5

Behaviours

Sidonius Apollinaris presented the nobleman Vettius as an exemplary layman. Vettius, Sidonius wrote, kept a pure home, with efficient slaves and an open table. The man himself, meanwhile, was sober, skilled in training the animals of the hunt, dignified and self-controlled. To these ancient virtues, however, Sidonius added a number of Christian elements. ‘He is a frequent reader of the sacred books, by which means on many occasions he absorbs food for the soul while at meals. He often reads the Psalms and still oftener chants them, and by his novel manner of life he acts the monk, although wearing not the habit of an order but the habiliment of a general.’¹ Vettius practised his religion ‘discretely and sensitively’ (occulte et delicateque) so as not to impose his asceticism on his guests, but he was no less serious about his faith as a result and Sidonius presented him as an example even to the clergy, since ‘I feel bound to admire a priest-like man more than a man in the priesthood’.² Sidonius, writing by this time as a bishop, appeared perfectly comfortable with the notion that a lay person could be virtuous while still residing within and taking an active part in the secular world. His expectations of lay piety were quite simple and achievable: live morally within the world, and do some sacred reading. Despite this, however, the value of Vettius’ conduct as a lay person resided for Sidonius in its approximation to monastic and clerical models – he ‘acts the monk’ and is ‘a priest-like man’. For Sidonius, a good lay life could be admired, but it could not somehow represent a stand-alone ideal.

The commemorator of Agapus, merchant of Lyon, felt no such tension. On his tombstone, dated to 601, Agapus was described as a good lay Christian: ‘the bay of the afflicted and the port of the needy, loved by all, he assiduously visited the places of the saints and practised almsgiving and prayer’.³ This is a slightly different picture of an ideal lay life. There was no need for reference to any external criteria – Agapus stood on his own merits. Instead of Vettius’ Christian aristocratic otium, we get an image of active civic engagement with the needy and of participation in the cult of the saints. Both pictures are models, on display to others, but the authors, audiences and genres are very different. They hint at the diversity of lay religious behaviours, even at the level of ideals.

This chapter is about these multiple ideals of lay behaviour but also whether we can move beyond the level of ideal. I use David Frankfurter’s model of a two-pronged approach: first, to examine the rhetoric, both of idealization and denigration, and to detail when and why clergy and lay people praised or attacked particular religious behaviours.⁴ Second, I explore, where possible, the role of religion in the lives of the faithful, looking especially for ways in which lay people integrated their practices with Christian schemes of authority.⁵ From this we get a complex picture of the relationship between clerical and lay views on religious behaviour. Clerical ideals undoubtedly had a powerful effect on those around them, but there was also considerable space for autonomous lay action.⁶

Previous chapters in this book have already explored some aspects of lay religious behaviour. Chapter 1 examined the phenomenon of conversi, lay people who adopted some ascetic practices while remaining in the secular world. Chapters 2 and 3 detailed how lay people engaged with secular spaces, while Chapter 4 looked at their involvement in the rituals of the church. Chapter 6 will discuss the relationship between belief and behaviour and the implications that each had for the other. This current chapter is therefore one part of a larger picture of lay religious behaviour which emerges from the book as a whole. It is an opportunity, however, to explore three specific aspects that are not covered elsewhere. The first sections of the chapter address ideals of lay behaviour through the perspectives found in three very different types of evidence: hagiographies, sermons and epitaphs. This analysis reveals that these ideals depended in large part on genre but that there are nonetheless some common expectations of lay piety. The chapter then moves to the inverse of this picture: clerical attacks on lay misbehaviour, what they mean, and what we can take from them as historians. The negative portraits of lay behaviour were just as rhetorically constructed as the positive ones, but still provide a series of intriguing suggestions about what lay people may have been up to. Finally, the chapter looks at a few examples of indirect evidence for lay behaviour: instances where the lay people lurked in the background of the main action, and where the attention of the author was not focused on them at all. In such cases, the drive to distort lay behaviour was considerably less strong, and we get some interesting depictions of how lay people may have interacted with religious institutions and figures.

Ideals: Hagiographies

Hagiography initially appears to be an unpromising source for information on ideals of lay behaviour. In late antique Gaul, the heroes of saints’ lives were almost exclusively bishops, monks, nuns and other dedicated ascetics. However, hagiography did provide models of lay religious behaviour in several ways. First, almost all Gallic saints’ lives included an account of them as a lay person. As we saw in Chapter 1, hagiographies celebrated conversion moments, when a saint transitioned out of the secular world and into a committed state of religious life, whether as a cleric or as a dedicated ascetic. The authors therefore usually devoted at least some time and attention to the period before. There were very few examples in Gallic hagiographies of subjects who spent their early life as a sinner, and were converted or transformed into a saint. What they provided instead were models of how to be an ideally virtuous lay person, in the secular world, and they are fascinating to us as examples of what their ascetic and clerical authors thought was both admirable and possible.

