ABSTRACT
In the Carolingian period, jurists were especially exercised by their awareness that both innocence and guilt are often invisible, buried in the impenetrable and veiled corridors of the human heart. To fully grasp the depth of the penitential education in Carolingian Austrasia, one should consider also the enormous influence of the De vita contemplativa of Julianus Pomerius. The Carolingian adoption of the system of the capital sins as the primary device of penitential education meant that confessors faced a radically enlarged range of sins, encompassing minor failings as well as the capital crimes traditionally identified as requiring penitential satisfaction. In a polity in which ecclesiastical interests were becoming as prominent as secular ones, recourse to the paradigm of the seven (or eight) capital sins generated a remarkably effective means of recasting jurisdictions. Law in the Carolingian sphere of influence became heavily inflected by theology, and a penitential ethos pervaded ecclesiastical jurisprudence.
