The embedding of priests in villages and rural settlements, and the relative spatial isolation from other clerics this entailed, constituted a defining feature of the religious and cultural structures of tenth-century society in the Latin West. Local priests usually did not live in clerical communities; instead, they lived with or near their families, perhaps in the company of one or two clerics as colleagues, close to their church and surrounded by lay neighbours, and usually at some distance from other priests.Footnote ¹ Perhaps for that reason, priests in this period have often been seen as barely distinguished from their lay neighbours, in a line of interpretation that goes back to contemporaries such as Peter Damian (see Introduction, pp. 4–5). And indeed, as we have seen in Chapter 3, priests did not differ hugely from other local property owners in their family affairs.

However, this atomised isolation in a ‘Little Community’ should not be overstated.Footnote ² Priests’ kinship ties were strong, but they linked them to the wider world as much as they cemented them in their localities. And for all that in general, priests’ families look similar to those of their lay neighbours, that did not stop them from following the traditional rules around their relationships set out in canonical tradition, according to which marriage and children were acceptable provided they took place prior to ordination, relatively late in a cleric’s life. Moreover, the evidence for tithes discussed in Chapter 2 suggests that their revenues were very much shaped by wider norms that reached into the local context. In short, while priests were certainly embedded in their local communities, that does not mean they were trapped within them. This chapter develops this enquiry by considering the circumstances in which priests left these localities to meet with other priests, how those moments of collective activity were organised and framed, and what implications this activity has for our understanding of these priests and the social worlds they inhabited.

A tantalising clue for the kinds of interactions local priests might have had with each other is provided by a little booklet now kept in Bern, Switzerland. The text describes the association (societas) of a group of priests. Within this association, the priests elected a leader, organised prayerful dinners that were held at each other’s houses on a rota and arranged visits and prayers if one of them fell sick and liturgical commemoration if one of them died.Footnote ³ The text is written in a Latin of very poor quality, with some amusing consequences, such as a quotation from Pope Gregory the Great that was so garbled it read ‘Where the brethren glorify wine, there the Lord will give His blessing’.Footnote ⁴

Unfortunately, the location, nature and date of this remarkable text, the so-called Bern church regulation (règlement ecclésiastique de Berne), are all contested. Charles Mériaux suggested that the priests in question might have been rural, perhaps from the Loire valley, and that the association itself could date to the tenth century.Footnote ⁵ But though the manuscript was plausibly written in the tenth century (see Fig. 4.1), it might be a copy of an older text, and it stands isolated. There is no directly comparable evidence for such communities that can certainly be dated to this period anywhere in the Frankish territories, or even in northern Italy.Footnote ⁶ In that light, the Bern regulation can be read as recording an older kind of associational culture that had become less common over the ninth century, as bishops made their presence felt more forcefully in the countryside (as will be discussed further in Chapter 5).Footnote ⁷

Fig. 4.1

Bern, Burgerbibliothek, AA 90.11, f. 4r (Photo: Codices Electronici AG, www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/bbb/AA0090-11).

Yet that strengthening of episcopal authority did not mean that priests no longer formed local solidarities, merely that these solidarities were now shaped by episcopal influence. There is certainly no reason to think that bishops would have sought to obstruct local priests from meeting each other. Bishops, for instance, set parameters for priests visiting other priests’ parishes to sing Mass: they did not prohibit it, but simply requested that it should only happen by invitation.Footnote ⁸ Indeed, Frankish bishops in the ninth century had positively encouraged priests to meet one another on a monthly basis, and this encouragement continued into the tenth century, as shown by two late episcopal statutes.Footnote ⁹ Around 930, Archbishop Ruotger of Trier called on ‘archpriests’ to arrange monthly meetings of ‘their fellow priests’.Footnote ¹⁰ Bishop Atto of Vercelli, writing around the same time, made similar calls, adjusted to a northern Italian context, commenting that a good discussion was as spiritually valuable as reading.Footnote ¹¹

It is possible that these meetings of local priests were organised in the tenth century by figures known as deans (decani), who are first attested in the ninth century (sometimes called rural deans to distinguish them from the deans based in cathedral communities) and who appear sporadically in charters from the early tenth century.Footnote ¹² An anonymous early tenth-century episcopal capitulary, the Capitula Sangallensia, puts special emphasis on the obligation of these deans to monitor the other priests.Footnote ¹³ A trace of this activity survives, perhaps, in a manuscript from Liège, Brussels, KBR, ms. 10127–44. On folio 89v, there is a marginal annotation from around the year 900, which provides a formula for suspending a priest for unspecified misdeeds:

Charles Mériaux has convincingly argued that this manuscript may have been owned by a rural dean.Footnote ¹⁵

The question of how far this system was organised territorially remains controverted, with some historians arguing that these arrangements were predominantly personal rather than spatial until the later Middle Ages.Footnote ¹⁶ Nevertheless, it seems likely that these deans did work within defined territories, at least in some regions, within the period studied by this book.Footnote ¹⁷ For instance, in the list of 144 churches from Autun discussed in Chapter 1, the churches were grouped into ten deaneries, called ministeria, each associated with a named priest, and the same is true of the other roughly contemporary lists from Sens and Orléans.Footnote ¹⁸ To the north, a saint’s vita from Cambrai around the year 1000 mentions one particular rural dean, Tresuguin, by name, and heavily implies he had a particular area to monitor.Footnote ¹⁹ This has implications for priests and their collective activity, since such ruridecanal groupings in themselves suggest at least occasional, and perhaps regular, meetings between priests and the rural deans or archpriests.

As noted above, Carolingian legislation had talked about monthly kalends where priests would come together, and these kinds of sociabilities can be studied in the later Middle Ages, by which point the laity was also often involved.Footnote ²⁰ It is quite likely that these meetings took place in our period too; it is telling that Bishop Burchard of Worms took care to copy the Carolingian normative material about them into his Decretum.Footnote ²¹ Unfortunately, there is no sure evidence for them, so it is difficult to take this line of enquiry further. The same applies to the reconciliation of public penitents; though this took place in the cathedral, the local priests were supposed to be present as witnesses, but there is no specific evidence for individual priests acting in this way.Footnote ²² Similarly, while we can imagine priests would have met each other at the ordination ceremonies mentioned above (Chapter 1), which were carried out by the bishop in the cathedral, no specific evidence for local priests in these encounters survives, probably because they were not recorded in writing.Footnote ²³

However, there is one occasion at which local priests met one another which is well-documented, namely the diocesan synod. These were formal meetings held by the bishop on a regular basis, usually at the cathedral church itself, which lasted for three or four days. For the duration of the synods, there came together what Shane Bobrycki has called a ‘controlled crowd’: a temporary gathering of people, orchestrated by those in authority.Footnote ²⁴ It is these meetings that have left the biggest imprint on our documentation, and it is on these that this chapter will concentrate, with a focus on the role played within them by local priests.

