Learning Literature & Poetics, and the Formation of
Monastic Culture in the Carolingian World
By
Eileen Margaret Jacxsens
BA University of Richmond, 2000
MA Catholic University of America, 2002
AM Brown University, 2004
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History at Brown University.
Providence, Rhode Island
May, 2011
Copyright by
Eileen M. Jacxsens
2010
2
This dissertation by Eileen M. Jacxsens is accepted in its present form by the
Department of History as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy.
Date_____________
_________________________________
Prof. Amy G. Remensnyder, Advisor
Recommended to the Graduate Council
Date_____________
_________________________________
Prof. John Bodel, Reader
Date_____________
_________________________________
Prof. Joseph Pucci, Reader
Approved by the Graduate Council
Date_____________
_________________________________
Peter Weber, Dean of the Graduate School
iii
Curriculum Vitae
Eileen Margaret Jacxsens
Born: June 17, 1978
Native of Washington, DC
Education:
Brown University, Providence, RI
PhD in History, May 2011
Dissertation: “Learning, Literature, & Poetics, and the Formation of
Monastic Culture in the Carolingian World”
Advisor: Dr. Amy Remensnyder
AM in History, May 2004
Catholic University of America, Washington, DC
MA, with honors, in Medieval Studies, May 2002
University of Richmond, Richmond, VA
BA, cum laude, Major in History, May 2000
Grants and Awards:
Vartan Gregorian Dissertation Fellowship, Brown University, 2007-2008
Summer Fellow, Program in Applied Paleography, American Academy in Rome, 2005
Maude Howlett Woodfin & Susan Lough Grant for Graduate Study in History, University
of Richmond, 2003-2006
Roy J. Deferrari Doctoral Scholarship, Catholic University of America, 2000-2003
Graduate Fields:
Medieval Europe (Major Field), Professor Amy Remensnyder
Roman Empire, Professor John Bodel
Christianity in the Eastern Empire, Professor Susan Harvey
iv
for Ellie
v
Acknowledgments
The completion of this dissertation would not have been possible without generous
financial support for study, research, and writing from the Brown University Graduate
School the University of Richmond, and the American Academy in Rome. I owe my deepest
debt of gratitude to my dissertation committee. I thank Professor Amy Remensnyder for her
encouragement as I discovered my interest in Carolingian literature and monastic education
and, above all, for her example of scholarship, dedication to teaching, and her critical and
exacting comments on my work. I thank my readers, Professor John Bodel, for his
encouragement, which thankfully crossed over into nagging from time to time, and also for
his friendship over the course of my graduate study, and Professor Joseph Pucci, whose
sensitivity to the beauty and depth of medieval Latin poetry gave me the confidence to pursue
this neglected body of work as a dissertation topic and, I hope, as a career. For the technical
expertise needed to complete this project, I must thank Professor Uta-Renate Blumenthal,
Professor Frank A.C. Mantello, Professor John F. Petruccione, all of Catholic University of
America, and Professor Christopher Celenza of Johns Hopkins University.
I also thank Professor Jeanne-Nicole Saint-Laurent, Saint Michael’s College;
Professor Walt Stevenson, University of Richmond; Professor Sheila Bonde, Brown
University; Professor Jenny Knust, Boston University; Professor Sonia Sabnis, Reed College;
Christine Kralik, University of Toronto for encouragement, comments on my drafts,
friendship and support.
This project required many hours and much energy, and the sacrifice and
understanding of those I love the most. I thank my parents and siblings for believing this
would culminate in a degree even when I doubted it was possible. I thank Justin for his love,
patience, and understanding over the past two years. I dedicate this dissertation to Ellie:
Study, study in earnest; in order to be salt and light, you need knowledge, capability.
vi
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations ...............................................................................viii
List of Abbreviations ............................................................................ix
Introduction .........................................................................................1
Chapter 1: Imprinting a Monastic Legacy.............................................35
Chapter 2: Lyric & the Creation of Carolingian Benedictinsim.............62
Chapter 3: The Architecture of Scripture..............................................97
Chapter 4: The Monastery & the Textual Community ..........................137
Conclusion............................................................................................170
Appendices ...........................................................................................178
Bibliography .........................................................................................189
vii
List of Illustrations
Hrabanus Maurus, Inclyta crux domini, Vat. Reg. Lat. 124, fol 12v ........................... 104
Hrabanus Maurus, Louis the Pious as Miles Christi, Vat. Reg. Lat. 124, fol. 8v......... 127
viii
List of Abbreviations
AASS
Acta Sanctorum
AHR
American Historical Review
AJP
American Journal of Philology
BHL
Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis
CSEL
Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum
EHR
Emglish Historical Review
HE
Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum
JAAR
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
JEH
Journal of Ecclesiastical History
JMH
Journal of Medieval History
JRS
Journal of Roman Studies
MGH
Monumenta Germaniae Histoirica (Hannover/Leipzig/Berlin, etc.
(1826 - )
Cap.
Capitularia
Conc.
Concilia
Epp.
Epistolae
Leges
Leges
Poet.
Poetae aevi Carolini
SS
Scriptores
PL
J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina. 221 vols. (Paris, 1844-64)
TAPA
Transactions of the American Philological Association
ix
Introduction
The body of literary works penned by monastic authors of the Carolingian age is
an abundant and largely neglected resource for historians interested in the education,
learning, and culture of the period. The poetry alone fills four large volumes of the
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, and numerous other volumes contain riches of
Scriptural commentary, letters, and hagiographies, but the scholarship on these literary
treasures to date has been sparse in comparison to work done on diplomata from the
same period, or annals written by court historians, royal and ecclesiastical scholars, and
noblemen.1 Until the recent work of scholars such as Peter Godman, Michael Herren,
Francesco Stella, and Joseph Pucci, the contents of Ernst Dümmler’s editions of Poetae
Latini Aevi Carolini merited little more than references in occasional footnotes in the
studies of Carolingian history.2 The literary studies by the above-mentioned scholars
MGH, Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini, 4 voll., ed. E Dümmler (Berlin, 1881) is the most complete
collection of Carolingian poetry. Other collections include C.H. Beeson, ed., A Primer of
Medieval Latin; an anthology of prose and poetry, (Chicago, 1925); K.P. Harrington, ed.,
Mediaeval Latin (Boston, 1925), reprinted several times and recently revised by J. Pucci
(Chicago, 2nd ed. 1997). A handful of studies on Medieval Latin literature examined the poetry in
particular: J. de Ghellinck, Littérature latine au moyen âge (Paris, 1939); M. Manitius and P.
Lehmann, Geschichte der lateinische Literatur des Mittelalters, 3 vols. (Munich, 1911); M.
Manitius, Geschichte der christlich-lateinischen Poesie bis zur Mitte des 8. Jahrhunderts
(Stuttgart, 1891); F. J. E. Raby, A history of Christian-Latin poetry from the beginnings to the
close of the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Oxford,, 1953); F. J. E. Raby, A history of secular Latin poetry
in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1957); and K. Strecker, Einführung in das
Mittellatein, 2nd rev. ed. (Berlin, 1929).
1
Recent works on Carolingian poetry include P. Godman, Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance
(London, 1985); P. Godman, Poets and Emperors: Frankish Politics and Carolingian Poetry
2
1
2
have opened up new avenues for consideration and interpretation of Carolingian
literature and its importance in monastic education and communal life. Commentaries
on Scripture, saints’ lives, and other literary texts were the basic texts of the monastic
school. Monastic scholars of the eighth and ninth century embraced poetry on a scale
unseen for centuries in the Latin west.
This dissertation will examine the role that
literature played in the development of Carolingian monasticism and in the evolving
relationship between monasteries, the Carolingian court, and the aristocracy. It will seek
to demonstrate that literary works were the means whereby the leading Carolingian
monastic scholars defined their identity and sought to assert their role in society.3 Close
connections between the Carolingian family, the aristocracy, and professed religious, as
well as the Carolingian rulers’ practice of drawing on monastic resources – land, offices,
and learning, in particular – to consolidate their power, had led, by the time of
Carolingian monastic reforms, to there being no clear delineation between secular and
religious power in the governance of life and discipline within the monasteries. Leading
monastic thinkers wanted to separate the practice and governance of life within the
(Oxford, 1987); M. W. Herren, "The De Imagine Tetrici of Walahfrid Strabo: Edition and
Translation," The Journal of Medieval Latin 1 (1991); M. W. Herren, "Walahfrid Strabo's De
Imagine Tetrici: An Interpretation," in Latin Culture and Medieval Germanic Europe.
Proceedings of the First Germania Latina Conference held at the University of Groningen, 26
May 1989, ed. R. North and T. Hofstra (Groningen, 1992); F. Stella, La poesia carolingia latina a
tema biblico, Biblioteca di "Medioevo Latino", vol. 9 (Spoleto, 1993); F. Stella, et al, ed., La poesia
carolingia (Florence, 1995); F. Stella, Poesia dell'alto Medioevo europeo: manoscritti, lingua e
musica dei ritmi latini: atti delle euroconferenze per il Corpus dei ritmi latini (IV-IX sec.),
Arezzo, 6-7 novembre 1998 e Ravello, 9-12 settembre 1999, Millennio medievale, vol. 22
(Florence, 2000); and F. Stella, Poesia e teologia (Milan, 2001); K.P. Harrington, ed., Medieval
Latin, 2nd ed. rev. J. Pucci, with a grammatical introduction by A.G. Elliott (Chicago, 1997); J.
Pucci, “Pied Beauty: Paul the Deacon’s Poem to Lake Como,” Latomus 58 (1999), 872-84.
The role of monastics in society was a tricky concept for them to address. Monasticism has its
origins in separation and isolation from society. But from its earliest days, its social function was
inescapable. On this, see P. Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,”
JRS 61 (1971), 80-101; P. Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin
Christianity (Chicago, 1980); P. Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a
Christian Empire, The Curti Lectures, 1988 (Madison, WI, 1992); P. Rousseau, Ascetics,
Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian (Oxford, 1978); A. Sterk,
Renouncing the World yet Leading the Church: The Monk-Bishop in Late Antiquity (Cambridge,
MA, 2004).
3
3
monastery from the caprices of Carolingian politics without jeopardizing the royal
protection they had been able to enjoy.4
Finally, this dissertation will argue that the
cohesion that a common literature created between the monastic communities of the
Carolingian Empire served to hold the Frankish kingdoms together socially and
culturally even as they began to fragment politically.5
Studies of Carolingian monastic reforms, which continued under royal
administration from the middle of the eighth century until about 817, have not
adequately credited monastic insiders for the vision and direction they provided. The
studies have focused heavily on the royal documents promulgated by the Carolingian
Charlemagne recruited monastic advisors and filled his court school with monastic scholars. He
did not want to separate monastic and secular education, though he wanted an educational
reform program aimed at literacy, not at learning per se. The “missionary context” in which he
saw monasteries was aimed at cultural and social cohesion and at imperial consolidation. See M.
M. Hildebrandt, The External School in Carolingian Society, Education and Society in the Middle
Ages and Renaissance, vol. 1 (Leiden, 1992), 53-63. Monastic study and education in the
Carolingian period centered first and foremost on Scripture, and included selected texts from
classical authors, works from the Early Christian Church Fathers – Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine
– as well as the writings of Boethius, Cassiodorus, St Benedict, Gregory the Great, Isidore of
Seville, the grammarians, and the works of late antique and early medieval Christian poets, such
as Venantius Fortunatus. See R. E. Sullivan, ed., The Gentle Voices of Teachers. Aspects of
Learning in the Carolingian Age (Columbus, OH, 1995), 60.
4
Historically, too much emphasis has been placed on the fragmentation following the Treaty of
Verdun as the moment of the nascence of what are now France and Germany. This emphasis
endured from the mid-eighteenth century through the 1950s. See for example, G. Waitz,
Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte 4 (3rd ed., Berlin, 1885) – Waitz considers the East Frankish
kingdom after the Treaty of Verdun the first German Reich; Der Vertrag con Verdun, 843. Neun
Aufsätze zur Begründung der Europäischen Völker- und Staatenwelt, ed. T Mayer (Leipzig,
1943); and even later in the twentieth century, Die Entstehung des deutschen Reiches.
Deutschland um 900, ed. H. Kämpf, Wege der Forschung 1, (4th ed. Darmstadt, 1971). The
refutation of this perception concerning the Treaty of Verdun began with Carlrichard Brühl: C.
Brühl, Die Anfänge der deutschen Geschichte, (Wiesbaden, 1972) and more fully argued in C.
Brühl, Deutschland – Frankreich: die Geburt zweier Völker, (2nd ed. rev & exp., Cologne, 1995).
Even now, the scholarship remains heavily focused on the Frankish kings and nobility, even in
studies focused on economic, social and cultural history of the Carolingian period: M. Innes, State
and Society in the Early Middle Ages: The Middle Rhine Valley, 400-1000, Cambridge Studies in
Medieval Life & Thought 4th ser. 47, (Cambridge, 2000) focuses on the independence of the
Frankish nobility and the negotiation of power between the crown and local aristocracies. E.
Goldberg, Struggle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict under Louis the German, 817-876, (Ithaca,
NY 2006), argues similarly that the medieval kingdom existed mainly at the royal court, the
meeting place between autonomous local aristocracy and the Carolingian king.
5
4
king and their impact on monastic life, discipline and culture.6 This approach, in
essence, credits the Carolingian ruler for creating the space within which monastic life
would subsequently grow, and depicts the development of monasticism in the eighth and
ninth centuries as driven and directed by the Carolingian kings. I will argue instead that
the shape of Carolingian religious and cultural reforms came primarily out of the
monasteries, transmitted through literary texts and in the relationships forged in the
monastic schools. Although the monasteries in which these writers lived and worked
had close ties to the Carolingian court and the Frankish aristocracy, the writings sought
to create a degree of distinctness and distance from the secular realm, and to define
monasticism independently and internally. Carolingian monastic authors turned to the
Patristic grammatical and exegetical tradition as the foundation for their semiotics of
community.7 Patristic writers exchanged letters and literary works with one another as
symbols of friendship and as tangible reminders of the far-flung community to which
C. d. Clercq, La legislation religieuse franque: étude sur les actes de conciles et les capitulaires,
les statuts diocesains et les règles monastiques (Louvain, 1936); D. A. Bullough, "Europae Pater:
Charlemagne and His Achievement in the Light of Recent Research," EHR 85 (1970); H.
Fichtenau, The Carolingian Empire: The Age of Charlemagne, trans. P. Munz (New York,
1964);F. L. Ganshof, The Carolingians and the Frankish Monarchy. Studies in Carolingian
History (Ithaca, NY, 1971); P. E. Schramm, Kaiser, Rom und Renovatio: Studien zur Geschichte
des römischen Erneuerungsgedankens vom Ende des karolingischen Reiches bis zum
Investiturstreit (Darmstadt, 1957); J. Semmler, "Die Geschichte der Abtei Lorsch von der
Gründung bis zum Ende der Salierzeit 764 bis 1125," in Die Reichsabtei Lorsch. Festschrift zum
Gedenken an ihre Stiftung 764, ed. F. Knöpp (Darmstadt, 1973); R. McKitterick, The Frankish
Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 751-987 (New York, 1983); W. Hartmann, Die Synoden der
Karolingerzeit im Frankenreich und in Italien, Konziliengeschichte, A/ Darstellungen
(Paderborn, 1989), and W. Hartmann, Kirche und Kirchenrecht um 900: die Bedeutung der
spätkarolingischen Zeit für Tradition und Innovation im kirchlichen Recht (Hannover, 2008).
6
Patristic writers, particularly Saint Augustine, held that words, texts, and signs, had meaning
only within an interpretive (linguistic, textual) community, which shared methods of speaking,
reading, teaching, and interpreting. The search for meaning – the meaning of the text and the
means to convey it – requires a community. “In discovering the meaning of signs we discover a
shared world of reference and in so doing we are integrated into our linguistic community...
Discovery of meaning frees us from captivity to the sign, and incorporates us in what we might
call a textual, or an interpretive, community.” See R. A. Markus, Signs and Meanings. World and
Text in Ancient Christianity (Liverpool, 1996), 30. See also M. Irvine, The Making of Textual
Culture: 'grammatica' and literary theory, 350-1100, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature,
vol. 19 (Cambridge, 1994) and B. Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and
Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, NJ, 1983).
7
5
they belonged.8 Both the reading and the composition of these texts were considered
spiritual exercises, and all those involved in the process of textual exchange – the author,
the audience, and, in some cases, the bearer – were integral parts of the interpretive
community that enabled the realization of the text as discourse.9
The education
necessary for participation in the Carolingian monastic community was the preserve of
the monastic school; monastic teachers passed it down to monastic disciples within the
confines of the cloister, where learning was characterized by the rhythms of prescribed
communal prayer and the labor of study.
This study also will argue that the Carolingian authors of the poetry and literature
discussed below have not been adequately credited for their understanding and use of
poetics, allusion, and the classical and Christian literary tradition and their success at
using these tools to write a body of literature that shaped the internal life of the
monasteries of the Carolingian period. The monastic literary works remain a neglected
body of evidence, particularly by historians, for two main reasons. The neglect is
partially due to a long-standing opinion that the works were poor imitations of classical
literature devoid of substantive information, but also because, until recently, there was
not a theoretical framework by which to discover the valuable evidence for monastic
culture contained in them. Harold Bloom, for example, in his The Anxiety of Influence,
argues that originality and creativity were anathema to pre-modern authors, who viewed
their predecessors with filial reverence. Monastic discipline further served to stifle
creativity and literary ferment because of the importance of obedience as a monastic
C. Conybeare, Paulinus Noster: Self and Symbols in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola, Oxford
Early Christian Studies (Oxford, 2000) discusses this at length in chapters 1 & 2. Also see H.
Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New
Haven, CT, 1995), chapters 1 & 3.
8
See Markus, Signs and Meanings, 22-35; and P. Ricœur, From Text to Action, trans. K. Blamey
and J.B. Thompson (Evanston, IL, 1991), passim.
9
6
value.10
The growth of literary criticism in the last half century, fueled by the
development of the fields of semiotics and philosophy of language, has created the
opportunity to study the role that Carolingian monastic literature had in the monastic
reforms, in shaping monastic culture, and in situating monasticism within society as a
whole in the eighth and ninth centuries. The primary distinction that this study seeks to
make, is between a mentalité, which can be revealed by reading a text, but may be
evidence of a worldview unwittingly held by the author, and a “move” made consciously
by the author.11 Carolingian scholars have yet to fully explore the importance of these
critical concepts for understanding monastic poetry and literature.
*
*
*
Historians of the Carolingian period a generation ago moved away from both the
origins-driven history that had dominated the nineteenth century and the first half of the
twentieth, and the emphasis previously placed on the nascence of the European nation
state in the Carolingian world. Instead they demonstrated that the cohesion of the
Frankish kingdoms under Carolingian rule centered on the person of the ruler and his
relationship with the local nobility and the institutional Church.12 More recently,
10
H. Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence; A Theory of Poetry (Oxford, 1973), 26-27.
Mentalité can be something static and passive, imposed on the inhabitants of a particular time
and place – D. B. Hamilton, Shakespeare and the Politics of Protestant England (New York,
1992), x, characterizes it as follows: “unconsciously and helplessly reproduced by every...subject
merely because that is the language and thought that constitutes a particular culture at a
particular moment in time” – the notion of “moves” looks to credit the writer with a reflective
activity. According to Hamilton, this concept assumes that the writer positions himself “in
relationship to ongoing issues” and seeks to understand “how each side appropriated the idioms
and argument of the other side.”
11
Important early works demonstrating this shift include Fichtenau, The Carolingian Empire:
The Age of Charlemagne; Ganshof, The Carolingians and the Frankish Monarchy. Studies in
Carolingian History; J. Freid, “Die karolingische Herrschaftsverband im 9 Jh. zwischen ‘Kirche’
und ‘Konigshaus,’” Historische Zeitschrift, 235, (1982), 1-43; McKitterick, The Frankish
Kingdoms under the Carolingians; G. Althoff, Verwandte, Freunde, und Getreue. Zum
politischen Stellenwert der Gruppebindungen im früheren Mittelalter (Darmstadt, 1990). R.E.
Sullivan called for scholars of the Carolingian period to explore new avenues of inquiry and new
methodologies in “The Carolingian Age: Reflections on its Place in the History of the Middle
Ages,” Speculum 64 (1989), 267-306 and in R.E. Sullivan, “What Was Carolingian Monasticism?
12
7
Carolingian history has looked at these personal ties through a number of political
biographies, and examined the role of kings, noblemen, and religious in creating
Carolingian culture and fomenting the intellectual and cultural revival that historians
have dubbed the Carolingian Renaissance.13 These studies work from the premise that
personality of the successful ruler was magnetic and he drew nobles, churchmen, and
scholars to his court and surrounded himself with a large cadre of loyal and influential
courtiers. This dissertation aims to balance the focus of such works by offering a study of
the ways in which monastic scholars and courtiers, and abbots succeeded in shaping the
internal culture of the monastery, in offering criticism of the Carolingian court when they
felt it necessary, and in negotiating for protections and privileges from the Carolingian
rulers, who were engaged in ensuring the maintenance of monastic discipline.
Charlemagne employed the structures, symbols and rituals associated with
aristocratic society and the liturgical life of the Church for ‘civilizing’ the peoples of the
Frankish kingdoms over which he ruled. Monasteries that had been established in the
sixth and seventh centuries as missionary outposts were ideal centers for teaching a
cohesive religious and cultural ideology that in turn would create greater political
stability. Charlemagne’s monastic policy focused on the extension of Frankish influence
into newly subdued and border regions including Saxony, Aquitaine, the trans-Rhenine
lands, and Lombard Italy. In these regions, he brought monasteries directly under royal
The Plan of St. Gall and the History of Monasticism” in After the Fall: Narrators and the Sources
of Early Medieval History. Essays presented to Walter Goffart, ed. A.C. Murray (Toronto,
1998), 251-87.
The proliferation of studies dedicated to the person of Charlemagne that have been published in
recent years is evidence enough of this trend: L. Halphen, Charlemagne et l'Empire carolingien,
Bibliothèque de l'évolution de l'humanité. (Paris, 1995); R. Collins, Charlemagne (Toronto,
1998); A. Barbero, Charlemagne: Father of a Continent, trans. A. Cameron (Berkeley, CA, 2004);
R. McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge, 2008); in
addition to the works on Charlemagne, there are P. Godman and R. Collins, eds., Charlemagne's
Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814-840) (Oxford, 1990); J. Nelson,
Charles the Bald (London, 1992); and P. Riché, The Carolingians: a family who forged Europe,
trans. M.I. Allen (Philadelphia, 1993).
13
8
control, and he used them to secure these areas for the Carolingians and promote
evangelization.14 That is to say, the policy was focused outward from the monastery to
the populace at large, and was only concerned with the internal life of the monastery
insofar as it affected the ability of monks to properly instruct and convert the laity.
Monasteries established in border regions and newly conquered areas were to be
populated by educated and literate monks and clerics and used as a means of
Christianization and enculturation. Charlemagne hoped that improving the level of
literacy among the monks and the clergy would help spread Christianity as both a
religion and a culture and better unify the Carolingian lands under their king. Education
would create a literate elite of religious men, loyal to the Carolingians, sprinkled
throughout the kingdom as examples of Christian perfection. In turn, a uniformly
Christian and Frankish population guided and educated by loyal and capable monks and
clerics would lead to a more cohesive and stable kingdom.15 Charlemagne’s pragmatism
should not be overstated, however, as it seems evident that he was genuinely interested
This was essentially the same policy that Pippin III had used before him, though Charlemagne
was more interested in the possibility of evangelization than his father had been. See McKitterick,
The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, p. 53-59. S. Vanderputten, "Faith and Politics in
Early Medieval Society: Charlemagne and the frustrating failure of an ecclesiological project,"
Revue d'histoire ecclesiastique 96 (2001), 311-32, details the goals of Charlemagne’s reform
program and describes why it ultimately fell short.
14
Charlemagne opens his Capitulare Ecclesiasticum of 789 with an exhortation to bishops and
clerics to educate the people of the kingdom, correcting errors, teaching proper doctrine and
discipline, and living as a good example. The exhortation’s controlling metaphor is pastoral – a
shepherd caring for his flock – and invokes images of people living in heavenly peace and
harmony. (On the tradition of the myth of the shepherd-king see O. Murray, “The Idea of the
Shepherd King from Cyrus to Charlemagne,” in P. Godman & O. Murray, Latin Poetry and the
Classical Tradition: Essays in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Oxford, 1990), 1-14.)
Charlemagne greets the bishops, priests and religious in perpetuae pacis et beatitudinis salutem
and ends his greeting by saying that they gather united in Jesus Christ (in laudem et in gloriam
domini nostri Iesu Christi congregare). PL, v. 97, col. 151A-152B. A practical example of this
policy would be Charlemagne’s conquest of Saxony, which was accomplished in 782, after a
decade-long effort, with the submission, conversion, and baptism of Widukind, a Westphalian
nobleman who had been a key leader of Saxon resistance and revolts. Rosamond McKitterick,
The Frankish Kingdoms Under the Carolingians, 62, characterized these baptisms as “rather
statements of political realignment than affirmations of religious faith.” And, in fact,
Christianization was subsequent to baptism in Saxony; Charlemagne began a missionary effort
there in earnest after 785.
15
9
in promoting both piety and learning as ends in themselves as well as supports for
promoting stability and cultural cohesion.16
The programmatic royal documents, written for Charlemagne by the monk
Alcuin, focus on the spiritual importance of literacy and learning. At the beginning of
Charlemagne’s reign, a number of large monasteries and bishoprics in Francia were held
by powerful nobles who were interested in the wealth and income attached to them.
They conveniently neglected the spiritual aspect of the offices. Charlemagne, like Pippin
III before him, tried to set a standard for monastic life in community and under a
regula.17 The rule of choice for both father and son was the Rule of Benedict, though
other rules such as the Regula canonicorum of Chrodegang of Metz, which bore the
influence of Benedict’s Rule, were adopted also. When Pippin III brought the monastery
of St Gall under royal control in the early 750s, he subjected the monastery to the
Benedictine Rule.18 In the capitularies from various synods, the instructions on regular
life for monks echo the Benedictine Rule: monks are to remain within the monastery and
not wander about;19 the abbot must live with his monks; a monk may not become a
Many of Charlemagne’s contemporaries praise him for his love and patronage of learning –
Modoin calls him Carolus sapiens in a dedicatory verse, MGH Poetae I, 384; Einhard, in his life
of Charlemagne, details both Charlemagne’s patronage of learning and his own scholarly pursuits;
Angilbert writes that Charlemagne, whom he refers to as David, habere cupit sapientes mente
magistros. Cf. MGH, Poetae I, 360. Charlemagne’s genuine interest in learning for its own sake
has been noted by modern scholars, most notably, McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under
the Carolingians, 61.
16
In Charlemagne’s earliest surviving capitulary, which came out of an assembly he called at
Herstal in 779, the first 7 of the 23 directives address monastic and ecclesiastical matters. One of
the capitulae instructs monasteries to remain faithful to the rule upon which they were founded:
De monasteriis qui regulares fuerunt, ut secundum regulam vivant (PL, v. 97, col. 127A). J.
Semmler, "Pippin III und die Fränkischen Klöster," Francia 3 (1975), 130-146, connects the
efforts of the Carolingian rulers to impart throughout their kingdom a unified Roman liturgy and
their favoring of the Benedictine Rule because the Office prescribed therein was patterned on the
Roman liturgy.
17
18
McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians , 43-4.
19
Synod of Ver, PL, v. 96, col. 1508-13, cap. 10.
10
hermit without the permission of the abbot.20 The Benedictine Rule’s emphasis on the
important presence of an exemplary and authoritative abbot made it particularly suitable
to the Carolingian monastic agenda.
Pippin and Charlemagne tried to increase the stability and security of the
monasteries by focusing on the spiritual commitment of monastic life. Land given over to
a monastery had to remain part of the monastery in perpetuity, and could not be
reverted to saecularia habitacula.21 Charlemagne’s Admonitio Generalis of 789
instructed men who had taken vows to remain faithful to them and committed to the
regular life. It cautioned monks who subsequently received holy orders not to abandon
their commitment to regular life, to steer clear of secular affairs and offices, and to
remain chaste.22 Charlemagne’s legislation envisioned monasteries as a place where
people could come and see men living Christian perfection and be inspired by them:
Optamus enim vos sicut decet ecclesiae milites, et interius
devotos et exterius doctos castosque bene vivendo et
scolasticos bene loquendo, ut, quicunque vos propter
nomen Domini et sanctae conversationis nobilitatem ad
videndum expetierit, sicut de aspectu vestro aedificatur
visus, ita quoque de sapientia vestra, quam in legendo seu
cantando perceperit, instructus omnipotenti Domino
gratias agendo gaudens recedat.23
We desire that you, as befits soldiers of the Church, be both
inwardly faithful and outwardly learned and chaste
scholars living well and speaking well, in order that,
anyone who asks to see you in the name of God or because
of the nobility of your holy life may learn from you, just as
your look is constructed from your posture, so also from
your wisdom, which he may perceive in your reading or
your singing, and leave rejoicing and giving thanks to God
Almighty.
20
Synod of Frankfurt, PL, v. 97, col. 191-200, cap. 12-13.
21
Admonitio Generalis, PL v. 97, col. 149-84, cap. 31.
Admonitio Generalis, cap. 14, 21, 23, 26, 27, 29, 52, 71-2, 76. Many of these directives also get
repeated in the capitulary that comes out of the Synod of Frankfurt in 794.
22
In this paper I will use the edition of De litteris colendis found in L. Wallach, “Charlemagne’s
De litteris colendis and Alcuin: A Diplomatic-Historical Study,” Speculum 26.2, 1951, p. 288-305.
23
11
The passage connects the acquisition of sapientia with monastic discipline as does the
Rule of Benedict, which presents twelve steps of humility that move the monk toward a
greater perfection of virtue and knowledge.
The model that informed these documents came from several monasteries that
had an already long and prestigious history of scholarship. The Carolingian royal family
had favored a number of monasteries that had active scriptoria and were well-known
scholarly centers: Corbie, Saint-Denis, and Tours among them. Charlemagne hoped to
improve upon and spread this monastic model beyond the Carolingian heartland and
southern Gaul to newly acquired lands.24 The royal court that Charlemagne assembled
in the 780s helped him develop a model for the monastic school and a curriculum
focused on improving the discipline of monastic life. Alcuin arrived at court in the early
780s and is credited with drafting the De litteris colendis. In this letter, knowledge and
wisdom are made synonymous with the study of literature and study is given as high an
importance as obedience to the monastic rule:
Notum igitur sit Deo placitae devotioni vestrae, quia nos
una cum fidelibus nostris consideravimus utile esse, ut
episcopia et monasteria nobis Christo propitio ad
gubernandum commissa praeter regularis vitae ordinem
atque sanctae relegionis conversationem etiam in
litterarum meditationibus eis qui donante Domino discere
possunt secundum uniuscuiusque capacitatem docendi
studium debeant impendere, qualiter sicut regularis
norma honestatem morum, ita quoque docendi et discendi
instantia ordinet et ornet seriem verborum, ut, qui Deo
placere appetunt recte vivendo, ei etiam placere non
neglegant recte loquendo.25
Therefore, let it be known to your devotion, which is
pleasing to God, that we, together with the faithful, have
considered it beneficial for the bishoprics and monasteries
committed to our governance by Christ’s grace, in addition
See McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 59-62, for a detailed
discussion of Charlemagne’s policy regarding monasteries and expansion.
24
25
De lit. col.
12
to the order of regular life and the practice of sacred
religion, also in the study of letters, that those who are able
to learn through the grace of God ought to teach others,
each one according to his own capacity, so that just as the
standards of the rule order and adorn virtuous habits, so
too perseverance in teaching and learning orders and
ordains language, so that those who desire to please God
by living rightly should not neglect to please him also by
speaking rightly.
This circular letter, Charlemagne writes, was prompted by his receiving a nonnullis
monasteriis saepius letters that were so poorly written that he became concerned ne
forte, sicut minor erat in scribendo prudentia, ita quoque et multo minor esset quam
recte debuisset in sanctarum scripturarum ad intellegendum sapientia.
The Admonitio Generalis provides further details concerning education and
study in the monasteries.
It directs monasteries to establish schools for boys ut
legentium fiant. The document also discusses length the importance of book production
and instructs that it not be entrusted to young students:
Et ut...fiant Psalmos, notas, cantus, compotum,
grammaticam per singula monasteria vel episcopia, et
libros catholicos bene emendatos; quia saepe dum bene
aliqui Deum rogare cupiunt, sed per inemendatos libros
male rogant. Et pueros vestros non sinite eos vel legendo
vel scribendo corrumpere. Et si opus est evangelium
psalterium et missale scribere, perfectae aetatis homines
scribant cum omni diligentia.26
And, in order that...there may be Psalms, notes, music, the
c o m p u t u s of the calendar, and grammars in every
monastery and bishopric, and properly emended catholic
books; since often while those who seek God inquire well,
but they inquire poorly through improperly edited books.
And do not permit your boys to corrupt those texts either
through reading or writing. And if the task is to copy the
gospels, the Psalter or the missal, let men of advanced age
copy them with the utmost care.
Proper copying of texts required proper understanding, which required knowledge of
grammar and rhetoric and the study of the literary canon. Cum autem, Charlemagne’s
26
Admonitio Generalis, cap. 71.
13
letter argues, in sacris paginis scemata, tropi et caetera his similia inserta inveniantur,
nulli dubium est, quod ea unusquisque legens tanto citius spiritaliter intellegit, quanto
prius in litterarum magisterio plenius instructus fuerit. Penetrating the meanings of
the figures of speech and metaphors was the most difficult aspect of reading and
required years of schooling under a learned master.
But Charlemagne envisioned the fruits of monastic learning to extend beyond the
walls of the monastery and foster religious and cultural unity within the Frankish
kingdoms. To this end, Charlemagne invited scholars to his court and appointed abbots
in monasteries to teach and study the texts. His patronage of learning went beyond the
political benefits of creating a broad educational system that taught a common culture.
Charlemagne undertook an “ecclesiological project” that aimed at achieving social
reform through the efforts of an educated, disciplined, and organized hierarchy of clerics
and monks.27
*
*
*
This study proposes a reexamination of Carolingian monasticism based on the
evidence of literary sources composed by monks and within the setting of a monastery.
The reconstruction of Carolingian monastic life, the mentalités of Carolingian monks, as
L. Milis reminds us, has relied heavily on charters, conciliar or synodal decrees, in short,
sources that describe the meeting point between the monastery and the world outside.28
It will argue that literary sources address the world within the monastery from the
viewpoint of the monk because they were written with the intention of shaping the lives
and worldviews of the inhabitants of the monastery.29 Unlike the diplomatic sources,
See S. Vanderputten, "Faith and Politics in Early Medieval Society: Charlemagne and the
frustrating failure of an ecclesiological project," 311-332.
27
28
L. Milis, Les moines et le peuple dans l'Europe du moyen âge, Europe & histoire. (Paris, 2002).
Scholars such as J.-L. Derouet, "Les possibilities d'interpretation sémiologiques des texts
hagiographique," Revue d'histoire de l'Église de France 62 (1976), 153 -62 and A. Gurevich,
29
14
which prescribed and defined the limits of monastic life from without, literary texts were
produced as a foundation for forming the monastic habitus.30 The texts adopted the
symbolism and idioms of both classical and early Christian literary tradition in order to
shape the attitude and culture of Carolingian monks.
At the heart of this investigation is the concept of a monastic literary aesthetic.
The value of the monastic literary work resided originally in its beauty and the spiritual
and meditative act of reading, studying, and pondering the meaning and complexity of
the text that the audience or readers received from it. Walter Benjamin in Illuminations
calls this quality of a work its “aura” and Hans-Robert Jauss suggests that the auratic
quality of medieval literature may reside, not in a single work that “means the world” to
the reader, as Benjamin characterized it, but rather in “an expectation which can only be
fulfilled by the step from text to text, for here the pleasure is provided by the perception
of difference, of an ever-different variation on a basic pattern.”31 This study posits that
the literary aesthetic depended not only on situating a text within the canon of literary
texts that formed the basis of monastic education and scholarship, but also in situating
the texts within the larger context of monastic life, with its repetitions and rhythms. The
constitutive intertextuality of monastic literature is its defining feature, both in its
Categories of Medieval Culture, trans. G.L. Campbell (London, 1985) have argued that modern
literary criticism, particularly deconstruction and discovery of the sub-text, applied to early
medieval hagiographical texts can unlock the thought world of author and audience. P. Fouracre,
"Merovingian History and Merovingian Hagiography," Past & Present 127.1 (1990), 3-38 at 5-8,
offers a number of caveats concerning the methodology advocated by the former two studies,
particularly regarding the notion that a semiological system within the text can be discovered
through the deconstruction of a text and the study of the sub-text. Fouracre argues that a return
to a more traditional approach to textual interpretation is still fruitful for early medieval
hagiography, particularly because of the importance of topoi in the genre.
See P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. R. Nice, Cambridge Studies in Social
Anthropology, vol. 16 (Cambridge, 1977), especially pp. 72ff. Bourdieu defines habitus as the
outlook and expectations produced by the environmental, social, and cultural influences
experienced by the subject.
30
W. Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. H. Zohn, 1st ed. (New York, 1968). H. R. Jauss, "The Alterity
and Modernity of Medieval Literature," New Literary History 10.2 (1979), 181-229, at 189.
31
15
production and its reception. Because the medieval text did not stand on its own and
required knowledge of the literary canon as well as the lived experience of monastic life,
an education within the monastery was a prerequisite to membership in the literary
community.32
The importance of the literary canon and the relationship of any single text to the
community of texts meant that the significance of an individual text could only be
grasped by situating the text in the canon. A text wholly original unto itself in this
aesthetic context would have been essentially devoid of meaning because meaning was
derived from its imitation of and variation from the forms and conventions of the canon.
The textual community relied on continuity with the canon as a basis for interpretation,
and the author situated himself within the tradition of texts and the community of his
addressees in order to produce a text that served to develop, communicate, and
legitimize social norms within that community.
The Carolingian crown and aristocracy saw monastic education in the context of
the early Frankish use of monasteries as missionary outposts for newly Christian and
nominally Christian populations and then as centers for the promotion of social and
moral reform.
Education, as such, was the means of adapting the individual to
Carolingian society and instituting a more cohesive Carolingian Christian culture. The
monastery should be open to the local populace and monastic education available to the
sons of the local aristocracy. Monastic reformers of the eighth century, on the other
hand, emphasized the tradition of withdrawal from the world that had been a strong
component of both early Christian and insular monasticism, and envisioned monastic
education as unique and the goal of this education the formation of monks, not the
For those who could not appreciate the intertextual aesthetic, literacy (reified) and the book still
possessed an auratic quality. And the monastic preservation of education and their circling of the
wagons, as it were, in this regard, helped to preserve this. Note the prevalence of reading, writing,
and study in the illustrations of medieval display Bibles, for example, which would have served to
further instill the sense of surprise or wonderment that Benjamin characterized as aura.
32
16
formation of Christian society at large. Education, from their perspective, was intended
to teach monks the ‘language’ and the habitus they needed in order to become part of the
interpretive community of the monastery.33
The texts used for monastic education taught reverence for the monastic tradition
of the West, particularly the Benedictine and Roman traditions. Monastic literature of
this period reveals a sense of continuity with the past, not a break from it or a selfconscious return to it. The texts display reverence for early Benedictinism and for
Roman literary style, but absent is the anxiety over connections to the Roman tradition
that the Patristic writers often displayed. This is an important feature of Carolingian
monasticism that has not been sufficiently discussed in the scholarship of the
Carolingian reforms or monastic life. The present study attempts to redress this
oversight by examining, in the first pair of chapters, monastic use of inscriptions and
poetry to link monastic architecture to its Roman heritage and, in the second pair of
chapters, how Carolingian monks appropriated and retooled the Benedictine monastic
tradition. The linkage that Carolingian monastic authors felt to both the Roman and
Christian past requires some clarification of the notion of a Carolingian renaissance.
The adoption of the term “Carolingian Renaissance” in scholarship on the
Carolingian period has linked too closely the notion of Renaissance developed by
fourteenth-century Italian humanists to Charlemagne’s notion of renovatio imperii. The
equation of “renovatio imperii” with “renaissance” elides one of the most important
B. Stock, Listening for the Text: On the Uses of the Past, (Philadelphia, PA, 1996); Markus,
Signs & Meanings; Conybeare, Paulinus Noster. Stock argues that literary texts, too often
ignored by historians, should be considered “under the guidance of linguistics, semiotics, and
hermeneutics” (16) as loci of self-definition and interpretation. Literary texts within a community
convey meaning through signs and symbols that members of the community interpret and
reinterpret. Community can be built around the consensus regarding the semiotics of the text.
Markus traces the development of Early Christian understandings of interpretation and Scriptural
exegesis and notes that “both assume and take place within a social group.” Conybeare’s work
applies precisely the techniques that Stock advocated to the study of Paulinus of Nola and the
textual community in which he participated.
33
17
aspects of the Carolingian program. The renovatio was not intended to be a ‘renaissance’
per se, but scholarship in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries applied
Renaissance attributes to the Carolingian reforms and created a narrative in which the
Europe was rescued from the ‘Dark Ages’ under the Carolingians, and attributed to the
Carolingian a central role in the creation of a European culture and political landscape.34
Although Charlemagne’s program employed visual and rhetorical connections to the
Roman past, it aimed at establishing legitimacy through a moral reform of society. The
Carolingian royal program embraced classical art, architecture, and literature as part of
the Christian and western heritage, as a continuation of the past, not a return to it.
Above all, it was an effort aimed at greater societal cohesion promoted by Charlemagne
and implemented by court scholars. Though a considerable proportion of the scholars at
court were monks, the monastic literary tradition developed somewhat separately, both
in form and intention, from the larger renovatio.
Eighth- and ninth-century monastic literature reveals that Carolingian scholars
placed their work in a continuous relationship with the Roman literary canon that had
evolved over the centuries. In the first centuries of Christianity, when Roman civic life
and the schools still remained strong, a man who rejected education was symbolizing his
rejection of aristocratic life and of the engagements and entanglements of the world. As
Christianity became the religion of the educated and elite, the need to reject the cultural
inheritance of the classical world as a means of distinguishing oneself as a Christian
faded; In terms of the prevailing mores and customs, “everyone, for all practical
On the use and historiography of the designation ‘Carolingian Renaissance,’ see G. W. Trompf,
"The Concept of the Carolingian Renaissance," Journal of the History of Ideas 34.1 (1973); J. J.
Contreni, "The Carolingian Renaissance: Education and Literary Culture," in The New
Cambridge Medieval History, ed. R. McKitterick (Cambridge, 1995); R. E. Sullivan, "The
Carolingian Age: Reflections on its Place in the History of the Middle Ages," Speculum 64 (1989).
34
18
purposes, was a Christian.”35 By the Carolingian age, to reject aristocratic life and
secular attainments meant rejecting military culture, and embracing a quiet life of study
and contemplation, modeled on the retirement of the Roman world.36 This, combined
with architectural and communal elements of monasteries, led to a renewed close
association between Roman traditions and culture and Christian monastic life in the
second half of the eighth century.37 As the reforms of Charlemagne pointed to a world
that looked like the late Roman empire of the fifth and sixth centuries, the monks of the
eighth and ninth centuries found kindred souls in the Christian thinkers of the period –
Markus, Signs and Meanings, 46. Markus argues in this work and in R. A. Markus, The End of
Ancient Christianity (Cambridge, 1990) that by the late sixth century, the landscape of the
Christian world had changed and could no longer mark a clear opposition to the secular, nonChristian Roman world. “[T]he powerful threads that bound together traditional Roman religion
and intellectual culture within a flourishing municipal life” (223) no longer existed. Markus
further notes that this was not the end of Roman intellectual life, and that much of the classical
intellectual tradition was employed in a “scripturally defined perspective” and that it provided “a
fruitful play of internal tensions for [Christian discourse’s] enrichment and growth” (224-25).
35
In the letters of Servatus Lupus, abbot of Ferrières, Lupus of Ferrières, Correspondance de
Loup de Ferrières, trans. L. Levillain, 2 vols. (Paris, 1927), he repeatedly expresses frustration
with the administrative and political duties of an abbot because they take him away from his
studies. In a letter (Ep. 27) to Hrabanus Maurus, his former teacher, upon his retirement as abbot
of Fulda, Lupus characterized abbacy as burdened with administrative duties and noted that his
former teacher would now rebus divinis solummodo nunc esse intentos. His letter to Pardulus of
Laon (Ep. 72) laments Charles’s lack of interest in and consideration for Lupus’s studies. This
sentiment appears in earlier letters as well. The first letter Lupus wrote to Einhard (Ep. 1)
expresses his love for learning and his sadness that it is not better received by men of the world:
Amor litterarum ab ipso fere initio pueritiae mihi est innatus, nec earum, ut nunc a plerisque
vocantur, superstitiosa vel [supervacua] otia fastidivi; et, nisi intercessisset inopia
praeceptorum et longo situ collapsa priorum studia pene interissent, largiente Deo, meae
aviditati satisfacere forsitan potuissem. He goes on to say: Nunc oneri sunt qui aliquid discere
affectant...Ita, dum alii dignam sapientiae palmam non capiunt, alii famam verentur indignam,
a tam praeclaro opere destiterunt. He echoes these sentiments again in an 845 letter (Ep. 45) to
his old friend Louis: Cupio etiam, si Dei placet, quod didici et semper disco docere. This comes at
the end of a list of Lupus’s concerns and he continues, Quas res, praeter ultimam (ea enim velut
reipublicae inutilis judicaretur, quae meo judicio ceterarum est gravissima), si me evocare
voluerit ad comitatum, regi, quaeso, suggerite.
36
Recent archaeological work at the Carolingian monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno in southcentral Italy illustrates the connection between Roman and monastic traditions. See R. Hodges
and J. Mitchell, San Vincenzo al Volturno: The Archaeology, Art, and Territory of an Early
Medieval Monastery, BAR International Series 252 (Oxford, 1985) and R. Hodges, San Vincenzo
al Volturno, 3 vols., Archaeological monographs of the British School at Rome (London, 1993).
The abbey of San-Riquier in northern France had similar architectural echoes of Roman villae
rusticae. See S. A. Rabe, Faith, Art, and Politics at Saint-Riquier: The Symbolic Vision of
Angilbert (Philadelphia, 1995).
