
warring parties — to give up the ‘superciliousness of his arrogance’
and to become a cleric ‘in ecclesia positus’, lest he lose eternal life
along with his earthly realm. This earned Columbanus the ridicule
of the king himself as well as of the royal entourage: ‘They had
never heard of a Merovingian who had been raised over a kingdom
becoming a cleric of his own free will’.61 This is the passage on
which historians have concentrated: Merovingian kings were no wimps
opting out. But the story goes on. Jonas has Columbanus exclaim:
‘If he does not accept the honour of being tonsured voluntarily, he
will briefly be a cleric against his will!’.62 This is another turning
point in the narrative, and one more maledictio, a malicious prophecy
by a powerful saint, which of course came true. The two half-broth-
ers fought a ferocious battle at Zülpich, and Theudebert had to flee.
Columbanus, sitting on a rotting tree trunk reading a book, had a
vision of Theuderic calling him, asking him for help. Columbanus
refused: this was not what the Lord had intended when He ordered
us to pray for our enemies, he answered. Theudebert was duly cap-
tured and taken to his grandmother Brunhild, who ‘full of wrath’
( furens) had him made a cleric; only a few days afterwards she ruth-
lessly (‘impie’) ordered him to be killed.

61
Jonas, Vita Columbani I, c. 28, p. 105: ‘Inter quae vir Dei ad Theudebertum accedit
eumque suadet, ut coepte arrogantiae supercilium deponeret seque clericum faceret, et in ecclesia
positus, sacre subderetur religione, nec simul cum damna presentis regni aeternae pateretur vitae
dispendia. Quod et regi et omnibus circumadstantibus rediculum excitat, aientes, se numquam aud-
isse, Merovengum, in regno sublimatum, voluntarium clericum fuisse’.
62
Ibid.: ‘Detestantibus ergo omnibus beatus Columba ait: “Si voluntarius nullatenus clerica-
tus honorem sumat, in brevi invitus clericus existat”. His ergo dictis, vir Dei ad cellolam remeat,
moxque prophetici dicti eventum res non diu dilata adfirmat.’
         315

As an example of a typically Merovingian practice of forced ton-

sure and monastic confinement, this story presents some problems,
if only because there is not a monastery in sight. According to Jonas,
Brunhild ‘requested that Theudebert was made a cleric’, thereby
implicitly granting him his life, but shortly afterwards she had him
put to death. This is no doubt part of Jonas’s narrative tour de force63
by which he succeeded in perpetually damning Brunhild’s memory.
We have only Jonas’s word for it that Theudebert was murdered at
Brunhild’s behest, the but moral of the tale is clear: killing an oppo-
nent who had just been tonsured was ‘impious’. As for Theudebert
and his entourage ridiculing Columbanus’ suggestion that the should
become a cleric of his own volition, this was just one more instance
of Jonas cleverly highlighting the difference between a wise saint and
a stupid king. Theudebert’s stupidity (and superbia) consisted of not
opting out at a moment of total defeat, saving his life and honour.
In other words, a real king would have withdrawn from the politi-
cal arena, accepting the clericatus honor. Theudebert refused to do so,
and got his just deserts: the shame of a forced tonsure, and of death
at the hands of a wicked woman. This was the view Jonas wished
to get across. There is no way to tell whether it was shared by all
the powerful of his day, but neither is there any reason to jump to
the opposite conclusion.
By the mid-seventh century, rulers exchanging secular power for
‘ecclesiastical honour’ were by no means exceptional on the Continent.
In Visigothic Spain, the honourable way out for a king was to adopt
the status of a public penitent. Chindasuinth (653),64 Wamba (680)65
and Erwig (687)66 all gave up royal office by becoming penitents,
thus avoiding a bloody conflict and making room for their successors;
a similar scenario was probably intended in 833, when Louis the
Pious submitted to a public penance. In Wamba’s case, this has been
construed as the result of an evil plot — the king had supposedly
been drugged and turned into a penitent — but there is no evidence
for this tall story invented in the late-ninth century. It is much more
likely that these kings decided to become penitents of their own

63
Wood’s expression, in The Merovingian kingdoms, 450–751 (London, 1994), p. 131.
64
Fredegarii continuationes, IV, c. 82, ed. A. Kusternig (Darmstadt, 1994), p. 256.
65
Twelfth Council of Toledo (681), ed. Vives, Concilios, p. 386.
66
Laterculus Visigothorum, no. 46–47. ed. Th. Mommsen (1898), MGH Auct. Ant.
13, p. 468.
316   

