Codex Epistolaris Carolinus

Codex Epistolaris Carolinus

The relationship between church and state is one of the defining features of medieval Europe and touched every aspect of life from peasants and priests to kings and popes. Charlemagne (742–814) commissioned a collection of 99 letters from reigning popes to Carolingian rulers dating between the years 739 and 791 concerning the subject and had them bound into a codex. The resulting manuscript is an invaluable source for researchers of political and church history in the Early Middle Ages and although it is now lost, its contents survive in this precious late-9th century codex, the only extant copy that is preserved in the Austrian National Library.
The letters originate from the popes Gregory III, Zacharias I, Stephen II, Paul I, Stephen III, and Hadrian I as well as two letters from Antipope Constantine II. They correspond to the reigns of the Frankish kings Charles Martel, Pippin the Younger, Carloman, and Charlemagne. He ordered that these letters, many of them in poor condition, be recorded so that the “wisdom of the ancients” would be preserved for posterity. It also reflects a period of religious reform at the Carolingian Court and an attempt to restore orthodoxy in the face of heresy and some questionable decisions made at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. These letters thus contain religious instruction from the highest authority that was meant to expel all doubt on various subjects, especially the relationship between church and state.

A Collection of Official Documents

Habent sua data libelli – this saying from Terentianus Maurus can be quoted in few manuscripts with as much justification as the Codex Epistolaris Carolinus. According to the introduction (fol. 1r), the collection of these letters was compiled in 791 at the behest of Charlemagne. The copy that has come down to us is no longer the original codex, but the later and only preserved copy according to an already book-like template, but without any chronological order of the pieces.
It contains the most important political and ecclesiastical documents on the history of the relations of the Frankish Empire with the papacy in the second half of the 8th century, from which the turbulent fate of the relationship between pope and emperor with its ups and downs received its direction. This alone proves the enormous historical value of this manuscript, which originates from Cologne, from the possession of Archbishop Willibert (870–889) and was executed by four scribes in a more or less regular Carolingian minuscule.