37
19
Saint Benedict, Boethius, and Gregory the Great. Monastic life in Italy and in the GalloRoman areas north of the Alps was imbued with reminders of this heritage; it was
literally surrounded by the remnants of Roman Christian learned culture.38
The monastic model from the south entailed aristocratic men leaving the affairs
and attainments of the secular world behind and taking up a life of contemplation and
prayer in the countryside. Often, these monasteries grew up where Roman villae had
once been. The connotations of the country estate remained, to some degree, in the
structure of the villa, and the monastic life easily became associated with the leisure of
study. This was not the strict and difficult study of the schoolboy, punctuated by the
harsh discipline of the master, but the leisure of study that Cicero linked to peaceful
retirement from worldly affairs.39 The architectural space of many Gallo-Roman villaecum-monasteries lent itself to the latter notion of study, while the long tradition of
monastic literature often invoked discipline and effort as hallmarks of religious life.40
The intent of the early monastic communities was not to transfer the former authority
and status of the Roman aristocracy to themselves. Instead, these were the rural
By the late fifth century or early sixth century, Christianity could be taken for granted as the
norm in the Roman world; its inhabitants were measured as more or less Christian, not as either
Christian or pagan. See R. A. Markus, From Augustine to Gregory the Great: History and
Christianity in Late Antiquity (London, 1983), R. A. Markus, Gregory the Great and his World
(Cambridge, 1997), and P. Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity,
A.D. 200-1000, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA, 2003). Monks in the eighth and ninth centuries also
benefited from the distance between themselves and classical Rome and the spread of Christianity
throughout western Europe. Building on the work of scholars like Venantius Fortunatus and
Gregory of Tours, whose careers effected a union between “Roman” and “Christian” and opposed
these to “barbarian” and “pagan,” the scholars of the Carolingian court could appropriate themes,
imagery and diction from the classical Roman canon and re-inscribe them with new meanings
without having the same sort of identity crisis that plagued Saint Jerome.
38
Cicero, De Oratore 1.1.3: ac fuit cum mihi quoque initium requiescendi atque animum ad
utriusque nostrum praeclara studia referendi fore iustum et prope ab omnibus concessum
arbitrarer, si infinitus forensium rerum labor et ambitionis occupatio decursu honorum, etiam
aetatis flexu constitisset.
39
On the architecture, see P. Héliot, L'abbaye de Corbie, ses églises et ses bâtiments,
Bibliothèque de la Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique, fasc. 29 (Louvain, 1957); Hodges and Mitchell,
San Vincenzo al Volturno: The Archaeology, Art, and Territory of an Early Medieval Monastery
; and J. Leclercq, Otia monastica: études sur le vocabulaire de la contemplation au Moyen Age,
Studia Anselmiana, vol. 51 (Rome, 1963).
40
20
monastic retreats of the Early Christian households turned ascetic communities, like
Augustine’s Cassiciacum retreat, or his community at Hippo, or Paulinus of Nola’s
ascetic household.
Almost as if in homage to the Early Christian tradition, Carolingian writers echo
the harsh criticisms of pagan learning and literature of their patristic forebears, but the
writings of Carolingian scholars belie their protests against the pagan classics. The
distance from pagan society allowed the medieval authors to employ allusions to the
classical tradition without the overwhelming anxiety over their pagan roots that earlier
Christian authors had felt. This study intends to demonstrate the variety of ways in
which Carolingian monastic authors employed these literary echoes in their own writing
and demonstrate the ways in which these authors redefined the metaphorical and
symbolic meanings of classical allusions. In order to examine how they engaged the
classical tradition in their works, it is important to recognize that Carolingian authors
neither were unaware of nor ignored the ancient contexts of their allusions. Scholars of
early medieval literature and textual transmission have historically been quite
conservative in their estimates concerning the volume and the quality of classical
literature available to Europe after the seventh century.41 The poetry examined in this
study demands that we reconsider these estimates. Often the allusions that eighth- and
ninth-century authors employ draw force from their ancient context, even if the new
situation of the allusion in the text turns the ancient meaning on its head.
In order to characterize how monastic writers of the eighth and ninth centuries
employed classical allusions, I refer to Harold Bloom’s model for how Romantic poets
B. Bischoff, Manuscripts and Libraries in the Age of Charlemagne, trans. M.M. Gorman
(Cambridge, 1994).
41
21
dealt with the work of their predecessors.42 I have chosen to begin with Bloom’s
influential work because it has helped to foster a conception of the medieval scholar and
poet that has limited the interest in precisely the sort of literature that this dissertation
hopes to dust off and reconsider. Bloom argues that English poets, who followed prolific
masters such as Shakespeare or Milton, became increasingly anxious about the influence
that these great poets exerted on their own work and concerned about how they could
achieve originality in the shadows of the great poets that had come before them. Bloom
divides poets into two categories based on their reaction to the poetic influence of
predecessors: “strong” poets are able to misread, as it were, imperfection into the widely
perceived perfection achieved by the elder poet, thereby creating space for their own
original work, and “weak” poets are those whose works tend toward mere imitation. He
places all pre-modern authors in the latter category. Underlying his argument is an
assumption that an overly submissive filial reverence of students for their masters and a
relatively weak sense of the individual characterized much of medieval European
society.43 The Carolingian monastic poets whose life and work will be examined here
promote the abasement of self in favor of the monastic community in their writings, but
this monastic value does not lend itself to the degree of subservience that Bloom
assumes. Instead the monastic authors willingly engage with their literary forebears,
both classical and Patristic, employing allusion and symbolism in a number of artful
Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence. Bloom argues that “anxiety of influence” is a modern
phenomenon, available only to poets after Shakespeare and Milton, and that pre-modern authors,
for whom originality and creativity were anathema.
42
Cf. Ibid., 26-27. See also C. Morris, The Discovery of the Individual, 1050-1200, Medieval
Academy Reprints for Teaching, vol. 19 (London, 1972; reprint, Toronto, 1987), which argues for
the late development of a consciousness of the individual defined apart from society in the Middle
Ages.
43
22
ways to inscribe new meanings onto the older texts, received poetic genres, and meters,
and other literary conventions.44
Although Bloom argues that the tension between the master and the disciple
exists only in modern poetry because originality and individuality were not prized, or
even encouraged, in the medieval world, the spread of Christianity and the importance of
literacy in Christian culture demanded “strong” authors who could claim Roman
classical learning for their own.45 For monks in eighth and ninth century Francia, this
anxiety of influence was a result of their dual inheritances - Christian and Roman.46
Western monasticism embraced this melding of traditions in its architecture, in the
rhetoric of its vocation, and in the progression of its education. Monastics did this with
some degree of ease as compared to Patristic and late-Antique Christian thinkers, in part
because Carolingian Europe inherited the Christianized classical culture of the postConstantinian Empire and, in part because the misreading of classical works in which
the Carolingian monastics engaged was not characterized by the anxiety that Bloom
attributes to the moderns, but was prompted, even compelled, by the rise of Christianity
– the watershed event of the Incarnation of the Word of God and what Christian thinkers
Several recent studies in the fields of medieval architecture and literature have examined the
notion of misprision, which Bloom reserves for modern artists and authors, in the pre-modern
period: See D. Kinney, "Roman Architectural Spolia," Proceedings of the American Philosophical
Society 145.2 (2001), 138-161 and T. K. Hubbard, The Pipes of Pan: Intertextuality and Literary
Filiation in the Pastoral Tradition from Theocritus to Milton (Ann Arbor, MI, 1998).
44
The importance of the written word, of literacy, and of literate culture in Christianity made the
“conversion” of texts a task of great import. As Christianity became part of all aspects of
European society and culture in the early Middle Ages – education, government administration,
commerce – literacy as a mark of power and as a tool in shaping culture became increasingly
valuable. The new elite of monks and clerics had to make their own the esteem formerly accorded
the Roman literary elite. On the centrality of learning and literary culture to Christianity see A.
Grafton, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of
Caesarea (Cambridge, MA, 2006); Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and
Diversity, A.D. 200-1000, 232-47; M. L. W. Laistner, Thought and Letters in Western Europe,
A.D. 500 to 900, New ed. (London, 1957); and H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity
(New York, 1956).
45
R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization, and Cultural Change, 950-1350
(London, 1993) and Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 2001000 discuss the importance of the union of Roman and Christian at length.
46
23
understood the revelation of the Word to mean for language and how it signifies.
Charlemagne’s conquests and the missionary work that went hand in hand with his
military triumphs served to reinforce this notion in the early Carolingian period. In
subsequent generations, monastic authors looked to aspects of classical culture that
equated learning with leisure and retirement from worldly affairs in order to define their
community over against the political world that too often intruded into the monastery.
Carolingian scholars had to appropriate themes, imagery, and diction from the
classical Roman canon and re-inscribe them with new meanings. Here the Carolingian
monastic scholars tackled what their Patristic predecessors had not: They accepted the
works of classical authors as part of their canon, and sought the appropriation of all
Roman literary and poetic forms for their own culture. This required the writers of the
eighth and ninth centuries to be what Harold Bloom called “strong” poets; they had to
“misread” the classical authors in order to create a literary tradition that suited their
culture and communal needs.47 The poets of the Carolingian period were not creating a
body of literature that was separate from the classical tradition, but rather one that was a
continuation of that tradition and in dialogue with it.
Bloom’s notion of “anxiety” and his identification of “strong” poets opens up a
reconsideration of the purpose of classical borrowing in medieval culture. Literary
borrowing, like the employment of architectural spolia, has previously been dismissed as
“synecdochic representations of the ‘classical tradition’ and medieval reuse as a means of
They intended to inscribe the texts with their own cultural values and societal norms. See
Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: 'grammatica' and literary theory, 350-1100, 155-161.
Bloom’s argument characterizes poets who manage to produce more than mere imitation and
idealization of prior poets “strong.” Employing “strong” and “weak” as his categories of poets,
Bloom notes the struggle involved in literary production. He calls the poets’ anxiety “immense”
(5). The “hungry generations” of poets, he writes, “go on treading one another down.” Learning,
study and writing elicited the same sort of sentiments from Carolingian monks. They wrestled
with texts and language and struggled over meaning and exegesis. Literary production was
intensive labor and exhausting exercise. Where Bloom’s poets express intimidation, fright, a
feeling of being dominated by their predecessors, the Christian poets of the Early Middle Ages, as
heirs of Roman literary tradition and forms, feel seduced by their forebears and compose their
own work to oppose that seduction.
47
24
perpetuating that tradition through quotation, appropriation, or emulation.”48 Bloom’s
definition of influence opens up the possibility that classical borrowings in medieval
literature are not merely reuse, but are instead efforts to inscribe representations of
learning and power with new meanings that are intelligible in the radically different
culture of the Christianized Frankish Empire.49 This literary effort allowed monastic
communities to construct an objective structure for social bonds that would serve to
create a community as cohesive as those based on traditional Frankish kinship ties and
the like.50 This was done through the systematic education necessary to take part in the
monastic textual community, and it had two key effects: 1) it was a means of clearly
distinguishing monks from the rest of society and 2) it taught them to view the written
word as an instrument of power.51
Monastic education structured the habitus, the perceptions and world-view, of
monks, and monastic texts sought to form the values and social norms of monastic
students in such a way as to strengthen their commitment to monastic life and their
bonds to the monastic community. The tools necessary for reading and interpretation
48
This critique is from Kinney, "Roman Architectural Spolia," 139.
A number of excellent studies in the fields of art and architectural history already have moved
those fields in this direction. In addition to Kinney, ibid., see B. Brenk, "Spolia from Constantine
to Charlemagne: Aesthetics versus Ideology," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41. Studies on Art and
Archeology in Honor of Ernst Kitzinger on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday (1987); L. Nees,
"Theodulf's Mythical Silver Hercules Vase, Poetica Vanitas, and the Augustinian Critique of the
Roman Heritage," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987); and L. Nees, A Tainted Mantle: Hercules
and the Classical Tradition at the Carolingian Court (Philadelphia, 1991). These studies
demonstrate how interpretation of spolia and classical borrowings is not monolithic, and that the
intention and reception of the use of classical elements in art and architecture could provide two
different meanings.
49
See J. Goody and I. Watt, “The Consequences of Literacy,” in J. Goody, ed., Literacy in
Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1968), 27-68. The distinction this study draws between
organic social structures and objective ones is important to note for Carolingian monasticism
because monastic communities had to overcome precisely the sort of organic bonds Goody and
Watt discuss and chose literate modes as their objective criteria for doing so.
50
S. Vanderputten, "'Literate Memory' and Social Reassessment in Tenth-Century Monasticism,"
Mediaevistik 17 (2004), 64-95, at 67-77 has a helpful and insightful discussion of models of
literacy and literate communities as they apply to tenth-century monasticism.
51
25
were taught in the monastic school and also reinforced in the daily life of the monastic
community. The eighth-century monastic reforms emphasized the importance of the
relationship between master and disciple. This relationship was modeled in part on the
early Christian monastic model of an authoritative master who taught more by example
than by word. This educational archetype looked back not only to early monasticism, but
also to the Patristic age and to classical Rome.
The Carolingian rulers had set a policy of using literacy as an instrument of
power, so monastic writers looked to appropriate literary genres not easily accessible to
those not educated in the monastic milieu in order to create a community apart from
external influences by means of a wholly separate literary tradition.52 The appropriation
of classical forms of poetry by Carolingian authors was unprecedented in Latin Christian
literature to that point. Carolingian writers employed a variety of ancient meters and
genres, including hexameters, the elegiac couplets most readily associated with Ovid and
bucolic poetry, and uncommon meters including iambic and Sapphic, particularly for
hymns. They wrote verse saints’ lives, hymns, inscriptions, enigmata, as well as moral
and educational poetry and even love poetry. Monks and religious studied and copied
classical texts in school; they glossed and wrote commentaries on them, and often
imitated their diction, meter, and themes in their own writings.
They did not do these things as ‘weak’ imitators of their classical forebears; the
Christian writers of this period employed themes and wording from Roman literature in
Vanderputten, "Literate Memory," 72-74, argues that tenth century aristocrats in Flanders used
a similar strategy when the set about building a body of literature that would bolster their recently
acquired authority, choosing to create a literary tradition out of formerly orally-transmitted
sources such as genealogies, Germanic epics, biblical stories, and mythology. Vanderputten
argues that “this ‘reinvention’ of the past in order to make important changes in the leadership of
society appear acceptable was possible because its immediate origins could be traced back to ...
flexible orally transmitted traditions.” Though the monks of the eighth and ninth centuries were
not reinterpreting (misreading) oral sources in order to create a literary tradition, they were in a
position to canonize the meanings of texts from the distant past, known to a select few intellectual
elite.
52
26
order to create a union between Roman and Christian traditions through literature or
literary borrowing and define the cultural and social values of the monastic
communities. The intended effect was that Christianity could be defined in cultural and
social as well as religious terms.53 Monastic literature served to differentiate the
monastery from the secular world, and texts were used to symbolize an invitation or
acceptance into the community.
For example, a presentation copy of a monastic
educational treatise, or a collection of poems offered to the Carolingian ruler, of the sort
examined in Chapter 3, below, signaled that the Carolingian emperor was considered
part of the monastic community as its patron and protector. Authors of homilies and
saints’ lives intended these texts to be read aloud to the laity who came to the monastery
creating a local community that would support the monastery. Lyric genres were
intended for a literate audience, some of it for monks, secular clergy, the royal court and
the literate laity, but the majority was meant to remain internal to the monastic
community.
In order to study these layers of the textual community, this dissertation will look
at monastic texts as operating both within the realm of things and the realm of signs.
Texts operated on a symbolic level to create a cultural model that carried enough
symbolic weight to become a prevailing conception of society.54 Literacy, not just the
Prior to the eighth century, Christian literature in Francia could oppose the Christian and
Romanized populace to the pagan barbarian Germanic peoples beyond their borders. Gallic
hagiographies, for example, cataloged miracles in which pagan temples were destroyed and idols
burned to demonstrate the holiness of the featured saint. Carolingian literature, however,
distinguishes not between the Christian and the non-Christian, but rather the degrees of
perfection of Christian ways of life. Markus notes that the shift in the meaning of conversio is
evidence of this: In the early Church, it meant the conversion of a non-Christian to Christianity,
but by our period conversio was “something undergone by the Christian soul on its way to
perfection” (Markus, Signs and Meanings, 47).
53
M. Corti, "Models and Antimodels in Medieval Culture," New Literary History 10.2 (1979),
339-366, uses the example of the medieval division of society into oratores, bellatores et
laboratores to demonstrate how a symbolic model, however incomplete in its definition of society
– women are entirely excluded, for example – can become a widely accepted commonplace,
consecrated as a cultural model by virtue of its parallelism to the Trinity.
54
27
texts produced, will be reified to demonstrate its potency in the social and cultural life of
Carolingian Francia. The text and the ability to produce or interpret text was a powerful
symbol of authority in the Carolingian world.
Ornate display Bibles, in all their
grandeur, and the miniatures they contain in which saints and evangelists are routinely
depicted sitting at a writing table in the presence of codices attest to the symbolic
equation of literacy with authority. Monastic efforts to control access to literacy and to
ensure a high quality of education for monks are evidence of the monastic understanding
of the power that their command of the written word conferred upon them. Monastic
literacy did not consist only of the ability to produce texts; it was above all the capacity to
interpret texts.55
The interpretation of a text and the authority that it conveyed
depended on the existence of a community of readers and listeners.
Use and interpretation of the classical heritage in Carolingian education was as
diverse as the scholars that Charlemagne brought to his court from the British Isles,
Visigothic Spain and Lombard Italy. Each region had its own tradition of monastic
scholarship. In Visigothic Spain, ascetic households lived a communal life of simplicity,
study, and prayer in the mold of Paulinus of Nola’s community.56 These communities
did not necessarily follow a particular Rule, and they grew out of late-Roman noble
The intention of monastic education and the definition of monastic literacy was to make textual
interpretation a monastic preserve. Of foremost importance was the interpretation of Scripture,
but classical, Patristic and monastic literature was also taught in the monastic school. In the
sense that a connection can be drawn between the restriction of literacy and monastic authority, it
should be noted that the tools for interpretation of texts, not the ability to read or hear them, was
restricted. In fact, for monastic communities, it was the opposite: the monks relied on the
presence of a community external to their own that served as both an audience for their work and
as an external group against which they could differentiate themselves. Monastic education did
provide two things that modern ethnolinguists would say places them at the top of the “linguistic
hierarchy: 1) a degree of universalism in the written language they used (this supplied by the
uniform grammars used to teach the monks), and 2) the methods use to teach monks equated the
written word with autonomy, truth, and objectivity. See B. V. Street, Literacy in Theory and
Practice, Cambridge studies in oral and literate culture, vol. 9 (Cambridge, 1984), 1-11.
55
M. Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages
(Malden, MA, 2000); D. E. Trout, Paulinus of Nola: Life, Letters, and Poems, The
Transformation of the Classical Heritage Series, vol. 27 (Berkeley, CA, 1999); Conybeare, Paulinus
Noster: Self and Symbols in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola.
56
28
households. Insular monasticism had a strong scholastic component; monks adapted for
their own use the classical liberal arts curriculum and prized the relationship between
teacher and pupil.
These monasteries also had a long tradition of libraries and
scriptoria, among them the notable collections at Wearmouth-Jarrow and at York.
Insular monasticism also valued missionary work and regarded as heroic a monk who
left the cloister to missionize new lands and teach and convert monks. These monastic
communities had strong ties to Rome and a great deal of respect for papal authority.
These models, and the Italian regular monasticism described above, each contributed to
the formation of the Carolingian ideal.
In order to trace the development of Carolingian monastic education and culture
– the monastic habitus – and the importance of monastic literature and poetry in that
development, this study will proceed as follows:
IMPRINTING A MONASTIC LEGACY
From the earliest Carolingian monastic reforms, an emphasis on the Rule of
Benedict and on the importance of praying the Divine Office together underscored the
primacy of community and limited individualism. Monastic writings, poetry, and saints’
lives from the Carolingian period bear the imprint of this focus on community over the
individual and on the monastic family and bonds of loyalty across monastic houses in the
Carolingian realm. These strains of the monastic tradition, these foundations of the
monastic habitus, are traceable to the first generation of monks, particularly to the work
of Alcuin in the last two decades of the eighth century.
Alcuin employed verse
inscriptions throughout his monastery at Tours, and even composed inscriptions for
other monasteries, as a means of shaping monastic culture and monastic education.
Through these inscriptions, Alcuin sought to redefine certain symbols from the Roman
and Christian traditions for the Carolingian monastery. In each successive generation of
29
scholars, the imprint of this habitus, though emphasized in different parts and manifest
in different ways, is evident.
Text, literacy, and verbal and written modes of communication held great
symbolic value in Christianity, as language and the written word reflected the Word of
God, Christ. Carolingian monastic leaders, who themselves came from the aristocracy,
placed scholarship and literacy at the center of their lives. In so doing, they evoked the
classical division between negotio and otio, between the affairs of the republic and the
leisure needed for study.57 Studying and understanding language, grammar, texts,
genres, and poetic meters allowed the monks to imitate and reflect the perfection of
Christ, the logos. But cultivation and appreciation of literary forms also symbolized the
Roman culture onto which the Carolingians had grafted their Christianity. The image
that monks used to articulate this relationship was the Roman villa. The poetry is
carefully crafted and does not slavishly worship an unrecoverable past age; instead, they
set their vision of monastic life in a venerable past, providing continuity with tradition
and creating a model of life that is viable in the new political and cultural climate of the
Carolingian Empire.
LYRIC AND THE CREATION OF CAROLINGIAN BENDICTINISM
The second chapter examines the role of poetry in creating Carolingian
Benedictinism. Monastic education looked back to earlier models and used textual
exempla to establish ideals, proffer these as normative, and encourage a mimetic
D. Trout, “Augustine at Cassiciacum: Otium honestum and the Social Dimensions of
Conversion,” Vigiliae Christianae 42 (1988), 132-146; W. A. Laidlaw “Otium,” Greece & Rome,
Second Series 15.1 (1968), 42-52; J. Leclercq, Études sur le vocabulaire monastique du moyen
âge, Studia Anselmiana, vol. 48 (Rome, 1961); and Leclercq, Otia monastica: études sur le
vocabulaire de la contemplation au Moyen Age ; Conybeare, Paulinus Noster: Self and Symbols
in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola, notes that early ascetic communities embraced the importance
of leisure for reading and study of Scripture. For Paulinus and his correspondents, the distinction
is not one between a public sphere and a private sphere, as was the case in the classical world, but
a division between the affairs of the world and the affairs of the spirit. Reading and study were
intended to be communal activities, and ought to produce “something generally available and
relevant and shared” (49).
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30
response from the student or audience.58 Monastic scholars at Charlemagne’s court used
poetry to shape monastic life and education beyond the scope of broader reforms spelled
out in royal dictates. Paul the Deacon’s verse life of St Benedict reinterpreted the events
recounted in Gregory the Great’s prose life in order to reflect the importance of the
master-disciple relationship in the Carolingian monastery and the centrality of study to
monastic life in the Carolingian period. In this poem, Paul is able to both pay homage to
the life written by his Patristic forebear and “misread,” in a Bloomian sense, the life as a
way of inserting into the ancient text contemporary monastic values.
Carolingian monks and religious did not consider their conception of monastic
life to be an innovation. They built upon and further articulated the traditions of
Western monasticism in order to re-form monasteries and monastic life.
The
widespread adoption of the Rule of St Benedict over other monastic rules was not a
sudden change, but rather a shift that had been in the making over the course of the
eighth century. The rule written by the father of Western monasticism emphasised the
importance of community in the life and spiritual growth of a monk. Like the monastic
reformers who favored it, the Rule distrusted individual activity and initiative.
The Rule of St Benedict offered the founders and reformers of Frankish
monasteries several advantages over the insular customs.59 It organized the day around
communal prayer, the Divine Office, and ensured that the community of monks gathered
See K. F. Morrison, The Mimetic Tradition of Reform in the West (Princeton, 1982) and
Conybeare, Paulinus Noster: Self and Symbols in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola, particularly her
introduction. Mimetic strategies allowed students to interpret authoritative texts and employ
allusions to those texts in order to define or redefine the meaning and imagery of the authoritative
text. Imitation was used as creative method – commentary could be added to text to assign
symbolic meaning, or an allusion to a text could reorient or even invert the meaning of the
original context, examples of which we will see in subsequent chapters of this work.
58
Frankish monastic leaders began to favor the Benedictine Rule as early as the seventh century;
too often, scholarship overstates the Carolingian shift to the Rule of St Benedict in the reforms
spearheaded by Benedict of Aniane and Louis the Pious. Start with D. Ionga-Prat, C. Jeudy, and
G. Lobrichon, eds., L'école carolingienne d'Auxerre: de Murethach à Rémi, 830-908 (Paris,
1991), p. 26 and n. 14.
59
31
as one at regular intervals throughout the day. It detailed the role that that abbot played
in forming and maintaining the community of monks, highlighting the importance of
obedience to the abbot and making humility the highest virtue for the individual monk.
Finally, the Rule provided monastic ideals, but, beyond the communal praying of the
Divine Office, did not define monastic activity. This allowed Carolingian thinkers, who
admired the learning of insular monks and classical antiquity, to emphasize education
and study. Paul’s chooses elegy as the genre for his poem in order to mute much of the
emphasis on the individual found in Gregory the Great’s Dialogue.
THE ARCHITECTURE OF SCRIPTURE
This chapter further examines the interplay between architecture and monastic
poetry by examining the physical and literary structure of a poem by the Carolingian
abbot and scholar Hrabanus Maurus. Hrabanus, as abbot of the monastery at Fulda
taught many of the great scholars of the third generation of Carolingian monks. This
chapter will examine the Carolingian fusion of Roman and Christian achieved through
monastic education, and its role in defining the place of the monastery in relation to the
rest of Frankish society. Hrabanus employed allusion to Roman literature and Roman
architectural forms in his poetry in order to signify the structures of monastic life to his
readers.
The second half of the chapter studies a poem by Walafrid Strabo, a student of
Hrabanus, that seeks to reinterpret a classical sculpture. The poem is a masterful
example of how Carolingian monks used literary texts and their ability to reinscribe
symbols with new meanings and appropriate them into the monastic worldview in order
to exert influence and pursue monastic interests at the Carolingian court.
32
THE MONASTERY & THE TEXTUAL TRADITION
The monks engaged in writing the texts that defined and shaped their tradition
understood that their efforts depended on education. M. Irvine has noted that “textual
communities” depend not only on the existence of a canon of texts, but also on an
“interpretive methodology articulated in a body of commentary which accompanied the
texts and instituted their authority.”60 Monastic education, particularly its emphasis on
grammar and rhetoric, held the key to proper understanding of the texts and thus of
monastic culture and tradition.61 Monastic educators consciously employed literary texts
to shape monastic culture and provided the key to interpreting monastic literature
through education in the monastic school.
Carolingian monastic education esteemed the relationship, established in the
earliest Christian monastic tradition, between master and disciple. The master was a
quiet authority figure who taught primarily by example, staying close to the precepts of
Benedict’s Rule concerning silence and speech, and authority. Early education in
grammar as well as Scripture and classical literature introduced pupils to the
foundations of the monastic textual and interpretive community. This community was
not exclusively intramural; letter collections and evidence of the book trade from the
ninth century provide ample proof that the monastic community in the Carolingian
Empire shared a common literary culture that served as the kind of objective bond that
Goody and Watt argue are stronger than ties based on family or status.62
60
Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture, 15.
Ibid. Irvine defines “text” as a written work that “takes its place in a larger cultural library and
which is interpreted as part of a system of other texts, genres, and discourses.” A canon of texts,
argues Irvine, owes its existence to an interpretive framework such as grammatica.
61
J. Goody & I. Watt, “The Consequences of Literacy,” in Goody, ed., Literacy in Traditional
Societies, 27-68.
62
33
The ties between teacher and student bound monks across the Carolingian world
because monks educated by masters at the more renowned schools received
appointments at the royal court and at monasteries throughout the empire. They then
sent students from smaller monasteries to these educational centers for their schooling.
Exchanging texts, letters, and other literary works was a means of building and
maintaining social bonds. The text swapping provided a monastic and clerical substitute
for the gift economy that solidified bonds of friendship and loyalty in the Carolingian
world.
The formation of strong monastic communities, both intramurally and between
monasteries, enabled monasteries to participate in and influence the culture and politics
of the Carolingian kingdom. By the second quarter of the ninth century, the closeness
between monasteries and the court, the stability of which was beginning to waver,
became as much a liability as a blessing.
The third generation of monastic scholars produced their literature in an
increasingly unstable political climate. Their work commented on the symbols and
traditions of royal power in order to maintain their access to power and influence. This
chapter examines a poem by Walahfrid Strabo that employs both the classical and
Christian traditions in an extended critique of royal administration. The poem claims a
vital role for monasteries and monks in the maintenance of peace and flourishing of
prosperity of the Carolingian kingdom. The chapter also examines the growing influence
of the aristocracy and monastic efforts to combat the instability and fragmentation it
caused. Monastic authors intended to create within the community a worldview of
monks that would preserve monastic discipline and ensure the survival and prosperity of
monastic life in the Carolingian tradition even as the political situation deteriorated.
*
*
*
34
Carolingian monastic scholars could not and did not intend to revive Roman literary
culture; they had to intentionally “misread” aspects of the Roman past, including its
literature, in order to form their own tradition, and religious and social customs. In
monasteries, the literati of the eighth and ninth century worked to shape and recreate
their received tradition and culture. They focused on literature and textual study as the
foundation for their monastic culture. Literary study was based on the structured logic
of grammar, and provided a body of learning and set of texts that formed the objective
basis of their community. It created a network of relationships between monastic
teachers and students that spread beyond the walls of any single monastery and proved
to be among the strongest loyalties in the Carolingian world. The monastic education
that enabled men to participate in this literate community served to underscore the
primacy of the monastic community over the individual. The social function of literature
and literary theory in this effort deserves careful study. This work is an attempt to begin
that study, and to point to some of the key figures, texts, and genres that were used.
1
Imprinting a Monastic Legacy
Among the poetry that survives from Carolingian authors are short carmina
written about spaces and rooms in the monastery. These poems are brief descriptions of
the activity or activities that should take place in a particular space and they serve to
order the activity in the monastic context. Alcuin authored a round of such poems for
the monastery of Saint-Martin at Tours, as well as poems for other monasteries,
including Saint-Vaast and Saint-Amand, and inscriptions for churches and cathedrals.1
The poems likely were inscribed on the walls of the monastery at Tours, thereby
indicating the proper use of the space and the meaning and significance of the activity to
any entrant into the room.2 Alcuin wrote these poems at the end of the eighth century,
Alcuin’s inscriptions for these monasteries, as well as other inscriptions he wrote are collected in
MGH, Poet. lat. I, 304-47.
1
The poems written for Tours survive for us in a seventeenth century edition, later published as
A. Du Chesne, Beati Flacci Albini seu Alcuini opera (Regensburg, 1777). This edition relies on a
ninth-century MS formerly at St Bertin, but now lost. The PL and MGH editions of Alcuin’s
poems rely on Du Chesne’s edition, but consult other MSS containing the poems for alternate
readings. There is no twentieth century study of the corpus or significant portion thereof.
Although studies of individual poems are scattered throughout other works, none address the
inscriptions. See, for example, F. Stella, La poesia carolingia latina a tema biblico, Biblioteca di
"Medioevo Latino", vol. 9 (Spoleto, 1993); F. Stella, Poesia dell'alto Medioevo europeo:
manoscritti, lingua e musica dei ritmi latini: atti delle euroconferenze per il Corpus dei ritmi
latini (IV-IX sec.), Arezzo, 6-7 novembre 1998 e Ravello, 9-12 settembre 1999, Millennio
medievale, vol. 22 (Florence, 2000); F. Stella, Poesia e teologia (Milan, 2001); M. Garrison,
"Alcuin, Carmen IX and Hrabanus, Ad Bonosum: A Teacher and His Pupil Write Consolation," in
Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages: A Festschrift for Peter Dronke, ed. J. Marenbon
(Leiden, 2001), 63-78; and C. S. Jaeger, Ennobling Love: In search of a lost sensibility
(Philadelphia, 1999). For archaeological evidence on inscriptions in monasteries, see n. 3, below.
2
35
36
around the same time that he was writing and advising Charlemagne’s royal statements
about education in monasteries.
In composing a series of inscriptions for the monastery at Tours, Alcuin was
working within a long-established tradition. Writing surrounded the monks at Tours:
the tombstones in the cemetery, the sarcophagi in the basilica, the wall paintings in the
church nave and apse, the side chapels, the doorways all had inscriptions either painted
or engraved on them. A cycle of poems had been composed in the second half of the fifth
century to be engraved on the walls of the basilica at Tours and its annexes. The poems
and inscriptions served to define the rooms in which they were engraved, giving the
space purpose and dictating the role of the reader within that particular room.3
Similarly, Alcuin’s inscriptions shaped Carolingian monastic culture in its infancy and
the themes that they emphasized were the very ones to which succeeding generations
returned in their own writings. An examination of these inscriptions both in their own
right and as their themes were interpreted by later Carolingian scholars illustrates how
Carolingian authors in successive generations utilized the symbols and idioms of their
own teachers to shape the monastic culture and habitus for the circumstances of their
own time.4
L. Pietri, “Bâtiments et sanctuaires annexes de la basilique Saint-Martin de Tours, à la fin du VIe
siècle,” Revue d’histoire de l’église de France, 62 (1976), 223-234. Pietri provides examples of
how inscriptions on the walls of chapels and the baptisteries adjoining the basilica of St Martin at
Tours functioned to define the spaces. He notes in his study «la tendance qui se manifeste durant
le Haut Moyen Âge à la multiplication et au regroupement en un même lieu de plusieurs
sanctuaires» and the importance of inscriptions in designating the various functions in turn.
Similarly, at San Vincenzo, archaeologists have uncovered evidence of inscriptions throughout the
monastery. See San Vincenzo al Volturno: The 1980-86 Excavations, ed. R. Hodges, 2 voll.
(London, 1993-95).
3
P. Bourdieu, In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology, trans. M. Adamson
(Cambridge, 1990) argues that constraints of social status, economic conditions, culture, etc.
place similar boundaries on what is perceived to be objectively possible and in turn shapes the
beliefs and ideas that constitutes a worldview. Monastic inscriptions had the effect of shaping the
monks’ mental conception of the physical space and defining the purpose of that space in their
lives. Texts – the Rule, the round of daily prayers, the literary canon they studied in the monastic
school, and these inscriptions – were what defined monasticism and created for the monks their
own separate identity and worldview.
4
37
The inscriptions direct the reader’s attention to the unity of monastic daily
activities and address everything from eating to sleeping to study. They provide a
continuous reminder to the monks of the lifestyle and culture in the monastery. The
monastic school was only one place in which the formation of habitus in the medieval
monastery took place. Everywhere in the monastery, habitus was carefully inculcated
through education, traditions, discipline, and separation. Inscriptions defining monastic
life and activities transformed both the culture and the architectural space within the
monastery.
Alcuin’s poems favor spaces for reading and study, reflecting the monastic and
educational reforms of the late eighth century. Although the history of the Carolingian
monastery has been dominated by the Plan of Saint-Gall, which shows a monastery with
different rooms as dedicated spaces for the library, the scriptorium, the monastic school,
the lay school, and so on, archaeological and literary evidence suggests that early
Carolingian monasteries did not have individual rooms for each of these, but instead
used larger multi-purpose rooms, like the cloister, warming room, or assembly room.5
Alcuin’s poems seem to favor this earlier notion of space over the divisions of labor that
would be imposed by the separate rooms. His poems carve out spaces for various
activities, but continually remind the reader that all monastic activities are linked to one
another. The fluidity and circularity of the poems, taken both individually and as a
On the predominance of the St-Gall Plan in scholarship, see for example, W. Jacobsen,
"Benedikt von Aniane und die Architektur unter Ludwig dem Frommen zwischen 814 und 830,"
in Atti del XXIV Congresso Internazionale di Storia dell'Arte (Bologna, 1979), 15-22; R. E.
Sullivan, "The Carolingian Age: Reflections on its Place in the History of the Middle Ages,"
Speculum 64 (1989); and W. W. Hornet al., The Plan of St. Gall: A study of the architecture &
economy of, & life in a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery, 3 vols., California Studies in the
History of Art, 19 (Berkeley, CA, 1979); for archaeology on other Carolingian monasteries, see J.
Percival, "Villas and Monasteries in Late Roman Gaul," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 48
(1997); R. Hodges and J. Mitchell, San Vincenzo al Volturno: The Archaeology, Art, and
Territory of an Early Medieval Monastery, BAR International Series 252 (Oxford, 1985);
Jacobsen, "Benedikt von Aniane und die Architektur unter Ludwig dem Frommen zwischen 814
und 830," Atti del XXIV Congresso Internazionale di Storia dell'Arte (Bologna, 1979); and P.
Héliot, L'abbaye de Corbie, ses églises et ses bâtiments, Bibliothèque de la Revue d'histoire
ecclésiastique, fasc. 29 (Louvain, 1957).
5
38
collection, inscribe a unity on the monastic complex that the St-Gall Plan eliminates.
Monastic scholars and authors returned to Alcuin’s conception of monastic life and the
centrality of textual study as the Carolingian ideal throughout the ninth century.
Of the handful of Alcuin’s inscriptions for the monastery at Tours that are
preserved for us, two discuss learning and study, one addresses the inscriptions and their
purpose, one he wrote for the dormitory, and one for the latrine. The first three poems
fit nicely together, addressing related topics and joining the activities about which they
are written. The other two, those for the dormitory and the latrine, seek to change
mundane necessities into monastic spaces. Unlike the first three, these pertain to
discreet rooms, marked off with walls and purpose-built. Alcuin approaches the rooms
differently than the multi-purpose spaces to which he assigns the activities in the first
three poems, but still links them to the hallmarks of monastic life by means of shared
themes and shared diction.
Poems such as Alcuin’s attempted to inscribe on the extant monastic structures a
new, distinctively Carolingian monasticism. Many of the monasteries in the Carolingian
world were located on donated properties and monasteries could use the existing
infrastructure, including buildings, farmland, and access to water.
Archaeological
excavations at the Carolingian monasteries of San Vincenzo al Volturno and San
Sebastiano at Alatri have revealed that these monasteries occupied sites of late Roman
villas.6 The evidence from these excavations suggests that the important architectural
hallmarks of these monasteries were those of the Roman villa.7
Although this connection began when a villa became a place for housing monks,
monastic communities more often than not substantially altered or rebuilt the structures
See E. Fentress, et al., Walls and Memory, The Abbey of San Sebastiano at Alatri from Late
Roman Monastery to Renaissance Villa and Beyond (Turnhout, 2005), 33-70, and San Vincenzo
al Volturno: The 1980-86 Excavations, ed. R Hodges, 2 voll. (London, 1993-95).
6
7
See J. Percival, “Villas and Monasteries in Late Roman Gaul,” JEH 48 (1997), 1-21, at 6.
39
shortly after establishing a monastic community in a villa in order to make the buildings
more suitable to their needs. The primary focus of the early Carolingian building
projects in the late eighth and early ninth century was not the claustral complex, but
rather the buildings dedicated to liturgy and worship. Angilbert, abbot of Saint-Riquier,
who wrote an account of the renovations he oversaw in the last decade of the eighth
century, focused his attention almost entirely on the construction of three churches: one
dedicated to the Savior and St Riquier, another to the Virgin Mary and the Apostles, and
the third to Saint Benedict and other monastic saints.8 He gives the auxiliary buildings
of the monastic complex minimal attention and only briefly addresses their purpose:
Reliqua vero moenia ipsius monasterii eodem Domino
cooperante quae hactenus conspiciuntur constructa, sicuti
cernuntur, omnia a fundamentis studuimus reaedificare,
et ut habitatores illius in eo missarum solemnia
frequentare, et omnipotenti Domino delectentur deservire,
ipso adiuvante, muro curavimus firmiter ambire.9
Indeed the remaining walls of that monastery, which until
now were perceived to have been constructed with the help
of the Lord himself, we had taken great care to rebuild
them from their foundations just as they are seen. And, in
order that the inhabitants of them may frequent the
solemnities of the Mass [within the complex] and also that
they may delight to fervently serve the omnipotent Lord,
we have, with his help, taken care to surround it securely
with a wall.
The buildings to be rebuilt were the living quarters and working space for several
hundred monks and an additional 100 or so boys, who would live according to monastic
custom and be educated in the school at Saint-Riquier.10
Neither the discussion
Angilbert, De Restauratione monasterii Centulensis, PL 99 coll. 841D-842C. A number of
major Merovingian monastic foundations, including Saint-Vaast and Saint-Amand, and Corbie,
initiated building programs in order to give the monastery the symbolically important three
churches. See Héliot, L'abbaye de Corbie, ses églises et ses bâtiments , 1-41.
8
9
Angilbert, De Restauratione monasterii Centulensis, PL 99, coll. 843D-844A.
Angilbert says that his community at Saint-Riquier numbered 300 monks and an additional
300 boys in the monastic school (De restauratione, coll. 848A-B). Although Angilbert’s numbers
carry Trinitarian symbolism and appear schematic, the community size he envisions is realistic.
See S. A. Rabe, Faith, Art, and Politics at Saint-Riquier: The Symbolic Vision of Angilbert
10
40
Angilbert provides not the surviving drawing of the Carolingian buildings indicate that
the monastery at Saint-Riquier constituted an extensive complex that provided distinct
working and learning spaces for the inhabitants.11 In addition to the attention paid to the
three churches at Saint-Riquier, Angilbert’s narrative of the building program at SaintRiquier focuses on the buildings central to the cooperation between the monastic
community and the royal court and aristocracy.12
The archaeological findings at the Carolingian monastery of San Vincenzo al
Volturno in Lombardy similarly show that living and working spaces for monks were not
as articulated nor did they consist of as many single-purpose rooms as the Saint-Gall
Plan. San Vincenzo benefited from a late eighth/early ninth-century renovation under
the abbot Joshua (792-817). Prior to the renovation and expansion of the monastery,
San Vincenzo had been home to 100 monks and occupied about 5000 square meters. In
the early ninth century, the community had grown to at least several hundred monks.
Here, too, the building program focused on the abbey church and guest residences.
Although manuscript evidence indicates that San Vincenzo had a sizeable library and
active scriptorium, no archaeological evidence of single-purpose space set aside for the
copying of books has been found.13
(Philadelphia, 1995), ch. 5, esp. n. 42 on community size. See also D. U. Berlière, "Le nombre des
moines dans les anciens monastères," Revue Bénédictine 41-42 (1929-30), 230-261; 19-42.
The drawing of Saint-Riquier, of which an Early-Modern copy of the original ninth-century
rendering is all that survives for us, is one of only two illustrations of a Carolingian monastery, the
other being the Saint-Gall plan. See H. Leclercq, L’ordre bénédictin (Paris, 1930), Plates 7 & 8.
11
M. A. Schroll, Benedictine Monasticism as Reflected in the Warnefrid-Hildemar
Commentaries on the Rule (New York, 1941), 48-49 points out that “[A]ccomodations for
guests...appear to be elaborate and perhaps extreme...Monasteries were among the chief hospices
of the time and were exhorted by councils to perform this service.” One example of this comes
from the Council of Frankfurt in 789, ed. A Werminghoff, MGH Conc. Aevi Carol. I, 165-171.
Schroll also notes that the monks from Fulda wrote to Charlemagne in the early ninth century
concerning the “immense and superfluous buildings” because the brothers were “exhausted
beyond measure” from looking after the guest complex.
12
In their discussion of the Assembly Room outside the Refectory, in San Vincenzo al Volturno:
The 1980-86 Excavations Part II, ed. R Hodges, (London, 1995), R. Hodges and J. Mitchell note
13
41
These building programs did not ignore the monastic community; instead they
focused on the symbolic representation of monastic ideals. The experience of living
within the monastery defined the purposes and meanings of traditional architectural
forms in new ways. Monasteries were intellectual centers, agricultural and industrial
centers in addition to being religious centers. Although Angilbert’s building program at
Saint-Riquier emphasizes the importance of surrounding the monastic complex of
buildings with a wall to protect the culture and lifestyle of the monks, the monastic
complex was a retreat by definition rather than on account of enforced seclusion or
architectural barriers. The symbolic, and, to a significant degree, the architectural
connection, to the Roman villa and its lifestyle remained part of Carolingian monastic
culture. In additional to recalling the Roman aristocratic pursuit of learning, the
architectural connection also underscored Carolingian identification with Early Christian
monastics and the pursuit of learning and study as a hallmark of monastic life. They
considered themselves heirs to the tradition of Paulinus of Nola, Augustine of Hippo,
and Martin of Tours, whose religious communities retreated to country estates to pursue
a life of ascesis, contemplation, and study.
Archaeological evidence for the monastery of Saint-Martin at Tours is insufficient
to say whether the basilica and auxiliary buildings stand on the footprint of a late Roman
structure, but both of Saint Martin’s own foundations, at Limoges and at Marmoutier,
were built out of late Roman villae, as were many other monasteries in Gaul, Italy, and
throughout the lands of the Roman Empire, so there was a strong connection between
the cult of Saint Martin, and between Gallic monasticism and the villa. The main church
of late eighth-century Carolingian monasteries had an atrium in front of the entrance to
that the chapter house was not a common feature of Carolingian monasteries either, and that the
spaces in which the monastic community could gather were the cloister and the warming room.
These also may have been the places in which reading, education, and manuscript production
occurred.
42
the basilica, off of which were the guest houses and auxiliary buildings. The cloister and
monastic complex was located at the other end of the basilica, off the transept or behind
the apse. This design, evident at both Saint-Riquier and San Vincenzo al Volturno, is
reminiscent of the layout of late Roman villae, particularly in the placement of the
church and guest buildings, the public space, in front, and the monks’ private living
space in the rear.
The villa that would have loomed largest in the imaginations of Carolingian
monastics and provided the most material for symbolic representation was Cicero’s
Tusculan Villa. Details of the architecture, location, and lifestyle of the villa were welldocumented in Cicero’s writings and Carolingian scholars read, admired, and imitated
Cicero’s learning. Cicero characterizes the villa as a retreat placed off the beaten path and
highlight the importance of the architectural and geographical setting for reading and
writing. In his De divinatione, Cicero mentions the library of his villa as the location in
which study and discussion or debate occured.14 The symbolic weight of Cicero’s villa to
medieval Benedictine monasticism is evident in the 11th-century construction of a
monastery on a site containing ruins traditionally purported to be the Tusculanum.15
The symbolism of the late Roman villa linked greater withdrawal from the world
of the laity with retreat farther into the monastery.16 The centerpiece of the monastic
complex was the cloister just as the peristyle garden had been for the villa. This was set
back from the front of the house to give the residents a more private reserve within the
villa. Also important to the monastic complex was the presence of space for study,
learning, writing, and discussion. In monastic architecture, this space was created not so
14
Cicero, De div. 1.8, 2.8
See G. McCracken, “Cicero’s Tusculan Villa,” The Classical Journal 30 (1935), 261-277, at 26168.
15
On the symbolic link between the classical villa and withdrawal from public affairs, see S.
Treggiari, “Home and Forum: Cicero between ‘Public’ and ‘Private,’” TAPA 128, (1998), pp. 1-23.
16
43
much by walls and doors as by the imposition of a lifestyle and culture on the space.
Inscriptions like Alcuin’s exhorting the monks to engage in these activities throughout
the monastery were a means of creating this atmosphere.
In addition to architectural echoes, the monasteries incorporated decorative
aspects of villae as well. Frescoes and stucco decoration adorned the walls of Carolingian
churches and monasteries. The extent, content, and style of Carolingian wall painting
imitated Roman and early Christian styles. Portraits and biblical narratives on walls
imitated Early Christian basilica cycles and tomb paintings.17
Excavations at San
Vincenzo reveal frescoes painted to imitate polychrome marble, decorative flowers, and
flowering plants, evidence that the Carolingians had read Vitruvius and intended to
imitate the wall paintings that he described in Roman villae.18
Paintings and
ornamentation covered the walls of nearly every excavated room at San Vincenzo.
