CLAUDIUS OF TURIN. - Of Spanish origin, a follower, it seems, of Felix of Urgel. He attended in Lyon the school that Archbishop Leidrad had brought to a high level of efficiency. C. devoted himself to the study of Sacred Scripture, of which he subsequently commented on various books: Genesis (811), St. Matthew (c. 816), the Letters to the Galatians (Lent 815 or 816), to the Ephesians and Philippians (817 or 818), to the Romans (818-20), to the Corinthians (820), Exodus (821), Leviticus (823), Kings and Ruth (c. 824), Joshua and Judges (825 and 826). He lived at the court of Louis the Pious in Aquitaine, and, after his appointment as emperor, in Aachen, where he had occasion to meet the scholars of the time, among them Einhard. Around 817 or 818 the emperor entrusted him with the government of the diocese of Turin. But, shortly after his entry, he gave violent vent to his iconoclastic tendencies, which were moreover still current in some quarters of the Frankish clergy of the time. His manner of acting aroused a chorus of protests not only from the diocesans, but from Paschal I, from Abbot Theodemir, his close friend, from Jonas of Orléans (PL 106, 305-88) and from the recluse of St-Denis, Dungal (ibid., 105, 465-530). The latter also found fault with his writings; the fervor of the polemic then and later altered and somewhat exaggerated certain of his errors, while his extravagant iconoclastic action remains certain, described by him in these terms in the Apologeticum: "In the city of Turin, I found all the basilicas full of the filth of anathemas and of images, against the order of truth, and since I alone began to destroy what all revered, therefore all opened their mouths against me to blaspheme me, and if God had not helped me, they would have swallowed me alive." C. defended himself with an Apologeticum, composed around 825, of which only a few fragments remain to us (PL 105, 454-64). He died in the course of 827 (on 8 May he was still alive) or shortly thereafter.
Most of his writings are still unpublished (manuscripts in Manitius); those published are found in PL 104, 615-918; the letters and the fragments of the Apologeticum were edited by E. Dümmler (in MGH, Epistolae Aevi Karolini, II [1895], pp. 586-613). C. was in his time the author who knew the works of St. Augustine best. In his commentaries, especially of the catena type, he cites among others Origen, Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome, Rufinus, the Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum, Fulgentius, Leo, Maximus, Gregory and Bede.
Bibliography7 works
A. Pietro Frutz