ABSTRACT
The pastoral compendia of the Carolingian age bear witness to the ideals and responsibilities of bishops and priests, whose task it was to teach the population and lead it to salvation. The main vehicle for week-to-week instruction of lay audiences during mass was homilies and sermons, while rituals of confession and penance were excellent occasions for a priest to share knowledge about virtues and vices. The ritual of baptism, as recent research has emphasised, was central to the Carolingian ideals of improving the moral standards of the kingdom by religious education. Especially in the time of Charlemagne, there was great interest in the ritual: baptism was considered to be of the highest importance for the salvation of the people. Teaching the Lord’s prayer was, in other words, a joint effort that we should, however, not consider as a top-down affair: surely these ideas were supported by the court and carried by the consensus of the episcopate and other leading men.