Interior decoration in monasteries could also include narrative fresco cycles and reliefs,
spolia, such as columns, and mosaics laid into the floors.19
By covering the walls of the monastic complex with art and text, the monks gave
new meanings to their architectural inheritance the same way they were reclaiming their
literary heritage. The Roman villa had been the leisurely home of the retired statesman
in the classical world. Here he sought to live in peace and pursue the vacatio of his
studies.20 Carolingian monastics considered their retreat from worldly affairs and its
attendant call to a life of study and textual production as the heir to this architectural
J. Mitchell and I. L. Hansen, eds., San Vincenzo al Volturno 3: The finds from the 1980-86
excavations, 2 vols., Studi e ricerche di archeologia e storia dell'arte (Spoleto, 2001).
17
18
Vitruvius, De architectura, 7.4.4-7.7.1.
For an example of reliefs, see S.A. Rabe, Faith, Art, and Politics at Saint-Riquier (Philadelphia,
1995), 117-119, 144 (chapter 5 n. 22 and n. 28). San Vincenzo had floor mosaics and Germignydes-Près at Orléans had an apse mosaic, see A. Freeman, “Theodulf of Orléans and the Libri
Carolini,” Speculum 32 (1957), 663-705, Pl. 4.
19
Cf. J. Leclercq, Otia monastica: études sur le vocabulaire de la contemplation au Moyen Age,
Studia Anselmiana, vol. 51 (Rome, 1963), 42-49.
20
44
symbol. All three generations of Carolingian monastic authors studied here used the
idiom of Roman retirement to symbolize their withdrawal from worldly affairs and
devotion to a life of study.
The emphasis that Alcuin’s inscriptions place on spaces for learning, study, and
text production, spaces that the architecture does not privilege, reveals monks’ efforts at
reshaping the spaces they inhabited, an endeavor that often meant redefining spaces
built for another purpose. Carolingian monastic life and monastic work emphasized
education and segregation from the secular world, and monasteries had to be reshaped
and re-imagined in order to accommodate this ideal. The poem Alcuin wrote about the
space in which monks copied books gives no indication of a particular room; it instead
defines the space by the activity that occurs there. The poem opens with hic, a word that
Alcuin uses to open several poems describing activities that seem to occur in multipurpose spaces.21 Although the process he describes in the inscription requires a space
with all the necessary tools for copying, the poem and its place in the collection of poems
does not indicate a separate, purpose-built scriptorium. While the preparation of
parchment and ink, the binding and cutting could be done in a workshop rather than
where the texts themselves were copied, the space needed to have tables at which the
monks could work, and room enough for the proof texts that Alcuin mentions:
Correctosque sibi quaerant studiose libellos. In the poem, the Tours scriptorium is an
open space whose boundaries are defined only by the limits of the activity. The space
flows easily into its surroundings just as the inscriptions move easily between related
activities.
The apology Alcuin provides in the final third of the poem indicates that the work
of editing and copying texts, though a longstanding practice at Tours and other Gallic
Two poems describing spaces at Tours and another intended for a corridor at St Amand begin
with hic. Hic does not open poems about single-use rooms, such as the lavatory, the dormitory,
and the refectory.
21
45
monasteries,22 was not considered proper monastic labor prior to the Carolingian
reforms, and thus would not have been given a room inside the cloister complex. Alcuin
writes that the work is recognized as opus egregium, offering a defense of the scribes’
labor. He goes on to argue that it is better to engage in the labor of writing than to work
in the fields, because it is better to profit the soul than to feed the body.
Est opus egregium sacros jam scribere libros,
Nec mercede sua scriptor et ipse caret.
Fodere quam vites, melius est scribere libros,
Ille suo ventri serviet, iste animae.23
To write holy books is now an esteemed labor,
The scribe himself does not go without his wages.
It is better to write books than to dig up vines.
The latter serves the belly, the former the soul.
Alcuin compares writing to labor in the field and picks up a theme from earlier in the
poem. The scribes, he cautioned, must be careful not to sow into the writings of the
Church Fathers their own frivolous words (interserere sua frivola verbis).24
In
Carolingian monasticism, study and writing came to surpass manual labor in value, and
the inscription creates and draws attention to a space for scribes and their monastic
labor.
The middle two thirds of the poem indicate that Alcuin envisioned an educated
troupe of scribes. He expects them to be able to compare and emend texts and to be able
to read Latin well enough to properly separate words and punctuate the manuscript. The
A. Diem, “The Emergence of Monastic Schools,” Alcuin of York, Scholar at the Carolingian
Court, ed. L.A.J.R. Houwen & A.A. MacDonald, Germania Latina 3 (Groningen, 1998), 29-30:
“The first Frankish monasteries with a clear tradition of producing and preserving books were
founded in the first half of the seventh century.”
22
23
See Appendix I for fuller context, translations, and notes on poems.
Interserere: This word appears rarely in classical Latin, but more commonly among Early
Christian and Patristic authors. Ovid, Met. 10.554 is the classical usage with which Alcuin would
have been familiar. As for Early Christian occurrences: Jerome, Epist. 124.11.1; Tertullian, De
carne Christi, 17.1; Boethius, In Ciceronis topica, Bk 3, p. 324 and Bk. 5, p. 363 refer to insertions
into texts.
24
46
prescriptions he gives to scribes in this poem reflect the concerns and reforms discussed
in the Epistola de litteris colendis and the Admonitio generalis.25
Alcuin played a major role in crafting the royal reform documents, but the poems
written for Tours place the reforms within the monastic context. Alcuin, acting as abbot,
composed inscriptions that encouraged the monks to study in order to better understand
theology and bring themselves and their fellow monks closer to knowledge of God. The
monks were not to form a literate group of courtiers or learn for the sake of royal service.
Just as the poems could mold the monastic villa into the private retreat of monks, they
could place the focus on education and literacy at the service of theological
understanding.
Alcuin gives monastic reasons for implementing the goals of the royal
documents at Tours, pointing out that improperly written texts could cause monks to
hear false things read in Church or misunderstand the writings of the Church Fathers.
The royal decrees move as easily between learning and teaching as does Alcuin’s poem.
The Epistola de litteris colendis states that the men chosen to be teachers are those “qui
et voluntatem et possibilitatem discendi et desiderium habeant alios instruendi,” and
this link between learning and teaching is again asserted in the final couplet of Alcuin’s
poem: Vel nova, vel vetera poterit proferre magister / Plurima, quisque legit dicta
sacrata Patrum.26
Cf. Admonitio Generalis, in MGH LL 2/1:52-62, c. 72: Psalmos, notas, cantus, compotum,
grammaticam per singula monasteria vel episcopia et libros catholicos bene emendate; quia
saepe, dum bene aliqui Deum rogare cupiunt, sed per inemendatos libros male rogant. Et
pueros vestros non sinite eos vel legendo vel scribendo corrumpere; et si opus est evangelium,
psalterium et missale scribere, perfectae aetatis homines scribant cum omni diligentia. The
Epistola de litteris colendis, MGH LL 2/1:78-79, encourages learning in the monastery “ut facilius
et rectius divinarum scripturam mysteria valeatis penetrare. It also emphasizes the importance
of correct texts and good teachers for monks, saying that, if properly taught, “in omnipotentis Dei
laudibus sine mendaciorum offendiculis cucurrerit lingua. Carolingian commentaries on the
Rule of Benedict discuss the need for good reading skills and correct texts in this context. See
Schroll, Warnefrid-Hildemar Commentaries , 119-120.
25
26
MGH, LL 2.1, 78-79.
47
The poem for the scriptorium ends with a seeming non sequitur; the final couplet
moves away from the writer of the text to the reader, from the composition and copy of
texts to studying the writings of the Church Fathers. The magister who will profit from
reading the texts is the focus now. But Alcuin ends this final couplet with the same
words as he ended the opening couplet – dicta sacrata Patrum – thereby linking the
two. In so doing, Alcuin reveals the fluidity that existed between the activities in the
monastery. The final couplet is linked explicitly to the initial couplet, and links the task
of the scribe to the work of the teacher. The scribe engaged in his own work and learning
is not excused from his duty to instruct and learn with his fellow monks. This sort of
engagement is evident in the careers of two monastic scholars discussed later in this
work, Hrabanus Maurus, whose scholarship and teaching were famous and prolific
throughout his career, and of Lupus of Ferrières, whose correspondence shows that he
attentively remained a teacher both by example and through his many letters offering
texts and textual instruction interpretation to his students.27 Alcuin employs
enjambment here, a device he rarely uses in his poetry, to emphasize how profitable and
important the role of the scribe is for monastic education. He notes that the copied texts
are only salutary insofar as they are read, and, as the middle of the poem explains,
readable. The study of these texts should then lead to teaching.
Alcuin’s inscriptions define the spaces in which they are located and in turn,
shape the habitus of the monks by shaping the expectations for those spaces in a
uniquely monastic way. The union and fluidity of teaching, study, and learning in the
monastery is both reflected in the poems and imposed upon the architecture by the
inscriptions. Alcuin’s poems indicate that he intended the monks at Tours to think of
monastic education both in terms of the community of learners and as a specific activity
designated to a specific time and place. Later Carolingian authors develop this idea
27
See chapters 2 and 4, below for more on the careers and writings of Hrabanus and Lupus.
48
further and understand schola to be defined by the activity taking place rather than only
by the physical space.28 The inscriptions make many spaces in the monastery places of
learning, study, and reflection. The poems address two different groups of monks.
Carmen XCIII opens thus: Hic pueri discant senioris ab ore magistri and explains how
the young students should approach their studies and their teachers.29 Then it turns to
the teacher and tells him why the education of youth is important. Here the inscriptions
reveal another characteristic of monastic space: Alcuin takes for granted that the older
monks and the boys live and pray together.30 He encourages the boys to think of the
older monks as patres.31 He also considers this mixing of men and boys ideal; the older
monks teach the boys and the boys, who on account of their age are quick studies, can
The emphasis on corporate learning appears in Hildemar’s Commentary on the Rule of St
Benedict, see Schroll, Warnefrid-Hildemar Commentaries , 126, and D. Ganz, Corbie in the
Carolingian Renaissance (Sigmaringen, 1990), 70ff. A. Diem, “The Emergence of Monastic
Schools: The Role of Alcuin,”, 27-44, at 30-32 cites a number of examples where schola
designates a community engaged in an activity rather than a physical space. Schola appears in
the Admonitio generalis, c. 72. Leclercq, Otia monastica: études sur le vocabulaire de la
contemplation au Moyen Age Otia monastica, 78-80 surveys the Carolingian understanding of
schola and its relationship to monastic notions of withdrawal and leisure. Hrabanus Maurus
expands the realm of the schola by connecting it to vacatio and vacare: Servi subditi estote in
omni timore dominis, non tantum bonis et modestis, sed etiam dyscolis. Dyscolis indisciplinatis
dicit, nomine ducto a Graeco eloquio, quia Graece schola vocatur locus in quo adolescentes
litteralibus studiis operam dare, et audiendos magistros vacare solent: unde schola vacatio
interpretatur. Denique in psalmo ubi canimus: Vacate et videte quomodo ego sum Deus, pro eo
quod nos dicimus vacate in Graeco habetur scholaste. Hrabanus Maurus, Homiliae 2.27, PL,
110, col. 195 C.
28
Cf. to Carmen XCVII. The phrase ab ore and the closely related in ore are important idioms in
Carolingian monastic education, and symbolize the habitus of the monk as much as his speech.
See below, pp. 55-56.
29
Unlike after the reforms of Louis the Pious and Benedict of Aniane, oblates in the late
eighth/early ninth century were not given a choice to be monks or revert to lay life when they
came of age. Thus the boys were considered members of the monastic community once they had
entered the monastery as an oblate. See Schroll, Warnefrid-Hildemar Commentaries , 76-78, 8081.
30
Alcuin’s use of the plural, patres, here is notable because it indicates that the education of boys
was considered the duty of the whole monastic community and not just of a single designated
magister. See M. de Jong, “From Scolastici to Scioli, Alcuin and the Formation of an Intellectual
Élite,” in Alcuin of York, Scholar at the Carolingian Court, 45-57.
31
49
better recite the prayers and liturgy than older men who might grow tired more easily.32
The inscriptions repeatedly stress the importance of personal relationships between
students and teachers and use the image of a father figure, echoing the fundamental
relationship that was a hallmark of Early Christian monasticism.
The following poem in Alcuin’s cycle, Carmen XCIV, opens, Hic sedeant sacrae
scribentes famina legis, / Nec non sanctorum dicta sacrata Patrum. This poem also
shifts easily from copyist to scholar to teacher, as noted above. The poems follow each
other nicely. An entirely new room need not be imagined. Because the inscriptions
indicate the space being discussed with “hic,” they do not impose boundaries on it;
perhaps the reader finishes the first poem and turns to another part of the room, the
cloister or the chapter house, and here, in this space, another form of learning and study
should be the focus.33 Hic, here, the reader’s attention must focus on a different
intellectual pursuit; he must turn away from the schoolmaster and apply himself to
writing and copying. The different activity creates a different space.
Another poem encourages the monk to read and reflect on the inscriptions found
throughout the monastery, but the poem is not directly about teaching or learning; it is
about ascent and the monk’s journey toward God. Alcuin explicitly links this poem to
those about study by means of shared themes and diction, so that there is no doubt that
study and prayer are inseparable. In the poem written about the education, young boys
are educated hymnidicas laudes ut resonare queant. Similarly, the monk who reads the
inscriptions throughout the monastery will always have the name of God on his lips and
lingua pias resonat per carmina laudes. The scribe, the student, the teacher, each of
Alcuin also describes the benefits of having young and old monks live together in Carmen
XCVIII, MGH Poet. I, p. 323. He encourages monks to run to prayer, and if they are too old to
run like the young, to run in their hearts.
32
Compare this use of hic to its most common employment in classical epigraphy – the tomb
inscription. It intends for the reader to pause at the inscription and take note of what he shares
the space with at that moment. The space is not clearly defined beyond the inscription.
33
50
these is above all a monk and Alcuin moves from study to prayer while retaining the
theme of reading. The contrast between the quisque legit poterit proferre of Carmen
CXIV and the quisque legens curris in the two poems is notable. Alcuin changes the
person of the verbs; the second poem addresses the reader directly. The contemplation
encouraged by this inscription is personal, and Alcuin moves from the third person,
which reflected the corporate endeavor of study and learning to the second person.
Carmen CXV tells the reader that all monastic activity is aimed at a single goal: the
individual’s union with God. The Benedictine Rule discussed ascent in terms of steps on
the ladder of humility. Alcuin places this monastic ascent in an architectural setting; the
monk is moving upwards on a series of terraces or porches toward heaven and holiness.34
Alcuin locates this particular poem in the palatium, which might be entrance
hall, foyer, or vestibule, but he chooses a word that recalls Roman architectural
inheritance. It suggests to the reader the authority and antiquity of the classical world
and the elevated social status and power housed within the palatium. The grandeur of
the spaces addressed in the poem suggests that these were places for both guests and
monks. San Vincenzo al Volturno offers an example of a vestibule that opened up at the
meeting place of several corridors and would have been a main entranceway for guests as
well as a place through which the monks passed several times a day given its proximity to
the refectory and assembly room.35 S.A. Rabe notes that at Saint-Riquier, the monastery
Pranger, The Artificiality of Christianity, notes that by the eleventh century, monastic
architecture had begun to reflect the monastic life, by articulating its separation from society
through the increased attention devoted to the claustral complex, and by emphasizing the
circularity of time and the immobility and structure of monastic life over against the “mutability,
vicissitude, and lack of structure” that characterized the outside world, in the church architecture.
This poem demonstrates that this consciousness was in place at the turn of the ninth century
among some monastic thinkers. Before the St-Gall Plan, Alcuin is reshaping monastic space and
considering is influence on the monastic enterprise. His Grammatica also employs the images of
ascent and architectural imagery, including the domus Sapientiae, with its seven columns and
seven steps of philosophy. PL 1o1, coll. 853A-854A.
34
See R. Hodges, San Vincenzo al Volturno, vol 2, 1-19. The room, like much of the rest of the
monastery was richly decorated with wall paintings and a tile floor.
35
51
“functioned on at least two levels,” as a place for laity and also for monks; the monastery,
church and auxiliary buildings were “a physical representation of the Trinity for ‘all the
people of the faithful,’ through its outward, physical appearance and performance,” while
at the same time the buildings constituted areas where the monks lived their internal life
of perpetual prayer.36 Alcuin’s poem does not require a strictly enclosed architectural
setting, but instead relies on the symbolic separation from the world and its affairs.
Alcuin uses the images of palatia and solaria to make the space an allegory for the
monastic journey upwards toward God, and, in so doing, adapts to the monastic milieu
symbols and idioms drawn from the monks’ prior social status, which they forfeited by
entering the monastery, in order to reorder the social hierarchy.
Alcuin employed the symbolism present in monastic architecture and the idiom
of classical retirement as a means of asserting the status of monks and religious within
the social order of the Carolingian world. Most Carolingian religious came from the
aristocracy and had expectations about their place in society and their elite status vis-àvis the secular nobility.37 As monks, these men had to carve out a different societal role
that gained importance as a means of asserting the separate and exalted social status of
monastics. The enactment of Carolingian monastic reforms more sharply defined the
distinction between monks and secular nobles, creating a tension between the
engagement of the monastic and secular spheres and the separateness that the reforms
imposed. Alcuin’s use of words borrowed from aristocratic architecture signaled to the
36
Faith, Art, and Politics, 91.
On the status and expectations of aristocratic Frankish monks and the social and political
importance of their relationships with their secular aristocratic kin groups see R. Le Jan, “
Convents, Violence, and Competition for Power in Seventh-Century Francia,” in F. Theuws, M. d.
Jong, and C. van Rhijn, Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages, The Transformation of
the Roman World Series, vol. 6 (Leiden, 2001), ; R. Le Jan, La royauté et les élites dans l'Europe
carolingienne: début IXe siècle aux environs de 920 (Villeneuve d'Ascq, 1998); and R. Le Jan,
Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc (VIIe-Xe siècle): essai d'anthropologie sociale (Paris,
1995). In her work, Le Jan broadly defines “elites” as those who expect to have access to power
and influence in the social or political sphere because of their birth or inherited status or because
of acquired knowledge.
37
52
monks that they possessed an exalted, though separate, status in society and shaped
their expectations for preferential treatment by the king, his court, and the secular
aristocracy.
In a poem addressed to the monks who “run around reading the verses in these
hallowed halls,” Alcuin juxtaposes the delight that the architecture and decor could
provide, for which he employs delecto, to the joy of heaven and union with Christ, using
rapio in contrast to the earlier delecto. The use of rapio and delecto also points to a shift
in monastic ethics that occurred in the Carolingian period. Beginning with the first
generation of Carolingian monastic thinkers, the object of monastic desire was redefined.
In a marked split from their Early Christian forebears, Carolingian monastics preferred
to link desire to the yearning for a greater understanding and union with the Divine,
rather than linking it to human sexual desire and immorality. Ascetic suppression of
disordered desire, central to the ethic of previous generations of western monastic
thinkers, did not feature prominently in Carolingian monastic thought.
Instead,
Carolingian monastic literature employed the classical language of desire to define the
monastic quest for wisdom and unity with God as the primary objects of monastic desire,
thus moving monastic engagement with desire from an ascetic approach aimed at
suppression to a positive yearning for the fruits of their monastic labors.
In using the words palatium and solarium to describe the monastery buildings,
Alcuin evokes images of imperial palaces, courts, and seigneurial estates. When the
words appear in classical and biblical contexts, the context is invariably a scene of
decadence, excess, and lavishness.38 The poem acknowledges the allure of the
Cf., for palatium, Suetonius Calig. 22, Nero 25, Nero 31; Tac. Ann 12.5: The palatium is where
Claudius waits while Vitellius sweet talks the Senate into allowing him an incestuous marriage.
Cf., for solarium, Suet. Claud. 10; Vulg. Jos. 2:6, 2 Reg. 16:22, 2 Reg. 11:2; Plaut. Mil. 2.3.69.
Hildemar’s ninth-century commentary on the Rule of St Benedict calls a place in the monastery
the solarium, but does not describe the purpose of the space. See Schroll, Warnefrid-Hildemar
Commentaries , 28.
38
53
architectural space of the monastic villa, as it were, in which the monk finds himself. In
so doing, the poem offers for subsequent generations of monks the concept of a religious
elite in contrast to the Frankish military elite. Alcuin’s focus on locations for study over
spaces for guests and entertaining dignitaries fits nicely with the villa ideal of pursuing
study over secular affairs, and focuses attention on the monastic quality of the space. It
also highlights the separation of monastic life from secular affairs and elevates monastic
affairs over the royal agenda.
The inscriptions written for the most private monastic rooms of the abbey
complex, which also seem to be the rooms that least define the monastic enterprise, the
dormitory and the latrine, do the most to describe and instill monastic culture in the
inhabitants in the inhabitants of the monastery. The poems that Alcuin composed for
these single-purpose rooms do not need to mark off the space in particular – four walls
would suffice. Instead in these rooms, Alcuin focuses on the meditation and prayer that
accompanies every aspect of the monastic life. Hic, used to carve out a niche or a space
in other inscriptions, is unnecessary for these are already well-defined spaces.
Architecture has defined the rooms for the dormitory and the latrine; Alcuin seeks to
mold these spaces into areas for meditation and prayer in order to set them apart as
monastic. The inscriptions make a monastic imprint on the architecture throughout the
monastery; no monastic space remains mundane.
The activity of the monastic
community separates them from the laypeople who share the space with them. The
inscriptions intended for the dormitory and the latrine turn ordinary activities into
meditations on the monastic life and fill these activities with monastic purpose. The
dormitory inscription offers a reflection on God’s power to sustain and protect him. The
dormitory offers rest to the monk who is tired after a long day and weary from his labors,
including the extensive liturgy of the day (for which he would be awakened again soon).
The inscription about ascending to ever-higher solaria sets the pace and effort of the
54
liturgy and prayer by using curro, ferveo, and scando. The monk in the poem is fessus, a
word that Alcuin uses elsewhere to describe travelers and laborers.39 The poem in the
dormitory calms everything and makes the room still and restful – signs, according to
Alcuin, of God’s presence there. Each night, then, a monk can experience a reminder of
the rest he works daily to attain – eternal rest in the presence of God.
Alcuin also uses this inscription to emphasize moderation in monastic life. God
gives daylight for labor and nighttime for sleep, thus it is right for the monk to maintain
this order.40 The fears mentioned in the poem surely include scruples about the comfort
and relief of sleep. But the monk should not stay awake through the night as a form of
ascesis; he should rest to prepare for the new labors of the next day. Individual ascetic
achievement, once a hallmark of monastic discipline in the Early Christian period, did
not fit well with the corporate model of monasticism of the Benedictine Rule.41 Nor did it
fit with the Carolingian monastic ethics of desire, which sought to use sleep as a symbolic
representation of eternal life rather than the abnegation of sleep as a means of bodily
discipline against unwanted physical desires.42
Alcuin uses fessus in MGH, Poet. I, p. 284, LXV.iv: scriptor fessus; p. 325, XCIX.x: fessus
viantus; and p. 343 CX.xviii: fessus vienens viator. This characterization of fatigue and weariness
complements Alcuin’s description of the monks’ war on vice. In his De virtutibus et vitiis liber,
Alcuin describes the bellum cum vitiis as a battle fought in habitu et in forma corporis, in
incessu, in voce, et in opere, in vigiliis, in jejuniis, in oratione, in remotione, in lectione, in
scientia, in taciturnitate, in obedientia, in humilitate, in patientiae longanimitate, that is in every
aspect of a monk’s life. PL 101, coll. 613C-638D.
39
Cf. MGH, Poet. I, p. 328, C.ii: Ad requiem noctem dederas, lucemque labori, / Prospera
conservans famulis noctesque diesque. / Ad te cor vigilet, somnus si claudat ocellos, / Te labor et
requies conlaudent omnibus horis.
40
A. J. Kleinclausz, Alcuin, Annales de l'Université de Lyon. Troisième série. Lettres, vol. 15
(Paris, 1948), 179-180, argues that Alcuin favored the Benedictine Rule and hoped to establish it
at Tours. The Vita Alcuini, ch. 12-13, provides evidence that Alcuin may not have approved of
individuals engaging in ascetic heroics. See MGH, SS, 15.1, 182-197. Benedict of Aniane also liked
the Benedictine Rule for its emphasis on moderation, community, and renunciation of self will
rather than on individual asceticism.
41
I would argue that it is precisely in this shift in the monastic ethics of desire that we can locate
the seed of the bodily experiences of union with God as the culmination of a life in pursuit of the
monastic desire for unity that are an important aspect of certain late-medieval spiritualities. See
C. W. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336, Lectures on the
42
55
The latrine provides the occasion for one of the most telling inscriptions of
Alcuin’s Tours collection. The inscription turns the location of, arguably, the most bodily
experience of the monks’ day into a moment for meditation about abstemiousness and
drawing closer to God. It also moves an individual and interior experience into an
opportunity for consideration of the purpose of the communal life. In order to provide
this brief summary of the Carolingian monastic hermeneutic of the body on the latrine
wall, Alcuin provides a brief reflection, taking into account the location and attendant
activities, but ties in a number of elements from the other inscriptions penned for Tours.
Alcuin links this activity to study and learning and unites even this to the purposes of the
communal scola; the monk in the latrine is addressed as lector, a reminder for the rest of
his day. The poem intends to guide the monk to a sober life in ore. These words echo
the second line of the poem (Carm. XCV) about the purpose of the inscriptions: Quisque
legens versus per celsa palatia curris, / Semper habeto dei nomen in ore tuo.
The phrase in ore comes from a widely commented upon verse in Proverbs:
Thesaurus desiderabilis requiescit in ore sapientis; vir stultis glutit illlum.43
Carolingian scriptural commentators expanded on the long tradition of commentary on
this passage beginning with Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos, which, in the
commentary on the text of Ps. 141, connects the repetition found in the Psalms to the
passage in Proverbs 21 and ultimately to the chapter of Leviticus that discusses the purity
of animals. Leviticus divides animals into clean and unclean based on their status as
history of religions ; new ser., vol. 15 (New York, 1995), particularly her section on thirteenth
century spirituality. Unfortunately, due to the lack of attention given the literary works of
Carolingian authors, Bynum’s book skips over this period almost entirely.
Proverbs 21:20. This is not a reading from the Vulgate, but rather came from the text of the
Septuagint, see A. Firey “The Letter of the Law: Carolingian Exegetes and the Old Testament” in
With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,
ed. J. D. McAuliffe, et al., 204-224. It became a preferred reading for exegetes because Augustine
relied heavily on it in his Enarrationes in Psalmos, linking the repetition present in the Psalmist’s
opening lines to the act of rumination, and then to the division of clean ruminant animals and
unclean non-ruminants found in Leviticus.
43
56
ruminant and non-ruminant. Augustine links rumination to the acquisition of wisdom
via Proverbs 21:20 by likening cogitation of a text to chewing and digesting it.44
Alcuin employs the same meter in this inscription as he used for the two about
learning and study, and the one about ascent, rather than the dactylic hexameter he used
for the dormitory inscription. The final line of the poem also departs from the dormitory
inscription by moving the reader away from the cyclical night and day tempo, to a linear
notion of time in which the monk should progress forward. This notion of time appears
in the other daytime poems, most notably Carmen XCV, but also the reminder of age in
the middle of Carmen XCIII. Here the poem’s linear conception of time encourages the
monk to embrace the linear monastic ethic of growth in wisdom directed toward greater
union with God instead of traditional monastic ascetic self-denial.
The colorful inscription fosters a sense of communal activity rather than
individual ascetic achievement. The poem’s first couplet demands self-consciousness,
but the second couplet asks the reader to “flee” from a preoccupation with individual and
interior concerns and embrace the textual study of the monastic community, signified by
the phrase in ore:
Luxuriam ventris, lector, cognosce vorantis,
Putrida qui sentis stercora nare tuo.
Ingluviem fugito ventris, quapropter in ore,
Tempore sit certo sobria vita tibi.45
Recognize, reader, the extravagance of your greedy belly,
You who smell with your nose the rotten dung.
Flee from the gluttony of your stomach, so that in your mouth,
The sober life will be yours in good time.
Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 101-150, ed. F Gori, CSEL 95 (Vienna, 2001-2005), Ps.
141. See also Augustine, Enarrationes underscores the in Psalmos, Ps. 36 & 66, and Augustine,
Serm., 149 in Augustine, Essential Sermons, ed. D.E. Doyle, OSA & E. Hill, OP, (Hyde Park, NY,
2007). Later Carolingian commentaries on the Psalms, such as Walafrid Strabo’s, follow
Augustine’s and note that repetition is not superfluous because it better commits the repeated
prayer to memory and experience: Walafrid Strabo, Glossa Ordinaria Liber Psalmorum, PL 113,
col. 1064D.
44
45
Carm. XCVII.
57
The opening exhortation to the reader to acknowledge his putrida stercora, a symbolic
reflection of his flawed desire, his greedy appetite, is in keeping with the longer tradition
of monastic ascesis and abstemiousness with regard to food and drink. But Alcuin’s
inscription moves the reader quickly from meditation on his interior life and the
evidence of his misdirected desires, by urging the monk to flee from his gluttony. Here
the poem intends for the reader who has not confronted the evidence of his flaws to put
aside any preoccupation with these desires and instead focus on the cultivation of his
desire for wisdom and the sobria vita. The second couplet of the poem connects both
the inscription intended for a hallway or walkway at Tours, which encourages monastic
desire for greater union with God through repetition of pious poetry (Et dum lingua pias
resonat per carmina laudes / Ferveat illius pectus amore tuum) and with the significant
body of Scriptural commentary that centers on the phrase in ore and the Carolingian
monastic reading aesthetic with its focus on the mouth as the locus of textual ruminatio
and digestion.46 Notably, it is the third generation of monastic scholars that forcefully
return to this monastic ethics of desire. After the periods of close cooperation with the
Carolingian kings and of critique and competition with the aristocracy had given way to
further political instability and greater insecurity for monasteries and their holdings, the
focus of monastic life and culture became more self-reflexive and more internally
defined. This turn has made the most lasting legacy of the Carolingian monastic
movement its ethics of desire.47
Succeeding generations of Carolingian scholars would continue to place a great deal of
emphasis on the phrase in ore and its link to textual study. Walafrid Strabo’s commentary on
Psalm 141 contrasts the ruminatio of the wise man with the gluttony of the fool. The specific issue
he addresses is, following Augustine’s commentary, David’s repetition of the same or similar lines
in the Psalms. He notes that such repetition not only commits the repeated prayer to memory, but
also that repetition is, in fact, rumination and cogitation on the text, PL 113, coll. 1064C-D.
46
The Carolingian move away from framing desire as misguided passions and defining desire as a
good laid the foundations for the spiritualities emblematic of the later Middle Ages, such as that
47
58
The poem, in fact the entire round of Alcuin’s inscriptions, requires its monastic
context in order to convey meaning. Furthermore, it encourages a mimetic engagement
with the text and with the community of monks. The brief poem confronts the monk in a
clear representation of the distance between man as he is and man as he should be. This
asymmetry drove monastic education. The monk who read the inscription would note
the juxtaposition of the phrase in ore with the notion of gluttony (ingluviem) and recall
the oft-quoted passage from Proverbs 21. As he read the inscription he experienced the
asymmetry between himself and the inscription, his teachers, and the monastic ideal.
The purpose of inscribing the walls of Carolingian monasteries was to link closely the
reading aesthetic with the hermeneutic of the body as a vehicle for the pursuit of ordered
desire rather than a stumbling block on account of disordered desire in an effort to form
the monastic habitus. The method consisted of etching into the walls that mark off the
physical world of the monk the very precepts that should delimit and define his mental
world and then pointing to elder monks and teachers as the intermediaries and guides to
those seeking to correct the asymmetry.
The early Church fathers, and St Augustine in particular, articulated a theory of
human progress from God’s creation of man in his own image through man’s
disobedience and loss of grace to reform and regaining the divine likeness.48 In what
Carolingian reformers considered the heroic early age of monasticism, the formation
model consisted of a disciple placing himself under the tutelage of an experienced elder
monk as his master. The novice’s education consisted of the master guiding the disciple
in a new way of life and a specifically monastic ordering of virtues and values. The basic
of Bernard of Clairvaux, whose spiritual writings display a celebration of desire and of the
monastic body’s ability to experience and symbolize rightly ordered desire.
This is a pervasive idea in Augustine’s corpus. It is evident in his description of his own life, in
his Confessions, where he places himself under the tutelage of several different masters and
finally Ambrose of Milan, and it is articulated in his essay on Christian education, De doctrina
Christiana, ed. W.H. Green CSEL 80 (Turnhout, 1963).
48
59
principle of monastic education was a corrective moral program, the imposition of
monastic culture through a mimetic process in which the novice monk saw the
asymmetry between himself and his teacher and directed his efforts to molding himself
in the image of his master.
Augustine articulated his theory of education in Neo-Platonic terms in his De
doctrina Christiana. He described the role of the liberal arts in man’s search for wisdom
and knowledge of God, which would ultimately lead to reunion with God, and placed the
liberal disciplines at the service of Scriptural study.49 Though Augustine himself both
benefited from and advocated a liberal education, he maintained that disciplines such as
grammar and rhetoric were best learned, not by direct or specific instruction, but rather
by association and the forming of proper habits.50 This idea became a fundament of
monastic education; the lived experience of monastic life was the key to a deeper
understanding of the meaning of Scripture, a fuller understanding of one’s humanity and
closer communion with God, because experience unlocked the meanings of symbol,
metaphor and analogy. In Augustine’s articulation, man trained himself so that he could
be illumined move beyond the material and see with the eye of the mind rather than with
the eye of the body.
The role of Neo-Platonic thought in the formation of educational theory in the
Patristic era and renewed interested in it in the Carolingian period had a profound effect
on the formation of the monastic school. Carolingian epistemology held that mankind
accrued knowledge or wisdom by finding new meanings, symbols, metaphors, and
allegories in the texts they read, particularly in Scripture. Deeper understanding of the
Scriptures elucidated what was previously understood and moved the student (upward)
closer to a true understanding of God, and consequently toward a fuller communion with
49
Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, 2.16ff.
50
Augustine, De doctrina Christiana 4.8.
60
him. Everything was building upward toward unity. A number of monastic inscriptions
attest to the continual reinforcement of this key aspect of monastic learning. If we return
to the poem Alcuin intended for a hallway at St Martin at Tours in which monastic
students are encouraged to move from physical reality upward to the spiritual realm, we
see the interplay between the physical experience of the monk and his education in
monastic virtue.
Dum tu pulchra domus pedibus solaria scandes,
Immemor haud esto scandere mente polum.
Sol rutilans radiis domibus splendescit in altis,
Lumine perpetuo Christus in arce poli.
Ut sol illustrat totus praefulgidus orbem,
Sic fulgent sancti semper in arce patris.
Sunt a sole domus celsae solaria dicta,
A Christo sanctum nomen habemus item.
Si te delectet manibus habitatio facta,
Non manibus factam plus tibi quaere domum.51
As you climb the lovely porches of the house,
Do not forget to ascend to heaven in your mind.
The sun’s shining rays grow brighter in the higher rooms,
Christ shines with perpetual light in the stronghold of heaven.
As the sun in all its glory illumines the earth,
So do the holy ones shine always in the house of the father.
As solaria of the heavenly house are so called because of the sun,
We too have a holy name on account of Christ.
If the dwellings made by hands are pleasing to you,
Seek all the more for yourself the home not made by hands.
The physical movement of monks in the monastery symbolizes their ascent through
learning to the heights of wisdom.
Alcuin uses imagery of light, the sun, and
illumination to describe the movement toward greater knowledge of and communion
with God. The sancti in heaven shine brightly and illumine those on earth – the monks.
And just as the reflected brightness of the sun gives the solaria their name, the monks
bear the name Christian insofar as they reflect the glory of Christ.
Alcuin’s inscriptions were permanent, ever-present reminders to the inhabitants
of the monastery of their distinctive and elevated status. In monasteries throughout the
51
Car. XCV.
61
Carolingian world, ubiquitous inscriptions constantly shaped monastic perceptions of
their purpose, their lifestyle, and lived tension of their position of distance from yet
engagement with the secular social and political spheres. The placement of these
inscriptions on the buildings and structures that marked the monastic separation from
the world and the employment of the architectural symbolism of the Roman villa had a
profound influence on monastic authors’ understanding of the intersection between
literature and architecture.
As this study will explore in subsequent chapters,
Carolingian authors had great faith in the power of writing to inscribe meaning on
objects, define social relationships, and provide access to secular power.
2
Lyric & the Creation of Carolingian Benedictinism
Little attention has been paid to the Carolingian interest in the Rule of St
Benedict prior to the reign of Louis the Pious; perhaps even less attention has been given
to the verse vita of St Benedict that Paul the Deacon wrote while at the court of
Charlemagne in the 780s. Scholarship on the place of the Rule in Carolingian monastic
reform focuses on two assemblies in 816-817, where Louis the Pious, the sole surviving
son and heir to Charlemagne’s empire, undertook to reform and standardize monastic
life throughout Francia.1 These councils decreed that the Rule of Benedict should be the
rule for all monastic houses of the empire, and that the Divine Office outlined in
Benedict’s Rule should be uniformly observed. Well before Louis’ councils of 816-17,
Benedictine monasticism received support from the Carolingian rulers, and monastic
reform occupied their attention. Pippin III had favored the Benedictine rule for the
monasteries that he had brought under royal control as early as 755. Pippin held councils
at Ver (755), Verberie (756), Compiègne (757), Attigny, (760-62), and Gentilly (767) at
which directives concerning monastic discipline, liturgical practices, and ecclesiastical
See for example C. Bonnet and C. Descatoire, Les Carolingiens et l'Eglise: VIIIe-Xe siècle (Paris,
1996); J. Nelson, The Frankish World, 750-900 (London, 1996); R. McKitterick, The Frankish
Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 751-987 (New York, 1983); H. Fichtenau, The Carolingian
Empire: The Age of Charlemagne, trans. P. Munz (New York, 1964); C. de Clercq, La legislation
religieuse franque: étude sur les actes de conciles et les capitulaires, les statuts diocesains et les
règles monastiques, 2voll. (Louvain, 1936).
1
62
63
organization were promulgated.2 During Charlemagne’s reign, Paul’s lengthy poem, a
reworking of Gregory the Great’s vita of Benedict, added to the interest among the
scholars at court in the Benedictine rule and the person of St Benedict as they worked to
shape monastic, educational and cultural reforms.3 The poem is contemporary with
Charlemagne’s programmatic treatises on education and monastic reform, chief among
them, the Admonitio Generalis (789) and the De litteris colendis (781-791); it also
echoes much of the legislation found therein. The poem goes beyond promoting the
Carolingian legislation and the goals it intended to achieve; the hallmarks of monastic
life that the poem emphasizes became the key features in the culture of Carolingian
A thorough description of Pippin’s monastic policy can be found in McKitterick, The Frankish
Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 53-64. Paul the Deacon’s verse life of St Benedict through line
130 is included in Book I of Paul’s Historia Langobardorum, but has no connection to the rest of
the chapter and was certainly composed prior to the writing of the Historia. The chronology of
Paul’s life is not well known and scholars have argued for dating the poem to Paul’s time at the
Carolingian court or to the several years prior, while Paul was at Monte Cassino. See Paul the
Deacon, History of the Langobards, trans. W.D. Foulke, Translations and Reprints from the
Original Sources of European History; n.s., vol. 3 (Philadelphia, 1907), xvi-xxviii for a chronology
that favors the former timeline and W. Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (Princeton,
NJ, 1988), 333-347, for an argument for the latter. Two internal aspects of the poem seem to
bolster the case for composition during Paul’s stay at the Frankish court: The poem’s repetitive
style is the sort of affectation that is common in Carolingian poetry, although it is found in a few
other poems in Paul the Deacon’s corpus. Dating the poem to Paul’s stay in Francia would also
explain his focus on harsh winter weather in lines 17-18: Frigora, flabra, nives perfers tribus
impiger annis; / Tempnis amore Dei frigora, flabra, nives. This description stands in stark
contrast to the description of Subiaco as a virtual paradise found in Gregory’s vita. Scholarship
on Paul’s literary works is sparse, but there have been several foundational articles: L. Bethmann,
“Paulus Diaconus Leben und Schriften,” Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche
Geschichtskunde 10 (1851), 247-334; G. Vinay, “Paolo Diacono e la poesia. Nota.” Convivium 1
(1950), 97-113, and more recently, J. Pucci, “Pied Beauty: Paul The Deacon's Poem To Lake
Como,” Latomus 58 (1999), 872-884; W. Goffart, “Paul the Deacon's 'Gesta episcoporum
Mettensium' and the Early Design of Charlemagne's Succession,” Traditio 42 (1986), 59-93. The
studies concerning Paul’s treatment of St Benedict have focused on the Lombard’s account of the
translation of Benedict’s bones to Francia: J. Hourlier, “Le témoignage de Paul Diacre,” Studia
Monastica 21 (1979), 205-211; W. Goffart, “Le Mans, St. Scholastica, and the Literary Tradition of
the Translation of St. Benedict,” Revue Bénédictine 77 (1967), 107-141.
2
The full text of Paul’s poem can be found in the Appendix, beginning on p. 178. The poem opens
with ten lines of introductory praise, then switches to a narrative of Benedict’s miracles,
recounting the stories found in the thirty eight capitulae of Gregory the Great’s dialogue, in lines
11-126. With a handful of exceptions, each chapter of Gregory’s dialogue occupies a single couplet
in Paul’s poem. The poem then closes with another section addressed to St Benedict that varies in
length from as few as four lines to as many as 28 in the manuscript tradition. The majority of the
manuscripts contain the entire 154 lines of the poem and the 28 lines in the final section.
3
64
monastic houses and the monastic community at large. Paul’s verse vita of Benedict
offered readers a model of monastic life rooted in scholarship and communal living.
Paul’s poem envisions the monk as a student and the abbot as a master and the
monastery as a community of scholars. As has been demonstrated in the previous two
chapters, this depiction of monastic life dominated Carolingian conceptions of
Benedictine monasticism, and Paul’s poem, along with other monastic literature of the
late eighth century, was important in defining the culture of the Carolingian monastery
beyond the legislation found in the royal documents. Charlemagne’s interest in monastic
reform took on a life of its own under the direction of court scholars familiar with
monastic life. It was at the court of Charlemagne, among the monastic scholars that the
king himself had gathered, that Carolingian monastic culture took shape. The men that
Charlemagne had gathered came to a community of scholars with the heritage of the
monastic traditions of the British Isles, of the Iberian penninsula, of southern Gaul and
of Italy.
The importance of the court community as well as the monastic roots of the
court scholars is evident in the monastic reform movement.
Paul the Deacon, a monk from Monte Cassino, a scholar, and a one-time courtier
at the Beneventan court, arrived at Charlemagne’s court after having struck up a
correspondence with Charlemagne’s secretary in an effort to secure the release of his
brother who had been captured during the Frankish conquest of the Lombards. He was
drawn to the court circle and the like-minded individuals that Charlemagne had
gathered. Charlemagne called upon Paul to help with one of his earliest initiatives in the
reform effort – a homilary for the Frankish clergy, to ensure correct preaching and
teaching throughout the kingdom.4 As a monk and a ‘true believer,’ Paul was concerned
about his role in furthering Charlemagne’s political ambitions, but found himself drawn
Cf. J. B. Mullinger, The Schools of Charles the Great and the Restoration of Education in the
Ninth Century (London, 1877), 101.
4
65
to the king and to his learned circle almost in spite of himself. Paul came to court hoping
to be part of a Christian renewal, but was wary of his life as a court scholar, which he
knew was quite different than the monastic life to which he had promised to adhere.
In his response to a poem that Peter of Pisa wrote commending him for his work
within the court circle, Paul expresses his concerns about his role there. Paul does not
beat around the bush; he opens the poem by assuring Charlemagne that he fully
understands the king’s purpose in inviting him to court: Sensi, cuius verba cepi exarata
paginis.5 And he makes it clear that he is not seeking glory for his learning. Paul goes on
to say that his affection for Charlemagne is the sole anchor that keeps him at court.6 He
assures the king (and the court scholars) that he is unmoved by the praises they heap
upon him. He protests the praises lavished upon him for his learning and expresses the
hope that his work teaching at the court will bring about moral reform.7 He also comes
down strongly against the veneration of pagan authors, likening them to dogs and asking
not to be compared to them.8
In this sentiment, Paul expresses the odd nature of the monastic anxiety of
influence. He pays homage to his Christian, particularly Patristic forebears by swearing
off the praises of the world lavished upon pagan authors. But his anxious disavowal of
the Roman tradition does not match his copious borrowing from Roman literature in his
own writings. As this chapter will show, Paul employed these allusions and imitations in
contexts that turn the ancient meaning on its head or reveal a Christian, and a
particularly monastic, understanding of a particular genre, phrase, word, or idea.
5
K.P. Harrington, ed., Medieval Latin, 2nd ed., rev. J. Pucci (Chicago, 1997), 213-15.
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
66
Paul is comfortable alluding to the works of classical pagan authors. Paul,
moreover, is quite willing to employ phrases from classical works and infuse them with
new, Christian meaning. In his couplet from his verse vita of Benedict describing how
the youthful Benedict conquered his sexual appetite, Paul quotes from Ovid’s Ars
amatoria: Ignis ab igne perit, lacerant dum viscera sentes; / Carneus aethereo ignis ab
igne perit.9 Ovid used ignis ab igne to advise young men that if they are looking for
women at dinner parties they should be advised that wine and firelight make women
seem more desirable to them while also inflaming their passions and bolstering their
courage. Paul turns the meaning of Ovid’s phrase on its head, noting that the fire of
Benedict’s self-inflicted penance quenched the fire of his passions. Herein lies the genius
of Paul’s classical echo: with one phrase, he gives the Ovidian phrase a Christian
meaning and offers to the reader an allusion that only those educated, presumably, in a
monastic school can identify.
The Ovidian echo is part of Paul’s larger effort to create within the monasteries a
received tradition and culture. The monastery was the heir to the learning of classical
Rome and the guardian of that tradition. Paul’s derives his classical allusions for the
most part from Augustan poets – Vergil, Ovid, and Propertius. These allusions taken
together with his reply to Peter of Pisa suggest that Paul’s work contains a commentary
on, or perhaps an exploration of, Charlemagne’s patronage of learning and his own role
at the court.
Paul’s poem expresses his hope that Charlemagne’s political efforts will lead to
the expansion of Western Christendom, but he seems wary of being brought to court as
an ornament to enhance royal prestige. In a letter home to Theudemar, the abbot of
Monte Cassino, Paul reveals ambivalence again:
9
Lines 27-28; Cf. Ovid, Ars Amat., 1.244.
67
Inter catholicos et Christianis cultibus deditos versor:
bene me omnes accipiunt, benigniter mihi affatim amore
nostri Patris Benedicti et vestris meritis exhibetur; sed ad
comparationem vestri coenobii mihi palatium carcer est,
ad collationem tantae quae apud vos est quietis hic mihi
degere tempestas est.10
I am engaged here among devout Catholics and with
reverent Christians, all of whom receive me warmly, and
abundant kindness is shown me on your account and for
the love of our father Benedict; but in comparison with
your monastery, the palace is a prison to me, in
comparison to the great peace among your brothers, here is
living in a tempest for me.
