Reading the Bible in the Middle Ages 1474245722, 9781474245722

Table of contents :
Preface vi
List of Contributors vii
List of Abbreviations viii
List of Tables ix
Introduction 1
Jinty Nelson and Damien Kempf
1 Twelfth-Century Notions of the Canon of the Bible 7
Cornelia Linde
2 The Orator as Exegete: Cassiodorus as a Reader of the Psalms 19
Gerda Heydemann
3 Lay Readers of the Bible in the Carolingian Ninth Century 43
Jinty Nelson
4 Jeremiah, Job, Terence and Paschasius Radbertus: Political Rhetoric
and Biblical Authority in the Epitaphium Arsenii 57
Mayke de Jong
5 Biblical Readings for the Night Office in Eleventh-Century
Germany: Reconciling Theory and Practice 77
Henry Parkes
6 ‘Quid nobis cum allegoria?’ The Literal Reading of the Bible in the
era of the Investiture Conflict 101
Florian Hartmann
7 Sibyls, Tanners and Leper Kings: Taking Notes from and about the
Bible in Twelfth-Century England 119
Julie Barrau
8 Violence, Control, Prophecy and Power in Twelfth-Century France
and Germany 147
Claire Weeda
Notes 167
Bibliography 267
Index 279

Citation preview

Reading the Bible in the Middle Ages

Studies in Early Medieval History Series editor: Ian Wood Concise books on current areas of debate in late antiquity/ early medieval studies, covering history, archaeology, cultural and social studies, and the interfaces between them. Dark Age Liguria: Regional Identity and Local Power, c. 400–1020, Ross Balzaretti Inventing Byzantine Iconoclasm, Leslie Brubaker Pagan Goddesses in the Early Germanic World: Eostra, Hreda and the Cult of Matrons, Philip A. Shaw Vikings in the South, Ann Christys

Reading the Bible in the Middle Ages Edited by Jinty Nelson and Damien Kempf

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 Paperback edition first published 2017 © Jinty Nelson, Damien Kempf and Contributors, 2015 Jinty Nelson and Damien Kempf have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the authors. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-47424-572-2 PB: 978-1-35003-628-4 ePDF: 978-1-47424-571-5 ePub: 978-1-47424-573-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Reading the Bible in the Middle Ages / edited by Jinty Nelson and Damien Kempf. -- 1 [edition]. pages cm. -- (Studies in early medieval history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4742-4572-2 (hb) -- ISBN 978-1-4742-4573-9 (epub) -- ISBN 978-1-4742-4571-5 (epdf) 1. Bible--Criticism, interpretation, etc.--History--Middle Ages, 600-1500. I. Nelson, Janet L. (Janet Laughland), 1942- editor. BS500.R388 2015 220.609›02--dc23 2015018902 Series: Studies in Early Medieval History Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

Contents Preface List of Contributors List of Abbreviations List of Tables

vi vii viii ix

Introduction 1 Jinty Nelson and Damien Kempf 1

Twelfth-Century Notions of the Canon of the Bible Cornelia Linde

2

The Orator as Exegete: Cassiodorus as a Reader of the Psalms Gerda Heydemann

19

3

Lay Readers of the Bible in the Carolingian Ninth Century Jinty Nelson

43

4

Jeremiah, Job, Terence and Paschasius Radbertus: Political Rhetoric and Biblical Authority in the Epitaphium Arsenii Mayke de Jong

57

Biblical Readings for the Night Office in Eleventh-Century Germany: Reconciling Theory and Practice Henry Parkes

77

5

6 ‘Quid nobis cum allegoria?’ The Literal Reading of the Bible in the era of the Investiture Conflict Florian Hartmann 7

8

7

101

Sibyls, Tanners and Leper Kings: Taking Notes from and about the Bible in Twelfth-Century England Julie Barrau

119

Violence, Control, Prophecy and Power in Twelfth-Century France and Germany Claire Weeda

147

Notes Bibliography Index

167 267 279

Preface The editors have been very grateful for help of various kinds. The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature and its then executive officer, David Rundle, and the Department of History at the University of Liverpool, especially Harald Braun, contributed greatly to the organization of the 2011 day-conference; and Sarah Hamilton of the University of Exeter drew in several new contributions for the published volume. We owe much to the support and expertise of Alice Reid and Anna MacDiarmid at Bloomsbury, to the encouragement of Ian Wood, the general editor of Bloomsbury’s Series of Medieval Studies, and to the anonymous readers whose thoughtful comments improved the various chapters. Our thanks go above all to the contributors, for patience beyond the call of duty. The picture of the book cover, taken from the Canterbury Bible (Lambeth Palace Lib. MS 3, fol. 301v, c. 1140–50), depicts the prophet Amos preaching. Unlike other prophets, Amos was a herdsman, and he is shown here addressing other herdsmen. The prophet with scroll may be an artistic motif, but it shows the man as a writer, reading out a text, which is of course his biblical text.

List of Contributors Julie Barrau University Lecturer in Medieval British History, University of Cambridge Mayke De Jong Professor of Medieval History, University of Utrecht, Netherlands Florian Hartmann Lehrstuhl für Mittlere Geschichte, RWTH Aachen University, Germany Gerda Heydemann Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin, Mittelalterforschung, University of Vienna, Austria

Institut

für

Damien Kempf Senior Lecturer in Medieval History, University of Liverpool Cornelia Linde Research Fellow, German Historical Institute, London Jinty Nelson Emeritus Professor, Department of History, King’s College London Henry Parkes Assistant Professor, Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University, USA Claire Weeda Assistant Professor, Radboud University, Netherlands

List of Abbreviations CCCM

Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Medievalis

CCSL

Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina

CSEL

Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum

CUP

Cambridge University Press

EME

Early Medieval Europe

EHR

English Historical Review

MGH AA CAPIT. CAPIT. EPISC. CONC. EPP. EPP. KA EPP. SEL. FONTES POET. LAT. SRG SS

Auctores Antiquissimi Capitularia, legum sectio II, Capitularia regum Capitularia Episcoporum Concilia, legum sectio III Epistulae III–VII Epistulae Merovingici et Karolini Aevi Epistolae Karolini aevi Epistulae selectae in usum scholarum Fontes iuris germanici antique in usum scholarum Poetae Latini aevi karolini Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum Scriptores in folio

NCMH

New Cambridge Medieval History

ÖAW

Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften

OUP

Oxford University Press

PL

Patrologia Latina

RB

Revue Bénédictine

SC

Sources chrétiennes

SETTIMANE Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo TRHS

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

List of Tables Table 1: The biblical canon of the Decretum Gelasianum compared to the annual cycle of Night Office readings in OR XIII

79

Table 2: Varying titles for eleventh-century lectionary ordines, showing the apparently mediatory role of the Freising PRG manuscript Clm 6425

85

Table 3: Five different sources of authority on biblical reading at the Night Office, each attributable to tenth- or eleventh-century Freising

86

Table 4: Liturgical books for the Office from tenth- and early eleventhcentury St Gall

87

Table 5: The disjuncture between the requirements of OR XIII and the actual provision of biblical readings in early St Gall Office books (shaded boxes are beyond the scope of the individual sources)

90

Table 6: The explicit association in Constance sources between postEaster readings and their related series of responsories (historia)96 Table 7: The differing treatments of 1 Samuel in sources of Night Office reading from St Gall and Constance

97

Introduction Jinty Nelson and Damien Kempf

For medieval Christians, the Bible was the book of guidance above all others, and Bible reading was the route to religious knowledge.1 These generalizations need to be qualified, however. The vast majority of medieval people accessed scriptural knowledge or guidance not by reading but by hearing and memorizing little bits of it. The Bible was very seldom available as a whole but far more often in parts – the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Gospels – and, as far as laypeople were concerned, in memorized sound-bites in the liturgy, in chants and hymns, or in sermons, or in legal records of gifts to churches. A singlevolume Bible might belong to an episcopal church, or a big monastery, carried and shown as a sacred ritual object in processions, or revered on the altar from afar. Lay Bible-owners were extremely few, and almost all were high-born. For private purposes, clergy, monks, laypeople alike, if literate, were far more likely to read a psalter (central to monastic prayer), or a ‘brief collection’ (breviary, or Book of Hours) consisting of select psalms augmented by prayers and hymns. Access to the Bible in any form varied greatly between time, place and social status or class. During the centuries covered by the term Middle Ages, huge variations in religious experience across time and place and social class were mirrored in differing degrees of direct acquaintance with the Bible and different ways of using it.2 This book began in a day-conference at the University of Liverpool in 2011: ‘Bibles: Reading Scriptures from Medieval to Early Modern’. In a single day, no such coverage was attainable, nor, frankly, was it aimed at. Speakers conveyed impressions on Bible reading/hearing in particular times and places: impressions that made up for inevitable patchiness by being both sharply focused and chosen with an eye to broader implications for religious practice. The present book is an adaptation to contributors’ choices and availability, and the resultant coverage of periods and places. Reduced chronologically to a still-generous 600 years or so, our volume retains a broad spatial coverage within a post-Roman Latin Christendom

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Reading the Bible in the Middle Ages

ranging from Italy, the Carolingian world including France and Germany, thence to the Anglo-Norman realm and the broader European culture of the schools. Topics remain varied, thus drawing on different types of medievalist expertise, yet all cluster beneath the overarching theme of Bible-readings/hearings/-understandings. Of course the period between the sixth century and the twelfth was not the only time in European history that the Bible was read assiduously with a view to applications in religious, social and political practice. Nevertheless, these centuries gave room and time to distinctive uses. We have tried to convey the freshness of these, as well as the distinctive creativity of writers scripturally-inspired. Light-touch editors have steered a course between excessive concern for coherence, that might have cabined and confined plentiful original insights that occurred serendipitously, and a fundamentally unified agenda and approach. The contributors to the present book have tried to ask more insistently than before who exactly medieval readers were, and how they read. Their findings are predictably diverse. True, the Church Fathers Jerome, Ambrose and Augustine, though their methods of interpreting Scripture were by no means uniform, basically agreed on the distinction between the literal approach, and the allegorical one. The literal speaks for itself, taking the Bible story as history. The allegorical was variously split into the typological, which explained, often through number symbolism, how the Old and New Testaments were connected (the four main Old Testament prophets prefigured the four Gospel-writers); the tropological, through which moral teachings were discerned in particular events and experiences; and the anagogical, whose meanings were worked out from prophecies and signalled fulfilment in the future. Within these parameters, there were great possibilities for variation. Drawing on earlier Fathers, and on both historical and allegorical traditions, but also adding their own responses to the biblical texts, and writing with exceptional clarity, the commentaries of Pope Gregory I and Bede greatly influenced subsequent biblical exegesis. This is apparent in the various periods of ‘renaissance’ and reform that medieval historians have identified by the labels Carolingian, Ottonian, Gregorian and Twelfth-Century. In all these periods of creative engagement with the Bible, scholars wrote comments or glosses on, often in the margins of, Bible texts. These cumulative efforts culminated in the production of the ‘Ordinary Gloss’ (Glossa Ordinaria) in the early twelfth century.3 All the contributions to the present book contain examples of Bible-readings and Bible-readers that borrowed from Gregory and Bede. Surprising only because of its sheer bulk, Gregory’s Moralia in Job was a perennial standby, diffused quickly and widely,

Introduction

3

and later much-cited by Bede and by Bible-scholars from the Carolingian period to the later Middle Ages.4 This volume opens with Cornelia Linde’s succinct account of what the medieval Latin Bible actually was – and was not – focusing on two twelfthcentury authors with different views. Many readers will be surprised to find that, as late as the twelfth century, no canon of the books of the Bible had yet come to be officially defined and promulgated: scholars did not just discuss, they havered over whether certain books merited a place in the canon, how the sequence of books should be ordered, and even how they should be labelled. Linde’s contribution clears the ground for all the rest, and at the same time provides a commentary on them all, by showing that different choices about what to include or exclude, and different definitions of the Bible’s contents and structure, and their meanings, remained not just possible but rife in the twelfth-century proto-universities – just as they had been earlier, in late antiquity or the age of Gregorian Reform, or indeed later, until 1442. It took a Renaissance pope and council to lay down the law about what modern Bible-readers tend to assume had been settled in the Dark Ages. Neither Gregory nor Bede wrote Psalm-commentaries. The man who had done so before their times was Cassiodorus. Gerda Heydemann approaches Cassiodorus’s work, written in the 540s, in Italy, through the needs and classinterests of his intended audience. Her chapter is profoundly informed by a more general perception that ‘the psalms – in a much stronger sense than many other texts – have the potential to shape and transform the self-understanding of their readers’, in this case, elite laymen as well as monks and clergy, keen to learn ‘how power had to be understood in a Christian society’. In the 890s in Anglo-Saxon England, a separate, ultimately Greek, tradition of psalm-exegesis shows up in King Alfred’s uncompleted vernacular translation of the Psalms, which included brief commentaries influenced by, amongst others, those of Cassiodorus, but often favouring historical rather than allegorical readings. The Psalms were already in the Carolingian period, and for long after, the basis of Latin literacy and Christian education. A key element here was the wide spread of monasticism, with its daily round of psalm-based prayer and psalm-based spirituality. In this context, Henry Parkes’s close examination of the parts played by two particular eleventh-century religious communities located quite close to each other in what is now Switzerland, and more important still, his careful listening in to their performances, adds a very important dimension to the present book’s agenda. In seeking answers to the question of why the two

4

Reading the Bible in the Middle Ages

communities’ practice in choosing biblical readings, and chants, for the night office varied from one to another, Parkes transforms what might at first seem an abstruse topic into one from which every reader of our book will benefit. The author notes at the outset that these religious communities made ‘concessions to lay participation’. Parkes shows how clerics and monks ‘sought to plan their journeys’ through the scriptural canon when the biblical round had not yet been formally codified, let alone standardized. Close analysis of relevant manuscripts reveals the great variety of liturgical practice, and the extent of improvisation in performance: ‘musically-notated Bibles recall … that the Scriptures were not spoken in church but intoned’. The existence of pontificals or even breviaries did not mean uniformity, any more than there was one idea or rhetoric of ‘Reform’ – an idea currently undergoing welcome deconstruction and reconstruction in light of new research by not only historians but specialists in liturgical and musicological studies.5 Cantors and local religious, once they had realized that lectio continua simply could not be completed in a single year, pioneered creative relationships with the liturgy, allowing ‘a stable singing tradition’ to lead liturgical innovation. Monks and canons decided for themselves the length, quantity, arrangement and selection of scriptural readings. Parkes’s conclusions, which he himself calls ‘surprising’, confirm an intellectual dynamic and audible changes in the way the reading of the Bible was performed. His eleventh-century monasteries were located in a south-German setting that, far from peripheral, was close to the epicentre of new religious energies, and on the beaten track of reformers with transalpine responsibilities and interests. *** If the Bible embodied God’s Word, then reading it was a form of direct dialogic exchange with God. The ninth-century Frankish noblewoman Dhuoda conveyed this idea in the Handbook she wrote for her son who had just joined the royal retinue. Jinty Nelson, acknowledging the impact of the work of Rosamond McKitterick, urges an appreciation of, not only the extent to which lay people heard and read the Bible in the Carolingian ninth century, but the fact that a small though still surprising number of laypersons were themselves writers who wrote under the impact of the Bible, especially the Old Testament. Among those Nelson contextualizes and discusses here is Dhuoda, who, as well as citing or echoing the Psalms nearly 400 times, and commending psalm-reading, along with psalm-centred prayer, itself a kind of dialogue, as a private exercise that prepared its practitioner for public service, presented Old Testament leaders

Introduction

5

as role-models of political and military leadership. Nelson argues that Dhuoda hoped to project this message to a court audience too, in so far as her son would, she hoped, share his book with his comilitones. Mayke de Jong shows how Dhuoda’s contemporary, Paschasius Radbertus, reinvented classical dialogue-form in monastic guise to re-present himself as a latter-day Jeremiah in communication with the Almighty. Political action in a strife-torn present could be authorized by reference back to the biblical past and especially the history of kings. Shared interest in self-examination, controlled and channelled by reflection on the Bible, linked Paschasius with his aristocratic audiences. Operating between monastic seclusion and ongoing engagement with the court’s and the world’s hard political choices, writers like Paschasius and exegetes like Hrabanus Maurus found in the Old Testament a uniquely persuasive rhetorical resource; and as in late antiquity, lay as well as ecclesiastical elites in the Carolingian period sought aid and comfort in biblical models of power, penitence and renunciation. De Jong’s chapter, and the textual extracts appended, enable modern readers to follow the workings of mid-ninth-century biblically-informed minds. How close could be the engagement of a medieval scholar with the Bible emerges from the work of an anonymous compiler of miscellaneous notes on knotty cruxes in the Old Testament. Julie Barrau very plausibly suggests that these originated as marginal glosses reflecting the author’s attendance at lectures in Paris. There an English student could encounter the competing interpretations of rival magistri, and become familiar with the method of juxtaposing conflicting authorities, finding resolutions and dismissing alternative interpretations with an alii aliter – ‘others say otherwise’. At the same time, he was a serious textual critic, capable of comparing different versions of Holy Writ and choosing between exegetical authorities with equal deftness. His recondite knowledge of the Holy Land’s topography was matched only by his enthusiasm for ferreting out apparently obscure yet potentially meaningful details of its history. This chapter illuminates a genre, manuscript miscellanies, and the mind of an exceptionally resourceful author with ‘a taste for the whimsical’ but also a scout’s enthusiasm for tracking a way through arcane and apocryphal thickets, and encountering sibyls, tanners and leper kings en route. Reading the Bible in the twelfth century could be an exciting intellectual journey that, with Paris’s schools accessible, depended on something more than a deskbound one. The attempts of writers to exploit the Bible in the cause of high politics is a striking feature of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Though there are some continuities with the earlier medieval knowledge-paradigm, the distinctiveness

6

Reading the Bible in the Middle Ages

of a new one seems to be signalled in texts that are new in form as well as content. On the whole, then, innovations outweigh continuities. The Investiture Contest is a topic with a vast historiography, chiefly German and Italian, yet the persuasiveness of Florian Hartmann’s findings is symptomatic of a recognition of the new in a context where novelty depended on new appreciation of how selective readings of the Bible could be effectively deployed in new circumstances and for new audiences to new propagandistic ends. Eleventhcentury sensibilities to clerical simony and sexual impurity generated passionate appeals for penance and reform, and well-articulated contestation. The three fat volumes of Libelli de Lite (Tracts about the Dispute) are monuments to multiple seizings of opportunity and displays of opportunism. Hartmann’s title-quote, ‘What has allegory to do with us?’, a direct quotation from the pro-papal polemicist Bonizo of Sutri, is an allusion to allegory in biblical exegesis. Allegory could scramble messages, subjecting Old Testament and New Testament passages to interference. Hartmann explains why historical or literal readings of the Bible were preferred to allegory, and why Gregory VII’s supporters preferred a small but deadly armoury centred on Jeremiah 48.10, justifying the use of the sword, that is, the military force of laymen, to Pauline tags that risked being misconstrued. Well-chosen biblical texts drove home the particular messages needed to motivate and legitimize lay engagement in war. In the twelfth century, political rivalries were played out between French and German royal publicists in a variety of texts, involving ethnic polemics and theories based on climatic difference and moral degeneracy, in all of which Biblical themes were interwoven even if not so central as in eleventhcentury contests. Claire Weeda traces the use of the ideas of the militia Dei, the beata gens, and the prophecies of Revelation, which could be found cheek-by-jowl with more secular notions. There were indeed lines of continuity with eleventh-century thinking, but still stronger were the contrasts in twelfth-century developments that justified new forms, new discourses and new genres, including vernacular literature, for the expression of imperial power and aspiration. In these too, though, scriptural echoes were never far away. As Weeda’s study shows, the conceptual framework offered by the Bible helped shape the construction of political power in the central Middle Ages. Reading the Bible was not only a way of comprehending and interpreting the world, but also served to control it.

1

Twelfth-Century Notions of the Canon of the Bible Cornelia Linde

In 1442, at the Council of Florence, the Catholic Church issued a decree that formally established the canon of the Bible. It was the first time that a binding list for the whole of Catholic Christendom was decided.1 Prior to this, the canon already had what was, in many respects, a stable shape. Yet it still preserved a certain degree of elasticity – at the very least, in the minds of theologians. While conventional boundaries delimited the range of discussion, sacred Scripture was, throughout the Middle Ages, not a rigid construct of fixed content that followed a formal arrangement. Instead, the Church Fathers and later medieval thinkers regarded its composition, as well as the number and order of canonical books, as a legitimate subject for scholarly debate. Modern scholarship has devoted little attention to medieval debates over the canon. Bruce Metzger concluded that the canon of the New Testament – his object of study – was only rarely the subject of discussion in the Latin West.2 But besides practical decisions, such as whether to include or exclude Baruch or the Epistle to the Laodiceans in manuscripts of the Bible, medieval scholars throughout the centuries engaged with the structure and composition of Scripture on an abstract level.3 This chapter focuses on the views of the canon held by two prominent twelfth-century scholars, Hugh of St Victor and Robert of Melun. After a brief but, for these purposes, indispensable overview of statements made by the Church Fathers and other early authorities, the focus of this study will be on examination of the two theologians’ approaches to, and methodology for, deciding upon and interpreting the canon of Scripture.

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Early authorities While the 1442 bull Cantate Domino contained the first official point of reference that applied to all Catholics, several late antique Church councils included decrees on the canon which were valid on a regional level. A detailed catalogue of biblical books was compiled, for instance, at the Council of Rome in 382, and in 397 the Council of Carthage also issued a list of canonical writings – yet not without appending, in at least one manuscript, a note stating that the Church in Rome still needed to confirm this decision.4 Lee Martin McDonald regards these early decrees as confirmations of the canonicity of books already widely used rather than as an attempt at establishing and prescribing the biblical canon.5 In this light, it is not surprising that divergent views circulated in the Latin World. Most notably, the Church Fathers Jerome and Augustine put forward fundamentally different concepts of the canon. Notwithstanding their radical disagreement, both positions obtained major influence – a surprising fact to which little attention has been paid in modern scholarship. As translator of Scripture, Jerome was without doubt the single most important figure in the history of the Latin Bible. Strongly influenced by his profound knowledge of Hebrew Scripture, he modelled his position on the by then well-established Jewish ideas of the canon. In the Prologus galeatus, the preface to his translation of Kings, he compiled what was to become a fundamental itemization of the Old Testament canon. Jerome followed Jewish tradition as it had established itself in the first and second century ce by dividing the Old Testament into three sections: Law, Prophets and Hagiographa. The contents of these three groups correspond largely, although not exactly, to those of the three divisions of the Hebrew Tanakh.6 The Law consists of the Pentateuch; the eight Prophets are Joshua, Judges including Ruth, Samuel (1 and 2 Kgs), Melakhim (3 and 4 Kgs), Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Minor Prophets. The nine Hagiographa, finally, are made up of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Daniel, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 1 and 2 Ezra, and Esther. The sum of these books – five Books of Moses, eight Prophets and nine Hagiographa – is 22, the same number, Jerome notes, as the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. And just as five letters of the Hebrew alphabet have a different shape if at the end of a word, so, too, five of these 22 books can be divided into two each, namely Samuel, Melakhim, Chronicles, Ezra, and Jeremiah with Lamentations.7 This attention to the precise number of books and their symbolism was adopted and expanded in the Middle Ages, not least due to Isidore’s exhortation to pay heed to numbers in the Bible.8



Twelfth-Century Notions of the Canon of the Bible

9

With regard to the deuterocanonical books, Jerome’s view of the canon is at odds with their inclusion in his translation. While he translated deuterocanonical books such as Tobit and Judith, which then became a constant part of the Latin Bible, he made it clear that he did not regard them as canonical.9 Compared to the Old Testament, Jerome devoted much less attention to the canon of the New Testament. In a letter to Paulinus, he merely notes that the New Testament consists of the four Gospels, the Pauline Epistles, Acts, the Canonical Epistles and Revelation.10 Jerome’s slightly younger contemporary Augustine promulgated a fundamentally different outlook on the canon in De doctrina christiana. While he, too, advocated that a threefold division underlay the canon of the Old Testament, he distinguished between historia, prophetae and ‘libri qui proprie prophetae appellantur’. Not only do the designations of the three sections not match Jerome’s, but Augustine also came up with a total of twice as many Old Testament books as his older contemporary. The first division, historia, already comprised 22 books on its own: the five Books of Moses, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1–4 Kings, 1–2 Chronicles, Job, Tobit, Esther, Judith, 1–2 Maccabees and 1–2 Esdras. The Prophets consist of the Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus. The third category, finally, is made up of the Minor Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel and Ezekiel.11 Two reasons led to the increase from 22 to 44 books. First, while the content is largely identical to that defined by Jerome, Augustine split books that Jerome had subsumed in one volume into individual items. So, while he insisted that the Twelve Minor Prophets should be regarded as a unit, he nevertheless counted each of them individually in his grand total. Second, and in the end more importantly, Augustine also added the deuterocanonical books such as Tobit and Wisdom to the canon. On this point, the two Church Fathers diverged drastically, and the question of the status of the deuterocanonical books remained a contentious issue throughout the Middle Ages.12 Augustine’s list of 27 New Testament books in the same passage of De doctrina christiana is standard in modern terms, though the order of the books is not necessarily so. He wrote that the New Testament consisted of the four Gospels, 14 Pauline Epistles, 1–2 Peter, 1–3 John, Jude, James, Acts and Revelation, adding up to a total of 27 books.13 The two Church Fathers’ views were by no means the only late antique takes on the canon. Jerome’s adversary Rufinus, for instance, came up with yet another total number of Old Testament books. In his Expositio symboli, he included 25 books in the Old Testament, while the New Testament consisted of the standard 27 books. He concluded

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his list with the comment that these books are the ones which the Fathers – he is referring to Eusebius’s Historia ecclesiastica in Rufinus’s Latin translation – included in the canon.14 Not surprisingly, Augustine’s and Jerome’s lists gained the greatest currency and both had become well established by the sixth century. An early merger of the two traditions is found in Cassiodorus’s Institutiones. He repeated their differing sums of Old Testament books as well as the grand totals of biblical books without siding with either Jerome or Augustine. Instead, Cassiodorus backed both versions by attributing a deeper meaning to these numbers. His matter-of-fact repetition of the different ways of dividing the canon suggests that the Latin West retained a certain degree of flexibility in its approach to the Bible. The division of the canon, the number of canonical books, as well as the status of the deuterocanonical books were by no means settled. The malleability of the Bible is further supported by the fact that Cassiodorus added a third, alternative count of the biblical books as he had found it in his codex grandior.15 This room for discretion survived throughout the Middle Ages. Ceslas Spicq pointed out that twelfth-century authors adopted Augustine’s but especially Jerome’s ideas concerning the canon,16 so both positions flourished. Two aspects already found in the writings of the Church Fathers proved particularly influential on later discussions of the canon. First, the notion of a tripartite pattern of the Old Testament became a constant element. Yet it evolved and took on different guises over the course of the centuries. Second, tying the number of books to a deeper meaning, a methodology introduced by Jerome, became a major consideration for those explaining the content and structure of Scripture.17

The twelfth century Hugh of St Victor Of twelfth-century authors, possibly the most widely read and at the same time puzzling summary of the canon was pronounced by the highly influential Hugh of St Victor. Hugh, who had entered the Parisian abbey of St Victor in 1115, first publicized his ideas in the late 1120s in his Didascalicon. In the course of the next decade, he repeated his take on this matter in varying degrees of detail in his De scripturis et scriptoribus sacris, Sententiae de divinitate and De sacramentis.18 The main influence on his notion of the canon was Jerome. This



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11

is particularly evident with respect to the Old Testament. Hugh copied Jerome’s tripartition into Pentateuch, eight Prophets and nine Hagiographa, and replicated the parallel between the total number of Old Testament books and the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet.19 Furthermore, in line with Jerome and in stark contrast to Augustine, he explicitly excluded the deuterocanonical books Tobit, Judith, Maccabees, Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus: they are read, he states, quoting Jerome, but they are not part of the canon of Sacred Scripture.20 While Hugh drew on Jerome for his establishment of the Old Testament canon, he did not insist on its most rigid application. In the Didascalicon he noted that some people counted Ruth and Lamentations as separate books, ending up with a total of 24 rather than 22. Hugh approved this alternative count by equating the number 24 with the number of elders adoring the Lamb in Revelation.21 For Hugh as for Jerome, the total count had to be supported by a fitting numerical symbolism. In the same vein, Hugh stressed that the number of the Pauline Epistles represents the perfection of the two Testaments.22 Jerome’s impact on Hugh went beyond a mere adoption of the Old Testament canon. Configuring a parallel structure for the two parts of the divinae scripturae, Hugh adapted the tripartite division postulated by Jerome for the Old Testament to the New Testament. The first ordo was made up of the standard four Gospels. The second part consisted of the writings of the Apostles. The number of their writings was, like the Gospels, limited to four: Acts, Pauline Epistles, Catholic Epistles and Revelation. These eight, joined with the 22 books of the Old Testament, gave a total of 30, which according to Hugh completed the body of Holy Scripture.23 In addition, however, he introduced an entirely new corpus of writings to the New Testament as the third ordo that completed the tripartition: the patres.24 Hugh himself provided no arguments in support of this curious inclusion. But he had certainly not added the patres without due consideration. He first mentioned their being a part of the canon in his Didascalicon, and repeated this view in De scripturis et scriptoribus sacris, Sententiae de divinitate and De sacramentis.25 From the start, he also offered some detail as to who or what is meant by patres. The third ordo, he wrote, consists of decretals and the writings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, whom he named as ‘Jerome, Augustine, Gregory, Ambrose, Isidore, Origen, Bede and many others’.26 Their writings, while a part of the New Testament, were not added to the number of previously listed books of Scripture, as they did not add anything new to the content. Instead, Hugh remarked, they elucidate what is written in the other biblical books.27

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This still rather vague list of patres might in itself provide another reason why Hugh did not count them among the body of Scripture: he refrained from specifying exactly which Fathers and Doctors of the Church are meant, let alone putting a precise number to their writings. As no total number of their writings could be established, the patres could not in the literal sense be added to the corpus diuine pagine or corpus textus. Consequently, while without doubt forming a part of the New Testament, number symbolism could not be employed to explain the unspecified total. Yet, despite this limitation, Hugh did not exclude the patres from the canon. In fact, applying his guideline in De scripturis that divine inspiration is the crucial factor for determining what is comprised in Sacred Scripture, their addition makes sense: as Spicq has pointed out, belief in the divine inspiration of the Fathers was widespread in the twelfth century.28 And Hugh was, indeed, far from alone in his view that the writings of the Fathers are a part of the canon and of equal status with biblical books. The same idea is attested, for instance, in Rupert of Deutz’s Super quaedam capitula regulae divi Benedicti abbatis.29 The fact that Hugh includes the patres not just among the divinae scripturae as a group in their own right, but explicitly makes them a part of the New Testament, shows that he understood Scripture to be limited to two parts, Old and New Testament, which accommodated all the canonical books. Internally, however, both Testaments still allowed some room for negotiation, and Hugh might well have felt it necessary to introduce the patres as the third ordo in order to include all the books he regarded as canonical while at the same time maintaining the desired parallelism between the Old and New Testaments. Hugh’s approach also suggests that he did not regard the list of patres – and, as a result, the New Testament – as closed. New additions to the third ordo could still be made. In De scripturis et scriptoribus sacris, Hugh refined the perceived parallel structure and, at the same time, the role of the patres in the New Testament. He interrelated the three ordines of the two Testaments, both across and within each of the Testaments. As Hugh had already hinted in the Didascalicon, the Fathers represented the next logical step after the Apostles, just as the hagiographers had to follow on from the Prophets. This aspect of salvation history displayed in the link between hagiographers and patres has been pointed out by Rainer Berndt.30 The patres were thus without doubt an essential part of Scripture. However, Hugh also described them as comparable to the deuterocanonical books. The latter, he explicitly stated, were read, but not a part of the canon. In a similar fashion, the patres were not counted into the text of Scripture.31 While at first glance this statement might appear to exclude the third ordo from the



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canon, the exact wording suggests that this is not what Hugh wanted to convey. Instead, his statement must be understood in relation to the number symbolism inherent in the total number of books. As Hugh did not or could not put a precise number to the Fathers and their writings, they could not be counted. Consequently, this particular mode of exposition could not be applied. Berndt and Spicq rightly argued that Hugh was working with a much wider meaning of sacred writings than the Bible in the narrow sense.32 Within sacred writings, the canonical books held a special position.33 Berndt summed up his investigation by stating that, for Hugh, the patres did not have canonical authority nor were they a part of Scripture. Instead, they had such a high standing that their integration into the New Testament was necessary from a theological perspective.34 Yet Hugh never excluded the patres from the canon, but explicitly incorporated them. As we shall see later, at least one of his contemporaries understood Hugh to mean that the patres truly were a part of the Bible. The difficulty inherent in this position might also explain why it was hardly ever discussed by contemporary writers. The key to understanding Hugh’s position might lie in his idea of the corpus textus, which he seems to have understood as the nucleus of canonical writings. At the same time, however, the canon was not limited to this corpus, and the New Testament, at least, was still open to additions in the third ordo. The ordines ‘Prophets’ and ‘Hagiographers’ presented a problem for Hugh. As in De sacramentis, so already in De scripturis he felt the need to explain the assigning of certain books to one or the other of these two categories. In all likelihood, his comments were a response to Augustine’s tripartition of the Old Testament into historia, prophetae and ‘libri qui proprie prophetae appellantur’. Hugh followed Jerome’s division and hence grouped different books under the heading ‘Prophets’ from those included by Augustine. In particular, his attribution of Joshua, Judges and 1–4 Kings to the prophets seemed to call for an explanation. They were not regarded as prophecies in the Christian tradition, and Augustine had included them in historia. In an attempt to pre-empt potential criticism of the terminology employed, Hugh stated that while the contents of the books in question might not be prophecies, the authors were nevertheless prophets. For prophets were defined by grace, office or mission. Joshua, Judges and Kings fulfilled these criteria and were thus rightly counted among the prophets, even though the books might seem to cover mostly history. After the clarification of what was meant by prophets, Hugh elucidated the term hagiographi. According to the literal sense of the word, it should, in theory, refer to all writers of Sacred Scripture. But Hugh explained that the group of

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biblical books summarized under this heading had appropriated the classification not as a prerogative, but out of unworthiness. It was due to humility that this group did not have its own name.35 This humility was also reflected in the succession of the ordines. The Hagiographa formed the third and last place, indicating the lower significance of its ordo. Consequently, the same was the case for the Fathers in the New Testament. Daniel and Job, as well as the writings attributed to David, scattered among the three ordines by Augustine, belonged to the Hagiographa. While these books contained prophecies, they did not belong to the ordo of Prophets, because the appellation ‘Prophet’ did not apply to these authors.36 Although Hugh did not explicitly refer to Augustine, it is clear that his comments related to Augustine’s alternative distribution. Still, Hugh was firm in his adherence to Jerome’s principles. His sole reference to Augustine’s notion of the canon was sparked by the need to address a terminological problem that could potentially be used to oppose Jerome’s, and, in his wake, Hugh’s, division of the canon. Throughout his works, Hugh attempted to impose systematic and logical order on the canon. Two main features characterized his approach. First, number symbolism and a general striving for harmony led Hugh to divide the New Testament into three parts to create a parallel to the Old Testament.37 Second, he also counted a total of a mere eight New Testament books, in contrast to the standard number of 27 suggested by Augustine. Yet the inclusion of the patres as the third ordo of the New Testament was certainly the most surprising suggestion. It is possible that their inclusion led Hugh to adapt his position concerning the criteria for inclusion in the canon. Rather than insisting on the approval of the Church, as he had done in the Didascalicon, he declared the defining condition to be divine inspiration, widely assumed to apply to the patres.

Robert of Melun Hugh of St Victor’s writings had an enormous influence from the mid-twelfth century onwards, yet his thoughts on the canon of the Bible found a very limited uptake. Quite possibly, this was due to his idiosyncratic inclusion of the Church Fathers as a part of the New Testament. The only twelfth-century author who actively engaged with Hugh’s position was his contemporary Robert of Melun, who took a critical stance on the Victorine’s statements. Robert, an Englishman, taught dialectic at Melun in the 1120s before teaching at Sainte Geneviève in Paris. Having returned to England, he became bishop of Hereford in 1163, which he remained until his death four years later.38



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Robert was strongly influenced not just by the writings of Hugh of St Victor, but also by those of Abelard, whose pupil he may have been.39 The Victorine’s major impact on Robert’s approach manifested itself clearly in his Sententie, probably composed between 1157 and 1160.40 Most notably, the text’s basic structure was modelled on Hugh’s De sacramentis.41 In the preface, Robert insisted that two learned men stood out from the crowd of expositors, ‘who have made rational enquiry about the sacraments of faith as about faith itself and charity, who in everything outshine all subsequent commentators of Scripture in judgement of all’.42 David Luscombe identified the two authors as Hugh of St Victor and Abelard.43 Robert, rather immodestly, continued that they were best understood by those who had heard their lectures – as was the case for Robert himself – rather than by those who had merely read their books.44 His overall aim, according to Luscombe, was to harmonize the two theologians’ thoughts and ideas in his own writings.45 Robert’s remarks on the canon are bundled together in Book I of his Sententie. In marked contrast to Hugh, he integrated both Jerome’s and Augustine’s view of the biblical canon in his discussion. He pointed out that Augustine divided the Old Testament into 44 books, while others came up with a total of 22.46 This second group, to whom Robert merely refers as ‘alii’, included Jerome and, of course, Hugh of St Victor. That he specifically had the Victorine in mind is clear from later direct references to Hugh’s ideas. In this instance, Robert did not give an explicit preference concerning the total number of Old Testament books. Although he identified Augustine by name and called proponents of the second division ‘others’, this does not, as we shall see, suggest that he necessarily preferred Augustine’s position. As in Hugh’s case, so also in Robert’s work, the comments on the New Testament were most revealing of his attitude to, and attempt at making sense of, the canon. Robert, too, champions the idea that the New Testament is divided into three ordines. First, he repeated Hugh’s layout in which the writings of the Church Fathers formed the third ordo. But Robert also suggested a different tripartition that he attributed to ‘alii’. This second division, possibly based on Cassiodorus’s Institutiones, consisted of the Gospels and the Epistles as the first two ordines, while the third was formed of Acts and Revelation.47 In contrast to the question of the total number of Old Testament books, Robert pronounced a clear preference for the second division and rejected Hugh’s suggestion. He argued that, in contrast to the patres included in the first triad, the second proposal contained nothing that could be corrected or changed.

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Robert did not let the matter rest with this argument, but added a further logical reason why the writings of the Fathers could not be regarded as a part of the New Testament. For if they had been, they would also have had to be considered a part of the Old Testament.48 He did not elaborate on why this should be the case, yet his train of thought was clear enough: Hugh had argued that the works of the Fathers are the third ordo of the New Testament because, even though they do not add anything to the body of Scripture, they explain its content. But the Fathers had of course also commented on the Old Testament and should hence, by the same criterion, likewise count as a part of the Old Testament. Since this was not the case, the notion that their writings must be a part solely of the New Testament was false, according to Robert.49 Robert never mentioned Hugh by name in the context of the debate on the canon, yet it must have been clear to contemporaries that he was specifically targeting Hugh’s position. And although he did not agree with Hugh on the content of the third ordo, Robert nevertheless adopted the overall idea that the New Testament, too, was tripartite. Consequently, he must have supported the division given as a second option in his Sententie. So Hugh’s general concept survived, but in an altered format: in Robert’s view, the three ordines consisted of Gospels, Epistles and, finally, Acts and Revelation. With the main structure of the New Testament established, Robert discussed its content in more detail. His main focus lay on the significance of the number of books contained in the different sections of the New Testament, often explained from a Christological perspective. The Gospels, he argued, have to be four because of the four cardinal virtues that are taught through them: temperance, fortitude, justice and virtue. This first ordo of the New Testament, the quartet of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, stood in stark contrast to its counterpart in the Old Testament, the Pentateuch. According to Robert, the Five Books of Moses represent the five senses. Due to their sensual nature, therefore, the first group of Old Testament books is inferior to the first ordo of the New Testament, symbolizing the cardinal virtues.50 Likewise, there is a good reason why the Catholic Epistles are exactly seven: the dignity of this number illustrates the perfection of their doctrine. In particular, Robert draws attention to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.51 With regard to the number of Pauline Epistles, the reader of the Sententiae is referred to a discussion of their number elsewhere. Whether Robert meant to discuss this aspect elsewhere in his Sententiae remains unclear, but he had also addressed this issue in his Quaestiones de epistolis Pauli. There, he had pointed out that the apostle had written more than just the canonical 14 letters – Robert



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mentions, for instance, the pseudepigraphic exchange between Seneca and Saint Paul. Yet the 14 Pauline Epistles accepted by the Church represent the perfection of their doctrine: the ten Epistles sent to churches represented the Decalogue, while the four Epistles addressed to individual persons illustrated the perfection of the four Gospels. Consequently, the combination of ten and four proved that the Pauline Epistles contained the teaching of the Law and the Gospels.52 While the two groups of Epistles could be regarded as seven or 14 individual works respectively, Robert insisted that each set counted as only one book. Together with the four Gospels, Acts and Apocalypse, the two sets of Epistles thus brought the total of New Testament books to eight, the same number as that advocated by Augustine. Robert, in line with his own working method, also provided an explanation for the total number. It stood for the eight beatitudes enumerated in the Sermon on the Mount.53 In his view, therefore, the numbers of both the grand total of New Testament books as well as the smaller sums of individual groups possessed a deeper significance. Luscombe concluded that the adoption of a critical stance vis-à-vis his teacher Abelard’s ideas was a notable example of Abelard’s own influence on Robert.54 This finding must be extended to Robert’s treatment of Hugh of St Victor’s views. Robert strongly relied on Hugh’s writings, yet approached his opinions critically and, if necessary, downright rejected them. Robert’s critical approach to Hugh’s notion of the biblical canon also confirms Martin’s assessment that the Sententie were both an exposition and a criticism of his predecessors. His main aim was not merely to elucidate, but rather to engage critically, albeit objectively, with his material.55 This was precisely the approach Robert adopted for the discussion of the canon of the Bible. He firmly rejected Hugh’s inclusion of the patres by providing two logical arguments. The brief examination of Robert’s methodology also confirms Martin’s observation that he relied on a mixture of auctoritates and reason.56 Robert drew on both the Church Fathers and his contemporary Hugh of St Victor, while at the same time approaching them all with the same critical attitude.57

Conclusion The analysis of Hugh’s and Robert’s notions of the canon highlights several remarkable facets of late medieval perceptions of the Bible. First and foremost, the canon was not yet closed, but was still open, beyond the twelfth century as well. For instance, the authenticity of the Epistle to the Hebrews was debated

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heavily in the thirteenth century,58 and some apocrypha such as the Prayer of Manasseh were treated as canonical by exegetes such as Hugh of St Cher, Albert the Great, Bonaventure and Aquinas.59 Likewise, the structure of the Bible as a book remained a topic of discussion well beyond the twelfth century. To give just two examples, the Dominican Nicholas of Gorran insisted on the symmetrical set-up of the two Testaments, based on a Christological perspective, while the slightly younger Franciscan Peter Auriol broke up the common threefold division by suggesting a split according to eight modi docendi.60 Theologians in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries thus regarded the contents and structure of the Bible as a topic demanding scholarly attention. Within their deliberations, they enjoyed a certain leeway with which to approach the Bible. There was a certain amount of elasticity with regard to the division of books and also, in case of the deuterocanonical books, the apocrypha and the patres, as to whether certain books were a part of the Old or New Testament at all. Ultimately, this flexible approach had its foundation in the diverging positions of the towering figures of Jerome and Augustine. Number symbolism played a major role in these discussions of the canon. It was on this basis that the grand total was explained and the limits of certain sections were clarified, as, for instance, in Robert’s fixing of the number of Pauline Epistles. While this application of number symbolism ultimately went back to Jerome, its usage was encouraged by Isidore, and it was a common feature in the twelfth century. This methodology also explains the main development in the perception of the New Testament structure. Both Augustine and Jerome advocated a tripartition of the Old Testament, yet neither of them hinted that the same might apply to the New Testament. But both Hugh and, in his wake, Robert, were adamant in their threefold division of the New Testament. Hugh of St Victor and Robert of Melun were the precursors of a continuing scholarly engagement with the Bible as a single and coherent work, rather than with individual books or liturgical readings.61 To late medieval theologians, the Bible was a shell containing adaptable building blocks that allowed for arranging and rearranging. While the basic outline of the canon was largely fixed, its precise content and structure remained a subject of discussion, for which medieval theologians not just adopted but also adapted the positions of the Church Fathers.

2

The Orator as Exegete: Cassiodorus as a Reader of the Psalms Gerda Heydemann

Introduction In the spring of 544, Arator, the Roman subdeacon and former magistrate at the Ostrogothic court, recited his exegetical poem on the Acts of the Apostles in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. The performance was a huge success: according to the report of the papal primicerius Surgentius, the reading of the two books took four days due to the enthusiasm of a crowd composed of the Roman clergy as well as laypeople, who frequently demanded the repetition of whole passages.1 The poem, dedicated to Pope Vigilius (who may have been present during its recitation), celebrated pontifical authority and the importance of Rome as a Christian centre, which was protected by the Apostle Peter himself.2 This was a highly political and a very timely message in the midst of the Gothic wars, when the Ostrogothic armies under King Totila were making significant advances against the imperial forces. As the threat of a renewed siege of the city must have seemed imminent, Arator ended his first book by evoking St Peter’s powers to defend Rome’s liberty and safety and to end the war.3 At about the same time, Cassiodorus, the former praetorian prefect of Ostrogothic Italy, was likewise engaged in biblical interpretation. Like Arator, Cassiodorus used the biblical text – in his case, the Psalms – to evoke the early Christian history of Rome, albeit in a different way. In his commentary on Psalm 73, a psalm of lamentation traditionally associated with the destruction of the second temple in 70 ce, Cassiodorus took the fall of one holy city, Jerusalem, as an occasion to appraise the rise of another.4 As he explained, the pagan fabric of Rome had come to be overlain by Christian shrines, and Rome’s inhabitants had been transformed from a plebs superstitiosa, an unbelieving crowd, into

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members of a saintly city, a civitas sanctissima. Out of the psalm’s depiction of the fallen Jerusalem, Cassiodorus moulded the image of Christian Rome. But he did not do so to convey a triumphalist narrative of Rome as the centre of the Christian world which could have served to reassure his audience in the way Arator’s poem was probably intended to. Rather, he used the remaining commentary to reflect on the religious offences committed by the Romans and on the atrocities of war. Behind the psalmist’s lamentation, Cassiodorus sought to discern his judgement on the conquerors, as well as the proper Christian reaction to victory and defeat. The result of Cassiodorus’s exegetical project, the Expositio psalmorum [hereafter EP], was very different from Arator’s in both genre and purpose: it is an extensive verse-by-verse commentary on the whole psalter, a ‘book for the eye’ more than one to be performed.5 Yet there are also very interesting similarities between the two exegetes and their projects. Cassiodorus shared with Arator both the background of a Roman aristocratic family and political experience in the service of the Ostrogothic rulers of Italy. While Arator, who had been comes domesticorum under Athalaric, left Ravenna to join the papal clergy some time in the 530s, Cassiodorus remained at court right through the early years of the Gothic wars.6 He had acted as a quaestor to Theoderic, and later succeeded the philosopher Boethius as magister officiorum after the latter’s downfall in 523. Under Theoderic’s successor Athalaric he rose to the praetorian prefecture, the highest office in the Italian administration. The Variae, a collection of administrative and diplomatic letters published as a record of his political activities, are an important source of information about the practice and ideologies of government in sixth-century Italy.7 There is not much firm evidence regarding Cassiodorus’s activities during the 540s. It is usually assumed that he left Italy after imperial forces had taken Ravenna and captured King Witigis in 540, and that he spent most of the ensuing decade in Constantinople, where he wrote the major part of the EP.8 He probably returned to Italy after the end of the war and the Pragmatic Sanction (554), to establish a monastic foundation in Squillace (Vivarium), which became famous as a centre of Christian learning. As an exegete, Cassiodorus like Arator looked back on politically eventful decades, while being confronted with a turbulent political present. In this chapter, I would like to explore how these experiences shaped his reading of the psalter and the exegetical choices he made in his commentary. In particular, I will suggest that it is through his use of classical rhetoric that we can understand how Cassiodorus the politician defined and took up his role as an exegete. I will focus on his rhetorical approach to a series of psalms which deal with crises and



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calamities, to see how they served as a means of observing and reflecting on problems which were also relevant in his own sixth-century society. In so doing, I hope to contribute to our understanding of the social and political dimensions of Cassiodorus’s exegetical project and its potential audiences.

1. Cassiodorus and the expositio psalmorum We unfortunately lack detailed information about the circumstances of the EP’s publication, let alone about its reception by a specific audience which we have for Arator’s poetry.9 It is difficult to establish a precise date for the work, but the scholarly consensus is that while Cassiodorus may have begun writing in the late 530s in Ravenna, the majority of the text was composed in the ensuing decade, probably in Constantinople, and completed around 550.10 The preface, a system of marginal notes designed to guide the reader through the material on the liberal arts and on Christian doctrine, as well as bibliographical information, was added during a phase of revision at Vivarium.11 Certainly, the text as we have it now is the result of a long process of composition and continuous revision, adapting it to shifting audiences and purposes. Nevertheless, by drawing attention to certain characteristic features of the text, as well as by placing it in the context of Cassiodorus’s other known activities during the 540s and 550s, it is possible to make some assumptions about its initial aims and audience. In the preface, Cassiodorus retrospectively described how he had left the world of secular politics and administrative duties in Ravenna to ‘immerse myself in the sweet words of salvation, after most bitter events’.12 This notion of conversio, of the transition from the world of the Ostrogothic court to the realm of scriptural studies and ecclesiastical politics, has been much debated in modern scholarship; it seems clear, however, that for Cassiodorus this did not entail a retreat from public life and political interests.13 There are a number of indications that Cassiodorus remained involved in the political and religious debates during the 540s and 550s, and that the EP was intended as a contribution to some of them.14 Cassiodorus, like Arator, dedicated his text to a pope, and although he did not specify his name, it seems plausible that the pater apostolicus mentioned in the preface can be identified as Vigilius.15 This fits well with the fact that Cassiodorus was as deeply concerned with questions of doctrine and orthodoxy in his exegesis as was Arator.16 The EP contains frequent polemics against ‘Arians’, that is,

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adherents of a homoean Christianity which was prevalent among the ruling elite in the Ostrogothic kingdom. Cassiodorus also reacted to the contemporary Christological debates known as the ‘Three Chapters Controversy’ which disrupted the Mediterranean Church during the reign of Emperor Justinian I. Even if it may not be possible to infer an exact date of the EP from its references to the Three Chapters Controversy, it is clear that the debates leading up to the Council of Constantinople in 553 formed an important context for the work’s composition.17 Another striking feature of the EP is its remarkable integration of biblical studies with classical arts. The commentary is interwoven with passages transmitting knowledge about the liberal arts, ranging from geometry or music to dialectic and, above all, rhetoric. It has therefore been called a ‘textbook of the liberal arts’.18 This effort to transmit and integrate classical and Christian learning has important social and political implications in a cultural context where concepts of Romanness and Christian identity had to be redefined and adapted for a post-imperial world. In this sense, the EP can be viewed as one in a series of attempts by Cassiodorus to provide intellectual guidance to a (future) Latin-speaking elite, who needed to understand Roman political traditions and values, as well as orthodox (Nicene and Chalcedonian) Christian theology.19 Latin culture and Christian scriptural exegesis were the necessary foundations for the formation of such an elite.20 A concern for such a project is visible in Cassiodorus’s collaboration with Pope Agapetus to create a Christian school, but also in many of the texts written in the 530s to 550s: the second book of the famous Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning, which according to Fabio Troncarelli was originally published as a separate treatise on the liberal arts;21 the models for political and administrative writing in the Variae together with the De Anima; and the Historia tripartita, a compilation and Latin translation of three Greek Church histories. The audiences of these different works may well have, at least partially, overlapped. Most important for this chapter is that Cassiodorus interpreted the psalter as a ‘collection of speeches’, as Ann Astell has underlined.22 Cassiodorus read the Psalms as a former orator. For him, rhetoric was a means to establish a connection between the text of the Psalms and the world of his sixth-century audience. An analysis of his rhetorical exegesis can not only point to the messages which Cassiodorus wished to communicate in his exegesis, but also show how he envisaged the social and political implications of the biblical text.



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2. The orator as exegete In order to understand how Cassiodorus’s experience as a secular orator shaped his exegetical approach, it is useful to look briefly at his thinking on the social and political function of rhetoric as it emerges from the Variae. Andrea Giardina has drawn attention to the fact that the rhetorical quality of the Variae is a key to understanding their political function and purpose, rather than being a reason to dismiss them as an instance of ‘literary vanity’ or ‘mere rhetorical flourish’ devoid of any practical significance, as has sometimes been suggested.23 The Variae merit study not only for the information about the Ostrogothic administration contained in the individual letters of the collection, and about their immediate audience, but also as a literary whole. As such, they can be interpreted as a careful attempt to legitimate the actions of the Italian elite who had run the administration during the Ostrogothic period. As a record of lawful and well-functioning government, the Variae may well have been intended to convince readers of a particular interpretation of the Ostrogothic past as compatible with Roman imperial traditions, thereby also communicating an argument about how the future political organization of post-war Italy should involve continuity with this past.24 For Cassiodorus, rhetoric was of tremendous importance for the legitimacy of rulership and the exercise of government. He ascribed almost king-like power to the quaestor, the person responsible at the royal court for the drafting of official documents and diplomatic correspondence, a position he himself had occupied under King Theoderic.25 The quaestor functioned as the king’s voice (vox nostrae linguae): his task was to ensure that the population accepted the legal measures and political decisions taken by the king. Ideally, the coercive power of the state could be replaced by the voluntary consent achieved through the use of rhetoric (ut paene feriata sit districtio, ubi praevalet eloquentia fortitudo).26 When Cassiodorus – whether as a quaestor or in other official functions – put the traditional governmental language of the Roman res publica at the service of the royal court, he fulfilled an eminently political task on behalf of the Gothic rulers. His work helped to assert the power of the king, but also to ensure the loyalty of his subjects to the legal and moral order of their society.27 To a glorious ruler, Cassiodorus claimed, the art of persuasion was therefore even more important than the collection of taxes.28 Such an understanding of rhetoric as a means to negotiate and safeguard social and political consensus is reminiscent of classical Roman conceptions of rhetoric as the art of government, as they were formulated in the works of

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Cicero, for example.29 In the Variae (as well as in the Institutiones) Cassiodorus emphatically located himself within such a Ciceronian tradition.30 By claiming continuity with Roman rhetorical culture in its late antique, and increasingly Christianized, form, Cassiodorus was at the same time claiming continuity with the political culture of the Roman Empire, where the exercise of power was tied to the moral code and traditional self-perception of an educated elite.31 The work of the orator (and not least Cassiodorus’s own efforts) contributed to the cultural and political accommodation between Gothic rulers and Roman political elites and helped to forge consensus between different social groups in the kingdom. Grammar and rhetoric emerge as the markers of just and civilized rule; they serve to highlight the ‘Romanness’ of the Gothic regime as opposed to ‘barbarian’ rule.32 This was the message that Cassiodorus intended to convey through the combination of rhetoric and political ethos in the Variae.33 Given his responsibility for the well-being of the state, the almost Ciceronian oratorstatesman as depicted in the Variae had to meet high standards in his personal behaviour and moral integrity.34 In many ways, we can discern a similar understanding of the power of language and the importance of rhetoric in Cassiodorus’s reading of the psalter. The use of the techniques of classical rhetoric has often been noted as the most distinctive feature of Cassiodorus’s exegesis.35 In the preface to the EP, where Cassiodorus reflected on the special quality of biblical eloquentia, he defined its purpose using Paul’s letter to Timothy: ‘ad docendum, ad arguendum, ad erudiendum, ad corrigendum in disciplina quae est iustitiae, ut perfectus sit homo Dei ad omne opus bonum instructus’ (2 Tim. 3.16-17).36 Building on the thought of Augustine, Cassiodorus developed a notion of Christian rhetoric in which the Bible was the focal point. According to this view, the secular orators had actually derived their art from the Bible itself; as a divinely inspired text, it represented the purest and most effective form of oratory. Scripture was therefore a privileged source for the study of rhetoric; at the same time, rhetorical knowledge was essential to its correct understanding and should be deployed for the analysis of the biblical elocutio.37 Throughout the commentary, Cassiodorus paid close attention to the precise wording and the literary shape of the biblical text. He carefully registered the occurrence of figures and tropes such as climax, hyperbole or the targeted use of metaphor in the Psalms, explaining the meaning of rhetorical terms to his readers.38 Most of the marginal signs which he later added to the text as a guide for readers in fact concerned the definition of such rhetorical terms, the etymology of words or the peculiarities of biblical language.39 With this approach, Cassiodorus followed a strand of



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biblical interpretation that was shaped by the tradition of the grammatical and rhetorical schools. He was particularly indebted to Augustine’s theory of the artes as an instrument for the study of Scripture as formulated in De doctrina christiana.40 While the incorporation of rhetorical material into the EP certainly enhanced its encyclopaedic character and its functionality as a ‘textbook’, it is important to note that this was not a purely scholastic exercise. Rather, Cassiodorus deployed rhetoric as an effective tool of interpretation and exegetical argument. Most remarkable in this regard is Cassiodorus’s combination of rhetorical analysis with a specific exegetical technique, prosopological exegesis.41 Following a long established interpretative tradition, Cassiodorus assumed that the narrative voice, the ‘I’ of the psalm text, could be identified with various speakers. David, sometimes speaking with his own voice, sometimes assuming the person of Christ or of various Old Testament figures such as Moses, Job or Asaph, acted as a rhetor, performing a social role not unlike that outlined in the Variae.42 It is easy to imagine that the practice of speaking ex persona aliena was of particular interest to Cassiodorus, who had himself often assumed the voices of others when writing in the name of rulers in the Variae.43 For each psalm, Cassiodorus outlined the rhetorical setting in a separate section called a divisio, indicating speakers, narrative units and main topics as well as the audience addressed.44 He even undertook a detailed literary analysis of some psalms as orations according to the rules of the classical rhetorical handbooks.45 He identified in the psalter examples for the different types of oratory, that is, epideictic (speeches of praise or blame), judicial, and even deliberative (advisory speech). In his exegesis of the individual psalms, Cassiodorus used the models and terminology of rhetorical theory. Penitential psalms, for instance, consisted of an exordium, a beginning designed to assure the benevolence of the divine judge, followed by an appropriately dramatic and tearful narratio and an effectful conclusio.46 Often, he discerned behind biblical verses the patterns of argumentation familiar to forensic orators, such as the argumentum ab attributis personarum tractum, a necessitate or a laude rei laesi (arguments drawn from the attributes of persons, from necessity, or ‘by the praise of the thing harmed’).47 Cassiodorus’s commentary on Psalm 89 offers an example of this. Playing on the double meaning of the psalm’s superscription – oratio Moysi hominis Dei – Cassiodorus characterized the text as an ‘oratio, by which the Lord’s anger is deferred, pardon gained, punishment avoided, and generous rewards obtained

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when he speaks with the Lord and gossips with the judge’.48 In the following commentary, Cassiodorus analysed Moses’ speech as a peculiar fusion between a prayer and judicial oratory, which he described using both the vocabulary of religious devotion and penance and the language of law and the courtroom. Moses spoke both as a praying individual and as a mediator between God and the Israelites, beseeching Him for mercy on behalf of his sinful people. Cassiodorus devoted careful attention to the rhetorical strategies deployed by Moses. Given the guilt of the Israelites, he begged the Lord to ‘temper his justice with a little gentleness, so that he can be prevailed upon by those sinners with whom he was known to be justly angry’.49 To achieve this end, Moses cleverly used the argumentum a laude iudicis, that is, to praise the judge in order to obtain his goodwill.50 But Cassiodorus not only emphasized Moses’ rhetorical skills – he also underlined his personal prestige and moral integrity, describing him as a ‘most holy man’, as a lawgiver, and as a person who had earned the privilege of intimate access and personal relations with God.51 Experienced as he was in placating an angered God, Moses emerges as the perfect model for a political and spiritual leader who skilfully negotiated between his community and its divine ruler. As Ann Astell has emphasized, this reading of the psalms as orations reinforced the potential for identification inherent in the biblical text.52 The deliberate fusion between secular and biblical oratory adds a strong social and political dimension to Cassiodorus’s exegesis. In what follows, I will explore this in more detail by concentrating on a series of speeches delivered by one of these biblical speakers, a certain Asaph.53 Asaph appears in the headings of various psalms and was interpreted by Cassiodorus as a spokesman of the Jewish people (or the synagogue), and as an allegory for the Christian Church.54 Like Moses, he was a figure of considerable interest for Cassiodorus: an intellectual leader of his people, a teacher (and also, in a sense, a historian), capable of providing guidance and mediating between God and Israel. Some of his speeches are speeches to a community in crisis, meant to reprimand or exhort the Israelites or to offer consolation and guidance in times of war, oppression or religious upheaval. These speeches, then, provide good examples of Cassiodorus’s understanding of the rhetoric of the psalter, and of the lessons he wanted his audience to draw from it.



