“Nicolaus pontifex Romanus de gratia Dei et libero arbitrio , de veritate geminae praedestinationis et sanguine Christi ut pro credentibus omnibus fusus sit, fideliter confirmat et catholice decernit.” Waitz,G.(ed.), Annales Bertiniani, Hannover, Hahn, 1883. p.53 as qtd. in Gustavsson, Louise Reinecke, "Gottschalk Reconsidered : A Study of His Thought as It Bears on His Notion of Predestination", Ph.D. Dissertation: Yale University, 1964. pp.55,56
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H310 Heresy and Persecution in Europe 1000-1350.
Professor Richard Landes
Bibliographical Essay
Andrew Magni October 2007
1.Evans, G.R.(1982)'The Grammar of Predestination in the Ninth Century' ; The Journal of Theological Studies, Oxford University Press, Oxford, Vol.33. Part.1, pp.134-145.
G.R.Evans discussion is the utilitarian and universalist forerunner of George Tavard's (see below) metaphysical and narrowly applied thesis [ that the antithetical philosophies of grammatical sciences, holden to respective views of the effect and purpose of human communication in relation to the divine, between the protagonists Hincmar and Godescalc [Fr.Gottschalk] exclusively provoked the momentously consequential misconstruing of the nuanced necessary inferences proposed by the 'miserable monk' out of symbiotic ontological theology which perceives language as liturgical and so experiential ] by pursuing the position that the employment of technical grammarian skills to defend theological positions, decidedly distinguished the Carolingian masters' exegesis of scripture from the the interpretation of their ancient predecessors, preparing the way for such a characteristic hermeneutic to dominate and thereby progressively renovate and finally revolutionize speculative theology through the middle and late Middle Ages as a platform for the creedal systematizing of the Reformation and Counter Reformation : Tavard explores the trinitarian controversy pivoted upon the phrase trina deitas “three-fold God' , where as Evans investigates the implications for theology in Gottschalk's use of gemina praedestinatio “two-fold”.
As theological language must adhere to the scripture's unique ad hoc grammar, which is not “reducible to self-evident first principles” , Evans muses, isolating and collating the rules for scripture's anomalies occupied Carolingian theologians, which turned their attention to the question of the overarching rules or principles of the very usage and propriety of language itself in the description of God – does language signify God literally, or by way of analogy. Their conclusion contemplated above usage and propriety to the view that scripture employs a progressively arcane series of “transferred modes of expression”, employing apparently literal language, but which the saints understand figuratively : encapsulated in the concept of a two-fold translatio “transferring” : either by way of a similitudine or a contrario.
After delineating Godescalc's and Prudentius' response to Eriungena's usage of 'translatio' to critique Godescalc's views, Evans examines how the progression from the mastery of grammar led invariably to concern for logical dialectics, and follows that with an reexamination of the above interlocutors debate through their use of syllogistic reasoning. He culminates by suggesting that Boethius' De Hebdomadibus as the source for Archbishop Remigius' Reply [see qualifications below] in Gottschalk's defense whereby he sets for the seven self-evident [ on the basis of the internal logic of the scriptures and the Fathers ] axioms concluding with “ None of the elect can perish and none of the condemned can be saved.” Practicing a distanciation from the dogmas in question, Evans simply concludes, as above, that all of the Carolingian actors in the debate had ascended from grammar and dialectics into the arenas of “speculative theology”, while noting suggestively, but uncommittedly, Eriugena's assertion that although God had given grammar and dialectics [as all the liberal arts ] to man , the latter could be used for good of the Church or to do her evil.
This text provides formidable technical evidence of my premise of the utter invalidity of the Hincmar's and the synods he conducted against Gottschalk's chief charge, that is, the teaching of 'two predestinations' [ as invalid as the charge of 'Arianism' ] , thus permitting a sure means to establishing Gottschalk's orthodoxy. Yet, principally Evans treatise permits my paper to advance the concept that Gottschalk's translatio hermeneutic opposing the stark literalism of Hincmar's likely caused angst in the iconic elites for it implicitly forbid the unmitigatedly literal conclusion required for an exegetical justification for “transubstantiation” out of Christ's words in John 6:53 “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.” and His words at the last supper in Matthew 26:26 “Take, eat; this is my body.” If transubstantiation could not be justified, then the entire clerical system of salvation, particularly the authority of the Roman Church to administer the divinely sanctioned charisma of ordination required to perform the transforming miracle, would be utterly nullified. Thus, the hierarchical system, and the Eucharist itself, would become gratuitous to the people, as it appears nearly all heretics before and after Gottschalk essentially assume. The cornerstone of hierarchical Christianity is the transubstantiation of the Eucharist. As the class seems to be increasingly concluding the heretic is one who publicly promulgates an attack on this cornerstone, and so as Gottschalk promiscuously and enthusiastically preached an attack thereupon, he was branded a heretic, notwithstanding the otherwise patristic orthodoxy of his views, and his apparent to his dying breath desire for and honor of the Eucharist.
2.Evert, Boyd Harry, Gottschalk of Orbais and the Debate Over Predestination in the Ninth Century, M.A. Thesis: University of Dallas, 1994.
