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Reviewed by:
  • A Sacred Kingdom: Bishops and the Rise of Frankish Kingship, 300–850
  • Greg Bearringer
Michael Edward Moore, A Sacred Kingdom: Bishops and the Rise of Frankish Kingship, 300–850 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press 2011) xii + 456 pp.

Some basic parameters of this book will suffice to show how impressive a task Dr. Moore set out upon: using sources from seven different languages, he contends that, over the course of more than five hundred years, the Frankish society and the various ruling families managed to grow from roving Germanic bands to rulers of an empire which covered a vast portion of the continent. This process, Moore argues, was in many ways guided by the bishops who interacted with the Frankish monarchy through (mutually beneficial) political and socio-religious ties that bound them together. There is much good to be said not only of the meat of Dr. Moore’s argument but also how he sets the table: he first must have us reimagine bishops not as mere second choice nobles searching for different avenues of power, but as significant players themselves serving [End Page 245] both an important social and governmental role who naturally came—ideally with appropriate reservations—from the aristocratic ranks.

In chapter 1, Moore lays out a history of bishops who fill a vacuum of power in various ways: building not only cathedrals but also mutually agreed upon definitions of authority and significant legal precedents which combined already extant Roman and biblical traditions, with provisions for spontaneous issues dealt with at councils. His second chapter has the cadre of bishops, with origins in imperial power, attempting to cultivate authority through these various councils by setting themselves as the authority of both Roman and canon law. These councils also became real forums of authority and of powerful men. The third and fourth chapters have bishops cementing their power and position, first by endowing the offices of bishop and king with specific roles steeped in religion and its rituals from which they derived a civic duty; and second, by using their cache and legal expertise to craft an historic-mythological model in which the king ruled along side bishops but only in a mutually beneficial relationship of power and form. Chapter 5 discusses the central role the bishops played in liturgy—as well as, more broadly, religious symbology—and how this reflected their central role politically and economically. In chapter 6, Moore argues that Boniface and those after him created an identity of kingship based upon a missionary ideal structured upon military action which was nevertheless counted as a sacral duty.

The seventh chapter sees the transformation of the church under the bishops into an “imperial” Church which sought a unified identity under law and along side a sacrilized kingship. Here, notably, Moore refutes the idea that the Carolingian government could be described as anything like a “political Augustinianism,” which makes sense when considering the long line of bishops manipulating the legal and religious traditions until they were, in fact, the very foundations of Carolingian monarchy. Indeed, he cites the fact that written law—the unquestioned domain of the bishop—became the medium through which Charlemagne expressed his authority and became increasingly concerned with duties left heretofore to the bishops. Chapter 8 has both the kingship and the bishops united in thought and purpose under the reign of Louis the Pious even while the political system began to crumble because of the inherent flaw of Merovingian succession. In the final chapter, Moore also points to a strained nobility called upon to be nearly saint-like in their responsibly to both the peoples and the land. Meanwhile, the bishops sought to codify nearly every religious practice. The council of Paris in 825 is shown both as a great achievement of Louis as well as the last great thrust of the royal and episcopal unity. It also contained, however, harbingers of a division between the two ruling classes of God’s kingdom. The overall thrust of Louis’s reign is that there was an increased effort to shape the kingdom into a Godly one even while the ability of the kingdom create or sustain unity was waning...

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