In my first post on this topic, I talked about two long enduring anti-intellectual attitudes: the populist resentment of the upwardly mobile scholar and the ruling class dislike of such new men. I now want to look in a historical way at a different form of anti-intellectualism touched on in dr ngo’s original article. This, expressed in slogans such as ‘trust your instincts’, ‘look into your own heart and decide’ etc, might be broadly seen as a hippy/New Age anti-intellectual philosophy (and associated with ‘liberal’ or left-wing social views). As far as I know, this is a Western attitude without obvious parallels to non-Western movements. What I’m interested is in thinking to what extent such views are a recent (1960s) phenomenon or whether the ideas have deeper roots. (I’m not looking here at ‘populist’ left-wing anti-intellectualism, as seen e.g. in the Cultural Revolution or some strands of working-class socialism)

New Age and hippy thought, of course, has many roots, drawing eclectically on many spiritual traditions from ‘Celtic’ druidry and Buddhism to Native American religions. But I don’t think these are the main sources for its modern Western anti-intellectual content. Some of these traditions are opposed to (or at least sceptical of) the conventional education of their culture, but they all (as far as I know) stress the importance of spiritual training. Witchcraft, shamanism, Buddhism, druid lore, the dream quest etc all seem to me to be ‘gnostic’ in its original sense: they involve the search for a hidden spiritual knowledge (gnosis) that is only slowly (and often painfully) revealed to the searcher after years of striving. It seems to me that the more superficial aspects of New Age thought are imposed on it by the modern West rather than inherent in the underlying spiritual traditions.

A different route for a more general Western hippy/liberal/left-wing anti-intellectualism seems more plausible. My current view (though I’m open to correction, as usual) is that its roots are in eighteenth and nineteenth century Romanticism. This period seems to me to mark the development of three new concepts that are key to this modern anti-intellectualism: a non-religious hostility to ‘science’, the development of ‘progressive’ education, and the Romantic cult of the genius.

Religious hostility to scientific thought has been a characteristic of some strands of Christian and Islamic thought since the later Middle Ages, and tends to be based on a contrast between the ‘true knowledge’ found in holy books and the ‘false knowledge’ of scientists, which is seen as either contradictory to this or superfluous. In contrast, non-religious hostility to ‘science’ is normally based on the opposition of natural/artificial (an idea that has a lot of traction in the Green movement). Although this contrast of the natural and the artificial is an age-old literary trope (as well a Western tradition of pastoral poetry which dates back to the Greeks, there’s also a Chinese one), this contrast of nature and science seems to me only to take off in the Romantic period. This is actually several centuries after the scientific revolution began, which fits with the fact that it wasn’t generally aesthetic concerns about the ‘unweaving of the rainbow’ that really alarmed the Romantics (after all, Goethe studied colour theory and you can’t get more Romantic than him). It was the technology of the Industrial Revolution, whether the factory system and its ‘dark satanic mills’ or the fantasy of creating artificial life that alarmed them. In a similar way, liberal ‘anti-science’ thought in the 1960s focused on the atom bomb and pesticides, and its current concerns include GM crops and carcinogens, while religious anti-science has its key focus on scientific theories such as evolution. (This leads to such paradoxes as right-wing opponents of science who are happy to use advanced technological methods to spread their message, and left-wingers who insist on the need to reject much of modern technology, but who don’t doubt the science of global warming.)

But I don’t think this anti-technology stance on its own leads to anti-intellectualism: instead it’s more likely to lead to a call for a more humanistic education, not a rejection of intellectual culture. Two more ingredients are needed to create the current forms of leftist anti-intellectualism. One is the development of ‘progressive’ educational ideas, which is also a new phenomenon of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. I associate these ideas as originating with the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (although I’d appreciate comments from those better informed on the history of education) and they are obviously influenced by more general ideas of the natural (child) as good and the artificial (adult) as bad.

Associated with this ideal of progressive education in the late eighteenth century was a condemnation of current forms of education as oppressive. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that such ideas arose at the same time as the first attempts at mass education in the west (such as Joseph Lancaster’s assembly-line style monitorial system and the Sunday School movement). It is only when access to education becomes less of a right and more of a privilege that it makes sense to complain that it’s harmful in its current form. Ten centuries or more of learning through beating (standard in the West in medieval and early modern period) had raised little more opposition than the occasional legend of teachers killed by their pupils. Educational violence was implicitly or explicitly seen as compensated for by the advancement education gained one. To be suspicious about how the ruling classes might want to control education also wasn’t paranoid in the period: there were many attempts in eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain (and France) to ensure that the poor were only taught suitable things and to root out dangerous radicalism in them.

Progressive education (and the condemnation of current education) has had a peculiar relationship to anti-intellectualism ever since its origins. On the one hand it tends to condemn certain forms of learning as either socially ‘irrelevant’ or not equally available to all in society (the classic example would be the study of Latin). Thus when it is anti-intellectual, it is so for specifically anti-elitist reasons. (It is ironic that while the main right-wing complaint in the US is of liberal elitists, in the UK it is of anti-elite liberals). Equally, however, progressive education is always based on the idea that everyone in society should be fully educated and thus tends to exalt some forms of learning.

Progressive education and the exaltation of nature by themselves, then don’t encourage the rejection of education; instead they argue for changing its form. They needed combining with the Romantic cult of genius to achieve their full anti-intellectual impact.

The cult of the genius is best seen as a Renaissance phenomenon, but the Renaissance genius is not socially marginalised. In Vaseri’s Lives of the Artists, for example (one of the key works for developing the idea of the artist as genius) boys with exceptional talent are nevertheless shown as undergoing an apprenticeship in the normal way and receiving success and rewards for their talent. In contrast, the Romantic genius was a tormented and unappreciated outsider and might also, for the first time, be untaught/self-taught. Paradoxically, it was the expansion of education in the eighteenth century that allowed the rise of the untaught genius, who needed no education, or whose talent was even harmed by training. (Again, an exaltation of ‘the natural’ is visible here). The ‘peasant poet’, for example, is very much a late eighteenth century phenomenon in the UK (Robert Bloomfield, Robert Burns, John Clare). It was only then that such men could learn to write without acquiring a formal education and yet have their output appreciated (at least by some). There are parallels to such non-classical artists as Samuel Palmer and William Blake.

It was also in this period that there is the first influential cult of the artist as transgressive outsider (with Lord Byron), thus demonstrating how the prosperous might be able to feel unappreciated and oppressed as well. This cult of the Romantic genius has sustained millions of the untalented ever since (via the false syllogism: ‘The untaught genius of X was unappreciated in his/her time. I am untaught and unappreciated. I am therefore a genius’). If the cult of nature and progressive education carried with them the implication that many of the educated could not be trusted, because they misused education, the cult of the Romantic genius allowed the more radical view that education was not really necessary.