Boyd Evert, as George Tavard, by necessary inference, affirms that Gottschalk's predestination doctrine is a natural “extension” to his demotic view of a symbiotic theological ontology : as God's attributes include omnipotence and immutability, thus his predestination must incontrovertibly be determinative and unalterable; as He is eternal, thus his predestination and prescience are eternal. Predestination being eternal “si fecerit quippiam quod praedestinando non fecit mox se omnino mutabit” ; thus, if God's damnation of the reprobate is not by predestination, then God is mutable. If God's predestination and prescience are conditional and temporal, then God Himself would necessarily be subject to change and time. Hence, to posit a conditional reprobation established only after the fall is to assert an impotent, and mutable god, and thus is to worship an idol. Boyd's work is commendable for publishing Gottschalk's complete Latin Shorter Catechism, providing thereby indubitable evidence that Gottschalk's profession of “gemina est predestinatio” is taken verbatim out a confessional quote of the “Doctor of the Church” Archbishop Isidore of Seville, and thus is Gottschalk does not, as Hincmar appears to have insisted, confess “bina est predestinatio”. Thus, the primary doctrine by which Gottschalk was condemned, his confession of “gemina” predestination, has not only unimpeachable patristic precedence, and literally contradicts the accusations with respect to predestination rallied against him, but is the necessary corollary of the dogma of God's immutability, presuming God's attributes to be eternal and unchanging and thus to be in demotic symbiosis. To condemned Gottschalk as an heretic on the basis of the confession of 'gemina' predestination, one must deny patristic authority, and consider God's attributes, collectively, as not eternally, and so necessarily, indelible to God's nature and so to that which characterizes His every action, and hence to posit a mutable and temporal God, that is, an idol.
For Evert, Gottschalk maintains theocentricty as the point of departure for his theology and thus soteriology, which methodological starting point confounded his contemporaries. Thus, for Gottschalk God's nature renders certain doctrines as necessary : e.g. God necessarily knew whom He would save before Christ's crucifixion, if otherwise, “He would not be God”. But to Hrabanus and Hincmar the monk preached a theological fatalism that would invariably produce apathetic congregations by notwithstanding Gottschalk's actual orthodoxy, is a heretic exclusively on account of his threat to by compromising the prominence within Carolingian piety upon the salvific potency and necessity of good works and the sacramental ( e.g. priestly and ecclesiastical) mediation of grace to perform them.
Evert further observes that the predestination debate was “severe and bitter” since both sides regarded themselves as the defenders of orthodoxy, which, in ninth century Western Christendom , meant faithfulness to Augustine. For Gottschalk, and his party, they were forging a return to Orthodoxy, and Florus asked their opponents if their persecution of Gottschalk was not a subtle way of branding Augustine a heretic. In the end however, only Gottschalk, and not his ardent defenders were persecuted, because while they penned treatises with the expectation and purpose of effecting the elite minority of literates pursuing the refining of their metaphysical views, Gottschalk preached his double predestination, after happening upon Augustine's works on the subject in the court library of Count Eberhard of Fruili, “to anyone who would listen” thus infuriating a priest of the court who informed Hrabanus, who in turn would entreat Hincmar to confine the gyrovagus haereticus monachus for he was too pestiferous to be allowed to communicate to anyone - having already led many “astray”. However, Hrabanus was also bitter against Gottschalk for contesting his vows in Hrabanus' monastery to the papacy, and Hincmar regarded the monk as a potential threat as a former patron of his nemesis Ebbo : Gottschalk was unhesitant “to speak truth to power” and thus his 'contempt' for ecclesiastical authority rendered him dangerous. Evert concludes, however, that Gottschalk's decisive faux paux , recognized by both his doctrinal supporters and detractors, was his carelessness in discussing with the masses of pious , yet 'simple', parishioners the multiplicity of complex doctrines he had gleaned from Augustine, who would become disconcerted and enervated thereby, and so would stumble from their steadfastness in the way of salvation : i.e. would become disaffected with the sacramental system and develop an abstract, metaphysical view of the path of salvation, thus abandoning the hierarchically administered salvation of the church. Evert's closing admonishment is that Gottschalk, though exceptionally well educated, having been rigorously prepared from childhood through the monastic pedagogical system, was dangerous precisely because he had not avoided flirting with “hostile repercussions” in the laity by failing to learn one critical characteristic - “discernment”.
For my purposes Evert profoundly confirms the evidential veracity of my thesis with thorough ruminations through the available literature from which I may glean profitably for setting up my order of proofs that Gottschalk was not persecuted as a heretic for his doctrine, per se, but, as appears is the case with nearly all persecuted as heretics, for the perceived personal, political and institutional, specifically demotic, threat he poses against Carolingian society's prime divider status quo.
3.Granz, David, (1990) 'The Debate on Predestination.' ; 4. Marenbon, John, ' John Scottus and Carolingian Theology: From the De Praedestinatione, Its Background and Its Critics, to the Periphyseon.' ; Gibson,Margret T. and Nelson,Janet L.(editors), Charles the Bald - Court and Kingdom, 2nd Revised Edition, Variorum, Aldershot, Hampshire, pp.283-302 & 303-325.