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3. Meditations in an emergency: The psalter and the rhetoric of crisis Psalm 73, a psalm of lamentation already cited at the beginning of this chapter, was traditionally interpreted by Christian exegetes as a prophetic foretelling of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 ce.55 This was an event charged with symbolic meaning, the interpretation of which had been contested between Christians and Jews, as well as among Christian intellectuals, for centuries.56 In his commentary, Cassiodorus followed the traditional interpretation of the psalm, but in addition, he imagined a very vivid rhetorical setting: Asaph, the speaker of the psalm, was acting as a forensic orator, pleading with the divine judge for mercy on behalf of the beleaguered Israelites and asking God to destroy their enemies.57 This may seem a somewhat surprising exegetical choice, given that Cassiodorus clearly subscribed to the standard view that the fall of Jerusalem had been a divine punishment for the Jews’ rejection of Christ.58 But he spent surprisingly little time on discussing the significance of the destruction of the Temple as a potent sign of the transition of God’s grace from the Jews to the Gentiles. Instead, he focused attention on Asaph’s rhetorical efforts to defend Israel, which basically consisted of conjuring up God’s anger against their enemies, the Romans. As will become clear, this served to undermine any connection between Christian triumphalism and Roman universalism to which the psalm might give rise. The dramatic events narrated by the psalm must have easily suggested themselves for comparison with contemporary events as Cassiodorus was writing during the Gothic wars. With control over Rome and other Italian cities repeatedly changing hands between the different parties in the course of the war, the fall of Jerusalem, the ‘quintessential siege’, lingered in the back of people’s minds as the backdrop against which to evaluate contemporary events. Flavius Josephus’s Jewish Wars, to which Cassiodorus explicitly referred his readers, was a well-known literary model for the accounts of sieges, and only recently had the spoils of the Temple been brought in triumph to New Rome by Justinian’s general Belisarius after his victory over the Vandals.59 Cassiodorus himself, as we have already noted above, carefully moulded the image of a Christian Rome onto the psalm’s depiction of the fallen Jerusalem, thereby suggesting a connection between the biblical text and similar events in different cities.60 In Cassiodorus’s treatment of the psalm, we can note a special interest in the historical role of the Romans as conquerors of Jerusalem and in their behaviour during the conquest. The resulting image was not particularly flattering. The

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Romans had come as wicked worshippers of idols to reduce Jerusalem and its Temple to the ground, and ‘the entire Hebrew people (gens Hebraeorum) either lay prostrate beneath the sword or were enslaved and reduced to captivity’.61 It was therefore easy for Asaph to rouse God’s anger against the Romans by meticulously describing the atrocities they had committed against the inhabitants of the city and against its sacred places. Cassiodorus carefully explained and amplified Asaph’s description of the destruction and defilement of the Temple, emphasizing that this was the most heinous of all crimes.62 He also noted that the Romans’ lack of respect for the sacred sites cast a dire shadow on the fate of the city as a whole and its inhabitants: ‘What then’, he asked, ‘could have happened to private dwellings, when the enemy’s rage did not spare the Lord’s sanctuary?’63 Through their behaviour, the Romans showed that they had failed to understand the purpose of their military victory. They did not convert, but rather placed the statues of their own gods inside the Temple: the Christian Rome evoked by Cassiodorus at the beginning of his commentary would be a reality only centuries later.64 Moreover, they succumbed to pride (superbia), the ‘most cutting’ – and most Roman – of vices. Setting up their army’s flags and symbols, and erecting commemorative statues over the triumphal arches and gates, they ascribed their success to their own merits rather than to God’s will.65 To Cassiodorus, this was a tangible sign of the imperial victors’ arrogance.66 Asaph therefore did well to return to the subject at the end of the speech, in order to ‘rouse the all-powerful judge most emphatically against the foes of Jerusalem’. For, as Cassiodorus observed, ‘pride is the vice which the Lord particularly abominates … Notice how prudently this most cutting vice is set at the end; he intended to conclude with what should be stored in the confines of the memory.’67 Through his analysis of Asaph’s rhetorical strategies, Cassiodorus made it very clear that the Romans of the Psalms were a completely inappropriate example to imitate. At the same time, Asaph’s plea served as a means to highlight certain topics which would have been especially relevant against the background of armed conflict in Italy. During the Gothic wars, the conduct of armies, the integrity of sacred places and the brutal treatment of the civilian population were certainly urgent problems, which were also discussed by other contemporary observers.68 Cassiodorus’s critique of the first-century Romans, who had shown themselves to be cruel, disrespectful of God and unwilling to convert, may well have provoked reflection on the current situation in Italy; yet it is important to note that it is impossible to identify any specific group in the sixth-century wars with the biblical Romans and to associate Cassidorus’s critique with either the imperial or the Gothic side.



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Cassiodorus’s exegetical strategy was thus designed to undercut the ideological potential of the psalm. Augustine, whose Enarrationes in psalmos he knew well and used extensively, had done the same in a sermon preached on the same psalm shortly after the sack of Rome in 410.69 Augustine had achieved this by downplaying the particular historical circumstances of the event, emphasizing that the Romans were merely a small wheel in the machine of sacred history, and that under different circumstances, other reges gentium could have just as easily accomplished the task.70 Cassiodorus, by contrast, directed attention precisely at how the Romans had enacted their historical role as instruments of God’s providence.71 He used Asaph’s observations to criticize the historical agents of the psalm, and to draw attention to the impact of war and its moral repercussions. As we will see below, Asaph also became a vehicle for suggesting the right interpretation of and reaction to such events. Similar observations can be made for Psalm 78. As a historical setting against which to read this psalm, Cassiodorus chose the Maccabean wars, when the Israelites fought against the Seleucid ruler Antiochus Epiphanes (175–34 bce).72 Like the narrative of the fall of the second Temple, the story of the Maccabees offered considerable potential for identification for Christian readers, not least with regard to its function as a prototype for Christian martyr narratives.73 Cassiodorus carefully spelt out for his readers the situation in which Asaph and the Israelites found themselves. A powerful city, once triumphant and a symbol of piety and orthodox belief, had been brought low by the imperialist ambitions of the Seleucid ruler, who exercised cruel domination alongside religious oppression.74 Despite his evocative description of the setting, Cassiodorus again refrained from drawing any straightforward analogies with political constellations of his own time – unlike, for example, Ambrose in fourth-century Milan, who had famously exploited this psalm to depict his Nicene community as a New Israel under threat from the Empress Justina and the homoean Goths.75 And it is again by carefully following Asaph’s movements as an orator that Cassiodorus established a critical distance towards both the beleaguered chosen people and its enemies. As Cassiodorus made clear, Asaph’s task in defending the people of Israel was not an easy one. After all, many Israelites had apostatized and abandoned the law, worshipping the foreign gods of their enemies and thereby calling into question their very status as the chosen people.76 Israel’s affliction could thus be interpreted as a divine punishment for their aberrations. Under these circumstances, pleading ‘not guilty’ was not an option for Asaph. He therefore began his speech

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(the dramatic beginning of the psalm – O God, the nations have come into thy inheritance) by formulating a judicial argument ad laesionem rei (an argument drawn from the thing harmed). This was meant to persuade God to rush to the aid of the Israelites by reminding him that they were, despite their shortcomings, his peculiar possession.77 When dealing with the guilt of the lapsed Israelites, Asaph – as any respectable secular litigator would have done – deflected the attention of the divine judge away from the inexcusable crimes of his clients, by reminding Him of the even greater shortcomings of their enemies, who were wholesale pagans.78 Another strategy employed by Asaph was to use the prestige of the patriarch Joseph to mitigate God’s anger towards the people: ‘he put forward the name of the most acceptable patriarch to represent the sinning people (gens), so that the recollection of that most holy man could lessen the sins of the people’.79 But in the end, Asaph’s most efficient strategy of defence was to resort to the argument of concessio, that is, the simple confession of one’s fault and bid for forgiveness.80 Asaph’s clients, the Israelites, were at times dissatisfied with God’s dispensation, unwilling to acknowledge his justice. Their advocate, by contrast, put his trust in God. Moreover, he slowly came to develop a more conciliatory perspective. Rather than merely evoking divine wrath against Israel’s enemies, he actually prayed for their conversion – that is, at least in the reading of Cassiodorus, who reinterpreted Asaph’s fervent call for revenge in this sense.81 By concentrating on Asaph’s rhetorical performance, Cassiodorus substituted Asaph for Israel as a model of identification. In the course of his speech in front of the divine judge, Asaph was transformed almost imperceptibly from a vigorous litigator into an exemplary Christian orator. Earlier in the text, Cassiodorus had contrasted Asaph’s skill with that of secular orators, discerning in it the efficacious use of the rhetorical figure of climax (auxesis). ‘Where are the orators who have adapted such service of the truth to the art of verisimilitude (Vbi sunt oratores qui ad artem uerisimilem ueritatis officia transtulerunt),’ he asked, adding, ‘Observe the arguments wielded by talented simplicity rather than malicious craftiness.’82 Clearly, secular orators had deflected the art of truth from its biblical origins, and thereby compromised it.83 How, thus, should it be used? While, as we have seen, Asaph himself at times needed to bend the truth to advance his clients’ cause, he ultimately abandoned such doubtful strategies in favour of confessing the sins of his people and asking for forgiveness, thereby conveying to his audience a message about how to react in the face of violent conflict and oppression, namely with perseverance and trust in God. Elsewhere, Cassiodorus interrupted his exegesis of another ‘judicial psalm’ (Psalm 31) with an appeal to secular orators, urging them to take the penitent



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prophet’s speech as their model and to enhance the credibility and moral integrity of secular legal practice.84 In contrast to secular judicial oratory, where litigators sometimes used their abilities to defend a false truth, and judgements could be ambigous or even corrupt and purchased by money, its biblical counterpart was characterized by an uncompromising commitment to veracity and justice. Here, facts counted more than words (causa plus clamat quam lingua); the technique of concessio (which was also used by Asaph in his plea on behalf of the Israelites), although considered to be the last resort of the laywer in traditional rhetorical handbooks, became the centrepiece of the orator’s strategy.85 Cassiodorus carefully weighed against each other the two types of oratory with which he was familiar. Although he acknowledged (and emphasized) the difference between them, he also articulated the hope that they might draw closer. It is worth remembering that topics such as the moral excellence (and rhetorical skill) of advocates or the integrity of judges and the legal system were also important issues in Ostrogothic Italy, as evidenced in the Variae and the Edictum Theoderici.86 In the context of Justinian’s projects of legal reform and codification, the Christian dimensions of imperial law and authority received renewed emphasis, and legal practice and education became the subject of political debates. The imperial quaestor Junillus Africanus composed an exegetical treatise in the 540s with the significant title Instituta regularia divinae legis, in which he discussed the Christian foundations of human law and governance; Cassiodorus knew the work and recommended it in his own Institutiones.87 Against this background, Cassiodorus’s presentation of Asaph as an ideal orator seems particularly interesting. In Cassiodorus’s exegesis of both Psalms 78 and 73, Asaph took centre-stage as a model for orientating Cassiodorus’s Christian audience in a more general sense too. In his concluding remarks, Cassiodorus exhorted his readers to let themselves be persuaded by Asaph’s speech, and to adopt a similar attitude towards the fate of their own community: ‘We must also ponder and store deep in our minds that we are being advised to rejoice with zealous charity at the blessings on God’s church, and to feel sore grief at her disasters.’ Citing Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 12.26), Cassiodorus reminded them that compassion and love of one’s neighbour were essential to the social cohesion of a Christian society.88 Asaph’s forensic speech contributed to the definition of an ideal community characterized by caritas and unanimity. Likewise, the most remarkable aspect of Psalm 73, although Asaph ended his speech with a note of rebuke against the Romans, remained his prayer for mercy and conversion

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on behalf of those members of his own community who were still refusing to believe in Christ.89 Cassiodorus specifically alerted his audience, the auditores egregii, to the compassionate way in which Asaph cared about the fortune of his community: Worthy listeners, you have understood how sweet are the duties of piety (officia pietatis) to those most faithful men (fidelissimi uiri): you have heard how they are unwilling that their descendants should bear the melancholy, and therefore lament with countless tears the latter’s future calamities. This indeed is the holy perfection of charity (caritas), to bring to mind the future dangers which one fears will descend on one’s successors.90

Asaph thus turned into a vehicle for the right interpretation and evaluation of the story told in the psalms, and at the same time served as a voice for Cassiodorus’s own comments and concerns. For Cassiodorus, then, what seems to have made these psalms especially interesting was their potential to provide a language with which to address and interpret comparable events in his own day. The potential for identification with the biblical orator becomes particularly apparent with regard to Psalm 72, where the voice of the psalmist is very strongly present in the biblical text. For this psalm, Cassiodorus did not offer any specific chronological setting, but concentrated entirely on the efforts of Asaph, who struggles to find a valid perspective on the evils endured by his community. The Israelites watch their enemies prevail and lead prosperous lives instead of receiving the deserved punishment for their sins, while they themselves are exposed to affliction and poverty despite their best efforts to live righteously. Asaph is therefore confronted with questions about the religious significance of success or calamity, and about the right reaction to such events. Does God take any interest in the fate of his chosen people, and what difference does it make whether or not we try to lead a righteous life? Can defeat or victory in battle, or prosperity and achievements in this world, be interpreted as signs of God’s benevolence towards a community? Following Augustine, from whose vivid sermon he derived much of his material, Cassiodorus identified as the major issue in the psalm the question of divine justice and intervention in human affairs.91 Cassiodorus closely observed the process through which Asaph slowly reached the right understanding of such issues. In the beginning, Asaph himself was haunted by doubt. Much like the Israelites, he felt envy towards the worldly achievements of the sinners, and confessed that he ‘had almost fallen when the Lord’s dispensation irrationally displeased him’.92 In Asaph’s case, the crisis of



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confidence in God’s justice and the reliability of divine power was especially serious because of his responsibility as a leader of the Israelite people.93 But slowly, Asaph stepped up to his task to offer moral guidance to his community. In an attempt to explain to them the right reaction to suffering and injustice in this world, he urged them to consider eternal salvation rather than temporary happiness. The faithful should not let themselves be deceived by the prosperity of sinners; even if it might seem otherwise at times, God is neither unjust nor indifferent towards the fate of his people. Not only will sinners receive their just punishment in due course, it is also wrong to hope for tangible rewards rather than spiritual goods in return for faith and pious works.94 Cassiodorus could thus conclude that Asaph’s knowledge of the divine law, along with his rhetorical abilities, had enabled him to regain his good judgement.95 In his exegesis, Cassiodorus not only (like Augustine before him) clarified Asaph’s reflections for his own audience, but in addition, he explicitly likened Asaph’s intellectual efforts to those of an orator: ‘This kind of speech is termed “deliberative”, when arguments are propounded which make us uncertain, and the judgement is selected which is appropriate to what is both advantageous and honourable.’96 The rhetorical handbooks defined the genus deliberatiuum as an advisory speech, most often delivered in front of a political audience, and dealing with matters of public interest and policy. According to Cicero and Quintilian, the goal of a deliberative speech was to reach political decisions by taking into account the expected outcome of an action (utilitas) as well as its compatibility with the socially accepted norms and values (the honestum or decorum).97 Ambiguity and contention arose where the useful and the honourable, the two principles for good decision-making, conflicted with each other, or where the issue at stake was itself morally ambivalent. Cassiodorus noted that Asaph’s problem consisted precisely in such a causa anceps, ‘as it is common in deliberative speeches, when the mind is uncertain about the outcome’.98 Aptly, Cassiodorus framed the tension between secular aspirations and spiritual goals discussed in the psalm not least as a political problem: the sinners ‘are seen to be wealthy, to dominate many peoples, to have no fears in this world, and are thought to possess peace’.99 He also clothed the psalmist’s critique of the arrogance of sinners, who think that their blasphemous thoughts and deeds will remain unpunished, in political language, attributing their actions to a tyrannica uoluntas which led them to overstep human boundaries in the erroneous belief that they could act with impunity.100 To convey to his readers a sense of the depth of the veritable crisis of identity which Asaph and his community confronted,

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Cassiodorus compared the loss of adequate patterns of interpretation with the experience of alienation from one’s homeland, the loca patriotica, a situation with which he was himself familiar.101 At stake was no less than the collective fate of the community and its relationship to a logic of divine retribution. As Ann Astell has observed, the concept of deliberative speech shifted towards a distinctly spiritual understanding as Cassiodorus applied it to the Psalms, taking on connotations of inner debate and personal meditation; yet it also retained its political meaning.102 After all, Asaph spoke as the representative of the people of Israel, and his problem consisted in discerning what kind of message to convey to this populus. When classical orators weighed the expected political or material benefit (utilitas) of an action against its moral quality, the honestum, they were in a sense negotiating the moral order of their society.103 This is not dissimilar to what biblical orators like Asaph (or Cassiodorus) were doing for their respective communites. It is easy to see the social relevance of questions about divine retribution for sin and the corollary of human behaviour. The same is true for reflections about God’s intervention in this world and the reasons for it, or about the tension between human responsibility and divine providence. Asaph’s speech (like Cassiodorus’s exegesis) was concerned with the ethical foundation of action in a (Christian) society. Reassuringly, as Cassiodorus pointed out, the outcome of Asaph’s deliberation was that ‘the judgement was selected which is appropriate to both the useful and the honorable’.104 Rhetoric thus allowed for the different principles of decisionmaking to converge, and offered a way to reconsider the underlying norms and values that were to serve as a frame of interpretation from a Christian perspective. This stands in sharp contrast to the wicked rhetoric of sinful people, whose way of speaking Cassiodorus characterized as a ‘ratiocinatio sine ratione, tractatus sine consilio, cogitatio sine sapore’ (reasoning without reason, discussions without consultation, thoughts without savour), that is, as a kind of anti-rhetoric.105 Cassiodorus ended his commentary by praising Asaph’s performance, which commanded all the more authority because it was grounded in Scripture.106 Asaph’s role as a political leader is here defined by his interpretative authority; the practice of leadership is closely tied to rhetorical practice. Cassiodorus, then, read Psalm 72 not only as a reflection on the moral standing of a community and on the religious significance of historical events; it was also an important lesson on how a political leader and teacher like Asaph should explain such issues to his community. As will be discussed in more detail below, Cassiodorus in a sense carried further this practice of deliberation for his own



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audience in his commentary, clarifying and reinforcing the lessons taught by Asaph, and incorporating a strong affirmation of Chalcedonian orthodoxy into his text.107 As in Psalms 73 and 78, Cassiodorus ended his commentary on Psalm 72 with an emphatic conclusion, in which he sought to persuade his audience to adopt the moral perspective and theological lessons developed from the psalm: ‘Grant O Lord, that you do not make us envy the men whom you condemn by your truth; but let us curse those whom you abhor, and be fond of those whom you love; for only those who follow your wishes with a most devoted heart can have their portion with you.’108 Cassiodorus thus assumed Asaph’s position as a teacher with regard to his own audience. Through the work of the exegete, the psalm became a vehicle for the ‘formation of the Christian’ (institutio Christiani). Like Asaph’s speech, Cassiodorus’s exegesis was designed to develop patterns of interpretation and guidelines for action and reaction for a Christian community.

4. The exegete as orator As an exegete, Cassiodorus continued Asaph’s work as an orator. Through his appropriation of the voice of the psalmist, we can trace his response to events and problems treated in the Psalms which were also the subject of debate in the sixth century. As we have seen, he was much concerned with the religious significance of military events and the behaviour of conquering armies.109 An important lesson to be derived from the story about the Maccabean wars as told by Asaph, for example, was that divine approval and support in times of affliction were conditional upon upholding orthodoxy and the correct observance of the cult.110 Only the part of Israel who had, under Mathathias’s leadership, remained steadfast in their faith and upheld the law despite potential repercussions, were truly to be considered ‘God’s people’, as Cassiodorus explained to his readers.111 Asaph’s speech was also a reminder of the solidarity and charity necessary for the internal cohesion of such a community.112 Conversely, Cassiodorus elsewhere identified religious dissent among the Israelites (described as a certamen nefarium) as the root of all further misfortune which befell them.113 The logic of human sin and divine retribution seems to have been of particular concern to Cassiodorus, especially in its relation to the collective fate of a community. The rhetorical construction of the Asaph-psalms in itself presupposed to a certain extent the idea of redistributive justice, since it was based upon the assumption that Israel’s destiny (much as that of other peoples)

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lay in God’s hand (and that the impending destruction of the people could be averted through the art of persuasion).114 In the commentary on Psalm 72, Cassiodorus discouraged the opinion that tribulation on earth is always a sign of divine anger; sometimes it is intended as an incitement to correction.115 Yet he unmistakably affirmed that the world is governed by God’s sovereign will. Human actions indeed have moral consequences, and human history unfolds not through mere chance, but is subject to divine providence, which we must respect and follow.116 And although Cassiodorus acknowledged that the faithful should focus on spiritual rather than temporal rewards for their behaviour, while sinners would receive the just punishment at the final judgement, he still sought to preserve some sense of retribution already in this world.117 The psalter contained many terrifying examples of divine punishment and the political consequences of religious error. Cassiodorus was clearly haunted by such questions, and he kept reframing his answers – perhaps understandably so, given his past commitment to a heterodox regime which was on the verge of collapse. He was also attentive to the tension between collective guilt and individual responsibility raised by such instances of divine punishment.118 But the Psalms also offered some reassurance concerning the possibility for men to influence or reverse their fate by repenting and taking appropriate action. In Psalm 142, one of the penitential psalms, King David, troubled by the assaults of his son Absalom, laments his past behaviour and prays for forgiveness of his sins. Cassiodorus took this as an occasion to remind his audience of the efficacy of prayer and penance on both an individual and a collective level. While David’s penitential prayer functioned as an example of each level for the orator sanctissimus, Cassiodorus also urged his readers to consider the story of the city of Niniveh, when the whole population had grieved and fasted and thus succeeded in escaping the impending disaster foretold by the prophet Jonah.119 Similarly, if there was any comfort to be derived from the narrative of Jerusalem’s fate in 70 ce, it was that even the Israelites could have prevented the destruction of the Temple, if only they had repented in time and confessed their guilt (as Asaph, the orator, had suggested).120 Another result of Cassiodorus’s exegesis of the rhetorical psalms was to convey to his audience a distinctly spiritual perspective on how to react in times of violent conflict and how to deal with potential enemies. This was a model which emphasized the possibility of reconciliation and conversion rather than violent subjugation or destruction. As already briefly noted above, Cassiodorus reinterpreted Asaph’s frequent calls for divine revenge against Israel’s enemies as pleas for their conversion. Thus, when Asaph called upon God to ‘avenge



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the blood of thy servants which has been shed’ (Ps. 78.10), he did not speak of temporal vengeance as ‘the means by which force and injustice are repelled by just retribution’. Rather, by interceding with God on behalf of Israel’s enemies, Asaph exhibited the proper Christian attitude according to the precept of the Gospel, which Cassiodorus proceeded to cite: ‘pray for your enemies, do good to those who hate you’ (Mt. 5.44).121 Similarly, when Asaph called upon God to intervene against the Romans in Psalm 73, he did not, according to Cassiodorus, hope for a military counterstrike, but rather prayed for their eventual conversion.122 While this was by no means an unusual way to deal with the violent language contained in the Psalms and other books of the Old Testament, this message seems to have been of particularly urgent concern to Cassiodorus. He frequently returned to this theme throughout the commentary, and he sometimes invested considerable exegetical effort in arriving at this conclusion.123 Moreover, Cassiodorus explicitly advocated it as a rule of conduct for a Christian people. This is the case in Psalm 137, where he identified as the speaker of the psalm the populus catholicus who praised God and prayed for the conversion of kings (reges terrae) and even of enemies. The psalm was an exemplary oratio (‘perfecta nimis et qualem fundere monemur oratio est’) not only because the unity and consensus among this people was so profound that they could be said to speak with one voice (una uox), but more importantly, they spoke not with anger, but appealed to God’s mercy for the repentance and salvation of the sinners.124 At the end of his commentary, Cassiodorus therefore again directly exhorted his readers to imitate the speakers of the psalm: Let us pay heed to the nature of this proclamation by which the holy people (sanctus populus) has instructed us … They sought to cut out all their hearts’ resentment (zelum cordis) against their enemies, so they asked that those who seemed to be hostile towards them should become their associates (socii). Let us imitate their devout sentence and opt to love those who afflict us.125

To this, Cassiodorus added that we should perceive enemies not simply negatively and as hostile to us, but positively, since dealing with them could actually provide an opportunity to exercise patience and thus be more useful than always being surrounded by the amicable presence of friends.126 This was certainly good advice for every Christian, but it may have been especially relevant to members of the Italian elite as they were dealing with the hostilities between different groups during the Gothic wars.127 That Cassiodorus would have responded to such issues with particular sensitivity is certainly understandable given the political background against

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which he was writing. His reflections on the Christian attitude towards enmity and war, on the tension between collective and individual responsibility and between human agency and the providential sequence of history could indeed have contributed to a broader societal debate.128 Old Testament language and models played an important role in the historiographical debates which accompanied Justinian’s wars against Ostrogothic Italy and Vandal Africa. In Justinianic legislation, the emperor’s actions were presented as expressions of God’s will, and imperial success as the result of divine favour.129 There is a substantial amount of biblical precedent and providential rhetoric in the works of the poet Corippus, who presented the Vandal expedition as the triumphant realization of a divinely inspired plan.130 He used biblical imagery to argue that the Roman victories were a sign of God’s favour, who fought at the side of the Romans just as he had once done for Israel; imperial setbacks, by contrast, were interpreted as temporary tests of their endurance and good faith.131 In his account of Justinian’s wars, the historian Procopius was much preoccupied with the moral interpretation of the recent past, with questions of historical causality and contingency, divine intervention in human affairs and with the ways to discern its patterns.132 He often described the reflections of various actors in the Wars about the reasons for victory and defeat, and about the preconditions for divine support.133 But he also weighed Christian assumptions about an economy of merit and retribution against notions of contingency and amoral fate – or, in other words, the inscrutability of God’s plans.134 The quaestor Junillus addressed similar issues in his Instituta regularia divinae legis, where he attempted to assess the salience and validity of the Bible as a frame of interpretation in the present age. The modes of divine government of human affairs (gubernatio divina) are an important theme in the text, and Junillus carefully explained to his readers how they could learn about God’s will and the mechanisms of reward and retribution from the Bible.135 As we have seen, Cassiodorus’s position on such matters was remarkably nuanced. He carefully avoided directly identifying any particular contemporary group with either the biblical Israel or its enemies. Yet he appears to have been particularly aware of the parallels that could be drawn between the military language and imagery of the Psalms and the contemporary situation in Italy – but also of the potential danger inherent in an unrestrained use of such imagery to legitimize one’s own position. At times, it seems that he deliberately evoked such presentist interpretations precisely to discourage them through the subsequent exegetical argument.136 He forcefully (and repeatedly) reasserted Augustine’s view that there was a fundamental difference between the Old and



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the New Testament in the way in which divine election and guidance manifested themselves. The Old Testament logic could not be seamlessly applied to events in the present, post-incarnational age, and it was therefore wrong to continue to expect tangible benefits such as the granting of land or protection in war.137 Cassiodorus was thus very careful to delegitimize certain uses of the Bible. Yet, as we have seen, this does not mean that he was not acutely interested in how the biblical text could function as a tool for understanding and interpreting the present. Promoting a reading of the Psalms which favoured conversion and integration of religious and political enemies was an important part of his efforts in this regard. This, moreover, was an immediate concern in the light of contemporary doctrinal controversies. Religious orthodoxy and political legitimacy were intertwined not only in the Old Testament narratives, but also in sixth-century political thought. Imperial propaganda cast Justinian’s campaigns against the barbarian gentes in the West as a battle on behalf of the Catholic faith against wicked ‘Arians’, and Justinian’s anti-homoean policy in North Africa could have served to reinforce this message.138 It was not uncommon to associate the demise of the Gothic kingdom with the religious affiliation of the Ostrogothic rulers and elites. Some even interpreted the death of Theoderic as a divine punishment for his heretical attitudes, especially since its circumstances purportedly resembled the infamous end of the heresiarch Arius himself.139 In addition, questions of Christology and adherence to the doctrine formulated at the Council of Chalcedon became increasingly divisive during the reign of Justinian, whose attempts to assure doctrinal unity throughout the empire culminated in the much contested Three Chapters Edict and the Council of Chalcedon 553.140 It is therefore no surprise to find that Cassiodorus frequently used Asaph as a vehicle to instruct his audience about matters of correct faith. As has often been noted, Cassiodorus in the EP consistently affirmed Nicene orthodoxy against those who, like ‘Arians’, denied Christ’s full divinity. At the same time, he addressed the question of how the human and the divine natures came together in the person of the incarnated Christ, a controversial topic during the Three Chapters Controversy.141 Both topics also appear in Cassiodorus’s exegesis of Asaph’s speeches, not only of those discussed so far, but also in various other psalms of Asaph. Thus, according to Cassiodorus, Asaph incorporated in his plea for the beleaguered Jerusalem in Psalm 73 a passage which prophetically described the miracle of the incarnation and its salvific function for humankind, stressing the son’s coeternity and unity with God.142 In Psalm 76, Christology and the soteriological meaning of the incarnation were

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identified by Cassiodorus as the topic of the deliberative speech performed by Asaph, who became a vehement advocate of a Chalcedonian two-natures Christology.143 A particularly vivid example is Psalm 81, where Asaph appealed to his community to keep the right faith. Not only did Cassiodorus turn Asaph’s speech into an exhortation to the Jews of his own time to convert to Christianity, adding a layer of vigorous anti-Jewish polemic to Asaph’s words, but he also used the psalm as a vehicle for an equally fierce polemic against both Nestorians and miaphysites, the two groups whose Christological positions he considered heretical.144 This suggests that Cassiodorus, who supported a (Western) interpretation of Chalcedon with an emphasis on the duality of natures in Christ against the different interpretation by Justinian and the imperial Church, may have considered it necessary to distance himself from Nestorian views. At the same time, it confirms the impression that he would not have agreed with Justinian’s policy of integration towards the miaphysites and his condemnation of the Three Chapters.145 In the context of the difficult relations between the West and the imperial centre, persuading others into what Cassiodorus considered the orthodox position was an urgent concern. Cassiodorus used the rhetorical exegesis of the Psalms not only as a means of developing patterns of orientation for communities in crisis, but also to reflect on the most pressing theological problems which he himself confronted around the middle of the sixth century.

Conclusion The Psalms – in a much stronger sense than many other texts – have the potential to shape and transform the self-understanding of their readers. They guide the interpretation of individual experiences by offering a common language which can serve to evaluate and communicate them. As I have attempted to show in this chapter, Cassiodorus’s analysis of the Psalms as orations reinforced this potential of identification. It provided a particularly effective way of persuading his readers to assume the position of the speakers or audience of the Psalms, and to refer to themselves the messages and teachings contained in the text.146 At the same time, it allowed the exegete to closely follow the movements of the speakers of the Psalms, to adopt their role and use their voice to articulate his own views and concerns. The fact that some of the biblical speakers (such as Asaph) resembled classical orators and advocates opened up the psalter in a yet more specific



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sense to readers like Cassiodorus and his peers. Like Cassiodorus, such an audience would possess some rhetorical and possibly also legal training and share experience of and interest in politics as well as in matters of theology and exegesis. Indeed, while the EP could certainly be used as a handbook of rhetorical terms and examples, the sophisticated dialogue between biblical and classical rhetoric to some extent presupposed an audience already knowledgeable in rhetoric, and therefore capable of appreciating its effects. It is intriguing to note that in some of the psalm-orations, Cassiodorus addressed his own audience as uiri egregii, uiri prudentissimi or compared the biblical orators to the secular diserti.147 This may remind us of the group of diserti who appear in the preface to the Variae as the audience of that work, and whose profile has been described by Jouanaud as that of a courtly elite, most of whom were advocates and distinguished by their rhetorical skills.148 These observations can reinforce the notion that the EP was intended to reach not only a monastic audience, but also a wider circle of Latin-speaking intellectuals who were active between Italy and Constantinople around the middle of the sixth century.149 We may think, of course, of Pope Vigilius, to whom the text was probably dedicated, and of the clerics in his entourage, some of whom would also have possessed a secular education or some background in law. Among those present in Constantinople was the future Pope Pelagius, as well as a number of Italian bishops.150 Arator, who also appears among the diserti mentioned in the Variae, is a good example of the intellectual profile of such a figure who combined both political and ecclesiastical experience. His exegetical poem, with which we began this chapter, serves as a reminder of the level of elite (and lay) interest in the Bible, and of the contribution of exegesis to ecclesiastical politics.151 But while Arator’s reading of Acts was well suited to support papal claims to authority and primacy by invoking the apostles as role-models for the pope, the rigorous Christological position expressed in Cassiodorus’s exegesis would eventually put him into disagreement with Vigilius after the latter had consented to the condemnation of the Three Chapters and the proceedings of the Council of Constantinople. Other members of the Italian (senatorial) elite who had emigrated to Constantinople remained involved in the exchange of texts and ideas and in the current political and theological debates as well, for example Cethegus, to whom Cassiodorus addressed the Ordo generis Cassiodoriorum. Cassiodorus was also in touch with some of the North Africans who were engaged in lively polemics against Justinian’s ecclesiastical policy. The imperial quaestor Junillus is another example of a courtier turned biblical scholar, who

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was engaged in political debates similar to those that shaped Cassiodorus’s commentary on the Psalms.152 It should be emphasized that there is no contradiction between a monastic and a broader readership of the EP, or between the spiritual aims of the text and its political dimension. The EP is a multi-layered text, for which we can trace several purposes and contexts; its audience and reception were not stable in the course of its long history of composition and revision. The commentary as a whole, and the ‘rhetorical psalms’ specifically, provide a space for spiritual guidance, self-reflection, prayer and meditation. At times, there is a notion of detachment and retreat; but there is also opinionated exegesis, a certain desire for reassurance and justification, and an attempt to offer comments on issues relevant to the contemporary world of the exegete. Cassiodorus used biblical figures such as Moses and Asaph, and the speeches delivered by them, to reflect on and redefine his own position in a time of transition, but he also wrote to persuade his ‘hearers’ (or readers) as a community. In the EP, Cassiodorus constantly negotiated the intersection of biblical and secular oratory. He often did so in order to demonstrate the greater efficacy or veracity of the former, but he also carefully delineated their points of overlap.153 This led to the redefinition of classical rhetorical concepts and enabled Cassiodorus to point to the ideal of a Christian rhetorical practice. Its effect, however, was not simply a spiritualization of secular rhetoric in the sense of its absorption into scriptural studies: rather, secular oratory itself was supposed to become more spiritual and to converge towards Christian standards. It is the tension between biblical and secular rhetoric that allowed Cassiodorus to explore the ways in which the Bible could provide patterns of orientation and identification. It also raised the question of what kind of rhetoric, which language of power, should be used to define the social and legal order of a Christian society, and to reflect on its ethical standards. To modern readers of the EP, this serves as a reminder of the permeability between biblical and secular traditions, and between political and exegetical discourse. Cassiodorus’s reading of the psalter was connected with an understanding of exegesis as a means of persuasion. There is, then, a further link between Cassiodorus the politician and author of the Variae and Cassiodorus the exegete: a clear sense of the power of persuasion, and a keen attempt to mediate between different social realms and audiences.

3

Lay Readers of the Bible in the Carolingian Ninth Century Jinty Nelson

Introduction ‘Reading the Bible’ is an expression that needs clarifying in a ninth-century context. Even the literate, a small minority of the population of Carolingian Europe, more often heard the Bible read out loud than read it to themselves, and this was even truer of laypersons than of monks or clergy whose professions required the ability to read. Modern distinctions between orality and literacy, and between oral and literate societies, are anachronistic when applied to the early Middle Ages.1 Take the case of Charlemagne: ‘he put a great deal of effort into improving the quality of reading and the chanting of psalms for he was knowledgeable in both. Yet he would never read in public nor would he sing except sotto voce and together with the congregation.’2 He could read, but as correct conduct required, he left reading out in church to the clergy.3 He commissioned a large treatise on the veneration of icons; he evidently had it read out to him, and in the single surviving manuscript there remain written in the margins his one- or two-word reactions to what he heard and evidently understood.4 It must be said that most of the comments are fairly basic: bene, ‘well[-said/-written]’, unsurprisingly, recurs very often, like the encouraging teacher’s tick in the margin of a student’s essay. Just a few of the comment-words are, as Ann Freeman pointed out, ‘more interesting’, but they’re used ‘rarely’.5 Rationabiliter is one of these rarities, and it occurs only twice. Each time, however, it is exactly the right word. It appears first after this general statement: ‘By as much as the body stands out over the shadow, the truth over the image, the done deed over the plan, by so much does the New Testament stand out over the Old.’ Three paired phrases, ‘in that …’,

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‘in this …’, each referring to an Old Testament event contrasted with one from the New Testament, are followed by a fourth, contrasting ‘the promise of the realm of Canaan and its wealth’ to ‘the grant of eternal life and the kingdom of heaven’ – and against this last pair is the marginal comment, rationabiliter.6 The hearer/reader has grasped the rationale of a contrast which in fact underpins the entire book, and the method that drives it.7 The second rationabiliter is similarly à propos: the text clearly alludes to (without quoting) St Paul (1 Thess. 5.21, ‘Omnia autem probate’ (‘But test everything’) before quoting 1 Jn 4.1: ‘Probate spiritus an ex Deo sint’ (‘Test whether those spirits are or are not from God’).8 Again, the hearer/reader picks up a rational connection, a rational sequence by way of typological opposition between image and Scripture, a progression from one level to another, from an imperative injunction to an approving exclamation.9 The mind of the man to whom the word probate! appealed and for whom the apt response was rationabiliter! was practical and decisive. It was the mind of Charlemagne, a layman. That Carolingian rationalism had its being, as well as its limits, was the observation of Hans Liebeschütz in 1950, seldom cited nowadays but still worth pondering.10 Of course, there was no such thing as a typical layman. By 793, though, an interest in reason and a notion of rationality on the part of Charlemagne, and those at his court and serving in his entourage, had been honed by conversations. Einhard, Charlemagne’s biographer, claimed that Alcuin was ‘the greatest scholar of his time, and was the teacher of Charlemagne’.11 There is plenty of evidence that the number of scholars, clergy and persons belonging to the lay elite with some training in Latin literacy, that is, reading if not writing, grew during Charlemagne’s reign, thanks to his personal enthusiasm for the study of the liberal arts but also to the centripetal force he exercised.12 By the late 790s, Alcuin was no longer regularly present at court but his former students were. The conversations had proliferated, not only there but wherever the former students found themselves in discussions at home and in assemblies. This chapter focuses on some examples of lay Bible-readers/hearers in the Carolingian ninth century. Lay literacy was significantly increasing thanks to the greater availability of education, and stronger motivations to learn. In some dioceses, local priests were encouraged to run schools. Great monasteries offered teaching not just to oblates destined for the monastic life but also to boys with futures in secular callings. In the households of aristocrats and propertied people, men and women wanted to give alms and endow churches by using documents, and to bring up the young in Christian lives. More laymen were being mobilized by a regime that communicated and administered through



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the written word. Whether at the pragmatic level of knowing how to read a document well enough to spot errors and falsehoods, or at the more advanced level of Latinity presupposed by the elites’ ability to read/hear classical history and poetry, functional literacy was promoted. This was the necessary context of laypeople’s direct acquaintance with the Bible in the Carolingian period.13

Talking about the Bible There is some relatively early evidence in echoes of conversations at the court of Charlemagne.14 Biblical phrases, heard and/or read, came into the minds of those who took part. These included lay people who were, as homines, human beings, defined according to Aristotle not only by their having reason and language, but by their capacity for laughter.15 Humour is certainly present in a dialogue preserved in BNF 4629, a ‘legal handbook’ produced at, and for, Charlemagne’s court.16 It includes three deftly-placed quotations from the Old Testament, two from the New, and exegetical passages from Isidore, Augustine and others. In what is probably the most strikingly innovative section, where the conversation turns to the meaning of Ecclesiastes 25.33, ‘A muliere initium factum est peccati et per illa omnes moriemur’ (‘The beginning of sin was made by a woman and through her we shall all die’), and the question is posed, ‘Ergo odio abendum [sic] est mulier?’ (‘So a woman is to be hated?’), to which the answer is, ‘Propter peccatum non propter natura [sic]. Odi igitur vitium ama creaturam, et ipsa [mulier] homo est et Dei opus est bonum’ (‘Through sin, not through nature. Hate the vice, therefore, and love the creature, and she herself is a human being and the work of God is good’). Homo can be translated ‘man’ or ‘human being’, or, as here, ‘woman’. The author of Genesis in describing God’s work of creation wrote no fewer than six times that ‘God saw that it was good’: this is not said specifically of the creation of man or woman – an event twice mentioned, Gen. 1.27, and 2.20-23 – possibly because since both were made in God’s own likeness it was redundant to say that they were good; but Gen. 1 ends with the statement that God saw everything that he had made ‘and behold it was very good’, while Gen. 2 opens with God completing on the seventh day ‘the work he had made’. The author of the dialogue in BNF 4629 produced an original combination of ideas: of woman as not being death ‘on account of her nature’, of woman as being homo, and of God’s work as good. However ‘crude’, however ‘garbled’, whatever the ‘strangeness’ of its setting amidst legal texts, this scripturally-inspired conversation reflected fresh thinking then, and provokes it now.

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Alcuin is the man most convincingly credited with ‘a distinctive voice in [projecting] the call to virtue [to lay people] in his own time’.17 Donald Bullough heard Alcuin’s voice in the ‘uniquely scripturally-based’ Admonitio generalis.18 Here the laity in general (populus Dei) were addressed indirectly through bishops (omnes ordines ecclesiasticae pietatis; pastores) and secular holders of high office (saecularis potentiae dignitates; ductores gregis).19 Scripture was to be diffused through sermons heard by lay people, and preached in the vernacular.20 Bullough heard Alcuin’s voice addressing lay people directly not in sermons (dialogues are unmentioned here) but in letters, especially the short Ep. 69, addressed to a Frankish dux and his wife.21 Here John 13.35 (‘you are my disciples if you love one another’) is cited, then picked up, via Matthew 22.40 and Matthew 7.12, in the concluding section where love of God and neighbour are presented as precepts whose ‘flowers’ are listed as a cluster of virtues, and the ‘fruit of the flowers’ as ‘life eternal’.22 Bullough’s comments are, as ever, à propos. But thereafter the flowertrail leads him elsewhere, and away from letters: ‘Specific citations from Scripture [which proliferate in Alcuin’s letters to clergy and monks, and to kings] are rare in and even totally absent from a majority of the letters to lay persons.’ This was, as Bullough said, ‘surprising’, especially given the profusion of scriptural quotations in the Admonitio generalis, for which Alcuin was ‘substantially responsible’.23 Never one to avoid a tricky question, Bullough went on to show the remarkably interesting range of non-scriptural texts on which Alcuin drew for ‘desirable qualities’.24 But my concern is with scriptural influences, and here I think Donald Bullough quite uncharacteristically gave up on the letters too soon. For, though Bullough curiously made no reference to it in the present context, Alcuin’s Ep. 136, addressed to Charlemagne, does contain a direct allusion to lay interest in Bible-reading, and specifically to the study of the Gospels. A layman had put to the king a question about the meaning of the passage in Luke 22.36 about the two swords.25 The king passed the question on to Alcuin with a faintly apologetic covering note. Alcuin responded with enthusiasm: I am absolutely delighted whenever laymen have blossomed to the extent of asking questions about the Gospels (Vere et valde gratum habeo laicos quandoque ad evangelicas effloruisse inquisitions). Yes, I have heard a certain wise man say somewhere that it is for clerics, not for laymen, to study the Gospels. What is my response to that? ‘To everything there is a season (Ecclesiastes 3.1).’ Often a later hour provides what an earlier hour could not. Whoever may be the layman who asked this question, then, he is a wise man in his heart even if he is a warrior in his hands (sapiens est corde, etsi manibus miles); and Your Most Wise Authority needs many men of that kind.26



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In short, Alcuin saw the latter part of Charlemagne’s reign as the hour of the layman – now ‘asking questions about the Gospels’.27 Donald Bullough’s wheel might be said to come full circle with the laymen ‘blossoming’. There is another Alcuin letter which if not directly mentioning lay Biblereading does imply it. Ep. 132, also, and perhaps uncoincidentally, written in 798, is a set of 12 capitula, numbered headings about debatable matters.28 The first five are about questions relating to inheritance, the sixth a brief statement of the dependence of the members of a public body on the health of the head. The next four items seem to be about elections. The seventh comments on authority, reason and truth. The eighth adds: ‘all the situations above can be considered as split into three – those who have the well-being [of the body] at heart, those who seek its harm, and those who can’t make up their minds, so that when they see who’s winning, they immediately join those people. Those who care about the body’s well-being must be usefully helped, those who wish it harm must be manfully resisted; while the doubtful should either be rationally brought on side or subtly fobbed off (circumspecte dissimulandi).’ The ninth response is: ‘“Populus iuxta sanctiones divinas ducendus est, non sequendus – the people according to divine laws must be led, not followed [a quotation from Pope Celestine I]”, and persons of standing are those whom it’s best to elect when in need of getting at the evidence. Those who are in the habit of saying, “Vox populi vox Dei” must not be listened to, for the propensity of the mob (vulgus) to violent disorder always comes close to madness.’ The final three responses draw some further lessons: some banal (‘constancy should be wise’), some à propos (‘the above [lessons] must be taught to the simpleminded, for ignorance of truth forces very many to go astray’). Alcuin ended with the hope that the king would give his responses very careful consideration. In an incisive paper uncited in recent discussion, Edward Peters set out a plausible context for the royal questions that had prompted Alcuin’s answers: Charlemagne wanted to appoint a bishop in a particular diocese, but the local populus, or a section of them, had preferred a man of their own choice, on the grounds that ‘their voice was the “vox Dei”’.29 Who were ‘they’? Who were ‘those in the habit of saying ‘vox populi, vox Dei’? The aphorism was not Alcuin’s, obviously, but that of his opponents in this particular argument, and perhaps of other contemporaries in analogous arguments elsewhere, ‘since the tumultuousness of the crowd may always be close to madness (cum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit)’. ‘They’, the populus, were laymen, who had reached their view after thinking over certain Old Testament texts for themselves, and connecting these with their own Frankish self-perception as a new Israel, a

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Chosen People.30 The Old Testament texts in question were, first, Isaiah 66.5-6, ‘Audite verbum Domini … Vox populi de civitate, vox de templo, vox Domini reddentis retributionem inimicis suis’, read in the light of, second, 1 Sam. 8.7 and 8.22, in which God commanded Samuel, ‘Hear the voice of the people’ (Audi vocem populi), ‘Hear their voice and establish a king over them’ (Audi vocem eorum et constitue super eos regem). The populus chose Saul as their king, and Samuel, acting at God’s command, heard their voice. Other Old Testament references (Exod. 19.5-6, ‘Si ergo audieritis vocem meum, et custodieritis pactum meum, eritis mihi in peculium de cunctis populis … Et vos eritis mihi in regnum sacerdotale, et gens sancta’); Deuteronomy 7.5-8; 1 Samuel 10.22-4; 11, 15; 2 Samuel 2.4; 5.1-3; 1 Samuel 1.39-40, and 8.51-3) provided a broader context for ideas of consent and being chosen, just as there was a much older medieval context in recurrent arguments over how episcopal elections ought to work. The argument implicit in Ep. 132, c. 9 could well have occurred in some Frankish civitas, perhaps the one that Alcuin lived in, Tours. Though Alcuin, in certain situations, disparaged his local vulgus as an unruly mob (Bullough detected an ingrained contempt for the rustici and the unlettered), the word populus could refer to the local elite.31 Peters suggests that the precise formula vox populi, vox Dei arose from ‘a deliberate and creative juxtaposition’ of 1 Samuel 8.7-9 (and I would dare to add 1 Sam. 8.22) with Isa. 66.6. It is tempting to go a step further and claim the juxtaposers as laymen who had been reading the biblical histories of Israel. The date of Alcuin’s responses, remember, was 798. Laymen were blossoming. An increasingly imperial vision could have made it easier to align the view from the palace with that in the noisy civitas.32

Lay Bible-readers Lay Bible-readers are easier to identify if they were also writers. In the late 830s and early 840s, the experience of political upheavals and personal sufferings inspired high-born lay-persons to produce writings in which evidence of their Bible-reading is clearly, though differentially, embedded. In this section I consider first two lay letter-writers, Einhard and Adalard (?), then the lay historian Nithard and the lay poet Angelbert, and finally the laywoman Dhuoda, writer of a Handbook for her son.



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Einhard Of the 66 letters of Einhard’s collection only three offer biblical citations, and all three cases can be considered special. Ep. 40 addressed to Louis the Pious probably in summer 837 warned that the recent appearance of a comet (11 April 837) had a meaning, and penance was advisable, citing Jonas’s prophecy of the fall of Nineveh (Jn. 3.2), after which God postponed punishment after the people repented, and Jeremiah’s words on a similar act of divine remission (Jer. 18.1-10). Ep. 53 to his dearest ones, the monks of SS. Marcellinus and Peter at Seligenstadt, guardians of Einhard’s relics, some time in the later 830s, begged them to be on guard against Satan and ‘to take turns in helping each other and carrying each others’ burdens’ (Gal. 2). Ep. 57 was sent to Vussin, ‘my dearest son’, anxiously urging on him to prioritize not liberal arts but good habits, ‘for knowledge puffs up but charity edifies’ (1 Cor. 8.1), while Christ enjoined to ‘learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart’ (Mt. 11.29), not because of His miracles. If Vussin really was Einhard’s biological son, that would explain why the father’s moral burden weighed so heavy.33 Two letters Einhard wrote to Lupus of Ferrières are preserved. One, datable to 836, is in the Lupus lettercollection: Einhard, full of woe because of the loss of his wife, cited Scripture only once, ‘Blessed be those that mourn’ (Mt. 5.5). In his question-letter to Hrabanus ‘On the adoration of the holy cross’, by contrast, Einhard cited Scripture 12 times (including two repeats), of which nine were from the New Testament. His concern was with prayer, and the meaning of Christ’s victory through the Cross.34 So deep, and so deeply personal, were the ageing Einhard’s reflections that he could be seen as an exemplar of the layman’s blossoming through inquiry about the Gospels.35

Adalard (?) A letter sent by a fidelis of Charles the Bald (perhaps Adalard, whose niece would marry Charles in November 842), to the Empress Ermengard, wife of the Emperor Lothar, in 840/41, reveals two laypersons’ shared anxieties about peace-breaking through the machinations of demons.36 The fidelis responds to a letter from the Empress and echoes her accusations that he had tried to destroy the fraternal concord of the sons of the late Emperor Louis: ‘and you treated this as the work of demons … who indeed take pleasure in dissension and discord … And it is also true that a man who … loves the destruction of fraternity becomes the collaborator of demons. But may God’s mercy forever make me immune to

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such collaboration.’ Clerical preaching, and the power of rumour, may well have evoked these terrors in the Empress’s mind, yet her own Bible-reading could have reinforced the connection of demons with cosmic battles (Isa. 34.14; Rev. 18.2); so, just as Adalard’s own Bible-reading, in the dark days that followed the Battle of Fontenoy, could have predisposed him to acknowledge the relevance of demonic powers while fiercely protesting the purity of his own commitment to justice with peace.37

Nithard Nithard was Charlemagne’s grandson – near the end of his Histories he tells readers so – and we can infer from his work that he was highly educated, his mind formed in the court of his grandfather and his mother Bertha, and then the court of his uncle Louis the Pious, but also, I think, at St Riquier, the family monastery run by his natural father, Angilbert, and his kin.38 Nithard was commissioned to start writing by King Charles the Bald in mid-May 841, and stopped writing in February or March 843. He wrote a history in the classical style of events he participated in and people he knew at first hand, and he also drew on texts he had read: Sallust was among his probable models. Genre dictated that biblical allusions were few, but Nithard’s choice and placing of them are all the more significant. At a critical point in the narrative of hostilities and reconciliations between Louis the Pious and his sons, there appear two New Testament citations: Luke 15.18 and 21, the story of the prodigal son, and the father’s forgiveness, recalled in the context of Lothar’s repentance and Louis’s clemency; and John 13.34, Christ’s command to his disciples ut et vos diligatis invicem, ‘that you also love one another’ (repeated in Jn 15.12, 17), recalled in the passage where Louis as father fratres, prout valuit, unanimes effecit, ‘made the brothers [Lothar and Charles] of one mind, so far as he could, begging and pleading with them ut invicem se diligerent, that they love one another’.39 There is something at once heartfelt and fearful about Nithard’s invocation of Christ’s example in a world where unanimitas was hard to establish and the limits of the possible all too apparent (prout valuit), where begging and pleading were required for what ought to have been affective kin-relationships, and the author’s hindsight knowledge – these lines were written up in final form, apparently towards the end of October 841, in the aftermath of the Battle of Fontenoy on 25 June 841 – darkly coloured his account of the efforts to restore peace in the late 830s. There are no further biblical reminiscences in the remainder of Nithard’s Histories, until the very last chapter, IV, 7, which sounds terminal. It



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is as if a dam had given way. Nithard found in Scripture the words he needed to drive home the contrast between the dark days of the present and the glorydays of Charlemagne. He echoed the dire warnings of Hosea and Ezechiel about those who stray from the right way, St Paul’s unqualified condemnation of the wicked sorcerer, the prophet Samuel’s voicing of God’s rejection of the wicked King Saul, and the Lord’s promise that ‘the whole world shall fight against his frenzied foes’.40 Nithard’s reading did not fail him: as well as being classical, it was also, in his final despairing chapter, profoundly biblical. He cited no chapter and verse for the words that were in his head and burst forth onto the written page in misery otherwise inexpressible.