He goes on to describe some of the daily activities of the monastery, and then
writes that he is delayed at court solo me aspectu misericordiae, solis pietatis visceribus,
solis animarum hic profectibus ad tempus.11
The tension between Paul’s discomfort with his life at court on the one hand, and
his interest in Charlemagne’s reform efforts on the other suffuses his writing. In his
History of the Lombards, written upon his return to Italy after his acquaintance with the
Carolingian court, he interwove the history of his own people with the history of the
Romans and the Franks, in order to create connections between these peoples as heirs to
the western, Christian tradition.12 It is a strikingly balanced work by a man whose people
were conquered and whose family endured such hardship at the hands of the conqueror.
Paul’s account of the Pippin III’s deposition of the Merovingians is the Carolingian party
line:
10
PL, v. 95, col. 1590-1592.
11
Ibid.
On Paul’s History, see J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Barbarian West, 400-1000, 5th rev. ed.
(Oxford, 1985); C. Wickham, Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society, 400-1000
(London, 1981); E. Sestan, “La Storiografia dell’Italia Langobardia: Paolo diacono,” La
storiografia altomedievale: 10-16 aprile 1969, Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi
sull'alto Medioevo, vol. 17 (Spoleto, 1970), 357-96; M. L. W. Laistner, Thought and letters in
western Europe, A.D. 500 to 900, New ed. (London, 1957); and P. S. Leicht, "Paolo Diacono e gli
altri scrittori delle vicende d’Italia nell’età carolingia," Atti del secondo congresso internazionale
di studio sull'alto medioevo 1951 (Spoleto, 1953).
12
68
Hoc tempore apud Gallias Francorum regibus a solita
fortitudine et scientia degenerantibus, hi qui majores
domus regalis esse videbantur administrare regni
potentiam, et quidquid regibus agere mos est, coeperunt,
quippe cum coelitus esset dispositum ad horum progeniem
Francorum transvehi regnum.13
At that time in Gallia, since the customary courage and
intelligence of the Frankish kings was deteriorating, and
those men who were mayors of the palace were seen to be
kingly and to administer royal power, and they began to do
those tasks commonly considered kingly, and indeed, since
heaven had ordained that the kingship of the Franks be
given over to their family line.
Paul treats the Franks favorably in his account because he had come to admire the
Carolingian model of kingship during his time at Charlemagne’s court and hoped to
encourage the Lombards to see things his way. He emphasizes cooperation between the
Lombards and the Franks prior to the 774 conquest, and portrays that event as a political
shift rather than a military conquest. Charlemagne rightfully replaced the Lombard king
in much the same way his father had replaced the Merovingian king.14 Paul sought to
join the Lombard past to the Frankish present as part of the cooperative progress of
history. The verse vita of Benedict that he wrote while at court similarly aims to include
the Italian father of monasticism in Frankish monastic history by refocusing Benedict’s
miracles to elaborate upon Carolingian reform goals.
The Carolingian documents that addressed educational reform aimed at creating
a minimum standard of learning and literacy for the clergy and religious – priests,
bishops, monks and abbots – so that they could reform the laity.
The royal effort
latched on to the learning, scholarship, and literary production already being cultivated
in monasteries. Monastic learning, however, was not directed toward pastoral care;
knowledge was a means of striving for greater human perfection and drawing closer to
13
Historia Langobardorum, 6.16.
See R. McKitterick, “Paul the Deacon and the Franks” Early Medieval Europe 8 (1999), 319-39,
at 328-31.
14
69
God. Scholars in the monasteries and at court welcomed the royal patronage that came
with the educational reforms, but in their own writings, they preserve the monastic focus
on learning as primarily a means of coming to know God; a minimal knowledge would
not do. The capitularies promoted the Rule of Benedict to curb abuses and ensure stable
monasteries from which learning and culture could be disseminated. Monastic thinkers
emphasized Benedict’s monastic journey toward God through humility, obedience,
study, and prayer.
In his poem on the life of Benedict, Paul highlights precisely these monastic
aspects of Benedict’s life and Rule. He is masterful in his use of every aspect of the poem
to convey meaning to the reader. The literal meaning of the poem is cloaked and quite
useless to the untutored reader. But to the careful and well-trained reader, the poem’s
genre, its meter, the repetition employed, the allusions, and the miracles included and
those left out, all say a great deal more than the sum of the words on the page. Unlike
Gregory the Great’s prose vita, which was accessible to a wide audience, Paul reserved
understanding of his poem for an elite group of educated, predominately monastic,
readers. The poem eliminates the more pastoral themes found in Gregory’s Dialogue,
particularly Benedict’s constant efforts to instruct and admonish, by words and miracles,
everyone he encountered. Gregory the Great’s Dialogue on the life of St Benedict tries to
mollify the strictures of the Rule by describing events in Benedict’s own life where
circumstances dictated that the Rule be bent or broken. Paul the Deacon’s poem
constructs an image of Benedict as an authoritative figure and a silent master.
In its reinterpretation of the founder’s life, Paul’s poem promotes eighth-century
Frankish monastic ideals and shapes the Benedictine monasticism of the Carolingian
renewal. The poem implicitly proposes that students be brought into the monastic
milieu to be educated, not that monastic education be adapted for the laity. It demands
that a reader pour over the text and probe its meaning in order to gain an understanding
70
of it. Paul relies on the structure and rules of language and grammar to reveal meaning
to a reader who strives to analyze the logic of his structural and syntactic choices.15
Paul’s poem is a tool for study and meditation; it is not suited for a style of teaching that
relies on questions and answers being exchanged between master and student.
The elegy that Paul wrote is not an easy read. Paul’s reader has to approach the
poem with a prior knowledge of the literary canon; he must know Gregory’s Dialogues
well enough to understand the stories to which Paul’s couplets refer and he needs wider
reading in classical texts in order to identify and understand certain allusions. He must
be familiar with the elegiac genre and meter so that he can appreciate the reasons for
Paul’s choice of genre and the meaning of the shift from dialogue to elegy. Where the
disciple learns through questioning and dialogue with the master in Gregory’s paradigm,
in the Carolingian model he learns by wrestling with a text through close reading. In
Paul’s work, the authority that resides in the text, an authority that is derived from the
source of the text, either divine inspiration, or the antiquity or learnedness of the author,
goes unquestioned and the reader is alone with the text. It is the student’s experience
with the text that teaches him.
In order to appreciate the meaning of Paul’s poem the monk had to read more
than just the text in front of him. He had to read this reworking of the saint’s life in light
of Gregory the Great’s prose vita, the established literary canon to which the poem at
times alludes, and the instruction of the grammarians on poetics and meter. Paul follows
Gregory the Great’s prose vita chapter by chapter, and presumes his audience to be
J. Chailley, "Ut queant laxis" et les origines de la gamme in Acta Musicologica 56 (1984), 4869 notes that Paul the Deacon’s hymn in praise of John the Baptist displays what Chailley calls
«des indices de sa propension à ce genre de jeux.» Chailley continues, «Ses homélies témoignent
de son goût pour l’allégorie, la recherche des énigmes, le symbolisme saisonnier et son corollaire
du cycle vie/mort.» He also notes the lyrical quality of Paul’s repetition of the halflines in the
couplets of his poem in praise of St Benedict, see pp. 51-52.
15
71
familiar with the sixth-century text.16 Portions of Paul’s vita do not fully explain or
contextualize a given event and require prior knowledge of Gregory’s version in order to
be understood. Unlike Gregory’s narrative vita, Paul’s poem does not indicate to the
reader Benedict’s age or adequately provide a chronology for the reader to follow the
saint’s maturation and growth in holiness. Paul often boils down to a single couplet an
event that Gregory describes more fully. A reader for example, would need to have read
Gregory’s version of the life in order to know that Benedict’s rolling in a briar patch was
intended to cure himself of adolescent sexual passions, because the poem focuses more
on metaphorical parallels than on how the event fit into Benedict’s personal growth. Paul
is not much interested in exploring the saint’s development as a guide to holiness, but
rather in offering a mimetic text through which a monastic reader could see the
asymmetry between himself and the holy man; the elegy begins with the author
addressing Benedict and asking “where do I even begin enumerating your triumphs?”
and then proceeds to catalogue the saint’s miracles.17
In composing a verse vita for Benedict, Paul the Deacon rethinks Gregory’s
choice of the dialogue between a student and a teacher as the genre for his prose vita.
The late eighth and early ninth century saw a number of hagiographic revisions, owing to both
political and cultural changes after 751. On the rewriting and revision of hagiographical texts see
S. Vanderputten, "'Literate Memory' and Social Reassessment in Tenth-Century Monasticism,"
Mediaevistik 17 (2004) and A.-M. Helvétius, Abbayes, évêques et laïques: une politique du
pouvoir en Hainaut au Moyen Age (VIIe-XIe siècle) (Brussels, 1994). Vanderputten, 74-75, notes
that these efforts to retool monastic historical identity sought to use texts to engender a new
spiritual and social identity. McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 280,
similarly describes this occurrence.
16
The opening line of the poem: Ordiar unde tuos, o sacer Benedicte, triumphos? recalls Cicero,
Pro Sex. Roscius, 30: quid primum querar aut unde potissimum, iudices, ordiar aut quod aut a
quibus auxilium petam? At this point in Cicero’s oration, he has outlined the case and turns to
the judges asking how mostly effectively to begin his defense of Sextus Roscius. Paul’s poem is
likewise an oration, a monologue, addressed to Benedict as the judge of its merit. Paul’s poem
about Lake Como similarly begins Ordiar unde tuas: see J. Pucci, Pied Beauty: Paul The
Deacon's Poem To Lake Como in Latomus 58 (1999), 872-884. The phrase is not uncommon
among medieval monastic authors; Bernard of Cluny uses it in his brilliantly constructed twelfthcentury poem calling for reform in the Church, De contemptu mundi. A fair number of
Renaissance Latin authors repeat this phrase, most notably the opening line of Petrarch, De otio
religioso, which begins: Unde vero nunc ordiar, seu quid primum semiabsens dicam, quod nisi
as totus praesens dicere uolui, illud nempe daviticum, “Vacate et videte.”
17
72
Paul’s poem is an elegy, that is, a genre associated with praise, funerary laments, and
love poetry. The love elegies of Ovid would have been Paul’s primary exposure to the
form.18 Although elegy was used for exhortations and giving advice, particularly to
troops headed into battle, it was not used for straightforward didactic works. Paul’s shift
from the unmistakably didactic dialogue form to the elegy tells his reader that his poem
is above all a work in praise of St Benedict’s holy life. The reader can be edified by the
poem, but the primary purpose of recording the saint’s deeds and miracles is to honor
the saint. In its opening line, the poem is addressed to the saint himself, not to the
reader.
The reader of the elegy praises the subject along with the author. The reader of
the dialogue learns along with the questioning student; the authorial voice and the
teacher’s voice are identified with each other. Peter, the student in Gregory’s dialogue,
can ask for explanation of a phrase or story. This allows Gregory to highlight the
meaning underlying miracles performed, to introduce tangents to the narrative that
discuss the discipline of monastic life, and to clarify Benedict’s behavior. Peter
sometimes opens these discussions by questioning the actions or words that Gregory
attributes to the saint, leading to long apologetic excursus voiced by Gregory. Paul
suppresses Gregory’s loquacious and inquisitive disciple and the contents of his portions
of the dialogue, because he did not suit the Carolingian monastic ideal.19 In the praise
On the medieval reception of Ovid’s corpus see: R. J. Hexter, Ovid and Medieval Schooling.
Studies in Medieval School Commentaries on Ovid's Ars Amatoria, Epistulae ex Ponto and
Epistulae Heroidum (Munich, 1986); A. Moss, Ovid in Renaissance France: A Survey of the
Latin Editions of Ovid and Commentaries Printed in France before 1600 (London, 1982); J.
McGregor, "Ovid at School: From the Ninth to the Fifteenth Century," Classical Folia 32 (1976),
29-51; D. Robathan, “Ovid in the Middle Ages,” in J. W. Binns, Ovid (London, 1973), 191-209; E.
H. Alton and D. E. W. Wormell, "Ovid in the Mediaeval Schoolroom," Hermathena 94-95 (196061) reprinted in W. S. Anderson, ed., Ovid: The Classical Heritage (New York, 1995), 23-36.
18
Peter is such a chatterbox that even Gregory has to silence him in order to finish the account of
Benedict’s life and miracles: At the end of chapter 13, Peter jumps in with a comment likening
Benedict to the prophet Elisha and Gregory responds, Oportet, Petre, ut interim sileas, quatenus
adhuc maiora cognoscas.
19
73
elegy, the holy man’s life stands unquestioned and authoritative, though the reader can
still learn from Benedict’s example, which is beyond questioning. The Rule of St Benedict
repeatedly stresses the importance of example as a means of teaching in monastic life,
noting that abbots should live so that they may be an example to their monks, that deans
and priors should be chosen based on their virtue, and that monks should always strive
to emulate the heroism of the Desert Fathers.20 Paul’s decision to write an elegy
highlights the saint’s ability to teach silently by his actions, which affirm the precepts of
the Rule.
Paul goes even further than this affirmation of monastic values; he writes a poem
that is, in essence, set off from the secular world. Paul creates a text of a saint’s life that
undermines the assumed purpose for hagiography – it cannot be received aurally by an
audience; it is not aimed at promoting the cult of a saint to a wider public. Paul’s poem
is structurally so devoid of the ordinary hagiographic conventions, that the text is
removed from the public sphere entirely.21 Gregory’s choice to write his life of Benedict
as a dialogue was itself a departure from hagiographic convention. A dialogic text
progresses through the exchange of two contrasting viewpoints; by its very nature, it
In an early ninth century commentary on the Rule of St Benedict, attributed to Paul the
Deacon, Pauli Warnefridi, Diaconi Casinensis, in sanctam Regulam commentarium, (Monte
Cassino, 1880), 58, the commentator expounds upon the Rule’s instruction that the abbot must
teach by deed first and foremost, and also by word: Beatus ergo Benedictus, quia cognouit
utrumque esse necessariusm, idest doctrinam quae in uerbis fit, et doctrinam quae in operibus,
idcirco dixit duplici doctrina, idest doctrina quae fit in uerbis, et doctrina quae in operibus.
Sequitur: Idest omnia bona et sancta factis amplius quam uerbis ostendat. Nunc
animaduertendum est, quare praemisit omnia, cum dixit bona et sancta. Ideo dixit omnia, cum
nihil excludit. Debet enim hoc eligere Abba, non quod ipse uoluerit , sed quod in diuinis
Scripturis repererit, secundum auctoritatem diuinarum Scripturarum.. The commentator
attributes the authority of the abbot to the blamelessness of his actions, in which he is guided by
the authority of Scripture. All authority derives from Scripture. The commentator quotes
Gregory the Great in his expositio concerning the Divine Office: nullatenus docuit sanctus Vir
aliter quam uixit. The commentator instructs that more weight be given to bonam uitam than to
sapientiam when choosing a dean or prior for a monastery.
20
The introductions to the following two collections of translated hagiographies provide excellent
overviews of the textual conventions of the genre. P. Fouracre and R. A. Gerberding, Late
Merovingian France: History and Hagiography, 640-720, Manchester Medieval Sources Series
(New York, 1996) and T. F. X. Noble and T. Head, Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saint's Lives
from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (University Park, PA, 1995).
21
74
admits to more than one possibility, even if only to ultimately discard the inferior one.
M. Corti notes that in medieval semiotics the dialogic genres – dialogue, certamen,
conflictus, debat – were used to create and consecrate cultural structures by contrasting
opposing ideals.22 The lyric genre of Paul’s text operated as a foil to the content, which
anticipates an entirely different genre and audience. The modus dicendi of the poem lies
in variations from the tradition of genre and content; the reader must consider the
author’s intended purpose in pairing the hagiographic content with an elegiac form.
The catalogue of miracles in the verse vita makes plain the authority the saint
commands, and by extension the authority that his text – his Rule – commands. In the
first two accounts of miracles that occupy more than a single couplet, Paul focuses on the
power of Benedict’s commands (iussa). The first sequence describes a scene from
Gregory’s seventh chapter in which a monk under Benedict’s rule finds himself able to
walk on water in order to save a drowning boy. Paul chooses iussa paterna gerens as the
repeated halfline in the opening couplet. He describes the water acting as a road
prompto ad praecepta magistri and the monk who ran across the lake as a cursor
ignarus, thereby emphasizing the abbot’s command as the cause of the miracle.23 Paul
follows this by revising of Gregory’s eighth chapter to make it a story about the abbot’s
authority, though Gregory intended it to be a warning against the sin of envy.24 Paul
devotes three couplets to the narrative, with the first couplet introducing the man whose
heart is full of evil impulses and will try to poison Benedict, the second recounting the
miracle of the raven carrying off the poisoned bread, and the third telling the reader that
22
M. Corti, "Models and Antimodels in Medieval Culture," New Literary History 10.2 (1979).
Lines 37-40. The monk does not so much walk on water, as the water turns into a road,
drawing a distinction between the unknowing monk and the apostle Peter, who realized he was
walking on water at Jesus command (cf. Mt. 14:22-33).
23
Gregory uses inuidia or inuideo four times and aemulor once while describing the jealous
priest.
24
75
Benedict was sad when the man who wished him evil had died, and his own disciples had
rejoiced at the death. The second couplet notes that the raven who brought Benedict
food took the poisonous meal away at the holy man’s command: Fert alimenta corax
digitis oblata benignis; / Dira procul iussus fert alimenta corax (lines 45-46). The next
miracle to which Paul devotes more than a single couplet comes from chapter 23 of
Gregory’s work. Paul recounts the story of two women religious whom Benedict rebuked
for gossiping and who had died without receiving reconciliation in two couplets, both of
which repeat the half line vocis ad imperium.
Vocis ad imperium tempnunt dare frena loquelis;
E bustis fugiunt vocis ad imperium.
Vocis ad imperium sacris non esse sinuntur;
Intersunt sacris vocis ad imperium.25
At the command of his voice they disdain to curb their speech;
They take flight from their grave at the command of his voice.
At the command of his voice holy burial are not permitted them;
They are given holy burial at the command of his voice.
The second couplet shows Benedict commanding first the excommunication of the
women and then their reconciliation with equal effectiveness. Gregory’s vita of Benedict
has Peter question how this is possible, noting that Benedict seems to be doing the
impossible in pardoning the women after their death. The challenge allows Gregory to
give a short excursus on the Incarnation of Christ and the mercy of God (though he does
not directly answer Peter’s question). Paul lets the contradiction stand as a testament to
Benedict’s unquestioned authority.
Both commands are concise and the couplet’s
terseness leads the reader to understand they were promptly carried out.
Authority rather than doctrine or curriculum was the focus of the Carolingian
monastic educational program. It is noteworthy that in Carolingian doctrinal disputes
and similar cases, the master often devotes as much verbiage to the student’s
Lines 77-80. Note also that Paul grammatically subordinates vox to imperium, telling his
reader that authority precedes speech, which follows the Rule’s instruction on silence, discussed
below.
25
76
disobedience and disrespect for his teacher as he does to arguing his point in the
dispute.26 Charlemagne himself concentrated on attracting preeminent foreign and
domestic scholars to his court circle and appointed learned abbots to key monasteries. It
was Charlemagne’s patronage of scholarship, rather than his legislation that drove the
cultural and educational ferment in the monasteries; the achievement of Carolingian
monastic scholars went far beyond learning the Psalter, the chants and songs necessary
for the Office, and the computus – the goals outlined in the royal capitularies. The court
and the monastic schools’ scholars would teach their disciples by means of their way of
life and their own scholarship. Much like the disciples of early hermits, the disciples of
these scholars were instructed by the example of their master. Teaching in the
Carolingian monastery required the presence of an authoritative master rather than a
specific curriculum. Students acknowledged their debt to their masters and traced their
intellectual lineage back to pay homage to prior masters and scholars, and to provide a
chain of authority from which theirs was derived.27
The most striking difference between Paul’s Benedict and Gregory’s reveals a
fundamental difference between the Carolingian notion of a monastic teacher and
Gregory’s earlier depiction. In Gregory’s dialogue, Benedict speaks to teach his disciples
(recounted in direct discourse), particularly when his authority or his actions are
questioned, but in Paul’s poem, the Benedict, the master and abbot, is never heard.28
In Alcuin, Carm. 32, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH Poetae 1, 250, Alcuin laments and admonishes a
student who has strayed from the discpline he had learned from his teacher. P.J.E. Kershaw,
“Eberhard of Friuli, A Carolingian Lay Intellectual,” in P. Wormald and J.L. Nelson, eds., Lay
Intellectuals in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2007), 77-105 describes the letters that
Hrabanus wrote concerning the errors in the theological teachings of his former student
Gottschalk regarding a double predestination. Like Alcuin, Hrabanus monastic practice to correct
theological study, and Gottschalk, by his lapsing from the former, had inevitably strayed from the
latter as well.
26
See “Learning in the Middle Ages” in J. J. Contreni, Carolingian Learning, Masters and
Manuscripts (Brookfield, VT, 1992).
27
C. Straw, Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection (Berkeley, CA, 1988), esp. ch. 3 and
R.A. Markus, Gregory the Great and His World (Cambridge, 1997), 68-75, have noted that the
28
77
Gregory has monks directly challenge Benedict in a story about building a monastery.29
Benedict assigns some monks to a build a monastery and leaves them, promising to
return and give further instructions on how the buildings should be arranged. He then
appears to two monks in a dream and provides a detailed description of the layout he
wants. The monks, however, fail to build according to these instructions and wait for
Benedict to return. When he does not arrive, they go to get him and say, Exspectavimus,
Pater, ut venires sicut promiseras, et nobis ostenderes ubi quid aedificare deberemus, et
non venisti.30 Gregory then has Benedict explain himself fully:
Quare, fratres, quare ista dicitis? Nunquid sicut promisi,
non veni? Cui cum ipsi dicerent: Quando venisti?
respondit: Nunquid utrisque vobis dormientibus non
apparui, et loca singula designavi? Ite, et sicut per
visionem audistis, omne habitaculum monasterii ita
construite.31
By Gregory’s account, questioning the abbot Benedict is acceptable and opens the door to
teachable moments. Paul’s couplets, on the other hand, focus on the miracle itself and
do not include any questioning of Benedict’s authority. In Paul’s account, the miracles
affirm the abbot’s authority, but do not explain or elucidate anything to those who
witness it: Pectora cuncta stupent, quod eras sine corpore praesens; / Quod per visa
monens, pectora cuncta stupent.32 The repeated halfline emphasizes the astonishment
events of Gregory’s own life, as well as the pastoral duties that he found himself continually called
upon to fulfill, inform his construction of Benedict’s life; Gregory’s intention in writing his
Dialogues was to offer a basic and appealing primer in monastic life to the many new converts to
monastic life in the sixth century. Each miracle story in the Dialogue provides a lesson for the
reader, and most of the lessons are focused on the basic principles of communal life: obedience to
the superior; the importance of communal ownership and renunciation of private property; the
dangers of wandering about outside the monastery; and finally the centrality of chastity and
humility to monastic life.
29
Gregory the Great, VSB, ch. 22.
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid.
32
Paul the Deacon, Versus, lines 75-76.
78
of the men to whom Benedict appeared, rather than their misunderstanding and
doubting of the vision.
Perhaps even more unsavory in Paul the Deacon’s mind would have been
Gregory’s use of direct discourse when people within the story question, challenge, or ask
favors of Benedict. The exchanges follow a pattern of doubting monks questioning
Benedict and Benedict performing a miracle to assure them of his authority. One such
instance occurs in chapter 5 of the Dialogue. Here, Gregory describes how some of the
monks at one of Benedict’s monasteries found climbing up and down the mountain to
fetch water dangerous and asked Benedict to move his monastery:
Tunc collecti fratres ex eisdem tribus monasteriis, ad Dei
famulum Benedictum venerunt, dicentes: Laboriosum
nobis est propter aquam quotidie usque ad lacum
descendere, et idcirco necesse est ex eodem loco
monasteria mutari.33
The brothers’ bold request is underscored by Gregory’s use of direct discourse. Benedict
must in turn effect a miracle to prove that he had not chosen a bad site for the monastery
and that it did not have to be moved. In his account of the miracle, Paul focuses on how
Benedict’s ability to produce miracles teaches the monks in his care: Unda perennis
aquae nativo e marmore manat, / Arida corda rigat unda perennis aquae.34 He uses
unda perennis aquae as the repeated half line – a phrase that the monastic student will
surely recognize from his lessons. The repeated half line echoes Propertius, Elegies, 3.5,
making an allusion that offers an interesting commentary on the genre of elegy as well as
providing comparisons to monastic life.35 Propertius 3.5 describes the poet’s devotion to
33
Gregory the Great, VSB, ch. 5.
34
Paul the Deacon, Versus, lines 33-34.
The themes of Propertius’ Book 3 fit nicely with monastic notion that the wisdom of age
tempers the passions of youth. Propertius, in particular, may have been a poet with whom Paul
could identify; both were wary of placing their work at the service of glorifying state and ruler.
(Propertius reiterates his inability to write poetry for Augustus and the state throughout his four
books of elegies, notably at 2.1 and 3.9, both addressed to Maecenas, who was, if not his literary
35
79
the pursuit of erotic love in almost ascetic terms.36 He has disavowed the worldly
pursuits of wealth and influence and instead has dedicated himself to love.37 He says
that men dedicated to love cannot be soldiers. The poem is divided in the middle, at line
22, with the first half describing how his early life is led in pursuit of love and the second
half telling the reader that once he becomes too old for love, he will seek the answers to
questions of nature through philosophy. The poem is key to the third book, during
which Propertius undergoes a conversion from the lust of youth to the thoughtfulness of
adulthood.38
In addition to pointing to themes from classical poetry, Paul’s choice of elegy as
his genre silences the challenges and questions of Benedict’s disciples. According to the
Rule of St Benedict, silence is a fundamental monastic virtue. Chapter 6 of the Rule
stresses the importance of silence as the first virtue: Nam loqui et docere magistrum
patron, an admirer and supporter who was also close to Augustus.) Propertius 3.3 confronts the
questions of genre and its role in defining the intent of a particular poem. The poem opens with
Propertius intending to write epic poetry glorifying the history of Rome, but he is stopped by
Apollo, who appears to him and tells him his gift and his duty is love poetry.
Propertius, Elegies 3.5: nec mihi mille iugis Campania pinguis aratur, / nec bibit e gemma
divite nostra sitis, / nec tamen inviso pectus mihi carpitur auro, / nec mixta aera paro clade,
Corinthe, tua... atque ubi iam Venerem gravis interceperit aetas, / sparserit et nigras alba
senecta comas, / tum mihi naturae libeat perdiscere mores, / quis deus hanc mundi temperet
arte domum, / qua venit exoriens, qua deficit, unde coactis / cornibus in plenum menstrua luna
redit, / unde salo superant venti, quid flamine captet / Eurus, et in nubes unde perennis aqua
(2-6, 23-30). Paul’s allusions to classical poetry seem to give the reader a subtle commentary on
chastity and monastic life. See also Ovid, Remedia amoris, 651: Sed meliore fide paulatim
extinguitur ignis / Quam subito; lente desine, tutus eris. / Flumine perpetuo torrens solet altior
ire: / Sed tamen haec brevis est, illa perennis aqua, in which Ovid advises his reader that love for
a woman cannot be quashed overnight, but must fade gradually.
36
The warnings against chasing wealth and power abound in Book 3. See Propertius 3.7, 3.13,
and 3.18.
37
The poems move away from the topic of love in Book 3. The early poems focus on the art of
poetry. In 3.9, Propertius writes Maecenas addressing again the question of whether or not he
should write poetry at the service of Augustus. In 3.24, he looks back at his obsession with love
and declares it to be finished, using the image of being bound and scalded: correptus saeuo
Veneris torrebar aeno; / vinctus eram uersas in mea terga manus. / ...nunc demum uasto fessi
resipiscimus aestu, uulneraque ad sanum nunc coiere mea (24.13-14, 17-18).
38
80
condecet, tacere et audire discipulum convenit. The 9th through 11th steps of humility,
explained in the Rule, center on silence:
Nonus humilitatis gradus est si linguam ad loquendum
prohibeat monachus et, taciturnitatem habens, usque ad
interrogationem non loquatur, monstrante scriptura quia
in multiloquio non effugitur peccatum, et quia vir
linguosus non dirigitur super terram. Decimus humilitatis
gradus est si non sit facilis ac promptus in risu, quia
scriptum est: Stultus in risu exaltat vocem suam.
Undecimus humilitatis gradus est si, cum loquitur
monachus, leniter et sine risu, humiliter cum gravitate vel
pauca verba et rationabilia loquatur, et non sit clamosus
in voce, sicut scriptum est: Sapiens verbis innotescit
paucis.
The ninth step of humility is achieved when a monk
practicing silence, only speaks when asked a question, for
”In many words you shall not avoid sin” (Prov. 10:19). And
“A talkative man shall not prosper upon the earth” (Ps.
140:11). The tenth step of humility is reached when a man
restrains himself from laughter and frivolity, for “The fool
lifts his voice in laughter” (Eccles. 21:23). The eleventh
step of humility is arrived at when a monk speaks gently,
without jests, simply, seriously, tersely, rationally and
softly. “A wise man is known my few words” (Prov.
10:14).39
Paul recounts Benedict’s deeds, but not his words. Miracles happen at his command, but
the reader, the disciple, never hears the iussa or the imperium vocis, because the words
that he used were not so important as the miracles he performed.
Benedict is portrayed as a teacher in Gregory’s vita through the explanations he
speaks to his monks; he is a teacher in Paul’s poem by virtue of his holiness and
authority.
Because learnedness was the source of authority in the Carolingian
monastery, Paul does not mention Benedict’s quitting school, a point that Gregory
emphasizes for his reader.40 Paul tells us that Benedict spurned the wealth of Rome
RSB, ch. 7. Translation from The Rule of St. Benedict, translated with introduction and notes,
A. Meisel and M.L. del Mastro (New York, 1975), 60-61.
39
Gregory makes this the main point of the preface, ending the section by describing Benedict as
scienter nescius et sapienter indoctus. Gregory then dates Benedict’s first miracle in terms of his
40
81
(sprevit opes Romae), not his studies, as Gregory’s dialogue indicates (Despectis itaque
litterarum studiis).41 The Psalter was most important part of the literary canon for the
eighth-century monk, and Paul’s poem recognizes this. According to Gregory, Benedict,
knowing he was about to die, had the brothers carry him into the chapel so he could
receive Communion in preparation for death. Paul’s poem says that Benedict chanted
the Psalms when he was near death: Psalmicen assiduus numquam dabat otia plectro; /
Sacra canens obiit psalmicen assiduus.42 Benedict’s death is accompanied by reading.
This couplet follows one in which Paul tells us that Benedict’s life as much as his Rule is
a guide for monks.43 The Carolingian teacher, like Benedict and the abbot or prior
described in the Rule, derives his authority from his virtuous life, which is based on the
prescriptions and examples found in Scripture and Patristic sources. The teacher’s
authority thus stands largely unquestioned, as it is based in the same texts that he opens
up for his students.
The change in genre and the attendant differences in the form of the life reflect
the change in monastic education and monastic culture that had occurred in Europe
between the sixth century and eighth centuries; both education and monastic culture had
become more hierarchically structured and deeply rooted in authority derived from
mastery of the written word.44 Carolingian monastic thinkers wanted to draw a greater
contrast between the monastic life of scholarship and the monastery cum school that had
abandonment of his studies: Hic itaque cum jam relictis litterarum studiis petere deserta
decrevisset (c.1).
41
Paul the Deacon, Versus, line 10; cf. to Gregory the Great, VSB, preface.
42
Versus, lines 119-120.
Paul repeats this notion in the hymn he composed for Benedict: Haec inter instar nectaris /
Miranda plectro claruit. /Nam pinxit apte lineam / Vitae sacrae sequacibus. He uses pingo to
describe Benedict’s composing the Rule – he did more than write the Rule, he illustrated it by his
own life.
43
44
Contreni, Carolingian Learning, Masters and Manuscripts.
82
become a reality of Gallo-Roman and Frankish monasticism from the fifth century
onward. Monasteries prior to the Carolingian period did not have external schools and
were the only formal educational institutions of for monks, secular clergy and the
aristocratic laity alike. As the Carolingian reforms sought to reintroduce and reinforce
the discipline and the uniqueness of the monastic experience, monastics began to
emphasize the religious and ascetic aspects of monastic scholarship and education.45 The
Carolingian rulers recruited monastic advisors and court scholars and, consequently, this
allowed the men at court whose work shaped the educational reforms to address their
own concerns about the content and discipline of monastic education. Monastic
reformers made hallmarks of regular and communal life, such as authority, obedience,
silence and submission the basis of Carolingian education. The reformers also sought to
separate, for the first time, the school for the lay aristocracy from the monastic school.46
The external schools could focus on achieving a workable level of Latin literacy and an
understanding of Christianity that would further promote a feeling of Frankish cultural
unity. Within the walls of Carolingian monastery, the master taught primarily by his
own exemplary behavior and scholarship the discipline of monastic life and learning.
Paul the Deacon’s poem depicted an exemplary master in Benedict and required learning
that included the classical literary tradition, Scripture, and Patristic scholarship.
Paul’s poem is meticulously constructed, with the initial half line of the
hexameter repeated as the second half of the pentameter line. The order of every couplet
and the matching half lines imitate the regularity and circularity of monastic daily life.
See the introduction in A. Diem, Das monastiche Experiment. Die Rolle der Keuschheit bei der
Entstehung des westlichen Klosterwesens, Vita Regularis, Abhandlungen 24 (Münster, 2005); N.
Cantor, “The Crisis of Western Monasticism, 1050-1130,” AHR 66 (1960), 47-67, cites the ascetic
withdrawal and regular discipline of monastic education as “too limiting in its interests and too
restricted in its organization” (53) for non-monastics by the 11th century, and argues that these
aspects of monastic education provided an impetus for the rise of non-monastic schools.
45
Cf. M. M. Hildebrandt, The External School in Carolingian Society, Education and Society in
the Middle Ages and Renaissance, vol. 1 (Leiden, 1992), 50-57.
46
83
This regularity echoes the Rule of St Benedict and injects Gregory’s narrative of miracles,
which is variable in both content and form, with a strict pattern and regular cadence.
Carolingian commentators on the Benedictine Rule seem particularly interested in time
and in properly ordering the monastic day. Their writings reveal their concern to make
sure daily activities occur at the correct hours, accounting for the changing seasons and
for the lengthening and shortening of days throughout the year.47 The daily schedule,
with its emphasis on the liturgical duties, kept the community together for much of the
day. Carolingian monastic prescriptions concerning study and reading moved these
activities out of private cells or the dormitory and into places where the monks would be
together and could be overseen by the abbot or another monk.48 This meant that even
time between the hours of the office was spent in communal settings and dedicated to
specific activities such as study, manual labor, and prayer. This circular and regular
conception of time in the monastery helped foster communal regularity and check
individualistic asceticism.
Paul’s poem connects this circularity and regularity with renewal. Paul borrows
the form for his couplets from scattered verses in Ovid, but he writes his entire poem
with this repetitive pattern. In between one third and one half of the couplets, the first
and second half lines of the pentameter are metrically identical. This heightens the
cadence of the poem, making it so regular that the lines that contain spondees jolt the
reader out of his rhythm and slow his momentum.49 In addition to the tempo that the
repeated half line imparts on the poem, it also provides Paul with an opportunity to play
M. A. Schroll, Benedictine Monasticism as Reflected in the Warnefrid-Hildemar
Commentaries on the Rule (New York, 1941), 107-31.
47
See D.G.M., «La journée du moine, d’après la règle et la tradition bénédictines» Revue
Bénédictine 6 (1889), 398-401.
48
Classical elegists deliberately avoided matching the half lines of the pentameter. See M.
Platnauer, Latin Elegiac Verse: A Study of the Metrical Usages of Tibullus, Propertius & Ovid
(Cambridge, 1951).
49
84
with the repetition. In the couplet that retells the story of Benedict repairing a bowl for
his nurse, Paul couples the repetition with two pairs of opposites that balance the two
lines: Vas pedagoga tulit diremptum pectore tristi; / laeta reformatum vas pedagoga
tulit (11-12). He frequently uses opposing pairs of adjectives to invert the meaning of the
half line. In this particular case, the inversion would have been poignant, since the most
common Ovidian epanalepsis, or clausal repetition, repeats the word that ends the
hexameter line at the beginning of the pentameter line.50 Thus the reader confronts the
opposite of the hexameter’s adjective precisely where he might have found the word
repeated.51 In lines 15-16, abdita becomes cognita (Laudibus antra sonant mortalibus
abdita cunctis; / Cognita, Christe, tibi laudibus antra sonant), and the praise with
which the caves resounded goes from the echoes of Benedict’s own voice to the praises of
men who have come to see the holy man. At Benedict’s command, the earth that had
ejected a corpse (propellit) holds it (tenet).52 Paul uses the circularity of the couplets and
the opposing adjectives in order to make the reader feel the circularity and renewal that
monastic discipline brings. The renewal in the couplets comes when the circular
structure reveals an unexpected turn that resolves the problem. The repetition of the
monastic daily schedule could similarly lead the monk to a deeper understanding of his
studies and a more profound knowledge of God, an encounter that turned the wisdom of
the world on its head. The poem emphasizes both regularity and rectitude in its very
structure. In each couplet the repetition of the half line makes the couplet come full
circle as the story the couplet tells is put aright.
50
Ibid., 34-35.
Compare to Fraudis amice puer, suado captaris ab ydro; / Ydro non caperis, fraudis amice
puer (69-70); and Ah lacrimande senex, hostilis concidis ictu; / Ictu sed resipis, ah lacrimande
senex (97-8). In these lines, Paul still uses pairs of opposites – captaris ab ydro is juxtaposed
with ydro non caperis and concidis is paired with resipis.
51
52
Lines 81-2.
85
Carolingian monks understood reform and renewal to be at the heart of
Benedictine monastic life. In the Carolingian commentary on the Rule, the author
describes the first of Benedict’s four types of monks, the cenobites, by comparing their
communal life to that of the Apostles of the early Church. The commentator notes that
when the early Church coepit tepescere due to concessions that the Apostles granted to
Gentile converts and the infirm in the community, some of the more devout members of
the community left the community and ibant in suburbana et secretiora loca, et prout
recordabantur ea quae Apostoli docuerant, exercebant.53 This exposition makes clear
that cenobitism is the most ancient form of Christian monasticism and focuses on both
the importance of reform and the role of monasticism as an agent of renewal, thus
echoing the intentions of Carolingian monastic policy. Paul’s poem structurally reflects
the same notion of reform, and shows that the reform comes from observing the regular
life. Reform efforts can come from outside, but renewal occurs when the patterns and
cycles of prayer and work found in the Rule are continuously observed.
In order to highlight the reform themes of stability, obedience, and humility, Paul
connects individual events within his poem by means of word repetition between
couplets. In lines 63-64, he prophesies that Rome will not be destroyed ab hoste but
rather by internal discord. In the couplet that immediately follows Paul recounts a
miracle whereby Benedict frees a deacon from the possession of a demon but warns the
liberated man that he will be punished by hoste gravi if he ever tries to exercise a priestly
function. Although in Gregory’s text, the prophecy about the fall of Rome refers to
Totila, the Gothic king, as the enemy who will not take Rome, Paul wants to have his
readers see only one enemy – the devil and his temptations – in both stories. In lines
66-67, Paul says that monasteries will be given over to pagans, who upon their
conversion would restore the monasteries to their former glory. By means of these three
53
Schroll, Warnefrid-Hildemar Commentary on ch. 1.
86
stories, Paul warns his monastic audience against temptations to attainments in the
world outside the monastery, to aspiring unduly to holy orders, and notes that reform
can come from without as well as within the monastery – all of which would have
resonated with an eighth-century Frankish monk. In making the point about the impetus
for reform coming from outside the monastery, Paul acknowledges that reform coming
from the king and a cadre of foreign-born scholars, and that deprives noblemen of
properties and offices they had grown accustomed to holding would meet resistance.54
The Carolingians had taken monasteries formerly under the control of lay nobles
or attached to bishoprics and brought them directly under royal control, appointing a
loyal abbot and protecting the assets of the house from being diverted away from it. In
this way, the Carolingians had checked the power of nobles and bishops and installed
abbots as counterweights to their influence. Monastic reform aimed at encouraging these
royal appointees – and training future generations of monks – to fully embrace their
vocation and maintain their loyalty to the king. Paul’s poem encourages his monastic
reader to embrace the regular life and leave off any secular ambitions; in doing so, the
monk will contribute to the increased rectitude and stability, not only of his own life, but
that of the secular world as well.
Paul returns to a second-person address to the reader for the next two couplets:
Fraudis amice puer, suado captaris ab ydro;
Ydro non caperis, fraudis amice puer.
Mens tumefacta, sile, tacita et ne carpe videntem;
Cuncta patent vati; mens tumefacta, sile.55
Young man, friend of deceit, tempted by the serpent, you will be taken in
But you are not seized by the serpent, young man, friend of deceit.
Be silent, mind puffed up with pride, hold your tongue and do not gripe
about the man who sees you;
It also points up Paul’s thesis of a cooperative history for the peoples of western Europe, which
was fleshed out in his Historia Langobardorum. See R. McKitterick, History and Memory in the
Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2004), 60-83.
54
55
Lines 69-72.
87
All things are known to the abbot; be silent, mind puffed up with pride.
He repeats ydro as he warns against temptation and then offers in the following couplet
a word about submission to authority. In order to join the two stories to which these
couplets refer, Paul skips a miracle from Gregory’s account about a monk who hid a gift
from a community of nuns only to have Benedict discover it.56
Omitting the miracle contained in Gregory’s chapter nineteen enables Paul to
connect the monk’s ability to avoid the snares of the devil with his humble submission to
his master.
It also points to a shift in focus between Gregory’s and Paul’s texts.
Gregory’s text focuses here on the problem of private property in the monastery. Paul is
unconcerned with this and eliminates one of the stories and shifts the focus to the
spiritual battle against temptation that the monk must endure. He also injects the issue
of authority into Gregory’s warning against pride, noting that cuncta patent vati.57 Thus
the monk should avoid griping about his master, to whom Paul refers as videntem. The
couplet is addressed to the reader in the second person so the reader can identify the
authority that Benedict commands with that of his own master and abbot. Paul takes
care throughout his poem to ensure that he makes the miracles performed by the
historical figure of St Benedict immediate to his reader. By pulling the miracles that
Benedict performed into the reader’s present and retelling certain miracles in the second
person, Paul also contracts the time and space that might distance the monastic reader
Gregory’s chapter 18, which corresponds to Paul’s lines 69-70 tells the story of Exhilaratus who
was sent to deliver two flasks of wine to Gregory and tried to hide one. Benedict knew he had kept
one flask and warned him against drinking from it because there was a snake inside. Gregory’s
chapter 20, Paul’s lines 71-72, tells how Benedict chastised a monk who was the son of a Roman
official (defensoris filius) because he, in a spirit of pride, asked himself why he should have to
serve Benedict. The omitted chapter, 19, tells how monks whom Benedict sent out to preach tried
to hide gifts they had received from him, but Benedict discovered them.
56
Early medieval usage of vates expanded to include saints, perhaps because of their ability to
effect miracles, and then further expanded to refer to bishops and abbots by virtue of their
purported authority and holiness.
57
88
from his sixth-century forebears, demanding that the reader see himself as the
individuals in the story.
Paul chose to write his narrative without explicitly delineating past and present, a
tactic more easily and commonly applied to poetic genres than prose ones. Gregory’s
vita is peppered with references to time; he often begins recounting a miraculous event
with “quadam die,” alio tempore,” or “quodam tempore.” The dialogic intrusions into
the narrative highlight the fact that the events Gregory retells happened in the past.
Several times in the dialogue, Peter asks Gregory to return to his narrative, and these
moments create distance between the reader’s present and Benedict’s life.58 Paul’s verse
vita, on the other hand, employs no adverbs or adverbial phrases that indicate time.
Paul’s decision not to mark time stands in stark contrast to medieval conventions; many
medieval authors took great care in measuring and recording chronology in their writing.
There were often multiple ways to measure time for a single date, and an author’s choice
of how he marked time could provide a clue as to his opinion or perspective about the
events he was recounting.59 Paul moved fluidly between verb tenses as well, using the
historical present to contract the distance between the past and the reader’s present:
Ignis ab igne perit, lacerant dum viscera sentes;
Carneus aethereo ignis ab igne perit.
Pestis iniqua latens procul est deprensa sagaci;
Non tulit arma crucis pestis iniqua latens.
Lenia flagra vagam sistunt moderamine mentem;
Excludunt pestem lenia flagra vagam.60
For example, at the end of a digression concerning the correlation of age and sexual desire in
men, Peter agrees with Gregory and then says, sed quia prolati testimonii claustra reserasti,
quaeso ut de vita justi debeas ea quae sunt inchoata, percurrere. After another long digression,
Peter again affirms Gregory’s explanation and asks him to return to his recounting Benedict’s life:
Ita esse ut doces, et manifesta ratio, et prolatum congruum testimonium declarat. Sed quaeso ut
de vita tanti Patris ad narrationis ordinem redeas. These requests also serve to remind the
reader that the teacher and his pupil were recounting a story and that their dialogue takes place in
the reader’s present, but Benedict’s life is firmly in the past.
58
See R.D. Ware, “Medieval Chronology: Theory and Practice” in Medieval Studies, ed. J.M.
Powell (Syracuse, NY, 1976), 213-38.
59
Lines 27-32. Propertius often mixed verb tenses and moods as well: See B.K. Gold, “Time
Poetry, and Immortality in Propertius (“Propertius” 1.8), The Classical Journal 81 (1985), 148-57.
60
89
Fire perishes by fire, while thorns tear the flesh;
The bodily succumbs to the spiritual; fire perishes by fire.
The dangerous poison lying hidden, is detected from afar by the wise man;
It cannot bear the sign of the cross, the dangerous poison lying hidden.
By gentle scourges the wandering mind is calmed and guided;
Kept at bay by gentle scourges are wandering dangers.
In addition to changing verb tenses, Paul plays with the chronology expected within the
poem. In the above-quoted lines, the reader knows that the first of the three couplets
refers to an event in Benedict’s youth. The next couplet describes him as sagax, an
adjective associated with age and great learning, not youth.61 Similarly, he addresses the
reader as parve puer in lines 41-42, but as lacrimande senex in lines 97-98.62
The Rule instructs that distinctions based on age should be avoided when
choosing an abbot, prior, or dean, and that all brothers regardless of age or seniority
should be consulted when the abbot has an important matter to discuss. In the context
of the Carolingian reforms, these directives became more significant; the king could
appoint an abbot from elsewhere to reform a community, for example. The most able
administrators and the most learned monks were likely those who had had the benefit of
monastic education since childhood. This meant that younger monks increasingly would
come to hold abbacies and other positions of influence. Intelligence and ability bred
Bede uses it to describe Paulinus of York (HE, 2.9). Cicero, in a letter to Atticus, mixes Greek
and Latin in order to make the section of the letter more difficult to decipher, but expresses his
confidence that Atticus, who is sagacius, will sniff out the intended meaning. See Cicero, Letters,
6.4.2. In his Remedia Amoris, Ovid employs the same form of the adjective found in Paul’s poem
in a passage where suggests that manual labor can exhaust a man and consequently quash his
sexual desires:
Vel tu venandi studium cole: saepe recessit
Turpiter a Phoebi victa sorore Venus.
