| Chrodegang, bishop of Mets from around 748 to 766, was the first among Carolingian thinkers to incorporate all the major aspects that characterized later Frankish reform into his own work. The main work of his which has come down to us, the Regula canonicorum, ostensibly seeks only modest goals: to enable a cleric "to control himself from illicit things, put aside vice, abandon evil and long-held pleasures ... so that things good and the best might be grafted" onto him. But the rule seeks to do much more than simply keep the canons from grievous sin. It seeks to create in the Metz cathedral close a new community, one based on ideas of hierarchy and equality, love and unanimity, where before there had only been a group of men beset with "strife, scandals, and hate." In this process of community creation--koinotegenesis--Chrodegang deployed various strategies to break down older structural divisions, and to create something new, a cathedral close united under its bishop, where all canons shared the same goal of praising God.;But while Chrodegang understood the past through texts, he felt free, and perhaps even compelled, not just to present the past as it was, but to determine its essential characteristic. Once this quintessence had been discovered, Chrodegang systematically set about trying to recreate it in his contemporary context. By mimetic and intertextual strategies, Chrodegang sought to bring to birth in Mets a new creation, a hagiopolis, a holy city.;Chrodegang accomplished this not by breaking with the past, but by harnessing it, using the images and work of earlier periods in Christian history to help him achieve his goals. This effort involved a manipulation of texts--most notably the Rule of Benedict, but also works by Julianus Pomerius, Caesarius of Arles, Gregory the Great, various Roman and other conciliar decrees, and even Scripture itself. The past, via these texts, provided him models, but they were not the sort of models that could be transplanted unchanged into his own environment. Instead, these were exemplars and norms, requiring adaptation and re-alignment if they were to fit into the world of mid-eighth century Metz. |