4.1 The Diocesan Synod: Historiography and Evidence

In the historiography of the diocesan synod, the thirteenth century marks a major break. At the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, Pope Innocent III legally required bishops in the Latin West to hold annual diocesan synods for all the clergy of the diocese.Footnote ²⁵ From around the same time, there begin to survive in great numbers instructions for the diocesan clergy that bishops issued at these meetings, instructions known as episcopal or synodal statutes. In form and content, these statutes resemble the older Carolingian episcopal statutes, though they have often been treated differently by historians, in part distinguished through their intention to integrate localities into a network centred on the pope in Rome.Footnote ²⁶

The history of diocesan synods before 1215 is, in comparison, much less studied, within a historiography that is generally more concerned with provincial and royal synods, meetings attended by many bishops rather than just one: moreover, to the extent that historians have paid attention to diocesan synods, it has been for what they can tell us about bishops, and not what they tell us about priests.Footnote ²⁷ Diocesan synods have hardly featured in the important scholarship on early medieval assembly politics.Footnote ²⁸

A few points are, nevertheless, clear. It is generally agreed that neither the concept nor the practice of the ‘diocesan synod’ existed in the fourth and fifth centuries. However, from the sixth century, a tradition developed in Gaul (perhaps building on Visigothic practice) that required bishops to hold formal meetings for the clergy of their diocese, including the rural clergy. The lack of older legitimation for these diocesan synods could be compensated for by creatively reading the calls for regular provincial councils – that is, meetings of bishops – in the canons of the 325 Council of Nicaea and the late antique Canons of the Apostles as if they also applied to diocesan synods, since these synods, after all, also gathered together sacerdotes.Footnote ²⁹ These meetings seem to have been held at least semi-regularly by bishops in Carolingian Francia, in which period they were usually labelled as synodus, with the term concilia usually reserved for the assemblies of bishops, though the terminology was not entirely consistent.Footnote ³⁰

Few historians have studied what happened to these synods after the Carolingian empire’s fall, and opinions differ amongst those who have. Some of the last episcopal statutes to be issued, those of Archbishop Ruotger of Trier (ca. 930) and of Bishop Atto of Vercelli (after 924), both insist they should be held, and Ruotger went into some detail.Footnote ³¹ A council held in Mainz ca. 950 assumes that they were being held every year and that they involved all priests with pastoral responsibilities.Footnote ³² Some historians, most notably Joseph Avril, have taken their cue from this material and have assumed that diocesan synods continued to take place regularly, with rural priests in attendance. Indeed, Avril saw these synods as providing an important bridge from the Carolingian church into the thirteenth century.Footnote ³³ A quite different interpretation was offered by Odette Pontal, who wrote that ‘rare under the Merovingians, more common under the Carolingians, diocesan synods became scarce once more in the tenth and eleventh centuries’.Footnote ³⁴ This development she attributed to the chaos of incipient feudalism; as temporal interests dominated over spiritual ones, ‘the synodal system broke down’.Footnote ³⁵ For Pontal, this system showed signs of recovery (renaissance) only in the later eleventh century.

If historians have taken different positions on the regularity of the diocesan synod, they have also disagreed about the nature of these meetings. In his magisterial history of Catholic law, written between 1869 and 1877, Paul Hinschius devoted a few pages to the post-Carolingian diocesan synod. He acknowledged that there was not a lot of information (though he conscientiously listed a considerable number of synods in characteristically ample footnotes), but, like Avril would later, he assumed that diocesan synods continued to be held into the tenth century. Unlike Avril, however, Hinschius saw more than just continuity; he detected a shift in its nature compared with the Carolingian period, towards taking a more decision-making role: ‘Many times the synod appeared not as an advisory group alongside the presiding bishop, but rather gave a final decision to questions raised by him’.Footnote ³⁶ For Hinschius, this changing role of the synod was a sign of the influence of ‘Germanic legal attitudes’ (germanischer Rechtsanschauungen), which distinguished between judges and whoever presided over the court (in this case, the bishop). This interpretation was accepted by Isolde Schröder in 1980, who agreed that diocesan synods became more collegial in the post-Carolingian period.Footnote ³⁷

More recently, a very different interpretation has been proposed by Florian Mazel, focusing on West Francia. Like Pontal, Mazel argues that diocesan synods were at best irregularly held in the tenth century (and remained so until the thirteenth century) and, moreover, suggests that few rural priests would have attended. However, he also argues – in contrast to Hinschius – that these synods became not more but less deliberative bodies. Indeed, he thinks local priests seldom attended precisely because these diocesan synods had become more narrowly judicial courts. Only those directly affected by a complaint or dispute would bother to attend, and thus these synods contributed little if anything to the creation of a ‘diocesan community’ (communauté diocésaine).Footnote ³⁸

The lack of historiographical consensus about post-Carolingian diocesan synods is, therefore, far-reaching. Were diocesan synods sporadic, poorly attended by rural priests and dominated by displays of episcopal authority? Or were they frequent and lively affairs, in which the opinions and views of local priests were sought and listened to? Which of these scenarios is more accurate is relevant for how we think about the activity of local priests beyond their immediate environs and the extent of their atomisation. Was their embedding in local societies balanced by effective collective ties, or were they first and foremost individual actors, who met their priestly peers and superiors only intermittently, and chiefly on a one-to-one basis? These questions have significant implications for the theme of this book, since the extent of episcopal influence over priests, or the lack of it, has been at the heart of debates going back to Ulrich Stutz about how priests were entrapped within seigneurial relations (see Chapter 2, p. 50). If priests met their bishops only seldom, then this might have diminished their capacity to fend off pressure from influential lay or monastic elites.

In addressing this question, we must first reckon with the limitations of our sources. There are no written acts or minutes recording the events and decisions of any diocesan synod, unlike grander provincial affairs; this is probably not a question of preservation but of genre, for these were not legislative meetings, and their process was likely never set down in writing. Moreover, as already noted in Chapter 1, the episcopal statutes that had been so prominent in the ninth century, and which seem often to have been issued at diocesan synods, faded out in the course of the tenth century (though they continued to be copied in manuscripts). Insofar as synods continued to be held, bishops no longer used them to issue written instructions, at least not from the second half of the tenth century. Few historians writing in the tenth and eleventh centuries mention diocesan synods, bar only the occasional passing reference, such as to synods that took place in tenth-century Magdeburg, early eleventh-century Konstanz and Poitiers in the 1030s.Footnote ³⁹

Nevertheless, we have a considerable body of material for studying these occasions. Diocesan synods feature occasionally in hagiographical accounts, which, for instance, mention synods in early tenth-century Liège and Konstanz, in Noyon in the 960s, Rodez not long after 1000, Paderborn around 1018 and at Hildesheim around the same time.Footnote ⁴⁰ A rather larger body of material is presented by sermons that were written to be delivered on the occasion of the synod, which will be discussed further below. Another important archive is preserved in charters that record decisions made in diocesan synods. Even if we take a narrow view and only include charters that state they were made at such a synod (in synodo) – in other words, charters that demonstrably frame the meeting as a diocesan synod, which will certainly lead to an under-estimate of the number of such synods – there are still around sixty surviving texts between 900 and 1050 from the lands of the former Carolingian empire.Footnote ⁴¹ Over a dozen of these charters survive in a form that can be described as ‘original’; a provisional list of all of them is provided as an appendix, including one as yet unedited charter (app. 2, no. 44).

Plotting on a map where they were issued shows a remarkably wide coverage (see Fig. 4.2). True, there are some blank spaces. Some of these probably represent genuine absences: for instance, Normandy, where the organisation of the church was seriously damaged by viking raids and seems only to have begun to recover from the early eleventh century.Footnote ⁴² Other gaps may be more misleading, though. For instance, the relative absence of charters documenting synods at influential sees from north-eastern France, such as Reims, and from southern Germany, such as Augsburg, is hard to square with the fact that bishops from these sees did attend provincial councils; it would be surprising if they had not held their own synods in their respective localities.Footnote ⁴³ It is important to keep in mind, therefore, that while the charters discussed in this chapter do present us with evidence of episcopal activity in a large area of the former empire, the absence of such evidence could reflect an archival bias.

Fig. 4.2

Map of places where charters were drawn up in diocesan synods, 900‒1050.

Fig. 4.2 Long description

The cities are as follows. Mainz, Speyer, Regensburg, Freising, Passau, Konstanz, and Salzburg. Verdun, Toul, Troyes, Langres, Besançon, Autun, Macon, Lyon, and Vienne. Paris, Sens, Le Mans, Angers, Tours, Nevers, and Poitiers. Bergamo, Piacenza, Reggio, Padua, and Modena. Liege, Koln, Cahors and Narbonne.

Created by Erik Goosmann.