I’m not suggesting here a specific genealogy connecting (say) Rousseau and Shelley to the hippies, more that similar reactions across time are visible to persistent characteristics of the modern industrial-capitalist state. ‘Liberal’ anti-intellectualism thus seems to me far more specifically tied to the modern West than populist anti-intellectualism: those in the Third World who have been most vocal about the Western use of knowledge as oppression, for example, are often precisely the products of Western or Western-style higher education.

There’s one other characteristic of the modern world that has also assisted the spread of liberal anti-intellectualism, and that’s paradoxically, the market. Once entrepreneurs realised there was a market (even if a niche market) for ‘left-wing anti-intellectualism’, whether it was for the Lyrical Ballads, Montessori education, modern art, rock and roll or New Age paraphernalia, then the market was willing to supply this (for a price). As much as liberal anti-intellectualism rejects the modern world, it simultaneously depends on it. It cannot gain the simple coherence of popular anti-intellectualism, because its supporters are almost always deeply embedded in the system itself, while simultaneously claiming to be outsiders. It thus has intrinsically ludicrous tendencies (in a way that populist anti-intellectualism doesn’t), but it’s also a much less coherent and dangerous political force.

It is only now I have started reading histories of Carolingian canon law in a systematic way that I have realised the peculiar position that many authors take on the legal position of early canons. Very often these are treated as legally binding, in the same way that canon law later was. If an early church council says that a matter is to be dealt with in a particular way, it is assumed that that becomes law and the whole church simply abides by this.

An alternative, which is almost equally unsatisfactory, is the assumption by some authors (such as Sylvia Konecny) that the impact of church law depends purely on political factors. Whether a royal divorce happened (as in the case of Charlemagne and Desiderius’ daughter) or didn’t (as in the case of Lothar II) had nothing to do with church law and everything to do with the relatively political power of the two rulers.

All this suggests that scholars writing about early medieval church law need to start thinking about the questions that historians writing on early medieval secular law have grappled with for years: what does law actually mean, what is it intended to do and how is it used? There’s a whole debate that seems to have entirely passed modern canonists by, presumably because they’re working in a framework of ‘Roman law’ (both late antique and eleventh century).

The first obvious point of similarity between the secular and ecclesiastical spheres is between law as aspiration versus law as application. The ‘programmatic’ quality of Carolingian capitularies has been overstated, but there is a serious point being made. Many Carolingian ‘laws’ are as much visions of what an ideal society should be like than strictly enforceable measures, and the same is true of many canons. I suspect that canonists have not taken this on board because they subconsciously feel that the symbolic use of law is a characteristic of ‘primitive’ societies, which do not have a proper understanding of law. The example of the UK ban on hunting with dogs, however shows that symbolic laws are not restricted to legally unsophisticated societies.

Secondly, parallels with secular law may get us out of excessive hang-ups about enforcement of ecclesiastical law (or its lack). The characteristic of all ‘state’ law-enforcement before the modern period (and specifically the development of police forces) is its reliance on occasional, exemplary punishment, as opposed to systematic repression of wrong-doing. It is likely too, that the canons had at least some deterrent power from the possibility that (in the reversal of the lottery slogan) it just might be you that got into trouble.

A final useful idea that comes from the study of early medieval secular law is that of customary norms (and hence law) as being negotiable rather than fixed. This has enabled studies of secular law in action to get beyond a simple dichotomy of laws as applied or ignored. Similarly, to see ecclesiastical cases as dealt with by negotiation between competing principles which were important but also malleable is more realistic than to attempt to fit a fixed legal framework around often specific and peculiar decisions.

What the study of the effects of early medieval canons offers to secular law, in return, is a way into the problem of why the powerful might obey the law, at least sometimes. Unlike with secular law, there was minimal direct coercive power behind the church’s demand for obedience to its norms; the Pope almost always had no divisions. (Nor, in practice, did Frankish rulers act to enforce such ecclesiastical demands, even if they might promise they would). And yet, for some of the Carolingian period, you can see powerful men adhering vaguely to some canonical principles (or justifying themselves by different canons when they did not). Lothar II did not simply repudiate his wife and dare the bishops to disapprove, and that was not purely because his political position was weaker than Charlemagne’s, but also because Christian kingship/lordship was important to him.

The example of the Carolingian church and the (intermittent) conformity of kings and magnates to its demands and ‘laws’ support the counter-intuitive suggestion that ‘playing by the rules’ can sometimes be maintained within a system even without a strong authority enforcing such rules. Rulers and magnates gained prestige from behaving in accordance with church norms and (seemingly) lost prestige and social support by opposing the church (or particular churches). A triumph by law rather than simply force in a dispute brought validity to one’s victory (for example, legitimacy to one’s marriage). Theoretical support for the legal order was also sensible for anyone who feared being the underdog in a future dispute; law could be a source of protection as well as a restriction. ‘Touch not the Lord’s anointed’ gave protection to Carolingian rulers even as it constrained their behaviour.

Yet what the Carolingian and post-Carolingian developments on marriage law, in particular, also suggest is that such a non-coercive system was difficult to maintain in the long run. If enough of the powerful refuse to acknowledge the rules in such a system (and a snowball effect is always likely), the rules effectively no longer exist, just as an unrefereed football match is always potentially likely to become a free-for-all. By the early eleventh century, as Georges Duby has shown, French rulers no longer cares about adhering to church rules on marriage. It is hard to argue that this was because Robert the Pious was in a stronger position with respect to the church than Carolingian rulers and so was more able to ignore their demands; it was more that adherence to church norms no longer seemed sufficiently advantageous. If applying insights about early medieval secular law can remind us that ‘law’ does not have a fixed meaning throughout the centuries, studying early medieval ‘canon law’ can reveal the extent to which almost all law in the early Middle Ages was essentially a confidence trick, a voluntary agreement by the powerful to accept small measures of legal constraint in their pursuit of power.

The resignation of Ruth Kelly from the Cabinet to spend more time with her family brought back thoughts I’d been having after the selection of Sarah Palin as the vice-presidental candidate. I got involved in a discussion then about whether it was a good idea for a parent with a baby who had special needs to be running for vice president. It was only afterwards that realised that I hadn’t been terribly consistent, trying to make unreasonably fine distinctions about what was and wasn’t good practice (e.g. the difference between Sarah Palin’s circumstances and those of David Cameron, who also has a child with disabilities).

I wondered after the discussion whether I was just being unconsciously sexist about the role of mothers (and I can’t ignore the possibility of that). Some commentators on feminist blogs raised a similar issue: wouldn’t feminists have reacted more positively to a liberal female politician with the same family circumstances as Palin? It was thinking about this that led me to see the wider problem here. What neither liberals nor conservatives can admit is that being a prominent politician harms one’s children.

