Abstract
The first lecture presents Agobard's treatise, placing it in the general context of the interpretation of weather and representations of the physical world in Christian ideology. Agobard's theology of nature is representative of a current of Christian rationalism expressed in monistic causality: divine presence and action are both necessary and sufficient to explain the workings of the physical world. This view prevailed in the clerical circle of the early Carolingians. Initially in the minority among the power elite, divergent currents of thought brought a dualistic response to the question of misfortune and evil in the terrestrial world. This presented evil as a principle acting on Nature , directly through the action of extranatural entities or forces, and jointly with the complicity of humans. Thomas Aquinas's notion of the evil pact, formulated in 1272, marked a decisive doctrinal turning point that gradually led to the criminalization of beliefs and practices that had previously been the province of penance and confession.