accord, guided by a mixture of political acumen and religious fer-

vour.67 We cannot be certain, but we do know that contemporary
authors chose to depict these royal conversions as a highly com-
mendable gesture, even in Wamba’s case.68 This amounted to more
than a mere cover-up. Queen Balthild’s withdrawal into her own
foundation, the nunnery Chelles — sometime between August 664
and August 665 — was consistently presented presented as a vol-
untary action. That the queen actually needed to opt out because
of factional strife is clearly hinted at in various sources,69 yet authors
favourable to Balthild subtly enhanced her reputation by stressing
that she entered Chelles of her own volition. This certainly holds
true for the author of the first Vita Balthildis, written before 690.70
The queen fervently wished to retreat to Chelles, but ‘for the love
of her’ she was delayed by the Franks — who ultimately permitted
her to leave because they were afraid of the formidable ‘Lady Balthild’:
But the lady considered it God’s will that this was not so much their
decision as a dispensation of God that her holy desire had been fulfilled,
through whatever means, with Christ as a guide. And having been
escorted there by certain noblemen, she came to her above-mentioned
monastery at Chelles, and there, as is fitting, she was honourably and
very lovingly received into the holy congregation by the holy maidens.
Then, however, she had a complaint of no mean size against those
whom she had kindly nurtured, because they had erroneously consid-
ered her suspect and even repaid her with evil for good deeds. But,
discussing this quickly with the priests, she kindly forgave them every-
thing and asked them to forgive her the disturbance of her heart. And
thus, with the Lord as provider, peace was fully restored among them.71

67
Cf. M. de Jong, “Adding insult to injury: Julian of Toledo and his Historia
Wambae”, in: P. Heather ed., The Visigoths from the migration period to the seventh century.
An ethnographic perspective (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 373–422, esp. pp. 373–4, with ref-
erences to earlier literature.
68
The Twelfth Council of Toledo merely stated that Wamba received his penance
‘in the event of inevitable need’, designating his successor: ‘Idem enim Wamba prin-
ceps dum inevitabilis necessitudinis teneretur eventu, suscepto religionis debitu cultu et venerabili
tonsurae sacro signaculo, mox per scribtuarum definitionis suae hunc inclytum dominum nostrum
Ervigium post se praeelegit regnaturum, et sacerdotali benedictione unguendum’; cf. Vives ed.,
Concilios, p. 386.
69
See Fouracre and Gerberding, Late Merovingian kingdoms, pp. 97–118 for a dis-
cussion of the sources for Balthild’s life; about her reputation, Nelson, “Queens as
Jezebels”. About Balthild and her policy of immunities and exemptions, see Wood,
Merovingian kingdoms, pp. 197–222; Rosenwein, Negotiating space, pp. 74–81.
70
Fouracre and Gerberding, Late Merovingian kingdoms, pp. 114–5.
71
Vita Balthildis c. 10, MGH SRM 2, p. 495. I follow the translation of the Life
by Fouracre and Gerberding, Late Merovingian France, pp. 118–32.
         317

This is as good an example as any of the way in which the theme

of force versus choice might be exploited to bolster a reputation.
The author cleverly managed to convey two conflicting messages:
factional strife forced Balthild to retreat into ‘her’ monastery, but
this nevertheless was her own choice, guided by Christ. She there-
fore entered Chelles in a most honourable fashion, receiving a royal
reception. Afterwards, however, days of political activity were not
quite over, for a grievous dispute still had to be settled. Peace was
the result, at a price. Balthild did not become a nun; by emphasiz-
ing her ‘holy desire’ (sancta devotio, the expression is used twice) to
enter Chelles, the author turned Balthild’s retirement into a matter
of choice and honour.72 Once inside, her behaviour befitted that of
the most worthy of nuns, as the author of the Life is at pains to
point out, but nonetheless Balthild remained betwixt and between,
out of the political arena but with all her royal potential intact. Her
Life provides a revealing vignette of queenly diplomatic activity within
the cloister, with Balthild suggesting to the abbess ‘that they should
constantly visit the king and queen and the palace nobles in befitting
honour with gifts, as was the custom, so that the house of God
would not lose the good reputation with which it had begun, but
would always remain more fully in the affection of love with all its
friends and more strongly in the name of God in love, as it is writ-
ten: ‘It is necessary to have a good report of them who are without.’
(I Tim. 3:7).73
As a former outsider who was now within, Balthild was in an
excellent position to appreciate her monastery’s need to keep up
good relations with the palace, and to protect the blameless repu-
tation which would attract gifts and protection. Such tell-tale details
suggest that Bathild’s life as a politically active member of the royal
family did not end once she retired to Chelles. She was a queen
lying low, but she remained a queen.

72
Vita Balthildis c. 10, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 2, p. 495: ‘Erat enim eius santa
devotio, ut in monasteriam, quem prediximus, religiosarum foeminarum, hoc est in Kala, quam
ipsa edicavit, conversare deberet.’ The expressions devotio and conversare both belong to
monastic usage, but ‘vow’ is only one of its possible translations (others are ‘reli-
gious intention’ or ‘pious wish’). If one wishes to translate Balthild’s devotio sancta as
a vow at all, one should not treat this as a formal monastic vow of any sort, but
rather as a personal and informal promise to God.
73
Vita Balthildis c. 12, p. 498.
318   

O  —   

This brings us to the flexibility and open-endedness of monastic exile.