Angelbert The poet Angelbert, a high-born fidelis of the Emperor Lothar, wrote, more in sorrow than in anger, as the sole survivor of Lothar’s front rank at Fontenoy, a rhythmic poem ‘sombre and majestic’, each of its 15 strophes beginning with a letter of the alphabet in sequence from A to P, ‘a mnemonic technique for public recitation’.41 The poem belongs to both learned and popular poetic traditions not least in its portrayal of the relationship between man and lord (Lord). The very first strophe asserts that ‘The wicked demon rejoices in the breaking of peace among brothers’ (‘de fraterna rupta pace gaudet demon impius’). Biblical forecasts impelled Angelbert down this track. In the fifth strophe, Angelbert mourned that ‘just as Judas betrayed the Saviour (‘velut Iudas salvatorem tradidit’), so your captains (duces), O king, betrayed you to the sword.’ As David lamented for Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1.21, ‘Montes Gelboe, nec ros nec pluvia veniant super vos’ (‘Ye mountains of Gilboa [where Saul and Jonathan had been slain], let there be no dew, neither let there be rain upon you’), so Angelbert lamented, ‘Gramen illud ros et ymber nec humectet pluvia’ (‘May neither dew nor showers nor rain fall on that meadow [the field of Fontenoy]).’42 In the next line Angelbert’s description of the fallen Franks as prelio doctissimi echoes 1 Maccabees 4.7 (repeated in 6.30) on Judas Maccabaeus and his men as docti ad praelium.43 The twelfth and fifteenth strophes echo Jeremiah’s and Job’s bitterness and cursing of a day to be expunged from memory, and Matthew 2.18’s ‘Vox in Rama’, recalling from Jeremiah how Rachel, inconsolable, mourned her dead sons. The poem ends with a call ‘that we pray the Lord for the souls [of the dead]’ in the kind of prayerful liturgical commemoration indicated by Leviticus 25.3: the battle is to be expunged from memory, but the dead are to be remembered in anni circulo, ‘in the round of the year’. Angelbert has produced

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not a pastiche but a deeply personal work drawing deep on his reading of and thinking with the Bible.44

Dhuoda So much has been written about Dhuoda and her handbook of moral guidance for her son William, which she began the day after his coming of age (at 15), that it almost seems enough to refer to existing literature.45 Certainly the key point to stress in the present context is that this woman knew the Bible intimately: for her son’s benefit, she quoted the Psalms some 200 times, and she quoted from nearly every one of the books of the Vulgate Bible (the only books not drawn on were Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah and a handful of the minor prophets, all relatively short), drawing especially on the exempla patrum priorum of the Old Testament. In other words, she was a phenomenal Bible-reader. A supplementary but important point is that she could be an unconventional one. Book X seems to consist of a series of afterthoughts: it was as if she could not quite put her work down, but also belatedly recognized some omissions in her verba praescripta. She added a brief chapter entitled de re publica (translated by Riché’s colleagues as ‘sur ta vie publique’, ‘about your public life’) in which, having spent much of Book III advising how her son ought to conduct his life in the magna domus, the royal palace, she looked ahead to her son’s maturity as the lord of his own domus: ‘I desire you and I encourage you that with God’s help when you come to mature age you will organize your own household appropriately, in lawful ranks, usefully (utiliter), and as it is written of a particular man, “like a most tender little worm in the wood”, you will carry out everything concerning the state in a well-ordered fashion, and faithfully (fideliter)’ (‘in re publica cuncta ordinabiliter cursu fidenter perage’).46 The biblical quotation, 2 Samuel 23.8, which at first seems to break the flow of thought, turns out to illuminate it. The reference here is to ‘the most wise of David’s strong men’.47 Dhuoda leaves readers/hearers to complete the reference for themselves: ‘he sat on the throne, he who slew 800 men in a single onslaught’.48 How did Dhuoda connect the little worm’s effects on the wood with her son’s hoped-for management of his household and cuncta in re publica? Riché’s colleagues translated, ‘tous les devoirs de ta vie publique’; and Thiébaux and Neel followed suit with ‘all the obligations [Neel: ‘duties] of your public life’.49 But I think the natural translation of de re publica might be ‘concerning the state’. Bede, in his Thirty Questions on the Book of Kings, Q. 9, comments on 2 Samuel 23.8 as follows:



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… tenerrimus ligni vermiculus virtus simul bellica et modesta viri designatur civilitas quia videlicet sicut vermiculus ligni tener quidem et fragilis toto suo corpore nec non permodicus apparet nihilo minus tamen fortissimum ligni robur exedens consumit et cariosum reddit unde et a terendo ligna teredinis nomen habet, sic ille affabilis omnibus domi et quietus atque humilis videbatur at in certamine publico robustum se atque intolerabilem hostibus exhibebat.50

To my mind, since Bede’s choice of the words civilitas and certamen publicum suggest the connection between the magnate’s household and his public service, the meaning of res publica is ‘the state’.51 Such a reading would accord with Foley’s ‘battling for the common good’. Further, since Bede himself correctly wrote ‘Quod dicitur de sapientissimo principe fortium David cuius quidem nomen in regum libro tacetur at vero in libro paralipomenon Iesbaam nominatur’, and since Dhuoda simply writes quidam vir, it is worth suggesting that Dhuoda either knew Bede’s Q. 9 or had arrived at a similar interpretation of it herself. No ninth-century author grasps better the link between the individual great man’s personal humility and his performance of public duty or office, between his domus or aula (‘hall’) and the ruler’s domus or aula meaning ‘palace’, as metonym for ‘public power’ or ‘state’.52 On humility, Dhuoda had written repeatedly in Books III and IV; perhaps inspired by the Pauline term commilitones (Phil. 1.2), and certainly by Augustine on the Psalms, she had urged her son to treat his colleagues as pares et fideles amici, and members of his future following and household as subditi, pares et minores, or pares, maiorumque sive iuniorum, to be treated with fraterna compassio.53 To be avoided above all was the sin of pride. It is highly relevant for Dhuoda, then, that the vermiculus was the sapientissimus princeps among David’s fortes. Perhaps there was just a touch of affectionate motherly teasing: her now 16-year-old son, who like the woodworm ‘seems very small of body, will prove to be very strong’; Dhuoda foresees a future in which, ‘thoughtful and peaceable towards all in his household’, he will be ‘brave in war’ and ‘robust in public struggle’, that is, in the world of court politics. In short, Dhuoda’s rushed postscript includes the biblical citation best suited to express her passionate hope that her vermiculus would become the wisest and bravest of the king’s men, and the most able to serve the res publica. She had found an apparently ‘extremely obscure’ biblical text.54 It perfectly summed up the purpose of her work. For modern readers, it confirms the fundamental importance of Dhuoda’s Bible-reading, powerfully reinforcing messages conveyed earlier in her own writing. The Handbook has an integrity all its own.

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Shared Bible-reading So far in this chapter, individual responses to the Bible have outweighed collective ones. I want to add two further bits of evidence for shared lay readings of the Bible. One is a letter written in 842 by Hrabanus Maurus to Abbot Hatto of Fulda about cases of consanguineous marriage and false divination: issues of obvious concern to lay people but on which the Old Testament offered perplexing messages of law and social practice that perhaps were ‘not for this time, that is, for the Christian religion’. Hrabanus assured the abbot that Old Testament precepts were certainly not to be despised, but were necessary, and to be used as testimonies, ‘for God is one and the same author (auctor) of both the Old Testament and the New’. It was a matter of using the allegorical methods of the Fathers to understand these passages correctly, and Hrabanus set out the relevant authorities at length.55 The second bit of evidence is in Archbishop Hincmar of Reims’s De coercendo et exstirpando raptu viduarum, puellarum ac sanctimonialium, written probably in 876.56 Rachel Stone has persuasively inferred that Hincmar found it particularly hard to construct theological and canonical arguments against marriage by abduction because he was having to rebut pravi atque distorti homines, sive fautores ac deceptores eorum, meaning laymen, abetted by their own clerical dependents (household priests of the kind described by Agobard of Lyons, perhaps),57 who had found in the Bible cases where abduction was clearly distinguished from rape and followed by marriage: King David’s marriage to Bathsheba (2 Sam. 11), and the mass abduction of Israelite women by the surviving men of the tribe of Benjamin whom the Israelite men then permitted to marry these women (Judg. 21). In the second case, Hincmar accepted necessity, reasonableness and public utility as justifying what was, after all, ‘a mystery done once, and never again repeated’.58 Why then did Hincmar bring these ‘precedents’ into the argument? As with the vermiculus of 2 Samuel 23.9, there was no exegetical discussion of the case of the tribe of Benjamin. Hincmar had to resort to his own devices.59 A generation before, Bishop Jonas of Orleans had alleged what Stone terms ‘“theological” resistance by lay men to the Church’s teachings on sex’.60 Churchmen were not rhetorically inventing lay arguments, but had themselves fostered them by commending the Bible not just to royalty but to a wider lay readership. As with the vox populi at episcopal elections, other voces were becoming audible in disputes over abduction as a form of marriage, and debates about times of sexual abstinence for married men. Rosamond McKitterick a quarter of a century ago made a case for lay



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literacy which many Carolingianists thought overstated.61 Today her argument is very widely accepted! It was the broad impulse behind the present chapter’s explorations on a narrower front. *** Some lay people, then, in the late eighth- and ninth-century Carolingian realms were acquainted up to a point with the Bible, whether as readers or hearers – and the distinction has often been blurred in the above discussion. But which lay people? Alcuin addressed aristocrats and courtiers, but maybe less privileged persons listened in to his and his students’ teaching at Charlemagne’s court. Dhuoda addressed one young man in particular, but through him she evidently hoped to gain access to the eyes and ears of his com(m)ilitones in the entourage of Charlemagne’s grandson Charles the Bald. These audiences were composed very largely of men, who were at court either part-time, or at a particular phase of their lives; but queens and their ladies shared aspects of court life. Aristocrats spent much time in their own houses, which were big, if not so big as the king’s; and in these ample spaces it was not only the great man, but also his wife and senior women, feminae potentes, whom moralists summoned to be accountable to God for the spiritual well-being of those in their own household, their familia, in both the medieval and the modern sense.62 The role of preacher was part of what Jonas of Orleans called the ministerium of fathers and mothers. At the social level reached by royal officials, every paterfamilias was responsible for the conduct of juniores.63 Senior women taught young children. Conscientious lords and ladies urged their household priests to preach too. As for the populus or vulgus assembled in their civitas, as at Tours or Reims, these were often no doubt clients of the high-born but they themselves belonged to local elites, labelled in contemporary sources, according to context, as boni homines, mediocres, pagenses. When sermons were preached by the bishop at a local assembly, these men heard the Bible interpreted, just as they did on Sundays if they attended church.64 Carolingian rulers preached fidelity, sanctioned by biblical precept and practice, enforced by the sanctions of biblical exempla. If the Carolingians’ subjects believed themselves to be a Chosen People, the servants of a demanding yet merciful God, that was because they were, first-hand or indirectly, readers and/or hearers of the Bible as a guide to living in their own world and time. Dhuoda told her son to read Holy Writ because ‘cuncta tibi ibidem patebunt’: ‘There everything will be laid open for you.’65

4

Jeremiah, Job, Terence and Paschasius Radbertus: Political Rhetoric and Biblical Authority in the Epitaphium Arsenii1 Mayke de Jong

Introduction: The Epitaphium Arsenii The reign of Louis the Pious (814–40) witnessed two major and shocking revolts: in 830 and 833, the emperor’s elder sons joined forces and attempted to depose their father. In themselves, these rebellious alliances were shortlived and unsuccessful, but during the upheaval and especially afterwards, memorable events such as Louis’s being taken captive by his sons, and his public penance in Soissons in the autumn of 833, gave rise to much soul-searching and written reflection.2 In the ensuing war of words, Scripture furnished powerful ammunition. This is not surprising, but it is worth pointing out that this did not just involve the citing of biblical texts in order to make one’s point or to claim authority. One can also think of ad hoc dossiers of biblical texts that were compiled for special occasions, or even of entire biblical commentaries dedicated to kings and queens as a gesture of support. Hrabanus Maurus, abbot of Fulda, was the author of a number of such commentaries, some of which were meant to support the Empress Judith in 830–3.3 In the aftermath of the revolt of 834 he acted as a mediator between the emperor and his rebellious son Lothar by offering Louis a compilation of biblical and patristic texts, arguing that Louis’s penance of the year before had been entirely invalid, but also urging him to forgive.4 In his biblical commentaries and dossiers, Hrabanus was precise and explicit, telling his royal reader from which biblical book he cited, and then giving the entire citation, often with chapter and verse. The text I will discuss here takes a very different approach, for it was meant for an audience of insiders who would understand implicit biblical references,

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including exegetically inspired comparisons between the central figures of the narrative and their biblical ‘types’. In his Epitaphium Arsenii, Paschasius Radbertus, monk and one-time abbot of Corbie, addressed a readership that comprised not just fellow-monks of his own community, but also members of the literate elite, bishops and lay magnates who had become entangled in the conflicting loyalties of the tumultuous early 830s. The Epitaphium’s main character is Wala, Charlemagne’s cousin and counsellor, who upon Louis’s accession in 814 entered Corbie as a monastic exile. Received back at the court in 821, he soon wielded great influence, only to be banished once more in 831 for his part in the first rebellion against Louis. In 834, after the second revolt had run its course, and its leader, Louis’s eldest son Lothar, was sent off to Italy, Wala followed him; having been made abbot of Bobbio, he died there in 836. He owed his nickname ‘Arsenius’ to his close association with Lothar; just as the historical Arsenius had been tutor to Honorius, son of Theodosius the Great, so from 821 onwards, Wala served as an older and experienced counsellor to Louis’s eldest son, a function he retained until his death.5 Radbert’s tribute to his beloved master Wala/Arsenius was also a muchneeded attempt to restore the great man’s reputation. The first book, written not long after Wala’s death in 836, argues that this influential courtier was also a true monk and abbot; the second, added in the mid-850s, defends Wala’s choices during the years of rebellion against Louis. The Epitaphium contains a section on Wala’s youth, but for the most part the narrative, structured as a dialogue, concentrates on the 820s and 830s, the years during which Radbert was Wala’s constant companion. It therefore seems to be a straightforward historical work, written by an author with first-hand experience of Wala’s actions, and it has often been used as such.6 On further consideration, however, it is apparent that Radbert addressed contemporary issues as much as those of the recent past. This is especially noticeable in the second book’s central argument, namely that the disasters of the present day (hodie) would not have occurred had Wala’s advice been heeded two decades earlier. Yet underneath this discourse about the present and the recent past, there were deeper layers of history that lent meaning and authority to Radbert’s prose. Together with Scripture, the history of the Christian Roman Empire formed a canonical past in which recent memory and contemporary events were situated. The major landmarks in this historical landscape were Ambrose, bishop of Milan, the prophet Jeremiah and, to a lesser extent, Job. In what follows, I will first explain why Ambrose and Jeremiah were important figures of identification, but I will then concentrate on Job. In the Epitaphium it was not just Job’s exemplary loyalty to God



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that mattered, but also the Book of Job as a literary model, and as a source of authoritative language that could be woven into this dialogue, especially when controversial issues were referred to. But first, I provide some brief and basic information about the author, his text and his subject.

Radbert and Wala Radbert (c. 790–c. 860) may have been a foundling; nothing is known about his childhood, except that he grew up in the nunnery of Notre Dame of Soissons, that had been entrusted to Abbess Theodrada in 810. She was a half-sister of Adalhard and a full sister of Wala, so as much one of Charlemagne’s cousins as her more famous siblings.7 Radbert entered Corbie as a monk under her half-brother Abbot Adalhard, and became Wala’s pupil after the latter withdrew to Corbie in 814.8 He became Corbie’s schoolmaster, and a prolific and highly sophisticated biblical commentator. Nowadays he is best known for an early work on the Eucharist, completed in 831–2,9 but in the mid-840s he also wrote an important commentary on Lamentations.10 Radbert was present in 822 when the two brothers founded Corvey in Saxony, where Wala’s mother hailed from;11 upon Adalhard’s death in 826 he was delegated to secure Wala’s succession in both monasteries at Louis’s court;12 in 831–3, he regularly visited Wala, trying to bring about a reconciliation with the emperor, while also writing his treatise on the Eucharist and embarking on the vast commentary on Matthew that he was only to finish as an old man.13 Furthermore, he wrote a Life of Adalhard, not long after the latter’s death in 826.14 By then, Wala had succeeded his half-brother as abbot, yet he was a regular presence at Louis’s court, and got involved in the rebellions of 830 and 833. In the summer of 834, when Wala joined Lothar in Italy, Radbert stayed behind in Corbie. From the Epitaphium, it is clear that quite a few monks in Corbie thought of Wala’s move as yet another desertion motivated by selfinterest; after having spent too much time away from Corbie, in the corridors of power, Wala now gave up Corbie for the more secure abbacy of Bobbio.15 For a number of reasons, their abbot had become a contentious figure. The Epitaphium, therefore, was not just a lament for Wala but also a twofold apologia to parry the dual thrust of his critics’ charges that Wala had not been a good abbot, and that he had been disloyal to his emperor. While the first book of the Epitaphium concentrated on the first charge, the second book argued the difficult case that Wala’s fides towards Louis had been impeccable: in so far as he had rebelled, he had done so to save his emperor.16

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Radbert’s position in Corbie after Wala’s departure cannot have been an easy one, for he had been the great man’s second-in-command and, most likely, his intended successor as abbot. But Wala’s reputation was damaged, and Radbert’s therefore as well; the first book of the Epitaphium, on which he embarked shortly after Wala’s death in 836, may well have been part of an effort to defend his own status in Corbie, and to salvage his chances for the abbacy. Only in 843–4, at a time when Charles the Bald could use all the help he could get, including Corbie’s assistance, did he become abbot of the great royal monastery. Either at Christmas 843 or at Easter 844, the king visited Corbie and accepted a new version of Radbert’s work on the Eucharist he had commissioned earlier, a gesture which expressed the king’s favour.17 Such gifts of biblical commentary implied a public recognition of the legitimacy of the ruler in question, but in this case Charles’s request may well have amounted to an equally public rehabilitation of Radbert, opening the way to his abbatial succession. Yet only some seven years later (between April 849 and the spring of 853) he was forced to retire, due to many conflicts within the monastery as well as with King Charles. He withdrew to the neighbouring monastery of St Riquier and settled down at his writing desk. By 860 his literary trail goes cold; he may have died in that year, but this remains uncertain.18 In these years of retirement, probably in the mid-850s, Radbert added his polemical second book to his Epitaphium, in which he openly attacked Wala’s enemies, Bernard of Septimania (d. 844) and the Empress Judith (d. 843). This pair had allegedly turned Louis’s sacred palace into a brothel, and even plotted to kill the emperor by such nefarious means as magic and sorcery. By the time Radbert voiced these accusations, both culprits had been dead for almost a decade, so one of the puzzles of this text is why Radbert attacked them so viciously all these years later. My provisional answer is that when the second book was written, the former abbot of Corbie was looking for a new patron; the Emperor Lothar I (d. 855), or even his son and successor, King Lothar II, may have been likely candidates. It is also possible that Radbert intended to attack Charles the Bald, who had forced him to retire. In either case, maligning Judith and Bernard and their dominance of the court in 830–1 could have seemed a suitable strategy. Like his beloved master Wala before him, Radbert had incurred royal disfavour and been banished from the court, for this was what removal from high office effectively meant, along with a loss of face and honour in the eyes of one’s peers. Within the context of the Epitaphium it is often difficult to separate Wala and Radbert, not just because of the author’s obvious identification with



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his subject, but also because to some extent they led parallel lives. Radbert was not related by blood to this royal family (regalis prosapia),19 but he portrayed himself almost as an adoptive son, and as the constant companion of his ‘two fathers’, Adalhard and Wala. He was the third man in their illustrious consortium.20

Literary models The chief literary model for the Epitaphium was Ambrose’s De excessu fratris Satyri, a funeral oration written upon the death of his brother Satyrus. In this two-part commemoration and consolation, Ambrose meditated on death as an end to earthly sorrows, and on the promise of resurrection.21 Apart from the Bible, this was the only text to be used in both books of the Epitaphium, providing one of the crucial links which turned these two books into a single work.22 Within the overall framework of the funeral oration, however, Radbert’s work was structured as a dialogue between three monks of Corbie, one of whom was Radbert himself (Pascasius) in the role of eyewitness, speaker and actor in his own narrative. The main source of inspiration seems to have been Sulpicius Severus’s Gallus, a dialogue about the virtues of St Martin, but Radbert also knew dialogues by Cicero and Augustine, as well as Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy.23 This format meant that different views could be expressed, and then either refuted or endorsed by the narrator, who had the final say when opinions clashed. In the second book, the continued dialogue helped to create a contrast between then (the 830s) and now (the 850s), which in turn reinforced the coherence of the Epitaphium. After long years of worry, turbulence and oppression, in the monastery and outside of it, Pascasius was now once more at liberty to sit down with two fellow monks to discuss his beloved Arsenius; indirectly, the opening sentence hints at Radbert’s loss of Corbie’s abbacy.24 Meanwhile, one of his interlocutors, Adeodatus, had grown up, and the other (Severus, that is, Radbert’s old friend Odilman) had died, so a new participant needed to be recruited. This was the bold and outspoken Theofrastus (a byname derived from Cicero), whose scathing commentary moved Pascasius’s narrative forward.25 The Epitaphium is transmitted in just one manuscript from Corbie, copied by at least three hands, and corrected, around the middle of the ninth century.26 The work was clearly destined for a restricted audience, capable of grasping

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classical and biblical references, but this is not to say that its author wrote it merely for internal use within his own community. Especially the second book with its extensive debates about Wala’s alleged lack of fidelity to his emperor touched upon painful memories shared not just by Corbie’s monks alone. Moreover, it was not just the past that was at stake, but also the present, namely that of Charles the Bald’s kingdom with its highly literate elite. However exclusive, the intended audience must have included not just churchmen but also lay magnates and probably members of the ruling dynasty as well. The latter are never out of sight: towards the end of the second book, the Empress Irmingard (wife of Lothar I) entered upon the scene, as the one who brought to Corbie the news of Wala’s death in Italy.27 As far as I can see now, there was no major rewriting of the first book at this later stage when the second was composed; the two parts of the Epitaphium are far too different in approach and style to allow for any attempt at homo­genization. Whereas the first is full of references to classical authors, especially Terence, the second cites only biblical texts. Furthermore, while the crisis years were glossed over in the first book, in a pointed way that regularly reminded the reader that much remained unsaid, the second book attacked Bernard of Septimania, the Empress’s alleged lover, as ‘perfidious Naso, recalled from Spain, that debauchee who abandoned everything honourable over which he was meant to govern; and who, silly as he was, plunged himself into every pig’s hole full of dirt’.28 This was strong language, and all the stronger given the relative restraint of the preceding book, although its ‘raging silences’ made it crystal-clear that much more could have been said. When he returned to the Epitaphium in the 850s and added his outspoken sequel, Radbert built upon the meaningful silences he had created at an earlier stage. Back then, in the late 830s, there had been good reasons to be careful, for he still had a chance of becoming abbot, as Wala probably had meant him to. By the time the second book was written, he had lost this glittering prize, and was ready to raise a bellowing prophetic voice in defence of Wala and himself. It was a voice of authority, enhanced by the examples of Ambrose, Jeremiah and Job. Although Ambrose’s funeral orations provided the literary framework for the Epitaphium, he was never explicitly mentioned. None the less, he was omnipresent, not just as the brilliant author who showed Radbert how to put grief and loss into elegant prose, but also as the fearless bishop of Milan who had stood up to the mighty Emperor Theodosius. Corbie owned a copy of the Historia ecclesiastica tripartita which featured this major confrontation, and this aspect of Ambrose cannot have escaped Radbert.29 In the second book,



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moreover, Ambrose’s presence is reinforced by Radbert’s choice of pseudonyms for his main protagonists. For example, the Empress Judith was called Justina, after the wife of Valentinian II who had been Ambrose’s relentless foe; her stepson Lothar, Louis’s eldest son, went by the name of Honorius, the son of Theodosius I, who had been tutored and advised by Arsenius – that is, Wala. Significantly, Louis the Pious was called Justinian rather than Theodosius; Louis’s association with the great Christian emperor who, moreover, had performed a model public penance, was deliberately suppressed. Other pseudonyms for members of the Frankish imperial family were also taken from Roman imperial Christendom, obviously in order to highlight identities, rather than to hide them.30 Wala’s byname Arsenius is distinctive, however, for it was already in use in the early 830s, and the same holds true for an identification that concerns me here: Wala as Jeremiah. In a letter of 831–2 to his pupil Warin (otherwise known as Placidius), Radbert referred to ‘our Arsenius, whom our times have now made into another Jeremiah’.31 We find an echo of this in the prologue to the first book of the Epitaphium, when Pascasius set the tone: But I fear that while I try to please you, I shall offend many. Or are you unaware, Severus, that our most unhappy times made another Jeremiah of him? For you have heard, and often, as I recall, this Arsenius exclaim, sobbing: ‘Woe to me, my mother, why did you give birth to me, a man of contention, a man of discord in the whole earth?’ (Jer. 15.10).32

This likeness is then defined as a typological similitude: Wala had not only assumed Jeremiah’s office (officium), but he also lived up to the prophet’s image (typus), a divinely bestowed burden. Severus spoke of ‘this Jeremiah, of whom he [Wala] bore the type’.33 It was emphasized that this was not a role he had chosen to play. Having to become like Jeremiah had obscured Wala’s mild nature, but the invectives which the prophet and he had hurled at their respective peoples sprang from love, not from hatred.34 Jeremiah is present throughout the Epitaphium, but apart from the very beginning of the text, his role in the first book remains mostly limited to that of a victim of evil persecution. By contrast, in the second book Jeremiah is moved to the forefront as the prophet who had fearlessly proclaimed truth to the powerful, regardless of the consequences for his own safety.35 This aspect of Wala/Jeremiah was reinforced by other biblical figures who had suffered exile, imprisonment or even death because of their outspokenness, such as Elijah, Isaiah and John the Baptist.36 Still, it was Jeremiah who provided the main model for Wala’s conduct in the 830s. Like the prophet, Wala had tried to warn

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his sinful people of impending doom, but then suffered incarceration and exile, sharing the disasters inflicted by a vengeful deity with the sinners who had refused to heed his warnings. All this was already in place when Radbert, not long after Wala’s death in 836, composed the first book. Yet two decades later, when the second book was written, an essential element was added, namely the exiled Jeremiah who looked back at the sins of his people that had inexorably led to God’s wrath and the Babylonian captivity. Jeremiah and his retrospective prophecy of doom became the central theme in the second book; by then the author himself had been deposed as abbot of Corbie, and the disaster of exile (from high office and the court) was foremost on his mind. When he wrote the second book, it was not difficult for Radbert to identify with the prophet Jeremiah who ‘after rebukes, persecutions and attacks, turned to lament, and bitterly bewailed all that had occurred as a retribution for sins’.37 This emphatic perspective of hindsight allowed the author to develop the Epitaphium’s second part into a compelling narrative of inevitable decline. Because Wala’s admonitions had not been heeded in the early 830s, ‘since then, and today (hodie), none of the rulers can show clearly the res publica’s road to justice’.38 Not only was Wala depicted as a latter-day Jeremiah, but Radbert’s own identification with the prophet Jeremiah gave him licence to expound, frankly and explicitly, on the true causes of the Babylonian captivity he had experienced himself.

Jeremiah and Job The fearless prophet who spoke truth to power was an early medieval continuation of classical and late antique rhetorical traditions of frank speech.39 Radbert was aware of these older figures of speech and used their vocabulary. He credited both Jeremiah and Wala with constantia, a quality typical of the frank speaker who did not bat an eyelid when confronting the powerful of the earth. It was the prophet who was central to Radbert’s concept of truth-telling. Wala was ‘another Jeremiah’ because of the constancy of his fidelity (fides) and the harshness of his exterior; when needed, he audaciously inveighed (invexit) against the emperor.40 Adeodatus’s question about Wala’s public speechifying at the palace was formulated accordingly: ‘Given that he was so humble that nobody seemed more humble or dead to the world, why is it that he spoke up so deliberately and boldly (consulte constanterque) in the senate in the presence of the emperor (coram augusto), among the most prominent of the ecclesiastical



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leaders and the counsellors of the senate?’41 This enabled Pascasius, the narrator of the Epitaphium, to kick the ball in: You know very well, brother, that he was the one whom neither the terror of threats, nor the force of things, nor the hope of what is present, nor the fear of what is in the future, nor the promise of riches, nor endless varieties of suffering, nor any kind of authority, could call away from the love (caritas) of Christ, from love (dilectio) of fatherland and people, from love (amor) of the churches and fidelity towards the emperor. It was for this reason that boldly (constanter), like another Jeremiah, he spoke many such words.42

All these identifications of Wala with Jeremiah as the fearless truth-teller occur in the second book, for this was now also Radbert’s authorial persona. He himself had adopted a similar mode, not because he was deliberately courting danger, but because this rhetorical strategy as well as his own identification with the prophet enabled him to pronounce unpalatable truths. Another Old Testament text that plays a remarkable part in the Epitaphium is the Book of Job. Radbert’s approach to Job differed from his treatment of Jeremiah and other prophet-like figures. With the latter, it was their actions that mattered. Because they warned sinners, boldly reminding them of God’s impending wrath, they served as models for both the author and his subject. By contrast, Job as the suffering man whose faith was tested but remained unshaken, the prefiguration of Christ, was not one of the Epitaphium’s prominent Old Testament models, in spite of Wala’s repeated experience of exile in 814, 831 and 834, and Radbert’s own share of adversity. As we shall see, Wala was associated with Job in the context of dispensing justice, but primarily Job was cited extensively, in two specific passages, because Radbert saw the Book of Job as a dialogue, from which he could borrow authoritative language to integrate into his own dialogic discourse. Throughout the first book he did exactly the same with Terence’s comedies; these were also perceived as examples of dialogue and could therefore be woven into his own bold attempt at this genre.43 Although he used Terence and Job for different purposes, he viewed both of them as authoritative models for his daring experiment, for which he mustered all the literary support he could get – from the ancients (including Sulpicius Severus) and from Scripture alike. It was by no means unusual for early medieval authors to analyse and classify biblical books with the methods of classical rhetoric. Radbert did so himself in his introduction to his commentary on the fifth book of Lamentations, explaining that this was an epilogue and recapitulation according to the proper

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rules of rhetoric (lex rhetorum).44 He must have known Bede’s authoritative De arte metrica, which refers to biblical books as examples of classical poetry or rhetoric, and informs its reader that the Book of Job ‘in its original language was not entirely written in poetry, but partly in rhetorical prose and partly in metrical verse’. 45 With Terence as with Job, Radbert wished his readers to know what he was doing, so he announced that he was about to speak ‘according to Job’ or ‘like the comic’, and then borrowed phrases from these two texts that subsequently assumed new and different meanings. The original context of these canonical utterances was of secondary importance to the contemporary message they were meant to convey. Just as a reminder: the Old Testament figure of Job was a rich man fallen on bad times at the instigation of Satan, who wanted to test Job’s loyalty to God. Sitting on a dunghill, covered in sores, Job bewailed his fate in a dialogue with three friends who had come to visit him. In their respective speeches, the crucial issue was why God made Job, a virtuous man, suffer so much? Job, for his part, protested that this was an undeserved punishment, while the friends pointed out that he had indeed sinned, and now must bear the consequences. But both views turned out to be wrong, when Job finally submitted to God’s will. In the end, all human efforts to account for divine motives count for nothing; all one can do is accept one’s lot. Job ended by acknowledging God’s overwhelming omnipotence. Having withstood the test of his loyalty, he was rewarded with abundant riches and offspring, and lived to a great age to enjoy them. The story of Job addresses a fundamental human dilemma: why does an all-powerful God allow bad things to happen to good people? This aspect of the biblical text is absent in the Epitaphium, as is Job’s keeping faith with God in the face of suffering. Instead, there are two quite different instances, both crucial in the narrative, when Radbert decides to speak emphatically with the voice of Job in order to drive his point home. It is no coincidence that in both cases the text is taken from Job’s own speech, rather than from the addresses of the friends who came to commiserate and give advice – this was what made the Book of Job a dialogue. In the Epitaphium the phrases and idiom taken from Job have become part of a different discourse, with biblical phrases and expressions assuming new connotations specific to the author’s day and age. It is therefore impossible to rely on (early) modern English translations of the Vulgate, such as the Douay-Reims translation or the Catholic edition of the New Standard Revised Version. The biblical citations should be translated as an integral part of the Epitaphium, and be treated as a ninth-century text. This is what I have attempted to do in my translation of the longest of the relevant passages (see the



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appendix on page 72), in order to show how the Book of Job lends weight and authority to Radbert’s voice.

Job and Terence In the first book, Radbert frequently cites Terence’s comedies, but most often these citations have very little to do with the original meaning and context of these lively plays.46 It seems as if they are picked at random from a wide range of comedies, yet they tend to turn up throughout the first book in similar contexts, namely in passages in which the limits of what could be said openly were implicitly and carefully challenged. When speaking up in his own voice became awkward, Radbert tended to cite Terence. When he wrote his first book, in which Terence looms large, he was still a careful author, who, if he used his deft powers of persuasion without treading on essential toes, could still become abbot, as he managed to do in the winter of 843–4. Perhaps because of this, his citations of ‘the comic’ are consciously reminiscent of schoolroom banter and one-upmanship between old and competitive friends – who could cite Terence best, and who recognized him first? In the Epitaphium’s first book, it was above all the outspoken and grumpy Severus who spouted Terence. Severus was the persona of Radbert’s old friend Odilman, who had died in the late 840s.47 Radbert’s citations of Job are very different from his playful and wide-ranging use of Terence. Only two chapters of Job were used in this very direct way, with entire sentences and parts thereof woven into the text of the Epitaphium. The first and relatively brief citation occurs in the Epitaphium’s first book, in the context of a discussion about Wala’s merits as abbot of Corbie.48 This was a delicate issue, for the great man had clearly been criticized for his frequent visits to the court, and the question had been raised of whether his conduct was becoming for a monk and abbot. The young monk Adeodatus, the interlocutor who posed seemingly innocent yet penetrating questions, put the knife in: he had heard that Wala was insufficiently Christ-like (non satis conformis erat) and therefore less loved and frequented by many. ‘Not to conform’ also referred to Wala’s failure to adapt fully to monastic discipline, however. Pascasius, the narrator, vehemently denied this, with much deft play on the word forma; this refutation then culminated in a statement tightly packed with citations from Job 29. Here, a humbled Job, ignored and insulted by men of inferior status, looked back wistfully at the respect and riches he had once enjoyed, and remembered the justice he had once dispensed as a matter of course. This was reminiscent

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of Wala’s position after he had been exiled from the court in the autumn of 830, but it also reminded the reader that Wala had shared with Job certain quintessential leadership qualities, such as caring for the oppressed and possessing an infallible sense of justice. This deft refutation introduced a long digression on the magnificent way in which Wala, as the representative in Italy of the Emperors Louis and Lothar in 822–5, had stood up for a defenceless Frankish widow who had been robbed of her property by wicked local magnates.49 The main point Radbert wanted to drive home by citing Job 29, apart from the similarity between their sudden loss of status and office, was that these had both been just men who had remained loyal to God. All the same, it was stern monastic criticism of Wala’s smiling amusement that had brought Job to mind in the first place: Although he laughed at them, they did not believe him (Job 29.24). As an abbot and a monk, the great man had still retained the habitus of the magnate and courtier. The Epitaphium’s second book offers a more extensive passage dominated by language from the Book of Job, which merits our particular attention.50 Job’s acknowledgement of God’s omnipotence is the main theme in Radbert’s evocation of the devastating force of divine might, which sweeps away kings and their counsellors, nations and peoples. Again, it was Pascasius, the narrator, who explicitly introduced the presence of Job into his text (‘for as Job has it, the tents of robbers were everywhere’), just as he had introduced Terence into the first book.51 The diatribe that follows comes at a crucial point, namely when Pascasius countered the contention that Lothar had caused his father’s downfall by having him submit to a public penance in 833, and had been justly expelled to Italy in shame when Louis regained the throne. In Pascasius’s view, the emperor’s eldest son had done his utmost to avoid violence and even parricide, and had left the throne to his father of his own free will. The benevolent force behind all this was of course Wala, whose advice had brought about Lothar’s eventual peaceful submission to Louis. In a similar vein, Wala did not suffer exile, once the second rebellion had run its course. Instead, he decided to leave of his own accord, although both Louis and Lothar vied for his loyalty and each tried to make him a member of their entourage.52 Not just Lothar’s, but above all Wala’s reputation was at stake here. Rather than having fled to Italy in 834, the latter had remained free from royal domination of any kind, to the extent that he could afford to play hard to get. Moreover, like Jeremiah, he had foreseen all the disasters that would hit the empire, including the civil war that would break out after Louis’s death in 840. Restoring Wala’s reputation, and correcting this false image of him as a man who had left both his monastery and his emperor in the lurch, is the central



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thrust of this chapter. Job’s presence made sense, for Wala’s close association with Job’s wisdom and virtue spoke volumes, as it had already done in the first book. Yet citing Job had another and equally important function: it allowed Radbert to address Louis’s public penance in the autumn of 833 without having to comment directly on this still painful event. At the very beginning of Pascasius’s lengthy and elaborate narrative, there is one brief reference to Louis’s ‘being deprived of power’ and ‘the verdict of the bishops who imposed a penance on him’, but otherwise, Louis’s public atonement seems to be glossed over. Radbert did discuss it, however, in his subsequent reflection. This was packed with citations from Job’s speech on divine omnipotence, with the implication that all that had happened in the aftermath of Louis’s downfall on the Field of Lies in the summer of 833 had been a punishment of God, who struck the Frankish leadership with blindness. This is in line with Radbert’s earlier contention that everything began to go downhill from the moment when, on the Field of Lies, both parties flatly refused to accept the mediation of Pope Gregory IV.53 Accordingly, Louis’s captivity and penance had been entirely misguided. There is an element of exoneration in all this, for it was God ‘who brought counsellors to a foolish end and judges to stupidity’ (Job 12.17), yet the general drift of the entire passage is that this was divine retribution in action, for none of the leadership at the time had truly sought God except for Wala, whose counsel went unheeded.54 References to the penance of 833 and its consequences abound, most explicitly in phrases such as ‘he [also] loosens the belt of office of kings and girds their loins with a cord’ (Job 12.18); the balteum is the equivalent of the cingulum, the sword-belt which signified the royal ministerium, and which Louis had been compelled to deposit on the altar in Soissons; instead, the emperor would wear the hair-shirt of the public penitent, and the accompanying cord.55 Likewise, ‘whomever He confines, nobody can liberate’ (Job 12.14) seems to refer to the emperor’s captivity prior to his penance, while its consequence was that ‘infamous bishops [and] magnates’ (Job 12.19) lost their offices. Then, in a series of citations, Radbert hammered home the dire consequences of rejecting Wala for subsequent rulers of the earth. With a final and explicit blast from Job, both Louis and Lothar were depicted as groping in the dark and swaying like drunks (Job 12.25). No doubt Charles the Bald was also included in this, for the defining characteristic of Radbert’s present was that rulers no longer knew how to guide their people. Implicitly, Charles was also shown to ‘walk in vain where there is no way’ (Job 12.24). In other words, all the leaders of the Christian people had lost the right road.

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Job is mentioned twice in this diatribe, so his presence in the text is clearly signalled, as was the case with Terence in the first book. Yet on the manuscript page, biblical and other citations are not made visible by quotation marks or a different script; like Terence, Job’s speech became an integral part of Radbert’s narrative. This is one more reason to translate biblical expressions in ninthcentury terms, rather than to follow a modern translation. In the latter one will find sacerdotes rendered as priests, while in a ninth-century context this expression often denotes bishops or other high-ranking clerics. This is certainly the group that Radbert had in mind in this particular passage; together with the optimates also mentioned in the sentence from Job 12.19 cited here, they comprised the upper echelon of the Carolingian elite. Holding high offices referred to as ministeria or, in Radbert’s case, officia,56 these prelates and lay magnates were responsible for the emperor’s downfall, yet they would soon be toppled and supplanted themselves. Similarly, the consiliarii and iudices mentioned fit the context of the assembly of Compiègne of October 833, where a public penance was imposed on Louis; these were the royal counsellors, ecclesiastical and secular, who pronounced the verdict on their emperor during that fateful autumn. Another example is the subtly adapted citation of Job 12.20, which in the Douay-Reims translation reads as ‘He changeth the speech of the true speakers, and taketh away the doctrine of the aged.’57 Radbert set this passage in the past perfect tense, however, and presented it as a symptom of the utter confusion that had reigned at the time: the advice of those who fearlessly spoke truth to power had changed into its opposite, while the wisdom of senior royal advisors such as Wala had been removed from the court.58 This is the meaning of this part-citation from Job 12.12, and in order to get this across to a modern audience, biblical passages will need to be translated within the historical context in which they functioned.

Conclusion: A public discourse Early modern and modern translations of the Latin text of the Bible, however excellent in their own time, are of limited value for a translator of the Epitaphium Arsenii. This was a narrative liberally sprinkled with biblical sentences and expressions that were so seamlessly integrated in the main text that it is perhaps misleading to speak of citations; Radbert was an author who lived and breathed Scripture, and to whom it came naturally to switch between his own voice and a biblical one. At times he would indicate that the ‘speaker’ was a certain prophet



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or apostle, but more often he wove fragments of biblical speech into his own prose as he went along. Biblical Latin, be it the Vulgate or another version, was read from a contemporary perspective: naturally Job 12 addressed the fate of kings, bishops and magnates, but this also meant that Carolingian political discourse was shaped by the Latin of Scripture. The ways in which biblical language helped to create the vocabulary of Carolingian politics merits further investigation. More often than not, Radbert’s citations from Terence had very little to do with what ‘the comic’ had to say, but this was still authoritative language, for in the monastic schools of the ninth century, Terence’s idiom was an integral part of Latin grammar books. The other staple diet of the school-room was of course Scripture, the source of all wisdom, including a good example of a literary dialogue to complement Terence: the Book of Job. It would go too far to say that Terence’s authority in the Epitaphium was at the same level as Job’s. The comic’s texts tended to lose their original meaning entirely, and they were mostly part of the speech of Pascasius’s interlocutors; Job, by contrast, was only used when the narrator, Pascasius, spoke himself, and with authority. Furthermore, the despairing man on the dunghill became largely invisible, yet Job’s submission to God’s omnipotence remained the central message in the biblical text as well as in the Epitaphium. All the same, the use of Terence and Job in this text shows some marked similarities. Both were perceived as authoritative writers who provided Radbert with examples of dialogue and with citations that made it possible to allude to sensitive matters without causing offence. In the first book, Terence entered upon the scene whenever Radbert took the risk of going beyond the ‘raging silences’, and had his fellow-monks speak in daring Terential language. Similarly, when dangerous criticism of Wala’s non-monastic lifestyle needed to be parried in the years right after the latter’s death, Radbert spoke through Job in order to silence his opponents. Towards the end of the second book, at a point where blame needed to be apportioned for the total failure of the rebellion of 833, Radbert spoke through Job once more, at greater length. Obviously the revolts against Louis were still a contentious issue in the 850s. Radbert/Job pointed the finger at everyone except for Wala, and defined all misfortune thereafter as God’s retribution for rejecting Wala’s Job-like wisdom. Although the Epitaphium’s second book counts as one of the most outspoken and polemical texts on the rebellions against Louis, there was still much that could not be expressed openly when this sequel was added. Radbert’s text aimed at insiders who would have needed only half a word to get the message. Using aliases for the main protagonists

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was one way of excluding a wider audience, and using the language of Terence and Job to hint at controversial events was another. This made it possible to be truthful without naming or shaming those involved; the powerful that might be offended could safely choose to pretend not to understand. Casting both Wala and Pascasius, the narrator, in the role of Jeremiah, moreover, meant that Radbert appealed to an audience that was aware of the traditional licence allowed to those who spoke truth to power. All the same, I would argue that the two books of the Epitaphium, and especially its second and more outspoken book, were part of a public discourse of sorts. However elitist, it was aimed at a political leadership that would recognize the authority and contemporary relevance of Jeremiah, Job, Terence and Christian imperial historiography. Radbert may well have written the Epitaphium’s first book with the monks of Corbie and Corvey foremost in his mind, but the powerful prose of the second book was aimed at his political peers and superiors. This was a highly select audience, a mixture of the most well-read members of the Carolingian elite – clerical and secular, male and female – but all the more influential because of this, and open to the persuasion of an ex-abbot who tried to write himself back into the corridors of power by speaking first like Terence and then like Job. Whatever the Epitaphium’s lack of renown and diffusion, it was not intended as a ‘private’ document, in the sense of the personal musings of a disgruntled monk whose career had gone wrong. This text was Radbert’s brilliant effort to sway a public opinion dominated by the leadership of his day and age: court-connected clerics, literate lay magnates and, last but not least, kings and queens. All might be persuaded by the author’s justification of Wala and himself. By definition, they were insiders who formed only a restricted audience, but for this very reason, their opinion mattered all the more.

Appendix: Paschasius Radbertus, Epitaphium Arsenii II.20, ed. E. Dümmler (1900), 90–2. Non itaque pulsus est, ut asseris, neque tam insipienter egit, ut tu plangis:, quoniam regnum et imperium quod ceciderat, comitante secum augusto patre sustinuit, et servavit:, neque in eo quidpiam admisit, nisi quod universus senatus coegit et populus, in potestatis privatione et iudicio praesulum, qui eum sub poenitentia redegerunt. Haec omnia quidem Arsenius noster una cum Dei gratia temperabat, ne utra eorum pars in altero crudelius, quam natura sinit,



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aut scelestius pro tanto discrimine ageret. Sed cum vorax flamma discordiarum amplius saeviret, nec pater augustus in aliquo acquiescens sponte emollesceret; ne forte parricidium proveniret, fecit suo sancto consilio, augustus filius relicto patre rursus in solio imperii, petita venia, cum suis omnibus qui cum eo consenserant, liber ut abiret: quia hinc inde super omnem populum furor Dei effusus effervuerat. Nam secundum Job (12.6) tabernacula abundabant predonum ex utrisque partibus, qui satis audacter provocabant suis pravis operibus Deum. Et ideo iam minus Arsenius suis proficiebat consiliis. Erant enim ostia concupiscentiarum ubique aperta, et conflagrata cupiditas. Idcirco suspendium elegit, de medio eorum ut recederet, quia cum Deus omnia dedisset in manibus eorum, nemo tamen Deum ex corde quaerebat, apud quem est sapientia et fortitudo, ipse quidem habet consilium et intelligentiam (Job 12.13). Unde liquido constat quod quem ipse omnipotens destruxerit, nemo est qui ędificet; quem concluserit, nullus est qui aperiat. Et ideo, quia hos alternatim destruebat quos erexerat, et reerigebat quos concluserat, maluit abscedere liber, quam inter eos manere servus peccati. Considerabat enim iam stupefactus, quod fortitudo hominis et ingenia nulla essent, quod sapientia magis stultitia recte videretur: nam, teste scriptura (Job 12.16), decipientem et eum qui decipitur, ipse novit. Propterea cum vidisset diversos dolos et fraudes hinc inde compugnare, fecit, ut filius patri deferret, et cum suo exercitu inlęsus abiret; ac pater cum his qui cum eo vellent, in imperio remaneret, ita ut daretur omnibus intelligi quod ipse sit rex solus omnipotens, qui adducit consiliarios in stultum finem, et iudices in stuporem: balteum quoque regum dissolvit, et precingit fune renes eorum (Job 12.17-18) quod huic sane contigisse vidimus. Sed quia neutra pars eorum ex toto digne Deum requisierat, vicissim alternis successibus commutantur, et flagellatur populus, ut intelligant omnes quod ipse sit Deus, qui adducet sacerdotes inglorios, et optimates supplantat. (Job 12.19). Alioquin nunquam, nisi eorum ex culpis, tanta esset vexatio et confusio omnium. Commutatum namque erat labium veratium, et ablata doctrina senum. Propterea solus iste non poterat iam contra omnes, nisi tantum quod egit: ne tunc rerum eventus in pejus deveniret, quod hinc inde plurimi hortabantur: quoniam effusa erat contentio ac despectio super principes (Job 12.21). Sed quod tunc obstitit, proh dolor! postea factum vidimus, ne civile bellum inter eos surgeret. Verumtamen hic noster potius mori, quam tale aliquid assentire, aut interesse vellet. Hinc persuasit filius ut abscederet una cum suis omnibus; et pater olim male tractato potiretur imperio, quandoquidem Deus, quia indurarat cor eius qui commutat corda principum terrae, et decipit eos, ut frustra incedant per invium Job 12.24), eius totum commisit iudicio, ne aliquid quod scelestius esset, proveniret inter

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eos. Erat enim triste tunc videre, culpis exigentibus, quod Iob ait: Palpabunt quasi in tenebris, et non in luce; et errare eos faciet quasi ebrios. Quoniam ipse solus est, cujus nemo avertere potest cogitationem; sed faciet quaecunque voluerit, suo iusto iudicio (Job 12.25; 23.13). Quae nimirum judicia considerans hic noster quae acciderant, quę quotidie fiebant peiora et augebantur, idcirco, licet sero, praevidit futura, quae hinc inde ad praesens iam completa cernuntur. Unde elegit magis aufugere, quam cum aliquo eorum remanere. Nam pater voluit eum me teste, multum instanter secum tunc cum omni honestate et reverentia summi honoris retinere, etiam si vellet iuramentum a suis fidemque facere, deinde augustus filius secum abducere. Verumtamen ille neutrum eorum audiens, imo fortiter resistens, ab utrisque discessit, pennigeroque gressu Italiam ingressus, infra coenobium sancti Columbani se recepit, quod sane coenobium ne invaderetur a raptoribus, ut caetera omnia sunt pervasa, ipsis petentibus fratribus suscepit ad regendum; et quandiu advixit, nobiliter ac pacifice eum rexit.

Paschasius Radbertus, Epitaphium Arsenii II.20, trans. Mayke de Jong (with citations from Job in bold): Pascasius: He [Lothar] was not expelled, as you claim, and neither did he act foolishly, as you complain, because he upheld and preserved the royal and imperial rule (regnum et imperium) which had fallen, together with the august father, and in this he did not condone anything whatsoever except what the universal senate and the people59 forced him to, with regard to [Louis’s] deprivation of powers as well as concerning the verdict of the bishops who made him do penance. All this our Arsenius tempered, together with God’s mercy [p. 91], lest either side would act more cruelly to the other than nature allowed, or more criminally because of this great crisis. But when the voracious fire of discord raged higher and the august father would not relent by assenting with anything of his own volition, the august son – so that parricide would not be the possible outcome – held his own sacred consultation, and having left the father once more on the throne of the empire, he asked forgiveness with all his men who had consented with him, so he might leave as a free man: because everywhere God’s wrath had raged widely over the entire people.60 For according to Job the tents of robbers abounded everywhere, who provoked God quite boldly with their evil deeds.61 And so Arsenius had ever less success with his advice. Indeed, the gates of carnal desire had been opened and cupidity had flared up. He therefore chose a moment of pause in order to retreat from their midst, for



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although God had given everything into their hands, nobody sought God from his heart – [God] with Whom there is wisdom and fortitude, He who indeed has counsel and understanding.62 And therefore it is clear that he whomever the Almighty Himself pulled down, there is no man that can build up: if he shut up a man, there is none that can open.63 And thus, because He alternately destroyed those whom he raised, and restored those whom he imprisoned, he [Wala] would rather depart as a free man than to remain among them as a slave to sin. Astounded, he reflected that the strength and wit of mankind had amounted to nothing, because stupidity rather than wisdom seemed to be right: for according to the testimony of Scripture, he knows both the deceivers, and him that is deceived.64 Hence, when he [Wala] had seen them fight each other with various wiles and tricks, he brought it about that the son would submit to the father65 and leave unharmed with his troops, and that the father with those who wished to be with him would remain in charge of imperial rule, in a way that gave all to understand that the only almighty king would be He Himself who brought counsellors to a foolish end, and judges to insensibility;66 and he also loosens the belt of office of kings and girds their loins with a cord.67 But because neither of them completely sought God in a worthy way, their successes were turned into alternating ones, and the people was scourged, so all would understand that this was God Himself who leads away infamous bishops and supplants magnates.68 Anyway, never would there have been such great vexation and shame69 of all, had it not been because of their sins. For the advice of the truthful was inverted,70 and the wisdom of senior advisors was removed. Therefore this man by himself could not stand up against everyone, except for that what he did in order that at that time, the turn of events would not become worse, much of which was engendered from then onwards, since controversy and contempt had been poured upon the rulers of this earth.71 But what he then resisted, lest a civil war would arise between them, oh grief! we later saw effectuated.72 All the same, this one of ours would rather die than agree with something of the sort or be part of it. Hence he persuaded the son to disappear with all his men, and the father to take control of the imperial rule which previously had been handled badly. Seeing that God, who changes the heart of the rulers of the earth, and deceives them so that they walk in vain where there is no way,73 had hardened his [Louis’s] heart,74 he [Wala] entrusted everything entirely to His [God’s] judgement, lest anything that was even more infamous would happen between them [Louis and Lothar]. For at the time he was sad to observe, with sins requiring it, what Job says: They shall grope as in the dark, and not in the light, and he shall make them stagger like men

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that are drunk.75 For He is the only one, whose plan nobody can change; in fact, He does whatever He wants, according to His just judgement.76 Evidently reflecting on the [divine] judgements which had occurred and which became worse and grew daily [p. 92], this man of ours, albeit belatedly, foresaw the future events which from then on to the present are seen to have been fulfilled. Therefore he chose to flee rather than to remain with any of them. For at the time, with me as a witness, the father most insistently wanted to keep him with him, with all honour and reverence due to the highest rank,77 even though the august son wanted him to swear the oath and fidelity [sworn] by his own men, and then to carry him off with him. Heeding neither of them, however, and indeed resisting strenuously, that man [Wala] withdrew from both, and, having entered Italy with winged step, he admitted himself within the monastery of St Columbanus. In order that this monastery would not be invaded by robbers, as all the others have been usurped, at the request of the brothers he undertook to govern it; and as long as he lived there, he ruled it nobly and peacefully.

5

Biblical Readings for the Night Office in Eleventh-Century Germany: Reconciling Theory and Practice Henry Parkes

Within the sphere of a medieval religious community, there was no source of exposure to the Scriptures more constant or more reliable than the daily round of worship in church.1 ‘The liturgy’, as the monk Jean Leclercq affirmed, ‘is the medium through which the Bible and the patristic tradition are received.’2 For a modern individual like Leclercq, just as for his medieval ancestors, the nine or more services of the day – numbering eight Office hours and at least one celebration of Mass – provided an unchanging framework for the continuous performance of Scripture, whose imprint upon cultural life extended far beyond the community itself.3 The Bible was read in the lessons at Mass, of course, but its reading was concentrated chiefly in the lengthy nocturnal office now known as Matins, whose content was prescribed thus in the sixth-century Rule of St Benedict: At the Night Office (vigiliis) books of divine authority should be read, from both the Old and New Testaments, but also commentaries on them written by wellknown orthodox Catholic Fathers.4

An ordinary weekday performance had three such readings, according to the Rule, while on Sundays and feast days this was expanded into 12 readings (or nine according to the Roman or secular cursus), distributed among three ritual sections, or nocturns.5 Estimates as to the actual length of the medieval Night Office vary, but Benedict’s anxieties about finishing before daybreak and his concessions for summer nights indicate that the service was often far longer than the time available. With this great canvas therefore set up for daily, weekly and festal reading, it is hardly surprising that medieval monks and clerics

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sought to plan their journeys of lectio continua through the scriptural and patristic canon. But it may surprise some to know that, while the homiletic content of the Night Office was organized from the eighth century onwards, and while special hagiographic readings for saints’ days were increasingly being sorted into passionals and legendaries, it was not until the twelfth or thirteenth centuries that the biblical round reached any kind of formal codification.6 The Bible was probably being read in a concerted liturgical cycle as far back as the sixth century, when Caesarius of Arles prescribed in his Rule for Nuns that the Old and New Testaments be read at the Night Office in their order (‘ordine suo’).7 In a late eighth-century book of biblical extracts from St Gall we find a text which designates that ‘all the scripture of the holy canon is sung from the beginning of the year until its end’, and this is followed by a short list of biblical books and the seasons of the Church year in which they are to be read.8 Documents of this sort – now known to scholars by the various titles ordo librorum, ordo legendi and ordo lectionum – actually survive in large numbers from this time onwards, and the majority were edited by Michel Andrieu in his series of 50 medieval ritual authorities known as ordines Romani (references henceforth abbreviated to OR).9 Some early examples betray the likely origins of this lectionary tradition at St Peter’s, Rome,10 but one can surmise from their widespread survival in non-Roman books, particularly those of ninth- and tenth-century Francia, that these ordines conveyed the basic model for biblical reading at the Night Office in the Carolingian period, and continued to do so in the centuries after. The principle was simple. Provided with a portion of the Bible, the community was tasked to work through the entirety at the Night Office over a given period of time. According to the most widespread lectionary ordo, edited by Andrieu as OR XIII, the Bible was read according to the following continuous cycle: the Heptateuch in the weeks from Septuagesima to Passion Sunday, including most of Lent; Jeremiah and the Lamentations in Passiontide; Revelation, Acts and the Canonical Epistles after Easter; Kings and Chronicles after Pentecost; the Wisdom books and Apocrypha (as now known) in the summer months; the remaining Prophets in November and December; and the Pauline Epistles after Christmas. Certain occasions were also treated separately. At the Christmas Vigil, for example, the first reading came from Isaiah 9 (‘The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light’, etc.), a tradition which persists in many churches even to this day. If one compares these general directions to the shape of the biblical canon prescribed in the so-called Decretum Gelasianum – a widely-copied authority on the subject, attributed to Pope Gelasius I (492–6)



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Table 1  The biblical canon of the Decretum Gelasianum compared to the annual cycle of Night Office readings in OR XIII Books of OT as designated in Decretum Gelasianum

Season of year as designated in OR XIII

Books of NT as designated in Decretum Gelasianum

Incipit ordo veteris testamenti

Septuagesima to Passiontide

Evangeliorum Matthew libri Mark Luke John Acts Epistulae Romans Pauli apostoli Corinthians Ephesians Thessalonians Galatians Philippians Colossians Timothy Titus Philemon Hebrews Revelation Canonicae Peter epistulae James John Jude

Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy Joshua Judges Ruth Samuel Kings Chronicles Psalms Proverbs Ecclesiastes Song of Songs Wisdom Sirach Item ordo Isaiah prophetarum Jeremiah Lamentations Ezekiel Daniel Hosea Amos Micah Joel Obadiah Jonah Nahum Habakkuk Zephaniah Haggai Zechariah Malachi Item ordo Job historiarum Tobit Ezra Esther Judith Maccabees

Post-Pentecost

August

Advent Passiontide November

September

October

Season of year as designated in OR XIII

Post-Easter PostChristmas

Post-Easter Post-Easter

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but of probable sixth- or seventh-century Gallican origin11 – this manner of division emerges as far from accidental. The prophets foretold the key seasons of Christmas and Easter, the New Testament authors responded, and the remaining books filled in the Ordinary time after Pentecost (Table 1). With the exception of the Psalms (sung according to their own weekly cycle within the Office), the Gospels (arranged separately for the Mass), and the Book of Ruth (possibly subsumed into the Heptateuch), the entire Bible was therefore accounted for. Although these provisions are now regularly conceptualized as a distinct genre of authoritative text, with the help of names like ordo lectionum or ordo librorum, it is important to emphasize how pervasive this manner of ordering was beyond the surviving ordines, as if the seasonal rhythms of liturgical reading permeated religious life at a much deeper level. A number of ninth- and tenth-century bibles had their contents ordered in more or less corresponding sequences, and certain groups of biblical books were regularly copied in selfcontained volumes, as if for a particular portion of the Church year.12 In many of the earliest homiliaries, including those of Paul the Deacon and Alan of Farfa, biblical readings were provided for Christmastide and the Easter Triduum after the shape of the ordines, while the sermons of Ælfric’s homiliary have been shown to echo the same Night Office lectionary.13 The early Frankish and Old Roman antiphoners also bear the influence of Scripture, transmitting groups of musical chants for the Office whose texts loosely follow the calendar of biblical readings, especially in the later part of the liturgical year.14 In the work of the ninth-century commentator Amalarius of Metz we encounter descriptions of the so-called summer historiae (collections of post-Pentecost Office chants designed to complement Kings, the Wisdom books, Job, Tobit, Judith, Esther, Ezra, Maccabees and the Prophets),15 as well a series of Lenten chants based on the key personalities of Genesis and Exodus (Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Joseph, Moses and Joshua).16 The ninth-century abbot Hildemar of Corbie was also fully conversant with the biblical seasons of the Office when he dictated his commentary on Benedict’s Rule.17 All of these examples suggest that Office reading practices had a momentum of their own. When Ælfric wrote his customary for the monks of Eynsham in the early years of the eleventh century, he repeated the familiar decree that ‘in the course of the year, the entire canon ought to be read in church’, before adding that ‘because we are lazy and slothful servants, we read in the refectory whatever we do not cover in church’.18 That may seem an inconsequential aside, but it is the catalyst for the present chapter, because it admits to a distance between



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prescriptive ideals and liturgical reality. There was probably always such distance in the practice of biblical reading, not least because of the capricious shape of the Church year, centred on the timing of Easter, and because of the varying hours of daylight upon which the length of the Night Office depended. The importance of the eleventh century to this story, however, is that only then can we begin to test that relationship. For it is from the same period in which Ælfric was busy incorporating a lectionary ordo into his monastic customary, an innovation directly paralleled in the customaries of Cluny,19 that liturgical sources survive which enable us to assess the influence of prescribed readings in practice. In the tenth and eleventh centuries we therefore find early attempts to copy out daily readings for the Night Office into lectionaries;20 antiphoners begin to survive in sufficient numbers for the comparison and assessment of their biblically-derived chants;21 and we witness some of the earliest attempts to synthesize chants, lessons and prayers together into a single performancedirected book, later to become known as the breviary.22 Though not limited to this period, we also find liturgically-annotated and musically-notated bibles, the latter recalling that the Scriptures were not spoken in church but intoned.23 In this chapter, these different theoretical and practical strands are brought together in a discussion of manuscripts from three German-speaking centres of the eleventh century. On the basis that practices were still fluid – as already shown by the stock of existing studies on Cassinese, Cluniac, Anglo-Saxon and miscellaneous French reading practices of the period24 – and in recognition of the fact that source survival is unrepresentative, each locality serves as a case study, bearing witness both to the variety of ways in which the Bible was read in the Night Office and to some of the essential continuities underlying medieval lectionary practice. While the region around Lake Constance is the focus of the second and third case studies, which consider the Swiss monastery of St Gall and its secular neighbour at Constance, respectively, I shall begin with an important cache of evidence which survives from the Bavarian cathedral of Freising.

