\ 120. GOTTSCHALK AND RABANUS MAURUS. 525
commanding genius and authority, his view was virtually dis owned, and gave way to the compromise of the Formula of Concord, which teaches both an absolute election of believers, and a sincere call of all sinners to repentance. The Calvinistic Confessions, with more logical consistency, teach an absolute predestination as a necessary sequence of Divine omnipotence and omniscience, but confine it, like Augustin, to the limits of the infralapsarian scheme, with an express exclusion of God from the authorship of sin. Supralapsarianism, however, also had its advocates as a theological opinion. In the Roman church, the Augustinian system was revived by the Jansenists, but only to be condemned.
§ 120. Gottschalk and Rabanus Maurus.
Gottschalk, the son of Count Berno (or Bern), was sent in his childhood by his parents to the famous Hessian convent of Fulda as a pious offering (oblatus). When he had attained mature age, he denied the validity of his involuntary tonsure, wished to leave the convent, and brought his case before a Synod of Mainz in 829. The synod decided in his favor, but the new abbot, Rabanus Maurus, appealed to the emperor, and wrote a book, De Oblatione Pueromm, in defence of the obliga tory character of the parental consecration of a child to monastic life. He succeeded, but allowed Gottschalk to exchange Fulda for Orbais in the diocese of Soissons in the province of Rheims. From this time dates his ill feeling towards the reluctant monk, whom he called a vagabond, and it cannot be denied that Rabanus appears unfavorably in the whole controversy.
At Orbais Gottschalk devoted himself to the study of Augus tin and Fulgentius of Ruspe (d. 533), with such ardent enthu siasm that he was called Fulgentius.1 Pie selected especially the
1 By Walafrid Strnbo, his fellow-student at Fulda, who had a high opinion of his learning and piety, and wrote a poem entitled " Gotescalcho monacho qui et Fulgentius;1' in Opera ed. Migne, Tom. K. ("Patr. Lat.," Tom. 114, col. 1115-1117). Neander (III. 474, note) supposes that Gottschalk probably bor rowed from Fulgentius the term proedestinatio duplex.
526 FOURTH PERIOD. A.D. 590-1049.
passages in favor of the doctrine of predestination, and recited them to his fellow-monks for hours, gaining many to his views. But his friend, Servatus Lupus, warned him against unprofita ble speculations on abstruse topics, instead of searching the Scriptures for more practical things. He corresponded with several scholars, and made a pilgrimage to Rome. On his re turn in 847 or 848, he spent some time with the hospitable Count Eberhard of Friuli, a son-in-law of the Emperor Louis the Pious, met there Bishop Noting of Verona, and communi cated to him his views on predestination. Noting informed Kajbanus Maurus, who had in the mean time become archbishop of Mainz, and urged him to refute this new heresy.
Rabanus Maurus wrote a letter to Noting on predestination, intended against Gottschalk, though without naming him.1 He put the worst construction upon his view of a double predesti nation, and rejected it for seven reasons, chiefly, because it in volves a charge of injustice against God; it contradicts the Scriptures, which promise eternal reward to virtue; it declares that Christ shed his blood in vain for those that are lost ; and it leads some to carnal security, others to despair. His own doctrine is moderately Augustinian. He maintains that the whole race, including unbaptized children, lies under just con demnation in consequence of Adam's sin ; that out of this mass of corruption God from pure mercy elects some to eternal life, and leaves others, in view of their moral conduct, to their just punishment. God would have all men to be saved, yet he ac tually saves only a part ; why he makes such a difference, we do not know and must refer to his hidden counsel. Foreknow ledge and foreordination are distinct, and the latter is conditioned by the former. Here is the point where Rabanus departs from
1 Epist. V. ad Nofingum. De Freed estwatione, first published, together with a letter Ad Eberhardum comitem, by Sirmond, Paris, 1647; also in RABANI MAURI Opera, Tom. VI., ed. Migne ("Patr. Lat.," Tom. 112, col. 1530-1553). Ilefele (IV. 134) complains that this edition has many inaccuracies and typo graphical errors.