Nunc leporem pronum catulo sectare sagaci,
Nunc tua frondosis retia tende iugis,
Aut pavidos terre varia formidine cervos,
Aut cadat adversa cuspide fossus aper.
Nocte fatigatum somnus, non cura puellae,
Excipit et pingui membra quiete levat. (199-206)
61
In both cases, Paul’s use of the second person requires the reader to adopt the meditative
persona of a character within the narrative of the miracle. For more on how Paul shifts the
person in which he writes and changes the meditative persona of the reader, see below.
62
90
ambition, and Paul’s poem demands that the reader deny his uniqueness and see himself
as the man with leprous skin (89-90), the old man possessed by a demon (97-98), and
the deceitful cellarer (93-94), and recognize his own shortcomings in the couplets
addressed to him.
The notion of self that Paul promotes in the poem follows closely the ideals for
suppressing the individual will and subordinating the individual to the community that
Benedict emphasized in his Rule. Gregory’s dialogue, by contrast, intended to soften the
Rule’s self-abasement. From the beginning of the work, Gregory highlights Benedict’s
independence, noting that after he was sent to Rome (Romae liberalibus litterarum
studiis traditus fuerat), he chose to leave his studies and withdraw from the world
(Despectis itaque litterarum studiis, relicta domo rebusque patris, soli Deo placere
desiderans, sanctae conversationis habitum quaesivit). Later on, desiring greater
solitude, Benedict ran away from his nurse (nutricem suam occulte fugiens) and went to
Subiaco. Gregory’s narrative attributes Benedict’s becoming a monk to his inclination
toward independence. This portrait of the heroic anchorite is opposite the depiction of
the ideal monk – humble, obedient, and integrated into the community – that Benedict
gives us in his Rule.
Gregory’s emphasis on the individual goes beyond his depiction of Benedict;
throughout the dialogue, Gregory takes care to name the people involved in the various
miracles. He gives us the names of his four sources for Benedict’s life and miracles – the
monks Constantine, Valentinian, Simplicius, and Honoratus – as well as the names of
upwards of twenty other people in the text.63 Paul, by contrast, suppresses all names in
Gregory carefully names the individuals involved in each event or miracle. Some of the
references are to relatively minor personalities in the narrative: Totila, king of the Goths, wanted
to test Benedict’s ability to prophesy so he dressed up one of his guards, Riggo by name, as king
and sent him to Benedict with three attendants so he looked more convincingly like the king. (In
cuius obsequio tres qui sibi prae caeteris adhaerere consueverant, comites misit, scilicet, Uult,
Ruderic, et Blidin, ut ante servi Dei oculos ipsum regem Totilam esse simulantes, eius lateribus
obambularent). Gregory even names the three attendants individually.
63
91
his poem, referring only to Benedict himself by name once in the opening line. Paul also
shifts from recounting in the third person, to addressing the meditative persona of the
reader in the second person, to addressing Benedict in the second person, thus making
the reader speak through the poem. The poet deliberately does not treat the reader as an
unique, individual addressee; the meditative persona that the poem requires the reader
to adopt is one of self-denial. In fact, the “you” of Paul’s poem is not a personal “you”
addressed to the actual reader, but an impersonal “you” that requires the actual reader to
recognize that he must adopt the persona of an unspecific ideal reader.64 This tactic
constructs the meditative persona as a suppression of the individual; it implies a notion
of self as interchangeable rather than unique. The author includes himself as much as
the reader in this denial of self.
The ideal reader constructed in the poem is
indistinguishable from the author of the poem (hence the portions addressed to
Benedict) and from the actual reader of the poem (hence the variety of the portions
addressed to the reader).
The monk who is reading the poem is engaged in a social activity as he studies,
and Paul’s poem reminds him that even though he is alone with the text, his reading and
interpretation are part of a larger cultural institution. Paul does not intend for the text to
adapt to the interpretation of an individual reader; instead, he demands that the reader
deny his individuality in favor of his role as a monk. The more fully the monk is able to
achieve this, the more the reader’s experience of the text will match the experience of the
monk who wrote it. Readers and writers trusted language to convey true meaning, and
the communal life of the monastery bridged the gap between author and reader by
demanding that they not distinguish themselves from one another.
In this sense, Paul must have seen Gregory’s use of Peter as a specified interlocutor as even
more an affirmation of the individual student or monk, and he employs the means afforded to
him by the lyric genre to suppress the individual.
64
92
Paul’s shifts in address remind the monk that there is a community of monks. All
are engaged in the same prayers, the same labors and all follow the same rule. In the
Carolingian commentary on the Rule, the author, in his discussion of Benedict’s image of
Jacob’s Ladder as representing the steps of humility, writes, Iste Iacob tenet figuram
Monachorum. The usually personalized figura is here incongruously paired with a
plural genitive – the face or form of all monks is one figura. He goes on to note that
obedience and humility are inextricably linked, even for those monks qui pro necessitate
sunt in Monasterio. So long as the monk has even one small inclination in the right
direction, non sunt desperandi. This first step is the monk’s recognition that he too
should strive to be the figura Monachorum, an ideal monk.
Gregory provides his reader with a particularly interesting account of an
exception to the rules of monastic life in his story of Benedict’s sister, Scholastica, and
Paul’s rewriting of the passage mutes Gregory’s intended point. In Gregory’s text,
Benedict goes to visit his sister just beyond the monastery walls and when he tries to
leave at night fall, she asks him to remain. He declines her request and says that it is not
possible for him to stay outside the monastery overnight. Scholastica bows her head to
pray and a violent storm begins all of a sudden. Gregory then recounts the following
conversation between brother and sister:
Tunc vir Dei inter coruscos et tonitruos atque ingentis
pluviae inundationem videns se ad monasterium non
posse remeare, coepit conqueri contristatus, dicens:
Parcat tibi omnipotens Deus, soror; quid est quod fecisti?
Cui illa respondit: Ecce te rogavi, et audiri me noluisti;
rogavi Dominum meum, et audivit me. Modo ergo si
potes, egredere, et me dimissa ad monasterium recede.
Ipse autem exire extra tectum non valens, qui remanere
sponte noluit, in loco mansit invitus. Sicque factum est ut
totam noctem pervigilem ducerent, atque per sacra
spiritalis vitae colloquia sese vicaria relatione satiarent.
93
Gregory makes a point of noting that Scholastica did not subjugate her will to that of the
venerable abbot, but rather appealed to a higher power when he refused her. Benedict
would have to stay the night against his will, a point Gregory repeats later for the reader
(Qua de re dixi eum voluisse aliquid, sed minime potuisse) just for good measure. He
explains her success by arguing that Scholastica desired this so much that her will was
not to be refused:
Nec mirum quod plus illo femina, quae diu fratrem videre
cupiebat, in eodem tempore valuit: quia enim juxta
Joannis vocem, Deus charitas est, justo valde judicio illa
plus potuit, quae amplius amavit.
Paul shifts the focus somewhat in the couplet he composes: Omnia vincit amor; vicit
soror imbre beatum; / Somnus abest oculis; omnia vincit amor (105-6). He chooses
love as the subject of vincit in the repeated half-line, relegating Benedict’s sister to the
interior portion of the couplet. He is sure to mention, in the small space he devotes to
the incident, that Benedict did not sleep outside the monastery, but that he kept vigil all
night. Here again, Paul’s choice of genre makes a difference; Gregory recalls the
conversation between Benedict and Scholastica in direct discourse, but Paul tries to
eliminate the dialogue and the challenge to Benedict’s authority by boiling the incident
down to a single couplet.
Paul’s commentary on the event is developed further in the repeated halfline of
the couplet, omnia vincit amor, which echoes a line from Vergil: omnia vincit amor; et
nos cedamus amori. The line comes from the Tenth Eclogue, which recounts the words
of Gallus the poet, who is dying of love for Lycoris. The poem has Gallus, love-sick in
Arcadia, setting himself to the task of retooling his elegiac poetry to include pastoral
elements: Ibo, et, Chalcidico quae sunt mihi condita versu / carmina, pastoris Siclui
modulabor auena (50-51). Gallus seeks to leave the genre of elegy in order to free
himself from the role of the suffering lover to which the genre constrains him. Omnia
94
vincit amor appears in the poem as Gallus gives up on his efforts and returns to elegy.65
Paul’s use of Vergil’s wording here calls attention to his own efforts to change the genre
of the vita of Benedict and to the fact that Scholastica’s miracle does not quite fit with his
intentions. Paul’s allusion seems to wryly suggest that just as the bucolic cannot unmake
Gallus’ role as the suffering lover, muting Scholastica does not fully suppress her
challenge to Benedict’s unquestioned authority.
Paul’s verse vita of Benedict shapes the goals of the Carolingian monastic renewal
for a monastic audience. He focuses and elaborates on those portions of the royal
documents regarding monastic reform that relate to the internal life of the monastery,
and he adapts the life of Benedict for a Carolingian monastic audience. As his poem
competed with (and depended upon) Gregory’s dialogue as the main narrative of
Benedict’s life, it had several advantages inside the Carolingian monastery. The half line
repetitions, coupled with the cadence they produced, made the poem easy to memorize.
Many of the half lines are remembered after a single reading. The half line can bring to
mind the miracle that the specific couplet recounted, and, often, it serves as the crux of
the couplet’s lesson: omnia vincit amor; ignis ab igne perit; vocis ad imperium; mens
tumefacta, sile. Paul ends the poem with 26 lines asking for Benedict’s intercession.
The lines ask Benedict to guide the reader to heaven, addressing him as caelestis
tramitis index (130). Paul’s choice of genre enables him to write this section both as a
guide to living a holy life as much as a prayer to Benedict to sustain the reader in
holiness. For example, Paul writes Guttura claude lupi semper lacerare parati; / Ne
male me rapiat, guttura claude lupi. / Cor labiumque meum fac laudent cuncta
creantem; / Christum habeant semper cor labiumque meum (141-44). As the monastic
reader prays these lines, he reads a summary of monastic virtues for which he should
strive.
65
Vergil, Ec. X, 62-69.
95
Paul highlights this parallelism between Benedict’s life and his Rule because
Gregory’s text attempted to use Benedict’s life to modify the Rule. Gregory, in order to
create a hero, emphasized Benedict’s independence where the Rule asked for submission
of the will. He highlighted individuals where the Rule sought to deny the self. Paul’s
effort to ‘update’ the vita and Rule of Benedict for an eighth-century Frankish audience
reveals how closely linked the authority of the Benedictine Rule was to the figure of
Benedict and how the vita of a saint established that authority. Paul’s vita aligns the
events of Benedict’s life with his Rule and emphasizes submission of the individual will,
and the importance of the monastic fortress in the spiritual battle a monk must wage. As
Benedict had in his Rule, Paul uses military metaphors throughout the poem. The sign
of the Cross he calls arma crucis (30). In the couplet that corresponds to Gregory’s
chapter on the writing of the Rule, Paul calls Benedict dux bonus and says that he
warned his charges of wars and was the first to take up arms in battle (115-16). The two
texts together affirm the authority with which both speak and with which Benedict
speaks to Carolingian monks.
Paul wrote his poem not merely to encourage monks to embrace the Carolingian
reform efforts, but to fully embrace Benedictine monasticism. As a monk hoping to
promote widespread reform and renewal, Paul tried to inspire zeal for learning,
cultivation of monastic obedience and humility, and a Benedictine sense of self-denial.
The Carolingian monastic achievement far outstripped the goals set by the royal
capitularies. The Carolingian royal documents hoped that an initiative to broadly
implement a basic education for clergy would lead to a basic Christianization of society.66
Paul’s poem and the literary works of other Carolingian monastic scholars connected
internal monastic reform with, not a basic literacy and catechesis, but a life dedicated to
G. Glauche, Schullektüre im Mittelalter: Entstehung und Wandlungen des Lektürekanons bis
1200 nach den Quellen dargestellt in Münchner Beiträge zur Mediävistik und RenaissanceForschung 5 (1970).
66
96
scholarship, study, reading and writing. Charlemagne’s court scholars and the abbots
and bishops that he appointed were to form their disciples into loyal supporters of the
Carolingian king. But monks also felt themselves set apart by their education and their
communal life and much of their literary output and poetry sought to impress upon the
monks a sense that they were set apart from the laity, in particular, courtiers and the lay
aristocracy. Subsequent generations of Carolingian monks would pick up this theme and
further emphasize importance of the monastic community – the monastic community as
a whole and not just the monks of his particular monastery – over a monk’s (former)
familial and political ties.
3
The Architecture of Scripture
The canon tables of early medieval display Bibles are invariably situated in an
architectural frame.
This long-standing and geographically widespread decorative
convention is illustrative of the early medieval notion that litteratura and scriptura were
structures; they were architecture.1 The acquisition of grammar and the knowledge
gained through literary studies were steps by which the student ascended to greater
wisdom. Wisdom had built a house, hewn out of the seven pillars of the liberal arts, and
the seven gifts of wisdom offered by the Holy Spirit. Alcuin opens the first dialogue of his
Grammatica with the image of grammar as the first step toward the student’s ascent to
the heights of wisdom. Later on in the dialogue between a master and his students, the
master invokes the image, taken from Proverbs 9:1, of the house that Wisdom built:
MAGISTER. Legimus, Salomone dicente, per quem ipsa se cecinit
[Sapientia]: Sapientia aedificavit sibi domum, excidit columnas
septem. Quae sententia licet ad divinam pertineat sapientiam,
quae sibi in utero virginali domum, id est corpus, aedificavit,
hanc et septem donis sancti Spiritus confirmavit: vel Ecclesiam,
The relationship between architecture and text from antiquity into the Middle Ages is revealing.
Manuscript illuminations imitated architectural conventions to signify the structural parallel
between textual and architectural composition and then textual conventions were incorporated
into architecture as the symbolism (signa) in texts became reified. The pattern of this interplay is
as follows: the plane of existence, the world of res, offers structures and aspects that can receive
symbolic meaning in the realm of signa. When the relationship between the object and its
symbolic value is formalized, the symbol is reified and additional signa can be applied to the ‘new’
object. M. Corti, "Models and Antimodels in Medieval Culture," New Literary History 10.2
(1979), 339-344, applies this pattern to medieval societal structures.
1
97
98
quae est domus Dei, eisdem donis illuminavit; tamen sapientia
liberalium litterarum septem columnis confirmatur; nec aliter ad
perfectam quemlibet deducit scientiam, nisi his septem columnis
vel etiam gradibus exaltetur.2
Let us read what Solomon, through whom Wisdom sang about
herself, said: Wisdom built herself a house, cut from seven pillars.
But this sentence pertains to Divine wisdom, who built himself a
house, that is his body, in a virginal womb, and strengthened these
seven [pillars] by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. That is the Church,
which is the house of God, illuminated these gifts; however
wisdom is strengthened by the seven columns of the liberal arts;
and in no other way is anyone led to perfect knowledge unless he
be elevated by these seven columns and by these seven steps.
The monastic scholars of the early Middle Ages relied on language, correctly written and
properly read, to convey truth and, in so doing, expose the foundations of wisdom and
move the student closer to an understanding of God.3
The architectural structures that decorated the pages of medieval manuscripts
reveal several important aspects of the monastic literary model. Texts, like buildings
were constructed from materials such as letters, syllables, words, phrases, allusions and
sounds that conveyed to the reader both their purpose and meaning. M. Carruthers
PL v.101, coll. 853 B-C.
Architectural mnemonics were commonplace in education since antiquity. Cicero details a
method, which he attributes to the Hellenistic poet Simonides, for creating in the mind an
architectural space to aid in memorizing speeches in Book 2 of his De Oratore. The first-century
BC textbook Rhetorica ad Herennium also details a architectural mnemonic. For a summary of
the techniques of architectural mnemonics and a history of its use, see M. Carruthers, The Book of
Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 10
(Cambridge, 1990), 18-54 and 89-99. In the Middle Ages, the notion of a mental structure to aid
memory began to influence architecture, particularly the planning and decorating of monasteries
and churches, and the sorts of structures that ancient texts had deemed to be best suited for
memory work – colonnades, recesses, archways, for example – became more regular features of
these buildings.
2
In his Grammatica, Alcuin writes that God gives the steps toward wisdom to men and that
students are led up the steps by their teacher until they themselves are able to see the light of
truth (PL v. 101, coll. 853C-854A). Monastic scholars of the Carolingian age had already begun to
accord a more exalted status to the written word than the spoken word. See M. T. Clanchy, From
Memory to Written Record, England 1066-1307, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1993), R. McKitterick, The
Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989), and M. Irvine, The Making of Textual
Culture: 'grammatica' and literary theory, 350-1100, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature,
vol. 19 (Cambridge, 1994) for scholarship on the development of textual culture in medieval
Europe, and particularly J. Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of
Monastic Culture, 3rd ed. (New York, 1982) on the importance of monasticism to the
development of literary culture.
3
99
notes that the medieval methods of reading and study, particularly those which had
Scripture at their foundation created in the mind of the reader a “memorative web” or
“mental fabric” that linked ideas in an aggregate fashion.4 Medieval reading methodology
thus prized, not the repetition of memorized texts, but the retelling of a text with its
aggregation of knowledge included. In a telling metaphor, Carruthers likens this process
to wall building.5 Medieval monastic authors thought of texts as architecture, and not
only constructed them as such, but relied on the layout and formation of a text to signify
multiple meanings, utilized allusion in their work in a way that parallels architectural
employment of spolia, and even grafted text onto architecture in order to influence the
reception of the material structure.
The first, basic lessons of grammar prepared monastic students to think of
language as a construction from smaller building blocks that lent themselves to the
formation of a text but also possessed meaning in themselves. Because language in
Carolingian pedagogy was built from the smallest units upward, to convey the fullest
meaning of the underlying truth, the smaller pieces were at an author’s disposal to
signify in ways beyond their situation in the text as a whole. The idiom of architecture
provided a means of understanding the process of writing. A text was itself a structure
that accrued layers of meaning and signa as it was constructed. Such a notion of the
structure of language and text had at its foundation the certainty that the building blocks
conveyed objective and eternally true meanings. This was particularly important for the
study of Scripture, toward which all monastic education was aimed, because Scripture
was the eternal and true Word of God.
M. Carruthers, "The Poet as Master Builder: Composition and Locational Memory in the Middle
Ages," New Literary History 24.4, Papers from the Commonwealth Center for Literary and
Cultural Change (1993), 881-904, at 892.
4
5
Ibid.
100
At stake in the reading and understanding of Scripture was the knowledge of
God, so education concerning the structure and formation of text was of the utmost
importance. Monastic education aimed at providing its students with a framework for
correct interpretation of texts, and the framework relied heavily on the science (scientia)
of grammar. Grammar began with the building blocks of language, letters. The
beginning of Alcuin’s grammatical treatise is a methodical survey of how language is
structured. By working from individual letters to syllables, to words, then to parts of
speech and to the construction of clauses and sentences, Alcuin presents language as
something that is constructed from components that have definite functions and thus are
intelligible.6 He chooses to build from the smallest component part upward to the
resulting text, noting that each piece signifies in itself and thus points to the foundational
inventio or idea, of the text. By teaching this grammatica, Alcuin offers a model for
reading and interpretation that examines the construction of a text rather than
demanding a deconstruction. Discovering the meaning begins with understanding the
foundations, and representation and symbolism in the text builds upward from the
building blocks. A commentary on meaning was, therefore, an addition to the existing
text rather than a picking apart of it.
Littera est pars minima vocis articulatae, Alcuin tells his students, and among
letters, there are consonants and vowels, as well as semi-vocalics and mutes.7 Even these
smallest parts of language already can begin to reveal to the disciples a deeper truth
about the structure of God’s creation. Alcuin explains that [v]ocales sunt sicut animae,
consonantes sicut corpora. Anima vero et se movet et corpus. Corpus vero immobile est
C.W. Jones, “Towards a Carolingian Aesthetic: Why Modular Verse?,” Viator 6 (1975), 309-340,
at 310-15, esp. 314, notes that the Carolingian literary aesthetic, like the Carolingian architectural
aesthetic favored a module, often something numerical and concrete, as a means of imposing
order and structure on a text, and conveying meaning via the text through symbolism.
6
7
PL 101, col. 855A.
101
sine anima. Sic sunt consonantes sine vocalibus.8 The different roles of consonants and
vowels in animating language provided not only the literal meaning conveyed by
intelligible combinations of the letters, but also a symbolic representation of the order of
the human person. In the smallest division of language Alcuin found exegetical
interpretation could reveal basic truths.9 In providing his students with this symbolic
interpretation, he signaled to them that the discipline of grammatica concerned itself
with not only the literal meanings of the text, but also the polysemous signs that
language and all its components could convey through sound, placement, meter, and so
on.
Alcuin’s treatise on grammatica sought to unite the disciplines of dialectic and
grammar more closely than the classical tradition had done in order to posit at the outset
of literary study that the meanings of various components of a text were a unity and
together constituted the true meaning of the work.10 Language was divinely enabled to
signify truth, argues Alcuin, because the first way in which things existed was in the word
of God: Primo, quod in verbi Dei dispensatione omnia aeterna sunt.11 Creation existed
in its names before the material had been formed. Names were the first creation. In his
8
PL 101, col. 855B.
Corti, "Models and Antimodels in Medieval Culture," 344-45, notes that “each time there
appears in a culture an ideology or a program which is in any measure deviant, a conflicting
semiotic reaction is triggered off within the society between the “different,” which requires new
structuring models, i.e. new semiotic structures, and what has already been codified.” In order to
gain a foothold, the new model must appeal to a basic, eternal truth at the level of signa, in this
case, God’s creation of man in his own image, in order to be consecrated at the level of the res. S.
Vanderputten, “‘Literate Memory’ and Social Reassessment in Tenth-Century Monasticism”
Mediaevistik 17 (2004), 65-94, at 70-71 notes that “the fact that literacy was mostly familiar to
society because of its use in a religious context was instrumental in its success outside that
sphere.”
9
See H. de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis I: The Four Senses of Scripture, trans. M. Sebanc (Grand
Rapids, MI, 1998), 24-40 for a summary of medieval understandings of the multiple meanings of
Scripture and their unity, an idea that, de Lubac argues, “derived its foundations from the
multiplicity of senses offered by a Scriptural text that could never be directly comprehended in all
its depths.
10
11
Alcuin, Interrogationes et responsiones in Genesin, PL 100, col. 519A.
102
dialogue on grammar he notes that nouns signify in different ways, and drawing from
Donatus and Priscian he enumerates the different types of nouns, proper and common,
and their different significations, a substance, a quality, or a quantity. Then he notes
that nouns could also signify relational truths: Dicendo enim filium et servum, patrem
significamus et dominum.12 As Alcuin explains each aspect of grammatica, he
demonstrates how the building blocks of language signify both in context and per se, and
unites the discipline of grammatica with the other foundational liberal arts, dialectic
and rhetoric, that is, with (rational) philosophy. From there, Alcuin presumes, the
student will ascent the gradus of wisdom through the study of the liberal arts and
eventually reach the height of vera philosophia, or theological study.
Poetry was the medium through which masters could teach students how to read
and to understand the multiple meanings within a text. In turn, students used poetry to
demonstrate their mastery of grammar, rhetoric and poetics. Hrabanus Maurus, one of
Alcuin’s students, who went on to become abbot and master of the great Carolingian
monastic school at Fulda composed a collection of shaped poetry entitled De laudibus
Sanctae Crucis that demonstrates the Carolingian monastic understanding of the
multiple ways in which a text could signify.13 The collection contains 28 poems on the
Cross and related theological themes, as well as a dedicatory poem to Louis the Pious
12
PL 101, coll. 860A-B
Shaped poetry has been a neglected field of study until quite recently primarily because critics
held two prejudices against it: First, as an intermedial art form and as such relied too heavily on
the visual aspect over the literary to convey its meaning or purpose, and secondly, it was seen as
popular, and therefore, not particularly good, literature. For an overview of scholarship on
shaped poetry up to the last decade of the twentieth century, as well as a defense of the genre in
light of new literary theory, see D. Higgins, “Pattern Poetry as Paradigm,” Poetics Today 10.2
(1989), 401-428. Higgins notes, 403-407, that estimating the value of a shaped poem cannot rely
too much on either the literary quality alone or the visual quality alone, because it is the interplay
of the two that determines how the poem conveys its full meaning. The sophistication of
Hrabanus Maurus’ poem in terms of its visual design and its metrical intricacy refutes any claim
that the poem relies too heavily on visual cues to convey meaning or that it does not occupy a
higher literary register.
13
103
and survives for us in a number of manuscripts. Hrabanus also wrote a guide to the
poems, a teachers’ manual of sorts, to point out the intricacies of each poem.14
These poems are written in grids and illustrations appear within the text that
direct the reader to read separate lines in the shaped spaces. For example Vat. Reg. Lat
124, fol 12v contains a poem of 35 lines of scripta continua [Image 1]. The poem uses a
handful of abbreviations, or ligatures that ensure that Hrabanus’ texts can read not only
left to right but also in other directions as the shaped illumination indicates.15 Hrabanus’
poem employs a cruciform shape to divide the text into four quadrants, and both arms of
the cross read “Inclyta crux domini [Christi] fundamen et aulae. The cross divides the
text into four quadrants, each of which includes an additional text of one phrase
concerning, in turn, apostles, martyrs, patriarchs, and prophets.
The 35-line poem visually represents and enhances the meaning of the text by
representing the very structure that the large text addresses.16 The poem’s shape
pictorially demonstrates that the Cross is the foundation of Christian salvation and, by
extension, the foundation of Paradise. The verses embedded in the text of the poem form
the shape of the mansio Christi which the Passion and Cross, in essence, constructed.17
E. Sears, "Louis the Pious as Miles Christi: The Dedicatory Image in Hrabanus Maurus's De
laudibus sanctae crucis," in Charlemagne's Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the
Pious (814-840), ed. P. Godman and R. Collins (Oxford, 1990), 605-628, at 607-08.
14
Hrabanus writes a defense of his employment of abbreviations, citing Optatian’s use of some
abbreviations in the collection he had composed for Constantine I in the 4th century. Ibid., 608.
15
E. Cook, "Figured Poetry," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 42 (1979), 1,
argues that “[t]he maker of a figured poem attempts to straighten the attachment between word
and object to as near an identity as is possible whilst using a non-iconic script. The urge to assert
this connection seems to be part of an urge to deny the randomness of all the forms of the world,
and to make the discursive, fleeting words of human temporality overlay, and become
synonymous with, the word which was in the beginning and is outside time. However specious
this man-forged link may be, the finished acrostic or figured poem...achieves a seemingly neutral
and unidiosyncratic fittingness...in which sage readers in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
perceived a tightly structured design.”
16 16
Iure domus Christi posuit quos culmen, in ipsum / Condistis, ima plebs alma est voce reperta.
/ Sancta salutaris et crux fundamine summo / Insita, constructa, crucifixi robore fixa (lines 69).
17
104
Image I
Vat. Reg. Lat. 124, fol 12v
105
The foundation of the structure is the cruciform in-text verse that divides the text
into quarters, what the text of the poem itself refers to as the firmata columna. The
columns signified by the four arms of the Cross dividing the four parts of the poem are
the Apostles, martyrs, Patriarchs, and prophets, each receiving their own verse
embedded within the text of the larger poem. Visually, the former two groups of holy
men and women appear above the latter two groups, signifying the supercession of the
role of Patriarchs by the Apostles, and that of prophets by martyrs. This points to the
fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures in the advent of Christianity, an important point to
emphasize for monastic students of Scripture. In this way, the contents of the
interwoven verses of the poem bear evidence of the fruits of monastic study of Scriptures
and the Early Church Fathers.18 Hrabanus’ poetry also demonstrates a familiarity with
the carmen cancellatum of the Merovingian poet Venantius Fortunatus, of St Boniface,
and of his own teachers, Alcuin and Paul the Deacon.
The structure of the poem and its intratextual verses points to two key aspects of
monastic poetry. Hrabanus’ poem must be experienced visually by the reader in order to
convey its fullest meaning; it was not meant for oral presentation or consumption.
Monastic poets, following the grammatical teachings of the earliest Carolingian monastic
reformers, understood individual letters to have a (visual) significance beyond their
place within the (primary) word or text. The structure of the text also points to its
meaning and requires a reader to realize the structural meaning embedded in the shape
of the text. Hrabanus’ poem centers on the Cross of Christ as a symbol of his triumph,
the foundation and the courts of the reign of God. Each of the four verses addressing a
group of inhabitants of that kingdom are shaped as a courtyard – a square. This shape
would also have evoked the image of a monastic cloister, with the embedded verses
Sears, "Louis the Pious as Miles Christi," 609 also notes that in other poems from the collection,
Hrabanus employs the monastic study of numerical symbolism and computation in the exegesis
of Scripture.
18
106
forming the hallways of the interior courtyard and the rest of the text, the open space in
the center, and consequently would have drawn a visual simile between the monastic
cloister and Paradise. As in medieval architecture, the spatial relationship between the
letters provides meaning to the text, both to the shorter verses contained within the
shaped spaces and to the larger text into which the spaces are incorporated.
In addition to these mimetic aspects of the shaped text, the poems intended to
draw attention to the ordered design of God’s creation. The parallel that medieval
authors drew between grammatical composition and architecture posited an underlying
structural principle to their texts. In effect, reading a shaped poem with embedded
verses such as Hrabanus’ is an act of meditation. In monastic education, the meditative
reading of complex acrostic poetry honed skills similar to those required for Scriptural
study and commentary.19 The monk had to read slowly and closely so as not to miss any
detail of the text, and his intention was to draw closer to an understanding of God
through the text and its multiplicity of symbols.
Hrabanus takes care to preserve the structure of the poetry even as he is at pains
to create a shaped poem that signifies in multiple ways for his reader. This poem is
written in dactylic hexameters on a 35x35 letter grid. With a minimal use of
abbreviations, he manages to ensure that each horizontal line corresponds to a single
line of hexameter. Additionally, each of the four internal square verses is one line of
hexameter read across the top and down the right-hand side, and then down the lefthand side and across the bottom. Hrabanus’ emphasis on the regularity of quantitative
meter further underscores the unity or harmony of all parts of the text, which exists in
imitation of Divine perfection and unity. The humanist scholar Leon Battista Alberti
advocated a similar reflection of perfection in his study of classical architecture when he
Cook, "Figured Poetry," 3-7, notes that acrostic poems with a complexity similar to those of
Optatian and Hrabanus are uncommon, but among the few that are found, the poems are laden
Christian themes and Scriptural numerology.
19
107
noted that a beautiful building was one in which all the parts were interdependent and
necessary such that “nothing could be added or taken away except for the worse.”20
From the writings of its earliest authors, the Christian poetic tradition placed
great importance on the use of meter. Ambrose wrote hymns that were carefully
constructed to appeal to his broad audience as Bishop of Milan. Augustine followed his
master in being mindful of the “psychology of versification” in his own poetry.21 In a
psalm that he wrote against the Donatists, Augustine avoids the confinement of a poetic
meter lest he obscure his meaning causa metri, and lose his audience or risk
misinterpretation.22 Augustine’s psalm consisted entirely of sixteen syllable verses and
was divided into twenty twelve-line strophes. Every line of the poem ended in either e or
ae. Augustine employed these devices in order to fix the text by making alterations easy
to identify and difficult to formulate. The poetics of Ambrose and Augustine appealed to
insular poets and, in turn, to the Carolingians, who linked themselves to Roman
tradition and held classical authors in high esteem.23 Quantitative meters such as are
found in classical Latin poetry seem to be a hallmark of Benedictine monastic reform
poetry. Examples of early Anglo Saxon metric poetry are rhythmic, that is with meter
based on the stressing of syllables not on the grammatical rules of syllable length.24 The
Carolingians adapted the patristic aesthetic to the more classical dactylic hexameter and
elegiac meter primarily by means of leonine rhyme and the sort of repetition we find in
Paul the Deacon’s Benedict poem.
Ibid., 6-7. This aesthetic comes from Roman architectural theory. See M.W. Jones, Principles
of Roman Architecture (New Haven, CT, 2000), esp. 33-48.
20
21
Jones, “Carolingian Aesthetic,” 327.
22
Jones, “Carolingian Aesthetic,” 328-29.
23
Jones, “Carolingian Aesthetic,” 331-33.
E. C. Teviotdale, "Latin Verse Inscriptions in Anglo-Saxon Art," Gesta 35.2 (1996), 99-110, at
99-100.
24
108
Hrabanus took such great care to preserve the meter in his shaping of the text
because it adds to a deeper understanding of the poem. Hrabanus here sings a song of
praise for Christ’s heroic victory (cantem clara tropaea) and uses the classical heroic
meter to emphasize the triumph. Furthermore, he employs the same metrical
composition for both the opening half-line of the poem and the opening half-line of the
thematic line that forms the central cross as do Vergil and Homer.25 In employing these
metrical schemes, Hrabanus not only demonstrates his knowledge of classical poetry, but
makes the claim that the heroic victory about which he sings surpasses the deeds
recounted in the epics of Homer and Vergil. Again we see the medieval poet assert a
“strong” claim by employing the canonized form of the hexameter line but applying it to
the Passion narrative and adding the conceit of needing to employ echoes of both Vergil
and Homer to do the subject justice.
Alongside the metric allusions to classical poetry, Hrabanus employs several
relatively uncommon Greek-derived words, such as tropaea, philax and Arcton, as well
as opening the central line of the poem with inclyta, a learned affectation common in the
literature of Carolingian monastics. Hrabanus’ employment of classical echoes and his
use of shaped poetry imitate courtly poetry of the late Roman Empire. Publilius
Optatianus Porfyrius, a poet from North Africa, wrote works in a similar style at the
court of Constantine I in the early fourth century. Optatian wrote shaped poetry in
imitation of Greek tradition, received imperial appointments and offices under
Constantine and wrote a series of poems that he presented to the emperor in the 830s,
probably at the time of his restoration to imperial dignity in 833-34.26 Though
Both Hrabanus’ lines begin −∪∪−∪∪  − . Furthermore, the opening line (Crux rogo sacra Dei
signa mihi numine pectus) follows the same metrical scheme as the first hexameter of the Illiad,
and the cruciform line (Inclyta crux Domini, Christi fundamen et aulae) follows the same scheme
as the Aeneid’s first line.
25
Cf. T. D. Barnes, "Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius," The American Journal of Philology 96.2
(1975), 173-86 for a full account of Optatian’s career. Sears, "Louis the Pious as Miles Christi,"
26
109
Optatian’s shaped poetry employs techniques from ancient Greek poets like Theocritus,
they surpass these ancient models in what E. Cook calls “acrostic complexity.”27
Optatian composed poems that had a fixed number of characters in each line, giving the
primary text a rectangular shape, and then embedded within the larger poem, but not
disturbing its continuity or flow, smaller shaped verses. This is the model that Hrabanus
Maurus sought to imitate. By including these imitations of Roman imperial court poetry,
Hrabanus continues the efforts of the Frankish court to invoke Rome as a primary
characteristic of the Carolingian political identity.
Carolingian rulers consciously tried to link themselves to their Roman and
Christian heritage, in which the reign of Constantine loomed large. The legend and
symbolism that came to surround Constantine’s victory and his ascension to imperial
office attributed his victory and ascent to divine providence and gave his imperial rule an
aura of divinity. Eusebius’s Historia Ecclesiastica and Vita Constantini provide what is
essentially a theology of the Christian Empire and Christian Emperor. There also was an
element of competition between the new western Carolingian Empire and the
established eastern Byzantine Empire that encouraged the western empire to maintain
close ties with Christian Rome and to frequently invoke the classical Roman heritage to
under gird the legitimacy of their imperial claims.28
605, notes that the dating that Hrabanus himself gives in the dedicatory preface to Louis indicates
that the collection of poems dedicated to the theological themes surrounding the Holy Cross,
Christ, and the kingdom of Heaven were completed in 813/14.
Cook, "Figured Poetry," 2-3; D. Higgins, Pattern Poetry: Guide to an Unknown Literature
(Albany, NY, 1987), 6-8; and D. Higgins, "Pattern Poetry as Paradigm," 407-408.
27
In the Vita Constantini, Eusebius presents a portrait of the Christian emperor as actively
involved in the liturgical and doctrinal issues of church, as evidenced by Constantine’s interest in
the Councils of Nicaea (VC, 3.4-3.14) and Tyre (VC, 3.41-3.42); whose military victories were
divinely ordained (VC, 1.29 and 1.37); and whose own behavior and policies were reflections of
Christianity (VC, 1.17 and 3.1-3.2). In the HE, Book 10, Eusebius offers inserts into the text a
number of documents and speeches that further underscore the qualities that defined
Constantine as a Christian emperor.
28
110
Louis the Pious inherited a kingdom in which the political identity and the
religious identity had been closely bound together and in which the religious elite served
as important symbols of dynastic legitimacy. By dedicating a series of complex, esoteric,
meditative monastic poems to his patron, the emperor Louis the Pious, Hrabanus
includes the emperor in the monastic literary circle in the same way Louis’ father had
been. And with an eye toward Rome, Hrabanus offered a series of shaped poems in
honor of the emperor Louis the Pious, just as Optatian had for Constantine. In what
must be a presentation manuscript of the collection, composed at Fulda under Hrabanus’
own supervision, Vat. Reg. Lat 124, the dedication to Louis stands at the front of the
work. The poems, though originally written a nearly two decades earlier, were likely
intended from their inception to be given as a gift to the Emperor. Sears argues that the
depiction of Louis in the manner of a Roman imperial portrait and the inscription Tu
Hludovicum Criste corona indicate that the dedication and the collection were to bolster
Louis’ position as he reclaimed power after a decidedly un-imperial public penitential
rite.29 The depiction of Louis as a soldier crowned by Christ included him in the
Carolingian monastic community, an interpretation that the form and content of the
poetry in the collection reinforces. For a monk educated in Scriptural study and
monastic tradition like Hrabanus, the notion of a soldier of Christ would immediately
call to mind the description from St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and the use of similar
imagery in Benedict’s Rule and other Patristic monastic writings.30 Like his father before
Sears, "Louis the Pious as Miles Christi," 616-28. On the public penance, see M. de Jong, The
Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814-840 (Cambridge,
2009).
29
Eph. 6:10-18, and also cf. I Thess. 5:8; 2 Cor. 6:4-8, 10:3-6; Rom. 6:13; 2 Tim. 2:1-4. RB,
prol.21. The imagery is picked up by theologians and hagiographers of the Early Church. cf.
Tertullian, Ad Martyras, 3.1 in Tertulliani Opera Pars I, ed. E. Dekkers, CCSL I (Turnholt, 1954),
pp. 3-8; Tertullian, De corona, 11.1, in Tertulliani Opera Pars II, ed. E. Kroymann, CCSL II
(Turnholt, 1954), pp. 1037-1065; Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini in J. Fontaine, ed. &
commentary, Sulpice Sévère, Vie de Saint Martin, Sources Chrétiennes, 3 vol. (Paris, 1967-69) Sulpicius refers to Martin’s familiaria arma in 16.7 of the vita, including among these ascetic
practices, the Sign of the Cross and prayer.
30
111
him, Louis is honored as a member of the monastic community in return for his
patronage and protection of monastic interests. In Louis’ situation, a quid pro quo is
understood: Hrabanus hopes for a return to stability in imperial rule and in turn to
society as a whole – to Louis’ heirs, to the rebelling provincial nobility and to the
hierarchy of the Frankish Church.
Hrabanus was not content to design a set of shaped poems that recalled or even
merely equaled the set that Optatian presented to Constantine. From his allusions to
famous classical metrical patterns and the intricacy of his design in Inclyta crux Domini
to his use of interlocking Greek words in another poem of the collection, to the
complexity of his interwoven verses in the dedicatory poem, Hrabanus intends to surpass
Optatian. The folia of Vat. Reg. Lat. 124, the likely presentation copy of the collection,
have been dyed purple and the illumination that highlights the interwoven verses within
the various poems is on a par with some of the finest surviving Carolingian display and
presentation codices. Hrabanus’ shaped poetry emphasised the Roman Byzantine
tradition of courtly poetry, and linked the Carolingian dynasty with the memory of the
emperor Constantine.31
Hrabanus’ collection of poems was not intended for dissemination to a wide
audience, and could not be used for such a purpose due to the intricacies of the text and
the close union of text and image. The high level of literacy found in monasteries and
among a select few monastic or clerical scholars at the royal court was necessary for an
appreciation of the works. In this milieu, the poems served a dual function: they
promoted loyalty and admiration for the emperor and were particularly suited to
Higgins, "Pattern Poetry as Paradigm," 414-19 notes that pattern poetry, outside of that of the
twentieth century, has not intended to stress innovation and originality. Instead, the poets have
“worked within the traditions associated with the form,” even down to imitating the shapes of the
received tradition. Higgins characterizes this as a poet “deliberately allying himself with a
tradition.” For a focused study of this sort of borrowing related to the Anglo-Saxon monastic
reform of the tenth and eleventh centuries and the use of the traditional poetic form to bolster
authority, see Teviotdale, "Latin Verse Inscriptions in Anglo-Saxon Art," passim.
31
112
monastic study. This sort of poem does not signify fully unless the words and letters are
placed in the proper shape. The words shape or create a visual image that mirrors the
content of the text. Just as the monk is taught regarding his own bearing and behavior
reflects his interior life, the image is formed by the substance of the text. Monastic life
aimed at shaping a student through text, and shaped poetry offered an example of a
mimetic text that underscored the monastic effort at effecting an interior conversion
through study and discipline that was visible externally. By dedicating his collection of
poems to the Emperor Louis, Hrabanus links him to the monastic community of the
Carolingian Empire. This inclusion was beneficial both for Louis, who tapped into a
long-standing literary tradition that helped to reinforce his royal authority, and for the
monastic communities throughout the Carolingian world, who through mutual
cooperation could ensure royal protection of their interests.
The gift of the text offered Louis membership in the monastic textual community
in a somewhat different way than the first generation of monastic authors had included
Charlemagne in the monastic community of scholars. Court scholars like Alcuin and
Einhard and Paul the Deacon included Charlemagne as a scholar in his own right.
Whether or not his learning merited this status aside, the monastic scholars at
Charlemagne’s court included their patron fully in the community, going so far as to
ascribe to the king attributes that reflected the values of the monastic life.32 Hrabanus
Maurus’ gift of his De laudibus sanctae crucis does not assume or intend to create an
image of Louis as a scholar. Although he does play with the double meaning present the
soldier of Christ image, Hrabanus does not praise Louis’ learning or his interest in
preserving the scholarly tradition and culture of the monastery. The text is given as a
presentation codex, and as such, the text is reifed; with its purple pages and carefully
executed illuminations, the work given to Louis is a symbol of Louis inclusion in the
32
Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne is a prime example of this inclusion.
113
community of monks more as protector than as a learned patron. This is accentuated by
the dedicatory poem depicting Louis as a soldier, an image that, in fact, would have been
better suited to the reign and conquests of his father than he.
Hrabanus’ collection of poems operates on one level within the textual
community of monks, where it illustrated the grammatical principles at the foundation
of monastic education, scholarship, and culture, and on another level as an object that
symbolizes the relationship between king and courtier and demonstrates the loyalty of
Hrabanus’ monastic community at Fulda and pictorially requests favorable treatment
and protection in return. As such, the work represents a split, initiated by the
Carolingian monastic community, between the world of the court and the monastery;
texts now functioned differently within and without the monastic community.
Hrabanus’ use of structure and shape to convey multiple meanings in his poetry
illustrates the basic principles of grammar and textual composition that he had been
taught as a monastic student under Alcuin. Alcuin’s writings on medieval grammar and
rhetoric were heavily influenced by Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria. This Roman
grammatical and rhetorical text was the earliest and most exhaustive study of grammar,
logic, and rhetoric available to medieval scholars. They studied it at length, issued their
own compendia and abridgements of it, incorporated its tenets into their own
grammatical treatises, and used it as a basis for medieval education.33 Quintilian divides
the construction of a speech into five parts, inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria,
pronuntiatio, the first three of which M. Carruthers notes have parallels in classical
architectural theory.34 Carolingian scholars used the same phases to describe the process
J. O. Ward, "Quintilian and the Rhetorical Revolution of the Middle Ages," Rhetorica 13.3
(1995), 231-284.
33
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 3.3. Carruthers, "The Poet as Master Builder: Composition and
Locational Memory in the Middle Ages," 896. Hansen, The Eloquence of Appropriation, 36,
writes that “rhetoric – which involved style and expression, invention and imitation, influence
34
114
of textual composition and connected the phases of speech construction to the arts of
grammar, logic, and rhetoric, noting that a speech must be well-constructed, grounded
in proper ideas and eloquently argued. In his treatise on rhetoric, Alcuin quotes
Quintilian nearly verbatim when he describes the five parts of rhetoric.35 But Alcuin goes
further in his treatise, connecting the study of rhetoric to the attainment of virtue.
Inventio Alcuin defines as “excogitatio rerum verarum ac verisimilium,” linking it to
logic and also to truth-seeking.36 Grammar is important for both dispositio, or the order
of the argument, and for elocutio, which Alcuin says is idoneorum verborum
accommodatio.37
Alcuin’s description of the argument and how it is formulated in words contains a
subtle but important shift from the classical understanding presented in Quintilian’s
Institutio Oratoria. In Alcuin’s treatise, the argument is thought through completely –
excogitatio – and determined to be true prior to the application of any words or
signifiers.38 Applying the appropriate words and properly ordering the argument are not
means by which the underlying idea is validated, instead these are tools, or building
blocks, that bring to light the core principles of the argument. This notion of inventio is
a break from the classical understanding of the term: Quintilian’s work does not
consider the process of inventio to be valuable separate from how the remaining steps in
the oratorical process are executed; inventio in the Institutio Oratoria is the first
and figurative thinking – was arguably the discipline closest to modern art theory. Rhetoric
proves rich in perspectives worth considering in relation to architecture.”
Alcuin, Dialogus de rhetorica et virtutibus, PL 101, coll. 919-946; in particular, coll. 919B-922C
and 939C-941B.
35
36
PL 101, col. 921D.
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid.
115
building block toward a complete structure.39 For the Carolingian student, inventio was
the framework whose innate structural soundness it was his task to do justice in
dispositio and elocutio.40 Situated in this medieval context, textual ornamentation
drawn from ancient sources was not the mere cloaking of a structure in an artistic
edifice, it was instead, the gathering of building blocks and fragments together in a
synthesis or unified whole suitable to the contemporary context. The elocutio of the text
was aimed at revealing to the audience the fundamental principle, or inventio, of the
structure; the building blocks should form a unified and elegant text in which both the
parts and the whole fully conveyed the meaning or underlying truth.
Alcuin’s treatise bears the marks of both his own educational background and the
court setting in which Carolingian educational, and cultural reform for that matter, took
shape. Charlemagne’s capitularies and conciliar decrees focused on ensuring a body of
properly edited and corrected texts on which monastic education could be based.
Alcuin’s De grammatica aims to systematically teach the Latin language and the skills
required to study, compile, and edit texts. But in noting the ways in which the
architecture of a text could signify beyond the meaning of the text per se, he was writing
a handbook for monastic Scriptural study and commentary. Medieval grammatical
treatises that abridged or synthesized classical grammatical texts, came to be criticized
by Renaissance scholars who believed it fell to them to restore the classical texts to their
original fullness and integrity. This Renaissance impetus continued in scholarship and
their prejudice against the work of the medieval compilators with it until quite recently,
obscuring the importance of the compilations both in preserving the texts and in the
monastic educational tradition.41
39
cf. Institutio Oratoria, 3.3.