Liturgical authorities in early eleventh-century Freising In the hands of Michel Andrieu, the textual history of the different biblical reading ordines was rationalized into a helpful chronological narrative. Beginning with OR XIV at St Peter’s, Rome, which was followed by early Frankish adaptations such as OR XVI, these practices are understood to have found wider

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acceptance outside Rome in the form of OR XIII, which Andrieu divided into four textual groups, A to D. Presented in this form, the Roman reading ordines are often erroneously construed in linear terms, with the result that OR XIII D, a variant form found added to a south-German manuscript circa 1100, is seen as the end of the line.25 In fact, there are almost as many variant forms as manuscripts: Peter Jeffery has recently found two distinct sub-traditions, which he has christened OR XIV B and OR XIII E,26 and by factoring in the recensions incorporated into eleventh-century texts, such as those of Ælfric and the Cluny, we can come up with many more. But one substantial witness to biblical reading in this later period, represented in some 30 or 40 sources from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, has largely passed under the radar. Known by the name given to it by Michel Andrieu in 1924, Le Pontifical Romano-Germanique (PRG) is a remarkable tradition of manuscripts originating from late tenth- or early eleventh-century Germany, whose eclectic contents include liturgical expositions, sources of Roman authority (ordines Romani), ritual texts and miscellaneous accumulations of music, readings and blessings.27 Whilst the name PRG is little more than an umbrella term for a widelydispersed and heterogeneous group of sources,28 one of the defining features of this manuscript family is a central kernel of texts known as Ordo Romanus Antiquus (ORA), after Melchior Hittorp’s sixteenth-century title, and more recently renamed by Andrieu as Ordo Romanus L (OR L).29 Although it seems never to have been copied outside manuscripts of the PRG tradition, the text of ORA is a substantial and self-sufficient guide to the form, meaning and history of the religious rituals of the church year. Directions about biblical reading play a prominent role because they introduce the majority of chapters, standing as the skeleton around which other kinds of liturgical text are interpolated. For the Feast of the Purification, for example, ORA begins with the biblical requirement for the day (Song of Songs or homilies), it then explains the occasion’s history with quotations from the Liber Pontificalis and OR XX, and finally it lists the major prayers and chants for the blessing of the candles and procession.30 Such is the structural significance of lectionary directions in ORA, indeed, that the text begins with a title which owes more to the practices of biblical reading than to the actual spread of its contents. As we find on the first page of Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 6425, a PRG manuscript made in the cathedral of Freising under Bishop Egilbert (1005–39):31 Incipit ordo Catholicorum librorum, et quando vel quo tempore libri veteris et novi testamenti sint ponendi. (‘Here begins a list of orthodox books and



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when or in which season the books of the Old and New Testament are to be appointed.’)

The ensuing ‘list of orthodox books’ is then dispersed across some 60 pages of miscellaneous liturgical texts, an apparent contradiction which led Hittorp and Andrieu to substitute their own (fictitious) titles, ORA and OR L.32 That may have served their purposes well, but the wider implications of finding prescriptions for biblical reading playing this structural role within the manuscripts of the PRG tradition, and positioned as prominently as those on the first page of the Freising source, have never fully been worked through. When Cyrille Vogel later presented his own narrative of the PRG tradition, published concurrently with his mammoth co-authored edition, he was in no doubt that ‘the PRG’ was a comprehensive – and essentially singular – reforming document.33 In Freising, as in other cities across Europe, this set of texts had been adopted not just as ‘a practical directory for the accomplishment of worship’,34 but also explicitly as an ‘official book’, as Palazzo later termed it, ‘with which the other books of the religious cult were aligned’.35 It is generally understood that the primary audience for this textual tradition was episcopal and papal, hence the word ‘pontifical’, even if manuscript provenance indicates that ownership was much more widespread. Hence, with reading practices accorded top billing in PRG books like Clm 6425, the ‘reform’ interpretation poses a crucial question: come the eleventh century, had Night Office reading practices finally succumbed to an official uniformity across the Ottonian Reich? The answer is a deafening no. Despite their bold hypotheses, both Andrieu and Vogel admitted that the earliest PRG sources were imperfect specimens, inappropriate for the job of reform which they themselves had attributed to the tradition.36 They pointed chiefly to the presence of archaic texts, theoretical tracts and unnecessary duplications, but they might equally have mentioned the patent impracticality of the books themselves for use in the liturgy – many are densely inscribed, all are extremely long and difficult to navigate, almost all lack a system of chapter numbering – as well as persistent scribal infelicities which include serial misspellings and confusion about visual hierarchy.37 When J. R. Hall considered the influence of ORA on Anglo-Saxon Office reading (via Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, Ms. 163), he commented that ‘it is uncertain whether the parts of this ordo [ORA] composing an ordo librorum were actually used as such in England’.38 In fact, countless scholars have tried and failed to demonstrate that PRG sources actively dictated local ritual practices,39 and many of the bolder claims once made about its use, whether at

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Ottonian coronations or in the performance of tenth-century papal enthronements, have since met with stiff opposition.40 Seen in this context, Clm 6425 invites our speculation as to what was really going on in Freising ritual practices in the early years of the eleventh century, and what a book like this might have achieved. Disappointingly, the version of ORA in Clm 6425 actually offers only minor advances on the OR XIII tradition of Night Office reading it appears to inherit. Aside from the dispersal of the lectionary prescriptions across the 60 or so pages of ORA, a feature common to all PRG sources, there are only two changes of note. One is a simple internal reorganization, such that the text begins and ends with the season of Advent (Isaiah) – also a feature of contemporary chant books – and it integrates most of the existing directions for feasts of the Sanctorale (Purification, St Peter’s Chair, Annunciation, Invention of the Holy Cross, St John the Baptist, Peter, Paul) and Temporale (Ascension, Pentecost) into a fully chronological sequence. This was surely a necessity within such a long text. The other observable change in Clm 6425 is the addition of biblical requirements for three extra feasts: the Assumption (from the Song of Songs, or homilies), the Nativity of the Virgin (homilies) and the Exultation of the Holy Cross (readings as on feasts of apostles, or homilies). One could speculate perhaps about a Byzantine flavour, since each of those additions belongs to the twelve Greater Feasts, but the greater puzzle, surely, is why so many major feasts of the Sanctorale, such as those of the apostles, or of non-Roman or local celebrations, still have no specific provision in this manuscript. But perhaps it did not matter to the Freising clerics. With no strong evidence that the lectionary ordo in Clm 6425 interacted with the cathedral’s daily rituals, a different context for its use is suggested by the text which, without so much as a line break, follows the final prescription of ORA (the reading of Isaiah in Advent) on folio 127r. The biblical theme continues, because here we find the long list of apocrypha attributed to the Synod of Ariminum (Rimini) which circulated widely as part of the Decretum Gelasianum.41 Whilst in a nominally ‘liturgical’ context (that is, a book broadly concerned with religious rituals and their performance) this admonitory tract might seem out of place, such curiosities are in fact strewn throughout this copy of ORA. In the next section of the manuscript, indeed, we find no fewer than 11 different expositions in connection with the Mass and other aspects of clerical life. Even by the high standards of the PRG family this is an erudite volume. Evidently, the point of the compendium was not to prescribe a ritual path through the Church year, but to inform the interested reader. It belonged to a different intellectual realm altogether.



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The possibility that clerics in Freising entertained a more curious or scholarly relationship with the liturgy is reinforced by parallel developments in canon law, in which biblical reading in the Night Office was also a going concern. Andrieu noticed that one surviving lectionary ordo, known as OR XIII C, bore a close resemblance to a text collected in the eleventh-century Decretum of Burchard of Worms.42 What he may not have realized was that this ordo was actually incorporated into legal collections far and wide in the eleventh century, including Freising’s very own Collectio duodecim partium (CDP), which is more or less contemporary with the PRG manuscript Clm 6425.43 As it happens, there is extensive overlap between the texts of Clm 6425 and the canons of CDP, and this includes among others the aforementioned authority on apocrypha.44 The relationship between the two is further strengthened by the titles of their respective biblical prescriptions (Table 2), whose unique overlap suggested that they even interacted. Despite this intellectual proximity, however, there was no textual rapprochement between the lectionary directions of Clm 6425 and CDP. The two actually have different recensions in which biblical books swap at slightly different times (the Pauline Epistles follow Christmas in CDP and Epiphany in ORA), different feasts are accounted for (in CDP the Sanctorale is basically omitted), and there are minor differences in biblical use (in CDP, Judith is absent from the summer cycle, while patristics replace biblical readings for the week after Christmas). In fact, Freising scribes copied as many as three further documents relating to biblical reading in this period, each of which carries a unique recension (Table 3). Thus, to the assumption that lectionary ordines evolved in a linear or straightforward manner from their Roman origins, and Table 2  Varying titles for eleventh-century lectionary ordines, showing the apparently mediatory role of the Freising PRG manuscript Clm 6425 Source

Title of lectionary ordo

Freising CDP manuscript (Troyes, Bibliothèque Municipale, Ms. 246, f. 124v)

Quando et quo tempore libri veteris et novi testamenti legendi sint

Freising PRG manuscript (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 6425, f. 1r)

Incipit ordo Catholicorum librorum, et quando vel quo tempore libri veteris et novi testamenti sint ponendi

All other manuscripts of PRG

[In Christi nomine] Incipit ordo Catholicorum librorum qui in ecclesia Romana ponuntur

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Table 3  Five different sources of authority on biblical reading at the Night Office, each attributable to tenth- or eleventh-century Freising45 Manuscript

Recension Place and date of of lectionary source ordo

[Various] Clm 6398

OR XIII C OR XIII A*

Clm 6425 Clm 17043

ORA / OR L OR XIII B

Clm 27305

OR XIII A

Context of text

Canon law collection (CDP) s. x addition to Priscian Institutiones Freising, 1007×32 Liturgical compilation (PRG) Freising or s. xi addition to copy of Schäftlarn, s. x/xi Pauline Epistles, alongside additions from Collectio Duodecim Partium Freising or Swabia, s. xi addition to Martyrology/ post-957 Collectar

Freising, s. xiin Freising, s. ix

*Unique recension for Passiontide and Easter

to the claim that anyone was trying to impose one model in eleventh-century Freising, these sources offer a collective rebuttal. Rather, the sum of evidence hints at the idea that, for the clerics of the early eleventh-century Freising Cathedral, the act of collecting sources of authority was just as important as the desire to respond liturgically to their contents. Alternatively, there was simply no consensus.

Biblical reading in the early St Gall breviaries The PRG tradition is the example par excellence of a much wider tenth- and eleventh-century tendency to experiment with the materials and design of liturgical books. The classic example of this behaviour is the compilation for the Office now known as the breviary, first attested in the first half of the ninth century but not fully formalized until the twelfth.46 Several such books survive from the early eleventh century, including a significant haul from the monastery of St Gall which were treated to an insightful study by Pierre-Marie Gy.47 Each of these books can be seen as an attempt to collect and organize the texts needed for singing the Office – whether chants, psalms, prayers or readings – into some kind of useful order, but as Gy pointed out, the monks of St Gall probably had no word for these creations more precise than liber officialis (Office book).48 This experimental outlook and lack of secure template explains the fluidity of identity among the surviving ‘breviary’ volumes, whose



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contents are summarized in Table 4. At one end of the spectrum lie the two halves of the ‘Hartker’ antiphoner, St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek (henceforth SG), Codices 390 and 391, which transmit the Office antiphons and responsories for winter (Advent to Holy Week) and summer (Easter to the Sunday before Advent) respectively. Although these books are not normally considered in the same breath as breviaries – they were known as antiphonaria even in their own time – their chronological organization provides the essential background to the eleventh-century books SG 413 and SG 387, which do much the same but with the interpolation of liturgical readings. SG 414 is the surviving part of another probable two-volume conception from eleventh-century St Gall, but of a different sort. Organized by genre, it transmits many more categories of Office text, including collects and capitula. SG 86 is a tenth-century copy of Pseudo-Clementine writings whose outer pages probably belonged to another of these proto-breviaries and consist of biblical lessons and unnotated chant incipits. Finally, there survive two books devoted to Night Office lessons: the Table 4  Liturgical books for the Office from tenth- and early eleventh-century St Gall49 Siglum

Category of book

SG 390 SG 391 SG 423

Antiphoner c. 990–1000 Winter Summer Lectionary s. x Summer only

SG 428

Lectionary

SG 86, pp. Breviary 1–4, 231–4

Date

s. xi s. x

SG 414

Breviary

c. 1030

SG 413 SG 387

Breviary

c. 1030–45

Scope

Contents

Manner of organization

Chants

In order of performance In order of performance

Biblical and homiletic readings Winter and Homiletic summer readings Christmas Biblical and readings, Epiphany chant incipits (fragment) Summer Hymns, only biblical and homiletic readings, chants, capitula, collects Winter Biblical and Summer homiletic readings, chants

In order of performance In order of performance Separate sections for each genre

In order of performance

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tenth-century summer volume SG 423, containing both biblical readings and homilies, and the eleventh-century lectionary SG 428, which contains homilies for the full year. Both individually and together, these books provide a rare opportunity to observe how the Bible was read liturgically in a single institution in the years around 1000. Gy was the first to observe that SG 413/387 and SG 414 communicate with great fidelity the chant repertory for the Office found in the earlier Hartker antiphoner, SG 390/391.50 But for the occasional expansion of nocturns from three chants to four (a common feature of eleventh-century sources as conscientious monks began to obey the Rule of Benedict to the letter), this singing tradition was evidently quite stable. Biblical reading, however, was not. Within the wider corpus of St Gall Office books, as far as they overlap, we find a considerable amount of variance. Take the length of readings. If the tenth-century fragment SG 86 is surprising for its minuscule requirement of just one or two verses per reading, even for the major feasts of Christmas and the Epiphany, SG 423 is impressive for demanding anything up to 40 verses for a ferial weekday service, albeit with more lenient requirements for the shorter nights of summer. The friction between St Gall sources does not stop there, for they also disagree fundamentally on the balance of biblical and non-biblical reading (SG 413/387 substitute patristic sermons for large swathes of the year, SG 414 does so for some of the year, and SG 423 for none of it), the presence of biblical reading on some days of the week but not others (SG 413/387 oscillate between Sunday-only reading, daily reading, weekday reading and variants in between, while SG 423 is continuous), and the different timings of each set of biblical books (SG 414, for example, devotes a full six weeks to the Pauline Epistles after Christmas, while SG 413/387 allocates just nine days). In each instance, one might assume that extra reading took place elsewhere, perhaps in the refectory, in order to make up the difference between the requirements of the ordo and the actual provision of the liturgical books. But this is where the St Gall sources form a united front: every manuscript is assiduous in promoting lectio continua. That is, the lector starts the first Night Office reading where he left off on the last occasion, and this rule of continuity applies even where the biblical reading is limited to certain days of the week. For this reason we can be relatively confident not only that other kinds of literature (perhaps patristics, perhaps biblical pericopes) were read on the intervening days, but also that the daily dose of biblical lectio continua was restricted to the Night Office. Ironically, this finding reveals a second respect in which the St Gall manuscripts concur. They are unanimous in not requiring the complete reading



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of the canon in a single year. If we compare these requirements to the Decretum Gelasianum (Table 5), we find out that the prescriptions of the Roman ordines were only very loosely followed in this locality. This is especially surprising given that more copies of the Roman ordines survive from St Gall than from almost anywhere else.51 If the monks knew of these texts in the library they clearly felt no obligation to obey. What was it, then, about biblical reading in the tenth- and eleventh-century Office liturgy of St Gall that made it unstable to this degree, even more so than the musical tradition which was cultivated alongside it? If the monks did not care for consistency, or if the readings in the breviaries were only ever approximations of a freer practice of lectio continua, it is not clear why they would waste their energies copying texts which were already available in the Bible. Gy made the reasonable suggestion that habits could have changed between each new breviary recension, a thesis validated by the wider evidence that Night Office lessons shortened in length over the course of the Middle Ages.52 On the footing that the daily course of reading was probably worked out by the cantor, the monastic official charged with organizing the liturgy and overseeing the library, it makes sense that the course of worship might have changed with each successive incumbent.53 Changing tastes would also explain why patristic readings begin to be substituted in SG 414 (not only in Lent, thereby cutting short the Heptateuch, but also from four weeks after Epiphany, instead of more Pauline Epistles), and then appear in even greater numbers in SG 413 (for the entire period from Septuagesima, through Lent, to Palm Sunday, thereby eliminating the Heptateuch altogether). But taste cannot be the only factor, since these books also differ fundamentally in design and, in particular, in their arrangement of the liturgical calendar. For any liturgical document to function smoothly year after year, it needs to have sufficient slack built in to accommodate the movement not only of the date of Easter – theoretically any day between 22 March and 25 April – but also of the other feasts whose dates are calculated accordingly. With lectio continua this task is much more difficult than it seems, because the timing of Easter directly affects the number of Sundays between Epiphany and Septuagesima (i.e. one must read the Pauline Epistles in anything from one to six weeks) and between Pentecost and August (i.e. Samuel, Kings and Chronicles can occupy between five and ten weeks). In a similar way, the reading requirement for each summer month will vary between four and five weeks, depending on how many Sundays fall in each. None of the St Gall books under consideration fully succeeded in covering every eventuality, a situation which suggests either that each breviary

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Table 5  The disjuncture between the requirements of OR XIII and the actual provision of biblical readings in early St Gall Office books (shaded boxes are beyond the scope of the individual sources) Book of Bible Season in which books Actual provision in St Gall sources to be read, according SG 423 SG 414 SG 413/387 to OR XIII Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy Joshua Judges Ruth Samuel Kings Chronicles Psalms Proverbs Ecclesiastes Song of Songs Widsom Sirach Isaiah Jeremiah Lamentations Ezekiel Daniel Hosea Amos Micah Joel Obadiah Jonah Nahum Habakkuk Zephaniah Haggai Zechariah Malachi Job Tobit Ezra Esther Judith Maccabees

Septuagesima to Passiontide

Genesis

[Patristic sermons]

Post-Pentecost

1 Samuel

1 Samuel

August

Proverbs

Proverbs Wisdom

Advent Passiontide

Isaiah Isaiah Jeremiah Lamentations Lamentations Ezekiel

November

Ezekiel

September

Job Tobit Judith Esther

Job Tobit Judith Esther

October

1 Maccabees

1 Maccabees 2 Maccabees



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Book of Bible Season in which books Actual provision in St Gall sources to be read, according SG 423 SG 414 SG 413/387 to OR XIII Matthew Mark Luke John Acts

Post-Easter

Acts

[Patristic sermons]

Romans Corinthians Ephesians Thessalonians Galatians Philippians Colossians Timothy Titus Philemon Hebrews Revelation

Post-Christmas

Post-Easter

[Patristic sermons]

Peter James John Jude

Post-Easter

[Patristic sermons]

Romans Romans 1 Corinthians

iteration was designed with a particular year in mind, or that these books were gradually rendered obsolete when the arrival of a new year revealed the limitations of the existing model. The volumes SG 413/387 actually failed to accommodate any one complete year, a surprising result which may indicate that these were actually unrelated volumes. Technically speaking, the two books together provide the means to celebrate the Office in years with just one Sunday between Christmas and Epiphany (Christmas Day therefore needs to fall on a Sunday, Monday or Tuesday), with only four Sundays after Epiphany (Easter Day needs to fall on or before 14 April), and, assuming a basic adherence to the Roman ordo, with a mere six Sundays between Pentecost and August (Easter Day needs to fall on or after 15 April).54 Whatever date we choose for Easter Day, this arrangement does not work. Chants could easily be repeated to cover any gaps in the calendar, of course, but continuous readings had far less room for manoeuvre. If SG 413 and SG 387 were therefore separate codicological endeavours, each belonging

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to its own pair of breviary volumes, then it would significantly increase our hypothetical tally of Office books made in St Gall at this time. This would only underline the point about the vicissitudes of the calendar. No less problematic for a breviary scribe was the question of how to accommodate the Sanctorale, for the biblical cycle was constantly at the mercy of interruptions from special saints’ feasts. These came with their own proper hagiographic or patristic lections, and, if the 70 such feasts in SG 413 and SG 387 can be deemed indicative, they came along with a frequency of one to two days per week. With both a burgeoning saints’ calendar and a growing repertory of new musical and hagiographic Office texts in this period, it is not clear why eleventh-century scribes would have tried to constrain a course of biblical lectio continua at all. Perhaps the verses were simply rolled over into the next Office, or perhaps refectory reading took up the slack. In the absence of a definitive answer, however, all we need to appreciate is that the act of keeping reading practices under control in a breviary was a monumental logistical challenge, advantageous though that book was in other respects. It is no wonder that these earliest Office books ended up being so uneven. As well as the various logistical challenges cited so far, there may also have been a more ideological reason why the St Gall scribes started to tinker with their practices of reading. Even as far back as the Rule of Benedict, it had been understood that Office lessons were to be read ‘with their responsories’ (cum responsoriis suis), an association which, it is thought, could have given rise to the early musical repertory for the Office.55 Come the eleventh century, however, there was clearly a different relationship in place. From all outward appearances, what was most firmly established in the Office liturgy of eleventhcentury St Gall was not the biblical round but the musical repertory, which is consistent across the surviving local breviaries, and was so famously stamped with divine authority in the antiphoner SG 390, with its opening illustrations of Pope Gregory and the Holy Spirit.56 The possibility arises that the tail had begun to wag the dog, so to speak, as music had itself become a determinant of eleventh-century lectionary practice. Given that responsory series only ever echo Scripture and rarely constitute a narrative in their own right, we cannot assume that music had sole responsibility. But what is certainly possible is that the underlying principle of the breviary’s design – the synthesis of different genres of Office text into a single book – had suddenly brought these issues of musical–scriptural coordination to the surface. One case in point is the period between the Easter Octave and Pentecost in which, according to OR XIII B, one reads from ‘Acts and the seven Canonical



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Epistles, or Revelation’.57 The ‘or’ is replaced with ‘and’ in OR XIII C, while sources of OR XIII A make the ordering more explicit, requiring Acts, then the seven Canonical Epistles, then Revelation.58 Surviving antiphoners, however, do the opposite. In SG 391 the responsories for the first and second Sundays after the Easter Octave are derived from Revelation, the remaining Sundays have Psalmic chants, and then the feasts of Ascension and Pentecost use chant texts from the respective biblical narratives in Acts. There is no conclusive evidence that the St Gall scribes adapted their reading patterns accordingly (in SG 423 the readings from Acts obey neither ordo nor antiphoner), but the substitution of sermons for the entire season in SG 413/387 would certainly have helped to evade this narrative friction. Stronger evidence that music affected reading practices can be found in the shape of the breviary SG 414 in the weeks before Lent. This is the period when the Roman ordines require the Heptateuch to be read at the Night Office, and it is also the season when the early antiphoners, including the Hartker codices SG 390/391 and (by proxy) SG 414, lead a musical journey through the major narratives of the book of Genesis.59 The only problem is that the surviving antiphoners commence their musical narrative on the feast of Sexagesima, whereas the ordines require that the Heptateuch be begun a week earlier, at Septuagesima. It is therefore significant that SG 414 takes its lead from the music, not the ordo: in this manuscript the reading of the Heptateuch is delayed by a week, such that the Night Office on Sexagesima Sunday begins with a lesson from Genesis 1 (p. 250) and the accompanying responsory is, appropriately enough, ‘In principio deus creavit’ (p. 485).60 Sermons were again substituted for the entire season in SG 413/387. Two other brief examples strengthen the case. Among the Office chants for the month of September, SG 391 provides individual sets of responsories derived from Job, Tobit, Judith and Esther. It has no music derived from Ezra, however, despite the corresponding reading requirement of the ordo. It may be no coincidence that SG 423 and SG 413/387 follow suit, providing readings from Job, Tobit, Judith and Esther, but none from Ezra. In a similar way, among the St Gall Office chants for the month of August, those which complement the reading of the Wisdom books, one can find chants which draw upon Wisdom, Sirach and Proverbs, as well as the Psalms, but none which makes use of Ecclesiastes or the Song of Songs. This is directly reflected in surviving lections. SG 423 sets out readings from Proverbs, SG 413/387 asks for readings from Proverbs and Wisdom, while in nearby Constance (on which more shortly) the August lections cover Proverbs and Sirach.61 These examples do

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not demonstrate a musical grip over the lectionary content of the Office, by any means, but they do suggest that those tasked with organizing the ritual were aware of an underlying friction. In a monastic community that person was generally the cantor, whose responsibilities were both musical and liturgical, the two being inseparable in a ritual context, and who would probably have known the entire musical repertory of the Office by heart.62 With the melodic contours of the year firmly engrained in the cantor’s memory, therefore, and with no authoritative exemplars of biblical lections at hand, at least on the evidence available, it is not difficult to imagine how this individual’s own sense of musical time could impinge upon his arrangement of the readings. Factor in the design of the breviary, in which these texts were now customarily being brought together on the same page, and this kind of reconciliation suddenly appears a very realistic proposition.

Iuxta Ordinem, Iuxta Usum: Reading and reconciliation in the circle of Bernold of Constance Some 20 miles away from St Gall was the cathedral and diocesan seat of Constance, a burgeoning intellectual centre and home to an active community of canons.63 Perhaps the most famous resident of this institution was the late eleventh-century liturgist, canonist and chronicler Bernold, among whose many achievements was the Micrologus de Ecclesiasticis Observationibus, a substantial treatise on the liturgy which considers, among other topics, the subject of biblical reading at the Night Office.64 But his text is by no means the only one which attests to local lectionary practice. There also survive a late eleventh- or early twelfth-century list of lectionary prescriptions, edited by Andrieu as OR XIII D, which was copied at the end of SG 614 in conjunction with a copy of the Micrologus;65 a copy of the Decretum Gelasianum, including the section on apocrypha from the Synod of Ariminum, appended by Constance hands to the margin of SG 671, perhaps in connection with Bernold;66 a unique text resembling ORA which was gathered together with legal and other theoretical texts for the liturgy (including another Decretum Gelasianum) in Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, HB VI 107, probably under Bernold’s supervision;67 and several bible volumes, Fulda, Hochschul- und Landesbibliothek, Aa 10, Aa 11 and Aa 29, which were annotated by late eleventh-century Constance hands for use at the Night Office.68 If local scribes were working towards consensus on the matter of continuous biblical reading,



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they had not found it here, for each of these sources has something quite different to say about the Bible and the manner in which it was to be read. One of the most pressing concerns of Constance scribes, evidently, was to match up lectiones cum responsoriis suis, that is, to solidify the relationship between biblical readings and their accompanying musical responsories. This was not a purely local initiative, as Ælfric’s letter, the Cluniac customaries and the eleventh-century ordo in Douai, Bibliothèque Municipale, Cod. 857 all behave similarly, as do breviaries by virtue of their design.69 But what is significant about the Constance texts is the degree to which many of the problems of reading–responsory coordination, including those encountered in the St Gall breviaries above, seem to have been remedied here. In four sources (SG 614, Stuttgart HB VI 107, the Micrologus and the annotated bible Fulda Aa 11), the post-Easter readings are reversed in such a way that the order – Revelation, then Canonical Epistles, then Acts in time for Ascension – closely follows the pacing of the musical repertory.70 This desire is made explicit, as Table 6 shows, by each document’s command to begin Revelation at the same time as the group of responsories beginning ‘Dignus es domine accipere’ (derived from Rev. 5.9). With a similar musical rationale, prescriptions for the month of September in SG 614 and in Fulda Aa 11 omit the requirement to read from the book of Ezra, which has no corresponding Office chants in the German tradition. The requirements are further reduced in SG 614 by restricting the post-Septuagesima readings to just the Pentateuch, that is, jettisoning Joshua and Judges, books which are represented neither in surviving Office volumes from the Constance vicinity nor in corresponding musical chants. Even the problem of lining up the Genesis chants is averted in Bernold’s Micrologus, thanks to the timely intervention of Pope Alexander II (1061–73): In Septuagesima Heptateuchum incipiunt. Unde et Alexander papa secundus constituit ut responsoria de eadem historia in eadem Dominica incipiantur, quae et in sequenti Dominica repetantur. (‘At Septuagesima they begin the Heptateuch, whence Pope Alexander II also ordained that the responsories of the same historia [i.e., set of responsories] should be begun on that same Sunday. These should also be repeated on the following Sunday.’)71

Whether or not the pope actually had any authority over this matter, the fact that Bernold felt the need to justify himself in these terms may reveal the essential problem at hand: with conflict being played out in these eleventhcentury manuscripts between a supposedly Roman ordo and a supposedly

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Table 6  The explicit association in Constance sources between post-Easter readings and their related series of responsories (historia) Source

Relevant passage

SG 614, 324 Dominica prima post albas imponitur Appocalypsis cum responsoriis (OR XIII Dignus es domine et secuntur septem Epistolae Canonicae cum D, 5) responsoriis Si oblitus fuero, usque in sanctam noctem Ascensionis Domini. Stuttgart, In secunda feria quae sequitur Octavam Paschae legatur Apocalipsis HB VI 107, et cantentur responsoria Dignus es domine per xiiii dies. In dominica f. 105r tercia legantur Epistolae Canonicae usque ad Ascensionem. Micrologus, In Octava Paschae historiam Dignus es domine, et Apocalypsin iuxta ch. 54 ordinem incipimus. Fulda Aa 11, ominica prima post albas ponuntur Apocalipsis f. 264v responsoriis Dignus domine accipere …

Roman antiphoner, no source of arbitration was more authoritative than that of Rome itself.72 These findings are complicated by the slightly corrupt textual state of SG 614, by which much of OR XIII D was duplicated and many aspects altered on the second appearance. But it is no less interesting to suppose that that scribe was making adjustments as he went. Indeed, by actively forging paths between the theory and practice of biblical reading, all of these examples are suggestive of an important dynamic in eleventh-century intellectual life, one which Roger Reynolds first brought to wider attention in the 1970s.73 As issues of ritual practice became entangled in the politics of the Church, particularly with regard to the disputed centrality of Roman authority and custom, so did works of liturgical scholarship flourish. As we have seen already, Bernold of Constance’s Micrologus was a hefty attempt to promote all things Roman in Christian worship. But no less scholarly in this regard are the two volumes of a local ninth-century bible, Fulda Aa 10/11, in which the annotations open up a valuable space for dialogue. Although Autenrieth’s work on that book concentrated on the achievements of two eleventh-century Constance glossators, later the subject of an illuminating analysis by Ian Robinson,74 she also pointed briefly to a third individual who had systematically marked up both volumes for liturgical use.75 Were there to be any doubt about his Constance credentials, this same person carved out lections in a second bible, the eleventh-century volume Fulda Aa 29, and he probably had a hand in several other local books as well.76 By now it should come as no surprise that the reading requirements across these bible volumes differ, and that, despite the pervasive influence of OR XIII, the



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provision falls well short of the complete canon required by the Roman ordines. What is most interesting about these annotations is the fact that they represent a coalface of late eleventh-century liturgical activity. The Bible was not actually read any more intensively in Constance than in St Gall, at least as far as the daily reading rates in Table 7 suggest. But we can diagnose a more methodical intent. In both Fulda Aa 29 and Fulda Aa 10/11 the emphasis seems to have been on reading fewer books more completely, in preference to cutting corners to get through more books – a tactic which is certainly in evidence among the volumes from St Gall. And in Fulda Aa 10/11 the scribe seems to have been particularly devoted to the problems of the calendar. Each of the summer months was therefore provided with biblical readings for five complete weeks (six, in fact, for August), an act of overprovision which was surely to acknowledge that the number of Sundays in each month varies from year to year. For the post-Pentecost weeks before August, the scribe divided the two books of Samuel into exactly ten weeks’ reading, the theoretical maximum required when Easter is at its earliest, before appending four weeks’ worth of contingency readings from 1 Kings. In a similar manner, five weeks’ worth of Isaiah were assigned to Advent (one more than needed),77 eight weeks’ worth of Pauline Epistles were marked out for the weeks following the Epiphany Octave (three more than needed), and there were originally six weeks’ worth of Acts readings for the weeks after Ascension before someone erased the markings back to the rightful three. Not content to deal purely in lectio continua, the same scribe – or a close collaborator, feasibly – also indicated the place of proper biblical lessons for the Vigil of Christmas (Isaiah), Holy Innocents (Revelation), Epiphany (Isaiah), Annunciation (Isaiah), Assumption (Song of Songs), Maundy Thursday (Corinthians), Good Friday (Hebrews) and

Table 7  The differing treatments of 1 Samuel in sources of Night Office reading from St Gall and Constance Source

Date

Reading requirement

SG 423 (Lectionary) SG 387 (Breviary) Fulda Aa 10/11 (Bible) Fulda Aa 29 (Bible)

s. x

1 Samuel 4 weeks 1.1–17.41 1 Samuel 1.1–6.16 6 weeks (Sun. only) 1 Samuel 1.1–27.6 5 weeks

s. xi2/4

s. ix3/4 (s. xi2) 1 Samuel 1.1–31. s. xi2 end

Period allotted

5½ weeks

Approx. verses per day 16 22 20 21

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Holy Saturday (Hebrews). If ever there was a watertight strategy for applying the old Roman lectionary ordines to liturgical practice, this was surely it. Lesson divisions were not the only part of the design, for one or more Constance scribes also appended authoritative extracts in the margins. As Autenrieth noticed, a contemporary scribe appended a particularly well-timed comment on folio 87v of Fulda Aa 11 – the start of the Wisdom Books, for August – about when summer reading cycles should begin.78 The question here was whether to begin on the first day of the month, the first Sunday of the month, or the closest Sunday to the first day of the month. Autenrieth rightly pointed out a connection to Hildemar’s commentary on the Rule of Benedict, of which Constance had sight of at least two copies at this time, in which the same issue is discussed.79 But she might just have mentioned an equivalent passage in OR XIII D, as found in the local manuscript SG 614, whose copying indicates all the more strongly that this was a matter of local interest.80 In a similar vein, most of the other biblical books in Fulda Aa 10/11 were annotated with a quotation from an ordo-like text, and many of these included details of the accompanying musical responsories, much in the manner of OR XIII D. (For one example, refer back to Table 6.) Perhaps most revealing of the local agenda was the comment added to folio 272v of Fulda Aa 11, just next to the start of the Pauline Epistles: Iuxta ordinem post natum Innocentum ponuntur Epistolae Pauli usque in Septuagesimam. Sed iuxta usum post Octavam Epiphaniae ponuntur et leguntur Epistolae Pauli quia a Natale Domini usque in Epiphaniam leguntur sermones de Natale Domini et infra Octavam Epiphaniam leguntur sermones de Æpiphania. (‘According to the ordo the Pauline Epistles are set out after the Feast of the Holy Innocents until Septuagesima; but according to use the Pauline Epistles are set out and read after the Octave of Epiphany. This is because sermons about Christmas are read from Christmas to Epiphany, and sermons about Epiphany are read during the Octave of Epiphany.’)

By making the rhetorical contrast between ordo and usum, the scribe was doing more than merely quoting an authority: he was commenting candidly on the confrontation between Roman requirements and the enduring nature of local practice.81 Like a responsible scholar, he was showing his working. If the PRG tradition encountered in the Freising manuscript Clm 6425 represented an intellectual engagement with religious ceremony largely in the abstract, here we find a manner of liturgical scholarship rooted in the realities of ritual. Among the canons of late eleventh-century Constance, if not elsewhere, the Roman ordo



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for Night Office reading was finally being rationalized for a realistic pattern of liturgical use.

Conclusion It is by no means a novel idea that sources of liturgical authority should have exceeded the achievements of medieval ritual practitioners, standing as the model to which all aspired, rather than a literal version of events for the modern historian to recount. But the important finding of this chapter is the sheer degree to which the ancient Roman ordines on biblical reading represented a largely unattainable ideal, even in disciplined, ‘reformed’ and demonstrably well-equipped institutions like the abbey of St Gall and the cathedrals of Freising and Constance. This is not to say, of course, that members of these communities did not know their Bible. Besides the Night Office there were the other liturgical arenas of the Mass and lesser Office hours; monks would have enjoyed communal reading in the refectory (RB 38) and after the evening meal (RB 42), as well as the time for daily private study (RB 48, 49); and this is to say nothing of the commentaries through which the Scriptures were interpreted. What these case studies imply, instead, is that the Frankish intent to conform to all things Roman – the ideology by which these peripheral souls drew themselves closer to the spiritual centre of their church – was far easier to contemplate in theory than it was to implement in practice. This is something which has long been argued of sacramentaries and liturgical chant repertories under the Carolingians, but has yet to bear fruit in studies of the eleventh century.82 Paradoxically, one of the principal means by which good discipline and ritual efficiency could be ensured in the eleventh-century Office liturgy – that is, the newly-adopted breviary – was also something which caused immense problems for the accomplishment of lectio continua. Not only did this book type lack the flexibility to reconcile reading continuity with the vagaries of each year, but it also seems to have underlined the discontinuities between older lectionary and musical traditions. These difficulties explain both the teething problems of the St Gall breviaries and the sheer multiplicity of texts on the subject of biblical reading which survive from the Constance vicinity. What was not accounted for, though, either in breviaries or in scholarly texts, was the question of how continuous reading could be squared with the festal calendar. As we have seen, some of the Roman ordines provide special readings for specific feasts, such that all was catered for on an occasion like the Exaltation of the Holy Cross or St

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Peter’s Chair. But it is not entirely clear what that provision meant to a German audience (Bernold noted that the Exaltation ‘is not so generally and solemnly celebrated’),83 nor how provincial monks and clerics were meant to reconcile an ever-growing number of local celebrations with the universal demands of a Roman ordo. We might therefore suppose that the reduced expectations in eleventh-century Office sources – the reading of Genesis, for example, rather than the entire Heptateuch – were in part a pragmatic response to these changes, and not just a simple reflection (pace Ælfric) of the ‘sloth’ of undisciplined religious communities. These findings therefore suggest a minor adjustment of how we might apply the word ‘reform’ to reading practices in this period. In her detailed survey of the different Cluniac requirements for liturgical reading, Diane Reilly commented that ‘so many different versions of the ordo librorum can be extracted … that it is obvious the Cluniacs allowed for great diversity in how this reform was both documented and put into practice’.84 The problem with this interpretation, as well as the sense of surprise it seems to register, is that it is premised upon a word favoured in modern discourse but largely alien to early medieval sources (‘reform’),85 and it calls upon the evidence of a kind of authoritative text (‘ordo librorum’) which, as far as this study suggests, was neither the sole factor in determining biblical readings nor something which communities ever diligently followed. Institutional change may well have catalysed a new interest in liturgical reading practices in the eleventh century, but by no means did it determine them. On the evidence here, no one document can really be said to have transformed or controlled Night Office reading in this period, and there is no suggestion that practices in Freising, St Gall and Constance were ever anything but ‘local’. Rather, in the knowledge that Benedict (and others) had asked for the Bible to be read, individuals continued to ponder the most responsible course of action themselves. So far as we can tell, they did so by consulting and collecting older authorities, by looking to the testimony of the antiphoner, by experimenting with new kinds of ritual and calendrical organization on parchment, and by preserving that which the community already knew. When dealing with the difficult realities of continuous Bible reading in the Night Office liturgy of eleventh-century Germany, Roman precedent was but one of many pertinent concerns.

6

‘Quid nobis cum allegoria?’The Literal Reading of the Bible in the era of the Investiture Conflict Florian Hartmann

By the last quarter of the eleventh century, the controversy between the popes and the German King Henry IV, between sacerdotium and regnum, had strongly influenced everyday life in the entire Empire. It was not only the debate over the investiture of bishops and abbots by lay aristocrats or even by the king which caused the civil wars, but also the fundamental discussion about the right order of the world. Thus, the impact on the people was great since the necessity to adhere to one of the two parties had consequences all over the Empire. For example, in many cities, two bishops could be found simultaneously, one for each party. A chronicler from Augsburg frustratedly stated: ‘Omnes sumus geminati … papae geminati, pontifices geminati, reges geminati, duces sunt geminati.’1 Consequently, the long-lasting controversy caused an adamant form of conflict, in which participants did not shrink from the extensive use of military force. By the eleventh century, popes began to excommunicate and to depose kings, to summon bishops to Rome for justification, to suspend simoniac priests and to call on laymen to attack the king with military force. According to Gregory VII, even the idea of a holy war and the use of violence was acceptable in order to reach the fundamental goals of Church reform. Hence, to legitimate these revolutionary papal claims, Gregory VII required eminently respectable arguments.2 Yet from the very start the Christian tradition forbade clerics to exercise military force and to shed blood.3 Because of his new approach to physical violence, Pope Gregory VII badly needed to legitimize his actions within the growing public sphere. This marks a crucial moment in the history

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of regnum and sacerdotium, in which the use of the Bible in polemical literature changed in different ways.4 In this context of conflict, both parties attempted to put forward arguments that were based on the foundations of the Christian Church. To document the validity of these arguments, the polemicists tried to find convincing support in canon law, in the elaborations of the Fathers, and, most of all, in Holy Scripture. The quotations from canon law and from the Fathers outnumbered those of the Bible, but the latter continued to be regarded as the most valid source of authority, at least until the renovation of Roman Law in the twelfth century.5 In this chapter I will try to analyse and reconstruct the use of the Bible in royal polemic, specifically with regard to its reaction to the new papal approach to reading and citing the Bible. Within this context my focus lies on those quotes from the Bible which did not need any explanation because their meaning was obvious even without any exegetical interpretation. Why did the authors so purposefully base their arguments on these simple passages? Who might have constituted the potential audience, and in what ways did this audience condition the way the polemicists read the Bible?

A new kind of violence? According to Sigebert of Gembloux, Pope Paschal II wanted Count Robert of Flanders to destroy the churches of Liège and Cambrai.6 Sigebert, one of the most learned critics of Gregory VII, criticized Paschal for using military force. He accused Gregory VII of having been the pope ‘qui primus … [se] contra imperatorem accinxit gladio belli’ (‘who first girded himself with the sword of war against the emperor’).7 The mention of the gladius belli is perhaps a reference to the doctrine of Pope Gelasius I and his influential letter, known as ‘Duo sunt’ (‘Two there are …’). In a letter of 494, addressed to the Emperor Anastasios, Gelasius distinguished between ‘two things’ which he called the ‘sacred authority of priests’ (auctoritas sacrata pontificum) and the ‘royal power’ (regalis potestas): ‘There are two things, august Emperor, by which this world is chiefly ruled, namely, the sacred authority of priests and the royal power.’ Gelasius referred to Luke 22.38 and the conversation between Jesus Christ and his Disciples: ‘at illi dixerunt Domine ecce gladii duo hic, at ille dixit eis satis est’ (‘And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough’). For the entire Middle Ages, the Gelasian doctrine remained crucial for discussions about the relationship between regnum and sacerdotium.8



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Consequently, we might expect Gelasius’s sentence to be frequently quoted in the polemic literature of that period. Gelasius defined the royal power as follows: ‘the ministers of religion, recognizing the supremacy granted you [the emperor] from heaven in matters affecting the public order, obey your law’. For this interpretation, the two swords of Luke 22.38 needed to gain an allegorical meaning; there were different allegorical interpretations, however: Walahfrid Strabo, for example, read the two swords as the Old and the New Testaments;9 Alcuin, however, offered a different version: How is it consistent that Jesus, who just now ordered his disciples to sell their tunics and buy a sword, should immediately afterwards say that those who take up the sword will perish by the sword? If the sword is God’s and the Lord, when he ordered them to buy a sword, meant they should buy God’s word, how is it consistent that everyone who takes up God’s sword should die by God’s sword?10

Alcuin had shown that the same word ‘may have contrary meanings in different contexts’:11 ‘Non enim aequaliter ubique gladius significat’ (‘For the sword does not signify equally in every context’).12 To illustrate this plurality, Alcuin named different allegorical meanings of the word ‘sword’ in the Bible: in Psalms 63.4 and 143.10, in Luke 2.35, Matthew 10.34, Romans 13.4, Isaiah 34.5, Deuteronomy 32.41, Ephesians 6.17, Matthew 26.52, Luke 12.36, Hebrews 4.12 and in Revelation 1.16 and 2.12.13 By interpreting the different swords in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, Alcuin was ‘highlighting the contrast between the sword of vengeance and the sword which is God’s word. He argued that the different commands in Matthew 26.52 and Luke 22.51 give each sword “its own proper meaning” according to context’.14 The problem of the two swords was, according to Alcuin, of no relevance for the political order in the Carolingian realm: Charlemagne had two swords to defend the Church both against heresy within his realm and against any foreign threat.15 Later on, Peter Damian offered an important reinterpretation of the two swords, which highlighted their political impact. In the middle of the eleventh century, it was he who assigned the two swords to a secular and a spiritual sphere respectively. Peter Damian, however, was convinced that regnum and sacerdotium worked together.16 But the idea of two harmonious partners, as designed by Gelasius and by Peter Damian, began to be changed by Humbert of Silva Candida and later on by Gregory VII. According to the latter, both swords belonged to the spiritual power and the king received one of them out of the hands of the spiritual power. King Henry IV realized the revolutionary potential

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of Gregory VII’s interpretation: ‘Piam dei ordinationem contempsit [Gregorius papa], que non in uno, sed in duobus, duo id est regnum et sacerdotium, principaliter consistere voluit, sicut ipse salvator in passione sua de duorum gladiorum sufficentia intelligi innuit.’17 The use of violence, for which Gregory VII was blamed,18 was indeed not directly linked to the Gelasian doctrine. However, due to the papal interpretation of Luke 22.38, the king became a minister of the Lord and of St Peter. This interpretation of the doctrine did not allow the pope to exercise physical violence by himself. For, in this passage, Jesus Christ evidently did not talk about the relationship between regnum and sacerdotium. And in fact, though the Gelasian doctrine and the swords of Luke seem to be crucial for the debate of the eleventh century, they were not mentioned very frequently in the polemics of this period. The Gelasian sentence is quoted merely once in the Liber canonum contra Heinricum quartum, but without any explanation.19 The Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda offered some brief references,20 and only a few citations of the Gelasian sentence can be found in the treatises of Hugh of Fleury,21 Bernold of Constance,22 in the Norman Anonymous,23 the Tractatus de scismaticis24 and in the anonymous De paenitentia regum et de investitura regali collectanea.25 The biblical foundation of the Gelasian doctrine, Luke 22.38, was quoted word for word even less frequently. Only four authors, Sigebert of Gembloux,26 Honorius Augustodunensis,27 Gerhoh of Reichersberg28 and the Norman Anonymous, author of the so-called Tractatus Eboracenses,29 took the obscure, but heavily contested words of Jesus Christ about the two swords literally. Not even Gregory VII himself referred in his numerous letters to Luke’s two swords. On the one hand, Luke 22.38 seemed to be most relevant to the hierarchical relationship between pope and emperor; on the other hand, the meaning was very obscure, because it did not directly deal with the relationship between regnum and sacerdotium.30 The words of Luke required further explanation. Without any kind of explanation, they lacked persuasive power. Since the meaning of this crucial passage depended on the individual and highly subjective interpretation of the exegete, it was strongly contested, and was therefore considered less useful in a line of argument. It was not sufficient to quote this passage in order to legitimate political goals. The ambiguity of Luke 22.38 could explain why it was not mentioned as much in the eleventh-century polemics as the importance of this passage might have led one to expect.31 Thus, for his political purposes, Gregory VII had to find other quotations to legitimize his point of view. This had become necessary since his alleged public call for violence against the king was without precedent. Henry



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IV, therefore, declared Gregory VII the origin of evil. Looking back at the end of his life, Henry described the peaceful time and the peaceful relationship he had had with the early popes of the reform papacy, particularly with Nicolas II and Alexander II. When this relationship began to deteriorate with the seizing of the papal throne by Gregory VII, it seemed obvious to Henry that Gregory VII and Urban II had initiated this development out of personal and contingent motives rather than due to a principled stand: ‘magis videbantur nos persequi odio et indignatione quam zelo iusticie’.32

The sword of Gregory VII In some measure, Henry IV was right. Gregory VII had changed papal behaviour when communicating with the king. From Gregory VII’s point of view, even the use of physical violence and of military force was justified in order to achieve the aims of the reform movement. The new ideology of violence can be found in the letters of Gregory VII and, in particular, in a new way of reading the Bible. It was not the heavily contested gladius from Luke 22.38 which he quoted most frequently, but, rather, from another passage about a sword: Erich Caspar already noted in his edition of the letters of Gregory VII that he used one Bible quotation most frequently – Jeremiah 48.10: ‘Maledictus homo, qui prohibit gladium suum a sanguine’ (‘Cursed be he who keepeth back his sword from blood’).33 Gregory VII quoted this passage for the first time in 1073, when he foresaw in a letter to Geoffrey, Duke of Lorraine, his future relationship to Henry IV: ‘Sin vero, quod non optamus, [Henry] nobis odium pro dilectione, omnipotenti autem Deo pro tanto honore sibi collato dissimilando iustitiam eius contentum non ex equo reddiderit, interminatio qua dicitur: “Maledictus homo, qui prohibit gladium suum a sanguine”, super nos Deo providente non veniet.’34 By quoting so frequently the words of the prophet, Gregory VII legitimized violence mainly for two purposes: for the struggle against simoniacs and for the struggle against tyranny. For example, in 1074, Gregory wrote a letter to the French bishops about King Philip in which he stated ‘qui non rex sed tyrannus dicendus est, suadente diabolo caput et causa est earum rerum,[id est] periuria, sacrilegia, incestum, cedes, incendia et alia’.35 Not only against laymen and simoniacs, but also in order to strengthen the authority of Rome, Gregory made use of Jeremiah 48.10: ‘Namque si fratres nostros consideremus delinquere et tacemus … nonne et ipsi delinquimus et errare merito iudicamur? Etenim,

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qui neglegit culpas emendare, committit … Et quid est, quod Dominus per prophetam: “Maledictus”, inquit, qui prohibit gladium suum a sanguine.’36 In 1076 Gregory VII also pointedly used the Jeremiah passage in his propagandistic letter to ‘all the brothers, bishops, abbots, priests, dukes, princes, knights, and all the Christians in the Roman Empire’, threatening that ‘whoever continues to communicate with the excommunicated king should be expelled from Christian communion’. Gregory felt forced to be so severe because of the word of the prophet: ‘Cursed is he who keeps back his sword from blood.’37 The letter, written in July 1076, circulated all over Germany. One month later, Gregory repeated the same argument in a letter to Bishop Hermann of Metz, once again legitimizing his severe position against Henry IV and his followers by quoting Jeremiah 48.10.38 It is this citation which demonstrates most tellingly the new legitimization of violence by Pope Gregory VII. By spreading the letter from 1076 all around the German Empire, he ensured the publicity of his position not only among the Gregorians but among the royalists as well. There existed, of course, historical examples for the excommunication of kings, even for their deposition. But in no earlier case had a pope justified the use of violence against a Christian emperor. Nor did the decretals offer any justification for papal violence against a king. Thus, Gregory VII had to use new justificatory citations which he found in the Old Testament. In 1076, after the deposition of the pope by the German bishops at Worms, Gregory VII began to promote the use of violence against the king. For the same purpose, the pope may have asked his friend and partisan, Bishop Bonizo of Sutri, to show whether it had ever been legitimate, or might now be legitimate, for a Christian to fight for dogma with violence: ‘si licuit vel licet christiano pro dogmate armis decertare’.39 Afterwards the followers of Gregory VII quoted the same passage from Jeremiah and added further examples, from the Old and the New Testament alike. Manegold of Lautenbach in particular listed many quotations concerning the gladius in the Bible.40

The adherents of Henry IV and critiques of papal bloodthirstiness Royalists, by contrast, tried to find arguments to delegitimize the papal position. For that purpose they used similarly apt passages from the Holy Scriptures. Interestingly, they seldom referred to passages which needed to be interpreted in an allegorical manner, because Alcuin had pointed out the difficulties those



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could cause. Rather, they preferred simple and extremely clear expressions that could be interpreted in a more literal manner. In 1080, Wenrich of Trier responded to the letter of Gregory VII, in which the latter called on the German people to fight along with King Rudolf against Henry IV.41 Wenrich knew exactly the kind of argument Gregory VII had used. He therefore attacked the pontiff by the same means: he quoted I Peter 2.13, 17-18: ‘Subiecti estote regi quasi precellenti; Deum timete, regem honorificate; Subditi estote in omni timore dominis, non tantum bonis et modestis, sed etiam discolis’ (‘Submit yourselves to the king … as supreme; Fear God, honour the king; Servants be subject to your masters in all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward’); Titus, 1.7: ‘oportet episcopum non iracundum esse, non percussorem’ (‘For a bishop must be … not soon angry … no striker’); 2 Timothy 2.24-5: ‘Servum autem Domini non oportet litigare, sed mansuetum esse’ (‘And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient’); Titus 3.1-2: ‘Ammone illos principibus et potestatibus subditos esse, omnem ostendentes mansuetudinem’ (‘Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers … showing all meekness’); and, for the use of physical violence, most significantly, 2 Corinthians 10.4: ‘Arma militiae nostrae non sunt carnalia’ (‘For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal’).42 The multitude of simple quotations from the Scriptures was both convincing and comprehensible for the lay elite. The message was straightforward: the spiritual order was not allowed to use physical violence and everybody had to follow the king’s command. It was, as put by Honorius Augustodunensis,43 the multitude of the testimonia scripturarum and their directness which was used to persuade an unlearned audience to accept the arguments of those supporting the king. The anonymous author of the Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda of c. 1091/3 argued similarly. He quoted letters in which Pope Gregory VII asked the German people to desert King Henry IV and to attack him. It was not the goal which was unique to Gregory, but rather the methods he exercised in order to reach it:44 he mobilized violence and military force (tyrannica violentia) instead of ecclesiastical admonitions (ecclesiasticae ammonitiones).45 Gregory VII was declared responsible for the ‘discessio illorum, per quos regendus est mundus’ (‘the removal of those by whom the world needs to be ruled’).46 Quoting Pope Leo I47 and the Gelasian doctrine,48 the anonymous author argued for the inviolability of the secular power: ‘beatus apostolus Paulus ecclesiam Dei ordinat, ut nihil adversus principes et potestates saeculi gerens per quietem et tranquillitatem vitae opus iustitiae et pietatis exerceat’

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(‘the blessed Apostle Paul ran the Church of God in such a way that he did nothing against the princes and powers of this world but through peace and tranquillity of life exercised the work of justice and piety’).49 To prove this, the author quoted St Paul’s letter to the Romans: ‘Let every soul be in subjection to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those who exist are ordained by God. Therefore he who resists the authority withstands the ordinance of God.’50 And from the same letter: ‘Do you desire to have no fear of the authority? Do that which is good, and you will have praise from the same, for he is a servant of God to you for good. But if you do that which is evil, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is a servant of God, an avenger for wrath to him who does evil.’51 It is the sword of the secular power, the sword of God, which is appropriate to prosecute those crimes which are too grave for ecclesiastical clemency.52 Thus, a couple of years after Gregory VII had begun to legitimize violence by means of Jeremiah’s words, ‘cursed is he who keeps back his sword from blood’, a supporter of King Henry IV forbade any violence against a king by using the same arguments from Holy Scripture. Both parties were quoting passages about the use of the sword, at a time when the debate on Gelasian doctrine had become well known to a rather wide audience. The anonymous author of the Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda continued to quote St Paul: ‘Sacerdotale enim iudicium non habet nisi gladium spiritus, quod est verbum Dei, atque ideo, cum per ecclesiasticas regulas non potuerit hereticos coercere ecclesia Dei, adiuvatur, sicut ait beatus Leo papa, severis constitutionibus christianorum principum’ (‘Priestly judgement has only the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and so when the Church of God cannot coerce heretics by ecclesiastical rules, it may be helped, as Pope Leo said, by the severe edicts of Christian princes’).53 St Paul told the Ephesians that ‘against the world’s rulers of the darkness of this age, the spiritual power has got only “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”’ (Eph. 6.17).54 He continued to prove his argument by stringing together the following quotations from the New Testament: ‘Give therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s’;55 ‘For there is no power but of God, and the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisted the power resisted the ordinance of God’;56 ‘Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king as supreme; or unto governors as unto them that are sent by him.’57 Using these quotations, the anonymous author legitimized royal government by proving it was ordained by the Lord himself. The anonymous author quoted



