Claudius, bishop of Turin (814–839), was a native of Spain, but spent three years as chaplain
at the court of Louis the Pious and was sent by him to the diocese of Turin. He wrote practical
commentaries on nearly all the books of the Bible, at the request of the emperor, for the education
of the clergy. They were mostly extracted from the writings of Augustin, Jerome, and other Latin
fathers. Only fragments remain. He was a great admirer of Augustin, but destitute of his wisdom
and moderation.^566
He found the Italian churches full of pictures and picture-worshipers. He was told that the
people did not mean to worship the images, but the saints. He replied that the heathen on the same
ground defend the worship of their idols, and may become Christians by merely changing the name.
He traced image-worship and saint-worship to a Pelagian tendency, and met it with the Augustinian
view of the sovereignty of divine grace. Paul, he says, overthrows human merits, in which the
monks now most glory, and exalts the grace of God. We are saved by grace, not by works. We
must worship the Creator, not the creature. "Whoever seeks from any creature in heaven or on earth
the salvation which he should seek from God alone, is an idolater." The departed saints themselves
do not wish to be worshipped by us, and cannot help us. While we live, we may aid each other by
prayers, but not after death. He attacked also the superstitious use of the sign of the cross, going
beyond Charlemagne and Agobard. He met the defence by carrying it to absurd conclusions. If we
worship the cross, he says, because Christ suffered on it, we might also worship every virgin because
he was born of a virgin, every manger because he was laid in a manger, every ship because he
taught from a ship, yea, every ass because he rode on an ass into Jerusalem. We should bear the
cross, not adore it. He banished the pictures, crosses and crucifixes from the churches, as the only
way to kill superstition. He also strongly opposed the pilgrimages. He had no appreciation of
religious symbolism, and went in his Puritanic zeal to a fanatical extreme.
Claudius was not disturbed in his seat; but, as he says himself, he found no sympathy with
the people, and became "an object of scorn to his neighbors," who pointed at him as "a frightful
spectre." He was censured by Pope Paschalis I. (817–824), and opposed by his old friend, the Abbot
Theodemir of the diocese of Nismes, to whom he had dedicated his lost commentary on Leviticus
(823), by Dungal (of Scotland or Ireland, about 827), and by Bishop Jonas of Orleans (840), who
unjustly charged him with the Adoptionist and even the Arian heresy. Some writers have endeavored,
without proof, to trace a connection between him and the Waldenses in Piedmont, who are of much
later date.^567
Jonas of Orleans, Hincmar of Rheims, and Wallafrid Strabo still maintained substantially
the moderate attitude of the Caroline books between the extremes of iconoclasm and image-worship.
(^566) In his comments on Paul’s Epistles (in Migne, 104 f. 927 sq. ), he eulogizes Augustin as "amantissimus Domini
sanctissimus Augustinus. calamus Trinitatis lingua Spiritus Sancti, terrenus homo, sed coelestis angelus, in quaestionibus
solvendis acutus, in revincendis haereticis circumspectus, in explicandis Scripturis canonicis cautus." In the same place, he
says of Paul that his epistles are wholly given to destroy man’s merits and to exalt God’s grace ("ut merita hominum tollat,
unde maxime nunc monachi gloriantur, et gratiam Dei commendet"). On his Augustinianism, see the judicious remarks of
Neander. Reuter (I. 20) calls him both a biblical reformer and a critical rationalist.
(^567) C. Schmidt in Herzog 2 III. 245 says of this view: "Deise, sehr spaet, in dogmatischem Interesse aufgenommene Ansicht,
die sich bei Léger und andern ja selbst noch bei Hahn findet, hat keinen historischen Grund und ist von allen gründlichen
Kennern der Waldensergeshichte längst aufgegeben. Dabei soll nicht geleugnet werden, dass die Tendenzen des Claudius sich
noch eine zeitlang in Italien erhalten haben; es ist soeben bemerkt worden, dass, nach dem Zeugniss des Jonas von Orléans,
man um 840 versuchte, sie von neuen zu verbreiten. Dass sie sich aber bis zum Auftreten des Peter Waldus und speciell in den
piemontesischen Thälern fortgepflanzt, davon ist nicht die geringste Spur vorhanden."