40
PL 101, col. 921D-922B.
41
Ward, "Quintilian and the Rhetorical Revolution of the Middle Ages," 232-33.
116
The monastic discipline of Scriptural study and commentary is illustrative of the
medieval conception of the writing process as parallel to architectural construction. The
aggregation of commentary that became attached to the texts of Scripture cannot be
considered merely a study aid or a series of footnotes. Scriptural commentary became
part of the text itself and marginal notes made in one manuscript were copied as part of
that text and then additional commentary could be added to that as well. Grammatical
commentary on texts was generative rather than deconstructive; commentators sought
to provide the text with an exegesis that reproduced and resituated it in light of new
cultural conditions.42
The result of the careful building of text upon text was the construction of a
monastic culture focused on learning as the means of ascent toward perfection and
toward God.43 In his commentary on Ecclesiastes, Alcuin situates the opening verses in
the context of monastic study and interprets the text as underpinning the culture of
learning within the monastery. His commentary on the verse that reads Cunctae res
difficiles, non potest homo eas explicare sermone. Non saturatur oculus visu, nec auris
impletur auditu, interprets the verse as a affirmation of the monastic discipline and a
condemnation of those who pretend to wisdom and knowledge without submitting
See L. Coon, "Historical Fact and Exegetical Fiction in the Carolingian Vita S. Sualonis," Church
History 72.1 (2003), 1-24; and S. Vanderputten, "'Literate Memory' and Social Reassessment in
Tenth-Century Monasticism," Mediaevistik 17 (2004), 78-85.
42
On Carolingian exegesis see: C. Chazelle and B. V. N. Edwards, eds., The Study of the Bible in
the Carolingian Era (Turnhout, 2003); A. Firey, “The Letter of the Law, Carolingian Exegetes
and the Old Testament” in, eds. J.D. McAuliffe, Barry Walfish, and Joseph Ward Goering With
Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
(Oxford, 2003), 204-224; J. J. Contreni, "Carolingian Biblical Culture," in Iohannes Scottus
Eriugena: The Bible and Hermeneutics, ed. C. Steel, J. McEvoy, and G. Van Riel (Louvain, 1996),
1-23; Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture
;Lubac, Medieval Exegesis I: The Four Senses of Scripture. Also M. Gorman, “The Commentary
on Genesis of Claudius of Turin and Biblical Studies under Louis the Pious.” Speculum 72 (1997),
279-329, provides a focused account of exegetical production in the Carolingian period,
particularly 286-88, which discuss the preface that Claudius wrote for his Genesis commentary
and in which he outlines his methodology.
43
117
themselves to the yolk of study.44 This interpretation of the text became so much a part
of the tradition of Scriptural study that it appears almost verbatim in Walafrid Strabo’s
commentary on the same text. When disciples in the monastic school learned the Book
of Ecclesiastes, they learned it with Alcuin’s commentary, and the commentary of other
masters like Jerome and Augustine.45
Biblical commentators from the Carolingian Age drew upon the work of Patristic
authors and compiled ancient commentaries alongside contemporary ones and added
their own remarks where they saw fit. Claudius of Turin, a cleric with close ties to Louis
the Pious, describes this procedure in the preface to his commentary on Genesis. He
addresses the preface to Dructeramnus, abbot of Saint-Chaffre and perhaps his patron.46
In it, he describes a methodical process of compiling the commentary of Church fathers
and defenders of orthodoxy, whose works were the fulfillment of God’s promise to fill the
earth with knowledge, a process that Claudius understood as occurring through
aggregate work of generations of theologians and commentators.47 Carolingian biblical
commentators believed that the gradus of wisdom rose higher during the course of
human history as generations of scholars, monks, and theologians studied the texts and
read and compiled and added commentary to the text.
Alcuin’s explanation of Ecc. 1:8, “All things are difficult; man is unable to explain these things
with speech. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled by hearing,” is as follows:
Nullatenus valet sermo explicare causas naturasque rerum; nec oculus saturari, ut rei possit
dignitatem intueri; nec auris, instituente doctore, ad summam rerum notitiam pervenire. Nam
modo omnia in aenigmate cernuntur, et ex parte intelliguntur, donec perfecta veniat scientia,
quae in hoc mortali corpore esse non poterit. Tamen haec sententia maxime contra eos agit qui,
sine labore et discendi studio, sanctarum Scripturarum sibi notitiam promittunt, aestimantes se
sapientes, cum sunt insipientes. (PL 100, col. 673A-B).
44
Walafrid’s commentary, PL 113, col. 1115-1126, quotes extensively from both authors. He likely
studied Alcuin’s commentary during his time under Hrabanus Maurus at Fulda. See also D. A.
Bullough, Carolingian Renewal: Sources and Heritage (New York, 1991), ch 5 on the influence of
patristic authors on Alcuin’s theology.
45
On Dructeramnus, see M. Gorman, “The Commentary on Genesis of Claudius of Turin,” 284
and n. 42.
46
47
Ibid., 286-88 and Claudius of Turin, Praefatio, MGH Epp. IV, p.590-92.
118
Study and reading was aimed at wisdom and achieving a better understanding of
the Divine and were the central communal activity of monasticism. Textual commentary
did not break a text into consumable and understandable parts or elucidate portions of
it; rather, these commentaries were grafted onto the text and became part of its
tradition. Monastic education and monastic writings in a wide variety of genres built
onto the foundation of Scriptural commentary and other writings from early Christian
authors as well as the literary heritage they had received from Classical authors. In
drawing from both traditions in their own work, Carolingian authors took their cue from
the supportive royal patronage of Charlemagne and constructed literary works that paid
homage to the received tradition, but also were situated in a new cultural and social
context. Charlemagne cultivated an image of his reign and his royal power that relied on
close ties to Rome, the papacy, and Christian imagery. His societal reforms, which are
for the most part indistinguishable from his ecclesiastical and monastic policies, aimed
at creating a unified Christian kingdom of the Franks over which he presided with both
temporal and sacral authority.48
Charlemagne invited scholars to his court and appointed abbots in monasteries
to teach and study the texts. His patronage of learning went beyond the political benefits
of creating a broad educational system that taught a common culture. Charlemagne
envisioned an “ecclesiological project” that would achieve social reform through the
efforts of an educated, disciplined and organized hierarchy of clerics and monks.49 The
Carolingian documents that addressed educational reform aimed at creating a minimum
The bibliography on this point is vast. See especially R. McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms
under the Carolingians; N. Staubach, "Cultus divinus und karolingische Reform,"
Frühmittelalterliche Studien 18 (1984); M. A. Claussen, The Reform of the Frankish Church:
Chrodegang of Metz and the Regula Canonicorum in the Eighth Century, Cambridge Studies in
Medieval Life and Thought; 4th ser., vol. 61 (Cambridge, 2004)
48
See S. Vanderputten, “Faith and Politics in Early Medieval Society: Charlemagne and the
frustrating failure of an ecclesiological project” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 96 (2001), 311-33.
49
119
standard of learning and literacy for the clergy and religious – priests, bishops, monks
and abbots – so that they could reform the laity.50 The royal effort latched on to the
learning, scholarship, and literary production already being cultivated in monasteries.
The model that informed these documents came from several monasteries that had an
already long and prestigious history of scholarship. The Carolingian royal family had
favored a number of monasteries that had active scriptoria and were well-known
scholarly centers: Corbie, St Denis, and Tours among them. Charlemagne hoped to
improve upon and spread this monastic model beyond the Carolingian heartland and
southern Gaul to newly acquired lands.51
The link between societal reform, the royal building program at Aachen, and the
educational reforms, with their connection to the production of liturgical texts and
Sacred Scripture, all of which were part of a Carolingian effort to connect imperium and
pietas in the person of the Frankish king were impressed upon the monks and religious
at court whom Charlemagne tasked with writing and implementing the reform
program.52 In particular, the Psalms, the centerpiece of monastic daily prayer according
to the Rule of Saint Benedict, was an important component of royal piety. No shortage
of Psalters was produced for the king and the royal family, some of which strengthen the
typological parallel between David, Charlemagne’s literary namesake, and Christ with
their manuscript illuminations.53 This iconographic parallel is also used in the interior
Ibid, 318-324. Vanderputten points out that Charlemagne’s effort was doomed to fail because
he hoped that a “partially reformed Church” would be able to effect a moral renewal of society.
50
See R. McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 751-987 (New York,
1983), 59-62, for a detailed discussion of Charlemagne’s policy regarding monasteries and
expansion.
51
See R. McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge, 2008),
330-340 for an overview of the connections between royal piety and Carolingian book production.
52
On the illumination of the Utrecht Psalter and the Christ-David parallel, see M. Stokstad,
Medieval Art (New York, 1986), 124-125 and fig. 5.15; for the Mondsee Psalter, see McKitterick,
Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity 338. See also, “Imagines Regum and their
53
120
design of Charlemagne’s palace chapel at Aachen, where his throne sits elevated above
the altar on a second tier almost directly across from a mosaic of Christ in Majesty
situated in the palace’s dome. The palace chapel, which recalls the imperial palace of the
Emperor Justinian at Ravenna, from which it plundered a great deal of building
material, “served as the centre of the liturgical celebrations and reforms promoted by the
ruler.”54 Owing to the importance of architecture in the monastic setting, discussed in
the previous chapter, and the close link to learning and education reform encouraged by
royal iconography the process of textual study and commentary naturally shared a
vocabulary with architecture and architectural borrowings.
Alcuin’s inscriptions, discussed in the first chapter, use an architectural metaphor
to illustrate the process of textual study, and the scriptural commentaries that medieval
scholars produced contain a verse-by-verse interpretation that includes a compilation of
earlier commentators as well as providing notes that seem relevant to contemporary
theological or socio-cultural questions. In these commentaries, the interests of the
monastic scholars dovetailed with Charlemagne’s societal reform interests. For example,
A. Firey argues that the Carolingian interest in Leviticus and the proliferation of
commentaries on that book despite Patristic neglect may be related to Frankish anxiety
over the incorporation of conquered peoples into their kingdoms.55 Using commentaries
from Greek Fathers in the absence of works from Latin authors, Carolingian scholars
interpreted Levitical prescriptions regarding Jewish law and custom in a way that
provided a parallel for the Christianization of newly conquered Germanic peoples and
Significance in the Early Medieval West” in Bullough, Carolingian Renewal: Sources and
Heritage 39-96.
54
McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity 340.
55
A. Firey, “The Letter of the Law,” passim.
121
creating a distinct Frankish Christian culture.56 Building an argument by marshalling
ancient works as the foundation for new interpretation lent the weight of tradition and
the authority of the past to Carolingian claims in literature the same way they did in
architecture.
Because of the parallels that medieval scholars drew between architecture and
the written text, a brief look at how the medieval artists and architects understood their
use of spolia and at how historians of medieval art and architecture have approached the
question of spolia is instructive for the interpretation of textual allusion in Carolingian
literature. Historically, scholars have used the term spolia rather broadly to designate
anything from “the most imperceptible to the most monumental” reuses of ancient
materials, from the grinding down of marble from buildings that have fallen into disuse
to the conversion of the Pantheon into a Christian church.57 Recent scholarship on art
and architecture favors a more narrow understanding of the term as describing
“architectural or sculptural elements transferred to new contexts where they may
perhaps, although not necessarily, retain an echo of their original purpose.”58 The
columns and arches with which medieval illuminators framed manuscript pages might
contain a variety of architectural elements.59 The columns depicted were often of
Commentaries on Leviticus from Origen and Hesychius of Jerusalem had been translated into
Latin by the sixth century, see E.A. Matter, “The Church Fathers and the Glossa Ordinaria” in I.
D. Backus and A. Bevan, eds., The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the
Carolingians to the Maurists, 2 vols. (New York, 1997), 83-111, at 87. Cf. also Ch. 1, above, n. 45.
56
M.F. Hansen, The Eloquence of Appropriation: Prolegomena to an Understanding of Spolia in
Early Christian Rome, Analecta Romana Instituti Danici. Supplementum, 33 (Rome, 2003), 2325.
57
Ibid., 25. Elsewhere in the book, Hansen notes parallels between Early Christian and early
medieval writings and building projects from the same period, and briefly surveys the few authors
who commented on the employment of spolia, all of whom note a parallel between the discipline
of rhetoric and the architectural employment of spolia, pp. 36-38.
58
These decorative architectural elements served as mnemonics within the manuscript itself. It
cannot be coincidence that the architectural frames found in manuscripts are precisely the sort
that we find in the Rhetorica ad Herennium and that date back to Aristotle’s treatise on Memory
and Recollection, and which later monastic writers revise to include more monastic buildings
59
122
different colors or had different capitals from one another, an imitation of the use of
classical architectural spolia in early medieval church architecture. Just as Roman
columns could be used to indicate the triumph of Christianity over classical paganism or
to lend authority and majesty to new Christian foundations, the architecture of a text
could include structures and material from classical sources to achieve the same ends.60
The materials together with their situation in a new context gave the work meaning.61
Interpreting the employment of spolia in medieval architecture is complex
because the appropriation and reuse of an object layered new meanings onto old. Even if
the reuse of an object had the intention of disconnecting the ancient artifact from its
canonical use and reinscribing it with a new meaning, a full appreciation of the new
meaning could only be achieved in light of the object’s original context.62 Scholars
generally have interpreted Charlemagne’s architectural borrowings and importations for
Aachen as representing and perpetuating the classical tradition; Charlemagne used the
imported materials and the classical architectural forms to lay claim to the same sort of
status as the Roman emperors.63 But several recent studies have argued that the Aachen
including the monastery church and the cloister. See Carruthers, "The Poet as Master Builder:
Composition and Locational Memory in the Middle Ages," 893-895, who further notes that
monasteries built by St Bernard of Clairvaux, Abbot Suger, Hugh of St Victor and Thierry of
Chartres among others are designs in which “the building includes elements of encyclopedic
mnemonic formae.” Inscriptions of the sort discussed in the first chapter are the way in which
monks began to create a mental composition of an ideal architectural mnemonic for monastic life.
This ideal culminated in the drawing of the St-Gall Plan. For more on the Plan of St-Gall and its
use of meditative and mnemonic aids, see W. W. Horn et al., The Plan of St. Gall: A study of the
architecture & economy of, & life in a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery, 3 vols., California
Studies in the History of Art, 19 (Berkeley, CA, 1979) and W. Braunfels, Monasteries of Western
Europe: The Architecture of the Orders, 3rd ed. (Princeton, 1972).
Carruthers, "The Poet as Master Builder: Composition and Locational Memory in the Middle
Ages," 892-3. See also, Hansen, The Eloquence of Appropriation, 34ff.
60
61
Hansen, The Eloquence of Appropriation, 33-35.
See B. Brenk, "Spolia from Constantine to Charlemagne: Aesthetics versus Ideology,"
Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41. Studies on Art and Archeology in Honor of Ernst Kitzinger on His
Seventy-Fifth Birthday (1987), 103-110.
62
W. Jacobsen, “Spolien in der karolingischen Architektur,” in J. Poeschke, Antike Spolien in der
Architektur des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Munich, 1996), 155-68.
63
123
building program departs from its late-Roman, Ravennate model and employs Roman
elements in a non-classical style and that the Carolingian architectural aesthetic went
beyond borrowing Roman and classical elements in an effort to recall the past as a means
of legitimizing Carolingian power.64 These studies, influenced by the work of Michael
Baxandall and Pierre Bourdieu, argue that the medieval use of spolia was far more
complex than mere borrowing of materials and reuse,65 and that contemporary
interpretation of spolia was based on a cooperative strategy (between the architect or
interpreter of the building or monument and the audience) of invention.
Medieval use of tradition and classical borrowings are as informative in where
they introduce change as where they are imitative. Tradition was not a static notion that
served to create a pre-determined path for imitation and interpretation. Instead, it was
dynamic and subject to the accretion of interpretations and meanings. Knowing the
origin of a thing was only part of the process of understanding the intention of its
The marble columns at Aachen, for example, contain elements that are Carolingian imitations
meant to look like spolia and the so-called Roman spolia did not all come from Rome. Aachen
seems to have been designed to imitate a Byzantine form but to use Roman spolia to explicitly
reject the modern Byzantine ornate decorative elements in favor of more traditional Roman
elements. See D. Kinney, “Roman Architectural Spolia,” Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society 45.2 (2001), 138-161, at 147-8, and Brenk, "Spolia from Constantine to
Charlemagne: Aesthetics versus Ideology," Hansen, The Eloquence of Appropriation, notes that
Christian architecture in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages represents a marked departure
from the formalism of classical Roman style and displays what she calls an “aesthetic of
heterogeneity” (cf. p. 168-180).
64
On complexity of meaning: M. Baxandall, Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Experience
of Pictures (New Haven, CT, 1985), particularly 41-42 and 58-59. Baxandall notes that authorial
intent is more difficult to determine when reuse is assumed to not admit any change. The
intention that the audience perceives could very well be the unintended consequences of a choice
made without reflection. It is only in the accretion of meaning through the changes made to a
received influence or tradition that a work of art, architecture or literature displays “intention.”
This dovetails with H. Bloom’s characterization of the work of the “strong” poet, who acts on a
received influence in order to reveal his intention or altered meaning to his audience and make a
value judgment on the relative position of the two uses. As with architectural spolia, so too with
literary, there seems to be an element of conquest implied. On cooperation between architect and
audience: Hansen, The Eloquence of Appropriation, 36: “Throughout the early Middle Ages, the
tendency in descriptions of buildings was...an increasing attention towards the metaphorical or
symbolical values of the earthly phenomena, including arcitecture.” She notes that although
neither Eusebius in his Life of Constantine, nor Paulinus of Nola in his description of the
churches at Nola detail the acquisition and use of spolia explicitly, both display a “rhetorical
mindset comparing the present with the past and building upon it.”
65
124
placement and the depth of its meaning. As in art and architecture, so too in literature
did the meaning of a text depend on the altered setting and cultural distance of an
allusion more than on its original context.
A pastoral poem by Walafrid Stabo, a student of Hrabanus Maurus at Fulda,
applies textual allusions from classical Roman poetry in a poem about an object of
architectural spolia from fifth-century Ravenna. Walafrid began his education at
Reichenau and showed great literary talent from a young age. One of his earliest and
most famous works, the Visio Wettini, is a work of 733 lines of hexameter verse with a
prologue of asclepiads and an epilogue written in Ambrosian stanzas. His command of
language and meter as well as his breadth of literary knowledge has earned him the
designation “prodigy” by some scholars.66 Walafrid was sent to the monastery at Fulda
in the mid-820s to be educated under Hrabanus Maurus. After several years at Fulda, he
entered imperial service as a tutor at court for Louis the Pious’ youngest son, Charles. In
the mid-830s he returned to Reichenau and was appointed abbot.67
By the time Walafrid became Charles’ tutor, the trend of admiration and
cooperation between monasteries and the Carolingian court already had begun to
fracture, as dynastic concerns and political strife between the peripheral nobility of the
Empire, Louis’ sons, and Louis demanded imperial attention and concessions, often at
the expense of monastic interests and concerns. As the adult sons of Louis the Pious
gained the loyalty of the nobility in the kingdoms allotted them by the Ordinatio Imperii
of 817, Lothar, Pippin and Louis the German became avenues to greater power and
Cf. M. Brooke, "The Prose and Verse Hagiography of Walahfrid Strabo," in Charlemagne's
Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814-840), ed. P. Godman and R. Collins
(Oxford, 1990), 551-564, at 555.
66
Ibid., and the introduction contained in Walahfrid Strabo, Walahfrid Strabo’s “Libellus de
exordiis et incrementis quarundam in observationibus ecclesiasticis rerum:” A Translation and
Liturgical Commentary, ed., and trans, with introduction and commentary A. Harting-Corrêa,
(Leiden, 1996).
67
125
influence for local nobles in their sub-kingdoms. The loyalty and attention of the regional
nobility gave Louis’ sons, in turn, greater power within the larger Carolingian Empire
and greater autonomy from their father.68 Louis, for his part, signaled, by means of his
second marriage and the subsequent birth of his son Charles, that he intended to
exercise the full power of his role as emperor for some time to come.69 Louis, drawing,
perhaps, on his own experience and a sub-king in Aquitaine under Charlemagne, took
great care throughout his rule to mitigate or shift the bases of power that his three elder
sons could form.70 As Louis worked to shift centers of power, loyalty, and influence, the
regional nobility and his own sons had to scramble to rebuild new networks, and
exchange the beneficia and officia that formalized such ties.71 By the late 820s, military
power became a primary focus of the alliances that the Carolingian rulers sought to form,
and magnates and landowners that could supply manpower to ensure a king’s influence
in the imperial balance of power could expect to be well-rewarded. In a realm with an
increasing number of kings and a finite amount of land, monastic offices and monastic
land holdings became gifts to loyal lay aristocrats.
In response to the shift in the royal focus toward gathering a strong aristocraticmilitary base and the detriment it posed to monasteries, monastic literature began to
move from encomium and inclusion of the Carolingian ruler within the monastic
community, as Hrabanus Maurus’ De laudibus sanctae crucis did, to competition with
de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814840, demonstrates the difficulty of adult sons in the Carolingian imperial structure, chapter 1,
passim.
68
69
See Ibid. 31-32.
Ibid. 52-58; J. Nelson, Charles the Bald (London, 1992), 73; E. J. Goldberg, Struggle for
Empire: Kingship and Conflict under Louis the German, 817-876 (Ithaca, NY, 2006); B. Kasten,
“Königssöhne und Königsherrschaft: Untersuchungen zur Teilhabe am Reich in der Merowingerund Karolingerzeit” (Thesis Ph. D. --Universität Bremen 1996., Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1997),
194-200.
70
71
Cf. McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians.
126
the aristocracy and critique of the Carolingian ruler. The new era of critique applied the
monastic understanding of poetry as a carefully designed structure built with attention
to each building block, from word choice, sound alliteration, and allusions, to genre and
meter. The monastic authors may have begun to despair of the poetry having a great
deal of influence within the wider circle of potentates at court, but evidently still had
confidence that close advisors to the emperor and his sons were reading and
understanding their work.72 Within monastic circles, critical poems such as Walafrid’s
outlined a socio-political structure that argued for the necessity of having the Church and
her faithful monks and clerics at the center of Carolingian power, and the importance the
emperor ensuring that he is embodiment of piety and faithfulness to the Church. In
Walafrid Strabo’s poem De imagine Tetrici, the link between architecture and literature
is explored and the poem seems to measure the relative cultural influence of the two
against each other as a metaphor for the power of political influence versus that of moral
rectitude and virtue. The work examines the symbolism and meaning that could accrue
on imported spolia as cultural baggage that can reveal the tarnish that has accrued on
the Carolingian ruler’s image.73
For an indication that monastic scholars think that learning and literacy have fallen off, cf.
Lupus of Ferrières, Ep 1. As for learned and high-ranking royal advisors, Einhard, for example,
remained a major advisor to Louis the Pious until shortly before Louis death. In fact, Einhard
himself employed the technique of offering critique through mimetic texts both in the vita Karoli
(cf. M. M. Tischler, Einharts "Vita Karoli": Studien zur Entstehung, Überlieferung und
Rezeption, 2 vols. (Hannover, 2001), though de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and
Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814-840 68, especially, n. 37, points out the weaknesses
of Tischler’s claim that the work was intended as a critique in any way) and in his Translatio et
Miracula SS Marcellini et Petri. See J.M.H. Smith, “Emending Evil Ways and Praising God's
Omnipotence: Einhard and the uses of Roman martyrs,” in K. Mills and A. Grafton, eds.,
Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Seeing and Believing, Studies in
Comparative History (Rochester, NY, 2003).
72
The poem has been edited and translated recently: M. W. Herren, "The De Imagine Tetrici of
Walahfrid Strabo: Edition and Translation," The Journal of Medieval Latin 1 (1991). All
quotations and translations I use will be from this edition. An additional article, M. W. Herren,
"Walahfrid Strabo's De Imagine Tetrici: An Interpretation," in Latin Culture and Medieval
Germanic Europe. Proceedings of the First Germania Latina Conference held at the University
of Groningen, 26 May 1989, ed. R. North and T. Hofstra (Groningen, 1992), provides a history
and commentary on the poem.
73
127
Image 2
Vat. Reg. Lat. 124, fol. 8v
128
The poem itself is modeled on the Vergilian eclogue, but plays with the
expectations that the genre indicates to the reader. It combines the eclogue genre with
the speculum principis commonplace. This is the same tactic and the same formal model
that Hrabanus Maurus used in the dedicatory depiction of Louis as a miles Christi in his
De laudibus sanctae crucis [Image 2], but now it is employed in a critical rather than a
laudatory or exhortatory manner. Walafrid’s poem dates to 829/830, a year of turmoil
for Louis the Pious and the Carolingian Empire. The poem postdates the re-allocation of
land to include a kingdom for Charles, Louis’ son by his second wife, Judith, to whom
Walafrid Strabo had been appointed tutor, and foresees unrest between Louis’s elder
sons and young Charles.74 Walafrid chooses the equestrian statue of Theoderic,
imported to Aachen by Charlemagne, as the poem’s focal point and examines the history
of the sculpture as a means of commenting on the Carolingian rulers.
The De Imagine Tetrici demonstrates how Roman objects and texts accumulated
new symbolic meaning in their new medieval cultural context. The poet understands the
history of the equestrian statue and how the symbolic intention of its original cultural
context still informs the new interpretation. Walafrid Strabo acknowledges the
accumulated interpretive history and then proceeds to built on it, introducing his own
signa to the statue. Walafrid makes his moves within the text in three ways. First, he
offers his own interpretation of the reception and history of the statue’s symbolic
meanings. In this portion of the text, he opens up space for his critique of Carolingian
politics and the court. Then he moves from his representation of history to the new
assignation of meanings, which he provides through the Biblical parallels he draws for
The rebellion of Louis’ elder sons in 830 was primarily due to their resistance to the
arrangement for young Charles’ inheritance, see J. Nelson, "The Last Years of Louis the Pious," in
Charlemagne's Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814-840), ed. Peter
Godman and Roger Collins, 147-160 (Oxford, 1990), 147-51, and de Jong, The Penitential State:
Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814-840, 31-44. This point is discussed
in greater detail below.
74
129
members of Louis the Pious’s family. By shifting the symbolism from classical culture
(the statue and the literary genre of the poem) to Scriptural allusions, Walafrid makes his
argument for the necessity of placing the Church and her servants at the center of
Carolingian politics.75
Walafrid opens his poem in a garden blooming with the emergence of spring in
imitation of the pastoral setting of the Vergilian eclogues. The structure (structural
allusion) leads the reader to expect a poem in praise of the salvific emperor who ushers
in a Golden Age. But the poem, a dialogue between Strabus, who is shortly to appear
before the emperor and does not know what to say, and his muse, Scintilla, transitions
abruptly from traditional bucolic elements to earthy characterizations of contemporary
political life. Scintilla answers Strabus’ description of the spring with an 18-line reply
evenly divided between her description of the fortune of ancient poets and her lament
about the current state of affairs.
Triste nemus testesque ferae timidaeque uolucres,
Mens secura, procul furibundae crapula curae.
At nos pro siluis, hederis, echone, coturno
Immanes omni ferimus de parte tumultus,
Et uix ipsa luto subducit pupula sese
Stercoribusque nouisssma, pro pudor, omnis inhorret.
Theirs a sombre grove, wild beasts and shy birds to listen,
Theirs was a mind free of worry, far from the madding
cares and headaches.
But instead of groves, ivy, echoes and fine phrases,
Our lot is horrid commotion on every side.
No sooner did the pupil of our eye raise itself from the mud
And dung than it starts in horror at the latest crisis – shame!76
Bloom, Anxiety of Influence, 14, argues that a ‘strong’ poet can “read the parent-poem as to
retain its terms, but to mean them in another sense.” The claim the later poet makes in so doing
is that the parent poet did not go far enough (Bloom terms this “completion”) or that he ended up
conveying the wrong meaning (“antithesis”). Here Walafrid seeks to demonstrate that a symbolic
program that evokes classical culture alone is incomplete and that only the addition of proper
Scriptural interpretations can redeem it.
75
76
Herren, "The De Imagine Tetrici of Walahfrid Strabo: Edition and Translation," lines 16-21.
130
Scintilla’s reply even sounds as sticky as the mire in which they find themselves:
Nudaque stercoribus sordescunt crura nigellis.77 By the end of the reply, the muse has
not given Strabus much encouraging imagery to work with, but Strabus goes ahead with
his questions. He asks why the equestrian statue was made (sit effigata). The muse’s
answer returns to the very origins of the statue and to the historical figure of Theoderic.
Her presentation of the origins and history of the statue problematizes Charlemagne’s
professed desire to recall through it, like Theoderic before him, Roman tradition and
culture.
The statue at the center of the poem is shown to be as ambiguous in its new
architectural context as the classical genre Walafrid has chosen is in its new literary and
cultural milieu. Walafrid’s poem claims that the borrowed artifact retains meaning from
its past context, and, furthermore, that this has something to reveal to its new
Carolingian audience about its current situation and meaning. Where a generation of
courtiers have flocked, like birds, to the imperial palace, eager to ingratiate themselves
with the new Frankish dynasty and bow to its authority, Walafrid points out that the
imagery that undergirds the legitimacy of the Carolingians is far more telling than they
suspect.78 He shows that the flawed conversion of the borrowed statue highlights the
problem of the Carolingian program of renovatio imperii. Cedant magna tui, super et,
figmenta colossi, Roma, he writes.79 Walafrid makes this anxiety a creative force, and
his poem attaches a new interpretation to the Carolingian use of the statue: the tradition
that Charlemagne takes from Rome should not obscure or push aside the Christian
inheritance. Walafrid, who studied grammar under the tutelage of Hrabanus Maurus at
Walafrid’s word choice here is also a dig at Ermoldus Nigellus, a cleric and courtier whose
reputation for obsequiousness in his courtly career, capped by his fawning poem in praise of the
Emperor Louis written in the latter half of the 820s.
77
78
De Imag. Tet., 46-51, and again at 209-10, 227-28.
79
De Imag. Tet., 215-16.
131
Fulda, wanted to add a body of commentary to this piece of spolia to reinscribe it with a
changed meaning. The image for the Carolingian empire that Walafrid attaches to the
tradition of the statue is rooted in the Old Testament; in the encomiums sung by the
muse Scintilla, Louis the Pious is Moses, and his sons are Joshua, Jonathan, and
Benjamin, and his wife, Judith, is Rachael.80 Though these panegyrics are situated in the
structure of the classical eclogue, they depart from the classical portrayals of royal
women that the eclogue traditionally contained. When Theodulf of Orléans wrote a
poem in praise of Charlemagne, he constructed an image of the imperial household with
allusions to Dido of Vergil’s Aeneid, not to Scriptural exemplars.81
The poetic genre used here helps convey the meaning of these Biblical parallels
because it too, like the statue, is not exempt from the baggage of the past. Walafrid plays
with the expectation that the poem will foretell a Golden Age by using imagery of the
peaceable kingdom described in the Old Testament Book of the Prophet Isaiah.82 But at
this moment in the poem, in Louis’ encomium, Scintilla reveals the savior, and it is not
the emperor. Louis, as a Christian emperor, may rule over the Christian people, but he
must honor the altithronum patrem, and, in turn, is eclipsed by the Church:
Hinc magnum Salomonis opus, hinc templa supremis
Structuris aequanda micant, specularia subter
Dant insigne nemus uiridique uolantia prato
Murmura riuorum; ludunt pecudesque feraeque
Uri cum ceruis, timidis cum caprea dammis.
Hence the great work of Solomon and temples of comparable structure
sparkle,
And in their window panes they mirror a fine grove, murmuring streams
80
De Imag. Tet., 94-161.
Theodulf of Orleans, Carmina XXV. Ad Carolum Regem, ed E Dümmler, MGH Poetae I, lines
78-106, which focuses heavily on classicizing allusions that depict the women as shining and
glittering, bedecked in jewels, gold, and regal purple garments (cf. Aeneid 4.134-139). See also P.
Godman and R. Collins, eds., Charlemagne's Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the
Pious (814-840) (Oxford, 1990), 579-80 and P. Godman, Poets and Emperors: Frankish Politics
and Carolingian Poetry (Oxford, 1987), 65ff.
81
82
De Imag Tet., 116-20.
132
Playing in a green meadow and wild beasts and tame cattle playing.
Wild oxen play with stags, wild roe with antelope.83
The vision and promise of the Golden Age lie within the Church. When Strabus arrives
before the imperial court, he is initially overwhelmed by the wealth and glamour that
surround him, but recovers himself and realizes that he is not in the presence of a David
or a Solomon; rather he sees before him ora sacri cornuta patris splendore corusco.84
The statue must be understood as a warning for the Frankish king; his duty is not to be
resplendent in gold, the way Theoderic wished himself depicted in the statue, or even as
Louis’ father, Charlemagne, had had the luxury of doing in a more peaceful time.85
Instead, Louis must be a Moses, chosen by God to lead his chosen people through a time
of crisis. But just as the promise of Israel lay just beyond Moses’ leadership ability, so
too does the promise of peace and a Golden Age lie beyond Louis’ ability to bring it to
fruition. Walafrid even chooses the image of Joshua for Louis’ eldest son, and the future
emperor as decreed by the Ordinatio Imperii, in order to emphasize the point. In an
interesting and revelatory inversion, the palace chaplain, Hilduin, is cast as Aaron, but
Hilduin, unlike his biblical counterpart is an idoloclast priest, who upholds the duties of
his office.86
As crisis and unrest loomed among the nobility and within the imperial
household, Walafrid’s poem sought to rein in the Christian and particularly the
83
Ibid.
This moment in the poem essentially describes Strabus’ movement from ‘weak’ imitator who is
wont to idealize the past to a ‘strong’ poet, capable of identifying a flaw and working to rewrite the
received tradition. Influence and tradition, for the strong poet, are not received, they are created,
written and rewritten.
84
85
On Charlemagne’s image, cf. De Imag. Tet., 109-111.
Herren, "Walahfrid Strabo's De Imagine Tetrici: An Interpretation," 38-39 and De Imag. Tet.,
209-220. The imagery is confusing, but perhaps Walafrid uses Aaron as a symbol for the
priesthood and intends to reassure the reader that the weakness of the Biblical Aaron regarding
the Golden Calf will not be repeated when it comes to the gilded images at the Carolingian palace.
86
133
ecclesiastical associations that had become attached to the imperial title.87 Louis’ tenure
as emperor saw a significant increase in the administrative responsibilities of
ecclesiastical leaders and an attendant increase in the wealth and power with which the
emperor rewarded them. The archchaplain Hilduin was closely tied to the royal
chancery, and therefore in a position to influence the affairs of state, accompanying
Louis on military campaigns, and serving as an adviser to Louis and the emperor’s
representative to the notary-clerics of the chancery. Louis, for his part, received a status
as Christian king that emphasized the union of his royal and ecclesiastical roles.88 Louis’
early work in Aquitaine and then in the Carolingian Empire as a whole encouraging
monastic reform and increasing the role of the episcopate fed into the image of Louis as
guardian of the Frankish Church, an image readily adopted and enhanced by his
biographers.89 But the blurring of lines between ecclesiastical and royal leadership had
become problematic in the latter half of the 820s in the face of military defeats and the
increasing loyalty that disaffected regional nobles were wiling to offer to Louis’ sons.
Louis responded to military defeats by marshalling the resources at his disposal
to amplify the theological associations of imperial rule and the divine authority
associated with the imperial title. Louis had new coins laden with Christian imagery
minted, he issued the Constitutio Romana, which assured papal rights in the Exarchate
On the Christian interpretation of kingship and the imperial title in the Carolingian period see
J. Semmler, “Reichsidee und kirchliche Gesetzgebung,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 71,
(1966), 37-65.
87
The ecclesiastical status of the Frankish Christian ruler and his dual role as a leader of the
Christian empire and the Church within it has a well-established history in Frankish literature.
Cf. J. George, “Poet as Politician: Venantius Fortunatus' Panegyric to King Chilperic,” JMH 15
(1989), 5-18; B. Brennan, “The Image of the Frankish Kings in the Poetry of Venantius
Fortunatus,” JMH 10 (1984), 1-11; M.F. Hoeflich, “Between Gothia and Romania: The image of
the king in the poetry of Venantius Fortunatus,” Res Publica Litterarum: Studies in the Classical
Tradition 5 (1982), 123-36; and “Gregory of Tours and Bede: Their views on the personal qualities
of kings,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 2 (1968), 125-33.
88
de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814840, 16-24, 83-84.
89
134
of Ravenna, required the nobility to submit to papal authority and in turn required the
pope, upon his consecration, to swear allegiance to the Carolingian emperor.90 In the
Admonitio ad omnes regni ordines of 825, Louis defined the office of emperor as a
ministerium conferred on the ruler by divine authority and human ordination. It is from
this ministerium, Louis further states, that all other offices and order derive their
respective ministeria.91 The capstone to Louis’ efforts at linking divine and secular
authority in the imperial title came with the conversion of the Danish king, Harald and
his family. The family was baptized at Mainz with Louis’ own family serving as
godparents. Until the end of the 820s, the monasteries and monks of the Carolingian
Empire still trusted in Louis’ faithfulness to their interests, and, conversely, were willing
to place themselves and their resources at the service of the emperor. By the time
Walafrid Strabo came to court in 829, however, Louis willingness to distribute
ecclesiastical and monastic lands to the lay nobility in exchange for loyalty had changed
the monastic outlook. Monastics, and abbots in particular, who had come from
aristocratic families themselves, were no longer being treated the way they had expected
as noble churchmen and began to create for themselves a more distinct social space that
involved (at least a symbolic) separation from the secular political sphere. Walafrid’s
poem capitalizes on the elevation of Christian imagery and the centrality of Christian
theology in the Carolingian definition of the imperial office to reassert the importance of
90
MGH, Cap., I, p. 322-24.
MGH, Cap.. I, p. 303-07, at 303: Sed quamquam summa huius ministerii in nostra persona
consistere videtur, tamen et divina auctoritate et humana institutione ita per partes divisum
esse cognoscitur, ut unusquisque vestrum in suo loco et ordine partem nostri ministerii habere
cognoscatur; unde apparet, quod ego omnium vestrum admonitor esse debeo, et omnes vos
nostri adiutores esse debetis. See also, Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in
the Age of Louis the Pious, 814-840 37 and K.F. Werner, “Hludovicus Augustus: Gouverner
l’empire chrétien – Idées et réalités” in Godman and Collins, eds., Charlemagne's Heir: New
Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814-840) , 3-123, at 87-89, who notes «Dans
l’Église et dans le monde, tous ceux qui exercent une fonction, ont reçu de ce fait une part du
«ministère» de l’empereur, dont celui est investi de la summa. Tous ces hommes étant
parternaires d’un seul ministère.» Werner goes on to argue that this document marks a key shift
in Carolingian administration, from «un état de fait» to «un état de droit».
91
135
monastics and ecclesiastics as religious figures and the necessity of cultivating religious
life for its own sake within the empire. If Louis once more asserted his protection and
preferrment of monastic lands and offices, Walafrid argues in the De imagine Tetrici, the
imperial dignity would be enhanced. But the emperor would have to recognize that he
was at the service of the Christian Church and not the other way round.
Walafrid’s poem drips with sarcasm and inverted meanings ooze out of the lines.
It is difficult to know where to take the poet at his word and where to assume inversion.
What is not in doubt is the poet’s skill at constructing an image and impression of the
emperor and his court. Walafrid’s poem has added to the tradition of the equestrian
statue a new layer of associations and changed how the statue signifies to its audience.
The statue now symbolizes at once the fragility of kingship and the importance of the
Christian Church in the Carolingian world and the Church’s ability to fix some of the
problems Louis the Pious has encountered. It also serves as a warning to the king not to
neglect the protection of the dignity of religious life in his empire. The Frankish Church
emerges from the poem as a source of strength within the realm to which the Louis
might turn for stability and strength.
The poem blames Louis’ familial troubles and the rebelliousness of the nobility in
part on the Carolingian’s misunderstanding of their role, symbolized by their
misinterpretation of the imported statue. In Walafrid’s interpretation, the Church is the
bulwark of stability and the Carolingians would do well to look there for support, instead,
perhaps, to the aristocracy.92 But it goes beyond assigning blame to the Carolingian
dynasty, and uses the statue as a representation of the human institution of kingship.
The imperial statue had been removed from its original context, placed in a new setting
and assigned a new symbolic meaning in the Christian Carolingian context. But in their
Beginning in the 820s, Louis the Pious frequently gave church offices and monastic land
holdings to noblemen in exchange for loyalty and military support, by the late 820s, Louis sons
were doing the same.
92
136
resituation of the artifact and in their reinterpretation of kingship in a Christian context,
the Carolingian rulers failed to heed the lessons offered by the demise of the model of
kingship that the statue first represented.
Walafrid notes this interpretive problem in order to clear space for a
reinterpretation of the statue, a central image in the Aachen courtyard and a symbol of
the imperial office. Walafrid capitalizes on the work of the first generation of
Carolingian scholars, who had made language and literary work a powerful means of
ensuring influence. Walafrid’s virtuoso performance in the De Imagine Tetrici leaves
obscure some of its insinuations, but demonstrates indubitably the importance of
interpretive power at court. The poem proves the value of the monastic ability to use
language and literature to create a sphere of influence in a court whose infrastructure
favored the aristocracy for their ability to provide military and monetary support to the
emperor.93 Walafrid’s poem is an example of how literary works produced by the third
generation of Carolingian monastic scholars moved from primarily cooperation and
praise of the Carolingian ruler to instruments that could be employed to critique royal
policies or actions and utilized in competition with the established avenues of access to
power dominated by the lay aristocracy.
It became more imperative for monastics to wield influence at court under Louis the Pious
because in 817, the emperor had the Constitutio de servitio monasteriorum drafted. This
document laid out which monasteries owed the emperor gifts and military service, which were
obliged to provide only gifts in support of the emperor and his efforts, and which monasteries,
owing to their size, holdings, and income, owed neither gifts nor military support, but were
obliged to pray for the emperor and the stability of the empire: “Anno incarnationis Domini
nostri Jesu Christi 817, Hludowicus serenissimus augustus divina ordinante providentia,
conventum fecit apud Aquis sedem regiam, episcoporum, abbatum, seu totius senatus
Francorum; ubi inter ceteras dispositiones imperii statuit atque constitutum scribere fecit, quae
monasteria in regno vel imperio suo dona et militiam facere possunt, quae sola dona sine
militia, quae vero nec dona nec militiam, sed solas orationes pro salute imperatoris vel filiorum
eius et stabilitate imperii.” PL 97, 423B-438A. Additionally, letters penned by Lupus of Ferrières
both as secretary to Abbot Odo and after he succeeded to the abbacy at Ferrières indicate that
military service and the imperial appropriation and gifts of abbatial land in exchange for
aristocrats’ loyal military service made life quite difficult for the monastery. See, chapter 4,
below. On the role of gifts and military service as a form of taxation in Carolingian administration
see T. Reuter, "Plunder and Tribute in the Carolingian Empire," Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society 35 (1985), 75-94, at 81-86.
93
4
The Monastery & the Textual Community
The 830s were a decade of political turmoil and internal struggles for the
Carolingian ruler. Monasteries keenly felt the effects of the political instability and the
weakening power of the emperor. The letters of Lupus, a contemporary of Walafrid
Strabo and abbot of Ferrières from 840 until his death two decades later, provide an
invaluable record of his monastery’s struggles during the 830s and 840s. As abbot,
Lupus had to simultaneously navigate the shifting balance of power within the royal
family, fulfill the demands of imperial military service, and ensure that he had procured
the means to offer dona, or gifts due in support of the emperor, all of which were
particularly difficult due to the loss of an income-providing dependent house and its land
holdings, which had been given to a nobleman in return for loyalty to Louis the Pious’
eldest son Lothar. All the while, Lupus was trying to maintain his monastic role as
scholar and teacher, as well as be a spiritual leader to the monks under his care at
Ferrières. Ferrières was a mid-sized abbey in Burgundy; it was not amongst the largest
and most famous of Carolingian monasteries, but it was big enough and wealthy enough
to have been required to provide both monetary and military support to the Carolingians
137
138
in Louis the Pious’ 817 Constitutio de servitio monasteriorum, alongside the more
renowned abbeys of Flavigny and Corbie.1
The gifts and military support due to the emperor became burdensome after
Ferrières lost its daughter house at St-Josse in 829 or 830. The house was located in
northern France, in a region where familial ties to Louis the Pious, his second wife
Judith, and Louis’ son by her, Charles, were strong. The Ordinatio imperii of 817, in
which Louis the Pious divided the Carolingian realm into kingdoms his three sons by his
first wife Irmingard, allotted the northern regions to his eldest son Lothar.2 During a
rebellion against their father, Lothar and his brothers, Louis and Pippin gained the
support of a rather large swath of nobles from across the Carolingian Empire, and StJosse was transferred from Ferrières’ control as a means of securing one of these
alliances. If Lupus’ letters are any indication, St-Josse was a wealthy dependency on
which Ferrières relied heavily for food and various other necessities, in addition to
PL, 97, 425A. For more on the history of Corbie, see D. Ganz, Corbie in the Carolingian
Renaissance (Sigmaringen, 1990), and B. Kasten, Adalhard von Corbie: die Biographie eines
karolingischen Politikers und Klostervorstehers, Studia Humaniora, vol. 3 (Düsseldorf, 1986) for
a study of Corbie’s own political ties and the effects of dynastic succession and instability on that
monastery see Kasten, Adalhard von Corbie . Less is available on Flavigny, but C. B. Bouchard,
The Cartulary of Flavigny, 717-1113, Medieval Academy Books, vol. 99 (Cambridge, MA, 1991)
has edited the cartulary of the abbey and this provides details on the life, size, and influence of the
abbey in the Carolingian period.
1
Louis’ first wife, Irmingard, died in 818 and he subsequently married Judith. Charles was born
in 823. Judith was tireless in her efforts to secure a patrimony for Charles and pursued alliances
vigorously to this end: Her mother received the abbey of Chelles in Neustria, her brother Rudolf
St-Riquier and Jumièges, also in the same region, among other offices and benefices. Judith’s
aggressive politicking on young Charles’ behalf may have done much to cause Louis’ three older
sons to rebel against him in 829-30. See L. Halphen, Charlemagne and the Carolingian Empire,
trans. G.de Nie, Europe in the Middle Ages, vol. 3 (Amsterdam, 1977), 175-176, 180-182 and J.
Nelson, "The Last Years of Louis the Pious," in Charlemagne's Heir: New Perscpectives on the
Reign of Louis the Pious (814-840), ed. P. Godman and R. Collins (Oxford, 1990), 147-160, 150154. Both the life of Louis the Pious written by the anonymous Astronomer and Nithard’s
Histories, though favorable accounts toward Louis the Pious, cannot hide the threat that Judith’s
machinations and influence over Louis posed to the emperor’s older sons. In the Astronomer’s
account, the sons went after Judith first. Threatening her with torture and death, they tried to
persuade her to convince Louis to abdicate the imperial crown and retire to monastic life and they
forced her into the monastery and tonsured her brothers. So much space is dedicated to their
treatment of her, in both the Astronomer’s account and in Nithard’s, that clearly she and her
family exerted a formidable influence on imperial affairs.