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the Old Testament (Jer. 27.6-8), as well, in order to strengthen the position of royal leadership: [The Lord told me:] I have at this time placed all these nations of yours under the power of my servant, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. I have even made all the wild animals subject to him. All nations must serve him and his son and grandson. But a nation or a kingdom which has not served King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and whosoever has not bowed his neck under the king’s yoke of servitude to him, I shall visit that people by the sword, and by famine and by pestilence, saith the Lord, until I may consume them in his hand.58

The scriptural quotation continues by stating that ‘only the falsi doctores [that is, Gregory VII and his followers] keep telling you, “You do not need to be subject to the king of Babylon.” Do not listen to them, but submit to the yoke of servitude to the king of Babylon.’59 The Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda argued explicitly against Gregory VII’s attempt to justify the use of violence. The author referred directly to the arguments of the pope, whose episcopal supporters preached that everyone would be justified, ‘si contra eum [that is, King Henry] arma tulisset, qui, utpote excommunicatus, rex iam esse non posset’.60 Thus, the anonymous author of the Liber seems to know Gregory’s argument when he states ‘Nova et inaudita est praedicatio eiusmodi, cum ecclesia non habeat sibi concessum gladium nisi spiritus, quod est verbum Dei.’61 It was, therefore, not the pope, but King Henry IV, ‘utpote Dei ministro, quem dicit apostolus non sine causa portare gladium, scilicet ad vindictam impiorum’.62 The same passage had been put forward in the sentence of the Synod of Brixen in 1080: ‘cum vas electionis Paulus testetur principem non sine causa gladium ferre’.63 According to Henry IV’s adherents, it was the king alone who was authorized to use the sword and, thus, to exercise physical force, while the sword of the Church, by contrast, was the word of God. The author of the Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda found passages which document the inviolability of kingship in the Old Testament as well. The violence allegedly caused by Gregory VII and his followers was condemned with a quote from Ezekiel 13.18: ‘You have put to death people who should not die and kept alive those who should not live by your lies to my people, who listen to lies.’ Once again, the anonymous author seemed to rebut instantly Gregory VII’s attempt to justify violence. The passages from Holy Scripture quoted in the Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda were simple to decipher and they delivered an obvious message:

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actual violence, particularly violence executed by bishops against the royal authority, was contrary to the divine order; and proof of Gregory VII’s violent actions was easy to find: ‘pseudoepiscop[i] … destruere nitebantur regnum Heinrici regis a Deo sibi collatum, resistendo ei atque repugnando usque ad effusionem sanguinis multorum hominum. Ex hac crudelissima heresi multae hereses et scismata emerserunt, ut nec divinae nec humanae leges quicquam nunc valeant apud illos.’64 It was – according to those in Henry IV’s camp – Pope Gregory VII’s supporters who began to act in a bloodthirsty manner, to kill others, thereby acting against the divine order. The anonymous author felt threatened by his opponents, not only by their sapientia, but also by their gladii, their swords. The Gregorians not only threatened with war, but also with texts – most dangerous of all – ‘quod gravissimum nobis est, introducuntur contra nos testimonia sanctarum scripturarum’.65 They were supposedly misinterpreting the holy guidelines in order to legitimize bellorum studia.66 The emperor, on the other hand, tolerated such disrespect in spite of the fact that he, as minister Dei, had the sword to punish the impious.67 But he, in contrast to Gregory VII, didn’t even want to kill any of those who would harm him (‘noluit occidere quemquam noxiorum’).68 Sigebert of Gembloux, the Liber de unitate conservanda, Wibert of Ravenna, Wido of Ferrara and many others criticized the pope’s bloodthirstiness. Wido of Ferrara asked rhetorically, ‘Who has ever begun so many wars, who has ever killed so many men?’69 Wibert of Ravenna, in a similar fashion, asked, ‘How many sheddings of blood [have there been] in Italy and the kingdom of Germany?’ (‘Quantae enim humani sanguinis effusiones in Ytalico et Teutonico regno?’).70 Similarly, Sigebert of Gembloux quoted a letter from Paschal II to Robert of Flanders: ‘Iustum est enim, ut … ubicunque poteris Heinricum hereticorum caput et eius fautores pro viribus persequaris … Hoc tibi ac militibus tuis in peccatorum remissionem … precipimus, ut his laboribus et triumphis ad caelestem Ierusalem Domino prestante pervenias.’71 Again, it was a pope who claimed the authority to unleash military action against a king. Sigebert concluded: ‘The mother of the Christian Church appeals to her daughters to kill the king.’ With his interpretation, Sigebert linked papal policy to motherhood, and this allowed him to quote the most famous biblical passage about maternal love, the Judgement of Solomon (1 Kgs 3.23-4), which ends with the words, ‘The king ordered, “Get me a sword!” So they placed a sword before the king. The king then said, “Cut the living child in two, and give half to one and half to the other!”’72 Just as David saw the Lord’s messenger standing between earth and sky with his sword drawn and his hand stretched out over



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Jerusalem (1 Chron. 21.16), in a similar way Sigebert and all the daughters of the Church of Rome (filiae Romanae ecclesiae) saw the pope ‘who is the angel of the Lord, standing above the Church with drawn sword. David prayed that the people not be killed, while our angel stretched out to Robert [of Flanders] the sword over the Church. Where has this sword for our angel come from?’73 Having begun with these two passages from the Old Testament, Sigebert turned to the famous doctrine of the two swords deduced from Luke 22.36-8: ‘When Jesus ordered each of his disciples to sell his garments and buy himself a sword, the disciples said, “Lord, behold two swords”, and Jesus said, “It is enough” (‘Iubente Iesu discipulis, ut vendita tunica emant sibi gladium, dicunt discipuli: “Domine, ecce gladii duo hic”, et Iesus: “Satis est’”). Then, Sigebert referred directly to Jeremiah 48.10, which had been cited many times by Gregory VII. But this sword, Sigebert stated, Jesus used rather against the impulses of his own flesh than against threats from the outer world.74 Canon law, however, allowed the use of weapons against inimicorum Dei assultus (‘the assaults of the enemies of God’) but only ‘ad defensionem urbis et aecclesiae. Bella vero indici ecclesiae per auctoritatem canonicam nusquam scripturarum legimus.’75 On the contrary, Jesus Christ, the Apostles, and the Apostles’ men were preaching peace.76 There was no legitimization here for Paschal II’s appeal for military force against Henry IV. When bishops accepted regalia out of the hands of kings or emperors, it was obvious that they should not kill them, ‘by their own sword, that is, by their own benefices’ (‘proprio gladio, id est eorum beneficiis’).77 Although Sigebert argued against Paschal II, he identified Gregory VII as the creator and initiator of papal violence: ‘Pope Hildebrand, who is the author of this new schism, and who first raised up the priestly lance against the diadem of the kingdom’.78 According to Gelasian doctrine, one spiritual sword might belong to the spiritual power, but the spiritual power was not allowed to use the other sword in order to kill: ‘whence then this apostolic command, that besides the spiritual sword he should exercise another sword of killing against his own subjects?’79 Sigebert presented his accusation in the form of a rhetorical question: ‘Which of the Roman pontiffs ever authorized by his own decrees that the pontiff ought to use the sword of war against sinners?’80 Pope Gregory I, at that very time under Lombard attack, had hesitated to act with violence against his enemies, ‘because I fear God’ (‘quia Deum timeo’). This example was familiar to all Christians afterwards. Therefore, no pope had used any sword but the spiritual sword ‘usque ad ultimum Gregorium, id est Hildebrandum, qui primus se et suo exemplo alios pontifices contra imperatorem accinxit gladio belli’.81 Again, and

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not by chance, it was the sword (gladius) which demonstrated the illegitimacy of the action of all popes from Gregory VII onwards. The ‘secular sword’ (gladius saecularis) was therefore the sword of war (gladius belli) which belonged to the king. Sigebert praised those bishops ‘who rendered unto Caesar the things that are Caesars’s and to God the things that are God’s’.82

‘Why allegory? Let’s go to the truth of the gospels!’83 Both parties quarried the same texts to legitimize their positions. Both cited from the same authorities. The different readings of the sources caused an interpretative divergence. The proposal of the Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda was naive, when the author hoped ‘to terminate by means of books the controversy which could not be terminated by the sword’.84 The intuition that new forms of argument had become necessary probably conditioned a new way of reading and using the Bible. It is, at any rate, eye-catching that by the 1080s the polemicists quoted extensively from passages in the Bible whose meaning was so obvious that any explanation became superfluous. It was both the lay audience, and the necessity of an unquestionable authoritative source, which seem to have favoured this form of reading the Bible by the 1080s. The intellectual debate about the legitimacy of using physical violence was of high relevance for an aristocratic society as a whole, especially once Gregory VII began to spur lay aristocrats to fight against an anointed king. The importance of this debate evoked, as recently demonstrated by Leidulf Melve, a new awareness of a wider, ‘semi-institutionalized public sphere’.85 Those treatises which addressed a non-literate public sphere argued to some extent on a lower intellectual level. Passages of polemical literature which dealt with the potestas regis quoted most frequently the simple and clear sentences of the Scriptures. Hugh of Fleury, for example, quoted in Chapter I on potestas, and in Chapter IV on the officium regis, the statement of St Paul in Romans 13.1: ‘Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. For there is no power but of God.’86 Obviously, the polemicists turned to using clear, unambiguous passages from the Bible. Both parties read the Bible in the same manner. Thereby, they seemed to focus on those passages which could be interpreted literally,87 because these passages were comprehensible even for a wider, uneducated audience. Thus the polemicists tried to legitimize their position directly by using quotations from the Bible rather than using sophisticated interpretations of obscure passages from the Fathers. To this end, they demonstrated a certain ‘ability to adapt



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the discourse according to the audience addressed’.88 When by the 1080s the polemicists referred frequently to public opinion and attested to the ‘function of semi-literate and illiterate audiences’,89 it may have become more important to raise those arguments that were able to convince the unlearned multitude.90 In this context the Bible was considered the most authentic and authoritative origin and source. If, in contrast, the Bible was interpreted allegorically, it might be deprived of its pure biblical origin since an allegorical, perhaps contested, interpretation was less convincing than the literal sense of simple biblical expressions. According to the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, which were well known to the polemicists of the eleventh century, Pope Leo I (d. 474) had stated, ‘In a case of obscurity and doubt it is right to follow those precepts which do not contradict the praecepta evangelica nor the decreta sanctorum patrum.’91 It was no coincidence that this statement was quoted by the polemicists; it was even used in order to refute arguments which contradicted the clear and simple expressions of Holy Scripture.92 Wenrich of Trier, Sigebert of Gembloux and the Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda are excellent examples of literal readings of the Bible; they brought together plenty of quotations, each with an obvious meaning. Even St Peter could be quoted, and his words were almost irrefutable: ‘Deum timete, et regem honorificate’ (1 Pet. 2.17) and ‘Carissimi … subiecti estote omni humanae creaturae propter Deum, sive regi, quasi praecellenti, sive ducibus, tanquam ab eo missis ad vindictam malefactorum, laudem vero bonorum, quia sic voluntas Dei est’ (1 Pet. 2.13-16).93 Who could not be convinced by these words when they came directly from such an authority? St Augustine had already noted that different intellectual levels should be used for differently educated audiences. Origen, who heavily influenced the interpretation of Luke’s two swords in the eleventh century,94 also proposed different methods of interpretation for the different audiences: according to him, the Scriptures had a literal, a moral and an allegorical meaning.95 While the first two of them (the literal and moral meanings) were suitable for simple believers unable to understand profounder meanings, the allegorical sense could be appreciated only by those who were capable of discovering wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom of God.96 What ‘the scholar shared with the laity’ was the literal sense.97 Different positions on the literal and allegorical elements in the study of the Bible converged in the writings of St Augustine,98 whose interpretation strongly influenced medieval views. The polemicists of the eleventh century were familiar with these debates.

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The allegorical interpretations in the teachings of St Augustine could be too complicated and almost incomprehensible to many lay aristocrats. Gregory VII himself had had no thorough schooling in canon law.99 The most learned canonists, therefore, criticized Gregory VII for some of his positions. It was no coincidence that Gregory turned to the obvious interpretation of certain Bible passages instead of the allegorical passages, which were highly contested. Arguments based on the literal meaning of the Scriptures were more likely to convince a less educated audience: ‘Why allegory? Let’s go to the truth of the Gospels’, said Bonizo of Sutri,100 who, generally, approached canon law in a more critical manner.101 But in Alcuin’s reading, the Gospels required to be read as allegory, whereas the Old Testament was simple. After dealing with the divergences in canon law, Peter Damian declared the precedence of the Scriptures, which gave canon law second rank in the case of discordance.102 In order to solve the problem that arose from interpretative plurality and the flourishing of ‘false interpretation’ of the Scriptures, intellectuals were searching for a hierarchy of authorities in case of disputed exegesis.103 Within this hierarchy, the Scriptures were rated higher than any other authority. Reading the letters of Gregory VII, or, for example, the treatise of Hugh of Fleury, the reader is struck by a multitude of quotations from the Scriptures whose meaning would have been simple and obvious. These phrases might have been the most suitable arguments for convincing the less learned laity. Honorius Augustodunensis stated that ‘In order to convince unlearned men deprived of secular knowledge there is, however, only one useful argument, namely that based on a multitude of proofs from the Scriptures.’104

An authoritative surplus by way of an obvious meaning? The simple interpretation of certain passages was perhaps not the only reason for their widespread use; the fact that it seemed to be less convenient to follow the interpretations of the Fathers led to a preference for quoting the literal meanings of the Scriptures. The hierarchy of authorities proposed during the Investiture Contest listed the sentences of the Fathers below the sentences of the important councils and below papal decrees and decretals. Moreover, the sentences of the four principal councils were valued as equal to the Gospels, as had been stated by Gregory I.105 This assessment was well known in the eleventh century.106 Consequently, the Bible was the highest authority, if its meaning was not interpreted by others. If, however, an argument from the Bible was used



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indirectly, by way of the Fathers, this interpretation was sometimes recognized to be inferior, if the argument was not obvious to the audience. It was the old problem of deciding between the sophisticated interpretations of obscure passages in the Bible and simple literal meanings. Augustine had already tried to solve the problems raised by allegorical passages in Holy Scripture. He noted the danger caused by the interpretation of obscure passages: Wherever such a meaning is found, that which is uncertain about it cannot be explained by testimonies from Scripture. We have to explain it by the evidence of reason. But this practice is dangerous. It is far safer to walk along the paths of Holy Scripture. When we want to understand the passages that are made unclear by allegorical expressions, we may either obtain a meaning that is not controversial, or, if it is controversial, we may solve it by searching and finding evidence in the same passage of Scripture.107

In any case, the treatises of the late eleventh century quoted remarkably often those passages from the Bible whose content was obvious. One of these clear expressions was, for example, Romans 13.1: ‘Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God.’ This simple and significant passage in favour of royal power was quoted not only in the Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda108 and by Sigebert of Gembloux, but also by Peter Crassus,109 Wido of Ferrara,110 Hugh of Fleury,111 Gregory of Catino112 and many others as well, while the contested words of Luke on the two swords were quoted only a few times. There are numerous other quotations from the Bible legitimizing any kind of royal government, even a tyrannical one: ‘Itaque rex bonus hominibus datur Deo propicio, et pravus Deo irato, sicut ipse per prophetam testator Israhelitico populo dicens: “Dabo”, inquit, “tibi regem in furore meo”’ (Hos. 13.11).113 Numerous examples for the obedience owed to a tyrannical king are to be found in the treatise of Hugh of Fleury.114 Gregory VII, on the other hand, most frequently ‘simply relied on the authority of St Peter, of whom he was the vicar on earth’.115 By means of this crucial and simple form of legitimization, Gregory could counter the fact that the use of physical force to remove bishops was not legitimized by any canon law.116 It was no coincidence, then, that Gregory VII’s most often-cited passage from the Bible was the simple order of Jeremiah 48.10: ‘Cursed is he who keeps back his sword from blood.’ Just as simple was the reply from the royal party offered by Hugh of Fleury in which he quoted Matthew 26.52. Here, Jesus replies to Peter who had cut off the ear of the High Priest’s slave, ‘Put your sword back in its place!’117

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It was, therefore, the Bible which offered perhaps the most persuasive arguments for refuting even the authoritative statements of the Holy Synods, of the Fathers, and of papal decretals. Even the famous sentence of Symmachus, ‘Summus pontifex a nemine iudicetur’ (‘the highest pontiff is to be judged by no-one’), was challenged by means of biblical quotations from Hugh of Fleury118 and in the Tractatus de investitura episcoporum119 and also by Sigebert of Gembloux, who might have been the author of the Tractatus.120 It states: ‘Dominus in evangelio dicit: “Si male locutus sum, testimonium perhibe de malo”. Et Paulus apostolus in faciem Petro principi apostolorum restitit. Ergo remote Romanae ambicionis typo, cur de gravibus et manifestis non reprehendantur et corrigantur Romani episcopi?’121 Sigebert quoted from the Bible again, John 18.23: ‘Jesus replied, “If I have said something wrong, confirm what is wrong”’, and Galatians 2.11, ‘But when Cephas [= St Peter] came to Antioch, I [Paul] opposed him to his face, because he had clearly done wrong.’ Once more, Sigebert’s interpretation is a literal one. Hugh of Fleury, similarly, quoted the same passage even more extensively, concluding: ‘Thus, if such a great apostle, affected by carnal weakness, had to be reprehended, how much more is he to be reprehended, whose heart is inflated?’122

Conclusion In many polemic texts of this period, the frequency of quotations from the Bible which are comprehensible even for an ‘illiterate multitude’ is very striking. This is, perhaps, unexceptional, but a larger question still remains to be asked, as to how far ‘literal’ reading of the Bible may have been characteristic for this period. In any case, it is interesting, and may well be significant, that contemporary Jewish Bible exegesis was also based on the literal reading of peshat, as practised, most importantly, by Rabbi Schelomo Yitshaqi, otherwise known as Raschi. In the twelfth century, his followers, in particular Rashbam, regarded it as necessary to practise an even more obvious exegesis.123 Thus, the literal reading of the Bible in the polemical literature of the Investiture Contest perhaps resulted, in part, from a general shift towards the literal sense as foundational for exegetical work. Nevertheless, in choosing their arguments and in preferring either literal or allegorical readings, the authors of polemical literature seemed to differentiate quite clearly between different audiences. In Christian controversy, it is true that apart from simple quotations from the Bible, allegorical interpretations of obscure passages of course remained



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important. It seems to be symptomatic for the period of the Investiture Contest, however, that Gregory VII, for example, did not quote Jesus Christ’s saying about the two swords, Luke 22.38, satis est, because its obscure meaning was known to be strongly disputed. In contrast, he referred to the much more directly meaningful words of the prophet Jeremiah in Jer. 48.10: ‘Maledictus homo, qui prohibit gladium suum a sanguine.’ Obviously, it was in the Old Testament that Gregory VII more frequently found explicit legitimizations for the use of violence against the enemies of the Church.124 The clear and obvious meaning of these passages may well have been what lay behind Gregory’s preference for the Old Testament. On the other hand, wherever the adherents of King Henry IV found appropriate passages, whether in the Old or the New Testament, they used them without showing any preference for one or the other.125 A preference for the literal interpretation might have been conditioned by a changed audience, since the widened public sphere required a specific form of argument that needed to be comprehensible for a broader public who lacked any formal education. And this kind of broader public sphere harboured the constituency for popular protest in northern Italy exactly in the middle of the eleventh century. It was Gregory VII himself who had demonstrated, already years before his pontificate, a specific sympathy with the pataria in northern Italy, a kind of mass protest which was fuelled by the unlearned urban population. Later on, during his pontificate, these same people were addressed by Gregory VII when he was searching for support for the reform programme.126 Neither the need to convince theologically ignorant people through letters, nor the possibility of doing so, existed very strongly north of the Alps, where ‘the dominant rural character of the society made organized popular opposition to the status quo difficult’.127 In the Italian cities, by contrast, just then in the embryonic stage of the development of city communes, an unlearned populace was susceptible to a simple argument. To them an argument based on the literal reading of the Bible was comprehensible and convincing thanks to their general knowledge of the Bible, whereas any deviance from the literal meaning on the part of papal propagandists might have caused confusion and loss of confidence. It may be no coincidence that it was in precisely this environment that Bonizo of Sutri, born in Milan and an adherent of the pataria, claimed to dispense with any kind of allegory: ‘Why allegory? Let’s go to the truth of the Gospels.’128 For Bonizo, who was used to communicating with the inhabitants of north-Italian cities, the non-allegorical reading of the Bible was the most advantageous means

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to gain support. His experiences might have led him to adopt a similar approach when supporting Gregory VII. On the other hand, Gregory himself cited the passage of Jeremiah 48.10, ‘Maledictus homo, qui prohibit gladium suum a sanguine’, for the first time in a letter to a secular prince, Geoffrey, Duke of Lorraine, and then again in a letter to ‘all the Christians in the Roman Empire’, laymen included. This passage evidently seemed to be appropriate for a lay public sphere, less for its origin in the Old Testament than for the directness of its message and the accessibility of its meaning.

7

Sibyls, Tanners and Leper Kings: Taking Notes from and about the Bible in Twelfth-Century England1 Julie Barrau

Catalogues of medieval manuscripts are littered with miscellanies, often consisting of several short items, each a few pages long. These composite volumes are little studied. They can none the less offer much to readers curious to understand the intellectual practices of those who wrote, bound and used them.2 The manuscript that is today Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 288 is such a volume. Its contents were gathered together at the latest by the mid-thirteenth century, since a note on the flyleaf informs us that it belonged to Nicholas of Sandwich, prior of Canterbury Cathedral Priory between 1244 and 1258. The fourteenth-century catalogue of Christ Church books, compiled by Henry of Eastry, records that it was bequeathed by Nicholas to his fellow Canterbury monks.3 There is no unifying theme to this Canterbury miscellany. At the beginning of the volume comes a small collection of letters written by Alan of Tewkesbury as prior of Christ Church, followed by an anonymous liturgical treatise on ecclesiastical offices and a text on the Mass by Richard the Premonstratensian. Further on, we find various biblical apocrypha, such as the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Gospel of Thomas and the De ortu beatae Mariae et infantia saluatoris, as well as lesser-known apocryphal texts such as the story of Aseneth, Joseph’s Egyptian bride, and a disputation against the Jews, the Vindicta saluatoris. Persevering readers could also have leafed through the Revelation of Pseudo-Methodius, a small collection of edifying stories, Hildegard of Bingen’s letter to the people of Cologne, texts by Jordan the Friar about the Tartars, and letters from Frederick II to the English against the pope.4 Several of these sections were copied at a wide range of dates, from the mid-twelfth to the mid-thirteenth centuries.

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The last item in the volume was ignored in the fourteenth-century table of contents established by Henry of Eastry in his catalogue of the Christ Church library. Cataloguing the Corpus Christi College collections in 1777, James Nasmith described it as ‘Visiones quaedam et narrationes de captiuitatibus Israelis, et alia historica. Nullo ordine et imperfecta.’5 For M. R. James, it consisted of ‘notes apparently taken from a gloss or commentary on the books of Kings (Chron.?), Tobit, Judith, Esther, Daniel, Maccabees’. These descriptions suggest that Nasmith and James only glanced at the text itself. The purpose of this present chapter is to bring the contents of those ‘notes’ to life, and to enquire into what they tell us about biblical culture in England in the third quarter of the twelfth century – the date and place suggested by the manuscript’s handwriting.6 This text consists of about 10,500 words covering 28 pages (f.111r–f.124v), in a layout of two columns of 32 lines. There is no way of knowing how long the work was to which it originally belonged, since it appears to begin and end in medias res. The argument of this chapter will be that this was not, as M. R. James proposed, a set of notes taken from one single gloss or commentary, but instead represents a collection of exegetical fragments accumulated by an educated twelfth-century English author, most likely either a monk or a secular clerk. The author’s identity itself remains unknown since the text allows no direct identification of either his name or his whereabouts. None the less, an examination of his sources and what he knew may eventually provide clues as to his background. Our author organized his notes according to the books of the Old Testament, from the Second Book of Kings and the Second Book of Chronicles to Tobit, Judith, Esther, Daniel and Maccabees. M. R. James failed to notice an extensive paraphrase and explanation of the seldom commented-on Book of Nehemiah. Overall, the notes recorded here can best be described as ‘glosses’, since they were intended to elucidate specific elements of the Bible rather than to supply a continuous and harmonized commentary.7 One could apply here the words of Frans van Liere about Andrew of St Victor’s commentary on the Books of Kings: ‘[These were] glosses of varying length, without a manifest underlying system.’8 Indeed, there are interesting similarities between the preoccupations and style of our author and the work of Andrew of St Victor, whom Beryl Smalley made the figurehead of the twelfth century’s renewed interest in exegesis ad litteram.9 Common features here include ‘exegesis displaying great love of detail and reminiscent of the quaestio structure’.10 Many so-called ‘commentaries’ of the ‘biblical-moral school’, represented by Parisian masters such as Peter the Chanter and Stephen Langton, were also



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in fact collections of glosses.11 The purpose of this chapter will be to place our particular collection of glosses in the context of twelfth-century biblical scholarship, while at the same time drawing attention to its unusual aspects. Our author had a highly selective, and eclectic, way of reading the Old Testament, and sometimes picked from a whole book just a couple of details that he thought worth commenting on. He had clearly read widely, and made what are on occasion rather puzzling remarks, as for example when he mentions a city full of female scribes, or notes in passing that Plato had translated the Pentateuch into Greek. These examples, and many more, will reappear below. Overall, a very distinctive voice emerges from these forgotten pages: one that, as I shall attempt to demonstrate, is well worth listening to. The first striking feature of these notes is that their author was concerned with the literal meaning of sacra scriptura, to the exclusion of anything that pertained to allegorical or moral exegesis. There is an obvious kinship here not only with Andrew of St Victor but also with Peter Comestor’s Historia scolastica, the ‘Bible of the schools’, composed in the late 1160s, whose winning formula (a paraphrase of Scripture laced with relevant elements of literal exegesis) turned it into a best-seller.12 The Historia scolastica was itself very dependent on Andrew’s works, so this only emphasizes the Corpus glosses’ proximity to the Parisian literal exegetical style and methods.13 The strict adherence of our author to the littera of the sacred text is particularly noticeable when he undertakes discussion of passages that more naturally lent themselves to allegorical or tropological meanings, such as the dream of Daniel. The overall structure of this text is a narrative of the history of ancient Israel between the period when there were two kingdoms, Israel and Judah, through to Hellenistic times. The focus is first on the kings of Judah from Oziah to Zedekiah, the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile in Babylon (f.111r–115r). There follow remarks about the books of Tobit (f.115v), Judith (f.115v–116v) and Esther (f.116v), and a long development about the story and the apocalyptic visions of Daniel (f.117r–120r). Then come notes about the end of the exile, Ezra and the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem by Nehemiah (f.120r–121r). The author turns next to Artaxerxes, and then, through the books of Maccabees and other sources, to the history of the Hellenistic kingdoms (121v–124v), with a long development on the Septuagint (f.122r–123r). Our author was curious, and keen to have the broadest possible view of the historical context of the history of the Jews. He was particularly interested in the political upheavals of the great kingdoms and empires that neighboured and often threatened the kingdoms of Israel and Judah: Babylon, Assyria, Medes

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and Persians are conspicuous, as one great empire was replaced by another. His attention to detail is evident when he notes the mistakes that could arise from confusing homonymous kings: ‘After Xerxes son of Artaxerxes, during whose reign Nehemiah built the city [Jerusalem], another Artaxerxes reigned, because there were several Artaxerxes.’14 He also knew that the same king could have different names in different traditions: ‘and Xerxes had a son who is called Artaxerxes in Greek and Assuerus in Hebrew’.15 This last fragment of onomastic science could be found in various places, for instance in the Commentaries of Jerome, who probably found it in the Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea.16 The diversity of sources and the strange ring of foreign names, issues long discussed by biblical commentators and historians, were familiar themes for our author, as when he writes about Josiah’s reign: In the third year of his reign Jeremiah was born. From then on there are different and contradictory histories about the captivity that cannot be reconciled, probably because of the strange names or the length of the period and the many different historians.17

Our author wanted to get his facts right. We shall see that he could none the less become very muddled indeed. His historical inquisitiveness was not limited to the biblical Middle East (Israel and its neighbours, the Babylonians, the Medes and the Persians), but often extended to events happening simultaneously in Greece or Rome. This places our text in the well-established tradition of the universal history, a tradition with which our author was clearly familiar. An educated English cleric of the twelfth century could easily have obtained access to Jerome’s translation of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Chronicle, itself presented as synchronic tables, or ‘canons’. Our manuscript has connections with Christ Church Canterbury, where a beautiful copy of the Jerome/Eusebius Chronicle was made in the late twelfth century.18 Our author could equally have found such parallel narratives in the chronicle attached to Bede’s computistical best-seller, the De temporum ratione, with which, as we shall see, our text demonstrates a degree of familiarity.19 Bede mostly followed Eusebius here, but added details from other sources. Peter Comestor also built such parallels into his Historia scolastica, adding details about non-scriptural events in sections of his text entitled ‘incidentia’. There are several examples of parallel histories cited in our text. Some are brief and merely noticed in passing, as for instance a remark on the invasion of Rome by Brennus and his Gauls, possibly borrowed from Bede,20 or the fact that it was during the reign of King Joathan that Romulus was born.21 In other



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places, such parallels are developed at greater length, for instance in the case of the first Olympiad, introduced both as the athletics contest and as the beginning of a new system of time-reckoning. We shall return in due course to our author’s interest in chronology. Here, meanwhile, is his digression on the Olympiad: ‘In the forty-ninth year of the reign of the same Oziah the Olympic games were created near Mount Olympus by Yphitus.’22 This erroneous localization of the Olympiad to a location near Mount Olympus was a fairly common mistake, and can be found, for instance, in the world chronicle, or Imago mundi, of Honorius Augustodunensis.23 More unusual is the attribution of the creation of the games to Iphitos, king of Elis, who along with Lycurgus and Cleomenes was credited by Pausanias with ‘renewing’ the games.24 This is a detail that can be found in the Latin Eusebius,25 but that seems to have been mostly ignored elsewhere.26 It is, for example, absent from Peter Comestor’s Historia scolastica.27 Our author’s understanding of Greek and Roman history sometimes led him to surprising statements. The most remarkable of these is probably the following about Plato: In his [Artaxerxes’s] time, Plato went to Egypt, translated the books of Moses from the Egyptian language into Greek and carried them [home] with him.28

Christianizing the more significant pagan intellectuals was a well-known feature of medieval culture, with Cicero and Virgil supplying perhaps the most famous examples of the genre.29 Plato did not escape this trend, so that there was a tradition according to which, during his travels in Egypt, Plato had become familiar with the Jewish religion and its sacred texts.30 Among Latin patristic authorities the most detailed account here was supplied by Ambrose of Milan, who went as far as to suggest that Plato met and conversed with the prophet Jeremiah.31 Augustine, having tentatively accepted this story, later disproved it in The City of God, by noticing that Plato lived long after Jeremiah had died, and long before Ptolemy’s commissioning of the Septuagint.32 Augustine’s argument, consigned to obscurity for several centuries, was revived in the twelfth century by Abelard and John of Salisbury.33 Our author supplies a far from canonical version of this same story, claiming that Plato himself translated the ‘laws of Moses’, probably the Pentateuch, and brought them home with him, presumably to Greece. It is fortunately possible to identify the text from which our author might have adapted this idea; another work of Ambrose, his commentary on Psalm 118.34 The phrase ‘lex Moysi’ appears there, as well as the idea of a translation (‘transtulit’). But in Ambrose there is no notion of Plato translating full books of the Jewish lex. Ambrose suggested instead, rather muddily, that Plato

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had heard in Egypt the ‘prophecies of the law of Moses’ and the ‘consolation of the [Hebrew] people’; some ‘hidden’ part of this he had ‘translated’ (or ‘transposed’) into his ‘dialogue on virtue’ (i.e. the Meno). Our author reveals here his wide reading, and perhaps a system of careful note-taking that allowed him to use information of which few of his contemporaries seemed aware. He also reveals his unfortunate tendency to simplify, and thereby to mangle, his sources. Another lengthy exposition is devoted by our author to Christianized ‘pagans’, in this instance to the Sibyls: Then [at the time of Ahaz’s reign] Rome was founded, then the Erythrean Sibyl prophesied about Christ as clearly as if she was seeing him, proclaiming that a saviour would be born and he would be delivered into pagan hands and they would inflict on him blows and a crown of thorns and a spear. There were ten sibyls. This one is the fifth, and Sibyl is not her own name but a general name for prophetesses; each of them had another name that was their own. This one was called Berofila [sic] Babylonica because she was from Babylon. She is also called Erythrean after the island Erictros [sic] where her prophecies were found. And the twenty-six lines of her prophecy were translated into our language as the Iudicii signum. But they were badly translated, as Jerome said, because in Greek the letters that begin each line made up the phrase Iesus christus theusios, that is ‘son of God’, sother, i.e. ‘saviour’. [And the translator did not manage to maintain the acrostic.]35

The details about the fifth Sibyl’s name and origin seem to be drawn closely from Isidore’s Etymologies.36 But here we can observe in detail how such facts could so easily be mangled, especially where Isidore’s herofila became our author’s Berofila. The description of her acrostic prophecy originates with Augustine’s De ciuitate Dei, which also describes her as living at the time of Ahaz.37 The versified prophecy, which actually has 27 lines and not 26, is presented by Augustine as a not totally satisfactory translation of a Greek acrostic that does indeed start with the letters ‘I[esous] Ch[reistos] etc’. Augustine’s translation, identified by its incipit Iudicii signum, was well known. It can be found, for instance, in Hrabanus Maurus’s De uniuerso, and in Lambert of St Omer’s Liber Floridus, and it came to be incorporated into the very popular Latin Sibylla Tiburtina.38 Meanwhile, the text of Jerome that our glossator refers to has not as yet been identified. The similarity here with Augustine’s qualms about the translation might none the less suggest that one Father has here been confused with another. To round off our picture of the glossator’s take on history and historical writing, we need to notice the way in which he viewed the kings of the Old



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Testament very much in the tradition of medieval kings. This was clearly an author with a specific interest in politics and kingly behaviour. Our author made occasional remarks about pride as a royal attribute, or about the way that the wealthy and powerful shelter themselves from sun and insects under silken tents.39 He could also be precise in his description of the machinery of politics. He seemed acutely aware that money lay at the heart of government, and even more of warfare. He wrote, for instance, that Xerxes ‘gathered a lot of money’40 before embarking on his conquest of Greece. He also noticed that this same Xerxes sent his cupbearer, Nehemiah, to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem ‘with a lot of money’.41 Other narratives of the same story, and particularly Jerome in his commentary on Daniel, which our author followed fairly closely at this point, simply mentioned the huge army, and Xerxes’s granting of Nehemiah’s request. But they paid no attention to the underlying question of finance.42 Our author knew that money mattered tremendously to kings, especially if they sought the means to build castles and make war. Such insight is perhaps hardly surprising in a contemporary of Henry II. But our author also had views on the ways kings raised the necessary funds: Then the king of the Assyrians gathered peasants, mostly from five different peoples and languages, whom he settled in Samaria so they would cultivate fields and vineyards and give him every year part of their crops (fructus) and taxes (tributa).43

This is a much fuller account of the settling of Samaria after the deportation of the Hebrews to Babylon than that which we find in the Bible.44 Our glossator turned the repopulation of emptied cities into a process of rural agricultural settlement, adding details about fields and vineyards, and most significantly revealing his views about why kings did such things, namely to get extra income both in kind and in specie. This interpolation is, so far as I can tell, entirely his own. When he described the plague that struck King Oziah (who appears as ‘Azarias’ in 2 Kgs), our author made the following point: His son Joathan took up the business of the kingdom (erat administrans regalia), but not so that he was the king in his father’s lifetime (non quod patre uiuente fuisset rex). Therefore if one reads that he was king one has to understand this as meaning that he looked after the business of the kingdom.45

The emphasis here is on an almost technical explanation of the power distribution between Oziah (retired from public life after sacrilege brought the plague upon him, but still nominally king) and his son, Joathan. The biblical text states that Joathan ‘ruled over the palace and was a judge for the people’.

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Nor does our other principal authority here, Josephus in his Antiquitates, specify what exactly Joathan’s regency meant.46 Our author twice uses the phrase ‘administrans regalia’, which is not biblical or patristic, or classical. It reads, on the contrary, like a very twelfth-century turn of phrase, redolent of the legal and administrative culture of Angevin England. Moreover, we might speculate whether, in an English context, such co-rule between two kings inevitably brought to mind the complex relationship between Henry II and his son and namesake, Henry the Young King. Another relationship between a king and his ambitious son attracted our author’s attention, that between Cambyses and his father, Cyrus: That Cambyses was most proud, and before his father had died, once he himself had become an adult, he went to his father and asked for a part of his kingdom, so he could have what was necessary to him, and [Cyrus] gave him Assyria, and Cambyses, while his father was still alive, ruled over Assyria.47

That Cyrus gave Assyria to Cambyses in his lifetime was a detail that could be found, for instance, in Comestor’s Historia scolastica.48 Again, however, the lively scene of the son petitioning for what was rightfully his, that is, a part of the regnum, is again strongly evocative of the Plantagenets, and is nowhere to be found in those ancient sources which had previously transmitted the story. All these remarks about kings, their power, their character and their money bring to mind the theologians, often masters in Paris, who at the time of our text expressed political views in their biblical commentaries, as John Baldwin and Philippe Buc have shown.49 Our author none the less differs significantly from Peter the Chanter, Ralph Niger and Stephen Langton, since he draws no moral or political lessons from his remarks. Here, as elsewhere, the scope of this observer of royal mores did not go beyond establishing a mosaic of facts. In his whistle-stop tour of several centuries of the history of the Holy Land and its neighbours, our author advanced no claim to comprehensiveness. His chosen topics were very specific and often he returned to them several times. One favourite subject was magic, soothsayers and the supernatural. A first example here would be the ‘fire of Tophet’, through which bad kings of Judah, such as Achaz and Manasseh, ‘made their sons walk’, meaning that they sacrificed their offspring to Baal-like gods: Manasseh had made a chariot and horses to pull it in honour of the sun … and put them at the entrance of the inner courtyard [of the Temple] … and threw his son in honour of the demons through the fire of Tophet. The fire of Tophet is the same as Iehennon where … Some say that it is called the fire of Tophet



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because of the stones from which this fire comes, others from the trees from which it comes.50

Manasseh’s evil deeds are here presented more briefly than in the biblical text itself.51 Andrew of St Victor was likewise more thorough,52 as was Peter Comestor.53 Our author probably got the story from the Second Book of Kings rather than the Second Book of Chronicles, because he refers to a single son rather than to ‘filii’. His reference to the stones, from which the magical fire possibly came, is reminiscent of the ‘spongious stones’ described by Peter Comestor in another passage, referring to Gehennon.54 I have been unable to trace his other explanation, according to which the fire came from trees. There is evidence here that our author had the full panoply of the kings of Judah in mind when he wrote about individual members of their dynasty. The detail about the chariot and the horses of the sun comes from the story of King Josiah, Manasseh’s grandson, reputed in Scripture to have undone the evil committed by his grandfather and to have re-established monotheism in Jerusalem. The verse about the chariot and horses comes in the Second Book of Kings immediately after an account of Josiah ‘defiling Tophet’ to make sure that no one would ever again sacrifice a son or a daughter there.55 There is therefore evidence here of careful reading across the Scriptures that enabled our author to combine several occurrences of Tophet; this is an elementary but sound example of internal (literal) exegesis. Another example of our author’s interest in magic is supplied in his lengthy presentation of the remarkable story of the Pharaoh Nectanabo: He [Artaxerxes] attempted to conquer Egypt, but Nectalamus [sic], a magus expert in astronomy and magical arts, made a tower of wondrous height in the middle of the sea, and he made it stand on four glass crabs, because he could not lay the foundations of the tower at the bottom of the deep sea, and he stood at the summit of that tower with a bronze basin filled with water in front of him, and he had emerald mirrors put all around him. When Artaxerxes prepared ships and soldiers that he wanted to send to Egypt and when they took to the sea, he (Nectalamus/Nectanabo) saw them immediately in a mirror and took a wax ship, complete with wax oars and soldiers that was the result of his magical arts. He put it in the basin where there was water and sunk it. Immediately Artaxerxes’s ship sank in the sea, with Artaxerxes’s soldiers. Eventually, when Artaxerxes heard of this, he had astronomers and magi build a ship with their magic, and one day Nectalamus saw that all the mountains and the forests took to the sea and he understood that Artaxerxes was using magic against magic and, seeing that he could not resist, fled to Philip, Alexander’s father.56

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The story of Nectanabo, his supernatural powers and his wax models belongs to the medieval Alexander tradition in which the Pharaoh, once he had fled to Macedonia, was reputed to have fathered Alexander. Nectanabo featured in the most widely disseminated version of the story, the Epitome Julii Valerii, written in the ninth century.57 But many details, such as Nectanabo’s supposed building of a tower raised on huge glass crabs (reminiscent of stories about the Pharos, with a magic mirror at its summit), the details of the magical stand-off with Artaxerxes, and the Pharaoh’s final defeat, are all details unknown to the mainstream Epitome. It would be tempting to dismiss the glass crabs and the emerald mirror as mere figments of our author’s imagination. But that would be both wrong and lazy. All of these details can in fact be found in another Epitome today known only from a single fifteenth-century manuscript now in Liegnitz (alias Legnica, Poland).58 This text, edited by Alfons Hilka, supplies what is in effect almost identical – a few words differ – to the earlier version found in our Corpus manuscript.59 Hilka noted that the Liegnitz Epitome was probably written as an interlude to be placed between the Books of Esther and Maccabees in some sort of ‘general chronicle’.60 Such a role would be fully consistent with the place of Nectanabo’s story in our text. But beyond the fleeting satisfaction of having found out that our author had a source, which he copied remarkably accurately, this poses more questions than it answers. The Liegnitz historia Alexandri ‘in no way resembles any other edition or epitome of [Julius Valerius]’,61 and our text proves its existence long before the fifteenth century.62 This in turn raises a challenge to Hilka’s assumption that the author of the Liegnitz version used Peter Comestor, since it is most unlikely that our Corpus author, writing at the latest in the 1180s, could have accessed a source that itself used the Historia scolastica, written in Paris only around 1170.63 CCCC MS 288 therefore supplies, as far as I know, the earliest extant fragment of a pre-1170 version of the AlexanderRomance, otherwise known to have been transmitted in an almost identical form three centuries later. This chapter is not about the Alexander-Romance, so the investigation of this particular mystery must end here. Nevertheless, the Nectanabo episode suggests that our glossator read widely, well beyond the range of texts that constituted the common fodder of twelfth-century English exegesis. It suggests an author with a voracious appetite for the unusual, and with library resources to match. It also supplies a useful reminder that, when the sources of seemingly fanciful passages cannot be identified, this does not imply that such passages are pure invention. This caveat is particularly significant in our approach to texts as laden with oddities as the Corpus glosses.



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That our author studiously gathered legends about magi is a point reinforced by his retelling of the story of two magi brothers who became kings of Persia after Cambyses. Peter Comestor provided an extraordinary version of this tale, in which the evil magus, Smerdes, tried to impose his younger and more handsome brother as heir to King Cambyses. According to Comestor, this might have worked since no one except for domestici was permitted to see the king. The plan only failed when a royal concubine, who was also the daughter of a rival magus, touched the king’s ears. This was sufficient to unmask him because, years earlier, Cambyses had become so angry with the future impostor that he had had his ears chopped off.64 Comestor’s bizarre narrative here would surely have been to the taste of our glossator; its absence in the glosses’ version of the story reinforces the hypothesis that they were written without access to the Historia scolastica.65 Our author’s version runs as follows: There were three kings in Persia after Cyrus, and a fourth followed who increased the wealth and the size of his kingdom and after him another remarkable one … After Cyrus, his son Cambyses reigned, who died after eight years leaving not a son but a daughter named Panteis. There were seven wise men who were always at the king’s side and who through their council managed everything in the kingdom. They were called by oriental people magi, not because they used magical arts but because of their great knowledge. At that time there were two brothers among the seven who were wiser than the others. One of them, named Elimeides, married Panteis and became king. The other wise men, jealous, plotted against him and he died within a year; his brother reigned after him, but all told, the two brothers hardly reigned for a year, and therefore they are often considered as a single king.66

Several details are worth noticing here. Persia is said to have been ruled by seven wise men, ‘by whose counsel everything was managed in the kingdom’. These seven magi may have come to our author from a faulty understanding of the relevant passage in Josephus, which indicates that Darius was elected king by the ‘seven lords among the Persians’.67 A regime dominated by learned men might have been alluring for such a deeply bookish man as our author, who was also, as we have seen, interested in the workings of politics. Such an impression is consistent with his adamant demonstration that the title magus implied none of the dark undertones of ‘magical arts’ that had been familiar to Christian readers since the time of Simon Magus and that were displayed elsewhere in the story of Nectanabo. On the contrary, we are told, the title refers here only to the ‘greatness of their knowledge’ (magnitudine scientie). The story of the two brothers did not come

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to our author from Josephus, who tantalizingly mentioned merely in passing ‘the massacre of the magi, who held the principality of the Persians for a year’.68 It may instead have come from Bede’s computistical work, which we already have considered as a potential source.69 Bede referred to Eusebius for details of the two brothers, which were missing from Jerome’s account. The synchronic tables (or canons) that were attached to Eusebius’s chronicles in manuscripts such as one from Christ Church Canterbury actually suggested there were three brothers and not two, but failed to identify them as magi.70 The detailed transmission of this story remains shrouded in mystery. One last peculiar element here is the name of the first magus who became king. All identified sources name him as Smerdes.71 Our text alone calls him ‘Elimeides’. The name appears to be a total fabrication, which would confirm what we know from other passages: that our author could get names spectacularly wrong. The name ‘Elimeides’ is none the less puzzling because it bears so little similitude to its supposed root, Smerdes. The word seems to have been an afterthought, since the name was added later albeit in the same hand that wrote the remainder of the Corpus gloss. Maybe our author worked from notes that proved incomplete, and thereafter sought a tolerable substitute. A possible but flimsy hypothesis would suggest borrowing here from the name of another biblical magus, Elymas, who opposed Paul in the Acts of the Apostles.72 Another thread that runs throughout the text, seemingly determining which scriptural passages would catch our glossator’s eye, is a sustained interest in buildings and architecture, another sign of his already noticed taste for unusual anecdotes and episodes. One example is the story of Daniel turned architect in Ecbatana. Josephus recorded that the prophet built a necropolis for the kings of Persia.73 This same anecdote can be found in Jerome’s commentary, but our author probably came upon it either directly in Josephus or from the opening of Hrabanus’s commentary on Judith. These two texts and ours describe the building as a mausoleum, whereas Jerome has turris:74 And he [Arphaxat] built Ecbatana or Hecchatamam [sic]. It was in the middle of the city of Ecbatana that Daniel came to build a mausoleum, i.e. a spiral (spiram) royal tomb where afterwards the kings of the Medes were buried … and because Daniel built it, the keeper of that mausoleum can only be a Jew.75

We might assume that our author borrowed from the Historia scolastica, were it not for the date of the Historia and for the Jewish keeper, unmentioned by Peter Comestor.76 It is none the less noteworthy that Daniel’s career as an architect



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seems to have attracted little notice among medieval authors beyond Hrabanus and Peter Comestor. Once again, we have evidence here of our author’s taste for the exotic. He also paid considerable attention to the geography of Old Testament Jerusalem, an interest that occasionally prompted him to lengthy digressions. Glossing an episode in which the advisers of King Josiah consulted the prophetess Holdah, who according to the biblical text ‘habitabat in Hierusalem in secunda’,77 our author felt compelled to explain ‘in secunda’, often understood as ‘in the second quarter’: Then the city was divided and surrounded by three walls. The priests and kings and levites lived inside (intra ambitum) the first wall, within which was the Temple. Within the second wall (infra ambitum) lived the rest of the nobility and the princes. Within the third wall were the tanners and the people who fulfilled servile tasks. The middle part was called second Jerusalem.78

The origins of this description of Jerusalem enclosed within three concentric walls, inhabited according to social status and trade, are not easy to trace. Details such as the tanners living in the outermost district make our author’s description all the more intriguing. He was sure enough of his facts to write again, a few pages later, that ‘Nehemiah provided the city with two walls. Later on it had a third wall.’79 The Glossa ordinaria, referring to Jerome, describes the secunda [pars] as a suburb between the main wall of the city and the antemurale (or outer protecting wall).80 Peter Comestor supplied a similar explanation, using the word ambitus as in our text, but with no mention of any third wall.81 The three walls are likewise unknown to Josephus. And why tanners? A possible but tenuous explanation here would be that our author was aware of the existence of a vicus pellipariorum in twelfth-century Jerusalem.82 He almost certainly knew that, as is written in Leviticus and as would have been obvious in any medieval city, the tanners’ trade was seen as an impure one. They were therefore obliged to live on the outskirts of urban settlements.83 Two characteristic features of our text are at play here: concrete true-to-life anecdotal elements, and elusive sources. Interest in the topography of Jerusalem is nowhere more striking in our text than in the glossator’s paraphrase and commentary on the rebuilding of the walls and gates of Jerusalem under the authority of Nehemiah.84 The biblical text consists mostly of a list of the many gates of Jerusalem and of the various men entrusted with their restoration. The exegetical tradition was thin. The Glossa ordinaria offered here only a brief and almost entirely allegorical interpretation,85

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which was largely drawn from Bede, who wrote the only complete medieval commentary on Ezra–Nehemiah.86 By contrast, our glossator supplied here an original and thoroughly literal exegesis, demonstrating further his distinctive eagerness to accumulate factual details, from the Sheep Gate to the Fish Gate, from the Dung Gate to the Gate of the Dragon, filling almost two entire pages with such ‘facts’ (f.120v–121r). It is obvious that he actively sought out factual information, albeit not always successfully: ‘Of the gates of the inner wall we have not found mention, except for three of them, especially the Law Gate; these three gave access to the Temple.’87 A closer look reveals various intriguing details. Since the very early Middle Ages, the layout and major sights of Jerusalem had been objects of sustained interest in the West, as demonstrated by the surviving itineraria.88 The flow of descriptions of Jerusalem and the Holy Land swelled as a result of the Crusades.89 Sometimes the words used to describe a building were borrowed from ancient auctoritates, as though a medieval author had seen a particular building with his own eyes.90 Our text describes the Sheep Gate and its surroundings thus: And he [Elispaha the high priest] with the priests built the Sheep Gate and the ‘Probatic’ Pool. There were two pools in the city, i.e. two basins or reservoirs for water, and one of them was near the Temple, to which came the ministers to wash the meat of sacrifices, and this was called probatica. Probaton [means] sheep or goat because there they used to wash the meat of cattle. And next to it was that gate that was called Sheep Gate, because the animals required for sacrifices were brought in through it.91

The two pools were a feature of Old Jerusalem known from patristic times, but attracting only occasional attention thereafter.92 The meaning of probaton and the religious purpose of the pool are likely to have been borrowed from Bede’s commentary.93 It is striking, though, that our author here was interested only in the ritual meaning of the Probatic Pool for the Jews of the Old Testament, making no reference to the pool’s Christian significance as the place where, according to John’s Gospel, Jesus healed a man bedridden for decades.94 Bede himself mentions Jesus’s miracle when discussing the pool in his commentary on Nehemiah, as did most other medieval commentators who noticed it.95 The omission of this detail from our text is all the more interesting in that the Gospel also refers to the ‘five porticos’: precisely the sort of architectural detail relished elsewhere by our author. A tendency to rely upon unusually pragmatic explanations is also clear in our author’s descriptions of the Fish Gate and the tower built over the Sheep Gate:



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And over that gate [the Sheep Gate] they built a tower, which was called the Ophet [sic] tower, i.e. cloudy, because it was so high that its summit pierced the clouds. The second gate, the Fish Gate, was built by the sons of Asanaa, and it was called the Fish Gate because it faced the Tyrrhenian Sea from which came fish. These two gates were on the western side.96

The ‘Cloudy Tower’, or Ophel, (and not ‘Ophet’, as the glossator faultily has it) is given an allegorical meaning by Jerome and by the Glossa Ordinaria.97 Here it is identified as the ‘cloudy tower’ of the prophet Micah,98 whereas the Glossa turned its shrouded summit into an allegory of Scripture’s unfathomable nature for mankind. Even the literal-minded Andrew of St Victor followed Jerome.99 Once again, the text in CCCC MS 288 stands out for its dogged adherence to the literal. But our author also made a serious mistake. The ‘cloudy tower of the sheep’ (turris gregis nebulosa) of Micah 4.8, identified with the Ophel Tower in the Glossa ordinaria, persuaded our author to jump to the conclusion that the tower was built over the Sheep Gate. This conclusion, based on over-hasty exegesis, is very much our author’s own. It is also wrong, since the Ophel Tower was on the east side of the wall, far from the Sheep Gate. The straightforward explanation given in the glosses for the Fish Gate is more in keeping with exegetical tradition – Bede also claimed that the name was derived from the route taken for fish imports.100 Yet, here again, our author was confused. His first obvious mistake is, of course, to suggest that the Tyrrhenian Sea was the closest source of fish. Furthermore, Bede – a likely source – did not write that the gate was to the west, but that it opened onto the most convenient road to the sea, lying to the west of Mount Zion. Archaeologists today suggest that the Fish Gate was actually to the north. However, this inaccuracy may have been grounded in the century-long identification of Nehemiah’s Fish Gate with the medieval ‘David’s Gate’, standing in the middle of the western wall where the Jaffa Gate now stands. Bede testified to this when he wrote that ‘David’s Gate’ was the modern name of this place (‘quae nunc porta dauid fertur appellari’). In the thirteenth century, Burchard of Mount Zion named David’s Gate ‘Fish Gate’ on his map of Jerusalem.101 Such confusions were common, so eager were the Crusaders – like many modern visitors to Jerusalem – to assimilate the city they saw with that described in the Scriptures. Burchard of Mount Zion’s map, for instance, describes Tancred’s Tower (sometimes called Goliath’s Tower) as ‘the cloudy Tower’ (turris nebulosa), thereby identifying it with the Ophel Tower. Burchard was clearly fond of such biblical identifications.102 Our text therefore belongs to a long-standing tradition, attempting to reconcile contradictory evidence about a city viewed in the medieval West as the navel of the world.