The usual assumption is that monastic exiles became full members
of a religious community and were therefore were politically kalt-
gestellt. But early medieval exilers and exiles must have known from
experience that monastic confinement was rarely permanent, that
hair once tonsured grew back, that veils could be taken off, and that
a political following might as well be built up within as without a
monastery. This becomes apparent from the cluster of texts dealing
with the tempestuous events of 673–675, which entailed the monas-
tic exile in Luxeuil of two adversaries, the maior domus Ebroin and
Bishop Leudegar of Autun. Paul Fouracre has brilliantly examined
the evidence, so I shall not repeat his analysis here.74 Just a brief
reminder of the main events: after having engineerd Ebroin’s down-
fall and exile to Luxeuil in 673, Bishop Leudegar ended up there
himself only two years later. Both men left Luxeuil again to return
to power, with all the risks involved: in 678 Leudegar was grue-
somely executed as an accessory to regicide, and Ebroin was mur-
dered two years later.75
The rhetoric of voluntary/involuntary exile had its impact on these
texts as well. The first Passion of Leudegar, written shortly after the
saint’s death, contains a remarkable story about Theuderic III, Balt-
hild’s youngest son who was put onto the throne by Ebroin. Upon
Ebroin’s fall from power King Theuderic had his hair cut off by
‘certain men who were seen to be leaders in the kingdom and wished
by flattery to persuade Childeric not to shed blood’.76 They presented
him shaven to his victorious brother, but the way this confrontation
unfolded owes a lot to the fact that the first Passion of Leudegar
was written at a time when Theuderic had returned to power. Asked
by his brother what fate he preferred, ‘he [Theuderic] would only
say this: that he had been unjustly cast down from the throne, and
he declared that he was anticipating a swift judgement from God in
his favour. It was then ordered that he should remain in the monastery

74
P. Fouracre, “Merovingian history and Merovingian hagiography”, Past and
Present 127 (1990), pp. 3–38.
75
See also Wood, The Merovingian kingdoms, pp. 234–8.
76
Passio Leudegarii, c. 6, ed. B. Krusch, MGH, SRM 5, p. 288; transl. Fouracre
& Gerberding, Late Merovingian France, p. 223.
         319

of the martyr St Denis and be protected there until he grew his

hair, which they had cut off ’. As an example of representing monas-
tic exile as a result of an honourable choice, this passage equals that
of the Life of Balthild. As for Leudegar himself (still according to the
first Passion), he was first taken to Luxeuil ‘to stay there until all
had taken counsel together what should be done with a man of such
great reputation’, but was subsequently sentenced to remain in Luxeuil
in perpetual exile. Yet the author explicitly indicates what kind of
leeway such a ‘perpetual’ banishment might offer: ‘This judicial decree
was quickly confirmed, with some of the priests and bishops feeling
that presently they would bring him back from the king’s anger’.77
In this narrative, Luxeuil has many functions. It was a place where
one could bring a political hot potato like this powerful bishop while
deciding what to do with a man with so many allies. The allies
themselves seem to have been content with the verdict of perpetual
banishment, banking on the king’s wrath to subside, so they might
bring him out again.

All this hinges on a kind of double entendre: that monastic exile was
perpetual, but exiles might be pardoned and leave again; that monas-
teries were both within withdrawn from the world; that tonsured
exiles were immune to violence, but that they might be killed if one
managed to get them outside the monastic precincts. As the First
Passion of Leudegar (c. 12) has it: ‘Again and again Hermenar threw
himself at the king’s feet, imploring him to let Leudegar remain in
Luxeuil and not to order him to be led out to a certain death accord-
ing to the cruel ones whom the devil had stirred up in a rage against
him’.78 Apart from glossing over Hermenar’s dubious role in Leudegar’s
martyrdom, this passage suggests that the king was eminently cap-
able of extracting Leudegar from Luxeuil if he wished. All the same,
the author of Leudegar’s first Passion is extremely vague about the
way Leudegar left his place of internal exile. Two dukes were charged
with this task; one of their men was to kill Leudegar ‘as soon as he
saw the servant of God outside Luxeuil’. But the villain took fright
and begged the saint for mercy; the next thing we know is that
Leudegar was indeed outside Luxueil, still in the custody of the two