2
139
benefiting from its income.3 The return of the property was the main focus of the
monastery’s political activities throughout the 830s and 840s. The fortunes of Ferrières,
St-Josse, Odo, Lupus’ predecessor as abbot, and Lupus himself provide a welldocumented example of a sea-change in the role of monasteries in Carolingian political
life.
The earliest letters in Lupus’ collection come from the roughly eight years he
spent studying at Fulda under Hrabanus Maurus (828/9-836). Up to this point, he had
been educated at Ferrières, where his parents had sent him with the intent that he
embark upon an ecclesiastical or religious career.4 Fulda offered Lupus both an
incomparable intellectual opportunity and a group of eminent ecclesiastics with whom
he would establish important friendships: Marcward of Prüm, Louis, abbot of St-Denis,
who would later become the chancellor to Charles the Bald, and the heterodox theologian
and rebel monk Gottschalk, among others. The connections that Lupus made at Fulda
would be the most important and influential correspondents, as well as his closest
friends, throughout his career and life. Early in his education at Fulda, Lupus began a
correspondence with Einhard, asking him for books and soliciting explanations for
grammatical questions he had encountered, and eventually demonstrating his rhetorical
skill in letters of consolation after the death of Einhard’s wife. These early letters show
how central learning and study were to Lupus’ monastic training and how much he
enjoyed this work.
In 836, Lupus returned to Ferrières, now under the direction of one Abbot Odo.
By now, Lupus’ reputation as a scholar was growing, and he had become known beyond
3
Epp. 30, 42, 45, 54.
See T.F.X. Noble “Lupus of Ferrières in His Carolingian Context,” After Rome’s Fall: Narrators
and Sources of Early Medieval History, ed. A.C. Murray (Toronto, 1998), 233-34. Noble points
out that that Lupus’ name may demonstrate his parents’ hopes for him; many of his kinsmen with
the same name went on to obtain Frankish bishoprics.
4
140
Fulda and Ferrières. The abbot of the monastery at Hersfeld, not far from Fulda,
requested that Lupus write a vita of St. Wigibert just as his course of study at Fulda was
ending, and Immo, bishop of Noyen inquired about his studies at Fulda shortly after his
return to Ferrières.5 In the fall of that year, some of Lupus’ friends,6 also undoubtedly
interested in the career of the promising young scholar, took him on a visit to the court of
Louis the Pious. Lupus evidently impressed Louis’ wife, the Empress Judith during this
visit, perhaps owing as much to the strategic importance of Ferrières’ location in her
efforts to secure for her son Charles a share in the Frankish kingship and realms as to his
reputation for learning.7
A year later, Lupus found himself back at court at the invitation of Empress
Judith, succeeding Walafrid Strabo, who had been appointed abbot at Reichenau, as
tutor to Louis’ son Charles.8 He seemed excited about the prospect that gradus
Loup de Ferrières, Correspondence, ed. and trans. L. Levillain, (Paris, 1927), Ep. 6-7. Lupus’
Life of Wigbert is examined in Chapter 4, below.
5
The term is Lupus’: Superiore anno, annitentibus amicis, in praesentiam imperatoris deductus
sum et ab eo atque regina benigne omnino exceptus (Ep. 11).
6
Evidence abounds for Judith’s efforts to secure loyalties for her son. Her mother received the
abbey of Chelles in Neustria, her brother Rudolf, St. Riquier and Jumièges (Francia and Neustria,
respectively), her brother Conrad received, St. Gall in Alemannia and secured a marriage with
Lothar’s sister-in-law, and her sister married Louis the German. She also pursued noble
alliances, including that of Bernard of Barcelona, whose wife wrote the Handbook for William,
trans. Carol Neel (Washington, DC, 1991), in the early 840s, and who was rewarded for loyal
service to the Emperor with the countship of Septimania in 828. The abbot of Reichenau
(Alemannia) was appointed as Charles the Bald’s tutor, Walafrid Strabo, whom Lupus may have
known from early in his time at Fulda. Any individual who came to court, especially in order to
educate or otherwise influence the future generation of rulers, was chosen in order to create or
solidify important social ties with the regna over which their sons would later preside. For
example, shortly after drawing up the Ordinatio imperii in 817, Louis the Pious invited a wellconnected Bavarian nobleman to court as the new teacher of Louis the German. See E.J.
Goldberg, Creating a Medieval Kingdom: Carolingian Kingship, Court Culture, and Aristocratic
Society Under Louis of East Francia (840-76). PhD Diss. University of Virginia, 1998. 32-33. By
appointing this important Bavarian magnate as his young son’s teacher, Louis the Pious hoped to
create strong ties of loyalty between Louis the German and the nobility of his sub-kingdom.
7
Ep. 11: “et nunc, hoc est X kalendas octobrium, indictione I, ad palatium, regina, quae
plurimum valet, evocante, promoveo.”
8
141
dignitatis aliquis9 would be offered to him on account of Judith’s influence, if somewhat
unsure of what such an office would entail. He wrote to one of his students assuring him
that he would continue to teach him and expressed excitement about the prospect of
further studies at the court. Lupus’ vision of the role of a court tutor was rooted in the
experience and work of the first generation of court scholars, such as Alcuin and Paul the
Deacon, whose own intellectual and literary pursuits flourished under Charlemagne’s
patronage. Lupus went on to say that if he did not receive a court appointment, he would
gladly continue to tutor as long as his student wished.10
The letters to his student betray Lupus’ youthful exuberance at the prospect of a
career as a courtier and how unaware Lupus was concerning the burdens of a court
appointment. Lupus assumed his duties would be essentially teaching and tutoring. He
saw no conflict between his monastic calling, which he defined primarily as a life focused
on learning and study, and his duties at court. He may have considered his time at court
and away from the monastery to be a productive and necessary exile, just as Alcuin had
styled his own move from the cloister at York to the Carolingian court two generations
earlier.11 Lupus did not seem to mind the prospect of living outside the monastic cloister,
9
Ep. 11.
Ep. 11: Quod (i.e. his receiving a court appointment) si divina exuberante gratia evenerit, non
dubites ilico te arcessendum, ut una permissu imperatoris degentes, communium studiorum
exercitatione jucundissima perfruamur. Sin autem soes notras eventus eluserit, rescribe an
velis me per amicos petere ut ab imperatore locus tibi quidem reddatur in monasterio tuo, apud
me autem studendi gratia, quatenus uterque nostrum voluerit, conferatur. And again, Ep. 12:
Quamquam, si nulla mei status mutatio provenerit, satius est ut apud me sis et in Virgiliana
lectione, ut optime proficias, — abundabis enim otio meaque prona in te diligentia, — quam
temet ipso utens magistro non tam fructuose quam laboriose proficias. Deo enim largiente, et
possum et adesse tibi incredibiliter cupio.
10
Upon leaving York, Alcuin wrote his O mea cella, a poem lamenting his departure from York for
the Carolingian court. The poem was probably written after his arrival at Aachen. See C.
Newlands, “Alcuin’s Poem of Exile: O Mea Cella” Mediaevalia 11 (1985), 19-45. The work is
divided into two halves; the first part recalls all the sweetness of the cloister and laments his
departure and the second half of the poem is a meditation on the ephemeral nature of the secular
world and a prayer that he, Alcuin, remain steadfast in his monastic outlook when faced with the
affairs of the court.
11
142
perhaps because a number of other court scholars, such as Alcuin and Walafrid Strabo
had been monastics. This naiveté, however, would not last long (nor would his
excitement for royal appointments); Lupus had felt, already in his short time back at
Ferrières, the weight of administrative duties and how they imposed upon his studies.12
Though he did not receive the appointment expected at his 837 visit to court,
Lupus could not return to Ferrières and devote himself to teaching and study as he had
hoped. He found himself burdened with administrative duties whenever he was home.
Si subitaneam nobis tuam attulisses praesentiam, he writes to one of his friends,
infertilis profecto laboris retulisses dispendium. Namque ita me
variis et inevitabilibus involutum offendisses negotiis ut vix intra
multos dies una hora vacuas tibi aures praebere potuissem.
If you had arrived here unexpectedly, you certainly would have put
yourself to unnecessary trouble. Indeed you would have found me
involved in so many unavoidable activities that I could scarcely
have given you one hour of free time for many days.13
Lupus found that life in the cloister, which he had hoped would be devoted to study and
teaching, was too often interrupted by political concerns and administrative duties vital
to the preservation of the monastic endeavor at Ferrières.
By working as Odo’s secretary until his own appointment as abbot of Ferrières in
late 840, Lupus learned intimately the political demands that an abbacy required and the
importance of currying favor with the king. Not only was Odo pressed into military
service in order to maintain for Ferrières the king’s favor, but the monastery had to
Lupus expressed this frustration in a letter to a friend who had written with grammatical
questions. He replied: Si tanta facilitate discuti possent a quoquam quanta moventur
quaestiones, olim ad consummatam studiosi quique sapientiam evasissent. Nunc, litterarum
studiis paene obsoletic, quotus quisque inveniri possit qui de magistrorum imperitia, librorum
penuria, otii denique inopia merito non quaeratur? Quo minus indignari mihi debes si
perexiguum otii, quod mihi vix optingit, indagandis quae nesciam, quam ventilandis quae jam
consecutus sum, judicem expendendum.
12
Ep. 10. The translations of Lupus’ letters in this chapter are from The Letters of Lupus of
Ferrières, trans. G.W. Regenos, (The Hague, 1966).
13
143
house visiting nobility, whose entourages proved a costly burden.14 Lupus again appeals
to chancellor Louis on Odo’s behalf to ask for relief from the financial strain of housing
and supporting one (otherwise unknown) nobleman, Zachariam abbatem. He writes,
Habeat igitur vestra insignis industria tenuitatis nostrae
considerationem et dignetur elaborare ut vel ad locum unde ad
nos venit vel ad alium quemlibet jam dirigatur, quia, ut rem
vobis ut est simpliciter fateamur, non mediocriter nos gravant
expensae quae illius hominibus tribuuntur. Unde per vos
sublevari deposcimus, ut sit unde aliis ad nos confluentibus
hospitalitatis gratiam impendere valeamus.
Will you therefore please use your good offices out of
consideration for our straitened circumstances to see that this
man is now sent to the place from which he came or to any other
place you please, for to confess the simple truth the support of his
men is no small burden to us. We beg you then to help us so that
we may have the resources to grant hospitality to others who
come here in large numbers.15
Weary of military campaigns and financially burdened by the imposition of guests, Odo
continued his politicking on behalf of Ferrières because he was fully aware of the
importance of undertaking such tasks:
Ceterum fama versatur inter nos clericos palatii diversorum
coenobiorum sibi dominium optare atque poscere, quibus nulla
sit alia cura nisi ut suae avaritiae oppressione servorum Dei
satisfaciant.
Now there is a report circulating in our monastery that the clerks
of the palace desire and even demand control of the various
monasteries and that their only concern is to satisfy their own
personal greed by oppressing the servants of God.16
14
Epp. 15, 16.
15
Ep. 14.
Ep. 16. Lupus, writing for Odo, goes on to appeal to the Louis regional loyalties and his ties
with the scribe himself from Fulda, saying, Unde in hac parte suppliciamus vestram nobis
vigilare prudentiam ut tenuitas nostra per vos esse valeat tuta. Namque, quia haud procul a
nobis educati estis, apud nos quoque fuisitis, qualita monasterii nostri vos minime latet: ubi,
preter studium religionis, quo sibi nomen inter alia coenobia vindicavit, non est quod
expetendum sit ei, qui si magni facit, nisi forte tam sacrilegus quis inveniatur, qui stipendia Deo
servientium in suo audeat usus convertere et eorum inopiam suam luxuriam facere. This
competition for influence and criticism of clerics at the Carolingian court becomes a common
theme in monastic writings in the 830s. Walafrid’s De Imagine Tetrici has a particularly scathing
allusion to Ermoldus Nigellus, an Aquitanian monk at Louis’ court, whose efforts at advancing his
position and influence knew no bounds – he wrote a sycophantic epic poem on the life of Louis
16
144
Abbots had a great deal more difficulty winning and wielding political influence than the
clerics and nobles at the palace, who were constantly in the presence of the king. Abbots
like Odo had to rely on appeals to friends, such as Charles’ chancellor, to ensure that
Ferrières was protected.17 Odo spent the months between Louis the Pious’ death in June
840 and his eventual dismissal in November of the same year, trying to ally himself with
whichever royal son he believed would provide most favorably for the monastery at
Ferrières.18 In the end, his political manoeuvering cost him the faith of Charles the Bald
and his office as abbot.
Lupus’ efforts, both as Odo’s secretary and after he had succeeded to the abbacy
himself, to ensure the security and stability of Ferrières and its monks influenced his
view of monastic life, the role of an abbot and the role of a monastic teacher. His letters
reveal his struggle to find the time for study he considered so important to monastic life
in the face of his abbatial responsibilities. Although he never ceases to pursue his
scholarly work and he fits in advice to students and maintains an active book exchange
whenever circumstances permit, he comes to see the role of the abbot as a bridge
between the monastic cloister and the world at large. Lupus was aware that the abbot’s
role as protector of the monks and courtier to the king put him at a disadvantage
compared to the nobility because closeness to the king, what Gerd Tellenbach termed
the Pious in order to regain imperial favor after being exiled for his loyalty to Louis’ rebellious son
Pippin of Aquitaine.
Lupus, in fact, may have been chosen as secretary in part because of the connections he had to
high-ranking clerics from his time at Fulda; many of the people with whom he corresponds on
Odo’s behalf are men with whom he had become acquianted at Fulda. See, for example, Epp. 14,
15, 16, 17, 18, 20.
17
See, for example, Epp. 18, 19. Lupus wrote the following in Odo’s name: Nos autem, in quodam
meditullio positi, fluctuamus incerti, dum deprehendere non valemus, quinam potissimum
regionem nostram sibi debeat vindicare. Namque, sicut relatio vestrorum hominum declaravit,
varia hinc fertur opinio. Tamen suppliciter vestram poscimus paternitatem ut, si consensus
omnium in Lotharium pronior fuerit et apud eum, sicut optamus et credimus, divina vobis
locum ad servorum Dei utilitatem concesserit clementia, memores nostri esse non dedignetum
potestis, a nostra parvitate, opitulante Dei gratia, propulsare (Ep. 18).
18
145
Königsnähe, often was a key factor in the making of a Carolingian courtier.19 The
itinerance of the royal court, the cost of travel and gifts for the king, and the importance
of stability in monastic life all conspired to make Lupus’ job difficult. In some of his
earlier letters, Lupus is at pains to assure his correspondents that he has recently seen
and spoken with the king and that he is faithfully carrying out orders that he had
received.20 His letters also indicate that he struggled with both the time he was away
from Ferrières and the impact of these absences on his duties as abbot and alternately
with the opportunities lost during the time he was forced to be away from the royal
court.21
Lupus’ letter collection traces a shift in focus from the mid-830s, when Louis the
Pious had seemingly recovered from the first rebellion of his sons and the nobility (829-
G. Tellenbach, Königtum und Stämme in der Werdezeit des deutschen Reiches (Weimar, 1939).
See also R. McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 751-987 (New York,
1983), J. Nelson, Charles the Bald (London, 1992), ch 2, and T.F.X. Noble, “Lupus of Ferrières in
his Carolingian Context,” After Rome’s Fall, ed. A.C. Murray (Toronto, 1998), 240-41. The
administration of such a vast area as the Carolingian Empire depended entirely on the loyalty and
support of the king’s subjects. Local nobility in the most distant regions commanded loyalty from
the people in and around their own land holdings and held a great deal of power in those areas.
In order to enforce royal authority throughout the kingdom, Carolingians employed two main
strategies: on one hand, they employed a body of clerics and lay nobles as local administrators
and in exchange for service and loyalty granted them offices and land holdings, and on the other
hand, the Carolingian rulers maintained an itinerant royal court that held semi-annual assemblies
at locations throughout the empire. The assemblies determined the governance of the empire,
and considered military, fiscal, and religious matters. They were also a stage for a more practical
intercourse between the king and his people: attendees were to bring gifts and could receive
honores or beneficia – titles, offices, or land in return for their loyalty and service.
19
Epp. 24, 26, 27, 28, 30. Also (Ep. 22, written in 840) Lupus takes care to assure the king, now
Charles the Bald, that his prolonged absence from the royal court does not indicate any disloyalty,
particularly in light of the feuding over kingships and territories between the sons of Louis the
Pious: Excellentissimo domino, judicioque sapientium multis et maximis regnis dignissimo,
summa veneratione nominando, inclyto regi Carolo devotissimus per omnia Lupus.
20
Licet inevitabilis necessitas me ad tempus vestris aspectibus subtrahat, sic tamen animus meus
vobis agglutinatus est, ut vos et vestra semper in oculis habeam, et, ut absque adulationis fuco
verum vobis confitear, vix comprehensibili amore complectar. Nam cur ab omnibus bonis
debeatis amari facile in vobis eminet. Unde quantum capio, quantum sufficio, quantum
intelligo, vobis fidelis sum.
Epp. 12, 28, 33, 34, 35, 38, 39. Several letters express Lupus’ concern that he is neglecting his
students and his duties as teacher in his prolonged absences, and several are concerned with the
vulnerability of Ferrières to “seculars who would like to overrun our monastery” in his absence.
21
146
30) and the Empire returned to a semblance of order and the emperor restored to his
rightful position of authority, through the division of the Carolingian empire amongst
Lothar, Louis the German, and Charles and the military and political unrest of the 840s.
In the earliest letters of the collection, Lupus, though torn between his abbatial
responsibilities inside and outside of the monastery, has faith in the traditional
structures of power, authority, and stability. Later in the collection, Lupus shifts his
efforts away from securing royal favor and protection and begins to cultivate a narrower
circle of friends and patrons culled primarily from his schoolmates at Fulda. These men
now occupied important bishoprics and abbacies in the kingdom of Charles the Bald –
Hincmar, bishop of Rheims; Louis, abbot of St-Denis and chancellor to Charles;
Marcward, abbot of Prüm, and Gottschalk of Orbais, to name several key
correspondents. Lupus writes to Hincmar in 845 that in his closeness to Charles the
Bald, he has “received as a gift from God the opportunity to help good people at the court
of the prince, so that what they do not have in themselves they may possess in you.”22
The importance of kinship networks amongst the Carolingian aristocracy in
reinforcing loyalties and preserve stability in Carolingian politics is well-established.23
Lupus’ letters reveal that monastics and clerics felt a similar bond and that monastic or
religious ties between men throughout the Carolingian world created a sense of duty to
ensure the rights and privileges of their fellow monks and abbots over against the
interests of the nobility. As a shift in the policy of Carolingian kings resulted in the
Ep 43: Cum tantis divinae gratiae muneribus abundetis, ultro vos cogitare apud iuvandi
bonos facultatem divinitus accepisse, ut quod in se non habent, in vobis possideant. Lupus goes
on to note the role that Hincmar’s education and religious profession play in his responsibility to
a fellow monk and peppers the letter with quotations from Scripture. He closes the letter as
follows: Vos autem interim mihi quaeso et quibuscunque similia patientibus Mardonchaei
constantiam, Esther pietatem impendite; ut hostes famulorum Dei vestra diligentia, imo divina
virtute, non ut tempore cuius mentionem facio, as suam perniciem, sed ad perpetuam salutem
vincantur et opprimatur.
22
See C.B. Bouchard, "Family Structure and Family Consciousness Among the Aristocracy in the
Ninth to Eleventh Centuries," Francia 14 (1986), 639-58; R. Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le
monde franc (VIIe-Xe siècle): essai d'anthropologie sociale (Paris, 1995).
23
147
handing over lands from bishoprics and monasteries as benefices to local nobility and
threatened monasteries and dioceses with the same insolvency as Lupus was
experiencing at Ferrières, the religious orders of Carolingian society began to formalize
and solidify bonds that had been created even as far back as their school days in order to
maintain a network of influence strong enough to compete with the nobility. A number
of Lupus’ letters to other monks remind them that they “have received as a gift from
God” a position of influence, and that they have been “promoted to a high position and
made a friend of the king for the good of the whole church,” and again, that they be
mindful of “the favor which you have received from God, for as you well know, you
should pay back with interest the talent which you have received from the Lord” (cf. Mt.
25:14-20).24 The ties between monastic communities as confraternities of prayer, which
dated back to the mid-eighth century, naturally led to the close association between
monasteries in the face of threats to their land holdings and solvency.25 In a brief survey
of monastic Libri memoriales, or books of the dead to be prayed for during monastic
liturgies, McKitterick notes that some of the codices containing these memorial records
set the names “within elaborately decorated arcades which resemble canon tables in
their layout” and as such, the “codex embodies the abbey...in which it was embedded.”26
As the lists of names grew to include members of monastic communities beyond the
walls of an individual monastery, the architectural setting containing the text continued
to visually signify the unity of the monastic community under a single roof.
Epp. 43, 48, 71. He also refers to his old friendships often in letters asking for favors or
influence: Cf. Epp. 43, 45, 64, 70.
24
O-G. Oexle and K Schmid, “Voraussetzungen und Wirkung des Gebetbundes von Attigny,”
Francia 2 (1975), 71-122. The prayer communities that formed between monasteries following
the Synod of Attigny can be documented through Libri memoriales, in which monasteries
recorded the names of the dead for whom they prayed. As networks of prayer confraternities
grew throughout the Frankish world, the books would contain larger and larger lists from a larger
circle of associated communities.
25
26
R. McKitterick, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2004), 162-172.
148
Furthermore, by the 820s, the decades-old practice of recording the names of laity from
the locality surrounding the monastery alongside the names of monks was losing ground,
and these libri were predominately, if not exclusively, filled with names of monks.27
Walafrid Strabo’s poem, De Imagine Tetrici, examined in the previous chapter, is
an example of the beginnings of competition with the aristocracy for influence.28 But
Lupus’ literary career demonstrates a more marked closing of ranks and an effort to
create an empire-wide monastic community to compete with the increasing power the
nobility could wield over the weakening Carolingian kings. Lupus’ career also tracks a
shift in the focus of efforts at monastic preservation from reliance on the stability of
imperial governance and the power and person of the Carolingian ruler, to an increased
focus on stability within the monastic community. This came largely in the form of
withdrawal from the political scene of the imperial court(s), and an increased focus on
intermural monastic relationships. Monastic education and literary training was the
driving force behind the reshaping of the Carolingian monastic sense of community and
of the monks’ separation from the lay aristocracy and withdrawal from secular affairs.
*
*
*
The monks engaged in writing the texts that defined and shaped their tradition
and community understood that their efforts depended on education in a monastic
context. Monastic education was not merely about transmitting knowledge of grammar
and the Scriptures or training scholars and administrators; it was first and foremost
aimed at passing on a discipline of life, at handing on to the student the virtues and
27
Ibid., 165, McKitterick uses the Reichenau prayer book as an example.
Nelson, "The Last Years of Louis the Pious," 147-59, points out that during the 820s, the land
and wealth of the Frankish Church and abbeys attracted the interest of the lay aristocracy. Louis
the Pious granted church and monastic lands to lay nobles during this time because the empire’s
borders had ceased to expand and benefices now had to come from within the present realm. And
although churchmen, like Lupus, did clamor for the return of properties in the 830s, they began
to “take a lower profile.” Nelson argues that this was “because they had learned that a ruler’s
undisputed authority offered their only real chance of protection” (155-56).
28
149
qualities of the teacher. Monastic education aimed at creating a “textual community”
that depended not only on the existence of a canon of texts, but also on an “interpretive
methodology articulated in a body of commentary which accompanied the texts and
instituted their authority.”29 In Carolingian monastic education, an understanding of the
interpretive framework came from the lived experience of the monastery. Carolingian
education, in this sense, was as much a charismatic as an intellectual model. A teacher
passed on a way of life and taught by his own example a curriculum of Christian virtue in
which study, learning, reading and writing were disciplines aimed at perfecting those
virtues.30
The importance of the model teacher in monastic education served several key
purposes within the community. The teacher operated in what K.F. Morrison has
termed the “mimetic tradition of reform,” which, Morrison argues, was a long-standing
convention in Western education, dating back to Antiquity. According to Morrison,
mimesis functions by mediating the space between asymmetries. In the case of
Carolingian monastic education, the teacher, whom can refer both to the master in the
monastic classroom and to textual constructions of the holy man, is an exemplar of
monastic life against which the student measures himself. In this way, the monk’s
education is just as much molding himself in the image of the teacher as it is about
mastering the disciplines of grammar, Scriptural commentary and so forth. The mimetic
M. Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: 'grammatica' and literary theory, 350-1100,
Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, vol. 19 (Cambridge, 1994), 15.
29
C. S. Jaeger, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideas in Medieval Europe, 9501200 (Philadelphia, 1994), 22-23, notes that “[t]he formation of character through a life shared by
students and master is part and parcel of education in antiquity and the earlier Middle Ages.” To
this I would also add that monasticism from its earliest also emphasized the importance of a
student submitting to his master, who is chosen on account of his surpassing holiness in order to
learn the pace and order of monastic life. The De litteris colendis notes that knowledge is prior to
conduct (prius tamen est nosse quam facere), but the acquisition of knowledge, learning or study,
is not education in the narrow sense of teacher lecturing and students taking notes, but rather
education is a way of life, a conversatio and the scola is a group of individuals who share common
customs and interests. The way in which the word scola is used in the RSB shows us that a
common or shared way of life was considered a critical element in education.
30
150
aspect of monastic education also promoted the goal of monastic unity or self-denial
because it encouraged young monks to strive for “sameness” over individual intellectual
achievement.31 The young monk imitated his master whose exemplary holiness was
measured by his own conformity to a literary ideal that held up earlier generations as
models of monastic perfection – making Carolingian rewritings of earlier saints’ vitae a
fundament of monastic education. The final and most politically valuable consequence
of this sort of education was that the emphasis on unity led monastics, who were by and
large from aristocratic families, to identify more with other monastics and with monastic
interests across the Carolingian world than with their own families and local kin groups
and their political interests.
Alcuin outlined this method of education in the earliest reform documents he
authored for Charlemagne. In the royal document that first outlined the Carolingian
monastic educational reform under Charlemagne, De litteris colendis, training in literacy
and training in virtue are presumed to be parallel intentions: sicut regularis norma
honestatem morum, ita quoque docendi et discendi instantia ordinet et ornet seriem
verborum, ut, qui deo placere appetunt recte vivendo, ei etiam placere non neglegant
recte loquendo. The letter draws an equivalency between regularis norma and docendia
et discendi instantia and also between recte vivendo and recte loquendo. Observance of
the rule imparts the discipline and the desire needed to learn and the desire to please
God through moral rectitude is the impetus for proper speech. The letter describes the
qualities of a teacher thus: interius devotos et exterius doctos castosque bene vivendo et
scolasticos bene loquendo. Here too, the interior life of the man is prior to external
indications of his learning, a result of his virtue.
31
See K. F. Morrison, The Mimetic Tradition of Reform in the West (Princeton, 1982), 17.
151
Monastic reformers of the eighth century were able to draw on a long, wellarticulated tradition of a monastic aesthetic of the body.32 The monastic aesthetic of the
body was rooted in self-denial and the body became a symbol of the corporate unity of
monks. This aspect of monastic education also mirrored the classical educational
tradition, in which discipline and self-mastery were at the root of the curriculum. In the
classical world, asceticism and self-discipline were the values of the elite; the physical
appearance and behavior of an educated man set him apart from the rest of society and
linked him to a class of elites. Elizabeth Clark notes that characteristic of classical sexual
values and ethics “reappear in transmuted form in monastic literature” beginning in the
fourth century.33
The medieval monastic reinterpretation of the ethics and aesthetics of the
educated elite constitutes another example of a “strong” response to classical culture. I
locate this “strong” response in the early Middle Ages because the early Christian and
Patristic writers tended to, at least rhetorically if not in fact, reject classical learning and
express distaste and mistrust for the culture of education in antiquity. Furthermore,
early Christian monasticism focused on ascetic practices such as sexual abstinence and
dietary restriction that were not novel in the classical world, but were reoriented to new
goals and given new meaning in the Christian context. In both contexts, however, the
purpose was self-mastery, albeit oriented toward unique goals. In medieval monasticism
the emphasis was placed on submission, which admits of another; ascetic practice in
Cf. Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early
Christianity (New York, 1988); V. Wimbush and R. Valantasis, eds., Asceticism (Oxford, 1995);
H. A. Luckman & L. Kulzer, eds., Purity of Heart in Early Ascetic and Monastic Literature
(Collegeville, MN, 1999); P. Cox Miller, The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late
Ancient Christianity, Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion (Philadelphia, 2009).
32
E. Clark, “Foucault, the Fathers, and Sex,” JAAR 56 (1988), 619-641, at 631. She notes that in
Classical Greece, a free male incorporated sexual restraint into his regimen of asceticism aimed at
self-mastery “ in order to create a life more brilliant than that of his fellow humans, and his elitist
ethic is accompanied by a quest for self-knowledge, for ‘truth.’”
33
152
medieval monasticism could not be deemed what Foucault called a “solo contest.”34 The
key difference in the monastic interpretation lies in the role and meaning of the master
or teacher. In classical antiquity the self-discipline of the master signaled his freedom
from constraining social norms and accorded him an exalted individual status amongst a
select number of elites. The self-mastery of the monastic teacher, on the other hand, was
the result of his efforts to submit himself with humility to the Rule and cultivate the
habits of self-denial and communal living. The monastic master was a man who
epitomized the monastic community and its virtues, not individual freedom and
exaltedness.
The bodily aesthetic and bearing of the Carolingian monastic master bore marked
similarity to ascetic men of the classical and early Christian eras. The ideal monk was
ingenio hic prudens, probus actu atque ore facundus.35 The Carolingian monastic
teacher was to be attentive and careful in his reading, a skilled grammarian, able to
dictate verses and a master of eloquent prose.36 This depiction of the ideal monastic
teacher is found in epitaphs, which were written to provide their readers with an
exemplar to whom they could compare themselves and whose learning and virtue they
should seek to imitate. Yet despite his expertise in grammar and rhetoric, the master did
not hold the exalted individual status of his classical counterparts. Instead, the monastic
teacher was an example of renunciation of the individual and submission to a communal
See M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality. Volume II. The Use of Pleasure, trans. R. Hurley
(New York, 1985), 68. E. Clark, “Foucault, the Fathers, and Sex,” 633-34, also argues that
Foucault overstated the importance of “passivity” and “intactness” in early Christian asceticism
and notes that the Desert Fathers “still exhibit that quality of self-mastery that Foucault found
characteristic of Athenian male ideals. The model of physical intactness that Foucault deems so
important in monastic literature arises relatively late, and is most notably associated with the
theme of Mary’s perpetual virginity.”
34
35
De lit. colendis.
See Hrabanus Maurus, Epitaphium Einhardi, MGH Poetae Aevi Carolini, vol. 2, ed. E
Dümmler (Berlin, 1884), 237-38 and Hrabanus Maurus, Epitaphium Walachfredi Abbatis, ibid.,
239.
36
153
ideal. In order to emphasize the importance of this shift, Carolingian authors wrote the
vitae of a number of saints to reflect the move away from the Early Christian individual
pursuit of holiness toward a strengthening of group identification. Along with this shift
came a refocusing of monastic ascetic practices away from the individual spiritual battle
in favor of a more communal spirituality of humility and obedience, and a focus on
learning, as we saw in Paul the Deacon’s reworking of the vita of Saint Benedict.
We can see the shift toward a more communal definition of monastic life in the
vita of Saint Wigbert, an early eighth-century Frankish abbot, that Lupus, a one-time
student of Hrabanus Maurus at Fulda, wrote in the second quarter of the ninth century.
The young scholar wrote the vita at the request of Abbot Bun at Herzfeld, and the
request and acceptance of the task was a proffering and acceptance of friendship
between the young scholar and the abbot.37 In this work, Lupus outlined the
characteristics of the ideal monastic teacher. The vita that Lupus wrote departs from the
traditional narrative template of earlier Frankish vitae. The most salient difference is
the subject of the text; earlier vitae tend to memorialize royal and high-ranking
ecclesiastical figures, that is, saints who were politically important to the Frankish elite
or Merovingian dynasty.38 Lupus does not address the imperial status of Hersfeld, where
Wigbert was first appointed abbot, nor does he give any indication of the saint’s familial
The exchange of texts as transactions that defined friendship in the monastic community of the
Carolingian Empire will be discussed in detail in Chapter 5, below.
37
P. Fouracre, “Merovingian History and Merovingian Hagiography,” Past and Present 127, 3-38,
at 9 notes that Merovingian saints were largely Frankish magnates who held positions of power
within the Frankish Church, not members of the Gallo-Roman aristocracy as had been the case
through the sixth century. G. Philippart and M. Trigalet, “Latin Hagiography before the Ninth
Century: A Synoptic View” in J. R. Davis and M. McCormick, eds., The Long Morning of Medieval
Europe: New Directions in Early Medieval Studies (Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT, 2008),
111-130, at 118-9, notes that “Gaul’s hagiography essentially concerns great founder bishops who
were pillars of the Frankish order...Gaul’s sacred history is political and ecclesiastical, with a
strong ‘national’ resonance.” F. Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum im Frankenreich. Kultur und
Gesellschaft in Gallien, den Rheinlanden und Bayern am Beispiel der monastischen Entwicklung
(4. bis 8. Jahrhundert) (Vienna, 1965), 489-503 describes this hagiographical development as the
Selbstheiligung of the Frankish warrior-aristocracy.
38
154
or royal ties. His lineage is solely monastic; Wigbert is a disciple of Boniface. The vita
does not include the performing of a single miracle; those are reserved for after the
saint’s death.39 The saintly qualities of Wigbert’s earthly life are imitable, and the
monastic reader could draw parallels between the vita and his own experience of
monastic life – particularly in regards to Wigbert’s youthful zeal for study and ascesis.40
Lupus opens the vita with a preface intended to highlight his education and
demonstrate his aptitude for Latin prose. He pays homage to the literary canon upon
which his education had been based, mentioning Sallust and Livy as well as Saint Jerome
and Saint Ambrose in an extended apology for his undertaking the task of documenting
Wigbert’s life:
Nec vero cuiquam haec ideo iudicentur infirma
quod octigentesimo trigesimo sexo anno
Dominicae incarnationis, indictione autem quarta
decima praesens opusculum cudens, ante
nonaginta annos acta repetere videar, cum
profecto, si vel leviter est eruditus, non ignoret
Sallustium Crispum Titumque Livium non pauca
quae illorum aetatem longe praecesserant partim
auditu, partim lectione comperta narrasse, et, ut
ad nostros veniam, Hieronymum Pauli sui Vitam,
quae certe remotissima fuerat, litteris illustrasse,
Even here, the miracles were not deemed plentiful enough and a tenth-century addition of the
Miracula Sancti Wigberti was written to strengthen the property claims of the abbey by asserting
the power and protection of the saint. See K. Leyser, Medieval Germany and its Neighbors, 9001250 (London, 1982), 36-37.
39
The prefatory note to both this life and Lupus’ Vita Sancti Maximini indicate that he was
uncomfortable with the abundance of miracles recounted in saints’ vitae. His appeal to the
histories written by Sallust and Livy appears in the context of his defending the accuracy of a work
that recalls events from the distant past, to which neither he nor anyone he might consult could
have been an eyewitness. His mention of Jerome’s Vita Pauli may be calculated to point out that
this hallowed text is chock full of miracles and its veracity is beyond questioning, and therefore
the text at hand out not to be blamed for the few it contains. In his life of St Maximinus,
discussed in greater detail below, Lupus has to grapple with the fact that a life has already been
written and does contain more traditional miracles. Lupus writes that he intends to provide a
more accurate life and to sort out the details that have been found to be apocryphal (ut Vitam
beati Maximini meo stylo elucubrarem, et res quae ad nos usque qualibuscunque litteris
decurrerunt, accuratiori sermone convenienti restituerem dignitati...Verum in hoc opere illud
me admodum coarctat quod multis quae dum adhuc viveret egit, ut palam est, silentio
suppressis, vix parva gestorum illius monimenta exstant, et in his ipsis quaedam fabulosis
inveniuntur similia. VSM, preface).
40
155
et antistitem Ambrosium virginis Agnes
passionem, cui profecto contemporalis non fuerat,
editam reliquisse.41
Thus, indeed, may no one judge this work to be
inaccurate because I am forging this little work in
the 836th year of our Lord, in the 14th indiction, and
I seem to be rehashing events from ninety years
ago, since, certainly, if a person is even slightly
educated, they are not unaware that Sallust and
Livy narrated not a few things which had long
preceded their own time, some of which they came
to know through reading and some through hearing
them told. And let us come to our own writers:
Jerome has elucidated in writing his Vita Pauli,
which was certainly very long ago, and the bishop
Ambrose left us the published passio of the Virgin
Agnes, who was manifestly not his contemporary.
As he begins the narrative of the vita proper, Lupus also reveals his knowledge of Bede’s
Historia when he provides the history of how Saxons came to inhabit the British Isles.42
By starting the vita in the fifth century, Lupus explicitly connects Wigbert and Frankish
monasticism to the venerable Anglo-Saxon monastic tradition.
Lupus describes how Saint Boniface appointed Wigbert as abbot of Herzfeld, a
new foundation in northern Germany. There, Wigbert, who himself sanctarum
Scripturarum regebatur auctoritate, managed to convert the brothers ab laxam ac
fluidam conversationem ad normam suae vitae.43 Boniface soon noticed that Wigbert’s
example was a powerful teaching tool; the monks at Herzfeld had learned the monastic
life aemulando magistrum. Hoping to promote adherence to the regular life elsewhere,
Boniface moved Wigbert to Ohrdruf in Thuringia. Lupus frames Wigbert’s acceptance of
the abbacy of Ohrdruf as humble submission to Boniface; the new abbot’s own
41
VSW, pref.
42
VSW, ch. 1.
43
Lupus of Ferrières, Vita sancti Wigberti, PL 119, col 685A.
156
submission to the will of his master provided an example for his new pupils.44 Here, as
at Herzfeld, the example of Wigbert’s life instructed and converted the monks:
Atque ibi successu simili desudans, quae perperam
gerebantur correxit; ac ipse absque diverticulo
carpens arctam viam, quae infatigabiles quosque
ducit ad vitam, catervam post se fratrum prospere
traxit.45
And there too, having encountered a similar
situation and working tirelessly, he corrected those
habits which were wrongly being practiced; and he
himself, without wavering, seized the narrow way,
which, in turn, brought all the unfaltering to that
way of life, and, fortunately, drew the throng of
brothers after them.
Lupus points out again that it was Wigbert’s unflagging devotion to the monastic life that
drew the brothers at Ohrdruf to follow his example. After a number of years, Wigbert
received permission to return to Herzfeld for his retirement.46 Wigbert, however, was so
overjoyed to return to his old home that he renewed his efforts at monastic perfection, an
effort that Lupus characterizes as behaving as a young monk rather than as one who has
the merit of age and so many surpassing labors to his name.47 His austerities were aimed
at a two-fold goal: that he might abstain from frivolous words (verbis inanibus
Lupus writes that Wigbert monitu paterno ad alterum compulit migrare monasterium (ch. 6).
When Wigbert wishes to return to Herzfeld, Lupus is even more at pains to emphasize the monk’s
humility: Itaque non frustra illic tritis aliquot annis, cum praeter id quod senio gravabatur,
anticipiti morbo subinde laboraret, nihil citra sancti Bonifacii gerere volens auctoritatem,
enixissimis ab eo precibus, intima tamen humilitate conditis, obtinuit ut ad prius revertens
coenobium (ch. 7). And although Boniface and Wigbert were near contemporaries, and Wigbert
may have in fact been slightly older, Lupus’ vita allows the reader to assume that Boniface is the
elder monk and Wigbert the younger. The text introduces Wigbert at birth, noting that he had
noble origins and then writes that from his early youth, he stood out on account of his surpassing
virtue (ch. 2). Boniface, on the other hand is introduced as a clarissimus vir (ch. 3). On
Wigbert’s chronology, see BHL 8879.
44
45
Ibid., col 685B.
46
Lupus indicates that he was sickly: corpus illius morbo urgeretur (ch.7).
The notion of a young monk being both better suited to the labors of study and efforts and
monastic ascesis is a common Carolingian monastic theme. In inscriptions for the walls on
monastic living spaces, young monks are encouraged to study in earnest while they are young and
able. See, for example, Carmen XCIII in Appendix 2.
47
157
abstineret) and that he should never leave off the study of Sacred Scripture (sacrae legis
meditationem nunquam mente deponeret). Both of these attributes were hallmarks of
the ideal Carolingian monk. Alcuin, in a lengthy poem that opens, Haec praecepta legat
devotus ut impleat actu, enumerates a number of guidelines for monastic life, including,
Contra verbosos noli contendere verbis and Magna quidem virtus est nam moderatio
linguae.48 Reserved speech and a studious demeanor signaled that Wigbert was sapiens,
a learned man from whom others should learn.49
The account of abbot’s life operated as a sort of asymmetrical mirror for ninthcentury monks, in which they saw where they ought to be in the discipline of their own
lives. In this way, the vita operated as a mimetic text both for abbots, who could
compare themselves to and imitate Wigbert, and monastic students, who could emulate
the example of the reformed monastic students in the story, as well as to Wigbert’s own
example of humility, obedience to a superior, and zeal for monastic practice. The
Carolingian monk lived in a cloister literally surrounded by exhortations to sing more
loudly during prayer, to devote greater time and effort to study while his mind was still
sharp and flexible, and to practice bodily denial while still in good health. Inscriptions
bearing these admonitions, written by several different monastic authors and intended
for the walls of Carolingian monasteries, survive for us.50 As I argued in Chapter One,
these inscriptions are important evidence that textual study had become a hallmark of
monastic life in the Carolingian period.
48
MGH, Poet. I, 275-281, verses 99, 113. See also verse 44.
49
Ibid., verse 98: Disce, sed a doctis...
In addition to the inscriptions found on walls of various monastic spaces and rooms, such as
those written by Alcuin discussed in Chapter 1, above, inscriptions would have been throughout
the liturgical spaces of the monastery, as dedications to altars, invocations to patron saints, and
inscriptions on monastic tombs. Dümmler included many such inscriptions in his collection,
MGH, Poet., voll. 1-4.
50
158
Monasteries in the West through the fifth and sixth centuries emphasized ascetic
practice as the goal of monastic training, and contemplation as the fruit of that goal.
Study was considered insofar as it was a form of asceticism. Monastic practice centered
on “fasting, vigils, and psalmody,” and the culture P. Riché characterizes as “ascetical
exercises and spiritual meditation on the Bible rather than learned exegesis and
theology.”51 Riché similarly characterizes Merovingian ecclesiastical culture as
dominated by biblical memorization rather than exegetical learning and notes that
Merovingian treatises display the literary talent of men brought up with an aristocratic
education, but in the face of heresy, they are not much more than an aggregation of
Scriptural quotations. The Merovingians, Riché writes, “believed more in the power of
miracles than in the success of an extended proof.”52 The major difference between the
hagiography of the Carolingian period and that of the Merovingians is the amplified
mimetic aspect of the Carolingian texts. Where earlier hagiographies emphasized the
connection between the subject’s nobility and holiness, which is evidenced through the
saint’s ability to perform miracles, Carolingian hagiographies aimed to depict saints
whose lives were imitable for monastic students.53
P. Riché, Education and Culture in the Barbarian West, Sixth through Eighth Centuries
(Columbia, SC, 1976), 100-22.
51
Ibid., 266-74. The valuation of miracles and the charismatic power of a saint is evident in the
late fifth-century life of Germanus of Auxerre, an important Gallo-Roman aristocrat and imperial
administrator. After he had been appointed bishop of Auxerre, Germanus was asked to go to
Britain to fight the Pelagian heresy. The trip is marked by a series of miracles and Germanus’
ability to effect such wonders overwhelmed the masses and “the Catholic faith implanted in them
was strengthened in all of them.” T.F.X. Noble and T. Head, eds., Soldiers of Christ: Saints and
Saints’ Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (University Park, PA, 1995), 94-96.
52
On the role of miracles in Gallic hagiography, see R. Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles in
Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, NJ, 1993), esp. 82-115; and I. Moreira, Dreams, Visions, and
Spiritual Authority in Merovingian Gaul (Ithaca, NY, 2000), 108, who notes that “it is important
to realize that sties of his kind are not primarily mimetic,” but rather intended to convey to the
audience a notion of religious and political authority that stemmed from the manifest holiness of
the saint who is able to effect miracles.
53
159
Although Wigbert’s vita is an example of the life of a Frankish saint from the
recent past, Carolingian authors often chose to rewrite the vitae of Early Christian saints,
as Paul the Deacon did with St Benedict of Nursia. Authoring vitae of early Christian
saints served the dual purposes of underpinning the Carolingian imperial claims by
invoking the Early Christian roots in the Frankish kingdoms and providing literary
exempla for the monastic community. The other vita written by Lupus that survives for
us is that of Maximinus, a mid-fourth century bishop of Trier whose circle of friends
included Athanasius of Alexandria and the great champion of Christian orthodoxy in the
western Empire, Hosius of Cordoba, and he was the theological adviser to both
Constantius II and Constans on matters of orthodoxy. Lupus also tells us that
Maximinus received an excellent education, both secular and Christian (qui nobiliter
educati, sacris pariter litteris instruebantur), and most of time that Maximinus is alive
in the text he is battling heresy by means of his erudition.54
Maximinus’ theological pedigree and his connection to the imperial household, in
addition to his ties to now-Frankish lands were ideal for providing Lupus the
opportunity to write a memorial to the saint that promoted Carolingian monastic
culture. Furthermore, the established text of the vita was written in an earlier Gallic
hagiographic tradition that focused heavily on miracle stories and provided few details of
Maximinus’ theological career. Monastic distaste for this sort of vita may have been the
reason that Abbot Waldo asked Lupus to revise the text.55 In his revision, Lupus is at
pains to add editorial comments for his reader that point up monastic virtues. Just as he
had done in the vita of Wigbert, written several years earlier, Lupus is sure to explicitly
54
PL 119, 668A.
Ep. 13: Huius tantae rei subtilis consideratio me tibi, Waldo charissime, suasit morigerari, et
quod iam inde ab initio nostrae cognitionis magnopere flagitasti ne tibi negarem effecit, scilicet
ut Vitam beati Maximini meo stylo elucubrarem, et res quae ad nos usque qualibuscunque
litteris decurrerunt, accuratiori sermone convenienti restituerem dignitati.
55
160
note where Maximinus’ life is exemplary and contains a mimetic aspect for students,
rather than highlighting his miracles as proof of his holiness.
Where the anonymous eighth-century vita focuses heavily on the miraculous
prediction that Maximinus would succeed to the see of Trier, Lupus’ version focuses on
the virtues of the young cleric, whom Lupus notes was on his way to becoming a
preeminent defender of Christian orthodoxy.56 Where the voice of an angel suffices as the
only proof of Maximinus’ worthiness and virtue in the earlier text, Lupus elaborates on
the saint’s character.57 Upon his arrival in Trier he submitted himself (se informandum
submisit) to the guidance (magisterio) of Bishop Agritius of Trier, a man preeminent for
his spirituality.58 Following the miraculous prediction of Maximinus’ elevation to the See
of Trier, the anonymous vita inserts a brief, boilerplate humility trope: se confitebatur
fore tali indignum honore.59 Lupus elaborates at some length on this, using the event to
teach his audience about virtue:
B. Maximinus huic oneri modis omnibus se imparem
fatebatur.
