This short letter by Hincmar of Rheims has not been dated, although Gerhard Schmitz argued that it was written around the same time (876-877) as a longer text, "De presbiteris criminosis" (About delinquent priests). It is not certain whether Teutfrid was a priest in Hincmar's archdiocese or whether Hincmar was responding to a request for advice on the case from bishops elsewhere. A location for the theft in West Francia is most likely, given Hincmar's involvement, although the mention of the tunic of Queen Emma as stolen by Teutfrid suggests a church that had close connections with Louis the German and his family. From the amount he stole, he was also unlikely to have been a parish priest, but was probably attached to a convent, cathedral or some other elite shrine.
The editio princeps of the text was by Jean Busée in 1602, based on a now lost manuscript from Speyer; the title was first used by Jacques Sirmond in his edition, reprinted from Busée. This text has been translated from Migne's reprint of Sirmond in Patrologia Latina 125, col. 1111-1116.
1)
1) Pope St Gregory [Gregory I] in the register of his decrees many times decreed that ecclesiastical business and cases ought to be decided legally and regularly (1). Where and by whom the case of the priest Teutfrid should be conducted and decided: "The laws decree that the accused does not have licence to proceed beyond the bounds of the province. For it is fitting that judgement of the crime is accomplished where the act is said to have been committed. We restrain foreign (peregrina) judgements with laws at hand (praesentes)." [Codex Theodosianus 9.1.10]. And chapter 30 of the Carthaginian canons: "It pleases that the accused and the accuser should be in such a place that the one who is accused, if he fears any force from the heedless crowd, might choose a place near to him, in which it would not be difficult to produce witnesses, where the case may be finished." [Council of Hippo 427 c. 2]. And the Synod of the Province of Africa in a letter to Pope Celestine: "The fathers provided very prudently and justly that any matters whatsoever should be finished in the places where they arose." [Letter from Council of Carthage 424-425 to Pope Celestine]
2) A priest who has confessed or been convicted by his own bishop, if he is obstinate, ought to be judged by the bishops of his province, just as the canons of Nicaea, Antioch, Serdica and African Carthage decree. For the Antioch canons, chapter 16 say: "That one is a perfect council where the metropolitan bishop should be present." [Council of Antioch 341, c. 16]. And chapter 20 from the episcopal councils: "In the councils themselves the priests and deacons should be present and all who think themselves injured and let an examination be made by the synod." [Council of Antioch 341, c. 20]. And chapter 9: "That the bishop should attempt to do nothing aside from the metropolitan bishop, except what pertains to his own diocese, nor should the metropolitan act without the advice of the remaining sacerdotes." [Council of Antioch 341, c. 9]
3) Since Teutfrid is said to have confessed or been convicted (2) about church goods removed secretly and sacrilegiously, that is three chasubles, the tunic of Queen Emma (3), a gold belt with gems, an ivory burse [box for the liturgical corporal], a pound of gold and other additional things, the laws say: "Confessed debtors are taken as judged and therefore the constituted times of payment should be counted from the day of their confession." [Pauli Sententiae, 5.5A. 2]. And the Canons of the Apostles chapter 25 say: "Let a bishop, priest or deacon who is caught in fornication, perjury or theft be deposed, yet not deprived of communion. For Scripture says: "The Lord will not punish twice in the same matter." [Canons of the Apostles, c. 25, citing Old Latin version of Nahum 1:9]. For if he swore fidelity to God in the case, he is caught in perjury; since he removed holy property from the true God, he has admitted sacrilege, just as Pope St Anacletus, ordained priest by the blessed apostle Peter himself and afterwards made bishop as his successor in the Roman see, judged with very many bishops: "He who seizes, takes away or defrauds monies of Christ and the Church is a homicide and will be reckoned a homicide in the sight of the just Judge [God]. He who seizes money from his neighbour works iniquity. But he who takes away church money or property commits sacrilege and should be judged as sacrilegious” [Pseudo-Anacletus, J3 †15 in Pseudo-Isidore]. And St Urban, pope and martyr: "Church property and goods are called offerings, since they are offered to God and they are the vows of the faithful and the price of sinners. If anyone seizes these, he is condemned to the damnation of Ananias and Sapphira [Acts 5: 1-11], and it is proper to hand over this kind to Satan, so that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord” [Shortened extract from Pseudo-Urban I, JK †87, in Pseudo-Isidore]. And Pope St Lucius: "By apostolic authority, we expel seizers of church property and goods, anathematized, from the thresholds of holy church and we condemn them and judge them to be sacrilegious. And an equal punishment catches both those doing and those consenting [to the act]." [Shortened extract from Pseudo-Lucius, J3 †246 in Pseudo-Isidore] And Pope St Gregory: "It is sacrilege and against the laws if someone should try to retain what is left to venerable places for his own profits by efforts of evil will" [Gregory, Epistola 9.90 to Sabinus].