David Granz's The Debate on Predestination takes it point of reference and the legitimacy of its inquiry according to employment of its topic as an insight into the reign of Charles the Bald, being a part of an anthology of articles related to the same theme and purpose. Consequently, the questions it attempts to answer include why predestination became an issue of contention eight years after the initial accusations of Hrabanus Maurus, what insight does the controversy provide into the 'Carolingian Renaissance', what [political forces] induced the participants of the controversy to exercise or modify a particular stance, and how should all the latter answers influence the interpretation of Charles' reign. Granz asserts that Charles the Bald had a doctrinal sensitive and inquisitive intellect and the questions of predestinations were encouraged to be debated and taught in his court, by his officially sanctioned teachers, in his immediate presence. As such, the controversy also revolved around the issue of the proper relationship between tutelage and dialectics, provoked by Gottschalk's employment of the syllogistic reasoning, gleaned from his “inspiration” from Jerome's commentary on Galatians and controverted by Eriugena's response, as a member of the court, through the use of the alleged sophistry, “ the quadrivium of vanity”, of the dialectic method employed in Augustine's early dialog.
Granz will exposit that as the societal implosion through anarchy threatened the constitution and viability of Charles' kingdom, pessimism with and rebellion against Louis the Pious' reign gathered momentum among the intelligentsia culminating in the deposition and penance of the monarch under the administration of Archbishop Ebbo of Rheims, who was the Gottschalk's patron, but Hincmar's enemy. Following Louis' reconstitution, Hincmar without remittance attacked the now former archbishop and all his supporters, including, thus Gottschalk, whom Hincmar, alone, accused of seeking the archbishop's office. As Charles' attempted to establish his own authority, in the midst of the hemorrhaging of his kingdom, he sought the support of orthodoxy, and noted that eight of his own bishops including notable canonists, supported the legitimacy of Ebbo's actions and the necessity of his restitution. Moreover, Prudentius of Troyes forbid the royal notary Aeneas from assuming the Parisian bishopric until he made full subscription to a strict Augustinian explication of predestination and redemption. As such, it became evident that the clerics were divided into various factions whose predestinarian views were composites of their world ordering ideologies. Thus securing the loyalty of, by establishing a consensus among, the fractious clerics became a royal prerogative, thus adding ominous monarchical intrigue to a debate which had raged since at least Bede's time, and in which its present participants were convinced lay the fate of the European civilization and the role of Heilsaristokraties ('aristocracy of salvation').
Hrabanus, Granz insists, regarded Gottschalk as an integral realization of God's scourge and to prove it he outrageously interpreted Gottschalk's Augustinian hyper-orthodoxy, and rebellion against his parentally imposed monasticism, into a frontal attack against the viability of the sacramental system of salvation and the absolute authority of her princes, and thus of the supreme soteriological role of the institutional church, which heretic, Hrabanus implied, had the support of the Saxons. To combat this impending threat both from within and without, Charles took the road to 'pax et unitas' through the apparently more inclusive anti-Augustinian positions of hypothetical and potential universalism and condemned Gottschalk's alleged striving to make the sacraments void officially thorough a Synod at Quierzy.
In conclusion, Granz decides that out of the Frank's societal crisis the resolution of predestination was born out of a concern for order and the power to instituted it, with the ecclesiastical intelligentsia using their elite tools of grammar, partristic exposition, and mastery of argumentation in a vain effort to elucidate the reason for and the means of escaping their present impotency outside the structures of the Church. This concept may be applied to our class' concern with respect to the basis of heretical persecution thereby in regarding Frankish society as one having had an unmitigated awareness of its sins and culpability before God, and seeing all evidences that it was not to be forgiven, the question of human freedom and social ordering of the Church's elect, and all the fundamental elements of Carolingian ideology and values, were opened , precariously and temporarily, to the demotic vision inherent in hyper-Augustinianism and the hierarchy recognized this and were determined to ameliorate this paradigmatic threat. By 866, however, with the concerns to vindicate and maintain the system of repentance and Church endowments, as exemplified in the resolutions of the Synod of Tusey, nearly ubiquitous, the debate became an “embarrassment” and the only potentially significant supporter of absolving Gottschalk , Pope Nicholas I who requested a meeting through papal mediators with Hincmar to discuss the matter, died. Once ecclesiastical authority had been tangibly reestablished by temporal agents amongst the Franks, Gottschalk's supporters no longer sought such power in an absolute Divinity, and for the new episcopate the “personal bonds between Gottschalk and his Creator” had no persuasive relevance : syllogisms were no longer the means of establishing man's place in an arbitrary cosmos of an angry God. With social order reimposed, the power of the sacraments and with it the priestly system of intercession was reestablished as indispensable to that maintaining of social and spiritual order - God created in the Eucharist through the mass replaced the invisible omnipotent deity and the hierarchical , prime divider society securely reimposed.