77
Passio Leudegarii, c. 12, p. 294.
78
Passio Leudegarii, c. 12, p. 294.
320   

dukes, who now had become his firm allies. All this prevarication
suggests that the crossing of Luxeuil’s boundaries in either direction
was a sensitive issue.79
In the first Passion, Leudegar’s entry into Luxeuil is unequivocally
presented as a sentence of exile, the result of an act of mercy on
the part of King Childeric and his leading men.80 By the mid-eighth
century, when an author from Poitiers rewrote the tale of Leudegar’s
sufferings, the story had become a different one. Leudegar now took
the initiative himself, requesting the king’s permission to leave the
world and devote himself to God. Once in Luxeuil, he encountered
his fellow-exile Ebroin, who received a similar uplifting treatment
from this hagiographer. The two men confessed their mutual guilt,
obeyed the abbot when he imposed a penance on them, and ‘did
their utmost to live forever within the monastic community as if they
were monks’.81
This is the view of a man writing more than 70 years afterwards,
who could safely credit the protagonists with lofty penitential motives.
It is a far cry from the seventh-century versions of Ebroin’s exile.
The Liber Historiae Francorum (727) merely stated that the enraged
Franks ‘tonsured Ebroin and sent him to the monastery of Burgundy
in Luxeuil’, after having cut off Theudebert’s hair.82 The Continuator
of Fregedar’s Chronicle related these events in an equally dead-pan
fashion, but with the addition of a tell-tale detail: Ebroin was taken
to Luxeuil against his will (invitum).83 This one little word reflects two

79
Cf. Passio Leudegarii, cc. 14 and 16, pp. 296–98, about the ‘duces’ who had
been ordered to take Leudegar out of Luxeuil. They suddenly appear in c. 14,
without any indication that they did follow up their orders, and suddenly appear
to have done so in c. 16.
80
Also in Leudegar’s case: Passio Praeiecti, c. 26, MGH SRM 5, p. 241: ‘Leodegarius
vero penitentia ductus et exilium Luxovio trusus’.
81
Ursinus, Passio altera Leudegarii, c. 4, MGH SRM 5, p. 327.: ‘Et iuxta iussum
regis, ipsumque pontificem deprecantem, Luxovio coenuvio, ut ei liceret, relicto saeculo, vacare Deo,
humili poposcit prei se dirigendum; quem protinus illic ire non distulit. Qui festinus in monasterio
perveniens, ibidem Ebruinum iam clericum invenit; dicens se aliquid in eo peccasse, veniam vicissim
petentes, steterunt concordes. Tamen ab abbate seiuncti, aliquod spatium temporis uterque peni-
tentiam agentes, inter contubernia monachorum strinue habitare quasi perpetue monachi conati sunt.’
82
Liber Historiae Francorum, c. 45, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 2, p. 317: ‘Eo tem-
pore Franci adversus Ebroinum insidias praeparant, super Theudericum consurgunt eumque de
regno deiecunt, crinesque capitis amborum vi abstrahentes, incidunt. Ebroinum totundunt eumque
Luxovio monasterio in Burgundia dirigunt.’
83
Fredegarii continuationes c. 2, ed. Kusternig, p. 272: ‘Eo tempore Franci adversus Ebroi-
num insidias praeparant, contra Theudericum consurgunt eumque a regno deiciunt. Crines capitis
eius abscidentes tutunderunt Ebroinumque et ipsum tutundent et in Burgundia Luxovio monaste-
rio invitum dirigunt.’
         321

generations of literary agitation against Ebroin. In the first Passio

Leudegarii Ebroin became the villain of the piece, exiled to do penance
for abominable sins ( facinora), a perfidious Julian who, once in Luxeuil,
merely feigned to lead the life of a monk — a true apostate.84 This
dim view of Ebroin would eventually prevail. Yet however diver-
gent, all accounts agree in one respect: whether Ebroin’s efforts to
behave like a monk were presented as sincere or hypocritical, he
never became a monk. At best he was ‘tonsured, in monastic habit’,
or living ‘as if ’ he would be a monk forever. It was nothing sur-
prising, then, for Ebroin to gather a gang (comitatus) of friends and
servants around him at Luxeuil, and to leave the place when he
thought the time was ripe.85 For such exiles, the monastery was a
place where one might keep one’s options open. Ebroin only became
a real monk in the early ninth century, from a typically Carolingian
perspective. The Annales Mettenses Priores, a hagiographical piece of
propaganda for the Carolingian dynasty composed in 806 or shortly
thereafter,86 made the most of Ebroin’s departure from Luxeuil. Given
that most Merovingian kings were not deemed worthy of more than
a passing remark, the author’s digression about Ebroin, ‘a cruel man
and prone to several vices’ may have been induced by contemporary
controversies about converts to monastic life leaving their commu-
nities once more, against all the rules that had been set by this time:
At one point he, forced by certain circumstances, joined the monastery
which is called Luxeuil, and there, the hair of his head having been
cut, he, with a vow, took up the habit of monastic life. But with the
passing of years, when another king who had been friendly to him
took up the rule of the Franks, he, leaving the monastery behind and
keeping the habit only so far as his tonsure, abandoned the monastic
habit, took a wife, and again snatched up the position of mayor of
the palace. But compared with the irregular and illicit way he suc-
ceeded to the management of his office, he excercised his rule even
more perversely and wickedly.87

