Be a Perfect Man. Andrew J. Romig

ideological tale of who a Christian man is and whence his authority derives.

      At the end of the book, Paulinus vividly describes the drama of final judgment. It is a courtroom scene in which God weighs all of the evidence of a man’s life in order to make his decision. The chief prosecutor is the “Demon Accuser” who “will throw in our face whatever we have done, and on what day we have sinned, and in what place, and what good work we ought to have done then in that time.”⁹⁷ If a man is guilty, the Demon Accuser will plead convincingly. Paulinus brings to life the demon’s voice and the speech that he will make before the divine judge:

      For then the devil will have to say, “Most Fair Judge, judge that man, who did not wish to be yours through grace, to be mine on account of his guilt. He is yours through nature; he is mine through misery. He is yours because of your Passion; he is mine because of my persuasion. He is disobedient to you; to me he is obedient. From you he received the stola of immortality; from me this tattered tunic in which he is clothed. He casted away your clothing; he arrived here in my clothing. What sexual perversion did he commit? What intemperance? What avarice? What anger? What pride? What of the rest of my parts? He sent you away; he sought refuge in me.… Judge that man to be mine and to be damned along with me!”⁹⁸

      The function of the scene is not to scare the reader with fire and brimstone. It is rhetorically so frightening precisely because of its procedural cool. The Accuser addresses God, the judge, in the respectful tone of the most well-trained legal scholar. His airtight arguments list sin after sin, error after neglectful error of obliviousness and disloyalty. All are unassailable. And most tragically, all could have been easily avoided. Structurally, the theater of this final moment makes perfect sense as a performed end to the guiding life narrative that the book lays forth. The narrative begins with human origins and concludes with the two possible outcomes of human existence: salvation and damnation. In salvation, the soul rejoices from at last reconciling with God and returning home. In damnation, the reader must hear the demon’s voice and feel the cold terror of him speaking not lies but hard and sad truths.

      Far from a simple manual of conduct, therefore, we can see just how fundamentally the text serves as an explanation of Eric’s humanity and what it specifically entails. It warns Eric to do everything within his power to avoid damnation but also provides him with the macroscopic view that will help him to do so—knowledge about who he is, where he is going, and how the secular world in which he lives compares to the heavenly world to which he truly belongs. This macroscopic view, the same view that Gregory the Great advocated for the Christian bishop, is where we must focus our interpretative energy when reading the text. Paulinus does not just describe traits and practices to which Eric should or should not adhere. He also narrates the philosophy of mind—the correct orientation of the will through caritas—that enfranchises Eric’s power, his purpose, and his ultimate authority to lead those under his care to their own eventual salvation.

      Alcuin and Wido

      Alcuin refrained from writing for Eric of Friuli, advising him to turn instead to Paulinus. Yet in 799 or 800, the abbot of Marmoutier did write a lay mirror of his own for the march-lord closer-by, Count Wido of Brittany—the same post held by the tragic hero Roland, who may have been Wido’s close relative.⁹⁹ Alcuin’s book, De virtutibus et vitiis, would become his most well-known work after his death, achieving significantly more popularity during the Middle Ages than anything else he wrote and certainly more than any of the other lay mirrors. The book would be translated into no fewer than four vernacular languages during the later Middle Ages and is extant today in more than 140 surviving manuscripts.¹⁰⁰

      The composition, brevity, and relative stylistic simplicity of De virtutibus et vitiis lend Alcuin’s book its own distinctive flavor when compared to Liber exhortationis. Unlike Paulinus’s text, Alcuin’s work contains an introductory address, clarifying both author and recipient. Even with this opening nuncupatoria, however, Alcuin’s book is shorter than Liber exhortationis by more than two thirds. Alcuin’s Latinity is also less ornate than Paulinus’s, favoring shorter syntactical constructions and far fewer extended displays of exegetical freeplay.¹⁰¹ His principle sources are different, too. Although he certainly drew on the same kinds of patristic authorities that Paulinus did (including, importantly, Gregory the Great), Alcuin seems to have favored more direct use of scripture: the Old Testament books of Psalms and Prophets and the New Testament Gospels (Matthew and John) and letters of St. Paul. Clearly influencing Alcuin as well was the work of Augustine and, perhaps but not necessarily through Augustine, Cicero.¹⁰² Finally, Alcuin’s work has a different structure and flow than Liber exhortationis. Divided into thirty-six short capitula, his book still begins with caritas as the guiding theme and ends on salvation, but De virtutibus et vitiis presents less of a narrative arc from creation to end of days and is rather focused more intently, as the title indicates, upon the explication of various aspects of virtus (which, once again, we should understand both in its modern sense of “virtue” and its gendered etymological sense of “manly vigor”) and their corresponding negative vices.

      Still, the term that Alcuin used to describe the contents of his book is precisely the one that Paulinus used—exhortatio. And just as with the relationship between Paulinus and Eric, Alcuin wrote for Wido as his spiritual advisor, not as a hierarchical superior. If we can take Alcuin at his word (we have no reason not to do so), Wido is neither a reluctant recipient nor stricken with feelings of inferiority. Alcuin states only that he wrote his book in response to Wido’s direct request for brief advice regarding his occupation as a warrior.¹⁰³ These words have received many different interpretations in modern scholarship, leading some to wonder whether Wido would have been happy with what he received. The book does not truly discuss war much at all.¹⁰⁴ To make sense of the text’s logic, we must picture more generously that Wido, like Eric, wished to know how to make his religion apply more directly to his secular duties. Alcuin’s reply, like Paulinus’s, was to teach the nature of worldly power itself—how Wido could perform his worldly duties in a manner that would grant him greater access to God’s protection and authority.

      The most important parallels between the two texts, therefore, involve their ideological themes and arguments, which are effectively the same. Alcuin argues that both spiritual and lay power derive from exactly the same source, caritas. He argues that caritas involves cultivating an emotional connection with both equals and subordinates and acting upon that emotional connection with good deeds. He therefore claims that laymen and clergy have equal power and duty within the secular world because they are engaged in the same duties toward their fellow Christians and the same fight against evil. Finally, he teaches that the emotional bonds created by caritas are what connect the Christian layman to the heavenly realm, allowing him to rise above the corruption of the secular world and to see it more clearly. Just as with Liber exhortationis, Alcuin’s book espouses quite traditional Christian ideologies of ascetic masculinity, yet it would be a mistake to interpret this as urging Wido to retire from the world. While Alcuin describes the imagined ideological link between caritas and ascetic authority, he also shows Wido how to access that authority while still living and working as a secular lord and military commander.

      An Ideology of Power: “Neither Martyrdom nor Contempt of the Secular World… Could Accomplish Anything Without the Duty of Caritas”

      De virtutibus et vitiis begins with a discussion of true wisdom and the obscurity of worldly knowledge. Meditation on true wisdom—correct knowledge—so central to the moral philosophies of Augustine and Gregory the Great sets the tone for Alcuin’s book as a whole. Citing 1 Cor 3:19, Alcuin writes that what seems to be wisdom in the world is stultitia (“folly” or “stupidity”) in the eyes of God. To achieve perfect wisdom, one must achieve cognitio divinitatis. Translated woodenly, this means “recognition of divinity,” yet Alcuin’s use of the pregnant phrase suggests not only contemplation of God’s nature but also recognition of the divinity that exists within the manly self. “ Cognitio divinitatis,” Alcuin continues, “is the virtus of good work, and the virtus of good work is the reward of eternal blessing.”¹⁰⁵ All is intertwined and interconnected. As with Paulinus, nothing that Alcuin writes