The Vitae of Gallic female saints are especially interesting because they were often depicted as having less power over their destinies and struggling with pressure from parents or spouses, meaning that it was harder for them to escape from secularity. The two Vitae of Radegund, for example, both spent significant time on the period before her conversion when she was forced by circumstance to live in ‘the world’. Both authors presented her as undertaking idealized behaviour throughout this period. Venantius Fortunatus described Radegund as a little girl, conversing with other children about her desire to be a martyr if the chance came in her time and he modelled her as one by describing her ‘enduring persecution from her own household’.⁷ She was shown polishing the pavement of the oratory with her dress, dispensing leftover food to other children, and leading them in a religious procession, carrying a wooden cross and singing psalms. Even after she became an adult and undertook that defining lay act, marriage, Radegund behaved in an idealized religious way. She married an ‘earthly prince’ (terreno principi) but was not separated from her heavenly one.⁸ In Lent, Venantius wrote, she was a penitent, wearing a hair shirt under her royal robes, and when the king asked for her at his table, she was busy praying elsewhere.⁹ Radegund the queen patronized monasteries and religious figures, dispensed charity, served the poor, ate ascetically, prayed long hours and refused fine clothing.¹⁰ In his account, Venantius demonstrated therefore that it was possible, even heroic, to live an ascetic life as a married lay person.

The account of her life by Baudonivia made the same point. The author described the saint as modelling an ideal lay way of life, separating herself mentally and spiritually from the world, even while in it. ‘Religion’, Baudonivia wrote, ‘was adopted as an example of the monastic life while she was still in a secular habit.’¹¹ In other words, Radegund was already looking forward to her future moment of conversion to the religious life and adopting its behavioural standards before she adopted the formal clothing. As Baudonivia put it, ‘When she was still with the king wearing worldly garb, her mind was intent on Christ.’¹² Radegund was ‘more celestial than earthly’ and ‘played the part of a wife … acting as a model laywoman whom she herself might wish to imitate’.¹³ Radegund, at this stage of her life, was presented as the ideal lay person, and an example to others.

We find the same model in other Vitae from this period. For example, readers were informed by her biographer that Queen Balthild harboured a desire for a ‘spiritual and heavenly spouse’ (spiritalem caelestemque sponsum), but was married to an earthly one and managed, despite this, to serve Christ ‘in secular clothing’ (sub seculari habitu).¹⁴ The author of Balthild’s Vita, although probably a nun herself, nonetheless did not shy away from Balthild’s ability to be virtuous in the world. She depicted the queen as ministering to the poor, supporting the religious, founding and patronizing monasteries, fighting simony and infanticide and ransoming Christians.¹⁵ In the Vita Bertilae, Balthild was described as a religious woman (religiosa) while still ruling her kingdom, because she was ‘much devoted to God and took care of paupers and churches’.¹⁶ Eustadiola likewise lived the life of a religious woman (religiosa) despite being ‘in secular dress’ (in saeculari habitu).¹⁷ Marriage and motherhood did not prevent this, but her conversion moment came when widowhood allowed her to act on her wishes. She then ‘put off her secular garments’ (abjecto seculari habitu), gave away her possessions and built a monastery in which to reside.¹⁸

Inevitably, given the nature of the genre, the model of ideal lay piety presented here was an ascetic one. The principle was to behave as a nun, even before you became one. We find the same principle at work in the hagiography of male saints. Honoratus of Arles and his brother were described by Hilary as exercising a ‘private episcopate’ (priuatus episcopatus).¹⁹ They led an ‘angelic life’ (angelica vita) while still ‘on earth’ (in terris).²⁰ In his brief Vita of Gregory of Langres, Gregory of Tours gave some attention to his subject’s virtuous life before ordination. Gregory was, according to the text, a just, rigorous and severe count of the city of Autun, he had sex with his wife only for purposes of procreation, was rewarded with sons, and never lusted after another woman. Only after his wife’s death was he ‘converted to the Lord’ (ad Dominem convertitur) and consecrated as bishop.²¹ Even though their heroes fled secularity, therefore, hagiographies still presented a model of how to be a good lay person, living in the world. It was hard, but it was possible.

The second way hagiographies presented ideals of lay behaviour consisted in their portraits of virtuous supporting characters. Although saints’ parents were often presented as obstacles, in some cases they appeared as models of ideal lay religiosity, and here the emphasis was far more upon worldly virtues, and far less upon ascetic or clerical emulations. For example, Aldegund’s mother and father married, had children, worked and lived in the world. According to the author, however, despite being ‘married in the flesh … burning with divine radiance, they chose the spiritual life imitating Paul’s example’.²² Anstrude’s mother and grandfather were both described in her Vita as religious people (religiosi) despite their marriages and evident fertility.²³ Austreberta’s father was termed ‘a man of honest life and venerable customs’, her mother was ‘elegant in her sanctity’, and both were acclaimed for their ‘holy probity of mind, firm faith, great charity, renowned justice, long-suffering hope, almsgiving, and solicitous hospitality for the poor. Adorned with such flowers of virtue, they deserved to be called temples of the Holy Spirit as was manifested afterwards by abundant signs.’²⁴

The final way in which hagiography modelled idealized lay piety was in the expectations laid out in the texts for lay responses to the saints. One important role of the laity within hagiography was to act as the ‘crowd’ – pressuring a saint into becoming their bishop, welcoming a saint to town, being led by the saint in an act of common penance, lamenting at the saint’s death and so forth. The Vita of Rusticula provided a classic example of the saint’s arrival in a city: ‘When it was announced that the venerable handmaid of God was on her way back and was near the city, a great crowd of all ages and sexes ran out, religious, laity, nobles and commoners, rich and poor, natives and strangers.’²⁵ The Vita of Germanus gave a very similar account of the saint’s ordination, describing him as elected bishop by the consensus of all (consensus uniuersitati) and listing clergy, nobility, townspeople and countryfolk.²⁶ At the funeral of Hilary of Arles, his hagiographer assured his readers, the entire city gathered together and wept, the whole population cried out in tears with one voice, and the people were so inflamed with grief that they almost tore his holy limbs apart.²⁷ These were standard motifs repeated in numerous hagiographical texts. In each case, the laity’s behaviour was idealized to show them playing the appropriate role in the crowd around the central hero.