84
Passio Leudegarii, c. 6, MGH SRM 5, p. 288: ‘Episcopis tunc quibusdam interceden-
tibus et praecipue intervento antistitis Leodegarii eum non interficiunt, sed Luxovio monasterio diri-
gitur in exilium, ut facinora, quae perpetraverat, evadisset penitendo’; ibid., c. 13, p. 296: ‘In
illis igitur diebus adhuc exsul in Luxovio resedebat Ebroinus monachali habitu tonsuratus, simu-
latam gerens concordiam, quasi dum uterque unam, sed disparem exilii accepissent sententiam, con-
cordem ducerent vitam’; Ibid. c. 16, p. 298: ‘Iuliano similis, qui vita fincta monachorum tenuit’.
85
Passio Leudegarii, c. 16, p. 298.
86
For a recent appraisal of this text, with full references to earlier literature, see
Y. Hen, “The Annals of Metz and the Merovingian past”, in: Y. Hen and M.
Innes eds., The uses of the past in the early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 175–90.
87
Annales Mettenses priores, s.a. 688, ed. B. von Simson, MGH SRG 10 (Hannover/
322   

This verdict is the result of a cumulative literary defamation,88 but

the Annals of Metz introduced a new element: Ebroin had taken
monastic vows (votum), then became an apostate and returned to
power; to make matters worse, he took a wife as well. This was a
real accusation in society busily ordering its monastic life, including
the irrevocability of monastic vows, but to earlier authors, this whole
business about broken vows would not have been understandable;
Ebroin had never become a full member of a religious community,
and neither did any of his fellow exiles, Balthild included.
This distinction did matter, not only when Louis the Pious in 833
staunchly refused to take ‘voluntary’ monastic vows under duress, as
a follow-up to his public penance,89 but also in the world of Ebroin
and Leudegar. The subtle expressions used by contemporary authors
speak for themselves: these were still political actors who only became
‘like’ monks. The same holds true for the monastic exile imposed in
788 and 794 on Charlemagne’s brilliant adversary Tassilo, duke of
Bavaria. The Royal Frankish Annals portrayed Tassilo as an oath-
breaker and a fickle ally, but when it came to his monastic exile,
they left his reputation intact. Charlemagne, moved by the love of
God and conscious that Tassilo was his kinsman, decided to spare
his life, and asked him what he wished to do; Tassilo asked leave
to be tonsured and do penance for his many sins, so that he might
save his soul.90 This much resembles the treatment Theudebert III
supposedly met at the hands of his brother, with one important
difference. For the author of the Royal Frankish Annals, monastic
exile and public penance had become identical, with the result that

Leipzig, 1905), pp. 5–6; transl. Fouracre and Gerberding, Late Merovingian France,
p. 353.
88
Vita Anstrudis, cc. 11–13, ed. B. Krusch and W. Levison, MGH SRM 6, pp.
71–2; cf. J.A. McNamara and John E. Halborg with E. Gordon Whatley eds. and
transl., Sainted women of the Dark Ages (Durham/London, 1992), pp. 296–97. In this
preseumably eighth-century text, Ebroin became the quintessential violator or the
cloister and Anstrud’s exiler — until the community’s terrifying prayer and a mir-
acle turned him into the abbess’ devoted supporter. For more Ebroin-bashing, see
the Vita Philiberti cc. 24–7, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 5, pp. 596–9.
89
Annales S. Bertiniani s.a. 834, ed. R. Rau, Quellen zur karolingischen Reichs-
geschichte II (Darmstadt, 1972), p. 22; De Jong, In Samuel’s Image, p. 262.
90
De Jong, “Paenientia publica and justice”, pp. 880–82, for a compilation of the
relevant sources. But in the Annales Petaviani s.a. 788, ed. G.H. Pertz, MGH SS 1,
p. 17, Tassilo’s first disappearance into a monastery — presumably Jumièges —
was turned into a dishonourable and coercive affair: ‘et Taxilo dux tonsus est, retrususque
Gemetico monasterio’. For a context to this passage, see Garrison, “The Franks as the
New Israel?”, p. 152.
         323

monastic exile became more like a definitive departure from the

world; this was the way in which a true penitent should atone for
his sins. But then again, he — or she — might not. Penance became
a theme that could be fully exploited in the literary battle fought
over the memoria of those who had left the political arena. Had it
been voluntary and therefore honourable, or a matter of despicable
coercion? This was the question. Meanwhile, the ‘ordinary’ kind of
monastic exile — by means of a mere clerical tonsure — continued
to exist. Louis the Pious fully availed himself of this method of cor-
recting and pardoning his opponents in the wake of the revolts of
818 and 833, in the full understanding than none of these men
would enter monastic life forever.

