Halitgar

Halitgar (Halitgarius, Halitcharius, Halitgaire, Aligerio) was a ninth-century bishop of Cambrai (in office 817–831). He is known also as an apostle to the Danes, and the writer of a widely known penitential.

Life

In 822 he travelled to Denmark as a missionary with Ebbo of Rheims and Willeric of Bremen, though not to great immediate effect.^[1] In 823 he was dedicating the church and relics of St Ursmer at Lobbes.^[2] In 825, with Amalarius of Metz, he carried the conclusions of a Paris synod on iconoclasm to Louis the Pious.^[3] He went as ambassador to Byzantium in 828.^[4]

De Paenitentia

His De Paenitentia laid down qualities Christians should aspire to in their lives.^[5] He discussed a distinction between killing in warfare (a sin), and in self-defense in battle.^[6][7] Heavy penances for homosexual acts were imposed on older men.^[8] The work is also a source for information about surviving pagan practices.^[9]

It was written in five volumes, at Ebbo's request.^[10] Ebbo's intention was to have a normative penitential; Halitgar set aside tariffs of penances for exhortations.^[11][12] This work and the two attributed to Hrabanus Maurus were considered to supersede those written before, and were very influential, particularly in pre-Norman England.^[13] At this point, "the books used by confessors began to consist more and more of instructions in the style of the later moral theology".^[14]

His sources have been much debated:

• material from Gregory the Great, Prosper of Aquitaine, the Collectio Acheriana^[10]
• the Canons of Elvira and other old collections^[11]
• Julianus Pomerius^[15]
• a source common to Halitgar, the Collectio quadripartita, and the penitential writings of Hrabanus Maurus.^[16]

References

• Die altenglische Version des Halitgar'schen Bussbuches : (sog. Poenitentiale pseudo-Ecgberti), Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964
• Raymund Kottje (1980), Die Bussbucher Halitgars von Cambrai und des Hrabanus Maurus: Ihre Uberlieferung und ihre Quellen

Notes

1. ↑ Carole M. Cusack, Conversion among the Germanic Peoples (1998), p. 135.
2. ↑ http://users.skynet.be/bk342309/Lobbes/page7.html, in French.
3. ↑ Rosamund McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians (1983), p. 133.
4. ↑ New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. V: Goar - Innocent | Christian Classics Ethereal Library
5. ↑ Philippe Ariès, Paul Veyne, Georges Duby, A History of Private Life (English translation 1987), p. 536.
6. ↑ Frederick H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (1975), p. 31.
7. ↑ Janet L. Nelson, The Frankish World, 750-900 (1996), p. 78.
8. ↑ Jody Madeira, Rebuilding the Closet: Bowers v. Hardwick, Lawrence v. Texas, and the Mismeasure of Homosexual Historiography(PDF), p. 10
9. ↑ John T. McNeill, Folk-Paganism in the Penitentials, The Journal of Religion, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Oct., 1933), pp. 450-466.
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. II: Basilica - Chambers | Christian Classics Ethereal Library
11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Henry Charles Lea, A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church I (1896), p. 105.
12. ↑ Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon England (2003), p. 227.
13. ↑ Thomas Pollock Oakley, English Penitential Discipline and Anglo-Saxon Law in Their Joint Influence (2003), p. 31.
14. ↑ Canon law - LoveToKnow 1911
15. ↑ David Ganz, The Ideology of Sharing p. 26 in Property and Power in the Early Middle Ages (1995) edited by Wendy Davies, Paul Fouracre.
16. ↑ Ghostly Recensions in Early Medieval Canon Law: The Problem of the Collectio Dacheriana and its Shades, The Legal History Review, Volume 68, Numbers 1-2, January, 2000