And St Augustine, by merit reckoned by the Apostolic See (through blessed Celestine) to be among the best teachers of the church, in a sermon on the Gospel of St John says: "Behold Judas is among the saints [apostles], behold Judas is a thief and You did not condemn him, a sacrilegious thief, not any ordinary kind of thief, but of the purses of God, purses, but holy. If crimes are discovered in the forum [i.e. connected to public office], he is not any ordinary kind of thief, but an embezzler of public funds. Theft from the commonwealth (res publica) is called "peculation". And theft of private property is not judged in the same way as theft of public property. How much more vehemently should this sacrilegious thief be judged, he who dared not to take from whatever place, but from the Church? He who steals and snatches something from the Church is compared to Judas, who was destroyed." [Augustine, Tractate on the Gospel of John 50, s. 10] And the sacred canons say about this: "Clerics and also secular men who presume to retain the offerings of their relatives or donations or things left by testament or believe that which they themselves have given to churches or monasteries may be taken away: just as the holy synod constituted, let them be excluded from churches as if killers of the poor until they should give back, and those who are excluded from churches should not be permitted to remain in their ecclesiastical grade.(4)" [Council of Agde 506, c. 4]
4) If Teutfrid confesses or is convicted, and then leaving ecclesiastical judgement, should seek the palace for the sake of his defence or purgation (5), the Council of Antioch, chapter 11 should be produced: "If any bishop or priest or one subject to whatever ecclesiastical rule should go to the emperor or king, without the counsel or letters of the [church] province and especially the metropolitan, it is proper for this one to be condemned, and thrown out not only from communion but also from the honour whose holder he seems to be, since he tried to bring trouble to the ears of the venerable prince about the laws of the Church. If therefore a necessary case requires going to the prince, let this be done with the consultation and council of the metropolitan and the remining bishops who are in the same province, whose letters should accompany the traveller" [Council of Antioch 341, c. 11]. And the Carthaginian canons, chapter 9: "Whoever of the bishops, priests and deacons and clerics, when a charge is directed against him in the church, or a civil case is moved, if leaving ecclesiastical judgement, he wants to be purged by public judgement, even if the verdict is offered in his favour, let him lose his position: this is in criminal matters. But in civil matters let him lose what he has won, if he wants to keep his position" [Breuiarium Hipponense, c. 9]. And Pope St Leo and the Roman synod: "We judge that whoever, passing over the bishop of his church, comes to the judgement of seculars, will be expelled from the sacred thresholds and kept far from the heavenly altars" [Leo of Bourges, Epistula episcoporum Leonis, Uicturi et Eustochi ad episcopos et presbyteros infra tertiam prouinciam constitutos](6).
5) If Teutfrid confesses or is convicted that openly or craftily (ingeniose) he led his supporters (proximi) into perjury (7) it is to be known that he is guilty of all these perjuries, as many times as he led people maliciously into perjury, and he himself has greater sin from that than those who when called by him, swore for him, just as the Lord speaking to Pilate makes clear, saying: "he who handed me over to you has the greater sin" [John 19:11]. And St Gregory in the Pastoral Rule says about people of this kind: "Prelates ought to know that if they ever perpetrate wrong deeds, they deserve as many deaths as they transmitted examples of ruin to their subjects. Whence it is necessary that they keep themselves so much more cautiously from fault, the more they not only die through the evil they do, but are guilty about the souls of others, which they destroyed by their bad example” [Pastoral Rule 3, 4].