Finally, perhaps the most suggestive source, and the one that has been least explored by historians to date, are the liturgies for holding diocesan synods, texts that detail the prayers and the ‘stage directions’ for the meetings.Footnote ⁴⁴ While formal liturgies for provincial councils go back to Visigothic Iberia in the seventh century, liturgies for diocesan synods are more difficult to trace. Yet by the ninth century, such instructions were demonstrably being made, with instructions that tend to be short, to focus on the examination of the priests and to vary considerably amongst themselves.Footnote ⁴⁵ Some of these texts continued to be copied into the tenth century. There are also some late ninth-century instructions for holding local ‘synods’, where the bishop visited local churches, in what modern scholars have called the Sendgericht (which we shall discuss in Chapter 5).

However, from the late tenth century, a completely new kind of liturgy for the diocesan synod emerged. Anonymous liturgists began to adapt older rites intended for provincial synods or councils, in other words, meetings involving several bishops, and to repurpose them deliberately for the ceremonial meeting between a bishop and his clergy. There are around a dozen such scripts for diocesan synods, mostly composed in the late tenth and eleventh centuries, and copied into manuscripts from across western Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.Footnote ⁴⁶ Stepping back from the differences in detail, they all follow a similar format. The clerics assemble, there are readings, prayers and sermons, and after a few days, the synod comes to a close. We can make out two major families of these rites: a set of instructions for a three-day ceremony, which seems to have been initially compiled in northern Italy ca. 1000 (known as Ordo 5, together with its relatives), and a set of instructions for a four-day ceremony, which seems to be roughly contemporary and to come from the Rhineland (Ordo 14 and its relatives).Footnote ⁴⁷ Versions of these two ceremonies survive in dozens of manuscripts from the late tenth and eleventh centuries across the Latin West. Alongside these two major families are a few ‘standalone’ rites that are sometimes transmitted in a single manuscript, but that can provide insight into the practices and ideas in specific localities, for instance, those from Freising, Besançon and Limoges.

In the late tenth century, then, a new liturgical framework was devised for the diocesan synod, one that was both more developed and much more widely copied than its scattered earlier precedents. Of course, we cannot read these texts as if they were direct and faithful representations of what happened during a synod.Footnote ⁴⁸ They were idealised portrayals, guidelines rather than scripts to be followed to the letter; we should remember that one tenth-century contemporary complained that he had hardly ever seen a book opened in a church council.Footnote ⁴⁹ Nevertheless, they were copied with intent and purpose, and often in manuscripts made in circles close to the bishop. For instance, Ordo 5 was copied in thirty-seven manuscripts of Burchard of Worms’s Decretum, dating from the eleventh century to the thirteenth, eight pontificals, again dating from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, as well as one wide-ranging manuscript of canons. Ordo 13 was copied in four pontificals, while Ordo 14 can be found in nearly twenty more, with eleventh-century copies surviving from Bamberg, Eichstätt, Mainz and Regensburg in the east, Lucca, Montecassino and Pistoia in Italy, and Angers, Besançon, Châlons and Sées in France. In any case, these texts are perhaps most interesting when they are read not as practical stage directions, but as representations of how people thought about synods, and this is how they shall be treated in what follows.

4.2 Attending the Synod

As already mentioned, much authoritative church tradition around the role and powers of the priest had been laid down in Late Antiquity (see Chapter 1, pp. 23–5). However, the diocesan synod had not existed in this period and thus did not form part of that tradition. This meant that in later centuries, legitimising its existence required a little imagination.Footnote ⁵⁰ Nevertheless, by the tenth century, it was widely understood that the diocesan synod should take place twice a year, once in the spring and again in the autumn.Footnote ⁵¹ Surviving charters suggest that this was indeed when synods were most commonly held: 45 per cent of the dated synodal charters were issued in April and May, and 31 per cent in September and October, with the other months sharing out the remaining 24 per cent.Footnote ⁵² Of course, we may imagine that they did not always happen quite so regularly. In 966, the bishop of Verona, Rather (originally from Liège), openly admitted to having put off holding one, because he thought his clergy was incorrigible, so it was not worth him ‘synoding’ (synodare); in the end, he did convene one, but it went just as badly as the bishop had gloomily feared.Footnote ⁵³ That said, a later bishop of Verona brought a formal complaint in 995 when two priests refused to attend his synods, so these occasions were perhaps held quite regularly without entering the written record.Footnote ⁵⁴

We can suppose that the cathedral clergy around the bishop were usually present at these meetings, but what about rural priests, some of whom lived far from the diocesan centre? This is an important question for our purposes, and it is unfortunately difficult to give a definite answer. A charter from 999 in which a priest named Michael, taking on a baptismal church in Murano near Venice, promises henceforth to attend the bishop of Torcello’s synod has, unfortunately, few parallels north of the Alps (or south of them, either).Footnote ⁵⁵ Hagiographical evidence provides us with a priest named Landulf from the village of Senancourt, who stated he had attended a synod at Noyon, some fifty kilometres to the south, but how much weight can be put on such a claim in this genre?Footnote ⁵⁶

Nevertheless, there are good reasons to suppose that local priests may have attended diocesan synods in some numbers. To begin with, their participation in these synods had been explicitly required in Carolingian episcopal statutes, including in the few issued in the early tenth century, and would be repeated in later legislation, too.Footnote ⁵⁷ As we shall see, sermons written for the diocesan synod also routinely imagined an audience that included priests with responsibilities for pastoral care.Footnote ⁵⁸ Several synodal liturgies included the generic Admonitio Synodalis, a sermon that was certainly aimed at local priests, and there survive several other sermons with demonstrably similar audiences.Footnote ⁵⁹ In a set of synodal sermons produced around 1031, the monk Ademar of Chabannes, writing not far from Limoges in south-western France, explicitly stated that all priests from a diocese were supposed to be present, addressing ‘all you priests from our diocese’ and talking of the synod as the moment ‘when generally all priests from the diocese come to meet the bishop’.Footnote ⁶⁰ Moreover, it was widely expected that (some) priests would come to the diocesan see annually to collect the chrism. This was the special oil that was essential for rites including baptism, and that could be consecrated only by bishops. It was distributed on Maundy Thursday (the Thursday before Easter Sunday), as noted by Bishop Burchard of Worms (amongst others), building on Carolingian precedents that go back to Boniface (ca. 675-754).Footnote ⁶¹ This occasion may usually have been tied in with a diocesan synod and thus increased the numbers attending, perhaps by design.Footnote ⁶² The compilers of liturgical ordines for the synods also acknowledged that these meetings were not restricted to cathedral clergy, or even priests in the city. One ordo talks of two kinds of priests present at a synod, ‘both urban and extra-urban’ (suburbanos).Footnote ⁶³ ‘Extra-urban’ might, of course, refer to those neighbouring the city, but another ordo, the widely disseminated Ordo 5, more clearly distinguishes between the cathedral clerics and the ‘external priests’ (forenses presbyteri) who were assembled.Footnote ⁶⁴ In this liturgy, the ‘external priests’ are quizzed specifically on the rules for carrying out baptism, so we can be reasonably confident this group had pastoral responsibilities.Footnote ⁶⁵ Indeed, as we shall see, many of the prayers that were recited in the diocesan synod covered pastoral care, which is at the least consonant with the attendance of rural priests there alongside priests attached to the cathedral. Priests were also informed where the bishop would be ‘visiting’ in the period of time that followed the synod, which again implies an assembly formed at least in part of rural priests.Footnote ⁶⁶

The presence of rural priests at these synods was thus ‘designed in’ in the liturgies, and presumably, therefore, formed part of contemporary normative expectations; but how far did these expectations match reality? The terminology of ‘external priests’ also appears in a charter made at a synod in Nevers in 903, and one from Poitiers in the early tenth century mentions the ‘rural priests’ who were present; two synodal charters from Padua talk of priests in attendance who had come from nearby villages.Footnote ⁶⁷ As we shall see, we can also identify some individual rural priests present at synods, especially in the early tenth century. In 889, a synodal charter from Münster was witnessed by fifty-three priests, of whom some forty may well have been local priests from the diocese.Footnote ⁶⁸ It must be acknowledged that there is no equivalent evidence from synodal charters issued in the period on which this book focuses, though several of these charters do feature the ‘archpriests’ (archipresbyteri) whose role it was to supervise the local priests.Footnote ⁶⁹ Yet the absence of more evidence should perhaps not surprise us. At provincial councils, all the bishops in attendance were supposed to subscribe the council’s decisions, and there are surviving charters that show just that. However, the liturgies for diocesan synods deliberately removed these expectations when the conciliar rites were adapted for diocesan use.Footnote ⁷⁰ It follows that a witness list to a charter made at a diocesan synod might not be representative of those in attendance.