Ita quem iam secretorum inspector
probaverat, fragilitatis propriae rigidus aestimator de se
vilia sentiebat. Hoc utinam homines nunc et intueri
vellent et imitari! Profecto nunquam ecclesiasticos
honores, qui sanctis et eruditis tantummodo competunt,
correptelis vitiorum obnoxii, oraculorumque coelestium
nescii, pecunia mercatum irent, humerisque suis velut
gravem seque oppressuram sarcinam nolentes ac
reclamantes nequaquam prorsus imponerent.60
56
PL 119, 668A.
The earlier, anonymous life is edited in AASS May VII, 21-24, and the account of Maximinus’
early clerical training is as follows: Sanctus...Maximinus, et Maxentius frater eius, ac Jovinus,
divinis bene eruditi sunt legibus; Maxentius in Pictavensi electus est urbe a Pontificatus ordine.
Tunc Maximinus perrexit Treviros in Galliam, quia audiverat B. Agricii Episcopi; ut ibi
clericatus acciperat onus, in ipso iam supradicto loco, quod et factam est. Postea S. Quiriacus
nocturna perrexit vigilia ad S Eucharium, vigilias custodiens noctis: ibique Angelus veniens
Domini ad eum, denuntiavit ei dicens: Vade et dic Maximino; ipse erit Pontifex post obitum B.
Agricii.
57
58
PL 119, 668-69.
59
AASS May VII, 21.
60
PL 119, 669-70.
161
Maximinus confessed himself unequal in every way to this
burden. And though the seer of secrets already had
pronounced him good, he, the harsh appraiser considered
himself worthless on account of his own weakness. If only
men nowadays wished to consider and imitate this! Indeed
it is certainly not only just those who are suited to
ecclesiastical honors as regards their holiness and their
learning who are at the mercy of corrupting vices and
unaware of heavenly prophecies, [who engage in usury],
and they refuse the heavy burden as a weight upon their
shoulders and then, not protesting in the least, they might
pick it up again.
Here, the presentation that Lupus offers of Maximinus is intended to engage the
monastic student in a mimetic exercise with the master located within the text. Lupus’
editorial comments offer both an exhortation to monastic virtue and a critique of how
the Carolingian court handed out ecclesiastical offices and abbacies in return for political
favors, an issue close to Lupus’ own heart.
Upon his return to Ferrières, Lupus found himself working as secretary to the
abbot Odo and at great pains to maintain good relations between the Carolingian royal
household, which was itself splintering into factions, and the monastery.61 Shortly after
he wrote the vita of Saint Maximinus, Lupus was appointed successor to Abbot Odo.
Louis the Pious had died, and the Carolingian lands had been divided in a contentious
settlement amongst his sons. Odo had been unsure how the division would ultimately
play out and had hedged his bets, calling into question his loyalty to Charles the Bald,
now in control of Ferrières’ territory. His problems with regard to the assignment of
ecclesiastical offices and properties as benefices for loyal service were just beginning.
Another result of the division of the Carolingian kingdom was that Charles’ brother
Lupus of Ferrières is known to us largely through his collection of letters, written between 830
and his death about thirty years later. Lupus is well-known as a Carolingian literary figure, and
his letters provide valuable information about Carolingian learning and the Carolingian
Renaissance. The letters also detail Lupus’ travels to royal assemblies and synods, as well as trips
he took as an emissary of Charles the Bald. What follows as an introduction to Lupus’ career and
his views on monastic life come from his letter collection, the modern edition of which is Lupus of
Ferrières, Correspondance, ed. and trans. L. Lévillain, 2 vol. (Paris, 1927).
61
162
Lothar had granted the use and income from the land of daughter house to a local
aristocrat in return for military service. Lupus wrote a number of letters to both Charles
the Bald and Lothar enumerating in great detail the hardships incurred at Ferrières as a
result of the transfer of the property and imploring its restoration to the abbey.
In the fractious and unsettled political climate at the beginning of Lupus’ career,
he found solace in monastic life. His writings, like Walafrid’s are indicative of the third
generation of monastic scholars, who longed for a return to the monastic emphasis on
study and learning, detachment from self and from the world, and submission of the
individual will to the virtues of communal life that they had found so liberating as
students. A number of letters that Lupus authored from about 837 on bear witness to the
role of study, education, and teaching in the monastic tradition and the importance of
these endeavors to Lupus as a monk and an abbot. He also continued to make every effort
to fulfill his role as a teacher, both by devoting whatever time he could to study and by
instructing or overseeing the instruction of young monks.
Lupus’ concern about how little studying he is able to accomplish is linked closely
to his understanding of the role of a teacher in the monastery:
Si tanta facilitate discuti possent a quoquam quanta
moventur quaestiones, olim ad consummatam studiosi
quique sapientiam evasissent. Nunc, litterarum studiis
paene obsoletis, quotus quisque inveniri possit qui de
magistrorum imperitia, librorum penuria, otii denique
inopia merito non quaeratur? Quo minus indignari mihi
debes si perexiguum otii, quod mihi vix optingit,
indagandis quae nesciam, quam ventilandis quae jam
consecutus sum, judicem expendendum.
If questions could be answered by anyone as easily as they
are raised, all scholars would have reached the summit of
wisdom long ago. But now literary studies are almost
completely neglected, how few can be found who do not
justifiably complain of the ignorance of teachers, the
scarcity of books, and the lack of time for study. You must
not be offended with me, then, if instead of explaining
163
those subjects which I have already mastered I deem it
proper to devote every minute of time I have to study of
things which I do not understand.62
In this letter Lupus laments the neglect of monastic life and discipline as much as he
does the lack of attention and esteem paid to study. In an earlier letter to the same monk
Altuin, Lupus writes of the time he has spent devoted to study and reading since
returning to Ferrières after a prolonged absence, presumably while at the imperial court.
In this letter, he notes that although conditions at the monastery demanded his attention
immediately upon his return, that within a few months, regular life would be restored
and his friend could pay him a visit to discuss his studies without concern.63 Lupus does
not seem to separate the regularity of his own life and the cultivation of his own studies
from the rhythms of life of his monastery as a whole. If his schedule demanded too
much travel and a lack of leisure for study, he perceived the problem as a global one, the
suffering of the monastic community as a whole on account of the neglect of monastic
discipline.
The lack of time devoted to study was problematic both for Lupus’ cultivation of
his own monastic virtue and also for his students, who learned from the good example of
their master:
Nec, ut opinor, erro, si quibus divino favore viam
intelligentiae vel aperui vel planiorem feci, quam
praecesserim sequendi necessitatem indicam; hoc
est, lectione magistra vel utens, vel usus, si
auditoribus meis aut praesentibus id ipsum
sermone, aut absentibus obstinato imponam
silentio.
Nor do I believe that I am making a mistake if I
direct those whose pathway to knowledge I have
with God’s favor revealed or made smoother to take
the path over which I have traveled, if, that is to
say, by using or having used the written text as my
62
Ep. 9.
63
Ep. 8.
164
guide, I shall impose the same practice upon my
pupils, persuading those present by word of mouth
and those absent by a stubborn silence.64
Lupus’ role as teacher begins with his own study and learning because of the importance
of examples and models in Carolingian education. Lupus himself was a model for his
students, his scholarship (e.g. the vitae he wrote) was an exemplum, and likewise, the
subject of the literary work was an exemplum. The student learned to read the text and
draw from it the monastic virtues it aimed to promote. Then the student moved from
reading the text in this rather straightforward manner to the study of authorial intent,
and then on to the study of the author. In this way, the progression of textual study was
itself a progression through the purposes of the monastic mimetic educational tradition.
Study of the author and his intent was integral to monastic scholarship and the
development of the monastic sense of community because, as Lupus tells us in his vita of
Saint Maximinus, monks saw that texts were not fixed without a set textual and
interpretive community.65 This interpretive community was formed via the textual and
cultural education of young monks. The author of the monastic text, therefore, assumed
and even relied upon the audience’s acceptance of the monastic mentalité as the medium
through which the text could convey meaning through symbol and idiom. In this way,
monastic writing and reading required cooperation between author and audience; it
64
Ep. 9.
Lupus closed the vita with a short conclusion that addresses, not just Waldo, but legere
volentes. Like the preface, this concluding bit reveals Lupus’ self consciousness and consideration
of his role as an author: His, ut arbritror, legere volentes satis superque instruximus quam
efficax in sacratissimo viro pellendi spiritus perditos sit gratia et emineat semper potentia.
Caeterum si velimus et hac et multiplici aliarum virtutum specie quoties floruerit usque ad hunc
annum, quo scribimus, hoc est, ab incarnatione Domini octingentesimum tricesimum nonum,
styli officio designare, ne modum libri tenebimus, et erudito lectori minus erimus grati, dum
similia frequenter narrabimus.
As I see it, for those who wish to read [this], we have given enough and more than enough
instruction as to how efficacious the grace of the most holy man is for the expulsion of evil spirits
and concerning how his power always shines forth. If I so desired to designate with the help of
my pen how often by this and multiple other manifestations of virtues he excelled all the way up
to this year, in which I write, that is AD 838, I would not contain (myself within) the limit of a
book, and I would be less pleasing to my learned reader by too frequently narrating similar things.
65
165
required submission to communal or shared norms of communication. The author had
to write according to a set of grammatical and rhetorical rules, that is using a common
language or ‘idiom’66 that could convey to his readers the ethical or ideological content of
his text. The reader, in turn, was an interpreter of that text whose cooperation with the
author was the interpretive key to the text. Lupus’ use of the common topos of miracleworking in Maximinus’ vita illustrates the relationship between author and audience,
master and student.
In the preface addressed to Waldo, Lupus discusses the question of the form and
genre he will employ in writing Maximinus’ vita. He also tackles the issue of topoi and
the traditional form of the saints’ vita. He says that scarcely any texts of Maximinus’
deeds survive, et in his ipsis quaedam fabulosis invenientur similia.67 Of course, such a
claim allows Lupus interesting license with the miracles he will include in his vita and
allows him to shape, within the vita tradition, his saint. He does not eliminate the
fabulosa, by any means. In fact, the text follows a traditional format for early medieval
This notion of cooperation between author and audience is drawn from several sources. J.G.A.
Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the
Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1985), 1-27, uses the term ‘idioms’ to describe the shared
language whose interpretation is contested by participants in a political argument. Of course, the
contested space that Pocock studies is precisely the space where cooperation is required in the
monastic interpretive community. But in order to create the space, a shared code of
communication is necessary. D. Hamilton, Virgil and the Tempest: The Politics of Imitation
(Columbus, OH, 1990) and ibid., Shakespeare and the Politics of Protestant England (Lexington,
KY, 1992) are excellent example of the application of Pocock’s methodology to he study of
authorial intention and reception in a literary work. A half century ago, W. Booth, The Rhetoric
of Fiction (Chicago, 1961), argued that an author of a literary work employs what he termed a
“rhetoric” in order to convey his authorial intent to his audience. In order to do so in a novel,
Booth maintains, the author must imagine himself as his own “imagined reader,” and
communicate effectively with this reader through the “implied author” or narrator. A successful
communication of ideas and values from (actual) author to (actual) reader requires (1) the author
to properly identify understand his audience, and (2) the reader to properly understand the
rhetoric of the implied author and play the role of the actual author’s imagined ideal reader. This
relationship, Booth maintains, is difficult to properly create because of the actual author’s effort
to hide himself in favor of the implied author and because of the instability of the actual audience.
Fortunately, the literary works examined in the present study present a more straightforward
author-reader relationship. The author must use a “rhetoric” accessible to his reader, and the
reader must assume the role of the work’s ideal reader as imagined by the author, both of which
are encouraged by the monastic context in which both the author and the audience operate.
66
67
PL 119, col. 667B.
166
vitae; Lupus writes Maximinus’ vita but focuses heavily on the death, translatio and post
mortem miracles of the saint. Moreover, the central miracle of Maximinus’ life is one in
which he and a bishop, Martin, are travelling together with a donkey. A bear eats their
donkey and Maximinus commands the bear to carry their luggage since he has eaten
their beast of burden. The bear obliges and the two men continue their journey.68
This odd animal miracle seems out of place given Lupus’ effort to emphasize
Maximinus’ learnedness and virtue as hallmarks of his claim to sanctity. After all, most
of time that Maximinus is alive in the text he is battling heresy by means of his erudition.
One reason for including this story in the vita is that an animal miracle also puts
Maximinus in some good ancient company: Antony, Paul the Hermit, Benedict, and
Cuthbert to name a few.69 Lupus also knows he is working from an earlier text of
Maximinus’ life. The earlier version contains formulae and narrative themes that,
although by no means exclusively reserved for oral tradition, are critical hallmarks of it.
Such structures play an important role in fixing an oral ‘text,’ and Lupus seems to take
care to argue for the correctness – authority – of his own text in both the preface and
concluding remarks of Maximinus’ vita. Lupus reworks the story of the bear so that his
readership, Waldo and the monks at Trier in particular, will note the differences in the
two accounts and use these keys to understand the moral lesson that he is trying to
convey.
Just as with Paul the Deacon’s vita of St Benedict, Lupus’ audience would have
been familiar with the story of Maximinus’ life as it had been previously recorded.70 In
the eighth-century version, Maximinus and Martin arrive at a camp (castellum) after a
68
PL 119, coll. 673-74.
On the symbolism of animal miracles, see P. Boglioni, “Il santo e gli animali nell’alto
medioevo,” L’uomo di fronte al mondo animale nell’alto medioevo, Settimane di studio, 31
(1985).
69
70
The earlier version of the miracle is found in the anonymous vita at AASS, May VII, 21.
167
day’s journey and Martin goes to get supplies leaving Maximinus to look after the ass and
the baggage (ibique Sanctum reliquit Maximinum, ut custodiret eorum sarcinulas, et
asellum simul cum sportellis).71
But Maximinus, overcome by the exhaustion of
journeying falls asleep on the job. Martin returns to find Maximinus asleep and the ass
missing. When Martin frantically wakes and questions him, Maximinus realizes that a
bear has eaten their animal and commands the bear, “Veni, sequere me” adding that the
bear will fulfill the role of the ass which he had eaten.72 In Lupus’ text, the two holy men
are walking along discussing divine things (divinis rebus intenti) so much that they did
not feel the effort or exhaustion of the journey (ut laborem itineris non sentiebat), when
the bear approaches and attacks the ass.73 This departure from the original account is
striking; the example that Lupus’ Maximinus provides fits the Carolingian ideal – a
monk indefatigable in his spiritual efforts. Also, the saint does not suffer the indignity,
and more importantly, does not embody the bad example, of falling asleep on the job.
Finally, Lupus does not need to be so heavy-handed in the miraculous redemption of
Maximinus’ soporific lapse, and can dispose of the exaggerated “Come, follow me”
parallel to Jesus. The result is that Maximinus is a more exemplary monastic model
whose focus on spiritual things and ability to overcome bodily fatigue are imitable, as
opposed to the eighth-century version, whose actions are not a good model and whose
miracle cannot be imitated.
Lupus uses the well-known miracle of the bear as a place to “make a move” in the
text.74 Although his text intends to downplay the significance of miracle-working as an
indicator of holiness, he uses the idiom of miracle working to signal a change in the
71
Ibid.
72
Ibid.
73
PL 119, col 673B.
74
The model employed in this explanation is J.G.A. Pocock’s. See note 66 above.
168
values associated with sanctity. His audience would have understood the idiom and the
story’s prior context and was therefore equipped to follow the point he was making. But
in order for the audience to make the move with him, that is to comprehend the
intention of Lupus’ move, they had to not only understand the idiom and notice the
move, but be familiar with the monastic context in which Lupus intended the text to
operate. Lupus’ text works in dialogue with the earlier vita of St Maximinus, and
therefore requires education in a monastic context, and perhaps the practice of living a
monastic life, in order for the reader of the text to read and understand the episode as
modeling Carolingian monastic values.
Saint Maximinus, in Lupus’ work, is a scholar and an ascetic. His ascesis is not
extreme or unparalleled; instead, it is a result of his education and grows out of his focus
on spiritual matters over bodily concerns. Lupus’ text emphasizes that Maximinus
submitted himself to the bishop of Trier, displaying humility and obedience befitting a
monk. The picture of the ideal monk that emerges from Lupus’ writings is that of a
learned man who seeks to separate himself from the secular and political world. He does
not do this, however, through extreme solitude, but instead by submitting himself to the
rules and rhythms of communal life within a monastery. The political climate in which
the third generation of Carolingian monks lived made this ideal appealing and nearly
impossible to achieve. Monastic authors took to criticizing the actions of the Carolingian
rulers and the aristocracy, as well as expressing a desire to be done with any involvement
in the various feuds amongst Louis the Pious and his sons. Though their writings
express a desire for separation from political life, the reality of Carolingian politics, and
the value of monastic lands and wealth as gifts offered in return for pledges of loyalty
meant that monks had to engage in royal assemblies, military campaigns and various
other political rituals in order to ensure the stability of their monasteries. As a way of
reconciling the cloistered ideal with the need for political involvement, Lupus and his
169
fellow monks professed a longing for a quiet retirement in which they would find the
leisure to focus on their studies.
5
Conclusion
By the time the third generation of scholars, men such as Walafrid and Lupus, became
the leading monastic scholars of the Carolingian world, the focus on cooperation with and
admiration for the Carolingian kings had been replaced by an emphasis on further withdrawal
from worldly affairs and a greater focus on life within the monastic community. At the heart of
this greater focus on interior life was a shift in the Carolingian monastic purpose. Many of the
preeminent monasteries in the Carolingian kingdom had been founded essentially as missions
in the seventh century. They were placed in areas still pagan or only recently, and nominally,
Christian. These monasteries were, in effect, missions not just for Christianity but also for
civilization.1 This required the monastery to be a place where the retreat of the monks touched
the outside world, but remained untouched by it. The monastic ideal that came to be fully
developed in the hagiography of Lupus of Ferrières has its roots in the inscriptions of Alcuin,
who employed texts to define the relationship between the physical, the bearing and habits of
the monastic body, and the moral, the measure of his virtue and his closeness to God. The
leading monastic thinkers of the later Carolingian era did not have to reinvent monasticism to
The Franks and the Carolingians equated Christianity with civilization in a way that paralleled the notion
that Romanization meant civilization; see R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization,
and Cultural Change, 950-1350 (London, 1993) and P. R. L. Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom:
Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA, 2003).
1
170
171
achieve this shift in focus; they could find their inspiration in the work of their own teachers,
men such as Alcuin, Paul the Deacon, and Hrabanus Maurus.
Although monks like Lupus could not fully achieve the monastic ideal they describe in
their writings, their core monastic values became the foundations of the monastic reforms that
took hold beginning in the eleventh century. The eleventh century saw the rise of a variety of
eremitical movements across Europe that appeared in response to a distaste for monastic
involvement in secular affairs and the corruption that reformers perceived that involvement
brought into the monastery. These eremitical movements, however, tended to take shape as
smaller, more withdrawn communities, gathered around a charismatic teacher. Not only did
these new monastic communities embrace the values that their Carolingian forebears had
emphasized in their literary works, but often, the eremitical communities relied on Benedictine
monasteries to ensure their unmolested solitude.2 As these eremitical movements grew, and
particularly after the death of the charismatic teacher, a number of them embraced stricter
interpretations of the Benedictine Rule that emphasized as hallmarks of a true monastic life the
same values that the Carolingian monks had stressed defined them and marked them off from
the rest of society.3
The Carolingian authors and texts examined in this study defined their monastic culture
by reappropriating imagery from Roman imperial life, an endeavor that fit well with the
symbolism and the architectural program that Charlemagne was employing to represent royal
authority. Monastic authors employed the metaphors and idioms of classical love poetry, elegies
and pastorals above all, but their writings disconnected desire from immorality and repeatedly
emphasize the quest for wisdom and unity with God as the primary objects of monastic desire,
thus moving monastic engagement with desire from an ascetic approach aimed at suppression
See U. Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth
Century (Philadelphia, 1988), 1-22, esp. 19-22.
2
H. Leyser, Hermits and the New Monasticism: A Study of Religious Communities in Western Europe
1000-1150 (New York, 1984).
3
172
to a positive yearning for the fruits of their monastic labors. Here again the use of idioms like
retirement from worldly affairs and the leisure for study aimed at ascending to a more perfect
understanding of and union with God characterizes the new Carolingian monastic ethics of
desire.
The writings of first generation of Carolingian monastic reformers, Alcuin and Paul the
Deacon among them, express a tension between their role developing and implementing court
policies and advocacy for monasticism in its own right. This tension spurred the development of
a rich monastic literary tradition that ensured the transmission of what M. Alberi calls a
“monastically inspired religious and cultural program” aimed at achieving spiritual progress
toward a fuller union with the divine.4 Alcuin and Paul the Deacon both note that the Rule of
Saint Benedict provides foundational instruction concerning self-abnegation, submission of the
will, obedience to a (learned) master, and communal life. Even during the relative political
stability of Charlemagne’s reign, Alcuin was disturbed by the duties that life at court imposed
upon him and the detriments those duties posed to monastic study and contemplation. In a
letter home to a friend from York, he laments drowning in a whirlpool of worldly riches.
Similarly in a letter to Angilbert, a fellow courtier and monastic, he employs a nautical image to
illustrate his feeling battered by the requirements of royal service and says that he is trying to
arrive at a port of stability.5
M. Alberi, “‘The Better Paths of Wisdom’: Alcuin’s Monastic ‘True Philosophy’ and the Worldly Court”
Speculum 76 (2001), 896-910, at 898.
4
To Eada at York, see Alcuin, Epistolae, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH Epistolae, vol. 4, Ep. 53: Habeto nos,
obsecro, socios beatitudinis tuae, sicut te cupimus socium habere prosperitatis nostrae. Et orationibus
devotionis vestrae deduc nos in eumdem paupertatis gradum, in quo, perficiente Deo, salubriter
consistis. Tu tenes in manibus quod nos olim tenere cogitavimus. Sed fluctus saeculi nostram naviculam
procellosis ventis in voraginem divitiarum rapuerunt. Sed te precor ut me pietatis precibus in portum
quietis revocare studeas. Cupio, sed non facio. To Angilbert, Ep. 97: Dulcissimo filio vir fluctivagus
salutem. Te abeunte tentavi saepius ad portum stabilitatis venire; sed rector rerum et dispensator
animarum necdum concessit posse quod olim fecit velle. Adhuc ex radice cordis nascentes cogitationum
ramusculos ventus tentationum flagellat, ut consolationis flores et refectionis fructus nutriri
nequiverint. Tota nocte laborantes nihil cepimus, quia necdum in littore Jesus stetit, praecipiens in
dexteram navigii rete mitti.
5
173
As political stability disintegrated under Louis the Pious in the latter half of the 820s,
Carolingian monks like Hrabanus Maurus tried to shore up Carolingian royal power and
prestige by offering a unified political and religious identity for the king and the kingdom.
Hrabanus’ collection of poems in the Liber de laudibus Sanctae Crucis was aimed at linking
Louis with Roman and Byzantine imperial traditions, but the literary work itself demonstrates
the potency of appropriating and redefining symbols and idioms from the classical literary
tradition for use in a monastic context. Walafrid’s De Imagine Tetrici is an example of how the
later generation of Carolingian monastic writers redefined symbols and idioms in their works to
critique the emperor and the court and to increase the prestige of the Carolingian monastic
community. Walafrid’s poem employs the symbolism provided by the architecture to create
competition with the lay aristocracy of the Empire. The military and political value of provincial
noble families to the Carolingian rulers afforded them tremendous political capital, often at the
expense of monastic and ecclesiastical entities. Authors such as Walafrid Strabo turned to the
monastic appropriation of classical symbols of elite social status to secure their position relative
to the lay aristocracy vis à vis the Carolingian ruler and ensure that royal policies would not be
detrimental to monastic communities.
The changes that Carolingian policies brought to the monasteries of the Frankish
kingdoms in the late eighth and early ninth centuries were shaped by the physical spaces of the
monasteries at which the changes were aimed. Not all the old Merovingian monasteries were
razed, as St Riquier, and new Carolingian ones built in their place. Nor were all the pre-Caroline
monasteries renovated, with new libraries, schoolrooms, and scriptoria added on. The spaces in
these monasteries changed shape in the minds of their inhabitants as the monastic way of life
changed. The poems inscribed on the walls of the old, pre-Caroline monasteries and on the
renovated early Carolingian monasteries effectively changed the way monks conceived of the
spaces in which they lived. Inscriptions such as those at Tours marked off areas according to the
activity that occurred there. Eventually the monks saw these spaces as discreet locations (hic)
174
designated for specific purposes. The schola, once a word that designated the entire community
of monastic learners, but then appeared in the Admonitio generalis as a place for teaching
novices, is not just a single, purpose-built facility in the St-Gall Plan, but two single purpose
spaces: one for monks and one for lay pupils.
The division of public and private, monastic and secular, spaces became more concrete
after 820. M. de Jong points out that in the late eighth century, “court and cloister served as
interconnected locations of training, with trainees going from one place to the other without
crossing any real boundaries.”6 But she notes that by the third generation of scholars produced
in these “interlocking worlds,” the self-sufficiency and desire for freedom among the monastic
scholars led to the more strict emphasis on the cloister and separation from the outside world.
The space of the cloister and the claustral complex was the symbol of their distance from the
secular world, and, as a result, became a more architecturally secluded place with the
monastery.
The textual form of the inscription is the essence of the reputation that Carolingian
monastic literature has received in modern scholarship.
Embedded in rock, utilizing
monochrome verbs, and addressing the reader of monastery inscriptions as a traveller or
wanderer, the text greets the reader with the sharp contrast between its immortality and
immutability and the ephemeral nature of the reader’s own existence.7 In this sense, the life of
the monastic schola was not limited to the schoolroom, but was fundamental and evident
everywhere in the monastery.
But each generation of monastic thinkers returned to the themes
of monastic life taught to them by their masters, and acted upon them in the context of their
6
M. de Jong, “From scholastici to scioli,” 52-53.
The greeting of the reader as traveller or wanderer is a common theme on gravestones in antiquity, and
would have further driven home the theme of mortality for the reader of the inscription. On viator refer
to the bibliography listed in the commentary of L.Wallach, “The Epitaph of Alcuin: A Model of
Carolingian Epigraphy, Speculum 30 (1955), 367-73.
7
175
own time, moving them and shifting their meaning so that they could be passed on as a viable
way of life to the next generation.
By the time the third generation of scholars, men such as Walafrid and Lupus, became
the leading monastic scholars of the Carolingian world, the focus on cooperation with and
admiration for the Carolingian kings had been replaced by an emphasis on further withdrawal
from worldly affairs and a greater focus on life within the monastic community. At the heart of
this greater focus on interior life was a shift in the Carolingian monastic purpose. Many of the
preeminent monasteries in the Carolingian kingdom had been founded essentially as missions
in the seventh century. But as this dissertation has demonstrated, Carolingian monks promoted
their own internal educational and cultural agenda, and over the three generations of scholars
examined here, the royal agenda and the monastic were in tension with each other. The more
that monastic values clashed with royal imperative, the more Carolingian monks embraced the
imagery of withdrawal from the world, using both a classical idiom of the aristocratic villa,
retirement from worldly affairs, and leisure for study, and the Early Christian idiom of
eremitical life.
The monastic ethics that came to be fully developed in the hagiography of Lupus of
Ferrières has its roots in the inscriptions of Alcuin, who employed texts to define the
relationship between the physical, the bearing and habits of the monastic body, and the moral,
the measure of his virtue, particularly regarding his studiousness and his submission to
communal life, and his closeness to God. The leading monastic thinkers did not have to reinvent
Carolingian monasticism to achieve this shift in focus. They could find their inspiration in the
work of their predecessors such as Alcuin, Paul the Deacon, and Hrabanus Maurus.
The literary works of Carolingian monastic scholars examined in this dissertation also
demand that we reconsider long-standing scholarly assumptions regarding Carolingian
monasticism, the monastic reforms of the eighth and ninth century, and the sophistication of
early medieval literary output. Chapter 1 demonstrated how Alcuin used inscriptions to
176
reshaped architectural spaces and literally inscribe them with new meanings. Chapter 3 again
looked at the parallels that monks drew between architecture and writing. The imitation of
Roman spolia in manuscript illumination points to the parallel between the appropriation of
Roman art and architecture and the appropriation of Roman literature. In both cases, the use of
an ancient building block in a new composition, constituted, not an effort at reproduction and
repetition, but of retelling and reinterpretation. Furthermore, both architectural and literary
works were conceptualized as structures erected from smaller building blocks and the
composition of these blocks was important for conveying the full meaning of the final work to its
audience. This hermeneutic model, derived from architecture, informed monastic literary study
and production and scriptural commentary. Writers could employ texts that evoked a former,
esteemed cultural context, but inscribe the allusion with a new layer of meaning, or even an
inverted, contradictory, or ironic meaning. The signification depended on recognition both of
the former context and the aggregate meaning within the new context.
Chapters 2 and 4 considered literary works, particularly Carolingian adaptations of
saints’ vitae. These chapters demonstrate the agency of Carolingian monastic authors in
shaping the intellectual and cultural world of the monastery. This observation demands a
reconsideration of the Carolingian monastic reforms, the scholarship on which has long
emphasized the role of the Carolingian rulers and the royal court and not devoted much
attention to the work of scholars in the monasteries and the cultural and educational reforms
they were effecting within the monastic community. This dissertation also argues that
Carolingian monastic authors had a sophisticated literary consciousness that modern
scholarship have not given adequate attention.
Carolingian monks used literary works that emphasized their withdrawal from worldly
affairs as a way to gain advantages from the Carolingian rulers and important aristocratic
families in order to ensure the protection of their communities and their way of life. Through
the appropriation of the classical literary canon, monastic scholars accessed the symbolic
177
language that the Carolingian rulers used to articulate their own power and authority. Monastic
authors fitted these works to into the cultural and context of the monastery in order to acquire
for the monastic community the cultural capital that the body of Roman literature carried in
terms of tradition, antiquity and social prestige. To ensure that this status remained uniquely
monastic, monastic reformers separated the monastic school from the lay school, and in the
former, learning was integrated into the fabric of daily life within the monastery, in order to
make it inseparable not only from the possessor of those skills, but also from the cultural and
ethical setting of the monastery. The internal reform efforts revealed through the study of
monastic literary works ensured that monastic life did not devolve to a mere arm for
implementation of the Carolingian royal program aimed at societal and cultural cohesion of the
Frankish lands. Monks retained the distance and social status necessary to develop their
communities and redefine themselves with a reasonable degree of autonomy as Carolingian
political stability crumbled, a factor that ensured the continued vitality and versatility of
monastic life in medieval Europe.
Appendix 1
179
Versus in laude Sancti Benedicti – Paul the Deacon, late eighth century.
His quoque diebus beatissimus Benedictus pater et prius in loco qui Sublacus dicitur, qui
ab urbe Roma quadraginta milibus abest, et postea in castro Casino, quod Arx
appellatur, et magnae vitae meritis et apostolicis virtutibus effulsit. Cuius vitam, sicut
notum est, beatus papa Gregorius in suis Dialogis suavi sermone composuit. Ego quoque
pro parvitate ingenii mei ad honorem tanti patris singula eius miracula per singula
distica elegiaco metro hoc modo contexui:
1
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Ordiar unde tuos, sacer o Benedicte, triumphos,
Virtutum cumulos ordiar unde tuos?
Euge, beate pater, meritum qui nomine prodis,
Fulgida lux secli, euge, beate pater!
Nursia, plaude satis tanto sublimis alumno;
Astra ferens mundo, Nursia, plaude satis!
O puerile decus, transcendens moribus annos
Exuperansque senes, o puerile decus!
Flos, paradise, tuus despexit florida mundi;
Sprevit opes Romae flos, paradise, tuus.
Vas pedagoga tulit diremptum pectore tristi;
Laeta reformatum vas pedagoga tulit;
Urbe vocamen habens tyronem cautibus abdit;
Fert pietatis opem Urbe vocamen habens.
Laudibus antra sonant mortalibus abdita cunctis;
Cognita, Christe, tibi laudibus antra sonant.
Frigora, flabra, nives perfers tribus impiger annis;
Tempnis amore Dei frigora, flabra, nives.
Fraus veneranda placet, pietatis furta probantur.
Qua sacer altus erat, fraus veneranda placet.
Signat adesse dapes agapes, sed lividus obstat;
Nil minus alma fides signat adesse dapes.
Orgia rite colit, Christo qui accommodat aurem;
Abstemium pascens, orgia rite colit.
Pabula grata ferunt avidi ad spelea subulci;
Pectoribus laetis pabula grata ferunt.
Ignis ab igne perit, lacerant dum viscera sentes;
Carneus aethereo ignis ab igne perit.
Pestis iniqua latens procul est deprensa sagaci;
Non tulit arma crucis pestis iniqua latens.
Lenia flagra vagam sistunt moderamine mentem;
Excludunt pestem lenia flagra vagam.
Unda perennis aquae nativo e marmore manat;
Arida corda rigat unda perennis aquae.
Gurgitis ima, calibs capulo divulse, petisti;
Deseris alta petens gurgitis ima, calibs.
Iussa paterna gerens dilapsus vivit in aequor;
Currit vectus aquis iussa paterna gerens.
Praebuit unda viam prompto ad praecepta magistri;
Cursori ignaro praebuit unda viam.
Tu quoque, parve puer, raperis, nec occidis, undis;
Testis ades verax tu quoque, parve puer.
180
45
50
55
60
65
70
75
80
85
90
Perfida corda gemunt stimulis agitata malignis;
Tartareis flammis perfida corda gemunt.
Fert alimenta corax digitis oblata benignis;
Dira procul iussus fert alimenta corax.
Pectora sacra dolent inimicum labe peremptum;
Discipuli excessum pectora sacra dolent.
Lyris amoena petens ducibus comitaris opimis;
Coelitus adtraheris Lyris amoena petens.
Anguis inique, furis, luco spoliatus et aris;
Amissis populis, anguis inique, furis.
Improbe sessor, abi, sine dentur marmora muris!
Cogeris imperio; improbe sessor, abi!
Cernitur ignis edax falsis insurgere flammis,
Nec tibi, gemma micans, cernitur ignis edax.
Dum struitur paries, lacerantur viscera fratris;
Sospes adest frater, dum struitur paries.
Abdita facta patent, patulo produntur edaces;
Muneris accepti abdita facta patent.
Saeve tyranne, tuae frustrantur retia fraudis;
Frena capis vitae, saeve tyranne, tuae.
Moenia celsa Numae nullo subruentur ab hoste;
Turbo, ait, evertet moenia celsa Numae.
Plecteris hoste gravi, ne lites munus ad aram;
Munera fers aris; plecteris hoste gravi.
Omnia septa gregis praescitum est tradita genti;
Gens eadem reparat omnia septa gregis.
Fraudis amice puer, suado captaris ab ydro;
Ydro non caperis, fraudis amice puer.
Mens tumefacta, sile, tacita et ne carpe videntem!
Cuncta patent vati; mens tumefacta, sile!
Pellitur atra fames delatis caelitus escis;
Nilominus mentis pellitur atra fames.
Pectora cuncta stupent, quod eras sine corpore praesens;
Quod per visa mones, pectora cuncta stupent.
Vocis ad imperium tempnunt dare frena loquelis;
E bustis fugiunt vocis ad imperium.
Vocis ad imperium sacris non esse sinuntur;
Intersunt sacris vocis ad imperium.
Tellus hiulca sinu corpus propellit humatum;
Iussa tenet corpus tellus hiulca sinu.
Perfidus ille draco mulcet properare fugacem;
Sistit iter vetitum perfidus ille draco.
Exitiale malum capitis decussit honorem;
It procul imperiis exitiale malum.
Fulva metalla pius, nec habet, promittit egenti;
Caelitus excepit fulva metalla pius.
Tu miserande, cutem variant cui fella colubrae,
Incolumem recipis, tu miserande, cutem.
Aspera saxa vitrum rapiunt, nec frangere possunt;
Inlesum servant aspera saxa vitrum.
Cur, promoconde, times stillam praebere lechiti?
181
95
100
105
110
115
120
125
130
135
140
Dolia, cerne, fluunt; cur, promoconde, times?
Unde medela tibi, spes est cui nulla salutis?
Qui semper perimis, unde medela tibi?
Ah lacrimande senex, hostili concidis ictu;
Ictu sed resipis, ah lacrimande senex.
Barbara lora manus ignaras criminis arcent;
Sponte sua fugiunt barbara lora manus.
Ille superbus equo reboans clamore minaci,
Stratus humi recubat ille superbus equo.
Colla paterna ferunt extincti viscera nati;
Viventem natum colla paterna ferunt.
Omnia vincit amor, vinxit soror imbre beatum;
Somnus abest oculis; omnia vincit amor.
Simplicitate placens instar petit alta columbae;
Regna poli penetrat simplicitate placens.
O nimis apte Deo, mundus cui panditur omnis,
Abdita qui lustras, o nimis apte Deo!
Flammeus orbis habet iustum super aethera nantem;
Quem pius ussit amor, flammeus orbis habet.
Ter vocitatus adest testis novitatis habendus;
Carus amore patris ter vocitatus adest.
Dux bone, bella monens exemplis pectora firmas,
Primus in arma ruis, dux bone, bella monens.
Congrua signa dedit vitae consortia linquens
Ad vitam properans congrua signa dedit.
Psalmicen assiduus numquam dabat otia plectro;
Sacra canens obiit psalmicen assiduus.
Mens quibus una fuit, tumulo retinentur eodem;
Gloria par retinet, mens quibus una fuit.
Splendida visa via est facibus stipata coruscis;
Qua sacer ascendit splendida visa via est.
Rupea septa petens nancta est errore salutem;
Errorem evasit rupea septa petens.
Poemata parva dedit famulus pro munere supplex;
Exul, inops, tenuis poemata parva dedit.
Sint, precor, apta tibi, caelestis tramitis index;
O Benedicte pater, sint, precor, apta tibi!
Nunc, venerande pater, cunctis celeberrime saeclis,
Mitis adesto gregi nunc, venerande pater.
Funde benigne preces, caveat quo noxia vitae;
Quo vitam capiat, funde benigne preces.
Vincula solve mei solita virtute piacli;
Pectoris et plectri vincula solve mei.
Arce piis meritis varias a corde figuras;
Desidiam et somnos arce piis meritis.
Currere cede viam tua per vesitigia sursum;
Nil remorante fide currere cede viam.
Guttura claude lupi semper lacerare parati;
Ne male me rapiat, guttura claude lupi.
Cor labiumque meum fac laudent cuncta creantem;
Christum habeant semper cor labiumque meum.
182
145
150
Pestifer ille draco mea ne procul intima turbet,
Nonque mihi occurrat pestifer ille draco.
Me tua sancta phalanx habeat post funera carnis;
Oro, ne excludat me tua sancta phalanx.
Omnia nempe potes meriti pro lampade summi;
Magnus amici dei, omnia nempe potes.
Perfice cuncta, precor, per eum quem semper amasti;
Dulcis amande pater, perfice cuncta, precor.
Sit tibi laus et honor, pietas immensa, per aevumj,
Qui tam ira facis, sit tibi laus et honor.
Appendix 2
184
XCIII. De schola et scholasticis.
(Tours)
XCIII. De schola et scholasticis.
Hic pueri discant senioris ab ore magistri,
Hymnidicas laudes ut resonare queant.
Hauriat os tenerum lymphas devote salutis,
Forsan in ecclesia ne sileat senior.
Sunt anni juvenum habiles addiscere quidquam:
Usus in antiquis postulat Ecclesiae,
Instruat in studiis juvenum bona tempora doctor,
Nam fugiunt anni more fluentis aquae.
Annosus sylvis quercus vix flectitur unquam,
Sed frangit hominis dextra potentis eam.
Nam nec senior multis adsueta rapinis
Sub juga nullatenus fortia colla dabit.
Nec bene namque senex poterit ediscere, per quem
Tondentem in gremium candida barba cadit.
Esto pius, pueris studiosus et esto magister,
Vos vestros, pueri, semper amate patres.
Ut maneat nobis dulcis benedictio Patris,
Et ne nam natus mente tenente duos.
Here may boys learn from the mouth of an older teacher,
So they may be able to echo hymns of praise.
Let the tender mouth faithfully drink in healthful springs,
Lest perchance the elder mouth fall silent in church.
The years of youth are suited to learning anything:
The custom of the Church in ancient things demands
That the teacher instruct the ripeness of youth in his studies,
For the years flee away in the manner of flowing water.
The age-old oak in the forest hardly ever bends,
But the right hand of the strong man breaks it.
For the elder will not place under the yoke
Necks still not strong or accustomed to many prunings.
And nor will the old man be well able to learn, in so far as
The white beard falls into his lap.
Be a pious master and devoted to your boys.
And you, boys, always love your fathers.
So that the sweet blessing of our Father will remain,
[text is corrupt here]
XCIV. Ad musaeum libros scribentium.
XCIV. Ad musaeum libros scribentium.
(Tours)
Hic sedeant sacrae scribentes famina legis,
Nec non sanctorum dicta sacrata Patrum.
Haec interserere caveant sua frivola verbis,
Frivola nec propter erret et ipsa manus:
Correctosque sibi quaerant studiose libellos,
Tramite quo recto penna volantis eat.
Per cola distinguant proprios, et commata sensus,
Et punctos ponant ordine quosque suo.
Ne vel falsa legat, taceat vel forte repente,
Ante pios fratres, lector in Ecclesia.
Here sit those writing the texts of sacred laws.
And also the sacred dictates of the Holy Fathers.
May they take care not to sow into these their frivolous words,
And that hand does not err on account of frivolity either:
May they eagerly seek for themselves corrected books.
Wherein the quill may go along the right path.
May they punctuate and separate words properly,
And place the periods in their proper place.
Lest the reader in Church, should either read false things,
Or perchance suddenly fall silent before the pious brothers.
185
Est opus egregium sacros jam scribere libros,
Nec mercede sua scriptor et ipse caret.
Fodere quam vites, melius est scribere libros,
Ille suo ventri serviet, iste animae.
Vel nova, vel vetera poterit proferre magister
Plurima, quisque legit dicta sacrata Patrum.
To write holy books is now an esteemed labor,
The scribe himself does not go without his wages.
It is better to write books than to dig up vines.
The latter serves the belly, the former the soul.
Any teacher who reads the writings of the Holy Fathers
Will be able to preach many old things and many new ones.
XCV.
XCV.
(Tours)
Quisque legens versus per celsa palatia curris,
Semper habeto dei nomen in ore tuo.
Et dum lingua pias resonat per carmina laudes,
Ferveat illius pectus amore tuum.
Dum tu pulchra domus pedibus solaria scandes,
Immemor haud esto scandere mente polum.
Sol rutilans radiis domibus splendescit in altis,
Lumine perpetuo Christus in arce poli.
Ut sol illustrat totus praefulgidus orbem,
Sic fulgent sancti semper in arce patris.
Sunt a sole domus celsae solaria dicta,
A Christo sanctum nomen habemus item.
Si te delectet manibus habitatio facta,
Non manibus factam plus tibi quaere domum.
Quicquid in orbe manus hominis construxerat unquam,
Omnia nam pereunt in cineresque ruunt.
Quicquid honoris habent sancti per gaudia caeli,
Cum Christo pariter semper habere queunt.
Quo te ducat amor, rapiat, trahat, omnibus horis,
Et rape me tecum, quaeso, tuis precibus.
Sit tibi, sitque mihi Christus currentibus illuc
Protector, rector, lux, via, vita, salus.
You who run around reading the verses in these hallowed halls,
Will always have the name of God on your lips.
And while your tongue sounds pious praises in poetry,
May your heart burn with love of him.
As you climb the lovely porches of the house,
Do not forget to ascend to heaven in your mind.
The sun’s shining rays grow brighter in the higher rooms,
Christ shines with perpetual light in the stronghold of heaven.
As the sun in all its glory illumines the earth,
So do the holy ones shine always in the house of the father.
As solaria of the heavenly house are so called because of the sun,
We too have a holy name on account of Christ.
If the dwellings made by hands are pleasing to you,
Seek all the more for yourself the home not made by hands.
Whatever the hand of man has ever built on earth,
All this is now ruined and lies in ashes.
Whatever honors the saints have because of the joy of heaven,
They always are able to have in union with Christ.
Whither love may lead you, seize you, draw you, at any time,
Seize me with you, I beg you, by your prayers.
That Christ may be with you and with me as we run there,
As protector, guide, light, way, life, and health.
186
XCVI. Ad dormitorium.
(Tours)
XCVI. Ad dormitorium.
Qui vim ventorum, pelagi qui mitigat undas,
Israel qui servat, nullo qui dormiat aevo;
Fratribus hac requiem dulcem concedat in aula,
Et quos immittit somno vis nigra timores,
Compescat clemens Domini, rogo, dextra potentis.
Quique diem statuit homini sub luce labore,
Noctibus et requiem concessit corpore fesso,
Ad laudemque suam faciet consurgere sanos.
He who softens the force of the winds and the waves of the sea,
Who keeps watch over Israel, the one who sleeps in no age;
May he grant sweet rest to the brothers in this hall,
And those fears which black force sets loose during sleep,
May the merciful right hand of the powerful Lord, I ask, restrain them.
And he who established the day for the toil of man in daylight,
Also granted rest in the nights for the weary body,
That he may make them rise again healthy to his glory.
XCVII. Ad latrinium
XCVII. Ad latrinium
(Tours)
Luxuriam ventris, lector, cognosce vorantis,
Putrida qui sentis stercora nare tuo.
Ingluviem fugito ventris, quapropter in ore,
Tempore sit certo sobria vita tibi.
Ubi libri custodiuntur
Parvula tecta tenent coelestis dona sophiae,
Quae tu, lector ovans, pectore disce pio.
Omnibus est gazis melior sapientia donis,
Quam modo qui sequitur lucis habebit iter.
Recognise, reader, the extravagance of your greedy belly,
You who smell with your nose the rotten dung.
Flee from the gluttony of your stomach, so that in your mouth,
The sober life will be yours in good time.
(?)
Ubi libri custodiuntur
Little cubbies hold the gifts of heavenly wisdom,
Which you, rejoicing reader, learn dutifully by heart.
Wisdom is better than all gifts of treasure,
He who pursues it will have a well-lit path.
187
De via duplici ad scholam et cauponam.
(St-Amand)
Hic tu per stratum pergens subsiste, viator,
Versiculos paucos studiosa perlege mente.
In via, quam cernis, duplici ditatur honore:
Haec ad cauponem ducit potare volentem:
Elige, quod placeat tibi nunc iter, ecce viator,
Aut potare mecum, sacros aut discere libros.
Si potare velis, nummos praestare debebis:
Discere si cupias, gratis, quod quaeris, habebis.
De via duplici ad scholam et cauponam.
Stop here, traveller, as you walk along this corridor,
Read over these few meagre lines in your keen mind.
On the way, as you see, you are enriched by a twofold honor:
This takes you to the wine cellar should you want to drink:
Choose, what way pleases you, oh traveller,
Whether to drink with me, or to study the holy books.
If you wish to drink, you must hand over coins;
Should you desire to learn, without cost, you will have what you seek.
188
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