And a priest, the more he is loftier in grade than any Christian layman you choose (quolibet Christiano laico), that much greater is his fault, (8) and he who is tied up in the perjury of those men is caught in their perjury and by that, according to chapter 25 of the Apostolic canons is to be judged concerning perjury. About which St Jerome, explaining the sentence of the prophet Ezekiel about the crooked oath by King Zedekiah says: "For that one was found much more faithful who believed you because of the name of the Lord and was deceived, than you who through the opportunity of divine majesty attempted a plot against your enemy, nay rather now your friend” [Jerome, Commentarii in Ezechielem, 5, 17]. Therefore, Scripture says: "I will place on his head the oath that he despised and the pact that he violated" [Ezekiel 17:19]. "For we read that the captured Zedekiah was led into Riblah where, his sons having been killed, he was blinded, and captive in a cage like a wild animal, transferred to Babylon" [Jerome, Commentarii in Ezechielem, 5, 17](9).
Indeed, as blessed Gregory explains: "the Babylonian king is the ancient enemy [the Devil], possessor of inmost disorder, who first slaughters sons before the eyes of the watcher, since he often thus kills good works, so that he who is captive, lamenting, may see himself lose these. For very often the mind produces good things, and yet conquered by the delights of its flesh, loses the good things it lovingly produces and considers what it suffers as harms, but yet does not raise the arm of virtue against the Babylonian king. But while seeing [these losses], it is struck through by the performing of wickedness, as often as sin is practised and conducted to the state that he himself is also deprived of the light of reason. Whence the Babylonian king, having first killed his sons, snatched out the eyes of Zedekiah, since the malign spirit having first taken away good works, afterwards also takes away the light of understanding. Which Zedekiah rightly suffers in Riblah. Indeed, Riblah is interpreted "these many". For whenever also the light of reason is closed for him, he is wearied in wicked use from the multitude of his sins" [Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job 7, 28](10).
He who violates an oath in the name of the Lord suffers all these things by the just judgement of God, since as blessed Jerome says, "he who despises an oath, despises Him by whom he swears, and does injury to that one, whose name his adversary believed" [Jerome, Commentarii in Ezechielem, 5, 17]. That is the one to whom he swore in the name of Him who says: "Do not take the name of the Lord in vain, nor pollute that"(11). And "Render to God your oaths" [Matthew 5:33]. And the Psalmist says that one will be in the holy place: "who swears to his neighbour and does not deceive" [Psalm 15: 4].
6) But if he [Teutfrid] should want to say that, forced by necessity, he ordered [his witnesses] to make that oath, an oath which he was able and ought to have kept, and that therefore he is not to be held guilty of perjury (12), let him hear what St Gregory says about he who swears or anathematizes: "About someone who has to swear or anathematize and persuades you by flattery that he should not be held guilty if he violates what he swore or anathematized, since he did this unwillingly.(13) If there are those who should say that someone who anathematizes when forced by necessity is not to be bound by the bond of anathema, they themselves who say this are witnesses for themselves that they are not Christians, who reckon that they can dissolve the bonds of Holy Church by vain attempts. Since they do not regard the absolution of holy Church, which it offers to the faithful, as true if they do not reckon its bonds as valid. We should not dispute against them for any longer because in all things they are to be despised and anathematized and since they believe that they deceive the Truth, therefore they are truly bound in their sins. And both I and all the catholic bishops and the whole Church anathematize them, since they perceive contraries to the truth and speak contraries." [Gregory Ep 11, 27 to Theoctista] (14).
