ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the early Carolingian period, and particularly the reign of Charlemagne, which looks backwards to formative early Christianity as well as forwards to criticism of pilgrimage as a genre akin to criticism of crusading. Early medieval Christianities have roots, and these need to be traced before any search for opposition to pilgrimage in the decades around 800 can make sense. The second alleged representative of enlightenment and rationalism is Agobard of Lyon another "transplanted" Spaniard. It is worth insisting on Charlemagne's devotion to pilgrimage because one or two influential modern commentators have claimed to discover rationalists in the Carolingian renaissance who were hostile to relic-cults and pilgrimage as symptoms of Volksreligiositt. Pilgrimage was among the large number of religious matters with which Charlemagne and his advisers concerned themselves. In Frankish eyes, this was a policy swing from one extreme to another: from the horror of iconoclasm to equally horrific icon-worship.
