"Ego enim iter illud nec approbo nec inprobo". The Debate on Devotional Mobility between Claudius of Turin, Dungal and Jonas of Orléans in the 820s

In the 820s Claudius, a prolific author of exegetical works and previously a member of the imperial court of Louis the Pious, criticised a number of devotional practices including the devotion for the images of Christ, the Virgin and the saints, the cult of relics and the Cross, and penitential pilgrimages to Rome. Claudius’s ideas were strongly countered by the Carolingian court and its intellectuals. A sort of public press campaign was launched in order to refute them. In 825 an episcopal meeting took place in Paris and condemned Claudius’s positions, even though the bishop of Turin was never explicitly mentioned. A résumé of his ‘Apologeticum adversus Theudemirum’, the letter-treaty in which he voiced his attacks to the cult of images and other devotional practices, was composed at the imperial court and sent to Dungal, an Irish schoolmaster working in Pavia, and Jonas, bishop of Orléans. Dungal and Jonas were called to produce treatises in reply to and refutation of Claudius’s views. This contribution focuses on the debate undertaken by these three authors about pilgrimages to Rome. The reasons why Claudius included it among the religious practices he criticised were directly connected to the state of the relationships between the Carolingians and the papacy at the time of composition of his ‘Apologeticum’. The rhetorical strategies and arguments deployed by Jonas and Dungal were equally embedded in and responding to the contingent needs and goals they pursued in undertaking the task of refuting Claudius’s ideas. In these authors’ texts, mobility became a common ground for understanding and ideally shaping Carolingian society.