It is within this complicated context — voluntary/involuntary, monk/

cleric, good/bad penitent — that Carloman’s retreat into monastic
life in 747 should be situated. The locus classicus is Einhard’s Life of
Charlemagne.91 For reasons unknown, but probably because of his
love for the contemplative life, Carloman relinquished his royal office
and went to Rome — says Einhard. Having discarded his secular
clothes, Carloman became a monk in St Silvester in Monte Soracte,
his own foundation. Here he remained for a few years, but because
of the hustle and bustle of a steady stream of eminent Frankish pil-
grims to Rome, eager to visit their former lord, Carloman withdrew
to the peace and quiet of Monte Cassino, where he led a religious
life until he died. To my mind, the question whether Carloman opted
out for religious or political reasons is une question mal posée: religious
fervour and political expediency were not necessarily at odds. It looks
as if Carloman remained politically active once he retreated from
the world — like Balthild, Ebroin, Leudegar and others.92 Many

91
Einhard, Vita Karoli, c. 2, ed. R. Rau, Quellen zur karolingischen Reichsgeschichte 1
(Darmstadt, 1974), p. 168. For the many instances in which Einhard’s account has
been taken at face value, Bund, Thronsturz, pp. 367–8 may serve as a pars pro toto.
But questions about historiographical complications surrounding the accession of the
Carolingians are now finally being raised: see R. McKitterick, “The illusion of royal
power in the Carolingian Annals”, The English Historical Review 115 (2000), pp. 1–20.
92
Liber Pontificalis, nr. 94, Vita Stephani II, c. 30, ed. L. Duchesne, Le Liber Pontificalis
I (Paris, 1955), pp. 448–9; R. Davis, transl. and ed., The lives of the eighth-century popes
(Liber Pontificalis) 94.30 (Liverpool, 1992), p. 65. Here Carloman is accused of co-
operating with ‘the unmentionable Aistulf’. ‘But God was propitious and Carloman
totally failed to divert to his purpose the steadfast heart of his brother the christ-
ian Pepin king of the Franks.’ I follow Davis’ translation. Cf. T.F.X. Noble, The
republic of St Peter: The birth of the papal state, 680–825 (Philadelphia, 1984), p. 82.
324   

important visitors paid their respects to their former ruler now in

Monte Soracte, conveniently nearby when they made a pilgrimage
to Rome, so the accusation that Carloman was busily plotting with
the Lombards against his brother Pippin is not entirely surprising.
Great men (and women) who disappeared into monastic space did
not entirely relinquish their power and status; by voluntarily leaving
the political arena, such qualities might even be enhanced. Instead,
some questions should be asked about the rhetoric of the sources
usually cited to ‘prove’ Carloman’s exclusively religious motives. There
are two nearly contemporary ones. A version of Annales Petaviani
attributed Carloman’s conversion to his compunction about a crush-
ing defeat in Alemannia, where many thousands of men met their
death.93 This hardly amounted to praise. The same holds true for
the Continuation of Fredegar’s Chronicle, which took Pippin’s line
entirely: Carloman, ‘burning with religious desire’, committed his
realm and sons into Pippin’s hands and went off to Rome, to become
a monk forever. This was the text upon which Einhard relied. It
left the initiative and honour to Carloman, but it also hammered
home an important point: Carloman left for Rome in order ‘to per-
severe in the monastic order’.94 In other words, Carloman had safely
left the corridors of power forever; this was not a story with an open
end. But what if his brother Pippin had been killed in a hunting
accident, like the Langobard King Aistulf in 756? Would Carloman
then have emerged from Monte Cassino, as Aistulf ’s brother Ratchis
did, in order to take charge of a chaotic situation?95 There are strik-
ing similarities between Carloman and Ratchis: both had a power-
ful brother, both became pilgrims to Rome, both ended up in Monte
Cassino as ‘servants of Christ’. But there are also differences, and
the most conspicuous one is that Ratchis’ departure from the polit-
ical scene — or his reappearance, for that matter — was not a con-
tentious issue for contemporary authors. The Liber Pontificalis reported
that Ratchis, accompanied by his wife and sons, had been made a
cleric, and then — with his entire family — received the monastic

93
Annales Petaviani s.a. 746, ed. G.H. Pertz, MGH SS 1, p. 12; cf. Krüger,
“Königskonversionen”, p. 186, n. 85.
94
Fredegarii continuationes, c. 30, ed. J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, The fourth book of the
Chronicle of Fredegar and its continuations (London, 1960), pp. 100–2; Annales Petaviani
s.a. 746, MGH SS 1, p. 11.
95
Bund, Thronsturz, pp. 214–9.
         325

