Halitgar

Halitgar (Halitgarius, Halitcharius, Halitgaire, Aligerio) was a ninth-century bishop of Cambrai (in office 817–831). He is known also as an apostle to the Danes, and the writer of a widely known penitential.

Life

In 822 he travelled to Denmark as a missionary with Ebbo of Rheims and Willeric of Bremen, though not to great immediate effect.^[1] In 823 he dedicated the church and relics of St Ursmer at Lobbes.^[2] In 825, with Amalarius of Metz, he carried the conclusions of a Paris synod on iconoclasm to Louis the Pious.^[3] He went as ambassador to Byzantium in 828.^[4]

De Paenitentia

His De Paenitentia laid down qualities Christians should aspire to in their lives.^[5] He discussed a distinction between killing in warfare (a sin), and in self-defense in battle.^[6][7] Heavy penances for homosexual acts were imposed on older men.^[8] The work is also a source for information about surviving pagan practices.^[9]

It was written in five volumes, at Ebbo's request.^[10] Ebbo's intention was to have a normative penitential; Halitgar set aside tariffs of penances for exhortations.^[11][12] This work and the two attributed to Hrabanus Maurus were considered to supersede those written before, and were very influential, particularly in pre-Norman England.^[13] At this point, "the books used by confessors began to consist more and more of instructions in the style of the later moral theology".^[14]

His sources have been much debated:

• material from Gregory the Great, Prosper of Aquitaine, the Collectio Acheriana^[10]
• the Canons of Elvira and other old collections^[11]
• Julianus Pomerius^[15]
• a source common to Halitgar, the Collectio quadripartita, and the penitential writings of Hrabanus Maurus.^[16]

References

• Die altenglische Version des Halitgar'schen Bussbuches : (sog. Poenitentiale pseudo-Ecgberti), Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964
• Raymund Kottje (1980), Die Bussbucher Halitgars von Cambrai und des Hrabanus Maurus: Ihre Uberlieferung und ihre Quellen