7) But if he [Teutfrid] should say, as many are accustomed to say, that he ordered [his witnesses] to swear with trickery (ingenium), let him not think he can deceive the Lord by verbal art, to whom nothing is hidden and who considers not what someone may swear, but what the one to whom it was sworn reckoned it, who believed the oath of his supporters (proximi) . As the catholic doctors say, he who swears through fraud is first guilty towards God, whose name he has taken in vain, against the precept of the law and then towards his neighbour, whom he reckons to deceive by black fraud, as the Psalmist says, since "The innocent in his hands and with a clean heart, who does not swear by fraud to his neighbour will receive a blessing from the Lord" [Psalm 24: 4-5]. But he is also guilty towards himself, "he who takes his soul in vain" [adapted from Psalm 24:4], as the Psalmist says against this (15).
NOTES
(1) Hincmar frequently cited phrases from Gregory the Great's letters on legal procedure in cases involving clerics: see e.g. The Divorce of King Lothar and Queen Theutberga (trans. Stone and West), Response 22, pp. 271-272.
(2) The letter's references to Teutfrid having allegedly confessed or been convicted imply that he has not yet definitively been judged about the theft (and hence there is a need for Hincmar's advice). It is likely, however that some initial church judgement had been made, which Teutfrid was now attempting to appeal.
(3) Emma (c. 810-876) was the wife of King Louis the German of East Francia (reigned 843-876). The donation of her tunic to a church (either before or after her death) may have been part of developing a cult of her. The inscription on a belt she gave to Bishop Witgar of Augsburg implies that she was practising some kind of chaste marriage by the late 850s: see Eric J. Goldberg, "Regina nitens sanctissima Hemma: Queen Emma (827-876), Bishop Witgar of Augsburg, and the Witgar-belt," in Representations of power in medieval Germany 800-1500, ed. Björn Weiler and Simon MacLean (Brepols, 2006), 57-95. It is also possible that the tunic was a votive offering, connected to the severe illness which affected Emma in 874 (a stroke which left her unable to speak).
(4) The final clause about “those who are excluded from churches” is not from the Council of Agde.
(5) Purgation involved the defendant and his supporters (oath-helpers) swearing solemn oaths about his innocence.
(6) On this mid-fifth century text, see Charles West, "Pope Leo of Bourges, clerical immunity and the early medieval secular", Early Medieval Europe 29 (2021), :86-108.
(7) This probably refers to false oaths made by oath-helpers, rather than witnesses.
(8) This is one of Hincmar's most striking claims of the superiority of any priest (not just a bishop) over all laymen (including implicitly, rulers).
(9) Zedekiah was the last king of Judah, who after being installed by King Nebuchadnezzar, revolted against him. He was captured, blinded, and taken to Babylon (2 Kings: 24-25). According to Ezekiel 17: 12-19 Zedekiah had sworn a treaty on oath with Nebuchadnezzar and then broken it. Hincmar sees oath-breaking as closely linked to perjury, since it implies that the original oath was not made sincerely.
(10) Hincmar's reason for including this passage is not clear: by equating Nebuchadnezzar with the devil, the implication is that Zedekiah should not have kept his oath to him, whereas he has just cited Jerome saying that he should.
(11) This phrase is based on Exodus 20:7.
(12) The logic here is hard to follow but possibly reflects Hincmar’s own worries about perjury more than expected objections by Teutfrid. The phrase “forced by necessity” may imply that at an initial hearing, church authorities made Teutfrid swear an oath to produce oath-helpers at a subsequent hearing. Was an ecclesiastical court itself forcing the defendant to choose between oath-breaking and perjury, or even encouraging perjury? Hincmar’s own response, that a coerced oath must still be kept, does not deal with this further problem.
(13) This first sentence of the quotation is not in Gregory's letter: it may be a gloss or heading in an earlier manuscript with an extract from the letter.
(14) Theoctista was sister to the Byzantine emperor Maurice. A translation of the letter is given in https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/letter/1232.html
(15) This section has many similarities to Divorce of King Lothar, (trans Stone and West) Response 6, p. 150, in which Hincmar cites a poem by Theodulf of Orléans making the same two points: that God hears how an oath is received by the recipient and that a misleading oath makes someone guilty towards both God and the one to whom he swears.