habit.96 Intimations of political controversy only surfaced a century

later.97 But Carloman’s ‘opting out’ caused real embarassment. Carol-
ingian historians went out of their way to make it clear that Carloman
had become a real monk, rather than simply submitting to clerical
tonsure; the man’s religious fervour was harnessed to this image-
building as well. Thus, Carloman became the one pious exception
proving the rule of hard-nosed Frankish Klosterhaft.
Einhard did much to reinforce this view, claiming that he did not
really know what was behind Carloman’s decision. But it appeared,
said Einhard, that Carloman gave up his secular reign because he
burned with longing for the contemplative life. Then, in much detail,
Einhard described the various stages by which Carloman had left
the corridors of Frankish power: he exchanged his secular clothes
for clerical ones and became a monk in Monte Soracte, but when
the world impinged on him too much, he retreated to the most
sacred monastic space in the Carolingian empire: Benedict’s very
own Monte Cassino. Was there a more definitive way to leave the
world? Not for Einhard, surely, who wrote several generations later
and had been raised in the Benedictine monastery of Fulda.98 For
Ratchis, however, in 756 the road from Monte Cassino back to Pavia
was but a short one, as it had been for an Anglo-Saxon king recalled
from the monastery to lead his people into battle.99 The same may
have held true for Carloman with regard to Aachen, until in due
course he realised that he had only one option left: to remain in
Monte Cassino, leading the religious life Einhard credited him with.
All that remained by the 820s was a series of skilfull accounts editing
out the tension of the late 740s, crowned by Einhard’s disclaimer: he
had no idea what had moved Carloman, if it was not genuine piety.
It is worth pointing out that Einhard’s chapter on Carloman is
preceded by his extremely effective defamation of the ‘do-nothing’
Merovingian dynasty, and also by his story about the most infamous

96
Liber Pontificalis, Vita Zachariae c. 23, ed. Duschesne, I, p. 434.
97
Benedicti S. Andreae monachi chronicon, c. 16, ed. G.H. Pertz, MGH SS 3, p. 702.
98
J. Fleckenstein, “Einhard, seine Gründung und sein Vermächtnis in Seligenstadt”,
in: K. Hauck ed., Das Einhardkreuz (Göttingen, 1974), pp. 96–121; De Jong, In
Samuel’s Image, pp. 233–234.
99
Stancliffe, “Kings who opted out”, p. 154 (Bede, Historia ecclesiastia, II, c. 15
and III, c. 18): Sigebert, the king of the East Angles, who in c. 631 was enticed
back onto the battlefield. This, however, is Bede’s vignette of a saintly kind who
would not fight with the sword, for he had become a monk; he wielded a stick
instead.
326   

monastic exile of all: Childeric III, the last Merovingian ruler ‘who
was deposed at the Roman pontiff Stephanus’ orders, and tonsured,
and thrust into a monastery’.100 This brief sentence is packed with
powerful statements: all that happened to the hapless last Merovingian
king was done by force, proving the point that Childeric had lost
all claims to royal honour. The only eighth-century source, the Royal
Frankish Annals, say no more than that Childeric was ‘tonsuratus et in
monasterio missus’ in the year 750. But along comes Einhard. Apart
from crediting Pope Stephanus II — consecrated on 26 March 752 —
with the king’s deposition,101 Einhard introduced a much stronger
expression: Childeric was ‘in monasterium trusus’ — once more, a use
of force and loss of honour is implied. Which monastery? Einhard
did not bother to mention a particular place, either from lack of
interest or, more likely, as part of his strategy of defamation. Useless
kings, justly deposed, went to nameless monasteries.102 Conversely,
when it came to Carloman’s various stages of monastic retreat,
Einhard named every relevant place: Rome, Monte Soracte, Monte
Cassino. In other respects as well, the two chapters seem to be linked
by their contrast. Whereas the last Merovingian ruler was dragged
off to a nameless monastery, Carloman was merely driven by reli-

100
Einhard, Vita Karoli, c. 1, p. 166: ‘qui iussu Stephani Romani pontificis depositus ac
detonsus atque in monasterium trusus est’.
101
Likewise: Breviarium Erchanberti, MGH SS 2, p. 328. Cf. R. McKitterick, “The
illusion of royal power in the Carolingian Annals”, English Historical Review 115
(2000), pp. 1–20.
102
The claim that it was St Bertin that served the last Merovingian as his ‘prison’
crops up in the Gesta of the Abbots of St Wandrille, in an entry written before 830.
Einhard had a lot of influence in this monastery, so it is not surprising that the
same strong terminology is used; cf. Gesta abbatum Fontanellensium, ed. S. Loewenfeld,
MGH SRG 24 (1886), p. 43; ed. F. Lohier and F. Laporte (Paris, 1938), p. 77. A
privilegium from Pippin III for St Wandrille is cited, and firmly dated as having been
issued on 6 June 750: ‘Quo anno idem gloriosus Pippinus ex consultu beati Zachariae papae
urbis Romae a Bonifacio archiepiscopo unctus, rex constitur Francorum, ablato principis nomine.
Unde rumor potentiae eius et timor virtutis in universas transiit terras. Et Hildericus rex, Meroingorum
ex genere ortus, depositus tonsusque in monasterio Sancti Audomari qui dicitur Sidiu trusus est’.
The author adds: ‘Cuius filius nomine Theodericus in hoc monasterio anno sequenti clericus
effectus collocatus est’. This had apparently become the official version of the Carolingian
usurpation, pointedly ante-dating Pippin’s assumption of royal office. However,
Folcuin (d. 990), the author of the Gesta of the abbots of St Bertin recalled that
Childeric was buried in St Bertin, and included a royal charter of 743, confirming
earlier royal privileges, but did not mention Childeric having been ‘thrust’ (trusus)
into St Bertin; cf. Folcuin, Gesta abbatum Sithiensium, ed. B. Guérard, Cartulaire de l’ab-
baye de Saint-Bertin (Paris, 1840), cc. 31 and 34, pp. 51–3. Cf. K.-H. Krüger, “Saint-
Bertin als Grablege Childerichs III und der Grafen von Flandern”, Frühmittelalterliche
Studien 8 (1974), pp. 71–80.
         327