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Every gate named by Nehemiah is here supplied with an explanatory gloss. Let us focus on one more of these: The sons of Isaiah built the sixth gate, which was called the Dragon Gate or the Spring Gate, because it was the way to the springs … that came out at the bottom of the mountain and did not flow with continuous waters nor at regular hours and ran in underground rocky passages where dragons used to live, and when it flowed the water made a rattling noise, so it was called the Dragon Gate, even though it is called more often the Spring Gate.103

There is no Dragon Gate in Nehemiah. There is, though, in the previous chapter, a Dragon’s Spring (or well), supplied with a moral interpretatio by, for instance, Hugh of Folieto and Richard of St Victor. Our author’s main source here, however, is a description of the Siloam spring, to be found in Bede’s commentary on Nehemiah – most likely our author’s source – derived ultimately from Jerome’s commentary on Isaiah: here our author obtained his details about a spring flowing from the bottom of the mountain, the irregular waters (jugibus aquis is a very unusual phrase), the rocky underground passages and the strange rattling noise.104 Our author was careless in turning the phrase incertis horis into iugibus horis, thus echoing iugibus aquis. He distorted the text much more seriously when he wrote that the ‘rattling noise’ suggested the presence of a dragon. This is a unique claim, not obviously biblical, although one verse in Isaiah combines dragons and springs. Fierce underground dragons inhabiting a city or its environs belong rather to the world of ‘Nennius’ or Geoffrey of Monmouth.105 Indeed, the story of a dragon manifesting itself from below a wall is evocative of the rather different legend of two dragons in the Historia Brittonum whose presence beneath a lake, revealed by a fatherless boy, explained why King Vortigern’s citadel (arx) collapsed overnight.106 In any case, the Dragon Gate, unknown elsewhere, and its interpretatio supply a startling instance of our author’s tendency towards exegesis by association. Thematic chains and linguistic mirrors, where one word in Scripture could be understood in the light of other occurrences of the same word elsewhere, was a legitimate and fruitful mode of biblical interpretation. This hermeneutic method explains the taste for those collections of distinctiones written from the late twelfth century onwards. On occasion, it could supply the organizing principle for entire books of exegesis, such as the De panis of Peter of Celle.107 Even though it is tempting to dismiss our author as a well-read fantasist, it is worth speculating whether here, as elsewhere, he was simply applying the methods of thematic internal commentary. The real question here would be whether his evocation



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of a dragon in interpreting Nehemiah would have been approved by fellow exegetes – an almost impossible question to answer. By now it is, I hope, established that our text is representative of the literallyminded tradition of exegesis and its concern for biblical history, itself closely linked to the distinct but neighbouring tradition of universal history. Our author contributed to this his own idiosyncratic quirkiness and his appetite for the unusual. He also participated in a fundamental exegetical process: the elucidation of the many obscurities and oddities presented by the Scriptures (especially the Old Testament) to the medieval Latin West.108 As previously noticed, our author stands out for his lack of interest in the theological or moral meanings of the texts on which he commented. By contrast, he spent much time explaining the meaning of particular words, or uoces. When Judith walked to her fateful meeting with Holophernes, she saw him seated under a richly decorated canopy.109 Our author’s explanation of this passage, linking the word canopeum to the Egyptian town of the same name in which the ‘canopy’ was supposedly invented and noting also its cone-like shape, resembles that of Peter Comestor.110 Attention to the meaning of unusual words in the Old Testament is obvious in our author’s treatment of the Book of Tobit, here reduced to just two lexicographical remarks. The second and shorter one consists of four words: ‘Capsilide id est pera’ (f.115v). Capsilide has to be read here as cassidile/capsidile, which appears in the Vulgate when Tobit takes a piece of liver from his cassidile to place it on burning coals.111 This obscure term, cassidile/capsidile is likened by our author to the word pera, meaning ‘shoulder bag’, itself better known not least because of its appearance in an address by Jesus to the disciples in Luke’s Gospel.112 There is a clue here that our author had access to glossaries or elementary concordances. The first and most famous of these was the eleventhcentury Elementarium of Papias, in which we find almost exactly the same definition: ‘Cassidilis pera pastoralis’.113 It is still unclear why our author singled out this one word from Tobit. What may be conjectured, however, is that he was writing for his own benefit, singling out snippets of information, rather than attempting to supply enlightenment to any wider audience. More puzzling still is his other remark about Tobit: ‘Tobit lived next to Caria sephet, i.e. the city of scribes, where everyone, men as well as women, held the office of scribe (officium scribendi)’.114 This is an extrapolation from the very first verse of the Book of Tobit, where it is explained that Tobit’s hometown, Nephtali, lay near the ‘ciuitatem Sephet’, also known as Cariath Sepher.115 The idea that Cariath Sepher was a city of scribes was widely disseminated, and

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could be found, for example, in Comestor’s Historia scolastica.116 The interpretatio was well enough established for Pope Gregory IX to describe Paris and its growing university in 1231 as ‘the mother of the sciences, like another Cariath Sepher’, a phrase, Parens scientiarum, that gave a name to the papal bull. Closer in date to our text, Gilbert Foliot described Bologna, another city famous for its schools, by the same name.117 But our author fundamentally altered our image of Cariath Sepher when he added that all the women were also trained to practise the officium of scribe. I can find this city of trained female scriptores in no other source. Once again, however, we must resist the temptation to assume that no such source existed. The example of the Liegnitz version of the Alexander-Romance and its unlikely appearance in our text shows that our author had access to sources that are often obscure. The writing women of Cariath Sepher may derive from yet another such unidentified source. More generally, it is difficult to know how to handle the many such instances where our author’s remarks seem to be divorced from tradition. There is no room here for a detailed list, but a few typical examples may suffice. It we look to our author’s commentary of the Second Book of Kings, we find him specifying King Hezekiah’s illness as anthrax – a most unusual word never used elsewhere in the context (2 Kgs 20.1-2). He also adds plague, bears and wolves to the lions sent by God against the pagan settlers of Samaria (2 Kgs 17.25).118 Here we can only guess that our author had access to obscure sources, otherwise unknown. An interest in the meaning and history of words sometimes led our author into lengthy digressions, as in the following example: The Septuagint often strayed from the Hebrew truth and added much that was not in the Hebrew text. When he came across [such things] Jerome added an obelisk (obelus), a sign which has wings in the manner of an arrow. Kings have always been proud, and among them there was one named Menfres, in whose time the Nile flooded in a way that caused more harm than good. When he saw this, Menfres took his bow and, furious, shot an arrow at the Nile. He was instantly blinded by the sun, and consulted soothsayers. They told him that Apollo was angry with him and that he should do something to honour the god. He built a portico seventy-feet high and at its top placed two golden arrows to honour Apollo … and recovered his eyesight.119

This story of Pharaoh Menephres (here ‘Menfres’), often identified with the historical Thutmosis III, could be found in one of the great medieval bestsellers, the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, where the king is named as Mesfres.120 It is a very good story of hubristic kings and vengeful gods, but it contributed nothing to exegesis of the Book of Esther and its textual tradition,



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our author’s chief theme in this passage. His claim that Jerome developed a system of diacritical signs in his biblical translations was perfectly accurate. His explanation of the obelus could be found, for instance, in terms very close to those used here, in Jerome’s prologue to the Books of Chronicles.121 However, the story of the blinding of Menfres reads like a random, albeit entertaining digression. It must have been specifically hunted down by our author, since no other known source connects the story with Esther. Isidore would have been an obvious but cumbersome place to seek out such information, as is revealed by contemporary exemplars. One such copy (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 22) is an English – possibly northern – manuscript dating from the second half of the twelfth century. To find the entry oboliscus, one would have to know, somewhat counterintuitively, that it belonged to Book 18, in a chapter on the ‘types of games’ (de generibus agonum). Only in the list of capitula to that chapter is oboliscus first mentioned (f.147); the actual entry is at f.147v. By contrast, Isidore’s description of the obelus, the diacritical sign, is to be found in Book 1 of his Etymologies, without any connection being drawn, either in Book 1 or Book 18, between the diacritical sign obelus and the monumental oboliscus.122 The seamless transition from obelus to oboliscus in our text is therefore, in all likelihood, the result of a patient accumulation of notes and trivia, eventually put to good use. Medieval commentators on the Scriptures found in ‘internal exegesis’ (or linguistic echoes) a major key to the understanding of the sacra pagina. This was mostly a tool used in allegorical or moral exegesis, but it could be used for exegesis ad litteram, especially to establish links between narratives and characters presented in different books of the Bible. Our author, characteristically, chose to linger on difficult cases where internal exegesis, however illuminating, led him to stumble upon contradictions. One such situation arose in relation to two characters already mentioned in this chapter, the elders who wrongly accused Susannah of adultery and who were confounded by Daniel:123 Two old men persuaded themselves that they were of the race of Judah and that the anointed one would be born from them, and then convinced young people to agree with them that the anointed one would be born from them. The Hebrews say that these two were Achimas and Sedechias, of whom Jeremiah said that because they had caused harm to someone (?) they were told ‘May the same be done to you, Achimas and Sedechias’. The king of Babylon fried (frixit) them because, possibly, once Daniel had confounded them, they were delivered by the people to the king who had them burnt, or in another version they were stoned to death by the people on the king’s order.124

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The two characters at the beginning of the extract are described very differently from the elderly lechers of the Book of Daniel. Their names, Achimas and Sedechias, are modified versions of Ahab and Zedekiah, the two false prophets and adulterers denounced by Jeremiah and condemned to be ‘fried in a fire’ (frixit in igne).125 The strange story about them persuading young people that the ‘christus’, or Messiah, would come from them because they were of the tribe of Judah, is borrowed from Jerome’s commentary on Jeremiah.126 However, Jerome’s version was rather more graphic as well as theologically disturbing. He described the two men deceiving gullible women (‘miseras mulierculas, quae circumferuntur omni uento doctrinae’) to sleep with them in order to become the ‘future mothers of the Messiah/Christ (‘matres futurae christi’). The assimilation of the false prophets of Jeremiah with the two lecherous accusers of Susannah confounded by Daniel is presented by Jerome as a Jewish interpretation in his commentary on Daniel: The Hebrew gives this reference: these are Ahab and Zedekiah (of whom Jeremiah wrote ‘May the Lord treat you like Zedekiah and Ahab’) whom the king of Babylon fried in a fire because of the crimes that they had committed in Israel.127

This connection made by Jerome explains our author’s conflicting versions of these same unsavoury characters’ deaths. Jerome was aware that his clever piece of ‘internal exegesis’, by which he linked two biblical stories, had a serious weakness, since the men confounded by Daniel were lapidated (this is an interpolation – nothing in the Vulgate specifies how they were put to death), and not burnt.128 Jerome added, none the less, that the story was regarded as a mere fable by many Jews, who considered it unlikely that enslaved people (the Hebrews in Babylon) would have been allowed to stone their leaders and prophets to death.129 The contradiction was also pointed out by Hrabanus Maurus (who borrowed it verbatim from Jerome) and more concisely by Peter Comestor.130 Our author did not fully address the problem, merely presenting the contradiction. It is impossible to tell whether he failed to see the real issue here, or whether he was simply unable to make up his mind. Another typical aspect of twelfth-century exegesis was a renewed interest in the textual history of the Scriptures. Here again, our author is a product of his time. He makes, for instance, several remarks on the gradual establishment of the scriptural canon. The first step that catches his attention, in the long fragment of text surviving in the Corpus Christi manuscript, is the supposed



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discovery of a book in the Temple during the period of the restoration of monotheism by Josiah (2 Kgs 22.8-11). Our text describes the rebuilding of the Temple under the supervision of Shaphan (Saphan) the scribe, and Hilkiah (Helcias) the high priest, before reaching this particular episode: Then Helcias said to Saphan the Scribe: ‘I found a book in the Temple’. It is believed to be the Deuteronomy. We read that Moses wrote the Deuteronomy in the plains of Moab and gave it to the Levites and ordered them to put it on the side of the ark where Aaron’s rod was and to read it always every seventh year during the feast of Tabernacles. And they put it there and did not read. And this way Helcias is believed to have found it and read it to Saphan. Saphan took it and brought it to Josiah and read it in front of him.131

This narrative incorporates a well-established tradition that identified the book discovered by Hilkiah with the lex written by Moses. Having admitted that he would not cross the Jordan (hence ‘the plains of Moab’), Moses was reputed to have given this writing to the Levites to be read to the people during the feast of the Tabernacles after seven years, in the meantime commanding that it be preserved on one side of the Ark of the Covenant.132 God did indeed command Moses in the Book of Numbers to put Aaron’s rod into the Ark.133 Here our text undertakes classic exegetical work, gathering together elements that together lend a deeper meaning to Hilkiah’s discovery. Further down, another crucial stage in the development of the sacred canon is related with the story of Ezra compiling the Hebrew Bible.134 Later still, in one of the longest ‘moments’ of our text, comes a full narrative of the writing of the Septuagint, occupying almost three pages (f.122r–123r). An analysis of this version of the story, which follows the mainstream account but adds unusual details, would make for a paper in itself. Let us note merely that the detail afforded this incident reveals our author’s keen interest in the history of sacra scriptura. The Corpus Christi glosses dealt with Esther, Judith and Daniel, three books whose status in the canon had been debated in the early Church. Our author dutifully supplied a summary of their textual history and their canonicity. His remarks are mostly based on the prologues of Jerome, which would have been readily available at the beginning of any book of the Vulgate Bible.135 His taste for the whimsical shows through, however, when he borrowed from the prologues lively anecdotes, such as the story of the Hebrew master who encouraged Jerome not to give up on his efforts to learn Chaldean with an uplifting maxim (the Hebrew equivalent of Virgil’s famous ‘Hard work conquers all’).136 Our author’s version runs as follows:

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And since he wanted to translate Daniel he worked very hard, because he could not speak in the Chaldean language which is full of harsh sounds, and many times he abandoned his attempts. But one Jew helped him with these words: ‘Hard work conquers all.’ In the end he had his teeth filed in order better to be able to cope with Chaldean speech.137

Here we are asked to believe that Jerome had his teeth sharpened or filed, the better to be able to pronounce ‘Chaldean’, that is, Aramaic. This is not a patristic or twelfth-century topos. Jerome complained several times, beyond the prologue to Daniel, that learning, and particularly pronouncing, Hebrew and Aramaic had been for him a difficult and painful process.138 The story about teeth filing is apocryphal. It none the less had some sort of tranmission across the Middle Ages since it seems to have become relatively well established in the early modern period, surviving into the nineteenth century in evangelical pamphlets and dentistry journals.139 I have been unable to find any occurrence of this anecdote earlier than our Corpus text. It is not in Comestor’s Historia scolastica,140 and its earliest appearance, apart from that in CCCC MS 288, seems to be in the early thirteenth-century Boncompagnus (or Rhetorica antiqua) by Buoncompagno da Signa.141 It remains unclear where our author may have heard the story. At the time, it may have been an arcane tradition, perhaps (and here apologizing for the pun) excitingly cutting-edge. What attracted our author to this story is none the less clear: a self-mutilating Church Father suited the glossator’s tendency to flesh out his sources with the liveliest incidents that he could recount. Our author was also keenly interested in textual criticism and the various versions of sacred text. For instance, writing about a complex point in Daniel, he declares that ‘to this point there is one thing in the Hebrew truth, another in the edition by Theodotion’.142 He thereby displayed his awareness that it was Theodotion, and not the Septuagint, that was used in the Latin translation of Daniel. He sometimes engaged with the most complex of textual arguments. One such occasion comes in the episode, at the end of the Book of Daniel, when the two elders who had accused Susannah are confounded by Daniel asking them under what sort of tree Susannah had committed her alleged adultery: one replied ‘sub schino’ (‘under a mastic-tree ’ – i.e. a lentisc), the other ‘sub prino’ (‘under a holm-oak’).143 Our author then remarks: Under a mastic-tree etc. Jerome’s Hebrew master held this as apocryphal, claiming that this word smacks of the eloquence of Greek phraseology. There is indeed in Greek the allusio uerbi, which is a figure of speech not to be found in Hebrew or Latin.144



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This subtle point of textual criticism, based on comparative stylistic grounds, is adapted from a rarely used passage in Jerome’s commentary on Daniel (not, for example, referred to in the Historia scolastica).145 The broader context is that the story of Susannah, Chapter 13 of Daniel in the Latin Vulgate, was not accepted into the Jewish canon (or Masoretic text), but had been included in the Greek translations (Septuagint and more significantly Theodotion, the version of Daniel used in Christian tradition).146 The point made by ‘Jerome’s Hebrew master’ is that in Greek, and in Greek only, etymology (‘ἐτυμολογία’) makes it possible to relate the two seemingly distinct words schinos (mastic-tree) and prinos (holm-oak) to words meaning scissio and secessio, thus lending deeper meaning to an ominous remark made earlier by Daniel, as well as announcing the two elders’ final downfall. All of this, our author suggests, demonstrates that the Susannah episode was written in Greek in the first place. This is hardcore textual criticism, with serious implications for the canonicity of what was otherwise a classic Bible story. Our author did not shy away from the difficulty, although it is clear that he did not fully understand the point made by Jerome. His translation of ἐτυμολογία as allusio is not quite right, and the way that this was applied by Jerome to the names of the two trees is here left unexplained. This mixture of intellectual ambition, originality and imperfect understanding is characteristic of our author. Like many of his contemporaries, our author frequently failed to identify his sources, some of them unexpectedly arcane, yet on other occasions was keen to show off the breadth of his references. It is in such a moment that a puzzling remark occurs in our text: ‘Cassiodorus, who glossed that book [Judith], states …’147 No such gloss or commentary by Cassiodorus on Judith is known to exist. Indeed, the Book of Judith, whose canonicity was doubtful, was very seldom glossed. The only extant medieval commentary is that by Hrabanus, itself to a large extent the basis for the Glossa ordinaria on Judith. To the best of my knowledge, the only direct link between Cassiodorus and the exegesis of Judith is supplied by a commentary that Cassiodorus is said to have commissioned from Bellator but which itself has not survived.148 The argument attributed by our author to Cassiodorus, that there was no king of the Assyrians named Nebuchadnezzar nor a king of the Medes named Arphaxat, is clearly borrowed from Hrabanus, from a passage that became the first marginal gloss of the Glossa ordinaria on Judith, sometimes identified by the words ‘Queritur quo tempore’.149 Slightly later, our text insists on the necessity to turn to the Jewish tradition according to which Nebuchadnezzar was in reality identifiable as Cambyses.150 This was a point found by our author in the same passage of

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Hrabanus.151 Meanwhile, the faulty attribution to Cassiodorus stands as one amongst several enigmas posed by our text. Yet another characteristic twelfth-century intellectual practice is here displayed: the juxtaposition of conflicting authorities, usually followed by a resolution or at least an explicit preference for one interpretation over another. Among the most famous examples of this dialectical genre we might cite Abelard’s Sic et non, the Decretum attributed to Gratian, and the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Biblical exegesis was partly impervious to such treatment, since allegorical interpretation allowed and even welcomed a plurality of meanings for any given verse or passage. As a result, widely divergent understandings could be enumerated, simply separated by uel or aliter, without further justification. Literal exegesis, though, with its close scrutiny of place-names, people, dates and res, was more inclined towards definitive and exclusive interpretations, thus supplying an entry for the juxtaposition of conflicting auctoritates. It is therefore unsurprising that this trope is present in our text. About the circumstances of the death of King Josiah (2 Kgs 23.29), our author notes that Pharaoh Nechao had gathered an army to fight the king of the Assyrians, but then immediately points out that Josephus claims that this was summoned not against the Assyrians but against the king of the Medes and the Persians.152 On the same episode, our author notes that ‘some histories state that Nechao had summoned Josiah for a secret meeting’, and that ‘two histories’ agree that Josiah was wounded by an arrow as he stepped down from his chariot (cf. 2 Chron. 35.21-4).153 Our author did not hesitate to take sides here, writing, for instance, that whereas Bede and Africanus were right, Tertullian fell short: This Bede explained competently. Africanus gave a different explanation but did not contradict [Bede] in his commentary about [Christ’s] death in what we say about the baptism and then during the three years. Tertullian gave a different explanation and in many aspects failed there.154 [A summary of Tertullian’s argument follows.]

Tertullian had indeed a very different understanding of Daniel 9.24-7. The main difference is that he did not interpret Daniel’s vision as placing the incarnation and death of Christ at the end of the period announced by the angel but in the middle of it.155 I have not been able to find a source where our author could have found these different interpretations of Daniel’s ‘historical apocalypse’ juxtaposed or reconciled. Julius Africanus was known in the medieval West through Jerome, as was Eusebius. It is conceivable that our author gleaned all this information directly, but there is another appealing hypothesis. It is equally possible



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that he was taught all this – both the patristic opinions and the assessment of their relative values. A magister giving a lectio would have ‘read’ biblical verses and then explained them by giving the relevant auctoritates, resolving whatever occasional contradictions arose. Our text, here and elsewhere, could be in parts a fair copy (possibly modified and expanded) of just such a magisterial reading.

Conclusion An appropriate way to open concluding remarks about these Corpus glosses is to point out that our author had no qualms in sweeping aside opinions he disagreed with, even when he was very much in the minority. This is striking in his account of the famous episode of the ‘writing on the wall’. In chapter 5 of the Book of Daniel, King Balthazar of Babylon threw a great banquet, during which he ordered that the sacred golden vessels looted from the Temple in Jerusalem should be used as drinking vessels. As is well known, his sacrilege was first punished by the appearance of the threatening ‘writing on the wall’, which Daniel was asked to interpret. Later that same night Balthazar was slain and his kingdom seized by Darius.156 Our author has an idiosyncratic take on these events. In his worldly outlook, the key here lay not in the sacrilege, but in a cocky standoff between oriental kings: Cyrus gathered an army and, jointly with his uncle, Darius, besieged [Babylon]; Balthazar, in order to make a joke of the siege, organized a banquet. Others [interpret this] differently.157

The existence of other explanations is swept aside by the ‘alii aliter’. Among the ‘others’ who did not suggest that the banquet was a provocative gesture featured authoritative figures such as Josephus158 and Peter Comestor.159 These few lines are an epitome of our glossator’s writing: evidence of wide-ranging reading, strict (narrow?) adherence to literal interpretationes, and idiosyncratic remarks. So what sort of text do we have here? These scattered remarks would not have been out of place as marginal glosses. Their variety in length, from one-liners to meatier analyses, and in topic would fit this hypothesis very well, and bring to mind, for instance, the glosses on the Historia scolastica of Nigel Longchamps. The Longchamps glosses share significant features with our text. Widely varying in length, they show Nigel’s personal interests in their very uneven coverage of Peter Comestor’s text and their eclectic subject matter – a commented list of the Muses, for instance, which relates only loosely to the topic of the main text.160

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If the last 14 folios of CCCC MS 288 were indeed initially glosses, what we have got there is a fair copy, made either by (or at the demand of) the glossator himself, or by someone else. To see them as glosses would solve some of the questions that arise for the reader of this text. It is conceivable, for instance, that our author annotated a volume of Old Testament books over a period of time, adding glosses as he read more and more widely and noted elements related to his specific interests. One of the most salient features of these notes is the discrepancy between, on the one hand, the breadth of reading necessary to accumulate so much knowledge, some of it very arcane, and on the other hand the haphazard sloppiness conspicuous in the many mistakes, simplifications and approximations. The latter could be explained by a faulty memorization, either because details were committed to mind too long before they were eventually jotted down, or because they were wrongly noted down whether while reading or, possibly more convincingly, while listening. Oversimplifying what one is listening to, garbling places’ and people’s names, turning the unfamiliar into the familiar by the addition of apparently innocent details: such faults are, as many on both sides of the lecture room know, all too common features of note-taking. But the fault is not necessarily to be ascribed to the student, here our author. The many details that cannot be identified in his text might also be explained by the influence of an enthusiastic, authoritative but unorthodox teacher, who could for instance have presented Cariath Sepher as a city of female and male scribes, or Jerusalem as a city with three concentrical walls, without necessarily quoting precise auctoritates. It is well established that twelfth-century schools were defined by the men who taught in them, more than by the presence of a stable institution.161 Students, in the best of cases, were also devoted disciples; at a time when biblical studies were changing fast, it is imaginable that some magistri became rather adventurous in their teaching. It was, after all, partly to regulate what was said in the classroom that universities emerged in the early thirteenth century. This brings up another question, present throughout this chapter. In his methods and his choices of topic, our author is closely related to a type of contemporary exegesis that was taught in Paris by Andrew of St Victor and Peter Comestor, and possibly by other masters as well. It is impossible to prove that the Corpus glossator read the Historia scolastica; if anything it is unlikely that he did, partly because our text is contemporary with or just slightly posterior to Comestor’s masterpiece, and partly because we have seen that occasionally it seems positively unaware of the Historia.



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What is possible, but even more difficult to prove, is that our English author was a former student of Peter Comestor. The constant circulation of numerous students and scholars across the Channel at the time, from John of Salisbury to Herbert of Bosham and Stephen Langton, is well known, and it is perfectly imaginable that our man would have been one of them. Maybe his glosses incorporated fragments of reportationes gleaned during lessons in Paris. Maybe the text in CCCC MS 288 reflects the labours of a pupil emulating the method of the master once he was back home; this scenario is possibly more likely, since it would allow better for the oddities and idiosyncrasies of our text. One cannot rule out either that our glossator would have learned under Andrew of St Victor and not Peter Comestor, possibly in Paris, but just as possibly in England at Wigmore (Herefordshire), a daughter-house of St Victor where Andrew was abbot from the early 1160s until his death in 1175.162 It is of course highly hypothetical to see the legacy of any precise magister in the Corpus glosses, but it is certain that the text belongs to a clear tradition that was then the cutting edge of exegesis. It is also clear that its author pushed some of the premises and practices of that tradition of literal commentary very far, almost ad absurdum. Our text’s many idiosyncrasies and oddities are likely to originate in the glossator’s occasional failure to store and retrieve accurately the abundant information he had accumulated. Be it careless note-taking or a defective memory, what we see here at work is ambitious scholarship gone occasionally askew, in spite of the author’s best intentions. Beyond this specific text, the many hitherto unstudied fragments waiting in miscellanies have a lot to teach us on how medieval clerics and monks collected and organized knowledge. It is equally fascinating to get a glimpse of the ways in which they sometimes distorted or even lost what they intended to gather and preserve.

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Violence, Control, Prophecy and Power in Twelfth-CenturyFrance and Germany Claire Weeda

In the twelfth century, French and German intellectuals intermittently claimed that their territories were the locus of knowledge and power, destined to foster true learning and protect the Church. Competing claims to the legacy of Charlemagne flared up between French and German royal dynasties.1 At least in one case, King Louis VI of France challenged the German entitlement to hold imperium, in 1118 dubbing himself ‘dei ordinante providentia Francorum Imperator Augustus’ in an act in favour of the monks of Compiègne.2 Conversely, at the end of the 1150s German Emperor Frederick Barbarossa’s notaries began to speak of a sacrum imperium. After appointing Victor IV as Pope instead of Alexander III in 1160, Frederick also turned towards the memory of Charlemagne, whose canonization he orchestrated in 1165.3 Earlier, on the ground, the Frankish Crusade movement had asserted its vanguard position in Christendom as an instrument of God’s will. In Paris the emerging university, drawing throngs of clerics studying philosophy and theology, hailed itself as the new hub of learning, echoing Alcuin’s and Notker the Stammerer’s earlier claims of the translatio studii to Paris.4 In this period, the rhetoric of power was clothed in the fabric of Christian, Roman and ‘Germanic’ traditions, amalgamating both biblical prophecy and Roman law. References to the Roman imperial tradition intermeshed with the patristic concept of the East–West translation of power, knowledge, religion, chivalry (mainly emphasized in vernacular sources) and riches from Babylonia, Greece, Egypt and Rome to the West, whether France (Paris as a centre of learning) or Germany (as the recipient of the imperial power).5 A move westward was also present in the territorial-temporal concept of the succession of the four empires, based upon the eschatological prophecies of Daniel.6 An

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overlooked aspect in the examination of this concept of the transfer of power and learning from East to West, to the French and German territories, is, however, the gendered language of rival claims to authority in relation to violence. At its most vehement, competition between the French monarchy and German Empire projected images of French ‘rational’ military valour – or arrogance, or even effeminate levity – pitted against violent German rage (furor Teutonicus), an ethnic stereotype inherited from antiquity.7 However, the value attributed to various degrees of violence is highly situational, depending on prevailing sociocultural norms, laws and political and religious traditions.8 Indeed, reputations of violence could be employed as arguments for and against claims to power, depending on the nexus of social and political values, and the religious context. This chapter addresses how these images were employed in the twelfthcentury competition over authority and attempts to appropriate the role of the Church’s defender.9 It examines how from the early part of the twelfth century, both the French and the Germans tapped into reputations of violence, control and learning in order to assume specific positions in the Crusade movement and in claims to the Carolingian legacy, specifically within eschatological thought.10 Ethnic reputations offered a flexible yet potent resource to be utilized when constructing, negotiating and validating power in the West.11 Indeed, as Len Scales has argued for the late thirteenth century in the case of German sources, ‘images of heroic warriorship and its antitheses’ were deployed to affirm an existing political order.12 More specifically, the value attributed to a reputation for employing varying degrees of violence depended greatly on whether that violence was directed towards Christian Others within society or the religious Other outside Christendom. As such, claims to imperial power and a reputation for extreme violence might constrain or complement one another, in the latter case especially when the emperor’s eschatological role was emphasized. Discussing strains of thought on the evaluation of violence, ethnic reputations and power, this chapter will thus differentiate between violence within Christian society and extreme violence against the religious Other. It will examine rival claims to being God’s warriors in the early crusades as well as in political and eschatological texts on imperium.

Fury, anger and restraint It is first necessary to establish the attitudes towards violence in this period and, in particular, to differentiate between two strains of violence: that



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within Christian society, and that targeted against the religious Other outside Christendom. Within Christian society, clerics certainly opposed anger to the virtuous, honourable behaviour of self-discipline, mercy, kindness and patience, as was deemed appropriate for those kings who ruled justly. Anger was one of the deadly sins and as such not an obvious characteristic to accentuate in good rulership. None the less, as Gerd Althoff has argued, although the Carolingian and later authors of mirrors of princes might exhort kings to demonstrate clemency, there was a chasm between ideal and reality, where inducing fear (terror) was socially required to make power effective and enforce laws. Royal anger was as such part of ‘rulership practice’, which the penalty clauses of royal diplomas threatened to mete out.13 As Proverbs 20.2 stated, ‘A king’s wrath strikes terror like the roar of a lion’, and those who angered him forfeited their lives. Indeed, under specific circumstances violence was effectively condoned or even required within Christian society. As Andrew Cowell has stressed, within the warrior society, maintaining social standing, and attaining and defending one’s honour and integrity thus sometimes required reciprocal acts of violence.14 On the other hand, the fundamental indicator of anti-reciprocal, extreme or ‘cosmological’ violence, as Cowell has argued, is ‘its refusal to operate within the anchoring structure of socially accepted forms and values of the sacred’. Such annihilating violence is defined by ‘its fundamental transitivity – by the fact that it is directed against a foe who is depicted as outside networks of even potential reciprocity and thus a target for destruction’.15 Such violence was not necessarily considered objectionable. Attitudes towards violence were theologically approbatory under Augustine of Hippo’s proviso – drawn among others from the Old Testament Book of Joshua (8 and 23) – that war served as consequence and remedy for (moral) injuries and sins. As such, the act of violence was condoned when driven by an inner charitable desire to deliver ‘sinners’, such as heretics, from evil or to defend the Church, so long as the just violence was sanctioned by a legitimate authority.16 In that case, violence represented an act of fraternal love, charitably correcting those ‘in the wrong’.17 However, violence generated by a greedy lust (libido) for domination and bounty was deemed unjust. Indeed furor – heedless, blind fury – was often considered within this category of unjust violence, as it exceeded the bounds of the ‘functional’ and the justifiable. As Proverbs 21.24 stated, ‘The proud and arrogant person – “Mocker” is his name – behaves with insolent fury’, which was considered unlawful and disproportionate. Or, as Isidore of Seville wrote in his seventh-century hugely popular Etymologies, ‘A just war is that which is waged in accordance with a formal declaration and is waged for the sake of recovering property or of driving off

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the enemy. An unjust war is one that is begun out of rage (furor), and not for a lawful reason.’18 This fury must be interpreted as madness, as indeed elsewhere Isidore states that furor is the antithesis of constantia, steadiness, relating it to wrathfulness caused by inflamed blood.19 According to Richard Barton, it was seldom associated with power in the works of, for example, the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman historian Orderic Vitalis.20 This kind of uncontrolled rage differed from the often more positively valued ira, which might be employed purposely in the event of obvious misdeeds. In addition, Richard Barton has argued that the language of violence was highly gendered. Calculated anger was a public demonstration of the guarding of masculine power, resulting in the resolution of wrongful situations and restoration of tainted honour. According to Barton anger (ire), a masculine emotion, was in this sense counterposed to fury, whose irrational traits bordered on what was perceived as effeminate – uncontrolled – behaviour.21 This gendered language of violence accorded with prohibitions which were once more being imposed on the clergy during the Gregorian Reform movement at the end of the eleventh century. Clerics were not to bear arms, engage in hunting, wear spurs, enter taverns or enjoy sexual relations with females. As Maureen Miller has remarked, these were ‘most of the outward markers of lay masculinity’. The clerics concurrently engaged in fierce competition with lay males over degrees of manliness, in papal correspondence often employing the word ‘viriliter’, guarding their manliness vis-à-vis lay men.22 Yet, there was an exception to the rule. Even heedless fury, although usually evil, could under specific circumstances resemble divine wrath; the same distinction applied to zealous ire, ira per zelum versus ira per vitium.23 Alain of Lille, in his twelfth-century Distinctiones, thus expounds: ‘Fury, strictly speaking, is divine wrath; thus the Psalmist (37.2) says: O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger. It is also viewed as evil, hence the Psalmist (57.5) also says: Their anger is like the venom of a snake.’24 Saintly furor might, therefore, entail righteous anger, if divinely sanctioned and dissociated from the devil’s evil workings.25 As Cowell states, with the Crusading movement this extreme, sacralized violence – meted out on behalf of the sacred – was directed particularly towards Muslims.26 I would like here to call to mind that other ultimate foe towards whom extreme violence was warranted: the Antichrist. Anger and fury could thus be valued both positively and negatively. How then did this apply to imperial power and the clerics writing about violence in the twelfth century? Matthew Gabriele, in Empire of Memory, has emphasized that the concept of imperium entailed fighting pagans and maintaining world



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authority over a Christian population. It was not necessarily attached to a specific territory, as its focus shifted from Rome to Francia and then to the German territories under the Ottonians.27 Its authoritative role, and designated task of defending the Church, would, however, effectively demand various degrees of martial strength. Wielding imperium and the employment of violence against the Church’s enemies had become closely associated. The following paragraphs will however examine how this claim to imperium and accompanying martial strength was a source of competition between Franks and Germans. In this context, we must distinguish between attacks on German fury evaluated within Christian society in reaction to perceived German warrior behaviour on, for example, the Italian peninsula and in the Crusading movement, on the one hand, and the wielding of Germanic fury against the religious foe outside Christendom, most notably the Antichrist, on the other. This chapter will argue that ultimately, in reaction to French claims of controlled violence, the notion of zealous anger in the battle for justice gained the upper hand over clemency in the eschatological Play of the Antichrist, as part of imperial Hohenstaufen propaganda. In the same period, twelfth-century texts by, for example, Otto of Freising and Rahewin, portrayed an enraged Frederick Barbarossa as the hammer of the world.28 Indeed, and this will be discussed further below, within eschatology it was precisely this appeal to divinely sanctioned fury in the face of the Antichrist – in the Last Emperor legend – which offered the Germans some leverage when dealing with their reputation for fury and gave them some elbowroom in their competition with the Franks over the legacy of Charlemagne and their claim to imperium. This might help explain why thirteenth-century German writers such as the Königsaal chronicler could employ the epithet of German fury as a ‘proud boast’, as Len Scales remarked.29 On the other hand, within the Crusade movement, the Franci were more successful in staking claims to serve as God’s ‘chosen’ warriors.

Competing reputations: German fury, French audacity – and arrogance In order to establish the meaning which contemporaries attached to degrees of violent behaviour amongst Franks and Germans within Christian society, it is necessary first to further sketch the sociocultural background and values attributed to the imagery of French and German martial behaviour in this period. At first glance, the German reputation of fury did not stand in huge

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contrast with the earlier image of the Franks as ferocious men; this indeed would seem to be the original etymological interpretation of the Franks’ name.30 In the early Middle Ages, Isidore of Seville’s etymology of the Franks stated: ‘Others reckon that they were named for the brutality of their behaviour, for their behaviour is wild, with a natural ferocity of spirit,’31 and references to their ferocity still occurred in accounts of the First Crusade, as cited below. However, already in the early Middle Ages the strength of the Frankish warrior skills was simultaneously praised, for example in the prologue to the Lex Salica, and in the early decades of the twelfth century Frankish strength of arms was increasingly discussed together with cultural finesse. By the 1120s in England the monk William of Malmesbury was thus claiming that ‘both in martial exercises and in polish of manners the men of France are easily first among the nations of the West’.32 Crucially, from the early decades of the twelfth century, cultural and social norms of noble and warrior conduct and character were rapidly evolving, captioned as chivalry and courtliness, and these were turning away from reckless violence and increasingly associated with French identity.33 Central to these norms was a strong emphasis on self-control, represented in the exemplary figure of the preudomme, a man ‘of mature sense and wisdom’, trustworthy, loyal, generous and modest, yet above all intelligent and demonstrating restraint in warfare.34 Significantly, the combination of good judgement, moderation and fighting skills was contrasted to rash courage.35 It is thus in this period that the virtue of prudens, which could mean basic worldly wisdom, suddenly appears as an epithet for the noble layman.36 Of course, hardiness (physical toughness and bravery) remained important, but it was to be checked by discretion. This combination of fighting skills and finesse – strongly associated with the French – quickly became the benchmark for noble demeanour in north-west Europe. The fact that, from the early twelfth century, intellectuals began to ground the qualities of German fury and newly shaped French finesse ‘scientifically’ in climate theory – the harsh cold of the north producing men prone to extreme roughness, the more temperate French territories producing men with balanced minds – more firmly established such reputations.37 Moreover, in the course of the twelfth century, intellectuals incorporated a reputation for controlled violence in the idea of a transfer of knowledge from East to West.38 Thus, in the 1170s in the romance Cligès, Chrétien de Troyes’s self-congratulatory boast proclaimed that chivalry, together with learning, had been translated from Athens via Rome to Paris.39 In France, clergie and chevalerie thus existed in mutual dependence, as martial prowess and knowledge went



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hand in hand.40 The perception that chivalry accompanied learning belonged to court culture, and it reflected a new emphasis on the value of the use of reason, not only in bookish learning but also in military performance.41 At the same time, the merging of the two endowed chivalry with a religious benediction, deepening the nobility’s relationship with God as the order ordained to fight for and protect Christendom.42 In the course of the thirteenth century, this idea was elaborated further when the close relationship in France between the monarchy and clergie was related both to the miraculous powers of St Denis and to the university of Paris.43 This reached its apex when William of Nangis, a monk at St Denis, interpreted the fleur-de-lis as meaning that Jesus had adorned the French kingdom with three graces: faith, learning and military strength, each symbolized by one petal.44 Conversely, from the later decades of the eleventh century, the behaviour of the Germans in battle was increasingly described as ‘furious’ (furor Teutonici), displayed in their madness (rabies), both on the Italian peninsula and on crusade. Authors employing this image of fury often attributed to Germans certain negative cultural characteristics as well. Landulf of Milan (died after 1085) thus wrote that ‘their minds were given to gluttony and drunkenness … the most savage Teutons do not know left from right’.45 One explicit reference from the Italian peninsula – where German knights often fought in campaigns under the emperor’s authority – articulates this imagery clearly. Donizo of Canossa, writing circa 1115 about the Germans in Mantua, thus states: Now you celebrate Easter with liars from Germany, Who love Bacchus all too well and vehemently wallow in excess. Friendly brawls are unknown in their language. When they are drunk, and, carried away by bitter words, They unsheathe their swords and chop up the guts of their own comrades, Whom they ravish as fodder like wolves, They know to destroy the halls of the saints with their violence.46

Or, as the author of the twelfth-century Life of Louis VII put it, ‘The Germans are the most impatient of men, who are thoughtless in matters of war, but instead furious in the raging madness of their minds.’47 In short, German fury could be evoked negatively as a sign of lack of control and barbaric behaviour notably towards the Christian Other within Western society, as the Germans even chopped up the guts of their comrades. However, there was a flip-side to this negative appraisal of German ferocity. The Germans could inspire awe with their tall, strong bodily frames.48 Yet

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importantly, this occurred in the context of service as part of an army defending Christendom against the religious Other outside Christendom, where the Germans’ reputation for courage and strong physical endowment – used for anti-reciprocal violence – might actually be extolled. Thus poets describing the Germans fighting in the entourage of Charlemagne in the chansons de geste depicted them as faithful comrades within a Christian army.49 None the less, on the whole German martial behaviour was deemed to be culturally and socially deficient, even when fighting against the religious Other. On joint expeditions in the early Crusades, when German and French exchanged insults over their role in the militia Dei and accused one another of unruly behaviour, or conversely, arrogance, emphasis on French restraint versus German fury gained the upper hand and came to be interpreted as a sign of the special suitability of the French warriors vis-à-vis German fighters. In the first part of the next section, I will go into this development in further detail.

Protectors of the Church and the Crusades The First Crusade was itself pivotal in the shaping of milites as knights: God’s designated defenders of Christendom. Efforts to align warrior values with the Church’s interests had been undertaken in the decades leading up to the First Crusade. In the early eleventh century, the Church had initiated the Peace and Truce of God movements, notably in central and southern France (with a revival in the 1080s in the Rhineland), presenting the fighting nobility as protectors of Christian peace and the Church. Although warrior ideals had also permeated the language of a holy and just war earlier, in this period the Church increasingly and specifically called upon the nobility to fight in God’s service – earning them penance and remission of sins – against the non-Christian enemy, be they heretics, heathens, Muslims or Jews. Instead of internecine fighting in Western Europe, knights were now presented as Christ’s soldiers, milites Dei, as well as milites sancti Petri. From the start, however, ethnic diversity was accentuated by both clerics and monastic writers, shaping the imagery and rhetoric of the movement from their cells and desks in the West, as well as on the battlefield. In Mireille Schmidt-Chazan’s view, the clerical authors emphasized ethnic difference in order to explain the later failures among some crusading groups despite their divine mission. For that reason, both the French and the Germans were at times accused of arrogance.50 But such animosity was already felt during



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the First Crusade, an expedition that was considered ‘successful’. We might instead, then, interpret these tensions as resulting from competition to become the vanguard of God’s army. Within this struggle, ethnic stereotypes could be employed as a means of staking a claim to being the foremost of Christ’s soldiers. Indeed, the early sources indicate that from the first expeditions to the Levant, contacts between Crusaders from French territories and Germanspeaking regions sparked off a sense of behavioural and religious pre-eminence among the Franci as fighters of God’s war. Ultimately, the traditional concept of the chosenness of the Franci and their mission, divinely appointed and foretold in Scripture, to liberate Jerusalem is highlighted by a number of authors, in particular Guibert of Nogent, and also Robert the Monk, who draws comparisons between Crusaders and biblical personae on their way to the Promised Land.51 In the earliest histories relating the events of the First Crusade, there is talk of a general friction among the main crusading armies coming from northern France, Normandy, Flanders, Lorraine and southern Italy. From the very beginning, ethnic stereotypes, dislikes and taunts were reciprocal: the Germans were called furious, the Franks accused of pride.52 After the armies had convened in Nicomedia in 1097, the anonymous Norman knight who wrote the Gesta Francorum relates how the Italians and Germans broke away from the Franks because the latter were ‘intolerably proud’.53 In his The Deeds of God through the Franks, Guibert of Nogent (c. 1055–1124) further explains: ‘For the Franks, as their name indicates, were famous for their great energy, but, in large groups, unless they are restrained by a firm hand, they are fiercer than they should be.’54 Here the traditional etymology of Franci as meaning ferocious is still applied; the Franks are not yet the paragons of chivalry. However, in the early decades of the twelfth century, the focus shifted increasingly to emphasis on Frankish martial excellence vis-à-vis German rage. One of the earliest chroniclers of the Crusade who writes of German fury, between 1125 and 1150, is Albert, canon of the church of Aachen.55 Although Albert did not take part in the Crusade, his account is based for a large part on eyewitness accounts and therefore offers insight into the experiences of his contemporaries – many of whom were Godfrey of Bouillon’s followers.56 Yet, despite the fact that his account, the History of Jerusalem, focuses on Godfrey of Bouillon’s crusading efforts and takes – contrary to most Crusade chronicles – a German ‘imperial’ rather than a ‘French’ viewpoint, still Albert was certainly willing to admit that ‘no region in the world excels Gaul by nourishing bolder men or more keen in battle’.57

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This we can see from the language in which Albert describes the adventures of Peter the Hermit’s band of Crusaders on their journey across central Europe. Travelling across Balkan territory, Peter the Hermit struggled to keep his band of followers in check. Despite promises to Duke Nichita of the Bulgars that his followers would proceed peacefully, a group of Swabians got caught up in an argument with a Bulgar trading his wares. The Swabians set fire to seven mills and some houses. When word of this reached Peter, he addressed ‘the more prudent and intelligent men from the army’, saying that ‘a serious and severe misfortune threatens us, arising from the rage of the senseless Germans’.58 Peter subsequently decided to formulate an apology. However, ‘while Peter, therefore, along with the more prudent of his men, was fully occupied with this project and plan and was composing his apology with careful words, a thousand foolish men, stiff-necked youngsters of excessive irresponsibility, a wild and undisciplined set of people with neither cause nor reason, advanced in a great assault over the aforesaid bridge to the walls and gate of the city’.59 This unruly behaviour was partly perhaps typical of youthful spirits, as the young apparently rushed across the bridge shouting with rage. It might also be a commonplace reflecting the ignoble, rustic reputation of Peter’s followers, travelling on foot rather than on horseback. None the less, the words picked by Albert of Aachen – wild, undisciplined, without reason – are also typical markers of ‘barbarity’ tacked onto German Crusaders in general. Similarly, a group of Bavarians and Swabians belonging to the entourage of a certain priest called Gottschalk, growing restless while being detained in Hungary, foolishly drank too much; they violated the proclaimed peace, stealing wine, barley, sheep and cattle, acting ‘like a people foolish in their boorish habits, unruly and wild’.60 Here the Germans are equated to peasants of low social standing. Moreover, as ‘stiff-necked men’ they were breaking God’s covenant, like the Jewish Chosen People of the Old Testament.61 Similar remarks can be found in the sources concerning the Second Crusade. Odo of Deuil blamed the failure of this Crusade alternately on the Greeks and the Germans, who were ‘unbearable to us as well’, remarking upon the followers of Emperor Conrad III.62 Odo, a monk and later abbot of the monastery of St Denis who accompanied Louis VII as royal chaplain on this disorderly Crusade in 1147, complains that the Germans disturbed everything as they went along, greedily procuring provisions for themselves at a market near Constantinople and afterwards furiously entering into a brawl with the Franci, whom they again scorned for their pride.63 Odo does not spare the French either, though, accusing them of ‘stupid arrogance’.64



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But it is in twelfth-century accounts of Pope Urban II’s call for crusade that the contrast between German inferiority and French polish and martial excellence is particularly marked. Crucial in these events was the fact that Pope Urban II, in 1095, in the midst of the Investiture Contest, had directed his appeal not to the German emperor but to French nobility and churchmen, though not necessarily the French monarchy.65 This privileging of the Franci is most pronounced in Guibert of Nogent’s The Deeds of God through the Franks. Guibert was keen to emphasize that Pope Urban II made his appeal to the French and not to the Germans because of the Germans’ barbaric nature. The Franci were historically the chosen allies of the papacy: ‘More respectful and humble than other nations toward blessed Peter and pontifical decrees, the French, unlike other peoples, have been unwilling to behave insolently against God. For many years we have seen the Germans, particularly the entire kingdom of Lotharingia, struggling with barbaric obstinacy against the commands of Saint Peter and of his pontiffs.’66 Guibert further related how the archbishop of Mainz derided the French, calling them ‘Francones’.67 Guibert retorted: You think them so weak and languid that you can denigrate a name known and admired as far away as the Indian Ocean, then tell me upon whom did Pope Urban call for aid against the Turks? Wasn’t it the French? Had they not been present, attacking the barbarians everywhere, pouring their sturdy energy and fearless strength into the battle, there would have been no help for your Germans, whose reputation there amounted to nothing.’68

Here, we can already see a positive appraisal of the use of violence by the Franci against the religious Other. Referring to the status of the Franci as a chosen people, French monks and clerics thus presented the Crusader movement, enacting the ideology of the recapture of the East, as an essentially French expedition in which Frankish fearless yet efficient and curbed violence was compared to mindless, dangerous German rage. As the new ‘home of learning and chivalry’, the Franci thus appropriated for themselves the role of protectors of the Church, assuming leadership in the Crusades, which was reflected in the literature of romances and chivalrous deeds.69 It is relevant, in this regard, that in both twelfth-century Latin and – crucially – vernacular sources, French territory is repeatedly praised as a sweet land, ‘the most splendid in the world’, and its inhabitants as a beata gens, blessed nation beloved by God.70 This continues in the thirteenth century, Francia being called the ‘rampart of Christianity’. In a bull issued by Pope Gregory IX in 1239, the Franks are called a new tribe of Judah, crowned by the hand of God himself.71 And significantly,

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as will become apparent below, at the end of the twelfth century claims were also made to the Carolingian ancestry of the Capetians, with poets pointing to the reditus regni ad stirpem Karoli of Philip Augustus and his son Louis VIII (via Isabella of Hainault).72 French authors were thus tapping rather successfully into ethnic reputations of violence in order to claim a role in the vanguard of the militia Dei. Importantly from a political viewpoint, defending Christendom by arms was also part of the package of wielding power, or imperium. Yet was their appropriation of this position challenged in political discussions on power from a German perspective? In the final section of this chapter, I will argue that it was, discussing how, especially under Frederick Barbarossa’s rulership, German rhetoric attempted to underline German rulers’ universal dominium as guardians of Christendom. Here, we shall encounter a positive evaluation of German violence as necessary for wielding imperium and defending the Christian ecumenity, employing the very image of German fury in the specific light of warranted, extreme violence against the religious foe outside of Christendom. It was precisely this aspect of anti-reciprocal violence which was relevant to the imperial position of defender of the whole Christian world community.

Imperium and violence As discussed above, from the early part of the twelfth century the French had already carved out a more refined reputation for controlled bravery. Yet such fame not only brought social and cultural prestige, it could also carry political weight. Images of German fury could be employed by French propagandists to make claims to French autonomy or even to greater suitability to wield power. One source which has been examined and quoted many times in this context is Suger’s Deeds of Louis the Fat, written in the 1140s. It is best known for Suger’s recounting of the events of 1124, when Louis VI, as holder of the fief of the Vexin from the abbey of St Denis, was said to have raised the saint’s banner from the altar and summoned the French territories to unite against the Germans’ threat to take Reims.73 Suger’s expansive language, speaking of a Francia stretching beyond the confines of Île-de-France, is taken as an early sign of the developing concept of the French kingdom.74 None the less, whether Suger at the same time challenged German imperial authority is a matter of debate. The most outspoken reference in his text concerns Pope Paschal II’s visit to King Philip I and Louis in 1107, when Pascal urged the French monarchs to ‘follow



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the established custom of their predecessors, Charles the Great and other kings of the French, and make a bold stand against tyrants, enemies of the church, and above all the emperor Henry V’.75 Here, I would like to draw attention to the fact that, writing on the imperial coronation of Henry V in Rome in 1111 – in the same chapter – Suger also strongly emphasized the treacherous fury of German knights: The mad Germans invented a pretext for a quarrel, gnashed their teeth in fury, and began to rage out of control. Their treachery caught everyone by surprise. With drawn swords they rushed about like men who were out of their minds and attacked the Romans who, properly in such a place, were not armed. The Germans shouted threats that all the Roman clergy, bishops as well as cardinals, would be seized or slaughtered, and going even beyond the limits of insanity, they did not fear to lay their wicked hands on the pope himself.76

Anne Latowsky emphasizes Suger’s relative lack of interest in the legend of Carolingian emperorship, and stresses that most forgeries produced at his abbey in this period harking back to Charlemagne’s reign instead attempt to submit French royalty to the abbey of St Denis.77 None the less, although Suger might not have paid detailed attention to the Last Emperor legend or the Carolingian legacy in his Deeds, does this strikingly vivid passage not cast doubt on German suitability to hold imperium? At the coronation, the German knights raged violently, behaviour unbefitting an army appointed to defend Christendom. As Florin Curta has pointed out, in reference to the events in 1124, Suger also differentiates between the animositas and potentia of France in contrast to the audacious, brazen behaviour of its enemies. Germans displayed arrogance against France, ‘the mistress of lands’, to whom the German territories had in the past been subject. During the Investiture Contest in 1107 and leading up to the coronation in 1111, they were indeed bringing violence to Rome instead of protection, anger against the papacy instead of devotion to it. Contrasting such misconduct, Suger emphasized the French policy of protecting the realm and the Church.78 Another passage again spoke of the Germans as stiff-necked envoys, grinding their teeth with German temerity.79 In concurrence with his re-evaluation of French martial behaviour, Suger was thus accentuating the entirely positive value of French strenuitas (in chapter 9).80 Conversely, the powerful abbot depicted the Romans by using stereotypes typical of the effeminate south and east: corrupt, vain, gullible and suffering from levity (in chapter 10).81 Most of the above examples demonstrate how the Franks managed to present a positive self-image as defenders of Christendom. However, the use of such

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specific imagery – of German fury and in this case Italian levity – gains further meaning when we compare German bishop Otto of Freising’s derision of French – effeminate – levity, in their belief in the prophecy that French King Louis VII was in fact a new Charlemagne (or Cyrus), as discussed further below. This occurred within a specifically prophetic-eschatological context. We can thus discern various usages of the image of violence within a gendered context; in the face of the ultimate foe, fury become a manly characteristic, juxtaposing feminine levity. Could then the German reputation for fury, as a form of extreme – anti-reciprocal – violence in fact also be employed as an argument that the Germans held the just claim to imperium? Indeed, although German fury was reviled by monks and clerics during the Crusades, the Germans seem to have turned the tables in the specific context of eschatological prophecy of the Last Emperor. A key passage which might hold a clue can be found in 2 Thessalonians 2.6-8, which prophesied that the Roman Empire would ultimately curb the evil force, and that the end of the world would not occur before a revolt against the Empire.82 By invoking this argument of ultimate violence, Frederick Barbarossa’s apologists were able to place the emperor within a distinct imperial-eschatological strand of thought which tapped into the purported legacy of Charlemagne.

The prophecy of the last emperor How could the prophecy of the Last Emperor and the legacy of Charlemagne be tied together?83 Charlemagne’s kingdom, an expansive Christian-Frankish realm, remained an empire of memory in the post-Carolingian era. Although its Frankish nature was ‘de-emphasized’ by the first Ottonians, focusing on territory and bonds of lordship, claims began to be made to its legacy especially under Otto III (996–1002), alluding to direct progression from Constantine through Charlemagne to the Ottonian dynasty. Otto III – as a new Charlemagne – thus visited Aachen and descended into Charlemagne’s tomb at Pentecost in the year 1000.84 Similarly, although the Capetians initially refrained from making boastful claims to a Carolingian descent, the turning point for the Franci occurred in the time of Abbo of Fleury in the tenth century.85 The first real harking back, however, took place under Philip I in the 1070s and 1080s. From the eleventh century, some West Frankish rulers began to designate themselves imperator and in an early phase under the Capetians, documents sometimes spoke of the imperium (authority) Francorum. According to Matthew Gabriele,



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texts thus began to emphasize the ‘essential Frankishness of the Capetians’ domain’.86 This new interest in the Carolingian memory went hand in hand with an increase in texts concerning the prophecy of the Last Emperor, the coming of a Second Charlemagne, and Charlemagne’s purported journey to the East.87 Based ultimately on the Sibylline and Pseudo-Methodius prophecies, and more recent additions to the genre by Adso in the tenth century, the Last Emperor, a Christ-like figure, was to fulfil a distinctive role in the end-days, unifying Christendom before laying down his crown on Mount Olivet, heralding the appearance of the Antichrist.88 The tradition, emerging in early medieval times, was a conflation of biblical prophecy and the inheritance of Roman imperial infrastructure and law. Although the eschatological foreboding of a Last Emperor does not feature explicitly in the Bible, the Book of Daniel does address the fate of the successive world empires as precursors to the apocalypse. In the early Middle Ages, Jerome, in his commentary on the Book of Daniel, subsequently interpreted Rome as the fourth empire which would rule until the end of time. The prophecy was articulated early on in the prophecy of the Sibyll, which was originally composed in Greek in the late fourth century, and translated into Latin at the latest during the reign of Emperor Otto III. Besides the prophecy itself, the text included lists of rulers up until the end-days, which was sometimes – though not always – amended to bring them up to contemporary events, and contained a division of history into nine generations, represented by nine blood-stained suns. As Anke Holdenried remarks, all the extant manuscripts contain interpolations to German or Lombard rulers identified (and sometimes updated) as the Last Emperor.89 According to the prophecy, in the ninth era, wars waged by the Syrian and Egyptian kings would thus ravage the earth; ‘C’ would then briefly restore law and peace. The Last Emperor, rex Romanorum and Grecorum, or Constans – later identified as Charlemagne – would then reign after a period of moral and political decline. Afterwards, the pagan temples would be destroyed and the Jews converted. After this, the Antichrist would seduce the world and unleash Gog and Magog. Eventually, the archangel Michael would kill the Antichrist on Mount Olivet, after the prophets Elijah and Enoch had been slain.90 A related strand evoking Charlemagne’s memory, the so-called Descriptio, compiled in the 1080s at St Denis or at the court of King Philip I, recounted how Charlemagne purportedly collected the nail and the crown of thorns in Constantinople and brought them to Aachen, after which Charles the Bald transferred them to St Denis.91 In the Descriptio, the Byzantine Emperor Constantine had a dream urging him to call for Charlemagne’s help as ‘king

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of France and warrior for God and for the peace of the Church’.92 Afterwards Charlemagne travelled to Jerusalem, where the pagans immediately turned in flight. Some texts, such as the Chronicon by Benedict of Monte Soratte, tied Charlemagne’s imperium to his purported voyage to the East and ascendancy over the Byzantines. The so-called prophecies reflected the tension over the Frankish inheritance. The unification of Christendom was often assigned to a Frankish king, not necessarily a German emperor. In Adso’s tenth-century Letter to the Antichrist, for instance, imperium remained in the hands of a Frankish rex. The eleventh-century versions of the Sibylla Tirburtina equally spoke of a king, this time in a Ottonian-Roman context. After 1000, however, the legends of the Last Emperor and Charlemagne began to merge, and the renovatio imperii Romanorum witnessed an upsurge.93 In the 1080s the two lines intertwined in the writing of Benzo of Alba, pinpointing Henry IV as the Last Emperor. German charters began to refer frequently to the German instead of Frankish (sacrum) imperium,94 while the Capetians none the less sometimes termed themselves Frankish kings wielding imperium.95 Prophesying who would be the Last Emperor amounted to name- or, rather, letter-dropping. One text predicted that the Last Emperor, who held imperium as the Frankish king of the Romans, would be named ‘C’ – Charlemagne. Significantly, this letter-dropping was sometimes related to ethnic stereotyping as well, using the taunt of French levity to subvert the French claim; in the thirteenth century this was repeated in the prophetic verse ‘Gallorum levitas Germanos iustificabit’.96 In his Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa written in 1157/8, Frederick Barbarossa’s uncle Otto of Freising also reported that a version of the Sibylline prophecy was circulating before the Second Crusade in France: ‘I speak to you, L, shepherd of bodies, whom the spirit of the time of the pilgrim God has inspired, addressing you by the first letter of the sum total that makes up your name.’97 This L – Louis? – would travel to the gates of Babylon (Jerusalem), where the waters of the river would be diverted as L was turned into a C. In Otto’s view this prophecy had been spread by a charlatan, and it had failed to materialize. Its popularity resulted from French levity (Gallicana levitas), a characteristically female trait.98 Did the French king at this time indeed position himself as a new Charlemagne? There is one reference to Charlemagne’s spurious journey to the East at St Denis, represented in the so-called Crusading Window and created under the auspices of Suger (abbot 1122–51) or his successor Odo of Deuil (abbot 1151–62), two writers whom we have already encountered above.99 These



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scenes were possibly based on the Descriptio, which relates how Charlemagne transferred the nail and crown of thorns from Constantinople to Aachen, and perhaps referred to Louis VII’s embarking on the Second Crusade, and the prophecy ridiculed by Otto of Freising.100 The window certainly tied Frankish feats in the East in 1099 to the memory of Charlemagne. It is, however, significant that the claims put forward to justify imperium and Charlemagne’s legacy are clothed in a language of effeminate levity and violence. Latowsky argues that Otto of Freising was contrasting two types of universal peace: the universal Augustan peace which currently existed under Frederick Barbarossa, and the peace achieved in the Last Emperor prophecy after the cataclysmic outburst of violence against the Antichrist.101 Frederick’s reign was one of peace, not extreme violence. Indeed, he positioned himself as a universal ruler, continuing the Empire beyond that of Rome, yet as a protector of Christendom and vicar of Christ.102 It was French levity to think that the Franks could appropriate this role, especially within the context of eschatology. Conversely, the emperor was eulogized as a salvator mundi with Christological characteristics, and Rahewin, Otto of Freising’s continuator, thus portrays him as a new Charlemagne.103 Yet only a few years later, The Play of the Antichrist associated the Staufer emperor with the Last Emperor and extreme violence.104 In it, German fury is contrasted to French arrogance. Based on Adso’s tenth-century prophecy, the play relates how a number of embassies first submit to Roman (German) imperial dominium. The emperor lays down his crown in the Temple of Jerusalem and surrenders imperial dignity to God. At that moment the Antichrist appears, helped by his Hypocrites, and persuades all of his divinity using intimidation and false miracles. Even the Jews are convinced he is the Messiah, but after they have succumbed to the Antichrist, Enoch and Elijah appear as the Two Witnesses (Rev. 11), and reveal the Antichrist’s true identity. The Antichrist is finally killed by a thunderbolt.105 Here are strong references to the Empire’s zealous anger, juxtaposed with French insolence – a taunt directed against the proud Franks during the early Crusades. Thus the Play’s Ambassadors boldly sing to the king of the Franks that as they are strong in war, their king must serve the emperor in battle, and do him homage and fealty (l. 57–60). In reply, the Frankish king retorts that Gaul once possessed the Empire and that it is thus theirs by legacy. The Franks, accused, yet again, of proud boasting, eventually submit, singing, ‘The power of his [the Roman/German] Empire is supreme / Let his fame and honour be forever feared’ (l. 97–8).106 In their subsequent confrontation with the Antichrist’s Hypocrites, however, they easily succumb, and the Frankish king

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sings: ‘I acknowledge your [the Antichrist’s] imperial right / I ask to serve you as a royal knight’ (l. 226b).107 The Teuton king is not such an easy push-over, however, and here German fury, as a form of extreme just violence, wholly comes into its own. The Antichrist lets the Hypocrites sing to the king of the Teutons that they are a strong people in war, as those subject to their wrath may tell. Their kings have to be appeased with gifts, avoiding battle, for ‘These savages are the ruin of those they fight / so conquer them with gifts instead of might’ (l. 231–2).108 Yet the king of Teutons is not foiled, stating that his foe shall fall by his avenging sword (l. 242). The confused Hypocrites then ask the Antichrist how long this German fury will last, which ‘blasphemes your sovereignty and takes up arms against the holy faith’ (l. 251–2).109 The Antichrist subsequently summons the other kings – the Franks, the Greeks, the Babylonians, Gentilitas, the king of Jerusalem – ‘to help him stem this mad Teutonic flood’ (l. 265)110 – and they battle, whereupon the army of the Antichrist is actually defeated. The king of the Teutons returns to his throne and sings, ‘Bloodshed must preserve our country’s honor / and valor drive out all her enemies. / Blood alone redeems a tainted name / and blood will keep the Empire free from shame’ (l. 270ff.).111 Eventually, however, the German king is seduced by a series of false miracles, and finally he, too, submits. As Latowsky argues, The Play of the Antichrist is an exemplar of Staufer propaganda asserting the German king’s role as holder of the Christian imperium, although not as a threat to actually crush the Frankish king or a realistic expectation of the imminent arrival of the Antichrist.112 Especially significant is the language of violence used to assert such a claim: here, German fury trumps Frankish martial valour in standing up to ultimate evil. Whereas the Frankish king arrogantly presumes he holds a claim to the imperial legacy, in the face of the Antichrist his meek submission reveals France’s true colours. Only fierce bloodshed – as a form of zealous justice – is sufficient to defend the Church in its direst hour. The meaning attributed to the Franks’ arrogance – an accusation also made against them during the Crusades – might thus here be interpreted as arrogance in appropriating the position as vanguard of the militia Dei, as God’s chosen warriors, whereas in reality they are fickle, an effeminate characteristic. Such competition between the French and Germans was played out on other levels. Frederick Barbarossa’s chancellor Rainald of Dassel called the French kings provincial ‘kinglets’. The so-called ‘Letter to Saladin’ by Frederick Barbarossa, featured in many late twelfth-century Anglo-Norman sources, lists – as a form of satire? – the German territories’ martial characteristics and claim to imperium stretching from Persia to Mauretania.113 Pro-French writers, on the



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other hand, contrasted the furor Teutonicus with French devotion to the Church and compared the Germans to a new race of Canaanites and the progeny of Moab, Lot’s cursed kin.114 The competition continued in the thirteenth century, as notions strengthened that the French monarch, a ‘most Christian’ king, ruled over a region devout in faith, where the fountain of the clergy, chivalry and learning cooperated for the good.115 The name Franci, as meaning free men, was now interpreted as ‘not subject to the German empire’. Guillaume de Sauqueville even wrote that whereas empire came from ‘en pire’, evil, to be free (the Franci) of evil was to be free of sin.116 Such pretensions were rebutted by Alexander of Roes, canon at Cologne, in his Memoriale (1281) and Notitia saeculi (1288).117 Defending a universalistic empire as a divinely bestowed office with a distinct role in the divine plan of salvation, Alexander set out to prove that the Germans (Franci Germani), descending from the Trojan Franks, were the original Franks and true Christian noblemen with outstanding martial virtues.118 The French, in contrast, were not pure Franks but of mixed Frankish-Gallic descent.119 His Memoriale, probably written for the papal curia, although praising the French for their typically clerical courtly manners (boldness, jocosity, generosity, amiability), berated the French for their inconstancy and arrogance, as well their effeminate softness, frivolity and lightheadedness (for example for organizing tournaments).120 By contrast, the Germans were explicitly equipped for holy warfare.121 The Italians, thus, had inherited the sacerdotium, the Germans the imperium, and the French the studium. Yet, as Len Scales has argued, the very fact that Alexander of Roes felt obliged to buttress the Germans’ reputation as martial defenders of Christendom reveals the strength of French claims to chivalrous valour.122 Although some German writers continued to extol Germanic fury, by the thirteenth century the French thus retained their reputation for courtly finesse, martial excellence and chivalry. Rhetorically, at least, they could claim independence from German universalistic hegemony.123 They had been rather successful in forging a reputation for wielding just violence as defenders of Christendom, even if they were sometimes berated for their arrogance in doing so. Above, I have demonstrated how reputations for violence thus gain different meanings in different contexts. Although generally the Franks seemed to gain the upper hand in appropriating a reputation for valour and martial excellence, still within the biblical tradition, extreme violence against the religious Other was at times – specifically within an eschatological context – an ultimate trump card. Thus the Germans, often scorned for their excessive and rash behaviour,

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attempted to position themselves as the holders of imperium by referring to the necessary use of extreme violence, something which the proud and sometimes effeminate French in their eyes were not capable of. Ethnic reputations thus offered some leeway as bargaining chips in order to stake claims to power within the traditions of politics and religion.

