Chapter Four

EARLY IN the ninth century, a Saxon nobleman gave his son, Gottschalk, to the Benedictine abbey of Fulda in western Germany. The youth was offered – oblatus in medieval Latin – to Jesus Christ as a sort of living sacrifice.

Gottschalk's parents hoped their generosity would reflect well on them in the world to come, but it also served a purpose in this world. Giving Gottschalk to the Benedictines provided for his immediate needs, while extinguishing all claims to his inheritance.

Thousands of children found themselves in this predicament during the Middle Ages. “When they have got their houses full of sons and daughters,” the monk Udalricus wrote of medieval nobility, “if any of them is lame or infirm, hard of hearing or short of sight, they offer him to a monastery.”

Some were dedicated to corporate servitude because, as younger sons and daughters, it was difficult to provide a dowry or inheritance for them. Still others were forced into monasteries by unwanted pregnancy, general rebelliousness, and even incidents as trifling as dreaming about a saint.

Wrenched from their families and cast alone into the strange world of the cloister, most oblates were easily bent to the will of their corporate masters. The thing that set Gottschalk apart was the way he struggled all his life to regain the freedom that his father and the Benedictine Order took from him.

In 829, when he was still a very young man, Gottschalk appealed to a synod at Mainz. How, he asked, could the free-born son of a Saxon noble be doomed to a life of servitude, when the decision was made before he had come of age, and against his will? Touched by the fervor of the young man's plea, the synod released him from his vicarious vow.

But even as the young man savored the prospect of a normal life, the ageless corporation abhorred the precedent that freeing Gottschalk could set. Acting on behalf Fulda and the Benedictine Order, Abbot Rabanus Mauras sued in ecclesiastic court to block Gottschalk's release.

Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, Jephtha's vow and Samuel's dedication were presented as evidence of Biblical sanction for child oblation. A distinguished scholar, Abbot Rabanus had no difficulty proving that the oblate system was genuinely Benedictine, since St. Benedict himself had admitted a Roman senator's son to Monte Cassino at age seven.

By the ninth century, oblates were a crucial source of human power for many monastic houses, like the nunnery described by pious Caesarius of Heisterbach where “by ancient custom, no girl is received after the age of seven years.” This dependency on unwilling conscripts made Gottschalk's plea for freedom a direct threat to the ecclesiastic corporations.

The Benedictines especially clung to the iron regime they had developed over the centuries, and set forth in detailed codes of punishment. Medieval chronicles reveal that the oblate's life to be a relentless round of prayer and brutality, each administered religiously. If the boys offended in psalmody or chant, or fell asleep, or indulged in natural childish play, they were immediately stripped and beaten with “smooth and supple osier rods kept for this single purpose,” as one monastic constitution stipulated.

For a fortunate few who were able to appreciate the education available in monastery schools, child oblation offered marvelous opportunities that did not exist in the secular world. England's proto-historian, St. Bede, for instance, was educated at the Benedictine monastery of Wearmouth, where he was sent as a boy in 684.

Another notable seventh century oblate was St. Gall, a wandering Irish monk who founded the important abbey near Lake Constance that bore his name. Ironically, the monastery of St. Gall eventually burned down when a latter-day oblate thrust a red-hot brand under shingles on the roof to divert attention for some minor transgression in school.

Gottschalk was not a trouble-maker of this sort. He became adept at Latin, and even wrote poetry in the early years of his confinement. “Why do you order me to sing a sweet song when I am exiled far away across the sea,” one of his poems implored, “O why do you order me to sing?” And the refrain repeated, “O why do you order me to sing?”

There is a note of innocent pathos in these lines that quickly burned off in his battle with the Benedictine Order. Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims and the most powerful prelate in northern Europe, described Gottschalk as a wild beast at heart under his cowl, furious and impatient with correction. Despite such condemnations, the unwilling oblate developed a following among the younger monks who were mesmerized by his fervor for freedom. Gottschalk's influence was so strong that he was able to enlist brethren to break the Rule by carrying letters for him, even to Rome.