Granz provides profoundly inalienable evidence of my thesis : Gottschalk's premises were not as such heterodox, as much as his syllogistic manner of justifying them and the demotic religiosity he implied by them through the “aphoristic fire of this theological and grammatical writings”, were a threat to the prime divider ideology of Carolingian society and ecclesiology and within the heightened anarchical pressures of debilitating invasions, that basis of his doctrine and practice had to be construed as an indelible part of a fearsome threat to the social and spiritual order, irrespective of being true to Gottschalk's actual convictions or to the precedence for the orthodoxy of strict Augustinianism, and without pity, or regard to Gottschalk, exterminated as heretical.
Although John Marenbon professedly narrowly explicates an iconoclastic resolution for the motivation for, the sources of the premises and methodology behind, and the analytic reaction to the two most controverted works of the “the most brilliant” intellectual of Charles the Bald's court and reign John Scottus, De Predestinatione [ in response to Gottschalk on behalf of Hincmar] and Periphyseon [his opus magnus and masterpiece], yet a consideration of his article provides startling insights consistent with my afore stated axioms into rationale behind construing Gottschalk as a viciously persecuted 'heretic', notwithstanding his fundamental doctrinal orthodoxy. Moreover, Marenbon recognizes that Gottschalk advocated views on predestination which provoked the most “extensive and complex theological controversy of the ninth century, and the only one to involve John Scottus” and thus Gottschalk commands one of the primary structural roles in the comprehension of John Scottus' works in ecclesiastical history, and so in Marenbon's exposition thereof.
At the outside Marenbon confesses my chief shibboleth : Hincmar, Hrabanus and now Scottus attack a “rather inadequate” exposition of, that is, a scarecrow of, Gottschalk's genuine convictions, though the writer claims it is beyond the scope of his limited purpose to enlarge upon what the monk “actually thought”. Thus Marenbon's article provides me with examples of these heretic hunters charges to compare with Gottschalk's actual positions , as may be discerned from the available collection of his works, to prove that it was not the true Gottschalk that was on trial for and condemned of heresy, but, as so often with heretics generally, a prime divider perception of and public reconstitution of the man as a grievous promoter of a revolutionary and dangerously demotic vision that will inspire the populus to rebellion against ecclesiastical authority and , to their doom, an apathetic attitude to the means of grace in the sacraments.
Moreover, Marenbon exposes that it was the profoundly evident inadequacy of Hrabanus and Hincmar's “rather confused way of tackling” their formulation of Gottschalk's doctrines of both God's predestination and prescience effectively, particularly and potentially tragically for them in the eyes of Charles the Bald, in the frame work of giving due credence to Augustine's anti-Pelagian axioms, that prompts Hincmar to seek out the assistance of Scottus, a favorite and influential member of Charles' court. Scottus responds to the challenge with De Predestinatione , though perhaps more rationally consistent in his elaborately thorough defense of his premises, avoiding evading gratuitous paradoxes by asserting divine inscrutibility as Hrabanus, or pursuing, and acknowledging the debatable quality of, tentative solutions, as Hincmar, yet even in elaborating God's punishment of the reprobate, Scottus brazenly contradicts Hincmar and stumbles into peculiarly novel doctrines which are of a convoluted and imprecise complexity. Yet the two surviving critiques of De Predestinatione by Prudentius of Troyes and Florus of Lyons, the former of which succeeded in anticipating or influencing Scottus' later thinking, which contradicted his present positions, God's punishments and the will of man, very confidently expounded on Scottus argumentation's inner contradictions and spurious concepts and analysis, successfully rendering his arguments as sophistry that brazenly opposed patristic authority, with Predentius providing “a voluminous dossier” of supporting patristic quotations which contradicted Scottus' views and Florus exposing the conceptual impossibility, for example, of Scottus' concept that God cannot punish the nature he created, but only the evil wills of men which he did not create and that though punishments are not substances they are in or from substances. So thoroughly had Gottschalk's defenders tackled Scottus' feeble defense of Hincmar, that the latter distanced himself from the work to the point of denying to have initiated it by request, claiming that all correspondence in his name to the contrary to be forgeries. Though unwilling to respond to the devastating critiques directly, in his final crowning work Periphyseon, Scottus' apparently incorporates or thinks extraordinarily similar to, the criticisms of both his former interlocutors, by denying his former positions ( though falling into even more novel and sophistic concepts - claiming that although that which is punished must be in a substance and so in that which is created by God, it itself is not created by God and that it is not the faculty of the will, which is created by God, but the perverse motions of the will which is punished ).