Notes Introduction 1

2

3

4

Still fundamental on the central medieval period is Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 3rd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984). See also the illuminating study of Philippe Buc, L’Ambiguïté du livre. Prince, pouvoir et peuple dans les commentaires de la Bible au Moyen Age (Paris: Beauchesne, 1994). Valuable in themselves, and also for rich bibliographies, are: John J. Contreni, ‘Carolingian Biblical Studies’, in his Carolingian Learning, Masters and Manuscripts (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1992), Chapter 5; Contreni, ‘The Carolingian renaissance: education and literary culture’, and David Ganz, ‘Theology and the organization of thought’, and idem, ‘Book production in the Carolingian empire’, in NCMH II, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: CUP, 1995), 709–57, 758–85, and 786–808; and David Luscombe, ‘Thought and Learning’, in NCMH IV (i), eds David Luscombe and Jonathan Riley-Smith (Cambridge: CUP, 2004), 461–98. The contributions to Richard Marsden and E. Ann Matter, eds, The New Cambridge History of the Bible. Volume 2. From 600–1450 (Cambridge: CUP, 2011) covering the period 600–1200, make an excellent starting-point. See also Susan Boynton and Diane J. Riley, The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages: Production, Reception and Performance in Western Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). Eyal Poleg, Approaching the Bible in Medieval England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), dealing with later medieval England, offers excellent comparative insights and perspectives. Biblia latina cum glossa ordinaria: Facsimile reprint of the Editio Princeps (Adolph Rusch of Strassburg 1480/1), 4 vols, with an introduction by Karlfried Froehlich and Margaret T. Gibson (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992); E. Ann Matter, ‘The Church Fathers and the Glossa ordinaria’, in Irena Backus, ed., The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West (Leiden: Brill, 1997), vol. 1, 83–111; Leslie Smith, The Glossa Ordinaria. The Making of a Medieval Bible Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2009). See Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998). For Gregory, see Robert A. Markus, Gregory the Great and his World (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), esp. chapter 2; for Bede, see Joyce Hill, Bede and the Benedictine Reform, The Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow Church, 1998).

168 5

Notes to pages 4–8 See Julia Barrow, ‘The ideas and application of reform’, in The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. III, 600-1100, eds Julia M. H. Smith and Thomas F. X. Noble (Cambridge: CUP, 2008), 345–62.

Twelfth-Century Notions of the Canon of the Bible See Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford and New York: OUP, 1987, repr. 1988), 240. The bull Cantate Domino that contains the list was edited and translated in Decrees of the Ecumenical Council, I, ed. Norman P. Tanner (London and Washington, DC: Sheed and Ward and Georgetown University Press, 1990), 567–83. Lee Martin McDonald, The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007), 209–10, omits the Council of Florence from his discussion and skips from late antiquity straight to the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century. For a study of the early history of the Christian canon, see Hans von Campenhausen, Die Entstehung der christlichen Bibel (Tübingen: Mohr, 1968). 2 Metzger, The Canon, 239. 3 For the reception of the Epistle to the Laodiceans, see Metzger, The Canon, 239; and Neutestamentliche Apokryphen in deutscher Übersetzung, II, ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher, 5th edn (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1989), 41–2; for Baruch, see The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, I, ed. Robert H. Charles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), 579–80. See Heinrich Denzinger and Adolf Schönmetzer, eds, Enchiridion symbolorum 4 definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum (Freiburg: Herder, 1963), 71–2 and 74. For a concise summary of the development of the canon in the West, see Metzger, The Canon, 143–64. For the famous Muratorian Canon, an 85-line introduction to the New Testament from the late second century, see Metzger, The Canon, 91–201 and esp. 194. Schneemelcher, Neutestamentliche Apokryphen, 2–3, offers a brief history of the term ‘canon’ and provides an overview of late antique canon lists. 5 McDonald, The Biblical Canon, 209. Rainer Berndt, ‘Gehören die Kirchenväter zur Heiligen Schrift? Zur 6 Kanontheorie des Hugo von St Viktor’, Jahrbuch für Biblische Theologie 3 (1988): Zum Problem des biblischen Kanons, 191–9, at 197, already pointed out that this tripartition follows the order of books in the Hebrew Bible, but not in the Latin Bible. The earlier division of the Hebrew canon into two parts evolved into a tripartition during the formation of the canon in the course of the first and second centuries ce; see Hans Peter Rüger, ‘Das Werden des christlichen 1



Notes to pages 8–10

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Alten Testaments’, Jahrbuch für Biblische Theologie 3 (1988): Zum Problem des biblischen Kanons, 175–89, at 175–6. 7 For Jerome’s remarks on the canon, see Jerome, ‘Prologus in libro Regum’, in Biblia sacra iuxta Latinam vulgatam versionem ad codicum fidem iussu Pii PP. XII, 18 vols (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1926–95), V, 3–11, at 3–9. See esp. Isidore of Seville, Liber numerorum qui in sanctis scripturis occurrunt, 8 VII, n. 35, PL, 83, cols 179–200, at col. 179B: ‘Non est superfluum numerorum causas in Scripturis sanctis attendere. Habent enim quamdam scientiae doctrinam, plurimaque mystica sacramenta.’ 9 See Jerome, ‘Prologus Hieronymi in libris Salomonis’, in Biblia sacra, XI, 3–5, at 5: ‘Iudith et Tobi et Macchabeorum libros legit quidem Ecclesia, sed inter canonicas scripturas non recipit’; Jerome, ‘Prologus Tobiae’, in Biblia sacra, VIII, 155–6, at 155: ‘Exigitis enim, ut librum chaldeo sermone conscriptum ad latinum stilum traham, librum utique Tobiae, quem Hebrei de catalogo divinarum Scripturarum secantes, his quae Agiografa memorant manciparunt’; and in a similar fashion, Jerome, ‘Prologus Iudith’, in Biblia sacra, VIII, 213–14. 10 Jerome, Epistulae, ed. I. Hilberg and M. Kamptner, 2nd edn, 4 vols (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1996), I, 53.9, pp. 462–3. 11 Augustine, De doctrina christiana, ed. Joseph Martin, in his Opera IV, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962), II, viii, 13, pp. 39–40. 12 In the long run, however, Augustine’s position prevailed; see McDonald, The Biblical Canon, 206. Berndt, ‘Gehören die Kirchenväter zur Heiligen Schrift?’, 199, states that Augustine’s position gained the upper hand in the thirteenth century. 13 Augustine, De doctrina christiana, II, viii, 13, p. 40. 14 Rufinus, Expositio symboli, in his Opera, ed. M. Simonetti (Turnhout: Brepols, 1961), 35, pp. 170–1: ‘Itaque ueteris instrumenti primo omnium Mosi quinque libri sunt traditi … Post hos Iesu Naue et Iudicum simul cum Ruth. Quattuor post haec: Regnorum libri, quos Hebraei duos numerant; Paralipomenon, qui dierum dicitur liber; et Esdrae duo, qui apud illos singuli conputantur; et Esther. Prophetarum uero Esaias Ieremias Ezechihel Danihel; praeterea duodecim prophetarum liber unus. Iob quoque et Psalmi Dauid singuli sunt libri. Solomonis uero tres ecclesiis traditi: Prouerbia Ecclesiastes Cantica Canticorum. In his concluserunt librorum numerum ueteris Testamenti. Noui uero quattuor Euangelia … Actus apostolorum, quos descripsit Lucas. Pauli apostoli epistulae quattuordecim; Petri apostoli epistulae duae; Iacobi fratris Domini et apostoli una; Iudae una; Iohannis tres; Apocalypsis Iohannis. Haec sunt quae patres intra canonem concluserunt et ex quibus fidei nostrae adsertiones constare uoluerunt.’ Cfr. Eusebius, Die Kirchengeschichte. Die lateinische Übersetzung des

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Rufinus, ed. Th. Mommsen, in Eusebius, Werke, II.1 (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1903), 4, 26, p. 389. 15 Cassiodorus, Institutiones, ed. Roger A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937), I, xii, 2, p. 37: ‘Sciendum est plane sanctum Hieronymum ideo diversorum translationes legisse atque correxisse, eo quod auctoritati Hebraicae nequaquam eas perspiceret consonare. Unde factum est ut omnes libros veteris testamenti diligenti cura in Latinum sermonem de Hebreo fonte transfunderet, et ad viginti duarum litterarum modum qui apud Hebreos manet competenter adduceret, per quas omnis sapientia discitur et memoria dictorum in aevum scripta servatur. Huic etiam adiecti sunt novi Testamenti libri viginti septem; qui colliguntur simul quadraginta novem. Cui numero adde omnipotentem et indivisibilem trinitatem, per quam haec facta et propter quam ista praedicta sunt, et quinquagenarius numerus indubitanter efficitur, quia ad instar iubelei anni magna pietate beneficii debita relaxat et pure paenitentium peccata dissolvit’; ibid., I, xiii, 2 (p. 39): ‘Beatus igitur Augustinus secundum praefatos novem codices, quos sancta meditatur Ecclesia, secundo libro de Doctrina Christiana Scripturas divinas LXXI librorum calculo comprehendit; quibus cum sanctae Trinitatis addideris unitatem, fit totius librae competens et gloriosa perfectio’; and ibid., I, xiiii, 2 (p. 40): ‘Tertia vero divisio est inter alias in codice grandiore littera clariore conscripto, qui habet quaterniones nonaginta quinque, in quo septuaginta interpretum translatio veteris testamenti in libris quadraginta quattuor continetur; cui subiuncti sunt novi Testamenti libri viginti sex, fiuntque simul libri septuaginta, in illo palmarum numero fortasse praesagati, quas in mansione Helim invenit populus Hebreorum.’ Cassiodorus’s subsequent remark (ibid.) is illuminating: ‘Unde licet multi Patres, id est sanctus Hilarius, Pictaviensis urbis antistes, et Rufinus presbyter Aquileiensis et Epiphanius episcopus Cypri et synodus Nicaena [et] Calchedonensis non contraria dixerint sed diversa, omnes tamen per divisiones suas libros divinos sacramentis competentibus aptaverunt.’ 16 Ceslas Spicq, Esquisse d’une histoire de l’exégèse latine au moyen âge (Paris: J. Vrin, 1944), 105. Unlike Cassiodorus, some early medieval authors did follow a clear course with regard to the canon; Isidore, for instance, in his In libros veteris ac novi testamenti prooemia, in PL 83, cols 155–80, at cols 157–60, repeated only Augustine’s position and did not mention any other variant. 17 The division of the Tanakh into precisely 22 books is also mentioned in Josephus, Contra Apionem, in Josephus with an English Translation, intr. and trans. Henry St J. Thackeray (London and New York: Heinemann and Harvard University Press, 1926), 162–411, at 178 (I, 8), though without reference to the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. 18 The exact dating and succession of Hugh’s works is difficult to establish, yet



19

20

Notes to pages 10–11

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the chronological sequence Didascalicon, De scripturis et scriptoribus sacris, followed by De sacramentis appears to be certain. For the dating of the Didascalicon, see The Didascalicon of Hugh of St Victor, trans. and intr. Jerome Taylor (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1961), 3 and 158, n. 1. Hugh wrote De sacramentis possibly in the early 1130s; see Roger Baron, Science et sagesse chez Hugues de Saint-Victor (Paris, Lethielleux, 1957), XLIV– XLV. The literature on Hugh is vast; for a succinct summary of his thought, see, e.g., Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 3rd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), 83–106. Hugh of St Victor, De sacramentis Christiane fidei, ed. Rainer Berndt (Münster: Aschendorff, 2008), 34–5: ‘Duo sunt testamenta que omne diuinarum scripturarum corpus concludunt. Vetus scilicet et nouum … Vetus testamentum continet legem et prophetas, agiographos … In lege continentur V volumina … In ordine prophetarum VIII sunt volumina… In ordine agiographorum IX volumina continentur … Qui omnes, id est V VIII IX similiter faciunt XXII quot litteras etiam alphabetum continet Hebraicum’; Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon de studio legendi, ed. C. H. Buttimer (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1939), IV, 2, p. 71: ‘Omnis divina scriptura in duobus testamentis continetur, in veteri videlicet et novo. Utrumque testamentum tribus ordinibus distinguitur. Vetus Testamentum continet legem, prophetas, hagiographos, Novum autem evangelium, apostolos, patres’; ibid., IV, 4, pp. 74–5: ‘Totumque Vetus Testamentum in XXII libros constituit, ut tot libri essent in lege quot habebantur et litterae. Porro quinque litterae duplices apud Hebraeos sunt: caph, mem, nun, phe, sade. Aliter enim per has scribunt principia medietatesque verborum, aliter fines. Unde et quinque libri a plerisque duplices aestimantur: Samuel, malachim, dabrehiamin, Esdras, Ieremias cum cynoth, id est, lamentationibus suis’; Hugh of St Victor, De scripturis et scriptoribus sacris, in PL 175, cols 9–28, at cols 15–17 and esp. 17A: ‘Totumque Vetus Testamentum in viginti duos libros constituit [sc. Esdras], ut tot libri essent in lege, quot habebantur et litterae’; Hugh of St Victor, Sententiae de divinitate, ed. Ambrogio M. Piazzoni, ‘Ugo di San Vittore “auctor” delle Sententiae de divinitate’, Studi medievali 23:2 (1982), 861–955, at 915: ‘Notandum est autem quod utrumque testamentum per tres ordines diuisum est. Vetus enim testamentum diuisum est in legem, in prophetas et hagiographos. Nouum, in euangelia, in apostolos et patres.’ Hugh of St Victor, De sacramentis, 35: ‘Leguntur quidem, sed in corpore textus uel in canone auctoritatis non scribuntur’; see also Hugh of St Victor, De scripturis, col. 15C; Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon, IV, 2, p. 72; Hugh of St Victor, Sententie, 917–18. Cf. e.g. Jerome, ‘Prologus in libris Salomonis’, in Biblia sacra, XI, 3–5, at 5.

172 21

22

23

24

25 26

Notes to page 11 Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon, 83: ‘Quidam historiam Ruth et Lamentationes Ieremiae seorsum per se inter hagiographa computantes, et hos duos praecedentibus xxii addentes, xxiiii veteris legis libros numerant sub figura et numero xxiiii seniorum, qui in Apocalypsi Agnum adorant [cf. Rev. 4, 10].’ Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon, 122: ‘Epistulas Pauli, quae etiam ipso numero designant utriusque testamenti perfectionem se continere.’ Hugh does not go into further detail. Hugh of St Victor, De sacramentis, 35: ‘Iuncti cum superioribus xxiibus ueteris testamenti xxx complent, in quibus corpus diuine pagine consumatur’; Hugh of St Victor, De scripturis, col. 16A: ‘Textus igitur divinarum Scripturarum, quasi totum corpus principaliter triginta libris continetur.’ Hugh of St Victor, De sacramentis, 35: ‘Nouum testamentum continet iiii euangelia apostolos patres’; Hugh of St Victor, De scripturis, col. 15C: ‘His viginti duobus libris Veteris Testamenti, octo libri Novi Testamenti junguntur’; Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon, IV, 2, pp. 71–2: ‘Novum autem [sc. continet] evangelium, apostolos, patres … Primus ordo Novi Testamenti quattuor habet volumina … secundus similiter quattuor: Epistulas Pauli numero quattuordecim sub uno volumine contextas, et canonicas Epistulas, Apocalypsim et Actus apostolorum’; Hugh of St Victor, Sententie, 917: ‘Restat libros noui testamenti enumerare, quod diuisum est in euangelium, in apostolos et patres. Euangelium continet opera quattuor euangelistarum … In libris apostolorum item quattuor continentur, id est epistole Pauli et canonice epistole, apocalypsis et actus apostolorum.’ A comparable, although not identical case can be found in Aimericus’s Ars lectoria. In this didactic treatise from the mid-1080s, the author includes the canon missae among the canonical books, although not as part of the Bible; see Aimericus, Ars lectoria, ed. Harry F. Reijnders, Vivarium 9.2 (1971): 119–37 (part 1); 10.1 (1972): 41–101 (part 2); 10.2 (1972): 124–76 (part 3), at 168–9 (part 3). He defines canonical books as those divinely inspired (ibid.): ‘Libri autentici sunt, quos “canonicos”, hoc est “regulares” vocamus, quos non humano sensu, sed Dei spiritu editos scimus ad illuminandum genus humanum.” I am grateful to Rita Copeland for the reference to Aimericus. Hugh of St Victor, De scripturis, cols 15D–16A; Sententie, 915 and 917; De sacramentis, 35. Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon, IV, 2, p. 72: ‘In tertio ordine primum locum habent Decretalia, quos canones, id est, regulares appellamus, deinde sanctorum patrum et doctorum ecclesiae scripta: Hieronymi, Augustini, Gregorii, Ambrosii, Isidori, Origenis, Bedae, et aliorum multorum orthodoxorum, quae tam infinita sunt, ut numerari non possint. Ex quo profecto apparet quantum in fide Christiana fervorem habuerint, pro cuius assertione tot et tanta opera memoranda posteris reliquerunt. Unde nostra quoque pigritia arguitur, qui



Notes to pages 11–12

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legere non sufficimus quae dictare illi potuerunt. In his autem ordinibus maxime utriusque testamenti apparet convenientia, quod sicut post legem, prophetae, et post prophetas, hagiographi, ita post Evangelium, apostoli et post apostolos, doctores ordine successerunt. Et mira quadam divinae dispensationis ratione actum est, ut cum in singulis plena et perfecta veritas consistat, nulla tamen superflua sit.’ 27 Hugh of St Victor, De sacramentis, 34–5: ‘Scripta patrum in corpore textus non computantur, quia non aliud adiciunt, sed idipsum quod in supradictis continetur explanando et laicius manifestiusque tractando extendunt’; Hugh of St Victor, De scripturis, col. 16A: ‘Haec tamen scripta Patrum in textu divinarum Scripturarum non computantur, quemadmodum in Veteri Testamento, ut diximus, quidam libri sunt qui non scribuntur in canone, et tamen leguntur’; Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon, IV, 2, p. 72: ‘Tam infinita sunt [sc. scripta], ut numerari non possint. Ex quo profecto apparet quantum in fide Christiana fervorem habuerint, pro cuius assertione tot et tanta opera memoranda posteris reliquerunt’; Sententie, 917: ‘Libri autem patrum sub numero non cadunt. Sunt autem patres qui non prioribus scripturis noua addunt, sed qui obscura exponunt, ut est beatus Augustinus, Gregorius, Hieronymus, Beda et alii sancti patres. Et nota quod hi tres ordines nouo testamenti respondent illis tribus ordinibus testamenti ueteris: euangelium legi respondet, apostoli prophetis, patres hagiographis.’ 28 Spicq, Esquisse, 107–8. 29 Rupert of Deutz, Super quaedam capitula regulae Benedicti abbatis, in PL, 170, cols 477–538, at col. 496AB. See Spicq, Esquisse, 108, for further examples. Peter Abelard, on the other hand, drew a clear line between the authority of the Fathers and the authority of the Gospel; see Abelard, Sic et Non, ed. B. B. Boyer and R. McKeon (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1977), prol., 92. 30 Berndt, ‘Gehören die Kirchenväter zur Heiligen Schrift?’, 199. 31 Hugh of St Victor, De scripturis, cols 15C–16B: ‘Sunt praeterea alii quidam libri, ut Sapientia Salomonis, liber Iesu filii Sirach, et liber Judith, et Tobias, et libri Machabaeorum, qui leguntur quidem, sed non scribuntur in canone … In tertio ordine [sc. Novi Testamenti] primum locum habent decretalia, quos canonicos, id est regulares appellamus. Deinde sanctorum Patrum scripta … quae infinita sunt. Haec tamen scripta Patrum in textu divinarum Scripturarum non computantur, quemadmodum in Veteri Testamento, ut diximus, quidam libri sunt qui non scribuntur in canone, et tamen leguntur, ut Sapientia Salomonis et caeteri … In his autem ordinibus, maxime utriusque Testamenti apparet convenientia: quia sicut post legem prophetae, et post prophetas agiographi, ita post Evangelium apostoli, et post apostolos doctores ordine successerunt.

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Et mira quadam divinae dispensationis ratione actum est, ut, cum in singulis Scripturis plena et perfecta veritas consistat, nulla tamen superflua sit.’ 32 Spicq, Esquisse, 108; See Berndt, ‘Gehören die Kirchenväter zur Heiligen Schrift?’, 198. 33 Hugh put forward two different criteria that a book needs to fulfil to be considered a part of Scripture. In his Didascalicon, IV, 1, p. 70, he defines scripturae divinae as writings approved by the Church. In De scripturis, cols 10–11A, on the other hand, he regards divine inspiration as the decisive factor. 34 Berndt, ‘Gehören die Kirchenväter zur Heiligen Schrift?’, 199. 35 Hugh of St Victor, De scripturis, col. 20A: ‘Quaeritur etiam, cur novem tantum dicantur agiographi, id est sancti scriptores, cum hoc nomen conveniat omnibus sacrae Scripturae auctoribus? Ad quod respondendum, quia quod nullam habet specialem proprietatem qua distinguatur a caeteris, commune nomen quasi proprium obtinet, non ex praerogativa, sed potius quasi ex quadam indignitate respectu aliorum; sicut in novem ordinibus angelorum minimus simpliciter obtinet commune nomen, et quaerenti quis sit, respondetur: angelus est, cum etiam principatus et potestates angeli sint.’ 36 Hugh of St Victor, Sententie, 916–17: ‘In hoc loco oritur questio quare inter hagiographos quidam de prophetis sint numerati, ut Iob et David et Daniel, et inter prophetas quidam de historiographis qui tantum res gestas referebant sine predictione futurorum ut liber Iosue et iudicum et regum. Ad quod soluendum uidendum est quod propheta tribus de causis dicitur, uel officio uel gratia uel missione … Cum igitur tribus modis prophetia dicatur, non eorum qui ex gratia tantum, sed eorum qui officio uel missione erant prophete, id est qui communi uoce populi appellabantur prophete, inter prophetias libri computabantur. Aliorum inter hagiographas. Et nota quod hagiographi dicuntur, secundum ethymologiam uocabuli, sancti scriptores uel scribentes de sacris. Vnde fit questio cum secundum hanc interpretationem hoc uocabulum his omnibus conueniat, quare isti magis appellentur hagiographi quam alii. Ad quod dicendum est quod alii aliquam specialem proprietatem habebant, ex qua speciale assumerent sibi uocabulum; hii autem quia nichil singulare habebant, commune uocabulum omnium acceperunt quasi proprium.’ Cfr Hugh of St Victor, De scripturis, col. 19C–20A, and also Hugh of St Victor, De sacramentis, 34–5: ‘Hii prophetici dicuntur eo quod prophetarum sunt etiamsi non omnes prophetie sunt.’ The eight books of prophetae are Joshua, Judges, Samuel (1 and 2 Kgs), Melakhim (3 and 4 Kgs), Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Minor Prophets. This point is not addressed in his Didascalicon. 37 This was already pointed out by Berndt, ‘Gehören die Kirchenväter zur Heiligen Schrift?’, 198. 38 See Constant J. Mews, ‘Between the Schools of Abelard and Saint-Victor in



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the Mid-Twelfth Century: The Witness of Robert of Melun’, in L’école de SaintVictor de Paris. Influence et rayonnement du moyen âge à lépoque moderne, ed. Dominique Poirel (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 121–38, at 121. Mews improves on the biographical information provided by Martin in Oeuvres de Robert de Melun, I, pp. VI, IX, XI, XII. 39 Mews, ‘Between the Schools of Abelard and Saint-Victor’, 122–3 and 137. D. E. Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard. The Influence of Abelard’s Thought in the Early Scholastic Period (Cambridge: CUP, 1969), 290, notes that if he was not a pupil of Abelard, he had definitely heard him lecture. For Robert’s life, see also Raymond M. Martin, ‘L’oeuvre théologique de Robert de Melun’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 15:1 (1914): 456–89, at 457–61. 40 In his partial edition of the Sententie, Martin dates the text to 1152–60; see Oeuvres de Robert de Melun, III.1, p. VI. Since Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard, 281, managed to date Robert’s earlier treatises Quaestiones de divina pagina and Quaestiones de epistolis Pauli to 1157 or some years earlier, this means that the Sententiae were written probably not before 1157. Franz Pelster, ‘Literargeschichtliche Beiträge zu Robert von Melun, Bischof von Hereford (… 1167)’, Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 53 (1929): 564–579, at 578, argues that the work was put together in its final form when Robert was in England and that at least the introduction was written at Oxford after 1158. Mews, ‘Between the Schools of Abelard and Saint-Victor’, 123, offers a slightly earlier dating. A later, shorter redaction of the work was put together by a pupil of Robert’s; see Raymond M. Martin, ‘Un texte intéressant de Robert de Melun’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 28:2 (1932): 313–29, at 313. For the dating, see Martin, ‘L’œuvre’, 485. 41 See Oeuvres de Robert de Melun, I, p. XII; Martin Grabmann, Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode, II, re-print (Darmstadt: Wissentschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1961), II, 326–7; and Mews, ‘Between the Schools of Abelard and Saint-Victor’, 130. 42 Robert of Melun, Sententiae, in Oeuvres de Robert de Melun, ed. Raymond M. Martin, 3 vols, Spicilegium sacrum lovaniense (Louvain: Université catholique de Louvain, 1932–52), III, prefatio, 45: ‘Horum autem tractatuum auctores pauci inveniuntur, sed ex illis tamen duo precipui, qui tam de sacramentis fidei quam de ipsa fide ac caritate ratione inquirenda ac reddenda omnibus qui post illos sacre scripture expositores extiterunt, omnibus omnium iuditio prepollent.’ Translation by Mews, ‘Between the Schools of Abelard and Saint-Victor’, 128–9. 43 See Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard, 284. For Martin’s summary of previous discussion on the identity of the two masters, see Robert of Melun, Sententiae, 45–6 (apparatus). 44 Robert of Melun, Sententiae, prefatio, 48: ‘Eis ergo qui auctores predictorum

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tractatuum viva voce, ut dici solet, suam exponentes sententiam presentes audierunt magis credendum est in eorundem tractatuum expositione, quam illis qui ex scripturis eorum quid senserint opinantur.’ For Robert’s thoughts on sacrae scripturae more broadly, see Robert of Melun, Sententiae, prefatio, III, 19–21. See also Grabmann, Die Geschichte, II, 324, and 323–58 on Robert in general. 45 Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard, 284. 46 Robert of Melun, Sententiae, I, 1, viii (pp. 181–2): ‘Libri vero canonice scripture a diversis diverso modo numerantur, id est veteris testamenti et novi. Beatus enim Augustinus canonicas scripturas veteris testamenti in xliiii libris contineri affirmat, sed novi in xxvii libros distribuit … Alii vero minori numero libros canonice scripture comprehendunt. Nam vetus testamentum non in xliiii libros dividunt, sed in xxii contineri estimant.’ 47 Robert of Melun, Sententie, I, i, xii, p. 191: ‘Novum vero testamentum diversi diverso modo distribuunt. Qui quamvis in numero partium divisionum non sunt diversi, in assignatione tamen ipsarum divisionum multum differunt. Trinam enim divisionem utrique faciunt, sed diverso modo eam contentis adaptant. Nam alii ex illis in has tres partes dividunt: in evvangelia, et in epistolas canonicas, et epistolas Pauli et actus apostolorum et apocalipsim Iohannis. Terciam vero partem scripta patrum continere dicunt, id est Ieronimi et Augustini, et aliorum veteris et novi testamenti expositorum. Alii autem scripta patrum partem novi testamenti nolunt esse. Sed evvangelia que unam partem esse dicunt et canonicas epistolas et epistolas Pauli quas aliam partem iudicant. Terciam vero partem actus apostolorum et apocalipsim Iohannis constituunt. Idcirco autem in his solis libris novum testamentum comprehendi volunt, quoniam in eis nichil est quod corrigi possit aut mutari, aut pro falsitate auferri.’ Cf. Cassiodorus, Institutiones, vii–xi, pp. 27–34. 48 Robert of Melun, Sententiae, I, 1, xii, pp. 191–2): ‘Idcirco autem in his solis libris novum testamentum comprehendi volunt, quoniam in eis nichil est quod corrigi possit aut mutari, aut pro falsitate auferri … Nam non sunt eorum scripta iccirco autentica, quia ab eis composita sunt, sed quia ab Ecclesia confirmata sunt. His itaque de causis hec particio librorum canonicorum novi testamenti convenientior videtur illa quam prius posuimus’; ibid., I, 1, xiii, pp. 196–7: ‘Alie vero sunt scripture quas non recipit ecclesia ex auctoritate eorum qui eas composuerunt, sed ex sola veritate fidei catholice consentiente quam in eis invenit. Et hee sunt que non ex suis auctoribus autentice sunt, sed ex sola confirmatione Ecclesie. Cuiusmodi sunt scripta patrum vetus testamentum et novum exponentium, que nulla ratione inter scripturas veteris testamenti et novi computari debent. Unde patet, illam distinctionem falso factam esse que asserit scripta Patrum, id est Augustini, Ieronimi et aliorum expositorum unam esse



49

50

51

52

Notes to pages 16–17

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partem novi testamenti, eo quod novum exponunt testamentum. Nam eadem ratione et scripta patrum quibus vetus testamentum exponunt partem possent dicere veteris testamenti esse. Quod quia nemo recipit, neque recipere audet nec aliquis recipere debet quod scripta patrum pars sint novi testamenti, quia eis novum exponitur testamenti. Unde sub nomine novi testamenti Evangelia, Epistole canonice, et Epistole Pauli, Apocalipsis et Actus apostolorum solum continentur.’ While the idea may strike a modern reader as odd, it is worth stressing again that Hugh implicitly included the Fathers in the canon, and that Robert certainly understood Hugh in this way. Robert of Melun, Sententiae, I, 1, xii, p. 194: ‘Sunt autem quatuor evvangeliorum libri, quorum doctrina in quatuor virtutibus eam suscipientes consummat et perficit. Quod Legem efficere non posse librorum eius numerus insinuat. Eius namque v sunt libri, quibus populus carnalis et his deditus que ad quinque pertinet sensus erudiebatur.’ The parallel of the Gospels and the four cardinal virtues is also implied in, for instance, Jerome, Epistulae, 64.20, p. 611; Beda Venerabilis, In librum beati patris Tobiae, ed. D. Hurst, in his Opera, II: Opera exegetica, 2B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983), 3–19, at 12; and Isidore of Seville, Liber numerorum, col. 183B; 183D–184A. The parallel of the Pentateuch and the five senses is mentioned, for instance, by Augustine, De diuersis quaestionibus octoginta tribus, ed. A. Mutzenbecher (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975), 1–249, at 120 (LXI.1). Robert of Melun, Sententiae, I, 1, xiii, pp. 194–5: ‘Canonicarum etiam epistolarum doctrine perfectionem numerus earum designat. Sunt namque vii, cuius numeri quanta dignitas sit, in multis Scripture locis invenitur; maxime eo loco quo dona Sancti Spiritus in eo contineri leguntur [cf. Is. XI, 2–3].’ Honorius Augustodunensis established a connection between seven hagiographa and the gifts of the Holy Spirit; see his Expositio in Cantica canticorum, in PL 172, cols 347–496, at col. 350D: ‘Vetus Testamentum partitur in tria; in historiam, prophetiam, agiographiam … Sunt autem agiographiae septem libri qui coaptantur septem donis Spiritus sancti, scilicet Job, David, Parabolae, Ecclesiastes, Cantica, liber Sapientiae, Ecclesiasticus.’ Robert of Melun, Questiones de epistolis Pauli, in Oeuvres de Robert de Melun, II, p. 7: ‘Item [queritur, quare] cum plures epistolas Apostolus scripserit, ut ad Senecam et quosdam alios, xiiii iste ab Ecclesia tantum recipiuntur? Quia in his xiiii perfectio doctrine consistit, id est veteris et novi testamenti. Nam x que ad ecclesias communiter mittuntur, ad Legis decalogum pertinent; quatuor vero que ad personas diriguntur Evangelii demonstrant perfectionem. Ex quo monstratur has Pauli epistolas legalem et evangelicam doctrinam in se habere.’ Robert of Melun, Sententiae, I, i, xiii, p. 195: ‘Perfectionem vero doctrine epistolarum Pauli

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numerus in quo et ipse continentur manifeste designat. Sunt enim xiiii, cuius numeri quanta perfectio sit, alio est explicandum loco.’ 53 Robert of Melun, Sententiae, I, 1, xiii, p. 197: ‘Unde sub nomine novi testamenti Evangelia, Epistole canonice, et Epistole Pauli, Apocalipsis et Actus apostolorum solum continentur. Illud tamen sciendum est, quia illud proprie novum testamentum dicitur, quod Dominus in monte discipulis dedit, ubi eos de viii beatitudinibus instruxit.’ 54 Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard, 297. 55 Martin, ‘L’œuvre’, 486 and 488. 56 Oeuvres de Robert de Melun, III, p. XIII. 57 Robert criticized most of his contemporaries, including the views concerning original sin pronounced by Hugh of St Victor, Abelard and Peter Lombard; see Martin, ‘L’œuvre’, 489. 58 Spicq, Esquisse, 153–5. 59 Spicq, Esquisse, 156. See ibid., 142–59, for his discussion of the canon in the thirteenth century. 60 Christopher Ocker, Biblical Poetics before Humanism and Reformation (Cambridge: CUP, 2002), 27–8. 61 For Hugh, see Ocker, Biblical Poetics, 26; for the notion of the Bible as one coherent work, see also G. R. Evans, The Language and Logic of the Bible. The Road to Reformation (Cambridge: CUP, 1985), 69–70.

The Orator as Exegete: Cassiodorus as a Reader of the Psalms 1

2

The so-called Praefatio Surgentii, which is transmitted among the prefatory material of Arator’s text in many of the manuscripts, explains how the poem was formally presented to Vigilius and deposited in the papal scrinium before the public reading. The text is given in McKinlay’s edition of Arator’s work: Arator, De Actibus apostolorum, ed. Arthur P. McKinlay, CSEL 72 (Vienna: Verlag der ÖAW, 1951), xxviii. For discussion, see Claire Sotinel, ‘Arator, un poète au service de la politique du pape Vigile?’, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome 101 (1989): 805–20 (esp. 805–8). This chapter was written in the context of the SFB ‘Visions of Community’, funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF; project F4202–G18). I would like to thank Jinty Nelson, Damien Kempf and the participants of the ‘Bibles’ workshop at Liverpool and the California Medieval History Seminar at UCLA, as well as Maximilian Diesenberger, Maya Maskarinec, Irene van Renswoude and Graeme Ward for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. Sotinel, ‘Arator’, 816–20; Johannes Schwind, Arator-Studien, Hypomnemata 94



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(Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1990); Roger P. H. Green, Latin Epics of the New Testament. Juvencus, Sedulius, Arator (Oxford: OUP, 2006), 251–350; Richard Hillier, Arator on the Acts of Apostles. A Baptismal Commentary (Oxford: OUP, 1993). 3 Arator, De actibus apostolorum, I.1070–6: ‘His solidata fides, his est tibi, Roma, catenis/ perpetuata salus; harum circumdata nexu/ libera semper eris; quid enim non vincula praestent/ quae tetigit qui cuncta potest absolvere? cuius/ haec invicta manu vel religiosa triumpho/ moenia non ullo penitus quatientur ab hoste./ Claudit iter bellis, qui portam pandit in astris’. Cf. Schwind, AratorStudien, 224–33; Green, Latin Epics, 317–21 and 343–50. 4 Cassiodorus, Expositio psalmorum [EP], ed. Marc Adriaen, CCSL, 97–98 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1958), lxxiii. 3. All citations of the EP refer to this edition; all English translations are taken from Patrick Walsh, Cassiodorus: Explanation of the Psalms, 3 vols, Ancient Christian Writers, 51–3 (New York: Paulist Press, 1990–1). Psalm numbers follow the Vulgate numbering; the Psalm texts and translations are quoted directly from Cassiodorus’s Expositio to ensure correspondence with the text of the commentary. A new edition of the EP by Patricia Stoppacci is in preparation, of which the first volume containing the praefatio has appeared: Cassiodoro: Expositio psalmorum. Tradizione manuscritta, fortuna,edizione critica, vol. 1, ed. Patricia Stoppacci, Edizione Nazionale dei Testi Mediolatini d’Italia 28 (Florence: Edizioni del Galuzzo, 2012). James Halporn,‘Methods of reference in Cassiodorus’, Journal of Library History 5 16 (1981): 71–91, at 73. 6 James O’Donnell, Cassiodorus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), remains the fullest study of Cassiodorus’s life: see ibidem, 13–32, for biographical information; Maïeul Cappuyns, ‘Cassiodore’, in Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, XI (1949), cols 1349–1408; André van de Vyver, ‘Cassiodore et son œuvre’, Speculum 6 (1931): 244–92. Cf. the papers in Sandro Leanza, ed., Flavio Aurelio Magno Cassiodoro: Atti della settimana di studi (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 1986) and idem, ed., Cassiodoro: dalla corte di Ravenna al Vivarium di Squillace (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 1993). For an excellent introduction into Cassiodorus’s work and the scholarly debates associated with it, see Marc Vessey, ‘Introduction’, in Cassiodorus: Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning. On the Soul, trans. James Halporn, Translated Texts for Historians 42 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004), 1–101. 7 Cassiodorus, Variae, ed. Theodor Mommsen, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores antiquissimi 12 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1894); partial Engl. trans. Samuel Barnish, Cassiodorus: Variae, Translated Texts for Historians 12 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1992). 8 O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, 105–7; Samuel Barnish, ‘The work of Cassiodorus after

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his conversion’, Latomus 48 (1989): 157–87, at 164; Angela Amici, ‘Cassiodoro a Constantinopoli: da magister officiorum a religiosus vir’, Vetera Christianorum 42 (2005): 215–31, at 221–4. Cassiodorus is securely attested in Constantinople by 550 through a letter by Pope Vigilius. Some scholars assume that he came to Constantinople only in 546, at which point Vigilius was brought to Constantinople to negotiate an agreement with the emperor about the Three Chapters. 9 On the EP, see above all Reinhard Schlieben, Cassiodors Psalmenexegese: Eine Analyse ihrer Methoden (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1979); a shorter version was pubished as idem, Christliche Theologie und Philologie in der Spätantike: Die schulwissenschaftlichen Methoden der Psalmenexegese Cassiodors, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1974); O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, 131–76; Aldo Ceresa Gastaldo, ‘Contenuto e metodo dell’Expositio psalmorum di Cassiodoro’, Vetera Christianorum 5 (1968): 61–71; Manlio Simonetti, ‘L’Expositio psalmorum di Cassiodoro’, in Cassiodorus: Rivista di studi sulla tarda antichità, 4 (1998), 125–39. From a philological perspective, see Ulrike Hahner, Cassiodors Psalmenkommentar: Sprachliche Untersuchung, Münchener Beiträge zur Mediävistik und Renaissance–Forschung 13 (München: ArbeoGes., 1973); Mauro Agosto, Impiego e definizione di tropi e schemi retorici nell’Expositio psalmorum di Cassiodoro (Montella (Avellino): Accademia Vivarium Novum, 2003); on the Christology of the work: Paulo DeSimone, Cassiodoro e l’Expositio psalmorum: una lettura cristologica dei Salmi (Cosenza: Ed. Progetto, 2000). 10 O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, 134–6 and 168–72. I agree with O’Donnell that Vigilius’s condemnation of the Three Chapters in his Iudicatum of 548 cannot serve as a strict terminus ante quem. See further van de Vyver, ‘Cassiodore’, 271–5; cf. also Schlieben, Cassiodors Psalmenexegese, 4–10, together with the remarks in Vessey, ‘Introduction’, 35, n. 110. 11 On the different recensions, see van de Vyver, ‘Cassiodore’, 271–3; James Halporn, ‘Cassiodorus’ citations from the Cantica canticorum and the composition of the Expositio in psalmos’, Revue bénédictine 99 (1985): 169–84; idem, ‘Methods of reference in Cassiodorus’. Patricia Stoppacci, in her recent edition of the preface, distinguishes between at least two distinct phases of revision in Vivarium, ‘Introduzione’, 183–207. Cf. eadem, ‘Stadi redazionali nella tradizione manoscritta dell’Expositio psalmorum di Cassiodoro. Modalità di transmissione e diffusione delle opere cassiodoree’, Studi medievali ser. 3, 50 (2009): 499–559. Cassiodorus seems to have kept a working exemplar of the EP, to which he continued to add notes and corrections. Cf. also James Halporn, ‘The editing of patristic texts: The case of Cassiodorus’, Revue des études augustiniennes 30 (1984): 107–26.



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EP, pr.: ‘Repulsis aliquando in Rauennati urbe sollicitudinibus dignitatum et curis saecularibus noxio sapore conditis, cum psalterii caelestis animarum mella gustassem, id quod solent desiderantes efficere, auidus me perscrutator immersi, ut dicta salutaria suauiter imbiberem post amarissimas actiones.’ 13 On the notion of a decisive break between Cassiodorus’s two careers, the political and the religious, see Vessey, ‘Introduction’, 16–18, who speaks of a ‘split biography’. Cf. the remarks by Averil Cameron, ‘Cassiodorus deflated’, Journal of Roman Studies 71 (1981): 183–6. It is interesting to note that Arator expressed similar sentiments in his prefatory letter to Pope Vigilius: Arator, Ep. ad Vigilium, lines 9–10: ‘Ecclesiam subeo dimissa naufragus aula/Perfida mundani desero uela freti.’ Cf. Hillier, Arator, 6, who notes that the ‘sacred and the secular Arator might just as well be separate persons, so little do we know about the path which led the poet to Rome’. 14 See Barnish, ‘Work of Cassiodorus’, 158–66; Amici, ‘Cassiodoro a Constantinopoli’, 221–31; Agosto, Impiego e definizione, 18–21. Cf. the much debated article by Arnaldo Momigliano, ‘Cassiodorus and the Italian culture of his time’, in idem, Studies in Historiography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966), 181–210, with reference to Cassiodorus’s lost Gothic history. 15 Cappuyns, ‘Cassiodore’, 1370; O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, 134; Barnish, ‘Work of Cassiodorus’, 178–9. Patricia Stoppacci, ‘Le dediche nelle opere di Cassiodoro. Il “pater apostolicus” dell’ “Expositio psalmorum”’, Filologia mediolatina 17 (2010): 11–39, at 21–7 and 35–7, has recently reopened the debate by suggesting that Vigilius’s successor Pelagius is the more likely dedicatee, thereby taking up an argument by Halporn, ‘Cassiodorus’ citations’, 172–4. As she points out, the deliberate ambiguity of Cassiodorus’s formulation may point to the text’s multifunctionality and its adaptation for changing audiences. 16 Schwind, Arator-Studien, 212–24; Green, Latin Epics, 313–16. 17 O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, 170, characterizes the EP as a ‘tract’ on the Three Chapters Controversy; cf. below, pp. 39–40. 18 O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, 158. See further Schlieben, Cassiodorus Psalmenexegese, 189–236; Agosto, Impiego e definizioni; Franz Weissengruber, ‘L’educazione profana nell’Expositio psalmorum di Cassiodoro’, in Sandro Leanza, ed., Cassiodoro: dalla corte di Ravenna al Vivarium di Squillace (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 1993), 61–72; Simonetti, ‘L’expositio psalmorum’, 128–30. On rhetoric specifically, see below, pp. 23–5 (n. 35). 19 Agosto, Impiego e definizione, 24–7; Fabio Troncarelli, Vivarium. I Libri, il destino, Instrumenta Patristica 33 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), 14–15 and 35–8; idem, ‘L’ordo generis Cassiodororum e il programma pedagogico delle Institutiones’, Revue des études augustiniennes 35 (1989): 129–34; Barnish, ‘Work of Cassiodorus’; Amici, ‘Cassiodoro a Constantinopoli’, 230–1; Giuseppe Aricò, 12

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Notes to pages 22–3

‘Cassiodoro e la cultura latina’, in Sandro Leanza, ed., Flavio Aurelio Magno Cassiodoro (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 1986), 154–78, at 158–9. 20 On the intellectual horizon of the aristocratic elite and its synthesis between Christian and classical education in sixth-century Italy, see Charles Pietri, ‘Aristocratie et societé cléricale dans l’Italie chrétienne au temps d’Odoacre et de Théoderic’, in János Harmatta, ed., Proceedings of the VIIth Congress of the International Federation of the Societies of Classical Studies, vol. 2 (Budapest: Akad. Kiadó, 1984), 231–49; cf. Massimiliano Vitiello, ‘“Nourished at the Breast of Rome”: The queens of Ostrogothic Italy and the education of the Roman elite’, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 149 (2006): 398–412. 21 Troncarelli, Vivarium, 12–21. For overviews of the complicated history of the text and its modern interpretations, see Patricia Stoppacci and Paolo Gatti, ‘Cassiodorus Senator’, in Paolo Chiesa and Lucia Castaldi, eds, La Trasmissione dei testi latini del Medioevo/Mediaeval Latin Texts and Their Transmission, 4 vols, Millenio Medievale 94 (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2012), IV, 81–146, at 114–29; Vessey, ‘Introduction’, 39–42. Of course, the version in two books, where the textbook on the liberal arts was combined with a treatise on the study of Christian texts, continued to serve this purpose. 22 Ann Astell, ‘Cassiodorus’ commentary on the psalms as an ars rhetorica’, Rhetorica 17:1 (1999): 37–75, at 68. 23 Andrea Giardina, Cassiodoro politico (Roma: ‘L’Erma’ di Bretschneider, 2006), 31–9; Jean-Louis Jouanaud, ‘Pour qui Cassiodore a-t-il publié les “Variae”?’, in Teoderico il Grande e i Goti d’Italia. Atti del XIII Congresso internazionale di studi dull’Alto Medioevo, Milano 2–6 novembre 1992, 2 vols (Spoleto: Centro di Studio, 1993), II, 721–42; Stéphane Gioanni, ‘La langue de “pourpre” et la rhétorique administrative dans les royaumes ostrogothique, bourgonde et franc (VIe–VIIIe siècles)’, in François Bougard, Régine Le Jan and Rosamond McKitterick, eds, La culture du haut Moyen Âge, une question d’élites?, Collection Haut Moyen Âge (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 13–38. Contrast the rather impatient remarks on the rhetorical style of the Variae by O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, 100; cf. also Andrew Gillett, ‘The purpose of Cassiodorus’ Variae’, in Alexander C. Murray, ed., After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History. Essays presented to Walter Goffart (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 37–50. 24 See Andrea Giardina, Cassiodoro politico, 25–46; idem, ‘Cassiodoro politico e il progetto delle Variae’, in Teoderico il Grande e i Goti d’Italia: Atti del XIII Congresso internazionale di studi sull’alto medioevo (Spoleto: Centro di Studio, 1993), 45–76; Christina Kakridi, Cassiodors Variae. Literatur und Politik im ostgotischen Italien, Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 223 (Munich: Saur, 2005), esp. 157–291. Samuel Barnish, ‘Roman responses to an unstable world: Cassiodorus’ Variae in context’, in Centre for Mediaeval Studies, Leonard Boyle, ed., Vivarium



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in Context (Vicenza: Pozzo, 2008), 7–22, stresses eastern political discourse (and its religious dimensions) as a backdrop for the Variae. Most recently, Shane Bjornlie, Politics and Tradition between Rome, Ravenna and Constantinople. A Study of Cassiodorus and the Variae, 527–554 (Cambridge: CUP, 2013), esp. 26–34 and 306–28, has suggested that the Variae were published in Constantinople after 540, and that the model of conduct of a bureaucratic elite presented there was intended to convince not only an Italian audience, but also the eastern bureaucracy at the court of Justinian. For the importance of Latin as a literary and administrative language in sixth-century Constantinople, see Averil Cameron, ‘Old and New Rome. Roman studies in sixth-century Constantinople’, in Philip Rousseau and Emmanuel Papoutsakis, eds, Transformations of Late Antiquity. Essays for Peter Brown (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 15–36. In this context, John Lydus’s famous plea for the preservation of Latin as the backdrop of Roman tradition is worth mentioning (see ibid., 21). See further Fergus Millar, ‘Linguistic co-existence in Constantinople: Greek and Latin (and Syriac) in the Acts of the Synod of 536 C.E’, Journal of Roman Studies 99 (2009): 92–103; Brian Croke, Count Marcellinus and his Chronicle (Oxford: OUP, 2001), 82–93. 25 On this, see Giardina, Cassiodoro politico, 33–6 and 44–5. 26 Cassiodorus, Variae, vi. v. 1–3. Cf. also xi. pr. 5, on the quaestor Felix (‘qui necessitates publicas eleganter implendo ad favorabilem opinionem suo potius labore perduxit’); viii, xiii and xiv (on the eloquentia of the quaestor Ambrose). 27 As Cassiodorus put it when describing the office of the quaestor, he ‘is known to admonish the people with their princes’ mouth that they should love the right, hate the wrong, praise good men without ceasing, and zealously denounce the evil’ (Variae, vi. v. 3). Cf. the general preface: Variae, pr. 10 (‘recorrigis mores prauos regi auctoritate … timorem legibus reddis’); viii. xiv. 2 (the quaestor as custos legum and promissor conservanda iustitiae). 28 Cassiodorus, Variae, ix. xxv. 3: ‘Gloriosius quippe dominis praeconia sunt quam tributa, quia stipendium et tyranno penditur, praedicatio autem nisi bono principi non debetur.’ 29 See Elaine Fantham, The Roman World of Cicero’s De Oratore (Oxford: OUP, 2004), esp. 209–36 and 305–19; Joy Conolly, The State of Speech: Rhetoric and Political Thought in Ancient Rome (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); Vicenzio Scarano Ussani, ‘Romanus sapiens et civilis vir. Quintilian’s political theory of the orator acting for the benefit of imperial power’, in Olga Tellegen-Couperus, ed., Quintilian and the Law. The Art of Persuasion in Law and Politics (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003), 287–301. For Christian adaptations of (Ciceronian) rhetoric and its relevance for manufacturing consent, see Robert Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of

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Augustine (Cambridge: CUP, 2004); Christian Tornau, Zwischen Rhetorik und Philosophie. Augustins Argumentationstechnik in De civitate Dei und ihr bildungsgeschichtlicher Hintergrund (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2006). 30 Cassiodorus, Variae, xi. pr. 8; cf. vi. v. 3 (citing De Oratore); Cassiodorus, Institutiones, ed. Roger A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937), ii. pr. 4 and ii. ii. 10 (Cicero as ‘Latinae eloquentiae lumen eximium’). While the chapter on rhetoric in the Institutiones concentrates on technical matters and forensic argumentation, Cassiodorus’s definition of rhetoric as ‘bene dicendi scientia in civilis quaestionibus’ (Institutiones, ii. ii.1), following Quintilian and Fortunatianus, also highlighted the political and juridical aspects of rhetorical practice. On Cassiodorus’s reception of classical (Ciceronian) rhetoric, see Vessey, ‘Introduction’, 27–30 and 71–2; Louis Holtz, ‘Échos de l’enseignement de la rhétorique antique dans les Institutiones de Cassiodore’, Ktema 14 (1989): 301–8; James Halporn, ‘After the schools: Grammar and rhetoric in Cassiodorus’, in Carol Dana Lanham, ed., Latin Grammar and Rhetoric: From Classical Theory to Medieval Practice (London and New York: Continuum, 2002), 48–62; Aricò, ‘Cassiodoro e la cultura latina’, 158–66. 31 Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992); Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire. The Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Robert Kaster, Guardians of Language. The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Irene van Renswoude, The Rhetoric of Free Speech in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought (Cambridge: CUP, forthcoming). 32 Cassiodorus, Variae, ix. xxi. 4: ‘hac [grammatica, GH] non utuntur barbari reges … Arma enim et reliqua gentes habent: sola reperitur eloquentia, quae Romanorum dominis obsecundat’; cf. ix. xxv. 2. 33 Giardina, Cassiodoro politico, 35–9. Cf. Marc Reydellet, La royauté dans la littérature latine de Sidoine Apollinaire à Isidore de Séville, Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 243 (Rome: Diffusion de Boccard, 1981), 207: ‘la rhétorique … transforme la politique en une étique’. 34 Standards that were embodied not least by Cassiodorus himself: see Variae, ix. xxiv and ix. xxv. On the political ideal and moral ethos of the aristocratic bureaucrats as propagated in the Variae, see Kakridi, Cassiodors Variae, 360–73; Reydellet, La royauté, 192–7 and 218–53; Troncarelli, ‘L’ordo generis’, 131–4; Jouanaud, ‘Pour qui Cassiodore a-t-il publié’; cf. Bjornlie, Politics and Tradition, 216–53, as well as 283–305 for a reading of De Anima in this regard. For the Christian and biblical dimension of this ideal, see Samuel Barnish, ‘Sacred texts of the secular: writing, reading and hearing in Cassiodorus’ Variae’, Studia