Hagiographies also provide innumerable examples of idealized individual lay acts in veneration of a saint – requesting assistance and showing proper gratitude. Venantius’ Vita of Radegund, for example, told of a noble matron named Bella who was blind, and who made her way to the saint’s presence where she prostrated herself and received a cure.²⁸ Florius, ‘one of the saint’s men’, was fishing at sea when his ship was overturned in the wind. He called out to the saint and he was saved.²⁹ A tribune of the fisc named Domnolenus had a vision of Radegund on the day of her death, in which she instructed him to build an oratory for Martin and to release his prisoners, commands which he immediately obeyed.³⁰ The role of the lay person in these tales was to act as a vehicle for an expression of saintly power, but they also modelled the correct pious response to a holy person: respect, obedience and trust in his or her power. These models would have been presented to lay people when saints’ lives were read at festivals. They also demonstrate for us more broadly what their clerical and ascetic authors fantasized as the ideal forms of a lay Christian life, and these ideals helped shape the religious worlds of Gallic lay people.

Ideals: Sermons

The ideals of lay behaviour found in hagiographies emerged indirectly in texts that were not about them. In sermons, however, we see preachers deliberately constructing such ideals and presenting them to their lay congregations in the hope of effecting a direct impact on their actions. Although still idealized, the models in sermons were far more precise and practical than those in saints’ lives, and they generally assumed that lay people would continue to live in and engage with the secular world. They therefore emphasized rather different forms of religious behaviour and found virtue in the lay life in different ways.

The Gallic preacher with the most to say about ideal lay behaviour was Caesarius of Arles. For him, good behaviour, as he made clear in sermon 13, was essential to being a good Christian in the world. ‘We ought to know that it is not enough for us that we have received the name of Christian, if we do not perform the works of a Christian.’³¹ Caesarius went on then to detail these works: give alms, avoid falsehood, present offerings at the altar, remember the creed and the Lord’s prayer and teach both to your children, be honest in your dealings, stay sober, go to church every Sunday, pay tithes, renounce your sins, take communion, be chaste, be a good example to others, do not commit theft or perjury, do not engage in quarrels or consult soothsayers or sing dissolute songs during religious festivals or shout at the moon during an eclipse or hang herbs and charms on yourself and your family.³² Other instructions were added to the list in other sermons: read the scriptures, be hospitable to strangers, visit the sick, bestow honour upon elders, recall to harmony those who are in dissent.³³ If you are married, do not commit adultery, and follow the rules on when you can have sex.³⁴ If you are not yet married, remain a virgin until you wed.³⁵ Caesarius made very little reference to the varieties of lay piety that have most occupied modern scholars: the cult of saints and use of relics, pilgrimage and festival. His focus was on ordinary, everyday ways of being a good lay Christian in the world.

These principles were informed by Caesarius’ own ascetic training and inclinations, but he was not simply imposing ascetic ideals upon lay Christians. In sermon 168, he assured his lay congregation that there were many levels of Christian virtue:

Men who are not able to give rather abundant alms should at least with a good intention dispense a little something according to their strength. Those who are unable to retain the glory of virginity should at least, with God’s help, strive to observe chastity with their own wives … Now these and similar actions, dearly beloved, are proven not to be excessively difficult or insupportable.³⁶

Caesarius repeatedly emphasized that God did not expect more from anyone than they were capable of giving – if you cannot fast, or keep vigils, you can love your enemies and give charity.³⁷ If you cannot give charity, give wise counsel, or a cup of cold water.³⁸ As a result, married lay people could also find their path to heaven. ‘Married people who have observed mutual fidelity … if they continually give alms and observe God’s precepts as well as they can, will merit happily to be associated with holy Job, Sara, and Susanna, along with the patriarchs and prophets.’³⁹

As all of this makes clear, Caesarius did not expect the same from all Christians. He was explicit that the expectations upon clergy and ascetics were significantly higher than upon lay Christians. Marriage, he explained, was the lowest of the three professions within the church available to women, the higher two being widowhood and virginity.⁴⁰ As an ascetic and a cleric, Caesarius still thoroughly endorsed a hierarchy within Christian communities. Nonetheless, in sermon 135 he made it clear that commitments at every level had to be taken seriously. ‘There is, indeed, a common standard for all men. Not to commit adultery is a precept for married people (nuptae) as well as for religious (sanctimoniali) … Not to steal is a precept for all men.’⁴¹ The same, he went on to point out, was true for drunkenness, pride and murder. The ascetic path was not the only way to virtue. Perhaps, he worried, when he was preaching, someone would reflect and say: ‘I am young and married, how can I cut my hair or assume the religious habit?’ Caesarius hastened to assure such an anxious person that this would not be required. ‘How can a married man be harmed if he is willing to change his evil habits to good and noble works, and if by almsgiving, fasting and prayer he is anxious to restore the wounds of his sins to their former healthy condition? For such a man it is enough to have a true conversion without any change of garments.’⁴² Living entirely without sin was impossible even for saints.⁴³ Lay people, in Caesarius’ mind, should simply strive to do the best they could, and hope that God would judge them kindly.