More specifically, being a politician seems to me the white-collar profession that intrinsically has most negative impact on one’s children. (I’m restricting this to white-collar jobs, because some other jobs are sufficiently hazardous to the parent’s health as to make them more negative). Why is this? Being a politician involves very long hours (I once heard Peter Lilley, my MP, reckoning that his constituency work required 80 hours a week) and irregular hours (with sudden crises). It normally also involves a high level of travel away from home. It combines this with unusually high visibility for the children. Even if they are not exploited by the parent for photo-opportunities and the like, they are still likely to be discussed by the media and have their personal details and problems reported (drinking or drug-taking, unmarried pregnancy, difficulties at school, appearance etc).

No other jobs combine this visibility of the child with such an antisocial workload for the parent (with the possible exception of high-profile religious leaders). There is little public interest in the children of corporate high-flyers, and while the children of celebrities do fascinate the media, such celebrities normally have far more control over their own workload.

As against these negatives, the children of politicians get relatively few positives. For all the moaning about the incompetence of politicians, almost all of them would be able to earn at least a decent middle-class income outside politics, while some would find better-paid jobs than politics offers. Politicians’ families would therefore not suffer any significant financial hardship if they took up an alternative career. Politicians’ children may find personal inspiration from their parents’ activities, but it’s very hard to see this as so much greater than for other parental jobs as to make up for the negative aspects. There are obviously degrees of harm involved to the children, depending on their age, the personal circumstances, and the effort taken by the politician to mitigate it, but the reality remains that the effect is always going to be negative. Unless we want to restrict the political class to the childless and those with adult children, politician’s children are going to suffer as a result of our electoral choices.

If the public were honest, we would have to accept this. What we are doing is making a choice that the good of the many (who benefit from the politician’s policies) outweighs the good of that politician’s children. But because we cannot admit that we are prepared to sacrifice the well-being of those children, we have to try and pretend that those politicians to whose politics we are sympathetic aren’t harming or imperilling their children. Which is why conservatives applaud Sarah Palin for running even when they normally think that a mother’s place is in the home: the thought that her anti-abortion views may be positive for millions of ‘innocent babies’ allows them to accept her neglecting her maternal role. The more liberal among us, however, can see nothing positive in her policies that could outweigh the difficulties she is causing her family. Similarly, liberals who feel an Obama presidency would benefit the US (and the world) are prepared to ignore any negative impact this would have on his children (which includes the real possibility of his assassination). We can’t really have an honest debate on politicians and their families until we’re prepared to face the truth about our own attitudes, which I suspect will be a long time coming.

The game of pointing out Hincmar’s inconsistent views and political manoeuvring is an enjoyable one for scholars. One of the most interesting examples was discovered by Carlrichard Brühl in 'Hinkmariana II: Hinkmar im Widerstreit von kanonischen Recht und Politik in Ehefragen', Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 20 (1964), 55-77. The title translates as ‘Hincmar in conflict with canon law and politics on marriage questions’, a provocative statement for all those who have seen Hincmar as one of the key founders of the canon law of marriage. But Brühl makes good on his argument, demonstrating that Louis the Stammerer (Charles the Bald’s son), who ruled West Francia 877-879 was married twice and that Hincmar appears to have accepted this. The evidence is as follows:

1) Annales Bertiniani 862 (written by Hincmar at this point) say that Louis married the daughter of Count Harduin and sister of Odo (her name is given by other sources as Ansgard), without Charles the Bald’s permission, although Charles subsequently acknowledged the marriage.

[From the marriage there were at least three children: Louis III, Carloman, and a daughter Gisla, none of whom Hincmar mentions before 878].

2) Annales Bertiniani 877 reports Hincmar crowning Louis the Stammerer king on 8th December 877, but does not mention his wife.

3) In Annales Bertiniani 878 Hincmar says that Pope John VIII crowned Louis the Stammerer on 7th September 878, but Louis was unable to get him to crown his wife.

4) Regino’s Chronicon 878 says that Louis married Ansgard in his youth, and had two sons by her, but because he had married without Charles’ permission, Charles forced him to separate from her and made him marry Adalheid.

5) Two charters from April 878 and Feb 879 show Adelheid as Louis’ wife.

6) A charter of Carloman from January 883 implies that Ansgard (his mother) was dead by then.

7) Flodoard gives the outline of two letters of Hincmar on the subject: one to Louis the Younger (king of East Francia) in 880, ‘about the two wives of the same Louis, son of Charles, how it was done’, and the other to Louis III and Carloman (Ansgard’s sons) from the end of 879: explaining ‘why he did not force him [Louis the Stammerer] to receive his rejected wife Ansgard and did not prevent him retaining Adelheid, and about the letters given to him [Hincmar] by king Louis for the advancement of his sons’.

Brühl’s view was that Regino was right about the repudiation, but wrong about the date and instigator of it. He thinks that Louis repudiated Ansgard on his own initiative, at the start of his reign (October 877), in order to win over the magnates (who were certainly sceptical, if not hostile to him). Brühl thinks this probably happened before the coronation in Dec 877, and Louis married Adelheid after the coronation, rather than that Hincmar refused to crown Adelheid, but never mentioned it. Brühl thinks that Hincmar accepted the repudiation and remarriage and kept quiet about because he knew it was in the kingdom’s interests that Louis should be king.

Brühl’s argument is very convincing, but there are still problems that bug me. Why did Pope John (who was obviously looking for Frankish support) crown Louis but not his wife? Hincmar may have seen it necessary to keep quiet about the repudiation in the Annales during Louis the Stammerer’s lifetime for reasons of state, but why did he not mention it after Louis’ death, when he was promoting and supporting as kings Ansgard’s sons? If he wanted to get in with them, why not denounce Louis the Stammerer after 879, especially since if Louis’ second marriage was invalid, one future rival for Louis III and Carloman’s kingdoms was removed (Adelheid’s son, the future Charles the Simple)? And how could Louis the Stammerer, anyhow manage to carry out a divorce and remarriage, without ecclesiastical help and with no complaint from anyone? No Carolingian ruler had managed that since Charlemagne in the early 770s.

Hincmar’s fingerprints seem to me all over this business, even if he’s done his best to wipe them off. If Louis the Stammerer needed to repudiate Ansgard in late 877 (and Brühl has convincing reasons why he might), Hincmar was the obvious expert to produce a water-tight ‘justification’ for this, which would also allow a valid remarriage.

Unfortunately, however, I can’t see how Hincmar can have done it. My initial theory was that Louis used Hincmar to claim that his marriage to Ansgard had never been valid in the first place (based most likely on claims that he’d abducted her and a valid marriage could not be made from raptus). This allowed him to remarry, but had one big problem: if Ansgard’s marriage weren’t valid, Louis III and Carloman weren’t legitimate heirs to Louis. If Louis the Stammerer did do this, he was taking the risk that he could have further heirs with Adelheid.

