ABSTRACT
Christening bestowed a personal name and a guardian angel, fit each child into a network of spiritual kin, joined them to the "Christian people" inhabiting Europe, and opened the doors of the Church to lifelong membership and the gates of heaven to an everlasting future. Christening was becoming one with the social practice and cultural self-consciousness of these peoples, and more so with Carolingian princes and prelates trying to encourage an even higher level of awareness and practice. Ninth-century Carolingians did not know when the baptism of children had become standard. Walafrid Strabo, for instance, ascribed it to doctrinal considerations anchored in the teaching of Augustine more than to sociological custom. Work on local church foundations has advanced in the last generation, especially for Anglo-Saxon England and Lombard Italy, but the Carolingian ecclesial landscape below the episcopal level is still not easy to penetrate. The font accordingly enjoyed a central position in ecclesiastical administration, and also in religious outlook.