Sometimes the charters give a clear indication of this. For instance, a charter issued at Mâcon was made at a synod ‘of the canons and of many (plurimi) priests’, yet only two priests are mentioned in the witness list.Footnote ⁷¹ A charter issued at Dijon was witnessed by a dozen named individuals, followed by the statement ‘and all the priests in the synod confirmed it’.Footnote ⁷² A charter produced at a synod held at Vienne, near Lyons, in 1036, gives an even more stark illustration of the disparity in numbers between attendees and witnesses. The document issued on the occasion was witnessed by nearly fifty people. This is a substantial number that clearly represents most, if not all, of the cathedral’s community, but obviously cannot have included the entire diocesan clergy as a whole. However, the charter itself, which survives as an original single-sheet, states that the synod was attended by nearly five hundred people, including abbots, monks and ‘clerics of various grades’.Footnote ⁷³ In other words, even allowing for some exaggeration, only a fraction of those present at Vienne formally witnessed the charter. With numbers such as this, for everyone to have witnessed would have been quite impractical; only the most prominent would be asked to put their name to such a text. Of course, other diocesan synods might have been much more intimate affairs, but we cannot treat the witness lists to charters as accurate reflections of attendance at a synod.Footnote ⁷⁴

In short, while it is impossible to be categorical, it seems likely that rural priests did often attend diocesan synods in the tenth-century Latin West: certainly not all priests, and probably not all the time, but often. When Bishop Rather of Verona complained about poor attendance at another diocesan synod he held in May 967, it seems it was the cathedral canons who had failed to come, not the rural priests, who it appears had attended just as they were supposed to.Footnote ⁷⁵ This might have involved considerable distances to travel for some of them, but then we know that rural priests did travel (see, e.g., John of Gorze, discussed in the Introduction to this book; Heriric the priest, discussed in Chapter 2; and the copying of regulae formatarum, letters of recommendation for priests, discussed in Chapter 5). Indeed, tenth-century texts commented on such priestly mobility, for instance, ordering that priests should not set off on a journey without their stole (stola), a kind of liturgical scarf, and commending them for their bravery in risking robbery and violence in travelling to the synod.Footnote ⁷⁶ Attendance was thus possible, encouraged and expected, and occasionally documented.

This inclusion of priests at the synod, as part of a defined group of people, was given clear spatial definition. Most of the synodal liturgies make it clear that the meeting was held in the cathedral and was carefully policed: the building was emptied in advance, only one door was left open at which porters regulated entry, and once everyone was inside, the doors were locked.Footnote ⁷⁷ It is interesting that, according to Ordo 5 (ca. 1000), the rural priests were physically positioned at the edges of the meeting, standing some way out from the circle around the seated bishop, arranged ‘in their order’ (in suo ordine), which presumably meant according to their date of ordination.Footnote ⁷⁸ They stood closer to the bishop than the subdeacons but were placed after the cathedral’s deacons, despite their formal seniority in terms of ordination grade.Footnote ⁷⁹ This was inclusion, then, but of a publicly differentiated kind.

4.3 Disputing

What did those rural priests who attended a diocesan synod see happening, from their vantage point at the back of the room? One key purpose of these assemblies was to resolve disputes. This activity is emphasised in charters, especially those written before 1000, often in the arenga or prologue (‘discussing judgements’: judicia discutienda) or, like a charter from Vienne dated to 907, when their draftsmen talk about the ‘complaints brought forth by many people’.Footnote ⁸⁰ It is suggested too by an inscription made by Bishop Eberhard of Konstanz (d. 1046) into a manuscript of Burchard’s canon law collection, which states that ‘on account of the expanse of the bishopric, synodal disputes often emerge from which it is not easy to escape without the authority of this book’, though sadly, we have found no evidence in the charters of a canon law manuscript being invoked to resolve a problem.Footnote ⁸¹

The liturgies also emphasise the importance of bringing disputes between priests to a synod for judgement: ‘If any cleric has a dispute against his brother, let him bring it before the bishop, so that it can be justly ended there’.Footnote ⁸² It may be this judicial function that explains one of the novelties of the new liturgies for the diocesan synod. This was their routine use of relics, which were integrated into the meeting in a way that cannot be paralleled in the earlier conciliar sources (though we can see them in some other descriptions of tenth-century councils).Footnote ⁸³ The purpose of these relics was perhaps to add additional sacral legitimacy to the meeting, but they may also have been used in the process of oath-swearing to settle disputes. Indeed, the liturgies are alert to the possibility of controversies emerging during the synod itself: one ordo talks twice of the possibility of an uproar (tumultus) occurring during the meeting.Footnote ⁸⁴

The liturgies naturally do not specify what kind of disputes were at stake, but charter evidence sheds a little more light. Several documents record disputes at synods concerning rural priests. In the early tenth century, for example, two priests, Peter and Droctramnus, travelled to Poitiers to present their cases to the bishop, Frothar II, at a diocesan synod held in the presence of both the cathedral canons and the ‘rural priests’ (ruri presbyteri) of the diocese.Footnote ⁸⁵ Peter was priest at Pranzay, 25 km south-west of Poitiers, so it would have taken Peter at least a day to walk there; Exoudun was a little further away, and Droctramnus might have needed a couple of days to reach Poitiers, even by horse. A handsome parish church still stands at Exoudun, though it was wholly rebuilt in the nineteenth century; that of Pranzay was destroyed in the sixteenth century and never rebuilt.

In dispute at Poitiers were the tithes from some specific areas of land. Peter claimed these lands were in his parish and that half the tithe had from ‘ancient times’ (aevis temporibus) belonged to his church at Pranzay; Droctramnus said they belonged to his church at Exoudun. The bishop responded by enquiring amongst the neighbouring priests. It was found that the tithe belonged to Pranzay, and it was judged that Droctramnus not only had to hand the tithe to Peter but also had to pay him some compensation. Peter also insisted on having a written notice made to attest to the judgement, which does not seem to have been written by the bishop’s clerical staff, and this rather informal document later made its way into the archives of the monastery of Nouaillé, which owned the Exoudun church by the early twelfth century (Fig. 4.3).

Fig. 4.3

Archives départementales des Deux-Sèvres et de la Vienne, C 8, no. 26.

Of interest here is not so much the question of tithes, already discussed in Chapter 2, but of how this dispute was handled and resolved. Bishop Frothar II of Poitiers chose to deal with the case at a synod (in suo sinodali conventu) presumably in part because this meant the neighbouring priests were on hand to be questioned; perhaps the synod also added extra weight to the decision. In other cases where local priests were involved, we can see bishops leaning on the additional authority that collective judgement conveyed. For instance, when in 912 the priests Bertard, Eraclius and Ledesius jointly accused their fellow priest Airard of stealing tithes from their parishes (parrochiae) by building new chapels, their complaint was heard by the bishop ‘and the whole synod’ (omnis sinodus).Footnote ⁸⁶ Sometimes, though, disputes between priests could be settled at the synod by alternative means. In 925, the archbishop of Tours settled a dispute between the priests Gaufrid and Rainald at the synod by means of a trial by ordeal.Footnote ⁸⁷

In the early tenth century, then, we can see that diocesan synods provided a useful means for local priests to escalate their disputes and have them settled. However, this evidence fades away over the course of the tenth century. The last charter to feature local priests bringing their own quarrels to the synod dates from the mid tenth century; the last time a bishop relied on (presumably) local priests to resolve a dispute at a synod was in 967, when the bishop of Verdun called on seven priests to swear an oath. Of course, disputes continued to be aired in diocesan synods. A letter from a Würzburg cleric, for instance, talks of managing to get a dispute postponed from discussion at a synod around 1025, but though the case concerned a tithe (from the village of Duttenberg), it had been brought by a count and was directed against the bishop of Worms.Footnote ⁸⁸ The evidence therefore suggests it might have become harder for local priests to have their voices heard directly, perhaps as the economic assets discussed in Chapter 2 were captured by more powerful elite forces.