Though contemporary critical consensus consistently regards John as having in some respects anticipated German Idealism, was an apt student of Neoplatonism, and of the Greek church , supporting its “deification as the end of salvation” view (the Greek Fathers who broached the concept , such as Gregory of Nyssa, inferred therefrom universalism thus an utter denial of even the concept of reprobation) and otherwise so immersed in the Byzantine tradition as to be considered as one “who though Greek thoughts in the Latin language”, and Marenbon concludes with the judgment that he was a diligent systematizer of doctrine as opposed to a traditional synthesiser of doctrine, who systematic resolves tensions through skillfully blending doctrines to particular preconceived coherent system, and so was willing to endure the repetitions, doubts, hesitations, and contradictions that a systematizing course must entail: but in no wise is he considered by anyone to have been a faithful student of the scriptures, of the faith of the Western tradition, or even of Augustine. That is, Hincmar's apologist is neither orthodox, in any traditional Western sense, nor careful to avoid novelty nor, it appears, specifically concerned with the defending the sacramental system nor even in the radical, even revolutionary necessary inferences of his concepts. Yet, he is allowed to prosper in Charles' court unchallenged as a heretic, even if there is a more serious aversion to his views than those of Gottschalk who reportedly never ceased to request the Eucharist and sought to maintain and prove his utter fidelity to the scriptures and tradition. Hence, this glaring discrepancy of judgment at least tangentially infers my thesis : Gottschalk's heresy was not his infidelity to orthodox doctrine, but the implication of the manner of his life, and spirituality and the manner and willingness to publicly preach his doctrine which, or so it appeared to the prime divider authorities, threatened to provoke rebellion against the hierarchical status quo,whereas Scottus' being tolerated as orthodox had naught to do with his faithfulness to orthodox doctrine or practice, but with his tactful expression of doctrine and mode of life which in no manner threatened or implied the justification for a demotic revolution away from the popular rigidly hierarchical ecclesiastical spirituality of his day.
5.Gustavsson,Louise Reinecke, Gottschalk Reconsidered : A Study of His Thought as It Bears on His Notion of Predestination, Ph.D. Dissertation: Yale University, 1964.
My fervent conviction of indebtedness to Mrs.Gustavsson for personally interceding for me with Yale University [after their initial dismissive assertion of being bereft of any copy to lend] to locate and make available by interlibrary loan for an albeit highly restricted consideration of her original [thus conventionally typed] over 200 paged doctoral dissertation. Therein she makes a specific point of having so thoroughly pored over Lambot's printed collation of the unprecedentedly large Berne collection of the hitherto 1930 untrodden writings of Gottschalk, in relation to the four locus raised by his confessional statements, that her initial focus was redirected from “predestination primarily understood as a solution to the tension between God's mercy and justice to predestination understood as a notion expressing a vital and positive God-consciousness” [ which experiential insight is the cornerstone of demotic spirituality and the invigorating and humiliating pulse of its egalitarian enthusiasm] for she came to appreciate that “[h] is views of the atonement, the sacraments, and the church, both where explicit and where only implied, were seen to guard divine rather than ecclesiastical prerogative”. As this latter sentiment is essentially my thesis, and as Gustavsson's articulate and philosophically orientated painstakingly critical analysis of and perceptions into not only the entire corpus of Gottschalk's extant works, but of all the relevant commentaries thereupon in French, German, Latin and English for a millenium, all gravitate to explicating and substantiating it, the dissertation is a cornucopia of insights and proofs into establishing the prime divider angst which Gottschalk inspired as the basis for his persecution as a heretic.
Gustavsson's critique operates upon the same perception as Tavard of Gottschalk's symbiosis of divine characteristics : for Gottschalk, to speak of the vision of “the majesty, mighty and merciful of the Creator over against His creature” is to speak of his gemina predestination for all creatures such that any assertion against this gemina predestination “constituted a denial of the truth”, and, brazen idolatry. For Gustavsson, Gottschalk's motivation in so vigorously pursuing the predestination debate was his [millennialist-demotic] hope, against hope, that truth would triumph over error and so the worship of the true God in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeks those who so worship him, would overcome all idolatry. His penchant to preach in the highs and byways was his motivation to establish the truth of God through every heart and throughout the land, casting down all idols and every thought that does not submit to the knowledge of the truth in as many as the Lord our God should call, notwithstanding Hincmar's facundity insisting on Gottschalk's morbidly “tragic world view” or fascination with reprobation, coupled with an self aggrandizing desire for self vindication and indulgence as the “main spring” for his views. From the time of his imprisonment to this day, commentators on the controversy comprise two camps : those who esteem the institutional church as either the means or the result of grace : the latter with hagiographic fervor excuse all of the monk's foibles as the holy forerunner of the Protestant Reformation, while the former acidly accuse him of proud presumption and as a threat to the Church and laity by denying “human prerogative” in the way of salvation and the worship and service of God and of supplanting Catholic sacramentalism with Islamic fatalism, etc.
For Gustavsson, neither side is “beneficial” to the sciences of theology or history. Rather, Gottschalk's views should be appreciated as “an insight” : an I -thou direct encounter with the absolutely sovereign Divinity whose attributes are exemplified through all of His works. In this framework, the sacraments are to be “highly esteemed” not as means of grace whereby the Church or the parishioner can in their utilization perceive God as their debtor, for they “guarantee no benefits” and are not instruments for the Church to act as agents of His soteriological power. Rather, he views them as means whereby God marks his elect with revelatory signs of His care. Yet, this concluding perception of Gustavsson precisely vindicates the thesis that Gottschalk's teaching is characterized by a demotic imperative which vitiates the church of its soteriological prerogative and mediating powers of salvation such that the iconic establishment perceived in his indiscriminate preaching, the same propensity to stir the masses to revolutionary aniconic convictions of the personal realization of encounter with divinity, as the Peace of God would furnish two centuries later, as all the other the wandering itinerant heretical preachers and cultic groups were with varying degrees of temporary success, in the midst of an increasingly desperate for immediate deliverance populus.
