Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World.(Book review)

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000572

Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World. Edited by Patrick Wormald and Janet L. Nelson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xiv + 266 pp. $110.00 cloth.

On the face of it, the Carolingian "lay intellectual" would seem an unpromising topic for investigation, an oxymoron wrapped in an anachronism. Nevertheless, the category proves immensely valuable, in part because we learn so much from the points of congruence and divergence. The laypeople we meet in these pages may not have been intellectuals in the manner of Bernard-Henri Levy, but they still thought actively and creatively about society and its problems and wrote for a public that understood what they were writing about. This was obviously true for Einhard (discussed by David Ganz), but equally so for Nithard (discussed by Stuart Airlie) and even Dhuoda (discussed by Janet Nelson), who expected her son to show her handbook to others. As Scott Ashley puts it in his fine contribution on AEthelweard, they were "public moralists" (243). Demonstration of their degree of engagement and their intelligence and learning is a welcome corrective to received opinion. Equally interesting is the fact that "lay" is shown to be such a wholly anachronistic category for the ninth and tenth centuries. The articles make it clear that specialists on the Gregorian Reform have it right: the divide between "lay" and "clerical" was an eleventh-century program. The ninth and tenth centuries saw it much differently. Here, too, Ashley has a nice formulation: '"Lay' and 'ecclesiastical' were less antagonistic and impermeable orders than complementary and overlapping identities" (238-239). Einhard is again an obvious example, and again far from unique: Nithard's epitaph at Saint-Riquier lauded him as being both brave in battle and knowledgeable in sacred wisdom (54). Several conditions made the overlaps possible. The most important was the centrality of the court as the arena of childhood education and later political advancement, for it fostered constant interaction among members of the elite (whether "lay" or "clerical"). Interaction at court thereby helped create an educated "lay" audience that understood ecclesiastical discourse intelligently and with a sense of social urgency. As Nelson shows, even Dhuoda was formed by the court and may have written to reform it. In Michael Wood's interpretation, the great reforms of AEthelstan's reign reflected the king's own decisions and values, but they were implemented by those who had received their formation in Alfred's court. A second important factor was the close relationships between lay patrons and monasteries. Here Valerie Garver's reading of the Life of Liutberga of Windenhausen is very revealing, first in its evidence for women teaching women, but even more in its depictions of close, ongoing interactions between lay aristocrats and convents. The result of such interactions was what Nelson calls "a shared scientia" (117). One should come away from this volume with heightened respect for its sophistication. We are now used to evidence that the later medieval laity had quite a deep understanding of the Catholic faith, partly as a result of mendicant preaching and devotional innovations. It therefore comes as something of a surprise to read Celia Chazelle's magnificent exegesis of an ivory crucifixion scene originally made for Charles the Bald (now the cover of the ...