However, in the spring of 878 (probably) May, Louis became so ill that his life was despaired of. My hypothesis was that after that, he tried to backtrack, because it was looking unlikely that he could have a heir in time from the second marriage. If Adelheid’s marital status was looking uncertain in September 878, it might explain why even a helpful Pope was reluctant to crown her at that time. It would also fit with another comment by Regino, who says that in 879 Boso of Provence made himself king, ‘holding the teenage sons of Louis as nothing and despising them as unworthy/ignobile (degeneres), because at Charles’ order their mother had been spurned and repudiated’.

The problem is, my theory didn’t hold up when I looked at the charters. There are the same requests for prayers for Louis’ wife and children (coniux and proles) in charters from December 877, Apr 878 and June 878. The implied status of Louis’ sons by Ansgard remains unchanged. However the remarriage was organised, it couldn’t have been that way.

For the moment I’m stuck. Could even Hincmar have come up with a justification for a remarriage which didn’t annul the first marriage? I have no real proof that he was involved at all. And yet passive acceptance of royal actions wasn’t Hincmar’s style. I still think somehow he devised this locked room puzzle, even if I can’t catch him at it.

In a recent post by dr ngo at Obsidian Wings discussing the US election he talked about the anti-intellectualism of US culture and its political effect. This got me thinking about possible historical reasons why anti-intellectualism is so much more politically significant in the US than in other countries (especially given that the US does actually have a very strong intellectual tradition). I will say at once that I’m not coming to this topic with any detailed knowledge of American political and social history, but there are some interesting points to make from an outsider’s perspective.

The first thing to stress is that anti-intellectualism as an attitude is very old and not purely a western phenomenon. For three examples that are more than 2000 years old, see the Old Testament book Ecclesiastes, Aristophanes’ play ‘The Clouds’ and the Qin dynasty programme of book burning. I suspect that anti-intellectual attitudes exist in any culture which has intellectuals, in the sense of an individual group distinguished by their superior education/learning. (I’m going to use this very broad definition of intellectuals here, because that is the one anti-intellectuals tend to use). There’s an obvious reason for this: the paradox that learning and knowledge do not necessarily lead to true wisdom. The comic stereotypes of the foolish wise man and the cunning ‘fool’ are found in folk tales, as well as the sitcom Frasier.

But I think that anti-intellectualism as a potential political force normally requires the existence within a society of social mobility via education. If an intellectual can achieve, through their learning, a social level that they are not born to, there are two obvious groups affected. One is those of his/her social peers who have not ascended in this way: envy may not be a pleasant emotion, but it’s a very common one. The other group affected by the social mobility of intellectuals is those who are already part of the ruling class for other reasons. If social mobility is possible, their political and social dominance may be challenged.

But there’s also a third group who are normally involved in all more substantial anti-intellectual movements: intellectuals or would-be intellectuals themselves. Intellectual social mobility requires competition between intellectuals for advancement (whether formally via competitive exams, or informally via patronage). The ambitious but unsuccessful intellectual (or the disillusioned intellectual) is often found attacking the system itself. Most anti-intellectual movements which want to make a serious impact need some of educated people within them, because those are the kind of people who can provide both effective propaganda and strategic political thinking. An early example of this kind of ‘trahison des clercs’ is Jerome arguing against reading ‘pagan’ (classical Roman) literature. It was normal for the literate classes in late fourth century Rome to do so, but there was a rhetorical advantage to be gained by claiming not to read such material, and Jerome was not alone in his opportunism.

Most substantial anti-intellectual movements, therefore have seen some ‘intellectuals’ ally either with the current ruling class (top-down anti-intellectualism) or those left behind by social mobility (bottom-up anti-intellectualism). If intellectuals ally with the ruling class, culturally this gets you claims that intellectual ability is less important than ‘natural breeding’ or ‘character’. (The classic example of this is Thomas Arnold’s development of the public school ethos at Rugby). Politically, this alliance has normally been seen in countries ruled by oligarchies and aristocracies, and their more modern offshoots, traditional Conservative parties. Its main political limitation is a lack of broad-based appeal.

At a cultural level, meanwhile, an alliance with those lower down gives you adulation of folk wisdom and ‘common sense’. At a political level, such an alliance has traditionally produced the demagogue and the revolutionary leader (from the Athenian killing of Socrates to ‘The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers’). More recently, it gives you populist working-class parties either of the right (such as the British National Party or Pauline Hanson’s One Nation) or of the left (such as the original UK Labour party, communism and its offshoots). Its main political limitation is its lack of the knowledge of the levers of political power and the active hostility of the existing ruling class.

Normally, these two forms of anti-intellectualism have been mutually exclusive, because their different political interests need different messages. Top-down anti-intellectualism, in the service of the ruling class, always has to define non-intellectual superiority in way that excludes the lower classes having it (or why should they be ruled rather than ruling), which explains the emphasis on ‘character’ as something built particularly by very expensive schools. Bottom-up anti-intellectualism, in the service of the lower classes, has to define moral superiority in terms of virtues and experiences that their classes have in particular. Otherwise, why should they now be included in government? This explains all the intricate arguments about who is ‘really’ working class.

There are two obvious factors which affect how politically significant anti-intellectualism is likely to be in any society: the extent of democracy and the extent of social mobility. Except in revolutionary (or post-revolutionary) situations (such as the Chinese Cultural Revolution), bottom-up anti-intellectualism is only politically significant in democracies, when those left behind get to vote. The amount of social mobility is also important. Even though not all social mobility is via education (it’s also possible though exceptional natural talent (entertainers, entrepreneurs, military geniuses) or exceptional luck (lottery winners) or both (sleeping with/marrying the right person)) education is almost always the largest cause of upwards social mobility. If there is a lot of social mobility, those left at the bottom are likely to feel more resentment: it’s harder to attribute their own failure to rise to external factors than if such rises are rare. Michael Young pointed out this problem with meritocracy 50 years ago). High social mobility, however, makes competition between intellectuals less fraught (because there are more places available), and so makes them less likely to ‘defect’ to anti-intellectualism. Anti-intellectualism by the ruling classes is initially increased by high social mobility (more competition for them). But at a certain level of social mobility, enough individuals who have risen themselves through education get into the ruling class for this anti-intellectualism to be diluted.

There’s also one other factor that I think is significant in pushing up anti-intellectualism, and that’s the removal of educational discrimination. Whenever formal or quasi-formal barriers to the education of ‘minorities’, such as women, blacks, Jews, the working class etc are removed (whether it’s allowing women to graduate, universal free education or the end of ’Jewish quotas’), then anti-intellectualism is likely to increase, at least in the short-term. The increased social mobility will upset both those left behind (especially those who have been convinced of the ‘natural’ intellectual inferiority of such groups) and those of the ruling class who see their position challenged. It also means more competition for intellectuals themselves, since there will be a larger pool of talent competing for the same opportunities for advancement.

The contradictory factors which contribute to political anti-intellectualism suggests that it will normally be kept in equilibrium, since social forces both encourage and discourage it, and anti-intellectualism itself not a coherent concept. But there is an exception when social mobility is actually low, but thought to be high. In that case, you get a lot of both the aggrieved left behind and also disillusioned intellectuals, while the ruling class also keeps more of any anti-intellectualism it traditionally possesses. (A situation where discrimination in education is still high (due to informal discrimination), but thought to be low (due to the lack of formal discrimination) is similarly likely to increase the resentment of both would-be intellectuals and those left behind).

While the US national myth is all about its high social mobility, it actually has lower mobility then many other western cultures. There is a particularly interesting contrast with Canada, which shares many of the same economic features and early pioneer history with the US, but doesn’t have the same anti-intellectual political culture (that I know of).

This gap between reality and image opens up possibilities for those in the ruling class of the US not available for politicians in the UK (which has equally low social mobility, but fewer myths about it). In both countries, there are politicians who owe their rise at least as much to their high socio-economic class as their own talents. In a supposedly ‘classless’ and meritocratic society like the US, such politicians can more successfully identify their beliefs with ‘bottom-up anti-intellectualism’, to make a grand anti-intellectual alliance. In a country more conscious of class like the UK (and more deferential towards high social class), a Conservative politician from a public school would be foolish to pretend that he was not from a ‘cosmopolitan and metropolitan’ background.

That is my interpretation (in very general terms) of why anti-intellectualism can have a political influence in the US that it has in few other countries (the nearest equivalent I can think of is Australia, but I think that has a more purely populist political system). I’d be very interested if anyone has good counter-examples or better explanations (or comments on other countries that I haven’t mentioned - how does political anti-intellectualism work in India, for example?)

One of the key political questions scholars have debated while studying Hincmar’s De Divortio Lotharii regis et Teutberga reginae is the extent to which Hincmar was simply advancing Charles the Bald’s cause in giving his advice on the case. Was Charles the Bald hoping to take over his nephew’s kingdom and was Hincmar helping him do that?

The evidence that Charles the Bald was hoping to take advantage of the situation is fairly strong: the Annales Bertiniani for 860 (written in Charles’ own kingdom) say that Lothar II made an alliance with Louis the German (his other uncle) ‘fearing his uncle Charles’. This is undated, but recorded by Prudentius after the meeting of the three kings at Koblenz in June, so probably subsequent to that, which means that Lothar had had a good chance to size up Charles’ intentions. Given that all Carolingian kings were serial grabbers of other rulers’ territories, Charles probably was hoping to get something out of Lothar’s problems. The question is whether Hincmar was helping him.

The argument made by those thinking the worst of Hincmar (that he was arguing dishonestly for political ends), is that he (and Charles the Bald) were forcing Lothar to remain married to a sterile woman (Theutberga), so he could not hope to have any heirs, leaving his kingdom free after his death. Several counter-arguments have been made. There was no suggestion in 860, when Hincmar wrote De Divortio, that Theutberga was sterile; indeed, one of the many charges against in her in 860 was that she’d had an abortion. The allegations by Lothar’s supporters that she was sterile were only made after 860. Secondly, Hincmar didn’t argue that Lothar had to remain married to Theutberga in De Divortio, but that her case had to be tried again.

Also, (though this hasn’t been pointed out before, as far as I know), why should Charles the Bald have presumed he would outlive Lothar, who was about 12 years his junior? It is only because Lothar II died young (aged around 34) that Charles and even Louis the German outlived him. If Lothar had lived to be 60 (as was perfectly possible, given that his father, grandfather and great-grandfather all did so), he could have been challenging Charles the Fat’s right to be emperor of all Francia in the 880s after the death of Charles the Bald, Louis the German and several of their descendents.

Does this put Hincmar (if not Charles the Bald) in the clear? Not necessarily, I now think. There are two interesting facts when you start looking carefully at the chronology of the case: in 860 both Theutberga and Hubert (her brother) fled to Charles the Bald’s kingdom. Hubert was there by the time Hincmar was writing the first part of De Divortio in the summer of 860, while Theutberga probably came shortly after he wrote that. Their presence in West Francia is significant because of what Hincmar argued about the procedure of the case. As I discussed in a previous post, he thought that the judgements made against Theutberga at the two synods of Aachen were not valid. He also accepted the validity of the ordeal procedure that had taken place in 858 (by which Theutberga has been cleared). However, Hincmar did not say that therefore the matter could not be opened again. Instead he argued for both a secular placitum to hear the case and a general synod to discuss wider issues.

If Hincmar had simply wanted to ensure that Lothar remained married to Theutberga he could have argued that the ordeal judgement of 858 was final. By arguing that another judgement could be made (and that if Theutberga had committed incest before her marriage, her marriage was not valid), he left at least the possibility of Lothar being able to remarry.

But the catch was that meant holding the secular placitum first, and Hincmar repeats several times that a valid judgement can’t be made in absentia. He specifically says that the secular placitum needs to examine Hubert, as one of those accused of the crime. The principle of no judgement in absentia meant that the case would be in practice be suspended unless Hubert and Theutberga were in Lotharingia. Unlike synods, where judgements could be made by bishops from different realms, secular law courts operated only within a particular kingdom. And if Theutberga avoided the trial by escaping to another kingdom (an obvious strategy), as long as the case was suspended as result, Lothar was in limbo. He couldn’t remarry before having a judgement on Theutberga, and he obviously couldn’t meanwhile have any legitimate children with her.

There were agreements between the kingdoms for extraditing fugitives and Hincmar urges in De Divortio that Charles the Bald should stand by them. But in practice, such an extradition could be blocked for years without any serious difficulty. This was demonstrated by the case of Ingiltrude, which had just been raised at the meeting at Koblenz in June 860. Ingiltrude ran away from her Italian husband Count Boso with her lover, and managed to avoid returning to judgement or penance for at least 15 years, by taking refuge in other kingdoms (she was already up to 4 years in 860).

Whatever Hincmar might say about extradition, if his views were adopted, once Theutberga was in Charles the Bald’s kingdom, Charles held all the cards. If Charles sent back Hubert and Theutberga to Lothar, Lothar could then get his divorce via a rigged secular judgement. If he didn’t, Lothar was definitely left heirless and unable to marry Waldrada. If Lothar wanted a legitimate marriage, he had to deal with Charles and provide some kind of incentive for handing over the fugitives. (A share in Provence would have been the obvious offer, since every Carolingian king was looking hopefully at the prospect of the young and sickly Charles of Provence dying soon).

As it turned out, Lothar didn’t deal with Charles. Instead he and his bishops argued that the decisions at the synods of Aachen had been legitimate, and there was no need for a further trial. However, this got him entangled with the Pope, and he never managed to get the case sorted out.

Did Hincmar plan all this for Charles the Bald? There’s no proof of it: Hincmar could always come up with canonical reasons to support his suggestions, and we don’t know the details of when and why Theutberga fled. The most we can say is that Hincmar’s suggestions in De Divortio, if adopted, would have respected ‘divine law’ and benefited Charles, and that Hincmar would not have been displeased at the combination.

I have been following the US election more closely than normal this year (mainly because one of my favorite blogs is Obsidian Wings), but in the past few days I’ve been particularly fascinated by the Sarah Palin story and the developing revelations around her. I even went so far as to read up on some of the (now disproved) rumours about her family life. Why did I break my normal dislike of gossip? There were lots of people (including many feminists) saying that other people’s private lives (and particularly other women’s private lives) were none of our business, but I still did it.

But the thing is...my own professional business at the moment is translating Hincmar’s text on a royal divorce, and all the lurid allegations that contains about Queen Theutberga’s sexual life. So the question arises: am I, as a historian, really any less of a muckraker than Andrew Sullivan? Or, conversely, do historians’ interest in private lives provide any suggestions as to why such modern day speculation might be justified?

I would say that the common arguments again modern-day gossip/prurience are generally sound. Indulging in this can encourage an unhealthy feeling of moral superiority/pride (I am better than those people) and such gossip is often full of double standards, particularly sexist double standards. It is often distressing to people to have their private lives discussed by others, and may worsen the family problems they are having. The consumption of gossip in the media encourages ever more intrusive reporting of those in the public eye and their families. My individual reading and commenting on rumours about Sarah Palin’s case, does not, I hope, add much to the strain on her family, but it does probably have some small detrimental effect, in a way that my investigation of Theutberga does not.

But it’s harder to argue that my own interest in Theutberga’s private life is in principle, completely different from an interest in Sarah Palin. If (by some fluke of time-travel) there were medical records or photographs available for me to explore whether Theutberga was really sterile or had had an abortion, as her opponents alleged, I would be looking at them, just as historians have tried to establish whether it was Crohn’s disease that afflicted King Alfred. And historians are interested in sexual scandals: does anyone think that scholars of the Tudor period study the relationship of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn purely as an insight into the development of the English Reformation? The only historian who thinks that Eleanor of Aquitaine’s official duties are more interesting than her private life is Jane Martindale. I am interested in Carolingian views on kingship and the relations between state and church, but if that was all I was interested in, I could study the case of Ebbo of Rheims just as easily as Theutberga’s.

Hincmar, in his introduction to De Divortio, explains why the case was so important to everybody (and it was allegedly being talked about throughout all three kingdoms, even in the women’s weaving sheds, suggesting that the appetite for gossip is a historical constant). Hincmar comments:

For, although this is a matter of a king and queen, namely man and wife...the case of all is generally affected, since marriage is called by the holy apostle ‘a great sacrament in Christ and the Church’, in which the salvation of all is believed to consist.

For him, the case mattered not only because it was about the rulers of the country, but also because it was about one of the universal basics of society, marriage. The parallels are interesting. In terms of power, Sarah Palin is a legitimate figure for a wide range of people to be interested in (more so than a sports star or a pop singer). Potentially, she could become the President of the United States and her decisions would then affect me and millions of non-Americans round the world. Similarly, questions about how people live their marital and family life and how they deal with problems within them (such as a baby with disabilities or an accidental pregnancy) have a universal interest. Most of us could imagine being in such a situation and wondering what decisions we would make.

Modern liberals, however, have increasingly argued that there should be a separation of personal (particularly sexual) and political morality. Politicians with lurid private lives (from Lloyd George and Winston Churchill to JFK and Bill Clinton) have nevertheless been excellent political leaders: poor personal judgement does not preclude good judgement in the national interest. This is in many ways a persuasive argument: attempts to force politicians out of office for sexual scandals often rely on deeply implausible arguments about misuse of public power. I personally don’t think that having an affair revealed, for example, should normally bar a politician (male or female) from running for political office or mean they should resign if in office. They should be judged instead on their political record.

Yet there is something oddly akin to medieval queenship in the Vice-Presidential role at the best of times. The Vice President is chosen personally by the President, not elected. He or she officially has a largely ceremonial role, with their practical power depending greatly on their personal relationship with the President and the characters of both. He or she cannot implement their own policies directly (unless this power is delegated to them), but can only lobby the President privately to encourage him or her to implement them. His or her only real power comes after the end of the President’s ‘reign’ or if the President is incapacitated.

Normally these parallels are hidden by the fact that the Vice President is an experienced politician himself/herself. John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin, however, exposes these issues. Sarah Palin has not been chosen for her political achievements or even her political potential (i.e. that she has exceptional political skills which she has not yet had time to develop). She has been chosen for her political image. Would she have been chosen if she had not been female AND good-looking AND had a large family AND been a keen hunter AND come from an iconic state? Almost certainly not. In that sense, whether her image corresponds to reality is relevant: whether all her children are her own is arguably no more off limits than whether she (hypothetically) had faked a picture of herself killing a moose. If you implicitly argue that your personal story is the key political statement about you, then you can’t object if those interested in politics then start to examine your life.

But the medieval queenship analogy also shows the other reason why Sarah Palin’s personal life is politically relevant. Bad behaviour by the queen wasn’t condemned by medieval moralists solely because it imperiled the succession, though that was important (which is why adultery by the queen was a common allegation). It was also significant because it showed the poor judgement of the king himself. Why had he chosen a woman whose character was not good or who encouraged him to wrong doing? Some commentators have picked up this about the VP pick as well: what does it say about John McCain that he chose someone rashly, apparently swayed by superficial appearances rather than true worth?

The separation of public and private morality is not a new idea (as is sometimes alleged); it is implicitly present already in some ninth century sources discussing Carolingian counts. But in some cases, even today, as this case shows, the dividing lines may be hard to draw. I think that makes discussions of Sarah Palin’s personal life, if not quite as respectable as examining Theutberga, at least more legitimate than most other contemporary gossip.

In two previous posts I’ve talked about my problems with the traditional concepts of a canon law system for the ninth century. Now I want to look at how some marriage disputes get dealt with in the ninth century, both because I’m interested in the topic and because that’s the area of secular life/cases involving laypeople that is normally thought to be the first to be dealt with by ‘canon law’ (as shown in e.g. Pierre Daudet, Études sur l'histoire de la jurisdiction matrimoniale: les origines carolingiennes de la compétence exclusive de l'église (France et Germanie). Paris: Libraire du Recueil Sirey, 1933).

As I said in my previous post on the topic, there are three different quasi-legal roles of bishops that can be seen in the sources from the ninth century and long before: as judges of ecclesiastical personnel, as settlers of secular disputes and as givers of penance. An important preliminary point to make is that legal systems and systems of penance are not always clearly separate at the period, and the grey area between the two can be exploited. One interesting example is the deposition of Archbishop Ebbo of Rheims in 835. The Emperor Louis the Pious handed Ebbo over to a synod of bishops, in what starts out as looking like a standard trial of an ecclesiastic. What followed, however, wasn’t a trial (in the sense of an examination of evidence), because the real charges against Ebbo, of taking part in Lothar’s revolt of 833-34, would have been politically embarrassing to raise. Instead, Ebbo ‘confessed’ unspecified sins to the bishops and was given penance, thus coincidentally meaning he had to step down from his bishopric while he performed it. The question of what kind of confession and penance had been involved in Ebbo’s case (secret or public) was to bedevil Hincmar for more than thirty years, but that’s a different story.

Now, an outline of the most significant of the marriage disputes. (For more details of the background of these cases, see my article in ‘Gender and History’ and the draft translation of Hincmar’s De Divortio).

1) Firstly, there’s the unfortunate woman Northild who (according to Hincmar) at the general placitum of Attigny in 822 complained to Louis the Pious about her husband doing dishonourable things with her (the usual assumption has been anal sex, though that’s not stated). Louis sent her to the bishops for ‘episcopal authority’ to decide what should be done. The bishops sent her back to the ‘legal judgement’ of laymen, but said they would give penance after that if Northild asked for it.

Why did Louis ask the bishops to deal with the matter and they then promptly bat it back? Jinty Nelson’s view is that this is all just a set-up to show the unity of everyone at Attigny, with Northild as fall-girl. But I think there’s additionally the possibility that the bishops were being expected to see whether the dispute could be settled between the couple. Once they decided it couldn’t be, they didn’t want to take a role in the actual judging of the case, but could be called on later after this judgment had been made.

2) Next, there’s a vassal of Lothar’s called Fulcric, who Hincmar excommunicated in the late 840s for putting his first wife into a convent and taking another one. Hincmar allegedly excommunicated Fulcric without any ‘canonical or secular judgement or examination’ (absque omne canonico sive mundano iudicio vel examine’). Presumably, Hincmar did this since he considered Fulcric was a notorious sinner unwilling to accept penance. He then called a co-provincial synod to confirm this excommunication, to which he probably invited Fulcric’s first wife and her father. At this synod, Fulcric was ‘examined, humiliated and absolved’ after agreeing to do penance. By about 852 Fulcric seems to have returned to his second wife and Hincmar excommunicated him again. Fulcric then appealed to Pope Leo IV, claiming that his first ‘wife’ had actually only been a concubine, and he’d therefore only made one marriage.

Leo IV’s response was a blistering letter to Hincmar. He was to lift the excommunication if Fulcric’s account was accurate and he was not to take any further action about the ‘remaining things’, or the Pope would punish him. (There is no suggestion that Leo IV had done anything more legally significant than talk to Fulcric: no mention of oaths etc). We don’t know about any further action after this, though Hincmar seems to have suggested that a synod should consider the matter again).

3) One of the most long-running cases of all was that of Ingiltrude, wife of Count Boso of Italy, who ran off with Boso’s vassal to Francia in about 856. Boso asked for ‘ecclesiastica auxilia’ and Ingiltrude was anathematised by Council of Milan in 856 after she refused to return. Pope Benedict IV began a letter-writing campaign to Frankish kings and bishops to get her returned that was continued by his successors. For more than 15 years there were unsuccessful attempts to get Ingiltrude to return. The popes sent letters and Ingiltrude was repeatedly excommunicated and anathematised. Boso came to Francia in June 860 and he is recorded at Coblenz appealing to the kings assembled there. In March 867, Nicholas I complains that Boso is becoming insolent to him, since he was trapped in the marriage.

Yet in all this time, there were precious few actual legal steps taken. The second Council of Aachen in February 860 summoned Boso so Ingiltrude could be examined in his presence, but he didn’t attend, so nothing came of that. Ingiltrude then confessed to Archbishop Gunther of Cologne, who absolved her (one of the reasons he was later deposed by the Pope). Pope Nicholas I repeatedly ‘summoned’ Ingiltrude to Rome, but it’s not clear whether this was for a trial, or for her to do penance and be absolved by him. (In 865 she swore an oath before the papal legate to return to Rome, but didn’t do so).

Next there are two cases from 860 which have quite a lot of parallels: those of Count Stephen of the Auvergne and the divorce of Lothar II and Theutberga

4) In Hincmar’s letter on the case of Count Stephen (the only evidence we have) he says that Count Raymond (Stephen’s father-in-law) sent letters to the synod of Tusey in Oct-Nov 860, complaining about Stephen’s treatment of his daughter, since he hadn’t consummated the marriage. In Hincmar’s view the synod shouldn’t normally have replied to such a letter for two reasons. One was that accusations had to be made in person and the second was that Raymond no longer had power over his daughter and so couldn’t accuse Stephen without her support. What Raymond could do was ask the synod for ‘correction of her husband by persuasion or suggestion’, i.e. have the synod try and resolve the marital dispute.

Raymond didn’t, however, need to try and rope his daughter in to make accusations about Stephen. The synod decided that since the dispute had been carried on publicly for three years it was causing scandal and therefore they needed to summon Stephen. Stephen, once he had come to the synod, asked to confess and was told that he must make public confession, since the matter was no longer suitable for secret confession. He said that he had previously slept with a relative of his wife and his marriage was therefore incestuous: he had been forced to go through with the marriage because he was frightened of Raymond, but had not consummated it. It was agreed by the synod that the matter should be dealt with by both a further synod and a royal placitum and Hincmar was asked to advise the bishops.

The idea of holding both a synod and a placitum (which Hincmar agreed with) was that the placitum should pacify what was obviously becoming a dangerous dispute between magnate factions, while the synod should decide the case. Most of Hincmar’s letter is spent on the question of what makes a valid marriage, but he also advises on procedure. He wants Stephen’s wife summoned to the synod for questioning (along with Raymond) and for her to confirm (possibly by oath) that she’s still a virgin. He doesn’t, however, consider it necessary for Stephen to have to name the woman he’s slept with and demonstrate she is a relation of his wife. He also makes suggestions of how the placitum might decide on compensation in the case.

5) The case of Theutberga also concerns ‘incest’, but a different meaning of that term. Theutberga was accused in 857 of having slept with her brother Hubert before her marriage to Lothar II in 855. In 858 her champion underwent an ordeal, which was passed. The matter was ended, however. In 860 it was claimed that she had confessed her sin (although the details of when and to who are inconsistent in the three accounts) and she was therefore given public penance.

Hincmar was asked about the case after the second synod of Aachen in February 860 by Lotharingian bishops unhappy at the decisions made there. I’m still trying to understand exactly what Hincmar’s argument is in De Divortio (it’s a complex text), but this is what I think he says. Firstly, he accepts the validity of the secular judgement by ordeal in 858. However, when Theutberga subsequently confesses, that makes it a penitential matter, in which bishops could be involved. Hincmar argues that Theutberga’s confession was a secret one, which means the public penance imposed by Aachen I and II was unsuitable. A public penance, according to Hincmar, needed either public confession (which he argued Theutberga had not made) or open proof (which should be obtained by a secular court). Because Theutberga’s secret confession had already been passed onto the king, it was not a breach of confession to have laymen deal with the case. Hincmar suggested that one of the things the secular court should do and summon Hubert and question him. If Theutberga was found guilty by this court, then the bishops could decide public penance. However, since the matter by now was a public scandal, affecting all the kingdoms, a general council should also sort out these aspects of the case. (Presumably Hincmar means deal with the public penance and possibly also sort out any remaining matters and carry out rituals to propitiate God).

What do these cases put together suggest about how marriage disputes are settled and what the church’s role is?

a) Firstly, that there isn’t a standard procedure for how these matters get dealt with. This is obvious not just from the differing procedures, but because the procedure often needs to be enquired about: people want advice from Hincmar in the cases of both Stephen and Theutberga.

b) It’s very hard to see there being two different jurisdictions for marriage (secular/ecclesiastical), in the sense of a legal distinction based solely on the facts of the case between whether a placitum or a synod deals with it, or how it should be shared between them. This is most obvious from the cases of Stephen and Theutberga, both of which concern a possibly false confession used to argue for the dissolution of a marriage. In both of these Hincmar advises the use of both a placitum and a synod, but in different ways. In Stephen’s case he says the synod must interview witnesses to decide if the confession is genuine, while the placitum does mediation. In Theutberga’s case he says a secular tribunal should examine the witnesses, while the synod has more general functions.

Daudet argues that this shows that choice of parties can determine what tribunal deals with the matter, but that doesn’t hold up. (Stephen didn’t choose the synod he got). It’s possible Hincmar argues contradictory things for political reasons in 860, but it’s noticeable that he doesn’t say anything specific about the need for ecclesiastical jurisdiction in these cases, when he does a lot in cases involving clerics.

c) As a follow-up to this, the Frankish church doesn’t actually show a great desire to take over dealing with marital disputes. They’re often quite happy to shove the examination of evidence back to the secular courts, after which they will decide on penance. In only two of these cases (Ingiltrude and Stephen) do they do or attempt to do any real ‘investigating’ of the case (in terms of questioning witnesses).

d) There aren’t many unequivocal references to legal judgements by bishops/synods: a lot might equally be talking about decisions on penance.

e) When the people involved in a dispute appeal to ‘the church’ they rarely do so to a synod (with the one exception of Raymond, Stephen’s father in law). Instead they appeal to a person (a bishop or pope), and they don’t usually request a synod, but simply help (unlike clerics who appeal). This suggests that they’re working within a mental model that’s pastoral rather than juridical.

All this, I think, confirms that talking about the existence of a canon law system for non-clerics in the ninth century is very dubious. What we are left with instead is one (secular) legal system, plus adapting standard church disciplinary procedures (synods and penance) to try to deal with specific moral/social problems that arise from cases. (Hincmar, in addition, I think also wants ecclesiastics to have an advisory role to secular tribunals to ensure that secular judgements on marriage are not in contradiction to ‘divine’ law, but he definitely does not want the church to take over legal decisions on marriage cases). We need to stop trying to fit ninth century evidence into a twelfth-century pattern.

The comments on a recent post at A Corner of Tenth Century Europe have morphed into a discussion on admissions to Oxbridge and whether or not candidates from state schools are disadvantaged. As someone who went to Oxford from a comprehensive school, I’ve added in my opinion, but in many ways the state/public school issue is a red herring. L, my daughter is just five and three quarters, and has one year of full-time education (a reception year at a local primary school). And yet her chances of going to Oxbridge are already vastly greater than many of her classmates.

Along with any inherited advantage in intellect she has (and I don’t know exactly how much that is), she’s also had the benefit of a lot of attention in her early years, both from us and from good quality childcare. Raised in a household full of books and read to a lot, she’s picked up voracious reading almost automatically. She gets taken along on holidays to the museums, castles and places with exciting scenery that we enjoy. During her childhood, she will thus get from us not only the support that any stable family can provide, but a level of cultural capital that many children don’t get. If she is having problems with her homework, we can between us probably help her; we can make sure that her subject choices at school don’t cut down her future academic prospects unduly. And although we’re not rich, we have enough money to spend on her support as required. When she needed speech therapy we could pay for private treatment rather than wait for the NHS to provide it. If she turns out to have artistic or (less likely) sporting talent we can probably afford to pay for lessons or equipment.

All this means that L has a good chance (if she wants to) of getting to a high-ranked university. If she is academically gifted, she also has a higher than average chance of getting to Oxbridge. What both my husband and I, as Oxford graduates can offer is not so much inside information on how to get in (since the admissions system constantly changes) as a more general understanding of Oxford and Cambridge. Perhaps most important is the proof we can offer that ‘people like us’ can go to Oxbridge, that it is not solely for those from a select few schools or with a particular accent.

L will get all these advantages without us needing to be particularly pushy. If we were really determined that she should go to Oxbridge rather than anywhere else, there are further things we could do to boost her chances. We could encourage her to apply for the less popular subjects and to the less popular colleges. We could pay for extra tutoring in some subjects, or for her to go on holiday courses etc. We could network and find people who had studied or taught her particular subject for her to meet. We could coach her in interview techniques. All this might boost her chances a little further, but it probably wouldn’t make a major difference.

Or we could spend thousands of pounds a year to send her to a public school (which would make a more substantial difference). But the fact is that even if we could afford to do that, we don’t really need to. If L wants an academic education she will be able to get a good one, either at Oxbridge or somewhere else. Her friends at school, who live in council houses, whose parents have lived in the same area all their lives and would feel uncomfortable away from it, who live on below average income, will probably not get that kind of higher education even if they have the aptitude for it.

Any simple demands to aid ‘state school’ applicants to Oxbridge will probably largely benefit children like L rather than those starting from a more disadvantaged background. Only measures targeting those from lower social classes and educational upbringing in a far more careful and long-term way will make a real change in which five year olds are on track for Oxbridge.

As I said in the last post, making assumptions about the existence of ‘canon law’ in the ninth century doesn’t seem very helpful. One big problem, for example, is that vaguely legal events in which bishops are involved get discussed in terms of ‘jurisdiction’, with the assumption that a consistent decision is being made about which of two legal systems someone should be subject to. It’s more useful instead to start from the question of why bishops and synods get involved in ‘personal’ cases (as opposed to property disputes), since that is a question that the sources at least sometimes do tell us. I think there are three ways in which bishops and synods get involved in such matters:

1) Cases which involve bishops and their subordinates (both secular clergy and religious men and women).

It seems to be perfectly normal that bishops discipline their subordinates, including judging their cases (as referred to, for example, in the episcopal capitularies). Similarly, a synod of bishops could give a trial to a bishop accused of some crime, and in the ninth century the Pope was clearly claiming the right to judge some cases of episcopal behaviour.

This area looks the most like the churc