6.Lambot, D.C. ed.Oeuvres théologiques et grammaticales de Godescalc d’Orbais. Textes en majeure partie inedits. Louvain:Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense,1945.
“Gottschalk's only known writings prior to 1930 were excerpts from his works circulated by his opponents, two confessional statements, and a few poems....Even where judicious examination rather than ardent debate was the intent, treatment has been admittedly incomplete for want of further evidence...Morin's discovery in 1930 in the Berne library of additional writings of Gottschalk and their publication by Lambot in 1945 both allow and require a reconsideration of Gottschalk's position.” [Gustavsson pg.2] That is, prior to 1930 our vision of Gottschalk was nearly exclusively through the spectacles of hostile hierarchical owls Without access to this collection of Gottschalk's works it would be have been rash presumption to have embarked on a journey to vindicate the monk's fulsome Augustinian orthodoxy in pursuit of proving his being charged with heresy could not justly be derived on account of it per se: as God permits, it will be judiciously quoted from to support any assertions of orthodoxy with the expectation that the professor is Latin literate.
7.Prichard, James C., The Life and Times of Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, Alexander Masson, Littlemore, 1849.
Although as an exhaustive, yet sympathetic, account of the recorded history of the Archbishop Hincmar
of Rheims' entire life with detailed explication of the disintegration of the centralization of Carolingian monarchical authority [ specifically focused upon Louis the Pious', his heir Lothar's, and his favorite son's Charles the Bald's reigns ] and coupled with the frightful desolation wrought against the kingdom from irrepressibly destructive foreign invaders, the book shall be of invaluable use providing confirmatory evidences and examples for the historical inferences and presentations of more succinct – and so for my purposes more directly useful - works, the ninety-four page, uniquely detailed third chapter Controversies on Predestination and the Three-fold Deity maintains my interest through its explicit, though aversive, high church Anglican historical and theological analysis and critique of Gottschalk's place in French ecclesiastical history on account of his contentious upholding of the doctrine of sovereign reprobation. Since this work provides remarkable evidence for the axiom that metaphysical implications of Gottschalk's abstract doctrines were not the chief motivation for his condemnation, by its outlining of the self evident basis - upon the episcopal precedence for his views and his orthodox contemporary support - for at least the toleration of Gottschalk's double predestination as consistent with if not directly supportive of orthodoxy, it allows me to build the case for the political, namely the hierarchical, opposition to the potential demotic ideology inherent in Gottschalk's view.
This chapter initially addresses the outworking upon French territories of the rise and spread of the semi-Pelagian heresy, during Augustine's on-going attempts to rout the Pelagians, and the French episcopal reaction thereto which act as an explanatory, and foundational, prototype of the predestination controversies four centuries later. The writer's generally hagiographical bias for Hincmar therein ,bordering on sycophantic, in regards to his understanding and treatment of Gottschalk may be partially excused on the basis of the crippling lack of access to the unprecedented trove added to Gottschalk's otherwise scant extant works uncovered in Berne some eighty years subsequently. Notwithstanding this handicap and bias, Prichard exposes [apparently unwittingly] the precise historical precedence for Hincmar's libelous interpretation of Gottschalk's doctrine and heavy handed mistreatment of his person in the semi-Pelagian monk Cassian, and Vincent of Lerins' condemnation of the “unwarrantable conclusions” against Augustine's reaction to the Pelagians and in particular Prosper's support of the latter, in the caustic anathemas and sentence of Bishop Faustus of Reis and the Council of Arles against the (allegedly) hyper-Augustinian Lucidus in the late fifth century, against which Pope Gelasius shortly issued a censure which Pope Hormisdas subsequently confirmed, and in the ungrounded accusations of heterodoxy against the “perfectly orthodox” Augustinians Bishop Caesarius of Arles and double-predestinarian Bishop Fulgentius of Ruspe.
Throughout the chapter's remaining exposition Prichard sets forth the entire pantheon of the theologians who subsequently entered into the “predestinarian” controversy and with objective perspicuity outlines the content and outworking of each respective position, and how their collective conclusion provides an empty victory for Hincmar, as the political winds fanning the flames of controversy die down leaving only the embers of embarrassing silence of the synodal decisions in regards to the nuanced specificity of the “double predestination” or predestination of the reprobate as maintained by Gottschalk ( which he vigorously explained was an aspect of one predestination with a double component) : the 860 Carolingian “Council of Tusey”, as Hincmar, only affirms sovereign predestination to life, upholding the Council of Orange's condemnation of an ambiguous “double predestination” only by default. The chapter concludes with the same enthusiastic, and thorough exposition of the theological and policital machinations behind the subsequent Trinitarian controversy.
In conclusion, the chapter paints Gottschalk as an ungrateful, recalcitrant heretic who, though treated with effusively condescending charity, as much as possible within the rigid guidelines of the holy, and righteous administration of justice, by Hincmar, and having been granted every graciously applied means and justification for repentance practically possible, notwithstanding, boldly despised the goodness and mercies of God thus vouchsafed and up to “the very point of death” , in full use of his faculties, denying these sweet entreaties for his welcomed return, refused to recant of his filthy heterodoxy and so remaining outside the saving embrace of the church, died ignominiously and, by necessary inference, will be justly cast into the Lake of Fire on the last day : e.g. the Archbishop Hincmar, and by extension the entire ecclesiastical hierarchy, acted as the just vehicle of the righteous judgment of God against the demotic emissary of Satan who threatened to obliterate the soteriological integrity and necessity of the only effective means of grace [namely the hierarchical church] by attributing salvation wholly to the immediate work of an arbitrary and absolutely sovereign God.