Caesarius’ approach to lay virtue was to provide lists of ideal behaviours, but not all preachers took the same tack. The sermons in the Eusebius Gallicanus collection offered very few lists of approved behaviours or sets of moral instructions. On the whole, the tone of this collection was far more meditative and vague, with sermons extolling general principles of common decency, rather than prescriptions for heaven. The closest this collection got to a Caesarian-style list was sermon 21, which informed congregants that ‘we’ (the first person plural is typical of the collection):

should adorn the celebrated triumph of the Lord’s passion and resurrection by the preservation of faith; we should show compassion to the poor; we should imitate God to whom no physical form is comparable; we should hold onto the image of his goodness and patience in all things; we should emend errors; we should pray for our enemies; we should make supplication on behalf of our detractors … we should wash the filth of sinners with the oil of almsgiving; the bonds of captives should seem to bind us and we should beseech God for mercy to them.⁴⁴

Insofar as any particular lay behaviour got attention, it was fasting. Fasting was urged upon the laity by a number of preachers in the collection, far more so than almsgiving or chastity, the favourite virtues of Caesarius, although the emphasis was still upon the reasons why it was important, and what it would achieve, rather than the practicalities of when and how a lay person ought to fast.⁴⁵ The Eusebian preachers (or perhaps compiler) also placed far more emphasis than Caesarius did on the importance of acts in order to receive one’s eternal reward.⁴⁶ Virtue was something you had to work at, hard, and throughout your life. Nonetheless, the Eusebian preachers shared Caesarius’ optimism about the possibility of lay success in this venture. ‘We can all have within ourselves the keys to the kingdom of heaven.’⁴⁷ Indeed, in at least one sermon, the Eusebian preacher presented virtue as the easier path. ‘I do not know, dearly beloved, why the rough and uneven ways of sins and pride are more pleasing to us, when the road of humility is more pleasant, level and direct.’⁴⁸ If you find the yoke of Christ a heavy burden, the preacher went on to claim, you have made it so yourself, and need only turn from your previous ways to make it light and pleasant.⁴⁹ Despite their different approaches to the challenge of inculcating good behaviour, therefore, and their emphasis on different aspects of lay virtue, both Caesarius and the Eusebius Gallicanus preachers agreed in presenting ideals which, they argued, were practical and achievable. It was perfectly possible, according to these preachers, to live a good Christian life in the secular world.

Ideals: Epitaphs

This final part on ideals shifts attention from clerical and ascetic perspectives to the ideals of pious lay behaviour found in epitaphs. Many bereaved family members and other commemorators wished to depict the deceased as models of piety. These ideals did not stand apart from the clerical and ascetic ones already explored: many members of the laity accepted, shared or internalized the ideals they would have heard being preached to them or presented in hagiographies. However, there are some different emphases and some interesting silences. The laity had particular ideals in mind at the moment of commemoration.

The tombstone of Epaefanius, who died in 563 and was buried at the church of St Justus in Lyon, described him as the possessor of a number of idealized virtues. He was ‘of the best morals, good to his parents, excellent in faith, dear to the citizens, pious to the poor’.⁵⁰ These were all motifs which recurred in a number of grave inscriptions. Many, for instance, began with reference to good morals as a particular point of praise. Innocentius was described as blessed in morals (beatus in morebus), Auspicius as having distinguished merits (egregiis meritis), another anonymous subject as having the best morals (optimis moribus).⁵¹ This merit was not necessarily reflective of piety, but many inscriptions went on to specify religious behaviours. One of these was generosity in almsgiving and support of the poor, which was mentioned in a number of lay epitaphs. An anonymous woman who died in 566–67 was termed, like Epaefanius, pious to the poor (pauperebus pia) and Sofroniola’s charity was one of her central virtues.⁵² Viliaric was given the title ‘father of the poor’ (pater pauperum), the Burgundian queen Caratena was the nourisher of the poor (fotis pauperibus) and Agapus, as we have already seen, was also praised for his charity.⁵³ Faithfulness and fear of God was another common theme of inscriptions, as with the widow from Lyon, ‘strong in her faith and piety’ (fide pietaq(u)e potens), Sofroniola, who was likewise praised for her faith and piety, and a penitent who was described as a ‘god-fearing woman’ (temens Deum femena).⁵⁴

All of these were standard Christian virtues, and not specific to the laity. Indeed, there was significant crossover between the praise given in epitaphs to clerics and ascetics and that given to the lay deceased, indicating a common sense of virtuous ideals and general expectations.⁵⁵ However, when lay inscriptions went into detail on virtues, they often included more civic or familial qualities on the list. Epaefanius, as we saw, was acclaimed as good to his parents. The anonymous subject of one sixth-century epitaph, as well as being excellent in faith and pious to the poor, was also dear to all and kind to her servants.⁵⁶ Lau[rentius] was ‘loved [by all?], of benevolent spirit, full of humanity, strenuous in fighting’, as well as being religious (relegiosus in fide).⁵⁷ The sons of Riculf and Guntello, meanwhile, painted an evocative picture of their parents: remarkable for their merits, united by a constant love, loved by all, sensible, patient, sweet, capable, generous, honourable and helpful, as well as pious in heart and mind.⁵⁸ Religiosity, in other words, was only one, perhaps quite small, part of the overall picture of a good person to be established in their epitaph.