gious zeal, making his way — gradually, and of his own volition —
to the then most sacred places in Western Christendom. Could it
be that these two famous chapters attempted to seal off any troubling
memories of two rulers who chose the honourable option out —
withdrawal into a monastery — while keeping their options open,
at least in the first years of their monastic exile? If any such mem-
ories were still alive when Einhard wrote, he made sure to bury
them by contrasting Childeric, the powerless victim of coercion, with
Carloman, consumed by religious fervour. In both cases, the result
was the same: two rulers disappeared into monastic space forever.

C

This has been an exploration of two interconnected issues. On the

one hand, there is the integration of monastic space into the topog-
raphy of political power in the Frankish kingdoms. By the early sev-
enth century, the purity of monastic prayer represented a crucial
source of spiritual power to Merovingian rulers; control over these
precious resources of prayer was to be preserved by royal restraint.
A group of ‘royal monasteries’ emerged, the recipients of immuni-
ties and exemptions: sacred islands where royal might was both
restricted and reinforced. These monasteries were certainly closely
linked to royal power, but they were by no means royal prisons.
Such loci sancti became places of internal exile to the powerful need-
ing to escape from the political arena if they were to save their lives.
They could fulfill this role beause sacred space had become indis-
pensable to the powers that were — as a ‘hands-off’ zone. This is
not to say that rulers did not invade the cloister, but if they did, it
might cost them their reputation in the long run. On the other hand,
we have to face the problems posed by the rhetoric of the sources.
What seems at first sight to be a straightforward ‘description’ of a
withdrawal to the monastery, may turn out to be a literary strategy
aimed at preserving or destroying the subject’s honour. Reputations
were made or broken by means of depicting monastic exiles either
as masters of their own fate, religiously motivated, or as involuntary
captives in the monastic precincts. In view of this ambivalence —
and often, contention — in the texts informing us about the power-
ful who disappeared into monastic space, the concept of monastic
prisons is not very helpful. The boundaries between sacred and
328   

secular space were reinforced in literary battles between saints and

kings, but the fury about ‘invasion of the cloister’ helped to distance
worlds that came very near, all the time and of necessity. A reli-
gious community without links to the outside world was doomed to
disappear; the same held true for a monastery that did not know
how to guard the separateness and purity that inspired confidence
from outsiders. Monastic exiles could exist by virtue of the proximity
of monastic and royal precincts, but their lives depended upon the
integrity of sacred space; if such boundaries, however undefined, dis-
appeared, monastic exile was no longer possible. A retreat into monas-
tic space might be both temporary and permanent, depending on
how matters developed. All of this tension — between versatile polit-
ical futures and the place-bound ideals of religious life — surfaces
in texts dealing with so-called ‘monastic prisoners’. Such texts are
never explicit about the precise limits and extent of sacred space. In
fact, early medieval authors tended to be vague about the spatial
details of the loci sancti that became integrated in the topography of
political power. The contours of these sacred spaces do become vis-
ible, however, not because we have any reliable description of the
concentric circles of which monasteries consisted, from inner sanctum
to outer precincts, but because early medieval authors were extremely
sensitive to the issue of ‘border-crossing’. Whenever sacred space was
infringed upon, an outburst of protest followed. Through such instances
of indignant outrage, but even more by what was left unsaid, a land-
scape emerges. It is dominated by the secular powerful moving about,
and by saints and their communities staying in place; sacred space
was defined as a ‘hands-off’ zone where the normal rules of power
politics, honour and revenge no longer pertained. All the same, these
places were closely connected to the secular centres of power. In fact,
they lent a measure of stability to volatile political communities. The
monastic exiles temporarily became part of the stable world, but
then returned to the political arena, where they might survive, or be
killed. Gradually, the boundaries between these worlds became less
permeable. By the ninth century, the former fluidity and double entendre
of monastic exile tended to harden into a strictly regulated public
penance or as a fully fledged monastic profession, but rulers still
needed their ‘time-out zones’ and used them in more traditional
ways. I have only scratched the surface of these issues, and intend
to return to them in the near future.