8.Remigius, Archbishop of Lyons (852), 'A Reply to the Three Letters ( Selections)' with an introduction by the editors ; McCracken, George E.with Cabaniss, Allen (editors), Early Medieval Theology, The Library of Christian Classics, Volume IX,The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, (year not ascribed) pp.148-175.
Two by Hincmar of Rheims and one by [H]'Rabanus' Maurus, three letters constituted a justification of the “severe and merciless” treatment of Gottschalk of Orbais by his hierarchical adversaries, the “ A Reply to the Three Letters” being a response thereto. The introduction, and the collective annotations of the work itself, argues both that though the traditional attribution of the exclusive authorship of Archbishop Remigius of Lyons to the apparently widely edited, by pro-Gottschalk partisans, Reply being historically indefensible in no manner diminishes the works' historical value and that the Church of Lyons and its partisans were given to a predilection for paraphrase (and hence imprecision in debate) . Moreover, the introduction includes a justification by the editors for their severe condensation of the material through the elimination of entire chapters and “wearisome Patristic commentary”, perhaps the latter being understandable since the editors label the doctrinal concerns of predestination a “plague” upon Christian history and the present work simply another literary contribution thereto. They even argue that the most influential historical exposition of this plague by Augustine was primarily experientially, solipsistically founded upon his belief in the 'un'consentual nature of his conversion, the same being the case with the Apostle Paul {!!}. As with Prichard, the editors' recognition of the impressively erudite, honorable and orthodox defenders of Gottschalk, namely Predentius of Troyes, Ratramnus of Lyons, Deacon Florus, Amulo and Remigius of Lyons, and “and even...in part” Lupus of Ferrieres, and the heterodox characteristic of his most spirited and elaborate opposition in John Eriugena, gives further foundation to my axiom that any metaphysical concerns of the monk having strayed from abstract theological orthodoxy were not at the heart of the condemnation of Gottschalk, for without controversy his doctrines were amendable to an orthodox understanding, but rather were centered upon the unfavorable comparison of his demotic ideology with those of hierarchical church assailing personalities of the past, and the pressures of the advance of pagan infidels against the Carolingian realms,and so the related societal implosion leaving the authority and wealth of the church in increasingly untenable positions, to quell even the most slight potential precursor to hierarchical contempt. The editors conclude by admitting that , at the end of the controversy, the Hincmar supporting attack by Eriugena inspired, however reluctantly, universal recognition that it “was worse” than any of the dogmas of Gottschalk. They also note that the Reply is in the three parts, responding to Hincmar, Pardulus, and Rabanus, respectively.
The Reply itself commences with an indication of its determination to be a repository of the faith as exposited by the Fathers for the “authority of the fathers must be followed” through its reply to the doctrinal, practical and ethical charges rallied against Gottschalk, which were directed either to the church of Lyons in particular , or to another bishopric ( in the case of Rabanus). Although the Patristic witness therein has been, as explained, excised, there is yet enough remaining so as to judge the faithfulness thereto nor the effectiveness thereof in vindicating Gottschalk, though for the main we are relegated to what remains apart therefrom which is , even so , a tour de force of scriptural , logical and ecclesiastical precedence for affirming the orthodoxy and holiness of Gottschalk and abhorring the heterodoxy, inhumanity, contempt for tradition and the irrationality of his three opponents. Consequently, this text, above all, vindicates, with immensely detailed analysis of the specific charges, the sophistic illegitimacy of the accusations of heterodoxy and rebellion against Gottschalk, and so providing the irreproachable evidence thereto which shall permit, as God permits, my paper to establish this point incontrovertibly and use it as the foundation for insisting that hierarchical political opposition alone was the raison detre of opposition to Gottschalk, and , in the main, as it was to many of the most celebrated inter-ecclesiastical purges of “heretics” up to that time (as my paper will briefly compare Gottschalk's treatment to that of the 'heretic' Jovinian in the late fourth century who with egalitarian doctrinal impulses claimed that married and celibate members of the church were equal in God's sight since asceticism did not merit a “better reward”) and beyond. Defense of metaphysical soundness and patristic faithfulness was merely the necessary aesthetically pleasing flourish which provided a righteous lamb's covering for the political ambitions and hierarchical anti-demotic impulses driving the ravenous opposition.
9.Tavard, George H.,TRINA DEITAS: The Controversy Between Hincmar and Gottschalk, Marquette University Press, Milwaukee, 1996.