4.4 Listening and Learning

A liturgical ceremony for a diocesan synod extant in two eleventh-century manuscripts includes a sermon from which this extract is taken.Footnote ⁸⁹ Fiercely critical of its priestly audience, who explicitly had pastoral duties, the sermon also survives in a few other manuscripts outside of a liturgical ordo and can be dated to the years around 900.Footnote ⁹⁰ Because it is written in the voice of a priest, not a bishop, historians have supposed that it was originally intended for a local meeting or a Send gathering, perhaps led by an archdeacon, rather than for a diocesan synod. That is certainly possible, but the phrase ‘many amongst you’ does imply a large audience of priests, rather than just the clerics of a local church, and we know that not all sermons at the diocesan synod were given by the bishop, who was not always present until the synod’s final day (and who might in any case have delegated the sermon to someone else, if they were not a good speaker).Footnote ⁹¹ Perhaps, of course, such a sermon would have been considered suitable for various occasions.

Whatever its original context, the inclusion of the sermon in a liturgical ordo for a diocesan synod suggests that some priests in attendance might have heard it, or something like it. And though it is unusually vivid in its criticism, its themes cover familiar ground. As well as berating the priests for their greed, the sermon criticises those who lend money at interest to their parishioners, who bribe their way into secular office and who commit sexual pollution. Rural priests would have heard these themes elaborated in many other sermons, probably intended for delivery at diocesan synods.Footnote ⁹² Take, for example, a sermon titled Libellus de adsidua predicatione, found in Verona, Biblioteca capitolare, Cod. XC, a manuscript copied in northern Italy around 900 (and described by Henry Parkes as ‘a most peculiar mixture of poetic, liturgical and homiletic interest’).Footnote ⁹³ The sermon instructs its audience on how they should preach to their flock but also quotes Caesarius of Arles to encourage the priests to read their books, rather than keep them tidily locked away:

However, the most frequently copied diocesan synodal sermon was the Admonitio Synodalis, a text we have already encountered. The Admonitio condenses Carolingian-period norms for local priests into an address of around 1200 words that might have taken twenty minutes or so to read out in full (see app. 3 for an English translation of the earliest known version). It was firmly and clearly aimed at rural priests with pastoral responsibilities. Setting out in brief a code of conduct and the expectations that went with their role, the Admonitio gives us a sharp insight into what tenth-century bishops thought local priests should do and how they instructed them on those obligations, creating what Sarah Hamilton has called ‘the equivalent of refresher courses for the rural clergy’.Footnote ⁹⁵ This sermon was copied into scores of manuscripts (though they all seem to be manuscripts for bishops, not priests) and was directly integrated into some synodal liturgies.Footnote ⁹⁶ Whether the Admonitio was intended to be read out at a synod year after year or whether it was a kind of crib sheet for a bishop or archdeacon to extemporise from is difficult to say. Repetition should not be a priori ruled out, given the heavily liturgical nature of these events, which would not of course have stopped bishops from giving emphasis to topics they judged especially important.Footnote ⁹⁷

Sometimes, however, we can be sure that the sermons changed from synod to synod. As a counterpoint to the widely disseminated Admonitio Synodalis, let us look at a single manuscript, now in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin with the shelfmark Phillipps 1664. This manuscript provides us with an unparalleled and unique cache of sermons, which we can locate in both space and time. Compiled between 1031 and 1033, they were written by the learned but idiosyncratic southern French monk Ademar of Chabannes, on behalf of or for the bishop of Limoges, and they were mostly intended for the diocesan synods held at Limoges in the early eleventh century. Over seventy of them are simply short extracts from Pseudo-Isidorian decretals, reworked into an address, but others are both longer and more detailed. Some caution is required in approaching them. Ademar was a complex figure, in whose work fact and fiction were often blurred, and we cannot be sure that these sermons were ever read out in the form that survives, by Ademar or by anyone else.Footnote ⁹⁸ In some cases, they are indeed clearly notes, opening up with a theme before advising the speaker to turn to other matters relevant to a synod.Footnote ⁹⁹ Nevertheless, these sermons are a goldmine for historians curious about what local priests might have heard at a diocesan synod.

Ademar assumed that local priests were amongst the audience that his sermons alternately encouraged and harangued, and he framed the risks they endured in travelling for this purpose, such as robbery, as a kind of martyrdom.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Ademar assured them that priests were like kings in God’s eyes, that their chastity was a kind of martyrdom and that they were raised up above the lay people to whom they ministered.Footnote ¹⁰¹ He advised them to preach regularly to their congregations and gave advice on the topics they should preach about, such as the sacraments.Footnote ¹⁰² Ademar cross-referenced too, linking through to sermons his audience had already heard, and those they had to look forward to.Footnote ¹⁰³

Education was a key purpose of the local synods. Ademar assumed that priests came to the synod to be instructed so that they could then educate their own uneducated congregations.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ The Admonitio Synodalis covers fairly basic content – the essentials for priestly conduct – and similarly, Ademar anticipated that some of the priests in his audience might not fully understand the Athanasian Creed, for instance.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ However, much of Ademar’s sermonising was ambitious, covering difficult theological problems. He wanted the assembled priests to know about Saint Martial of Limoges, one of Ademar’s favourite topics: if they could not understand the story of Martial, how could they understand the mysteries of the Gospels? He wanted them to know about Islam and Islamic beliefs, which he presented in extremely hostile fashion; he wanted them to know about heresy and heretics; he wanted them to understand Trinitarian doctrine properly. Some of this knowledge was, intriguingly, designated by Ademar as secret: material that was not suitable for the uneducated laity to hear about.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Ademar’s irritation about muttering during the sermons might suggest that not all those in his audience were as enthralled as he expected.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ On the other hand, the muttering in question was between priests and monks about the best liturgical practice, so perhaps we should not be too dismissive of priests’ capacity to engage with the sermons. Indeed, Ademar accepted that his audience might already know much of what he was telling them already: that was fine, he said, because it was good to be reminded.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

Alongside sermons such as Ademar’s or the Admonitio Synodalis, rural priests in the diocesan synod would have heard other kinds of readings, above all from the Holy Scriptures. There were readings too from canon law. Ademar might have liked a liturgy for a diocesan synod from Catalonia, which contains great detail about the nature of the Trinity. More prosaically, several ordines give space for the bishop to explain during the synod how many weeks there were till Lent, or when Easter would be, or which parishes the bishop would be visiting in the coming year or who the bishop had excommunicated.Footnote ¹⁰⁹

While rural priests could have learned much by simply listening, not all the learning was passive. In the 920s, Archbishop Ruotger of Trier and Bishop Atto of Vercelli had asked local priests to come to the synod with their liturgical books for inspection, in line with Carolingian tradition.Footnote ¹¹⁰ This requirement cannot be found in later texts, and in general, the new generation of synodal ordines put noticeably less emphasis on testing knowledge than the earlier ordines.Footnote ¹¹¹ Nevertheless, the very popular Ordo 5 synodal liturgy includes a specific investigation, already mentioned above, into what the local priests knew about the different stages of baptism. In northern Italy, Bishop Rather of Verona described the diocesan synod he held in 966, in which the rural priests were questioned about their knowledge and behaviour for two days by the archdeacon and archpriest, in Rather’s absence.Footnote ¹¹² When Rather attended the synod on the third day and heard their report, he was appalled to be informed that everything was satisfactory: ‘So for what purposes should a synod be held if nothing more to be corrected is found?’Footnote ¹¹³ Rather was furious that the enquiry had been treated as a rubber-stamping exercise, rather than a genuine investigation.

In sum, then, diocesan synods represented a moment in which local priests would be reminded of the duties that came with their high status and encouraged to live up to their responsibilities and would receive instruction on both theological and practical questions. The nature of this instruction would naturally have varied considerably – not all sermon compilers were Ademars – but we can see how the diocesan synod represented an important mechanism for creating and maintaining the local priesthood as a local ‘knowledge elite’, on which Carolingian bishops had expended so much effort.Footnote ¹¹⁴ It was here that priests would collectively learn, or be reminded, of what it meant to be a priest: the duties, responsibilities and powers that came with the office.

4.5 Praying

Local priests came to the diocesan synod because they had to. Once there, they could settle scores and obtain justice, receive moral and religious instruction and find out who would be entertaining the bishop and his retinue in the coming year. Still, we should not forget that the synod was a religious event in its own right. In Ordo 14, it is assumed that it would begin with a Mass.Footnote ¹¹⁵ And at the heart of the diocesan synod was organised and collective prayer, the purpose of which was to ensure the presence of the Holy Spirit. These prayers were interspersed with physical movement, as the assembled body of clerics collectively knelt, stood or prostrated themselves on the floor, movement juxtaposed with moments of stillness and silence. These gestures were meaningful and deliberate. Prostration, for instance, was removed from a version of Ordo 5 in its northern French copies; conversely, in a Besançon manuscript, the instruction was that it should last ‘for a very long time’ (diutissime).Footnote ¹¹⁶

The prayers were uttered for the benefit of many people: for the emperor,Footnote ¹¹⁷ for the bishop,Footnote ¹¹⁸ for the pope,Footnote ¹¹⁹ for the king and for the queenFootnote ¹²⁰ and for the faithful departed.Footnote ¹²¹ At the Council of Mainz in 950, all priests in charge of churches and congregations (ecclesias populumque procurantes) were supposed to celebrate eighty masses a year for these same categories of people.Footnote ¹²² Amongst the most important beneficiaries of the prayers, however, were the priests themselves. The synod’s prayers often reflected the importance of their pastoral duties:

In addition to these prayers for priests as members of a general sacerdotal community, these synods also heard prayers for the priests as members of the diocesan community, echoing a prayer association recorded in more specific terms in a mid tenth-century Regensburg agreement.Footnote ¹²⁸ A liturgical ordo drawn up by Ademar around 1031 (and preserved in the same manuscript as his sermons) is particularly forthright on this:

This ‘fraternal’ commemoration was clearly aimed at the parish priests, since the text subsequently instructs the archdeacon to ask about the deceased canons of the cathedral and monks. Here we can see the diocesan synod constituting a kind of prayer association, creating a fraternal bond amongst the local priests of a diocese, who would know that after their death, they would be remembered by their peers. No wonder that Ademar described the function of the synod, ‘where all you priests of our diocese’ gather together, as ensuring ‘that peace and love may reign between them’.Footnote ¹³⁰

4.6 Paying

The liturgies for the diocesan synod mention the chanting and the sound of church bells, but there is one sound that they probably underplay, and that is the clink of coin. None of the main ordines mentions money. However, already in the ninth century, figures such as Hincmar of Reims had warned against using diocesan synods to exploit priests financially; presumably the synod offered a convenient moment for the bishop to receive some of the revenues priests received that we previously outlined in Chapter 2 (and that were documented at a general level in the lists from Autun, Sens and Orléans).Footnote ¹³¹

Although payments to the bishop at synods were doubtless already customary by the ninth century (if not earlier), there is reason to suppose that in the tenth century, these arrangements were becoming more formal, perhaps more regular, and more closely associated with the diocesan synod. For instance, the Catalan liturgical ordo states quite plainly that the diocesan synod was when the census was paid to the bishop.Footnote ¹³² In Apt in southern France, the bishop demanded a payment in May 976 ‘for the synod’.Footnote ¹³³ In 1018, the bishop of Langres issued a charter talking about the dues owed by priests at the time of the synod (obsequia debita sinodali tempore).Footnote ¹³⁴ In Limoges around 1030, it was during the synod that representatives checked whether priests had paid their dues or not.Footnote ¹³⁵ Far to the north in the early eleventh century, Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim in Saxony required parish priests to pay a penny (denarius) as a token of their obedience at a January synod.Footnote ¹³⁶ To the west, in 1047 the bishop of Rennes exempted a church from all dues, except eight pennies paid ‘to the bishop for the Pentecost synod’.Footnote ¹³⁷

Perhaps the strongest evidence of all is terminological. That local priests owed dues to bishops was a long-established convention (and Chapter 2 above includes a case where a church was classified as a chapel precisely to avoid these dues). However, in the course of the tenth and early eleventh centuries, western Frankish charters in particular begin to mention specific dues, labelled sinoda, sinodum or sinodalia, in addition to older kinds of payment, such as parata or visitation fees, which were owed by rural churches to the bishop, irrespective of who owned them.Footnote ¹³⁸ It seems probable that these were paid on the occasion of a synod.Footnote ¹³⁹ The earliest reference to these sinodalia in a surviving original document seems to be a charter of 1004, in which the bishop of Le Mans transferred dues from two churches that are described as the ‘synodal dues and what are commonly called the circada or parata’ (sinodales census et quȩ vulgo circada vel parata dicuntur);Footnote ¹⁴⁰ slightly later original charters talk of sinodales […] consuetudines or synodale servitium.Footnote ¹⁴¹ However, investigating charters that were preserved in cartularies suggests that the term is older and goes back to the beginning of the tenth century in Burgundy, with the first reference to synodales eulogias and synodale servitium dating to 929 from Mâcon, with comparable references later in the century from Apt, Chartres, Dijon, Nevers, Orléans, Paris, Rennes, Tours and Troyes.Footnote ¹⁴² By implication, these ‘synodal’ dues were paid at the synod (as is indeed confirmed by a 951 charter from Tournus);Footnote ¹⁴³ by implication too, these synods were held regularly. In the early eleventh century, the bishop of Lisieux is recorded as having suspended some priests in his diocese who refused to pay these synodal dues; that their churches were owned by the canons of Chartres made no difference.Footnote ¹⁴⁴

In one of his sermons, written around 1031, Ademar of Chabannes explains what these dues were and why they were levied. He distinguishes between the paratum and the sinodus. The paratum was so called because it was for preparations for the bishop’s visits around the diocese (for these visitations, see Chapter 5, below).Footnote ¹⁴⁵ As for the ‘yearly due known as the sinodus’ (census annuus, qui dicitur sinodus), Ademar justified this levy as a contribution towards the cost of the chrism, the holy oil that the bishop distributed to all the priests of the diocese. Ademar emphasised how hard it was to obtain the ingredients for the chrism. Balsam, he notes, comes from the land of the ‘Saracens’. That meant it was an expensive ingredient, but it was vital, because ‘on this sacrament the whole of Christianity stands’, so it was necessary for all priests to make a contribution to the expense.Footnote ¹⁴⁶

The link that Ademar here sketches out between chrism, money and the synod is revealing. As we have noted already, rural priests were meant to come to collect fresh chrism once a year, on Maundy Thursday; Ademar was careful not to frame this as the priests being charged for the chrism, which would sound simoniacal (and had been prohibited by church councils), but as them making a contribution towards its costs.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ That this charge was called sinodum, ‘the synod [money]’, shows how the diocesan synod was integrated into an economy of salvation that included the transfer of silver. This payment, in turn, ensured the local priests were supplied with the sacred and exotic substance on which their own local status depended: for, without chrism, they could not carry out the fundamental rite of baptism. In the ninth century, Hincmar of Reims had explicitly denounced any association between the distribution of chrism and the cost of balsam; by the early eleventh century, such qualms appear to have been set aside.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ The ‘expenses’ of the local priests discussed in Chapter 2 thus found their place in a spiritually meaningful exchange, centred on the diocesan synod.Footnote ¹⁴⁹

4.7 Socialising

It might seem at this point that the diocesan synod would have been viewed as an intimidating prospect by local priests: exhausting hours of prayer, sermons whose content they knew perfectly well already and which sometimes went on much too long, perhaps some examination by a bishop as scornful as Rather of Verona, and the obligation to pay dues.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ Historians have therefore tended to assume that rural priests would view diocesan synods as an unwanted obligation and try to avoid going, attending only if compelled. Yet there is another side to the synod that we can glimpse, albeit only indistinctly.