Only very rarely did epitaphs go into detail about religious behaviour. We have already seen one example, at the start of this chapter, where Agapus was praised for frequenting the holy places.⁵⁹ Caratene was noted for her castigation of her body, sobriety and fasting, while another inscription alludes to the practice of chanting hymns.⁶⁰ Occasional inscriptions reference the fact that the deceased undertook penance, although it is unclear what this meant in practice.⁶¹ Even though the placement of epitaphs indicates the practice of ad sanctos burial in many places, they were generally silent on any connection to the saint. There is little we can say from epitaphs about what the veneration of these figures might have meant to lay people. Moreover, the virtuous behaviour emphasized in epitaphs was not especially ascetic in nature. The ideals found here were ones that celebrated proper engagement with the world, not withdrawal from it.

Some people in late antique Gaul appear to have worried that an idealized lay religious life was not possible, or that there was no true Christian virtue in it. Gregory of Tours reported that a woman named Berthegund left her husband and children to join a nunnery, saying: ‘No one who has sex with their spouse will ever see the Kingdom of Heaven.’⁶² Although he was himself a cleric, and a man who celebrated ascetics, Gregory of Tours did not endorse this attitude. He reminded Berthegund of her obligations to her husband, threatened her with excommunication and sent her back home.⁶³ The Gallic church was not going to insist that all Christians should be ascetics, nor even allow this to everyone who wanted it. Neither did clerics always present the world as inherently sinful and contaminating, despite the rhetoric we saw in Chapter 1. When addressing the laity, they took care to present models of idealized virtue and instructions on how to achieve it. Epitaphs suggest that lay people also thought virtue was possible in the midst of secularity and that it should be celebrated and advocated. These ideals helped to form the religious worlds of the laity in late antique Gaul.

Misbehaviour

Our clerical sources had a great deal to say about lay misbehaviour of various kinds and this evidence has attracted scholarly attention, especially when the misbehaviour was framed in the texts as ‘pagan’.⁶⁴ Attacks on lay misbehaviour were just as deliberate and distorting as the inverse accounts of idealized lay virtue. Both were calculated to change lay behaviour and set up models that the laity should either follow, to get rewards, or avoid, in the face of threatened consequences. However, they also suggest something of the nature of the behaviour beyond the rhetoric, and we get some indication of what it was lay people were doing that the clergy wanted to change. In this section, I focus on just two attacks: those on Christian lay people who continued to engage in ‘pagan’ activities, and tales of misbehaviour on the Sabbath and holy days. Although the labels applied to this misbehaviour by the authors of these texts tell us little about the self-conception of the people they describe, there is still value and interest in exploring these portraits of the laity.

The accounts of apparent paganism in sermons and church council records have been very controversial. Historians have debated whether the accusations of pagan activities among the laity represent the survival of ancient traditions, resistance to the dominant Christian culture, independent religious formations or essentially empty rhetorical tropes.⁶⁵ For our purposes here, the most interesting aspect of these attacks is how many of them placed the ‘pagan’ behaviours within a Christian framework. In other words, although clerics labelled the problematic behaviours as pagan, they acknowledged that the people performing them identified as Christian. The clerical attacks therefore focused on arguing that these behaviours were incompatible with Christian identity and had to be changed. The labelling served to make this argument. For example, in sermon 33, Caesarius outlined at length the proper preparation and observances for the feast of John the Baptist. He then condemned a series of improper devotions. ‘Let no one on the feast of St John dare to bathe in the fountains or marshes or rivers either at night or early in the morning; that wretched custom still remains from pagan observances … We likewise admonish you, brethren, not to allow your household to sing shameful, dissolute songs which are opposed to chastity and upright living.’⁶⁶ We do not have to accept Caesarius’ categorization of this behaviour as pagan. We do not even have to accept his view that these practices ‘remain’ from former times. We can more comfortably, however, accept the notion that lay people were behaving in ways that Caesarius found inappropriate on the festival of John the Baptist.⁶⁷ Caesarius made very similar accusations about lay behaviour at ‘holy festivals’ in sermon 13, where he condemned those who led a chorus, sang, danced and pantomimed. ‘Even if they come to church as Christians’, Caesarius fulminated, they ‘return from it as pagans, because that kind of dancing has carried over from pagan practice’.⁶⁸ There are some people, he bemoaned in another sermon, ‘who come to the birthday festivals of martyrs for this sole purpose, that they may destroy themselves and ruin others by intoxication, dancing, singing shameful songs, leading the choral dances, and pantomiming in a devilish fashion’.⁶⁹ These practices, Caesarius insisted, ‘have remained from the profane customs of the pagans’ and anyone engaging in them would lose the sacrament of baptism and be judged by the Lord to be among pagans rather than among Christians.⁷⁰