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patristica 38 (2001): 362–70, who speaks of the ‘homiletic’ quality’ of the Variae. On the classical ideal of the orator as uir bonus dicendi peritus, see Michael Winterbottom, ‘Quintilian and the vir bonus’, Journal of Roman Studies 54 (1964): 90–7; Jacob Wisse, ‘De Oratore: Rhetoric, philosophy, and the making of the ideal orator’, in James M. May, ed., Brill’s Companion to Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 375–400; Fantham, Roman World, 305–26. 35 Astell, ‘Cassiodorus’ commentary’; Schlieben, Psalmenexegese, 40–93, 187–211; Ceresa-Gastaldo, ‘Contenuto e metodo’, 64–5. 36 EP, pr. xv. See Mauro Agosto, ‘Su Cassiodorus In psalm praef.15’, Cassiodorus 5 (1999): 289–301, at 294. 37 Antonio Quacquarelli, ‘L’elocutio di Agostino nelle riflessioni di Cassiodoro’, Augustinianum 25 (1985): 385–403; Agosto, ‘Su Cassiodoro’, 295–8; idem, Impiego e definizione, 29–52; Weissengruber, ‘L’educazione profana’, 64–9. 38 Agosto, Impiego e definizioni, is a detailed study and source analysis of all the figures and tropes in the EP; see also Jean–Marie Courtès, ‘Figures et tropes dans le psautier de Cassiodore’, Revue des études latines 42 (1964): 361–75; Schlieben, Cassiodors Psalmenexegese, 202–5; Antonio Quacquarelli, ‘Riflessioni di Cassiodoro sugli schemi della retorica attraverso i Salmi’, Vetera Christianorum 25 (1988): 67–93. 39 Astell, ‘Cassiodorus’ commentary’, 41–2; Halporn, ‘Methods of reference’. 40 Frances Young, ‘The rhetorical schools and their influence on patristic exegesis’, in Rowan Williams, ed., The Making of Orthodoxy. Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: CUP, 1989), 182–99; Christoph Schäublin, ‘The contribution of rhetoric to Christian hermeneutics’, in Charles Kannengiesser, ed., Handbook of Patristic Exegesis. The Bible in Ancient Christianity (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), 149–63. On the Augustinian background and De Doctrina christiana, see among others the contributions in Duane Arnold and Pamela Bright, eds, De Doctrina Christiana. A Classic of Western Culture (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995); Karla Pollmann, Doctrina christiana. Untersuchungen zu den Anfängen der christlichen Hemeneutik unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Augustinus, De doctrina christiana (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1996); Peter Gemeinhardt, Das lateinische Christentum und die antike pagane Bildung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 337–49; James J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages. A History of Rhetorical Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 47–64; and the classic study by Henri-Irenée Marrou, Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique: avec une Retractatio (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1958), 469–98, 505–40. 41 Schlieben, Cassiodors Psalmenexegese, 40–94. On this exegetical technique, see Marie–Josèphe Rondeau, Les commentaires patristiques du psautier, iiie–ve siècles,

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2 vols, Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 219–20 (Roma: Pontificale Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1982). For Augustine, see Michael Fiedrowicz, Psalmus vox totius Christi: Studien zu Augustinus ‘Enarrationes in Psalmos’ (Freiburg: Herder, 1997). 42 Cassiodorus, however, rejected the opinion that there was more than one author of the Psalms, following Augustine in arguing that David had indeed composed the whole psalter; see EP, pr. ii; Schlieben, Cassiodors Psalmenexegese, 14–16. 43 Cassiodorus, Variae, xi, pr. 6: ‘ut qui decem libris ore regio sum locutus, ex persona propria non haberer incognitus …’. Cf. Vessey, ‘Introduction’, 19. 44 Schlieben, Cassiodors Psalmenexegese, 20–38. 45 Astell, ‘Cassiodorus’ commentary’, 42–62; Schlieben, Cassiodors Psalmenexegese, 205–11; Hahner, Cassiodors Psalmenkommentar, 65–71. On the three types of oratory in classical tradition, see George A. Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, 300 BC–AD 300 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 7–23 and 509–11; Tomás Albaladejo, ‘The Three types of speeches in Quintilian, Book III: Communicative aspects of the political and legal features of rhetorical discourse’, in Olga Tellegen Couperus, ed., Quintilian and the Law. The Art of Persuasion in Law and Politics (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003), 50–8. 46 See, for example, his analysis in EP, vi. div.; EP, xxxi. div.; EP, ci. div. 47 EP, vi. 9; EP, xxxi. 4; EP, lxxiii. 2. 48 EP, lxxxix. tit.: ‘In primis oratio posita est, per quam ira domini suspenditur, uenia procuratur, poena refugitur et praemiorum largitas impetratur, cum domino loquitur, cum iudice fabulatur, praesentem sibi facit quem uidere non praeualet et illum per eam placat, quem suis actibus uehementer exaggerate.’ Cf. Astell, ‘Cassiodorus’ commentary’, 62–3. 49 EP, lxxxix. 13. 50 EP, lxxxix. 16. 51 EP, lxxxix. tit. 52 Astell, ‘Cassiodorus’ commentary’, 68. 53 The series of psalms associated with Asaph comprises Psalms 49 and 72–82. Michael D. Goulder, The Psalms of Asaph and the Pentateuch, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 233 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996); Beat Weber, ‘Der Asaph-Psalter – eine Skizze’, in Beat Huwyler, Hans-Peter Mathys and Beat Weber, eds, Prophetie und Psalmen (Münster: Ugarti, 2001), 117–41. 54 EP, lxxiii. tit.: ‘congregatio quae nunc uocatur ecclesia’, which is the typological counterpart of the populus Israelitarum. Cf. EP, lxxviii. tit.: ‘Asaph uero synagogam significat, quae tamen catholicae conuenire possit ecclesiae’, and EP,



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xlix, tit. for the interpretation of Asaph as an allegory for the Jewish synagogue as well as its Christian continuation. 55 On the psalm, of which the dating and historical reference is controversial, see Michael Emmendörffer, Der ferne Gott. Eine Untersuchung der alttestamentarischen Volksklagelieder (Tübingen: Mohr, 1998), 77–102; Goulder, The Psalms of Asaph, 61–8; Ariane Cordes, Therese Hunsberger and Erich Zöllner, ‘Die Verwüstung des Tempels – eine Krise der Religion? Beobachtungen zum Volksklagepsalm 74 [73] und seiner Rezeption in der Septuaginta und im Midrash Tehillim [73]’, in Johannes Hahn and Christian Ronning, eds, Zerstörungen des Jerusalemer Tempels: Geschehen – Wahrnehmung – Bewältigung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 61–91. 56 Heinz-Martin Döpp, Die Deutung der Zerstörung Jerusalems und des zweiten Tempels im Jahre 70 in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten n. Chr. (Tübingen: Francke, 1998). 57 EP, lxxiii. 1: ‘Introducitur populus Iudaeorum Deus supplicans, ut abuerteret ab Israeliticis quod imminebat exitium’; EP, lxxiii. 2: ‘Intuere sollicite quot modis beneuolentiam Iudicis quaerat, ut oratorum argumenta hinc inuenias fuisse progressa.’ 58 For example, EP 73.9: ‘ut debitas ultiones susceperint merito, in quibus nulla fuit tam multa crimina congrua paenitudo’. 59 Procopius, Wars, iv. ix. 5–10; see Michael McCormick, Eternal Victory. Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge: CUP, 1987), 14–17 and 64–8. In Wars, II. xii. 42, Procopius also reported a different version of the story of the Temple treasure, namely that it had been seized by Alaric during the sack of Rome in 410. 60 EP, lxxiii. 3. 61 EP, lxxiii. 3 (translation slightly modified). 62 See EP, lxxiii. 4–7, for the detailed description of the events and violence done to both the Temple and the remainder of the city. 63 EP, lxxiii. 7. Cf. lxxiii. 1: ‘Merito enim territus quaerebat [Asaph, GH] cur sanctuarium Domini passurum est nefandissimam uastitatem; timens ne, quia permissa est templi uastatio, iudaicus quoque populus funditus interiret.’ 64 EP, lxxiii. 4. 65 EP, lxxiii. 4 and 5–6. This was a stock argument about Roman arrogance, made in a similar way by Augustine, En. in. ps., lxxiii. 8, as cited below in n. 69. 66 Cassiodorus specifically mentions the statues erected in praise of the emperors: EP, lxxiii. 4 and lxxiii. 5–6. 67 EP, lxxiii. 23. 68 See, for example, the description of violence during sieges and the comments on brutality and lack of discipline of armies in Procopius, Wars, ed. and

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trans. Henry B. Dewing, The Loeb Classical Library, 5 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954), v. ix. 22–30 and v. x. 27–33 (siege of Naples by Belisarius); vi. xxi. 39–42 (Milan) and vii. ix. 1–6. By contrast, he underlines the more civilized conquest of Carthage in Wars, iii. xxi. 8–16; vi. xxix. 32–9 (Ravenna); vii. xx. 22–9. See also the descriptions of the siege of Naples and Rome in the Liber pontificalis, Vita Silverii, ed. Louis Duchesne, Le Liber pontificalis, 3 vols (Paris: E. de Boccard, 21955–7), I, pp. 290–5, cc. 3 and 5. The mistreatment of civilians by passing armies was also the topic of legislation issued by the Emperor Justinian, as well as of political treatises: see the anonymous Dialogue on Political Science, trans. Peter N. Bell, in Three Political Voices from the Age of Justinian, Translated Texts for Historians 52 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009), 123–88 (138, n. 54); Codex Iustinianus, Nov. cxxx, ed. Rudolf Schöll and Wilhelm Kroll, Corpus Iuris Civilis, 3 (Berlin: Weidmann 1894, repr. 1988). Cf. Walter Pohl, ‘Perceptions of barbarian violence’, in Harold Drake, ed., Violence in Late Antiquity. Perceptions and Practices (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 15–26. 69 Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, [Enarr. in ps.], ed. Eligius Dekker and Jean Fraipont, 3 vols, CCSL 38–40 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1956), II, Enarr. in ps. lxxiii. For the dating to 411 or 412, see Michael Fiedrowicz and Hildegund Müller, ‘Enarrationes in psalmos’, in Augustinus-Lexikon II, 5–6, ed. Cornelius Maier (Basel: Schwabe, 2001), cols 804–48 (col. 819). On Augustine’s reaction to the sack of Rome, see most recently Therese Fuhrer, ‘Rom als Diskursort der Heterodoxie und Stadt der Apostel und Märtyrer: Zur Semantik von Augustins Rombild-Konstruktionen’, in Henriette Harich-Schwarzbauer and Karla Pollmann, eds, Der Fall Roms und seine Wiederauferstehungen in Antike und Mittelalter, Millennium-Studien 40 (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2013), 53–75; Richard Corradini, ‘Die Ankunft der Zukunft. Babylon, Jerusalem und Rom als Modelle von Aneignung und Entfremdung bei Augustinus’, in Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann, eds, Strategies of Identification. Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 65–142 (91–110), both with bibliography. On Augustine and sacred history, see the classic study by Robert Markus, Saeculum. History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine (Cambridge: CUP, 1970). 70 Augustine made a point of referring to the ‘enemies’ envoked in the psalm generically as reges gentium: Augustine, Enarr. in ps., lxxiii. 6. Only in Enarr. in ps., lxxiii. 8 do we find the adjective romanus; in Enarr. in ps., lxxiii. 3, where Augustine explains the connection between the death of Christ and the fall of Jerusalem, and the Romans appear via the citation of Io xi. 48. For the Romans as instruments in God’s salvific plan, see, e.g. Enarr. in ps., lxxiii. 8: ‘facti sunt instrumentum irati, non in regnum placati’.

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Contrast, for example, EP, lxxiii. 4–7 with Augustine’s treatment of verses 5–7, in which he declared that it was better to pass over these verses, since it is not appropriate to dwell on the punishment of the enemies (Augustine, En. in ps., lxxiii. 9). For background on this psalm, see Johannes Schnocks, ‘“Gott, es kamen Völker in dein Erbe”: Psalm 79 [78] und seine Rezeption in 1 Makk’, in Ulrich Dahmen, ed., Juda und Jerusalem in der Seleukidenzeit. Herrschaft – Widerstand – Identität (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2010), 147–60. Other Latin exegetes (such as Arnobius the Younger or Hilarius of Poitiers) referred the psalm to the Philistine wars or the capture of Jerusalem under the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II, or again to 70 ce. I have discussed aspects of Cassiodorus’s exegesis of Psalm 78 in a previous article: ‘Biblical Israel and the Christian gentes: Social metaphors and the language of identity in Cassiodorus’s Expositio psalmorum’, in Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann, eds, Strategies of Identification. Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 143–208, at 170–4. See the essays collected in Gabriela Signori, ed., Dying for the Faith, Killing for the Faith. Old-Testament Faith-Warriors (1 and 2 Maccabees) in Historical Perspective (Leiden: Brill, 2010). EP, lxxviii. 1; lxxviii. 4: ‘Gloriam illam Ierosolymorum toto orbe mirabilem usque ad opprobrium dicit uenisse uicinorum, ut quanta prius nobilitate resplenduit, tanta postea abominatione sorderet … Contempti uero tunc sunt habiti, quando eos captiuitati traditos uidebant, quibus pridem tot regna cessisse cognouerant.’ Cf. lxxviii. 5, where Mathathias liberates the ciuicus populus from the yoke of servitude and from the imposition of impious sacrifices. Ambrose of Milan, Ep., lxxvi (20), ed. Michaela Zelzer, CSEL 82/3 (Vienna: Verlag der ÖAW, 1982), c. 20: ‘Matutinis horis lectum est, ut meministis fratres, quod summo animi dolore respondemus: Deus, venerunt gentes in haereditatem tuam [Ps lxxviii. 1]. Et re vera venerunt gentes, et plus etiam quam gentes venerunt; venerunt enim Gothi, et diversarum nationum viri: venerunt cum armis, et circumfusi occupaverunt basilicam. Hoc nos ignari tuae altitudinis dolebamus, sed nostra imprudentia aliud opinabatur.’ See the Engl. translation and commentary by Wolfgang Liebeschuetz and Carole Hill, Ambrose of Milan: Political Letters and Speeches, Translated Texts for Historians 43 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005), 124–36 and 160–73. For background, see Neil McLynn, Ambrose of Milan. Church and Court in a Christian Capital (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), 181–96. EP, lxxviii. 7. EP, lxxviii. 1. EP, lxxviii. 6. Cassiodorus makes it very clear that this was Asaph’s strategy

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84

85

Notes to pages 30–1 to arouse God’s indignation against the enemies: ‘He says: Pour out thy wrath, meaning, “discharge your indignation in abundance over your enemy, so that they may be overwhelmed by Your powers as they now oppress us”. He realized that men’s triumph can last only so long as the divine power permits. And when he says: That have not known thee, he is palliating the faults of the Jews; for though many of them had sinned, there were none the less those among them who attended to the Lord’s commands. He says that those wholly ignorant of the Lord’s name are rightly to be attacked, and thus their own inexcusable guilt is lightened by comparison with the greater sin.’ EP, lxxviii. 7: ‘pro gente quae peccauerat, gratissimae patriarchae nomen obiectum est’. Cf. for a similar interpretation EP, lxxiii. 21. EP, lxxviii. 8: ‘Confessione delictorum propitium sibi iudicem reddit, ut qui se per iustitiam uindicare non poterat, per supplicationes necessarias expiaret’; lxxviii. 10: ‘Qui de propriis uiribus desperat, necessarie ad auxilium omnipotentis iudicis currit, ut quod actibus propriis conferri non potest, pietate sancti nominis trinuatur.’ On concessio, see n. 85 below. See below, pp. 36–7. EP, lxxviii. 4. On the notion of biblical eloquence as characterized by greater truthfulness and purity, see Astell, ‘Cassiodorus’ commentary’, 59–61; Agosto, ‘Su Cassiodoro’, 296–8; Weissengruber, ‘L’educazione profana’, 64–9. On the classical problem of the veri simile in patristic thought, see Hans Blumenberg, ‘Kritik und Rezeption antiker Philosphie in der Patristik. Strukturanalysen zu einer Morphologie der Tradition’, Studium Generale 12 (1959): 486–97; Tornau, Zwischen Rhetorik und Philosophie, 20–35. EP, xxxi.7: ‘Venite, oratores, qui negotia humana artificiosa subtilitate tractatis; uidete reum se lacrimis diluentem, audite peccatorem confessionibus absolutum, intellegite sententiam principis non salutem hominis impetere, sed potius peccata damnare. Ista sunt tribunalia, quae nullus redimit, ista sententia quae nihil sub ambiguitate decernit. Tali potius modo causas uestras defendite, qui negando ueritatem cum criminibus consuestis delicta uestra miscere. Conuertite ordinem saecularium iudiciorum, orationem uestram ab epilogis incipite, peruersas flebiliter narrate miserias, correctionem protinus ueraciter intimate, et tunc meremini gaudentes concludere quod flentes feliciter incohastis.’ Cf. Astell, ‘Cassiodorus’ commentary’, 59–61. EP, xxxi. 5. On Cassiodorus’s use of concessio, see Astell, ‘Cassiodorus’ commentary’, 52–62, who at 54 points to the contrast with Cicero in De inventione, where he advised his readers to avoid concessio and deprecatio in court (Cicero, De inventione, ed. Eduard Stroebel (Leipzig: n.p., 1915, repr. XXX,1977), ii. xxxiv. 104).

86 87

88

89 90

91 92 93

94

95 96

97

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See the references in Sean Lafferty, ‘Law and order in the age of Theoderic the Great (c. 493–526)’, Early Medieval Europe 20 (2012): 260–90, at 275 and 285–6. Caroline Humfress, Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity (Oxford: OUP, 2007), 196–215; Michael Maas, ‘Roman history and Christian ideology in Justinianic reform legislation’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 40 (1986): 17–31; idem, Exegesis and Empire in the Early Byzantine Mediterranean. Junillus Africanus and the ‘Instituta regularia divinae legis’ (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), esp. 12–13, 67–75; Tony Honoré, Tribonian (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979), 1–39. Cassiodorus cites Junillus in Institutiones, I.x.1. EP, lxxviii. concl.: ‘Considerandum quoque et alta mente condendum est quod caritatis studio commonemur Ecclesiae Dei bonis laetari et iterum calamitatibus eius uehementer affligi … Quapropter conuenit ut quod unicuique fidelium prouenerit, ad nostros dolores proximitatis studio transferamus, sicut apostolus dicit: Si quid patitur in unum membrum, compatiuntur omnia membra, siue gloridicatur unum membrum, congaudent omnia membra’ (1 Cor. 12.26). EP, lxxiii. 20 and 22. EP, lxxiii. concl.: ‘Cognouistis, auditores egregii, quam suauia sint fidelissimis uiris officia pietatis: quemadmodum nolint proxmios suos tristitiam sustinere, ut de futuris cladibus tantis lacrimis affligantur. Haec est reuera caritatis sancta perfectio praesentare futura sibi pericula, quae proximis formidantur esse uentura’ (trans. slightly modified). See, in particular, Augustine’s concise summary of the issues at stake in the introduction to his sermon: Enarr. in ps., lxxii. 5–6. EP, lxxii. 2: ‘ut paene lapsum se diceret, cui administratio domini irrationabiliter displicebat’; see also lxxii. 3 and 13–14. See the comments in EP, lxxii. 15 (on the verse ‘If I say, “I will speak thus,” behold, I should offend against the generation of Thy children’), where Cassiodorus analyses Asaph’s reflections on what to teach the Israelites. For these messages (sometimes clarified by Cassiodorus), see EP, lxxii. 18–20 (punishment for sinners); lxxii. 25 (spiritual rather than earthly hope) and lxxii. 15 (God’s care and justice). EP, lxxii. 17 (the lex diuina as a guide to knowledge); lxxii. 14 (Christ and his gospel). EP, lxxii. 17: ‘Quod genus orationis dicitur deliberatiuum, quando et partes ponuntur, quae nos dubios redunt et eligitur sententia, quae et utilitati conueniat et decori.’ See Cicero, De inventione, i. v. 7 and ii. lii. 157–8 on utilitas and honestas as criteria in a deliberative speech; cf. Quintilian, Instituta oratoria, ed. Michael Winterbottom, Oxford Classical Texts, 2 vols (Oxford, OUP, 1970), iii. 8. On the classical background for deliberative speech, see Kennedy, Art of Rhetoric,

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100 101 102

103

104 105 106

Notes to pages 33–4 18–21; Fantham, The Roman World, 209–36; Michael C. Alexander, ‘Oratory, rhetoric, and politics in the republic’, in William Dominik and Jon Hall, eds, A Companion to Roman Rhetoric (Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 99–108. EP, lxxii. 13: ‘Hoc genus causae ab oratoribus anceps dicitur, quod maxime in deliberationibus praeuenit, quando dubius est animus quid sequatur.’ Cicero described the causa anceps as a case where honourable and shameful aspects (honestas, turpido) were intermingled (Cicero, De inventione, i. xv. 20: ‘anceps, in quo aut iudicatio dubia est aut causa et honestatis et turpitudinis particeps, ut et benivolentiam pariat et offensionem’). Cassiodorus proceeds to give a definition of causa which links it to the notion of contingency by means of a playful etymology: ‘Causa enim a casu dicta est, quod saepe bona sit, saepe mala.’ He was, however, familiar with Cicero’s definition of causa, which he cited in Institutiones, ii. ii. 8. EP, lxxii. 3: ‘Nam cum peccatores uidentur locupletes, multisque dominari populis et in mundo non esse quod timeant, putantur habere pacem …’ See also lxxii. 20, where Cassiodorus takes up Augustine’s warning that dreams of wealth, honour, marriage or a position of power (imperium desideratum) will turn out empty and vain. EP, lxxii. 9. Cassiodorus warned such people not to think that their secular honours (dignitates) would outlast their human lives. EP, lxxii. 10. The spiritualization is especially clear in Psalm 76, another speech by Asaph, where Cassiodorus defined the genus deliberatiuum in terms of an inner debate which did not concern itself with obtaining temporal benefits: EP, lxxvi. 7 (‘Proprie actus ipse deliberationis exprimitur. Exercemur enim, quando per retractationes innumeras aestuamus et quasi in palestra animae spiritali concertatione fatigamur’); cf. lxxvi. 1. For an elaborate discussion, see Astell, ‘Cassiodorus’ commentary’, 43–53. Cicero defined the honestum as the sum total of things we desire for their own sake; see De inventione, ii. liii. 159. Note that he devoted part of his treatment of the genus deliberativum to a discussion of the four political virtues: Cicero, De inventione, ii. liii. 160–5. Cf. Cicero, De oratore, ed. Augustus S. Wilkins, Oxford Classical Texts (Oxford: OUP, 1902, repr. 1963), ii. 333–40. EP, lxxii. 17: ‘eligitur sententiae quae et utilitati conueniat et decori’. EP, lxxii. 12. EP, lxxii. concl: ‘Deliberauit enim sapienter, elegit eximie … quando utrasque cogitationum partes, uelut iusta libra discernens, aequabili totum moderatione pensauit. Completa est his admonitionibus institutio Christiani, ut nec cogitationibus prauis delinquat, qui se Domino commendare festinat.’



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107 EP, lxxii. 24–5. Cf. below. 108 EP, lxxii. concl.: ‘Praesta, Domine, ne nos talibus inuidere facias, quos tua ueritate condemnas, sed exsecremur quos horres, et amemus certe quos diligis; quia tecum nequeunt habere portionem, nisi qui uoluntates tuas mente deuotissima subsequuntur.’ 109 See above, pp. 39–40. 110 EP, lxxviii. 5 and 9, where the leadership of Mathathias is presented as divinely sent aid for the Israelites, which also helped to purge them of their idolatry. Contrast Augustine, Enarr. in ps., lxxviii. 12: ‘nam quid aliud mererentur peccata nostra, quam debita et digna supplicia’. 111 EP, lxxviii. 13ff., ‘But we, thy people and the sheep of thy flock, will confess thee forever’: ‘In my opinion, he is speaking of the remnants gathered together by the enthusiasm of Mathathias, whose merits enabled them to maintain the law of the Lord. They are truly the Lord’s sheep, for they proclaimed His glory and remained steadfast in faith.’ The righteous part of Israel is then equated with the Christian populus. 112 EP, lxxviii. concl. Cf. above, n. 84. 113 As he observed in EP, lxxix. 7, another psalm of Asaph lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem. 114 See, for example, EP, lxxiii. 8–9 and lxxiii. 18; cf. Moses’ role as an intercessor in EP, lxxxix and EP, cv. 23. On the notion of redistributive justice in early Christian historiography, see Garry W. Trompf, ‘Rufinus and the logic of retribution in post-Eusebian church histories’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 43 (1992): 351–71. 115 EP, lxxii. 15; cf. lxxii. 5: ‘tribulatio siquidem istius saeculi fidelibus uotiua correctio est’. Cassiodorus also developed this theme through the analysis of other biblical speeches delivered by Asaph (EP, lxxx. 14–15) or Moses in Psalm 89 (EP, lxxxix. 15: ‘Tribulationes quas hominibus prouidentia diuina concedit, quam ueraci aestimatione perpenderat, ut delectatum se in eis diceret, per quas humiliandum populum salutariter sentiebat’; cf. lxxxix. 9 and 11). Augustine likewise dwelt on the issue at length with regard to Psalm 89: Enarr. in ps., lxxxix.11 and 13. 116 EP, lxxii. 15: ‘Dicebat enim: Si annuntiauero plebi Deum mortalia non curare, occurere sibi putat praedicationes priores, quas Israelitis ante praedixerat, ut Deum colerent, caeli terraeque Creatorem, qui per suam sapientiam uniuersa disponit, bonis malisque pro suorum actuum qualitate restituens.’ Augustine, by comparison, stressed that God’s justice remains inscrutable and his judgement difficult to discern behind the events of this world, after having reprimanded those who believe in astrology: Augustine, Enarr. in Ps., lxxii. 22: ‘Vere magnus labor, cognoscere quomodo Deus curet res humanas, et bene sit malis, et

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Notes to pages 36–7 laborent boni! Magna vis quaestionis!’ As Cassiodorus stated with regard to another of Asaph’s speeches, he was an example for the ‘truly wise men’ (ueri sapientes), who put their trust in God’s potestas and ordinatio, EP, lxxvi. 2: ‘Quapropter uere sapientes sunt, qui se potestati diuinitatis ordinationique committunt’; lxxvi. 4: ‘qua sapientia cuncta disponat, quali potentia uniuersa contineat.’ EP, lxxii. 18. While Cassiodorus generally followed Augustine in underlining the importance of spiritual rather than temporal rewards, at this point he remarked that sinners, even when prosperous and successful, could never escape the consequences of their inner guilt, and that moreover, ‘even in this world, such people often incur the destruction which they do not even suspect’. Cf. EP, lxxx. 14–15, where he likewise asserted that God ‘opposes our enemies when we dedicate ourselves to Him with humble satisfaction. If we oppose God by evil action, He in turn refrains from refuting our enemies, and He does not lay a protecting hand on those who have drawn away from him with proud struggles.’ See, for example, his discussion of the Israelite defeat against the Philistines after they had captured the Ark of the Covenant, in EP, lxxvii. 62, where Cassiodorus assured his audience that despite the subjugation of the people, those Israelites who were of upright conscience nevertheless enjoyed God’s protection. EP, cxlii. concl.: ‘Sed cum isti singillatim delicta nostra nos deflere commoneant … exstat tamen et illud Niniuitarum efficacissimum supplicationis exemplum, ubi cuncta aetas ingemuit, ubi sensit pecus omne ieiunium; et tantum ualuit afflictio generalis, ut ueritatem potuisset prophetici superare sermonis.’ EP, lxxiii.18: ‘Sic pro culpabilibus rogat, ut eorum semper confiteatur errata. Hoc si Iudaei fecissent mente deuota, potuerant generaliter debita uitare supplicia.’ EP, lxxviii. 10: ‘Vindicatio est enim per quam uis et iniuria iusta retributione defenditur. Sed hic illud uidetur optari, quod ad conuersionem respicit inimici. Nam cum hic in eis temporaliter uindicatur, interitum aeternae damnationis euadunt …’ Cf. also lxxviii. 12. Cassiodorus based his reading of these verses on Augustine, who likewise claims that the intention of the speakers (according to him, Christian martyrs) is to pray for the well-being of their enemies. But there is an interesting difference in that Augustine preserved a sense of the martyrs’ wish for retribution, explaining it by their (rightful) zeal for justice; while this notion is absent from Cassiodorus’s text, who instead reinterprets the verse entirely in terms of conversion and love for one’s enemies. See Augustine, Enarr. in ps. lxxviii. 9, 14 and 16. EP, lxxiii. 3.



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123 For a particularly telling example, see EP, xliii. 6, where Cassiodorus disarmed the psalm’s vehement call for the destruction of the enemies not only by referring this violent conflict to the struggles of Christian martyrs rather than Christian armies, but also by reminding his readers of the Augustinian notion that there existed a fundamental difference between the Old and the New Testament with regard to God’s physical intervention on behalf of his people. See below, p. 00 (n. 137). 124 EP, cxxxvii. 8 (on ‘Domine, retribues pro me, misericordia tua in aeternum’): ‘Perfecta nimis et qualem fundere monemur oratio est, causam suam Domino commendare, qui nouit unicuique digna rependere. Sed ut hoc non iracunde dictum, quod deprecationi uidetur esse contrarium, potuisses accipere, sequitur “in misericordia tua aeternum”, quam facias et illis qui nos persequuntur immaniter; ut sicut nos pro tuo nomine uidentur affligere, ita et illi confessionis munere cruciari debeant ad salutem.’ The context for this verse is the reinterpretation, in the commentary, of the conflict scenario in the psalm text as a battle between Christian martyrs and persecutors. 125 EP, cxxxvii. concl.: ‘Intendamus quali nos praedicatione populus sanctus imbuerit, quanto instinctu pietatis orauerit. Nam ut omnem nobis contra inimicos zelum cordis excluderet, ipsos rogauit sibi fieri socios, quos habere uidebatur aduersos. Sequamur sententiam piam, amemus potius affligentes. Non debemus inimicos aestimare qui prosunt; nam si aequo animo perferantur, frequenter nobis talia conferunt, qualia dulcissimi amici praestare non possunt. Isti enim saepe nos a uirtute blandiendo deducunt; illi uero in eadem affligendo constituunt. Quapropter ama patientiam et plus inuenis in inimico quod diligas.’ 126 EP, cxxxvii. concl. 127 In this context, we may note that the populus also specifically exhorted kings (reges terrae) to righteous belief. As Cassiodorus remarked, although kings should be pious and moderate men, many reges gentium were ‘either subject to brute vices or marred by debased religious practice’ (EP, cxxxvii. 4). It is tempting to assume that he had in mind heretical rulers of his own day, although he does not say so explictly. 128 See Mischa Meier, Das andere Zeitalter Justinians. Kontingenzerfahrung und Kontingenzbewältigung im 6. Jahrhundert n. Chr. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004). 129 Meier, Das andere Zeitalter, 101–14, 137–70. See, e.g. Nov. Iust. xxx. xi. 2; CJ i. xxvii. 1. 1 and 6–7; Nov. Iust. xxxvi, pr. and Nov. Iust. xxxvii, pr., as well as the famous Const. Tanta, cc. 6 and 23 and Const. Deo Auctore, pr. Cf. Maas, ‘Roman history and Christian ideology’, 25–7; Patrick Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 485–554 (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), 140–7.

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130 On this, see Heinz Hoffmann, ‘Corippus as a patristic author?’, Vigiliae Christianae 43 (1989): 361–77. 131 E.g. Corippus, Iohannis, ed. James Diggle and F. R. D. Goodyear (Cambridge: CUP, 1970), iv. 273–84: ‘tu gentes et bella domas, tu conteris arma/impia, tu nostris solitus succurrere rebus … sub nostris pedibus Maurorum sterne cateruas/ eripe captiuos saeuis a gentibus Afros/ Romanosque tuos solite miseratus alumnos/cerne pius, nostrosque fauens fac gaudia luctus’; viii. 348–53: ‘gentesque superbas/ frange, precor, uirtute tua: dominumque potentem te solum agnoscant populi, dum conteris hostes/et saluas per bellas tuos’; vii. 98f. (‘permitte saepe probari/ipse tuos’). Note v. 522–4, where Corippus alludes to the book of Joshua and the fall of Jericho (Ios x. 12–14): if only God had allowed a similar miracle to occur, that is, if he had lengthened the day of the battle as he had once done, the Moorish gentes would have been completely wiped out (‘ille dies cunctis supremus gentibus esset/ si mora praecipitem tenuisset prospera solem/ fecit ut ante semel’). 132 Cf. Averil Cameron, Procopius and the Sixth Century (London: Duckworth, 1985), 113–19; Dariusz Brodka, Die Geschichtsphilosophie in der spätantiken Historiographie. Studien zu Prokopios von Kaisareia, Agathias von Myrina und Theophylaktos Simokattes (Frankfurt/Main: P. Lang, 2004), 14–61; Michael Whitby, ‘Religious views of Procopius and Agathias’, in Dariusz Brodka and Michal Stachura, eds, Continuity and Change. Studies in Late Antique Historiography (Krakau: Jagiellonian University Press, 2007), 73–93. 133 E.g. Procopius, Bella, v. x. 30–3; vii. viii. 12–19; vii. xxi. 4–11; viii. 30. 134 Procopius, Bella, ii. x. 4–5; vii. xiii. 15–18; vii. xxv. 4–5; viii. xxxii. 28–30. The matter has been debated in recent years not least with regard to Procopius’s religious affiliations; see Anthony Kaldellis, Procopius of Caesarea: Tyranny, History and Philosophy at the End of Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), with the comments by Whitby, ‘Religious views’, 73–82. 135 Junillus Africanus, Instituta regularia divinae legis, ed. and trans. Michael Maas, in Exegesis and Empire, 118–235. See ii. 7 and ii. 13 on biblical examples for divine punishment and protection, merit and retribution. 136 For example, commenting on Psalm 43 (Ps. 43.3–4: ‘Thy hand destroyed the Gentiles (gentes), and thou plantedst them: thou didst afflict the people, and cast them out / For they got not the possession of the land by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them. But by thy right hand and thy arm, and the light of thy countenance, because thou wast pleased with them’), he reinforced the strong image of a divinely sanctioned conquest of the land: God had driven out the indigenous peoples, to set up the Israelites in their place. Cassiodorus even took up the language of implanting and growth to describe the prosperous



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relationship that tied Israel to the land (EP, xliii. 3–4). On the other hand, when translating their deliverance to the gentes into a Christian setting, Cassiodorus used some keywords highly charged with political significance in sixth-century Italy: the chosen people loses liberty (libertas) and possessions (patrimonia) to the hostile gentes (EP, xliii. 12); a Christian people (populus) is afflicted by ‘foreigners’ (alienigeni) who lack the right faith, being immersed in ‘worldly superstitions’ (EP, xliii. 13). EP, lxxiii. 20: ‘In illo enim [i.e, the Old Covenant] pollicitationes temporales sunt, ut fuit terra repromissionis et inimicorum subiectio. Talia enim rudi populo debuit concedere, ut ad spiritalia intrepidus potuisset subinde festinare. In nouo autem testamento promittitur imperturbabilis uita, regnum cuius non erit finis, beatitudo perpetua, et Domini contemplatio gloriosa.’ In EP, xliii. 10, Cassiodorus contrasts the experience of Israelites with that of Christian martyrs: ‘Nunc autem Deus non egreditur in uirtutibus martyrum, quando eos tribulationibus subdit, et diuersis passionibus tradit. Tunc enim egrediebatur in uirtutibus Hebraeorum, quando sine labore prostrati sunt, qui se contra electum populum erigere tentauerunt. Quod ad consolationem sancti populi pertinere non dubium est; ne quis patres suos felicissimos grauiter ferret, cum ipse Domini permissionibus affligatur.’ For Augustine’s formulation of the problem, see Enarr. in psalmos, lxxiii. 2–3 and 23; xliii. 5–6 and 10. See Dragoş Mirşanu, ‘The imperial policy of otherness: Justinian and the Arianism of barbarians as a motive for the recovery of the West’, Ephimerides Theologicae Lovanienses 84 (2008): 477–98, for a survey of the evidence. For Vandal Africa, see Andrew Merrills and Richard Miles, The Vandals (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 239–50. Cf. Cassiodorus, Variae, xi. xiii. 5, where the personified Roma addresses Justinian in a letter written in the name of the senate: ‘quid enim pro me nitaris amplius agere, cuius religio, quae tua est, cognoscitur sic florere? … Nam si Lybia meruit per te recipere libertatem, crudele est me amittere quam semper visa sum possidere.’ Anonymus Valesianus, ed. Ingemar König, Aus der Zeit Theoderichs des Großen. Einleitung, Übersetzung und Edition einer anonymen Quelle (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997), c. 20; Liber pontificalis, Vita Iohannis, ed. Duchesne, I, 275–8, c. 6. See Andreas Goltz, Barbar – König – Tyrann. Das Bild Theoderichs in der Überlieferung des 5. bis 9. Jahrhunderts, MilleniumStudien 12 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), 400–25 and 501–21. On homoean Christianity in Ostrogothic Italy, see Thomas S. Brown, ‘The role of Arianism in Ostrogothic Italy: the evidence from Ravenna’, in Samuel Barnish and Frederico Marazzi, eds, The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007), 417–41. Useful introductions to the topic include Richard Price, ‘Introduction’ to

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Notes to pages 39–41 idem (trans.), The Acts of the Council of Constantinople 553, Translated Texts for Historians 51 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009), 1–108; Maas, Exegesis and Empire, 42–64; Celia Chazelle and Catherine Cubitt, eds, The Crisis of the Oikumene. The Three Chapters and the Failed Quest for Unity in the Sixth Century Mediterranean (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007). For discussions of Cassiodorus’s theological positions, see Barnish, ‘Work of Cassiodorus’, 158–65; O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, 166–72; Schlieben, Cassiodors Psalmenkommentar, 175–84; DeSimone, Cassiodoro, 126–47. EP, lxxiii. 12–13. Cf. also EP, lxxix. 16, where Cassiodorus likewise uses Asaph’s plea to affirm Nicene orthodoxy. EP, lxxvi. 7–10. Note the citation of Pope Leo I’s Codex encyclicus; cf. lxxii. 25, where Cassiodorus explains Asaph’s prayer for the coming of the Saviour in carefully chosen words: ‘ut Deus homo ex duabus et in duabus naturis distinctis atque perfectis unus Christus appareat et damnatum lege peccati per gratiam redemptionis absoluat’. On the formula ex duabus et in duabus naturis, see DeSimone, Cassiodoro, 128–32. EP, lxxxi. concl. Against the Nestorians, he brought forward the traditional charge that they divided Christ into two seperate persons, reminding them that this ‘is an error of the same order as believing that there is one intermingled nature, though in the unity of one person’. His polemic against the miaphysites, however, was even more vigorous. After a series of questions challenging their positions, Cassiodorus summed up the flaws of their belief in the one nature of Christ, reminding them of its incongruity with the Council of Chalcedon. Cf. Barnish, ‘Work of Cassiodorus’, 161–3; O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, 170; see also Mario Mazza, ‘La Historia tripartita di Flavio Magno Aurelio Cassiodoro senatore: metodi e scopo’, in Sandro Leanza, ed., Flavio Aurelio Magno Cassiodoro (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 1984), 210–44, at 228–9; Agosto, Impiego e definizione, 18–21. In the preface to the EP, Cassiodorus cited Athanasius of Alexandria’s comments to that effect: EP, pr. xvi: ‘Quicumque psalmi uerba recitat, quasi propria uerba decantat et tamquam a semetipso conscripta unus psallit et non tamquam alio dicente, aut de alio significante sumit et legit; sed tamquam ipse de semetipso loquens, sic huiusmodi uerba profert et qualia sunt quae dicuntur, talia uelut ipse agens, ex semetipso loquens, Deo uidetur offere sermones.’ Cf. Astell, ‘Cassiodorus’ commentary’, 68–9; on Athanasius, see Hermann Josef Sieben, ‘Athanasius über den Psalter: Analyse seines Briefes an Marcellinus’, Theologie und Philosophie 48 (1973): 157–73; Paul R. Kolbet, ‘Athanasius, the psalms, and the reformation of the self ’, Harvard Theological Review 99 (2006): 85–101. As noted by van de Vyver, ‘Cassiodore’, 262, n. 2. See EP, lxxiii. concl. (auditores egregii); lxxxix. concl. (uiri prudentissimi); note the comparison between



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secular orators and the biblical speaker in ci. concl. (‘Isti sapientes, isti diserti, isti reuera gloriosi dicendi sunt oratores, qui talem possessionem uictores accipiunt, de qua inimici aduersitate nullatenus excludantur’) and the address to the secular orators in EP, xxxi. 7. Cf. also lxxvi. 2; lxxxv. tit and cvi. 38. On the penitent psalmist as a rhetorical model, see the comments by Astell, ‘Cassiodorus’ commentary’, 61. 148 Jouanaud, ‘Pour-qui Cassiodore a-t-il publié?’. 149 Cf. the arguments in Barnish, ‘Work of Cassiodorus’, 162 and 178–9; Troncarelli, Vivarium, 9–14; Agosto, Impiego e definizione, 19–21; Stoppacci, ‘Introduzione’, 7–10. 150 Claire Sotinel, ‘The Three Chapters and the transformation of Italy’, in Celia Chazelle and Catherine Cubitt, eds, The Crisis of the Oikumene. The Three Chapters and the Failed Quest for Unity in the Sixth Century Mediterranean (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 85–120 at 88–91. 151 Cassiodorus, Variae, viii. 12; cf. Jouanaud, ‘Pour-qui Cassiodore a-t-il publié?’, 726–8 and see above, p. 00. For lay interest in theological questions, see the examples in Pietri, ‘Aristocratie et societé cléricale’, 239–41. 152 For the circulation of Latin literature and polemic in Constantinople during the reign of Justinian, see Cameron, ‘Old and New Rome’ and cf. above, n. 23. See further Maas, Exegesis and Empire, 8–9, 42–3; Bjornlie, Politics and Tradition, 124–7. On Cassiodorus’s contacts in Constantinople, see Barnish, ‘Work of Cassiodorus’, 158–9; O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, 31–5. 153 Astell, ‘Cassiodorus’ commentary’, 40–1; Agosto, ‘Su Cassiodoro’, 293–301; with a different interpretation: Quacquarelli, ‘L’Elocutio’, 398–403.

Lay Readers of the Bible in the Carolingian Ninth Century See Michael Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, England 1066–1307, first edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979), 2nd rev. edn (1993); Brian V. Street, Literacy in Theory and Practice (Cambridge: CUP, 1984); Jack Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (Cambridge: CUP, 1986); Rosamond McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge: CUP, 1989), esp. 211–32, 236–70; Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Society (Cambridge: CUP, 1990); Christoph Dartmann, Thomas Scharff and Christoph Friedrich Weber, eds, Zwischen Pragmatik und Performanz. Dimensionen Mittelalterlicher Schriftkultur (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). 2 Einhard, Vita Karoli c. 25, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger, MGH SRG 25 (HannoverLeipzig: Hahn, 1911), 30.

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Johannes Fried, Karl der Grosse (Munich: Beck, 2013), 44–9; see also Fried’s paper cited below, n. 12. 4 The late Ann Freeman acknowledged Wolfram von den Steinen’s path-breaking ‘Karl der Grosse und die Libri Carolini. Die tironischen Randnoten zum Codex Authenticus’, Neues Archiv 49 (1929–30): 207–80, but she herself clinched the argument, ‘Introduction’, 71–3, and ‘Further Studies’, Speculum 46 (1971): 597–612, repr. as Ch. V in her Theodulf of Orléans: Charlemagne’s Spokesman against the Second Council of Nicaea (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), convincing (most recently) Thomas F. X. Noble, Images, Iconoclasm and the Carolingians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 166, and Fried, Karl der Grosse, 29–30, and for the context, 445–54. 5 Freeman, ‘Introduction’, 71. Opus Caroli I, 19, p. 194, see Freeman, ‘Further studies’, 609. 6 7 Elisabeth Dahlhaus-Berg, Nova Antiquitas et Antiqua Novitas. Typologische Exegese und isidorianisches Gschichtsbild bei Theodulf von Orléans (Cologne: Böhlau, 1975), 36–8, 76–91, 190–6. Opus Caroli II, 17, p. 267; see Freeman, ‘Further Studies’, 600, 601, 610. 8 9 Dahlhaus-Berg, Nova Antiquitas, remains to my mind the best book on Theodulf ’s exegesis and his thinking in general. 10 Hans Liebeschütz, ‘Wesen und Grenzen des karolingischen Rationalismus’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 33 (1950): 17–45; cf. the ‘homespun train of reasoning’ apparent in what John Marenbon, From the Circle of Alcuin to the School of Auxerre (Cambridge: CUP, 1981), 60, 168–9, thought a ‘sermon’ written by Alcuin’s student Candidus, but only intended ‘for advanced students’, and ibid., 65, for Agobard’s defence against another Alcuin-student, Fridugis, of the ‘rusticity’ of biblical style. 11 Einhard, Vita Karoli c. 25, p. 30. 12 Fried, ‘Karl der Große, die Artes liberales, und die karolingische Renaissance’, in Paul L. Butzer, Max Kerner and Walter Oberschelp, eds, Karl der Grosse und sein Nachwirken. 1200 Jahre Kultur und Wissenschaft in Europa (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 25–43. 13 Thomas F. X. Noble, ‘Secular sanctity: forging an ethos for the Carolingian nobility’, in Patrick Wormald and Janet L. Nelson, eds, Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World (Cambridge: CUP, 2007), 8–36, in a wide-ranging and important discussion, esp. at 10, 12, 28, signals lay Bible-reading. See further and fundamentally, McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word; also Nelson, ‘Literacy in Carolingian Government’, in McKitterick, ed., The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge: CUP, 1990), 258–96, and the contributions of Warren C. Brown, Matthew Innes, Hans Hummer and Marios Costambeys in 3



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Brown, Costambeys, Innes and Adam J. Kosto, eds, Documentary Culture and the Laity in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge: CUP, 2013). David Ganz, ‘Some Carolingian questions from Charlemagne’s days [in Paris BNF Latin 4629, ff. 15v–18v]’, in Paul Fouracre and David Ganz, eds, Frankland. The Franks and the World of the Early Middle Ages. Essays in Honour of Dame Jinty Nelson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), 90–100, esp. 100, citing Donald A. Bullough, ‘Charlemagne’s court library revisited’, Early Medieval Europe 12 (2003): 339–63, at 358, ‘Jejune though they are, and not without a sense of humour, they can be seen as constituting an early stage in the development of … the dicta so remarkably studied by John Marenbon’ (see n. 10, above). Ganz, ‘Some Carolingian questions’, 100, persuasively suggests that ‘we have here a trace of the conversations of the court’, but 99, wonders at the ‘strangeness’ of this text’s presence in a collection of legal texts; see Hubert Mordek, Bibliotheca Capitularium regum Francorum manuscripta, MGH Hilfsmittel (Munich: MGH, 1995), 502–7. See also Marenbon, From the Circle of Alcuin, 53, 55, hovering between admiration for the efforts of participants and horror at their enthusiasm ‘that so outweighs discretion’, their ‘crudeness’ and their ‘lack of sophistication’, and Marenbon’s comments, 65, on misunderstanding between Fridugis and Agobard c. 830 implying that the rusticitas of biblical style had the potential to bridge the gap between scholar and students. F. Stephen Halliwell, ‘The Uses of Laughter in Greek Culture’, Classical Quarterly 41 (1991): 278–96; cf. David Ganz, ‘Humour as History in Notker’s Gesta Karoli’, in Edward B. King, Jacqueline B. Schaefer and William B. Wadley, eds, Monks, Nuns and Friars in Medieval Society, Sewanee Medieval Studies 4 (Sewanee, TN: University of the South, 1989), 171–83. Ganz, ‘Some Carolingian questions’, 98, 100, wisely suggests that the little dialogue in BNF 4629 might reflect lay as well as monastic concerns since ‘the distinction between lay and clerical was a permeable boundary’ (citing Wormald and Nelson, eds, Lay Intellectuals, 4–7), but 97–9 notes how ‘garbled’ and grammatically ‘confused’ was this text. Donald Bullough, ‘Alcuin and lay virtue’, in Laura Gaffuri and Riccardo Quinto, eds, Predicazione e società nel Medioevo: riflessione etica, valori e modelli di comportamento (Padua: Centro Studi Antoniani, 2002), 71–91, at 71. Bullough, ibid., 74 with n. 12, reckoning ‘thirty-five acknowledged quotations from Scripture, sixteen from books of the Pentateuch, three from other parts of the Old Testament, and only nine from the Gospels’, using the edition of Alfred Boretius, in MGH Capitularia regum Francorum I (Hannover: Hahn, 1883), no. 22, pp. 58–62, but see now Hubert Mordek, Klaus Zechiel-Eckes and

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Notes to page 46 Michael Glatthaar, eds, Admonitio generalis Karls des Großen, MGH, Fontes iuris Germanici antiqui XVI (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013), 248, listing 20 citations and 11 ‘echoes’ from the Old Testament, including 14 citations and six ‘echoes’ from the Pentateuch, and from the Gospels (coincidentally?) 14 citations and six ‘echoes’; see also Bullough, Alcuin. Achievement and Reputation (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 71–91. Admonitio generalis, preface, ed. Mordek et al., 180, with comment in ‘Einleitung’, 26. Admonitio, esp. preface, l. 38; c. 32, l. 140; c. 60, l. 217; c. 65, l. 272; c. 68, l. 295; c. 80, ll. 393–9. See Thomas M. Buck, Admonitio und Praedicatio. Zur religiösen Dimension von Kapitularien und kapitulariennahen Texten (Freiburg and New York: P. Lang, 1997), esp. 67–139; Mayke de Jong, ‘Charlemagne’s church’, in Joanna Story, ed., Charlemagne. Empire and Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 103–35, esp. 114–16; for vernacular sermons in rustica Romana lingua aut Thiotisca as commended by the assembled bishops at the Council of Tours in 813, c. 17, ed. Alfred Werminghoff, MGH Concilia aevi Karolini II, I, p. 288, see Roger Wright, Late Latin and Early Romance (Liverpool: Francis Cairns, 1982), 104–44, esp. 118–22; Maximilian Diesenberger, Predigt und Politik im frühmittelalterlichen Bayern (Vienna: University of Vienna, 2014), esp. chapter 4.6. Ep. 69, ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH Epp. KA II (Berlin: Weidemann, 1895), 112–13. Bullough, ‘Alcuin and lay virtue’, in Gaffuri and Quinto, eds, Predicazione e società nel Medioevo, 71–91, at 75; and Bullough, Alcuin. Achievement and Reputation, 371 with n. 124, convincingly argues that the dux was Gerold, appointed governor of recently-acquired Bavaria (788), and the letter’s date was ‘c. 791’. Unfortunately Gerold’s wife’s identity remains unknown: Michael Borgolte, Die Grafen Alemanniens in merowingischer und karolingischer Zeit (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1986), 122–6, esp. 124. The couple were childless: Walahfrid, Visio Wettini, ed. Ernst Dümmler, Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini II (Berlin: Weidmann,1884), 329, l. 816, explaining Gerold’s exceptional generosity to the abbey of Reichenau. ‘Florum fructus’, Alcuin, Ep. 69, p. 113; see Bullough, ‘Alcuin and lay virtue’, 76 with nn. 17, 18, and 86, n. 59. Bullough, ‘Alcuin and lay virtue’, 74. Alcuin’s preponderant role has now been definitively established by Mordek et al., Admonitio generalis, ‘Einleitung’, 47–55. For ‘at least a nod in the direction of St Paul’ in the conclusion of the De virtutibus et vitiis (with heavy redeployment of Alcuin’s own De rhetorica et virtutibus), see Bullough, ‘Alcuin and lay virtue’, 89–90. Mary Alberi, ‘“The sword which you Hold in your Hand”: Alcuin’s Exegesis of the Two Swords and the Lay Miles Christi’, in Celia Chazelle and Burton van



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Name Edwards, eds, The Study of the Bible in the Carolingian Era (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 117–31. Alcuin does not cite (here or elsewhere) 2 Tim. 2.3, ‘Labora sicut bonus miles Christi Jesu’, perhaps because v. 4, ‘Nemo militans Deo implicat se negotiis saecularibus’, stressed too explicitly a separation between the service of God and the service of man. The epistle was of course believed to have been addressed by St Paul to a bishop. Ep. 136, p. 205. See Nelson, ‘The Native Tradition, 4: Alcuin’, in Pluscarden Benedictines (Elgin: Pluscarden Abbey, 2005), 34–40, written in ignorance of Alberi, ‘“The Sword”’. Alberi’s fine paper anticipated some of my own findings, but was focused on a specific, difficult problem of biblical exegesis, and showed how Alcuin resolved it. The sword of vengeance was to be sheathed: the sword of the Word of God was to be wielded viriliter – in manly fashion – just as Christ’s disciples had had to wield it against the wiles of the Devil, following Mt. 28.19, ‘Ite! Go forth and teach all peoples.’ In this letter, Dümmler identified 47 scriptural citations, including Ecclesiastes 3.1, but otherwise nearly all from the New Testament. The citations did not (as observed in the preceding note) include 2 Tim. 2.3. Alcuin, Ep. 132, pp. 198–9. On this letter, Donald Bullough wrote, Alcuin, 36 with n. 78: ‘it has in my view nothing to do with Alcuin, although a case can be made for its connection with Fridugis, or his circle at Tours, a generation later’. The re-dating of the two manuscripts containing Ep. 132 to the eleventh century does not, of course, in itself impugn the attribution to Alcuin, and Mordek, Bibliotheca Capitularium, 557–9, 805–7, does not appear to have rejected that attribution. Aware as I am of the unwisdom of rejecting Bullough’s view on such a matter, I have nevertheless decided to risk it. Perhaps, in the end, if the text were to be connected with Fridugis rather than Alcuin, my argument here would not be too greatly affected. Edward Peters, ‘Vox populi. vox Dei’, in Edward B. King and Susan J. Ridyard, eds, Law in Medieval Life and Thought, Sewanee Medieval Studies 5 (Sewanee, TN: University of the South, 1990), 91–120, at 93–103. Cf. for laymen apparently au fait with Bible reading in the 870s, Rachel Stone, ‘The invention of a theology of abduction’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 60 (2009): 433–48; see below, p. 54. Notwithstanding the question-mark placed by Mary Garrison, ‘The Franks as the New Israel? Education for an Identity from Pippin to Charlemagne’, in Yitzhak Hen and Matthew Innes, eds, The Uses of the Past in the early Middle Ages (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), 114–16, esp. 118–23, and her then timely call for precision combined with criticism of ‘a tendency to overemphasize’ earlier against later evidence for expressions of Frankish identity, it may be time now, in the pendulum-swing way of academic debate, to re-emphasize the

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Notes to pages 48–50 complementarity, indeed inseparability, of king/court-centred ideology and lay self-perceptions of chosen-ness as populus and gens. Bullough, ‘Alcuin and lay virtue’, 81, writes that ‘Incidental remarks in [Alcuin]’s correspondence reveal a dismissive and contemptuous attitude to countrydwellers, rustici.’ But it is hard to see particular harshness in the evidence of Alcuin’s approach to property management as recorded in the judicial proceedings Bullough cites here (cf. Nelson, ‘Dispute settlement in Carolingian West Francia’, in Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre, eds, The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge: CUP, 1986), 45–64, repr. Nelson, The Frankish World 750–900 (London: Hambledon, 1996), 51–74, at 54–7), and perhaps Epp. 245, p. 394, and 246, p. 398, reveal a more sympathetic attitude to unprivileged lay-folk, and Ep. 249, p. 403, an at least ambivalent one. See Rob Meens, ‘Sanctuary, penance, and dispute settlement under Charlemagne: the conflict between Alcuin and Theodulf of Orléans over a sinful cleric’, Speculum 82 (2007): 277–300, and Nelson, ‘Charlemagne and the bishops’ (forthcoming). Rudolf Schieffer, ‘Karl der Große und die Einsetzung der Bischöfe im Frankenreich’, Deutsches Archiv 63 (2007): 451–67, at 459, 461. For an analogy between canonical consent in the makings and unmakings of kings and bishops, see Peters, ‘“Vox populi”’, esp. 95. Ep. 40, ed. Karl Hampe, MGH Epp. V (Hannover: Hahn, 1898–9), 129–30; Ep. 53, p. 136; Ep. 57, 137–8, trans. Paul Edward Dutton, Charlemagne’s Courtier. The Complete Einhard (Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 1998), no. 61, pp. 160–1, no. 64, p. 162 and no. 30, p. 143 (but not mentioning the reference to Mt. 11.29). See Celia Chazelle, The Crucified God in the Carolingian Era (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), 122–8. Above, p. 47; and Henry Mayr-Harting, ‘Charlemagne’s religion’, in Peter Godman, Jörg Jarnut and Peter Johanek, eds, Am Vorabend des Kaiserkrönung (Berlin: Akademie, 2002), 113–24. MGH Epp. V, Epp. Karol. Aevi III, Epp. Variorum no. 27, ed. Ernst Dümmler, 343–5; cf. Nelson, ‘The search for peace in a time of war: the Carolingian Bruderkrieg, 840–43’, in Johannes Fried, ed., Träger und Instrumentariens des Friedens im hohen und späten Mittelalter (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1996), 87–114, at 102–4. That Adalard was the fidelis was suggested by Dümmler, Geschichte des ostfränkischen Reiches, 2nd edn (Leipzig: n.p., 1887), I, 181, 184, n. 2. For high-born women as Bible-readers, see McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word, 225–6. See the new and suggestive work of Dana M. Polanichka and Alex Cilley, ‘The very personal history of Nithard: family and honour in the Carolingian world’, Early Medieval Europe 22 (2014): 171–200, esp. 184–95. The title Histories (or



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Four Books of Histories) is modern. For older historiography, see Nelson, ‘Public Histories and private history in the work of Nithard’, Speculum 60 (1985): 251–93, repr. Nelson, Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London: Hambledon, 1986), 195–37, and Stuart Airlie, ