ABSTRACT
The programme of consolidation and reform begun by Pippin was continued with unbroken zeal by his successors Charles the Great and Louis the Pious, always in close communication with the Pope, and under considerable influence from England. As Giles Brown points out, we should not imagine that Charlemagne was beginning a new reform, only continuing an existing process: ‘There was no Carolingian Renaissance … because there was no long dark night which preceded it.’ 1 As ever, the maintenance of a high standard of conduct of the clergy was seen as the key to enlivening the entire Church, and a succession of local synods or councils prepared the way for the definitive Councils of Aachen in 816–17. Even in England, outside the direct control of the Carolingians, communities of clergy were well established before the first Danish Wars. Dom David Knowles considered that the papal legates in 786–7 had actually brought the Rule of Chrodegang with them to England, though there is no specific authority for this (Knowles 1949, p. 139 sq.). They certainly brought twenty capitula from Hadrian I, including the rule that all canons must live ‘canonically’ (Hadden and Stubbs (1871), iii, 450, c. 4; cf. Deanesly 1925). There is evidence that the communal life was being lived at Canterbury in the early ninth century, when Archbishop Wilfred confirmed certain privileges for the priests, deacons and clergy, including the right to own and bequeath property, but insisting that they should be regular in attending choir in the Cathedral, eating together in the refectory and sleeping in the dormitory. 2