In each of these cases, Caesarius’ complaint was that some members of his lay congregation did not share his views on what behaviour was acceptable and unacceptable in a Christian. He responded to this by trying to make particular actions beyond the pale by labelling them as pagan. Caesarius used the same technique to attack a range of other lay activities as pagan, accusing his congregants of engaging in masquerades, shouting at the darkened moon, fulfilling vows to trees and fountains, hanging phylacteries, magic signs, herbs or charms on themselves or their family members, and refusing to work on a Thursday.⁷¹ Caesarius did not suggest, however, that these lay people operated outside a Christian framework. Sermon 53 made clear the preacher’s frustration with those who blurred the strict boundaries he perceived, and attempted to enforce. ‘We have heard that some of you make vows to trees, pray to fountains, and practise diabolical augury … Why then did these miserable people come to church? Why did they receive the sacrament of baptism – if afterwards they intended to return to the profanation of idols?’⁷² Christian actions and pagan actions, Caesarius argued, could not co-exist. This was all part of Caesarius’ ‘rhetoric of separation between pagan and Christian’.⁷³ His attempts to ensure separation and categorization, however, are our best evidence that some lay people did not share his views on separation and categorization. The very structure of his attacks, clearly designed to persuade, and to change behaviour, suggests that some lay behaviours blurred boundaries in ways Caesarius found problematic.

The picture provided by Caesarius was echoed in the Concilia Galliae. Various councils also condemned practices which they described as pagan, and which they pinned on both laity and clergy. The councils made clear that the problematic festival practices, and the reading of auguries, were undertaken by Christians.⁷⁴

If any Christian, in the custom of pagans, should swear on the head of some wild animal or other beast and invoke over it the gods of the pagans, and if, having been admonished, he does not want to be prohibited from this superstition, he should be expelled from the community of the faithful and the communion of the church until he should emend this fault.⁷⁵

At the Council of Auxerre in 561–605, clergy prohibited vows to trees or fountains unless whoever made the vow kept a vigil in the church and acquitted their vows to the benefit of those on the church poor list.⁷⁶ It was not permitted, the same council went on, to make use of lots or auguries, unless it was done in the name of the Lord.⁷⁷ In other words, even those complaining about this misbehaviour recognized that it took place within a Christian framework, and that lay people were making different decisions about which behaviours were appropriate.

Accounts of lay misbehaviour on the Sabbath and other holy days represent a slightly different and less rhetorically charged situation. Church council records and secular law codes alike both repeatedly insisted that the laity should not work on a Sunday.⁷⁸ A canon from the Council of Orléans in 538 specified that agricultural labour was prohibited on the Sabbath, so that all Christians could be free to come to church, and this was repeated at the Council of Chalon in the mid-seventh century.⁷⁹ A decree of King Childebert permitted food preparation on Sundays but outlawed other kinds of servile work.⁸⁰ In miracle stories, the ban was presented as more extensive and lay people got into trouble for baking bread or combing hair. Miracle stories also applied these prohibitions to other holy days such as saints’ festivals, Easter and parts of Lent.⁸¹ Pious observance of these days was therefore treated in each of these genres as a key element of proper lay behaviour.

At the Council of Mâcon in 585, however, the clergy present complained that these rules were being disregarded. ‘For we see that the Christian people hold the Lord’s day in contempt through their thoughtless ways and behave just as they do on private days.’⁸² The participants at the council were therefore directed to admonish their congregants upon their return home and the laity were instructed to spend the whole Sabbath focused on worship of God.⁸³ Numerous miracle stories likewise reported lay failures to observe the holy days, although this was always punished and corrected, as the genre would require. Often they presented a neat morality tale, such as the example in the miracles of St Martin, in which a slave repaired a fence on a Sunday and suffered a crippled hand as a result. Eventually, he prayed at Martin’s church and was healed.⁸⁴ In the course of their accounts of this misbehaviour, however, the stories also suggested possible reasons for it. Repairing a fence was a job that sometimes could not wait until Monday, and the slave may anyway not have had much choice about whether or not to undertake this work. In another miracle story, a layman named Ursulf was forced by his master to find and repair a gap in a fence where cattle were entering, but was punished by being blinded, because it was the first day of Lent.⁸⁵ In another tale told by Gregory of Tours, the misbehaving lay person was on his way to church on Easter Sunday when he saw a herd of animals ruining his crops. ‘He groaned, and said, “Woe on me, for the work of my whole year is being wasted and nothing will remain.” And he took an axe and began to cut branches to block the opening in the hedge. Immediately, of its own accord, his hand gripped itself so that it could not release what it had grasped.’⁸⁶ Only intervention by the local saint could restore his hand to its normal state. In Gloria confessorum 97, a citizen of Orléans who tended his garden on the day of Saint Avitus’ festival defended his action by claiming that Avitus was also a working man, and therefore presumably would understand.⁸⁷ Each of these stories indicated a more complex lay attitude to the work prohibition than the surface interpretation presented by its clerical author. A general lay respect for Sabbath, or for Lent, or for a saint’s festival, was tempered by a knowledge of agricultural realities and/or a desire to present their behaviour in the most sympathetic light possible. The laity may have regarded the observation of these days as an ideal, but faced with the loss of one’s crops, or the immediate power of one’s master, other priorities could prevail.

Furthermore, we need to balance these clerical complaints against the intriguing canon from the Council of Orléans in 538, which condemned excessive observation of the Sabbath.

Because the people were persuaded that they should not travel on the Lord’s day by horse or oxen and by carriage and that no food should be prepared or labours performed in the house or for people, all of which pertains more to Jewish than to Christian observances, we decree that on the Lord’s day, that which was permitted previously should [still] be permitted.⁸⁸

Significantly, the canon concluded by insisting that those who broke the rules were to be subject to ecclesiastical jurisdiction, not to lay judgement. The clergy were clearly seeking to exert their own control over the nature and extent of Sunday observances. We cannot conclude on the basis of one canon that there was widespread lay over-observance of the Sabbath. It does, however, suggest an environment in which lay religiosity did not accord neatly with clerical ideals, and it provides another example of how attacks on lay misbehaviour can hint at the world of action and interpretation beyond.

Indirect evidence

The final section of this chapter tackles indirect evidence for lay religious behaviour. This is evidence where the laity were in the background of the main story, or were assumed to be acting in a particular way, provoking a response from the clergy or from ascetics. In examples of this type of evidence, the author was not especially interested either in promoting a model of lay behaviour or in condemning it. The laity were, in fact, largely incidental, and provided a plausible context for the author’s actual concerns. In these cases, the laity appear less carefully constructed and the glimpses of lay behaviour that emerge are therefore particularly valuable.

An episode from the Vita of Radegund by Venantius Fortunatus illustrates this well. One evening at twilight, Venantius wrote, ‘the layfolk were singing noisy songs near Radegund’s monastery as they danced around accompanied by musicians with citharas’.⁸⁹ One of the nuns, to her apparent surprise, recognized one of her own songs, ‘being preached by the dancers’. Indeed, the nun went on to insist that two or three of her own religious songs had been mingled, as Venantius put it, with ‘the odour of the world’.⁹⁰ Radegund, however, could not hear the worldly elements of the songs, but could only perceive the properly spiritual words, something which demonstrated, Venantius concluded, ‘that though her flesh remained in the world, her spirit was already in Heaven’.⁹¹ Venantius’ purpose, in this story, was to convince his audience of Radegund’s holiness. She was presented as exemplifying an idealized separation of saintly and secular. The lay people were simply present as contrast, acting to blend and blur boundaries in ways that Venantius depicted as inferior. We cannot know if Venantius was providing us with an image of actual lay behaviour in this anecdote, or whether he constructed an appropriate foil, the better to set off his heroine. Nonetheless, their behaviour had to be credible to those who read the story, so that the reader’s attention would be drawn to the extraordinary saint. Furthermore, this evidence fits with the picture we have begun to build up of lay people interacting with and valuing religious traditions and institutions, but using them in their own ways, not completely under clerical control.

Gregory of Tours gave another good example. He was once chatting, he wrote, with a boatman contracted to take him and some clerical companions across the Loire river, and asked him about the best places to fish. The boatman, Gregory reported, pointed out a particular spot and added: ‘May the blessed Martin assist you.’⁹² Apparently, Gregory’s companions were annoyed, and retorted that the great St Martin did not stoop to helping people catch fish. The boatman, however, insisted that the saint did exactly that and went on to tell a story of his own. Earlier that year, he claimed, on the day of Epiphany, he had discovered that he had nothing to drink, so he prayed to Martin to give him some wine, that he might celebrate the holy festival in proper style. When he was next crossing the river, an enormous fish was thrown from a whirlpool and fell into his boat. The boatman then sold the fish, bought some wine and was able to celebrate Epiphany, along with everyone else. ‘Hence you will know’, the boatman concluded, according to Gregory, ‘how quickly Martin will appear on behalf of something for which he has been invoked, if the request is made piously’.⁹³ Gregory gave no further comment on this tale, but concluded by stating: ‘I call God as a witness that I heard this story from the mouth of this boatman.’⁹⁴

Here we seem to have a picture of lay religious behaviour: petitioning prayer to a saint, based on confidence that the saint cared about and was involved in the ordinary activities of secular life. In the background, moreover, we catch a glimpse of the social pressure to celebrate a religious festival in appropriate style, with alcohol. The anecdote even seems to reveal some of the tensions between lay and clerical approaches, as Gregory’s companions derided the boatman’s rusticity. We also know that plenty of sermons attacked drunken revelries on feast days as disrespectful and impious, whereas the boatman insisted that Martin had enabled such celebration. But the clerical–lay division in the story was not absolute. Gregory, himself a bishop, had no compunction about citing this tale as further evidence for the power of his favourite saint, and implicitly endorsed the boatman’s account, in contrast to the apparent scepticism of his companions. The anecdote therefore suggests a complex religious world, where lay people participated fully in a religious culture, but also used it to their own ends and interpreted it in their own ways – ways connected to, but not always identical with, the religious understandings of the Gallic clergy, who themselves had a variety of perspectives and reactions. In this story, Gregory’s purpose was simply to accumulate more evidence of Martin’s power – the details of the events were there to provide veracity, not a model. I argue, therefore, that we can place more weight upon them. The boatman might not have summed up the lesson of his tale quite as neatly as Gregory had him do, but the essential elements of the story, and the outline of the boatman’s behaviour and beliefs, are possible and plausible.

Gregory also provided indirect evidence of lay religious behaviour when he talked about how lay people sometimes got their piety wrong. For example, in Gloria martyrum he told a story of a count who suffered from painful feet.⁹⁵ One of his servants suggested that he try washing his feet in one of the liturgical vessels from the altar of the local church, but once he had done so, the count was completely crippled in punishment for his impiety. Gregory treated the count and his servant with derision. They were idiots (stulti), he said, who did not know that the sacred vessels of God should not be adapted to human use. Gregory, of course, wanted to be the arbiter of what was permitted and what was not, and he shaped his tale to make this point. However, the actions of the count and his servant are plausible. Gregory’s works are full of stories of saintly body parts being used in exactly this sort of way. It would be no great stretch to imagine lay people extending this to the sacred vessels of the church. The count and the servant both appeared to believe in the healing power of religious objects and they acted according to that logic. Gregory objected to their agency but shared the same basic worldview.

Gregory also told numerous stories about lay people using relics incorrectly. In one tale he gave an account of a man who took a reliquary into his storeroom. According to Gregory, this was a miscalculation, because the storeroom was thereby sanctified and rendered no longer suitable for secular use. Eventually the man had to tear down the storeroom and build an oratory in its place, to compensate for his rusticity.⁹⁶ In his account of the miracles of St Martin, Gregory told of how one of his servants had brought home a piece of wood from the railing around Martin’s bed and ‘kept it in his cottage for protection’. Eventually a vision informed him that this was impious, and the rail was relocated by the bishop to an ‘appropriate place’.⁹⁷ The line between improper appropriation and laudable lay piety, however, was a very thin one, and depended on Gregory’s point in any given tale. In the same collection on St Martin, Gregory actually condoned the theft of a relic for purposes of healing. One man was so filled with faith, Gregory reported, that he attempted secretly to remove a relic from Martin’s tomb, and eventually came at night with a knife, to cut a section from the rope that rang the saint’s bell, which thereafter bestowed health on many ill people. Gregory used this story to illustrate the sheer number of miracles Martin worked, and the extent of his powers.⁹⁸ Other examples of lay agency were likewise presented to further a point about saintly power, not to make an argument for clerical authority. For example, Gregory claimed that lay people living near Bordeaux went to an oratory of Martin when their horses were afflicted with a disease. Obtaining the key to this oratory, they made it into a brand and marked the animals, effecting their cure.⁹⁹ In none of these cases was there any visible presence of clergy. The point of the stories, for Gregory, was an illustration of the extensive power of holy men. The interesting feature of the stories for us is the behaviour of the laity in responding to their own religious needs. They were not necessarily acting in tension with the wishes of the church, but they were not acting under any ecclesial direction either. Gregory’s position on lay religious agency clearly shifted according to his rhetorical purpose. However, the actions he described are essentially constant, and suggest a particular kind of lay approach to the religious, walking a fine line between clerical approval and disapproval.

Another place to look for indirect evidence is in the legal literature from the period. To take just one example of this, many sources make reference to the practice of wealthy lay people donating property to the church. Since few charters from this period survive, we largely learn about the practice from the laws and formularies designed to avoid disputes. The pious practice was therefore not here the central point of the source, it was the assumption from which the law proceeded, and a behaviour to which it was responding. Incidentally, however, we find out a great deal about donation practices because the legal sources make clear what they expected the problems to be. In particular, the barbarian law codes and collections of formulae from this period acted to protect donations against subsequent interference or claims by the family. They often insisted that the local bishop was to have full power over the gift, and that the individual or family lost any rights over it, even when they still resided on site.¹⁰⁰ The church councils likewise expressed great anxiety about lay people attempting to withdraw gifts given either by themselves or by their family members.¹⁰¹ In 506, for example, the Council of Agde declared that any clerici or saeculares who attempted to regain control over any gifts given by their parents to a church or monastery were to be considered murderers of the poor (necatores pauperum), and excluded from the church.¹⁰² But not all the laws gave full control to the clerical establishment. The Formulae Marculfi contained a fascinating model for someone who wished to build an oratory out of a large property and provide for the support of twelve paupers as well as the clerics who would serve there.¹⁰³ After signing over various lands and incomes to sustain this establishment, the donator decreed that the local bishop would have the power to replace clergy as necessary but not to ‘give, claim or diminish’ any part of the grant, and provided for exactly the sort of continuing family involvement that other laws sought to deny. Many suggestive points can be drawn out of this evidence. The existence of formulae and laws in large numbers indicates that such donations were becoming routine, but also that the church was anxious to control them. In particular, they appeared worried that property, once donated, might be withdrawn by heirs, or that donating families might be able to exercise power over the institutions they funded. All of this anxiety and care reflects the very real problem that many powerful lay people who gave to religious institutions expected some continuing influence to derive from that. Given the central role that church institutions played in their lives and in their eternal prospects, it would have been natural for the powerful to try to exert control over this aspect of their world as well. Indirect evidence therefore confirms the ideal model of lay piety and respect for the church, but also suggests that it could operate in practice in more complicated ways, and with more lay agency than was comfortable for some clergy.

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This chapter has explored a range of lay behaviours: idealized, iniquitous and incidentally revealed. These behaviours were very diverse: preachers and hagiographers did not emphasize the same pious acts, and epitaphs show that while lay people may have absorbed certain clerical expectations, they placed them within the context of their own behavioural ideals. Attacks on lay misbehaviour also demonstrate a mismatch between clerical interpretations of lay activities and the meanings that lay people may have placed upon them. Finally, indirect evidence has revealed lay people lurking in the background of a range of genres, interacting with church institutions on their own terms and in their own ways. There was plenty of scope for the laity of late antique Gaul to formulate their own views on how a good Christian should behave in the secular world.