We might begin by considering whether priests could have seen these synods as networking opportunities. They were a chance to hear the gossip, to find out who had been excommunicated (one of the duties of a diocesan synod) and who had been forgiven.Footnote ¹⁵¹ There may also have been a chance to put in a good word with the bishop on behalf of a promising nephew or other family member (the networks discussed in Chapter 3), or indeed for oneself, in pursuit of a better-endowed church (for we have already seen in Chapter 2 how some local churches were considerably better off than others). The Admonitio Synodalis warns priests against seeking promotion: ‘Let no one leave the church to which he is assigned and move to another for the sake of gain’.Footnote ¹⁵² Such ambition required the flow of information, for which the diocesan synod could have provided the ideal opportunity.Footnote ¹⁵³

We might also consider whether some priests saw the synod as an opportunity to catch up with old friends. Ordo 5, after all, requests the local priests to assemble in their order of ordination, which would have meant regularly seeing the same faces.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ Perhaps they enjoyed debating and discussing with other educated men during the ‘coffee breaks’.Footnote ¹⁵⁵ Ademar recounts just these kinds of conversations in one of his sermons, where he recalls discussions with some priests about grammarians who argued that elements of the Mass were ungrammatical (just such a grammarian was burned at the stake as a heretic, Ademar noted with grim satisfaction).Footnote ¹⁵⁶

There are also some hints that the discussions might have taken on a more convivial tone. Take, for instance, two tiny edits that were made to diocesan synodal liturgies. The synodal liturgy Ordo 13 has already been mentioned. It survives in six manuscripts, of which the two earliest are ca. 1000. Like most of the synodal liturgies, it is based on the much older seventh-century Ordo 2, which was originally designed to structure a meeting of bishops. Amongst the alterations that Ordo 13 made to the original text, one is particularly relevant here. The original text in Ordo 2 said ‘Let none of the bishops leave the communal meeting before the hour of general departure comes’.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ The liturgist behind Ordo 13 changed this to ‘Let no one leave the communal meeting or dare to have dinner (prandere presumat), before the hour of general departure comes’.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ The reference to bishops has been taken out since Ordo 13 was for a diocesan not a provincial synod; intriguingly, though, Ordo 13 has also added a reference to dinner. Ordo 14, a sibling to Ordo 13 that is copied in even more manuscripts, has a slightly different variation on the same instruction: ‘Let no one dare to come to the synod unless fasting (ieiunus) or leave the communal meeting, before the hour of general departure comes’.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ In other words, when adapting their model, the compiler of Ordo 14 thought it was worth specifying that sobriety was expected at the synod.

The earliest precedent for such a requirement is from tenth-century Trier, where Ruotger had also insisted that people should be sober when they attended the synod; this was something that Carolingian texts had not worried about.Footnote ¹⁶⁰ Herbert Schneider suggested this could reflect the role of the participants as judges, on whose sobriety normative texts had long insisted.Footnote ¹⁶¹ But there is an alternative, and perhaps more obvious, interpretation, which is that priests were worryingly inclined to dine and drink over the course of the synod. Perhaps that should not come as a surprise. After all, a ninth-century ordo explicitly mentions a farewell dinner at the end of the meeting, while in Hildesheim, in 1013, the priests were given a meal by the bishop before they left, ‘so that the tired brethren might not lose strength on their route home’.Footnote ¹⁶² We might moreover consider the practicalities. Ademar’s synodal ordo for Limoges talks about visiting priests staying in hospitia.Footnote ¹⁶³ What kind of lodgings might these have been: an austere dormitory, or a room in (or near) a tavern?

That a toast or two might have been raised is suggested by a text known as the ‘Rhythmus de Andecavensi abate’, preserved in Verona, Biblioteca capitolare, Cod. XC, a tenth-century manuscript we encountered earlier, on folio 68r. Immediately before a high-minded poem for a gathering of priests, thanking the heavenly king for bringing them together (qui nos in unum congregavit), there is this text, which is straightforwardly a drinking song for clerics.

Gilles Meersseman suggested that these poems were two different kinds of songs for a gathering of clerics.Footnote ¹⁶⁵ The context for them is north Italian, but perhaps these songs have a wider relevance. Can we imagine local priests merrily singing with their old friends the evening before they began their journey back to their churches? That might help make sense of Ademar’s clarification in his ordo of the arrangements for attendance at a diocesan synod, specifying that no (rural) church should be left entirely unattended, in case of some pastoral emergency: ‘For each church let one priest stay behind, with a minister to help him, for the opus divinum, for the necessity of baptism and for viaticum, so that no one dies without baptism or viaticum […]’.Footnote ¹⁶⁶ This was a concern he also raised in his synodal sermons.Footnote ¹⁶⁷ Ademar’s worry was not that too few rural priests would come to the synod, but too many.

4.8 The Dominance of the Bishop

In the vita of Bishop Godehard of Hildesheim, written not long after he died in 1038, there is a unique description of a diocesan synod that did not go as planned. The text explains how the bishop held a synod on Maundy Thursday in 1025, with both clerics and laity in attendance. After a day of discussing varied matters, the bishop requested those present to consent to a written decision. The text does not explain what the decision concerned, but it is possible it was connected to the children of priests, a topic in which we know the bishop of Hildesheim was interested.Footnote ¹⁶⁸

The clerics present at the synod dutifully agreed to the decree. However, to the bishop’s astonishment, the laity present refused and remained silent, despite the bishop’s injunctions. Eventually, some spoke up, complaining that they felt unduly coerced and that the bishop should have invited them to contribute ‘according to their law’ (secundam suam legem). Appalled by their impertinence, the bishop warned them to comply nine times, until they eventually walked out en masse. At this point, the bishop suspended the synod on account of the uproar (tumultus, a term that also appears in the ordines). The threat of excommunication brought most of them to their senses, and one by one they repented over the next few days, with the exception of a prominent layman named Ludolf, whom the hagiographer claims was responsible for the original disruption. Excommunicated by Bishop Godehard for his stubbornness, Ludolf fled the diocese. It is intriguing that a local priest he encountered in the remote wilds of the diocese (solitudo quedam instar heremi), a man named Vanzelin who served a church at Hollenstedt, had heard of Ludolf’s excommunication at the synod and refused to offer him shelter, in perfect compliance with the requirements of canon law (as noted in the Admonitio Synodalis, c. 74). Ludolf forced the priest to accompany him, with the priest again conscientiously adhering to the Admonitio Synodalis’s requirements by fetching his stole (Admonitio Synodalis, c. 68); during the journey, Ludolf was killed by a lightning bolt whilst unwisely using his shield as a makeshift umbrella during a thunderstorm.

This account of a diocesan synod survives only in a late manuscript (and was not published until 2021).Footnote ¹⁶⁹ It is unusual in several respects, but there is nevertheless no obvious reason to doubt that it was written by Wulfhere, an eleventh-century canon at Hildesheim, as part of his revised Vita Godehardi, around 1050. The Vita positions the diocesan synod as a place not for discussion but for, effectively, coerced consent: the bishop demands agreement with his ban (bannum), and when the laity object, the bishop is shocked. For the hagiographer Wulfhere, in other words, the function of the diocesan synod was primarily as a platform for episcopal authority, to ensure that even remote priests such as Vanzelin obeyed the bishop.Footnote ¹⁷⁰

Bishops had always run diocesan synods, of course, but can we see a change in emphasis over time? The charters give some indication in this direction. That some record disputes involving local priests has already been mentioned; it is striking, however, that these are all relatively early, and certainly before the year 1000. Later synodal charters do record disputes over tithes, but these tend to be disputes between institutions, rather than between individuals. The voice of the local priest becomes harder to hear in a more institutionalised environment.

