The Earliest Form and Function of the ‘Admonitio synodalis’ *

This article examines a text known as the ‘Admonitio synodalis’ as evidence for episcopal expectations of local priests in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The ‘Admonitio’ is generally considered a stable text that represented and fostered continuity within the Church, but this article highlights instead its early development. It begins by identifying a previously unedited version of the text found in some tenth-century manuscripts, arguing that this long recension is the closest to the original form. It then turns to how the text was adapted in the tenth century, notably by Bishop Rather of Verona. It finally examines the changes made to the text when it was incorporated into the liturgy of synodal ordines in the early eleventh century. A transcription of the tenth-century recension, based on a Brussels manuscript, is provided as an appendix.

[*]When thinking about the Carolingian political and religious order, historians have tended to focus their attention on emperors, bishops and counts [1]. However, recent work has shown how local priests in the countryside occupied a central role in the Carolingian ideological programme too [2]. These priests were targeted by a new genre of text, the so-called episcopal capitularies which flourished in the ninth century, and which set out for the first time a tailored framework of expectations for priests living in rural communities [3]. And they were materially supported by a new kind of revenue, an obligatory and – crucially – territorialised tithe [4]. But what happened to these local priests after the fragmentation of the Carolingian order that had defined, regulated and supported them? How did the position and role of local priests change in the long tenth century? This article addresses this question by examining episcopal expectations of local priests, as expressed through an important text known as the ‘Admonitio Synodalis’.

The ‘Admonitio’ is an address or homily, suitable for delivery at a diocesan synod when a bishop gathered the priests of his diocese [5]. Its author is unknown, though some manuscripts ( falsely ) attribute it to a Pope Leo [6]. Over its ninety or so clauses ( the precise number varies considerably from manuscript to manuscript, as we shall see ), it concisely outlines the parameters for how priests should behave and how they should interact with their parishioners ( parocchiani ). For Johannes Laudage, who in 1984 analysed its contents as part of his classic investigation of the Priesterbild or “image of the priest”, the ‘Admonitio’ was an attempt “to bring together the most important regulations about priestly life from a pastoral point of view.” [7] It covers where priests should live, at what time they should get up in the morning, which vestments they should wear when celebrating Mass and how they should preach, alongside prohibitions on drinking and accepting bribes, and much else besides.

None of these instructions was particularly novel or unusual. To the contrary, the ‘Admonitio’ reads like a précis of Carolingian episcopal capitularies such as those issued by Frankish bishops such as Theodulf of Orléans and Hincmar of Reims, and subsequently summarised by the monk Regino of Prüm, to regulate the lives of the rural clergy living in their dioceses. What was unusual about the ‘Admonitio’ was the scale of its transmission. Wilfried Hartmann has talked of a “hugely wide dissemination”, Rudolf Pokorny described it as “one of the most ‘successful’ works of early medieval church law”, and Joseph Avril emphasised its “extraordinary diffusion.” [8] At least 139 manuscript witnesses survive, from countries across Western Europe including England, Italy, Spain, France and Germany [9]. Most of these manuscripts date from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. But although the ‘Admonitio’ was less often copied from the thirteenth century onwards – though a Polish bishop transcribed it as late as 1521 – its influence lived on indirectly [10]. Parts of the text were frequently integrated into later medieval episcopal statutes. For instance, its clause requiring priests to know the prayers for the Mass was copied verbatim in the 1290s in Mende, in 1298 in Novara, in 1310 in Bologna, in 1338 in Pavia and in 1382 in Buda [11]. Even in the seventeenth century, it seemed current enough for Étienne Baluze to suggest tongue-in-cheek that it should be revived to educate the “most wretched priests” of his own day [12]. Though it was not included in the twelfth-century Roman pontifical, an edited version was incorporated into a revised Roman pontifical published in 1485, and remained in this tradition until 1962 [13].

This scale of dissemination and influence has meant that the ‘Admonitio’ has often been seen as a vehicle through which expectations around rural priests developed in early Middle Ages were transmitted to later periods. For the most part this has been framed as a history of continuity. Indeed, for Robert Amiet, who edited the text in 1964, the most remarkable thing about the ‘Admonitio Synodalis’ was its stability and longevity, which meant that priests in the twentieth century were still being exhorted through much the same text as they had been over a millennium earlier in the eighth century, when Amiet thought the ‘Admonitio’ had first been compiled. Through the ‘Admonitio’, Amiet wrote, “one sees appear the eternal face of the holy Church.” [14] Joseph Avril took a similar view, seeing the ‘Admonitio’ as representing a fundamental continuity into and through the tenth century: “[ … ] the impulse given by the Carolingian reformers was maintained as far as the clergy entrusted with churches were concerned.” [15]

In this article, however, I offer a different perspective. Rather than emphasising the stability and longevity of the ‘Admonitio Synodalis’, I seek to explore its dynamics and its evolution. By tracking the changes that were made to this text in the tenth and eleventh centuries, we can detect subtle shifts in emphasis in the standards by which local priests were measured between the Carolingians and the so-called Gregorian Reform. First of all, though, we need to consider Amiet’s edition in more detail, since, as will become clear, this edition has done a great deal to shape subsequent discussion of the text.