Charlemagne: Great Capitulary

Audience

The audience for the capitularies was multileveled. The content of the capitularies originated as oral decrees from the emperor. In the case of the Capitulary of 802, these dictates were issued at one of the many councils or synods Charlemagne held at the royal palace at Aachen. The decrees, however, had to be disseminated throughout the kingdom to various functionaries, including bishops, abbots, nuns, dukes, and counts, who then were responsible for carrying out the king's orders. The intermediaries Charlemagne used for this purpose were called missi dominici, the plural form of missus dominicus, a title that means “envoy of the lord.” These officials, selected from the royal court, were themselves high-ranking archbishops, bishops, abbots, dukes, and counts who were assigned to various districts. The job of these officials, who generally traveled in pairs (a cleric and a layman), was to visit their assigned district four times each year, assemble the officials in the district, and explain their duties and obligations, often as contained in the capitularies. These officials would then communicate the emperor's decrees to the people in their charge. Thus the missi dominici were in the nature of inspectors-general. It is because the Capitulary of 802 outlines the role of the missi that it is sometimes referred to as the Capitulare missorum generale, or the Capitulary of the Missi.