At the same time, the references in some early charters to the bishops relying on the judgement of the assembled synod fade away. A charter from Dijon ca. 903 emphasised that ‘the whole synod agreed with us’ and that ‘all the priests in the synod confirmed it’; a charter from Nevers in 903 talked of a decision being made ‘through the advice of […] the external priests’; a charter from Vienne in 907 was described as ‘judged by the holy synod’; a charter from Langres in 912 was agreed by ‘the whole synod’; a charter from Tours around 925 was judged ‘by everyone’; a decision in Poitiers around the 940s was the result of asking ‘everyone sitting in the holy council’; and a charter from Verdun in 967 was judged after ‘an enquiry in the whole synod’.Footnote ¹⁷¹ However, after this point, such collective participation is less emphasised. Indeed, the number of disputes recorded in synodal charters also drops off. Instead, the documents record episcopal decisions, with the synod as the approving audience.

The new liturgies for the diocesan synod that appear from around 1000 present a similar story. The arrival of the bishop at the synod is a grand occasion. There is a formal procession;Footnote ¹⁷² he is dressed in finery and escorted by various officers and accoutrements; in one version, the bells ring out before he arrives.Footnote ¹⁷³ In some variants of the liturgy, as we have already seen, the bishop is not even present in the first few days of the synod; his arrival on the final day is thus all the more imposing.Footnote ¹⁷⁴ The compiler of another ordo, Ordo 16, which survives in a single twelfth-century manuscript, seems to have deliberately suppressed material that emphasised the collective nature of the synod, notably an address that began ‘Behold, most sacred brothers’ (Ecce sanctissimi fratres). Schneider observed that ‘his synod was very far from being a collegial institution for resolving disputes (Rechtsfindung)’.Footnote ¹⁷⁵ The new synodal liturgies generally have much less space, too, for testing priests’ knowledge, a key theme in more traditional texts.

There is an intriguing comment in Ademar’s synodal liturgy for Limoges, which refers to the bishop making an ‘edict’ (edictum) if it is necessary to introduce an innovation (noviter observandum), rather than reinforcing good old law.Footnote ¹⁷⁶ ‘Edict’ is a strong word to use; it had been avoided by the authors of Carolingian episcopal statutes.Footnote ¹⁷⁷ Herbert Schneider interpreted this provision as anticipating the later synodal statutes, which it clearly does, though it does not necessarily imply a written text. But we might wonder whether it also represents a growing emphasis on the dominance of the bishop in the synod, not just with, but over, the priests. Indeed, the evident interest that tenth- and eleventh-century bishops had in formalised liturgies for the diocesan synod can be read as a means of realising episcopal authority.

Perhaps the clearest indication of all is provided by the account of a synod held at Arras in 1025, on whose third day the bishop, Gerard of Cambrai, confronted a group of heretics and corrected their error. In the surviving account, Bishop Gerard is almost the only person to speak. And speak he does, with an oration of some 60,000 words in Latin, which serves as, effectively, a summary of Christian doctrine and organisation as Gerard understood it. As Diane Reilly and Steven Vanderputten have observed, the surviving text cannot be a transcript, and Gerard surely cannot have given this speech as it stands, which would have taken several hours.Footnote ¹⁷⁸ What is interesting, though, is how the authors set this summary of Christianity in the frame of a diocesan synod: a bishop, authoritatively and comprehensively setting out the Christian faith to a large but almost entirely passive audience. A decree by Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim in 1020, calling on not just the local priests but the entire population of the diocese, except peasants (rusticani) and cloistered religious, to attend the diocesan synod can be read in the same way: creating the largest possible audience for the bishop’s pronouncements.Footnote ¹⁷⁹

4.9 Conclusion

As explained at the beginning of this chapter, though the relative isolation of the local priest was a defining characteristic of the pastoral system in the Carolingian and post-Carolingian Latin West, there were certainly occasions in which these priests came together. Sometimes, perhaps often, this may have taken place in a local context, meeting with the neighbouring priests who lived down the valley or over the hill at the behest of the rural dean, but the evidence for this is sadly thin. Much better attested is how local priests engaged with the diocesan synod, and so this chapter has focused on what we can say about the nature of this gathering.

It is unlikely that all the local priests of a diocese all turned up in the episcopal centre twice a year; indeed, they were not even all supposed to. The creation, perhaps for the first time, of lists of churches within a defined territory in the dioceses of Autun, Sens and Orléans around 1000 shows that at least some bishops were taking an interest in local priests in their diocese beyond this particular occasion.Footnote ¹⁸⁰ Nevertheless, it seems plausible that local priests did attend on a regular basis. Doing so would have played a role in helping priests understand the concept of their office – the Priesterbild, in Laudage’s phrasing.Footnote ¹⁸¹ It would also have played a role in integrating these priests into a wider community, both spiritually and practically, as much as and perhaps more so than in the ninth century, where the evidence for diocesan synods is, overall, thinner. This is implied by the wording and the proliferation of the liturgies and sermons for the occasion, and sometimes by the charters too. When we consider the sociability of the synod, and in line with the Spielraum emphasised in Chapter 2, we might wonder whether the assumption implicit in much of the historiography that priests would try to avoid coming is fully justified.

That said, there is some reason to suppose that the nature of the meeting to which the priests were coming was changing, as the nature of episcopal authority developed.Footnote ¹⁸² As noted at the beginning of this chapter (pp. 138–9), Hinschius suggested that synods became more consensual and collaborative over the course of the tenth century, and Schröder agreed. However, the evidence, taken together, rather suggests the opposite. Diocesan synods were always hierarchical, but the tone of the meeting was evolving. While it is true that bishops largely stopped issuing freshly written statutes at diocesan synods, they used the occasion to bolster their authority in other ways. The late tenth- and eleventh-century focus on receiving payments at the synod, such as the sinodalia, cannot be seen in Carolingian evidence, except as an illicit practice to be discouraged; a century later, it had become formalised and accepted. Indeed, as already mentioned, the exploding popularity of new liturgies for holding these synods, which elevated the bishop and formalised the meeting, is in itself evidence for this change. The shift from deliberative assembly (‘assemblée deliberante’) to official control meeting (‘réunion officielle de controle’), as Pontal put it, was already underway long before the thirteenth century.Footnote ¹⁸³ From one point of view, we could read this as how bishops compensated themselves for the long-term erosion of their sacramental status, as they became formally distinct from priests only in dignity; from another, we can see it as a stage in the affirmation of episcopal power.Footnote ¹⁸⁴ It also seems that these synods began to put more focus on priests’ moral character and behaviour, playing down the Carolingian focus on their education. That might have been because educational attainment was no longer perceived as a problem, or because this kind of testing was now being done in other forums: or perhaps it was simply a very practical response to increasing numbers of attendees, as the numbers of local priests continued to grow (as discussed in Chapter 1, pp. 28–31).Footnote ¹⁸⁵

What difference did all this make to rural priests? Despite their elevated sacramental status, it seems clear that these changes were pushing them into the margins of the meeting, quite literally so if the liturgical instructions were followed. While in the early tenth century they were often active figures in synodal records, by the mid eleventh century they seem to have played a largely passive role in the formal arrangements of the meetings. From one point of view, then, they had surely lost some degree of power. That does not mean that they stopped coming to the synods, or that these collective moments lost significance. Rather, it seems both to be true that local priests were collectively integrated into wider contexts through the diocesan synod and that the mechanisms of this integration changed over the course of the tenth and early eleventh centuries.