George Tavard intends to provide the missing thorough discussion of the Trinitarian controversy between Hincmar and Gottschalk, which he claims, has been avoided by all other Carolingian scholars who prefer rather to focus upon the more well-known and thereby apparently more consequential, and substantial predestination controversy. Yet, Tavard insists,the Trinitarain debate, essentially whether the conjunction of the terms trina and deitas of a liturgical Latin hymn sung during the feasts of , not without prophetic irony, many martyrs and the Eucharistic hymn for the feast of Corpus Christi attributed to Thomas Aquinas, and so with his – if unconscious - exoneration of Gottschalk's position, is orthodox. From my perspective, the momentous conclusion is that the charge of Hincmar, that the long suffering monk was an heretical Arian, and thus assuredly worthy of being kept in a circumstance of practical solitary confinement until he went insane, was utterly unjustified, and simply another evidently politically motivated misconstrual of the teachings of the orthodox monk to brand him with the label of heretic, and that those with hierarchical authority could enforce such a libelous perception and judgment of 'anti-Catholic traditionalist' notwithstanding all evidence to the absolute contrary. In the event, for Tavard, since faith is not in question in the debate, but rather speculation, the discussion is outside the parameters of determining heresy.
Rather, Tavard identifies the 'trina deitas' controversy as the linguistic side of debate concerning the limits of human communication, from the artist side contested between the iconodules and iconoclasts [ since the first iconoclastic period, 730-787, having been concluded less than a century before, was still hotly debated in the Carolingian period under the aegis of the acts of the Synod of Francfort of 794 and the Quattuor Libri Carolini most likely by Alcuin in 792 in which both sides of the issue during the Seventh General Council of Nicaea in 787 are judged as extremist : the Carolingian position supported the concept that art could speak to the intellect and memory, so could act as a pedagogical tool, in which the iconoclasts would vehemently disagree, but denied that it may also speak to the innermost recesses of the soul where “the gift of faith inspires love and hope”, and so acquire a sacramental office , as the iconodules insisted. So to the question of what do human words describe and so stand for when applied directly to the mysteries of the Trinity the Carolingians would answer the reality of God Himself. According to Tavard, the Carolingians were, in effect, linguistic iconodules in their fervor if not devotion to grammatical science which for them was not a science of symbols but of reality: if a word is incorrect, the reality of God described thereby is illegitimate, and so is an idol. Thus, grammar was regarded as an auxiliary science to theology, for it was the means to comprehension and comprehensibility and thus to the meaning of reality and the direct encounter with that reality. The rarity and so preciousness of the written word urged submission in both speaking and writing to a strictly codified Latin standard.
For Tavard Gottschalk represented the icon painter in his citing Arator's Baptismal poetry as justifying precedent for his use of trinus to modify deitas, and Hincmar the iconoclast, for whom law was greater than charity in the administration of his diocese, in his insisting on the literal signification of the adjective and his contempt for Arator's “poetic license”: when Hincmar saw the term trinus, his legal mind had envisioned only the parameters of the ordinal “three” and thus insisted that it could not be applied to the noun God , for there is only one God. It may, however, be applied to persons, for there are three. So while for Hincmar such an expression of trina deitas is the demonic presumption of three separate gods, Gottschalk responded to trinus liturgically in spiritually seeing the reality of the one God through Christ expressed in the three persons: for Gottschalk una et trina deitas is reality. For Gottschalk all the attributes of God are in continual symbiotic unity. Thus, the creation expresses not only His eternal power, but all the attributes of His Godhead. In this way, Gottschalk as Augustine, regards all creatures, including the reprobate, as presupposing divine justice and so the granting of freedom of the will, which is, however, by free consent in bondage to sin : God creates the reprobate with “creaturely freedom”, thus they sin freely, and so are damned justly. Hincmar's caricature of Gottschalk's position of men being in bondage to sin by predestination denies the necessity of the attribute of justice conditioning each of God's acts including reprobation, which is committed for the love of the elect and His goodness towards them : even as all the sins of the reprobate work together for good to those who are given the grace to love God, as they are called according to His purpose of unmerited election, cp. Romans 8:28 ; this principle is most clearly demonstrated in the reprobate's sin of mocking, scourging and crucifying Christ which was for the salvation of the elect.
Hence, according to Tavard, it was Hincmar's lack of “insight” which misconstrued Gottschalk's perception of the Trinity wherein he perceived from the signification of homoousios in Nicea I and homoousia in Constantinople III that with the attributes of God sharing “the homoousia of the Persons”, so “they share their threeness”. Had he perceived Gottschalk's egalitarian principle of divine attributes, the entire predestination controversy, and those which it consequently and subsequently incurred could have been avoided. Thus, Tavard's conclusion justifies the axiom of Gottschalk's theological orthodoxy, and Hincmar's intransigent, and unjustified use of the slanderous epitaph of “heretic” : if Hincmar had , in charity , examined carefully Gottschalk's position, the latter would not become the aniconic martyr slain on account of the machinations of apathetic hierarchical partisans. My paper shall attempt to prove that the deliberate reason for Hincmar's callous indifference to the fully orthodox inferences, as Tavard indicates, of Gottschalk's actual beliefs, is bound with not with his ignorance of ( as Tavard) but with his fear of the demotic principles presumed therein, and thus he preferred the mischievous idol of Gottschalk's convictions, so that he could with a 'clear conscience' slay the dragon, and thereby keep the garden of God from the profanation of democracy.
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