CAPITULARY
. The documents recording the legislative acts of certain Carolingian kings, which
contemporary sources refer to as capitularies (Lat. capitulare, pl. capitularia), earned this
name because their contents were often organized into series of short articles, or chapters
(Lat. capitula). Although capitularies have survived from the time of Carloman (r. 741–
47) and Pepin III (r. 741–68), the number of such texts sharply increased under Pepin’s
son Charlemagne (r. 768–814), as one element in his effort to improve the administration
of the vast realm that he came to control. Writing was always of marginal importance in
the government of Charlemagne, however; the foundation of law remained what it had
been under earlier Frankish monarchs, the king’s oral pronouncement based on the royal
ban, his absolute power to command. The capitulary possessed no legislative power in
itself but merely set forth what the monarch had proclaimed. Furthermore, although the
king might consult with his lay and ecclesiastical magnates, at least through
Charlemagne’s lifetime there is no evidence that their consent was necessary in order for
a capitulary to be valid. It is only in some capitularies produced under Louis the Pious (r.
814–40) that the assembly’s consensus seems to have become a more vital element of
lawmaking. This occurred at the time of a decline in royal authority and a rise in the
power of the nobility. While the practice of issuing capitularies continued under Louis the
Pious, after the breakup of the empire in 843 (Treaty of Verdun) capitularies are found
only from west Francia during the reign of Charles the Bald (r. 840–77). They
disappeared even from there shortly after Charles’s death in 877.
The peripheral importance of writing to legislative activity under Charlemagne and his
successors helps to explain the erratic manner in which Carolingian capitularies have
survived. Provisions for the preservation of copies of these documents in the palace
archives became common only under Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald and even then
were inconsistent. To a great degree, the capitularies have come down to us only because
of records preserved by missi dominici, representatives of the king who circulated them in
the realm. The capitularies that still exist, largely thanks to such collections, take a
variety of forms but in general are devoted to specific issues needing attention, both
secular and ecclesiastical in character. Some deal with such concerns to the church as the
role of images and the propriety of their worship, or the organization of monastic and
canonical life; others note matters to be discussed at later assemblies, amend the realm’s
systems of law, or contain instructions to missi dominici or to counts in different parts of
the empire.
Among the most important of the capitularies from Charlemagne’s reign are the
Capitulary of Heristal (779), which aimed at wide-reaching reform of lay and church
administration in his realm; the Admonitio generalis of 789, a program of ecclesiastical
reform that, among other things, provided regulations for the establishment of schools
near cathedrals and monasteries; the Programmatic Capitulary of 802, concerning the
new situation created by the imperial coronation in 800; and the Capitulary of Thionville
(805), which sought to deal with the weakening of Charlemagne’s power toward the end
of his life and the corresponding increase in corruption among local officials.
Celia Chazelle
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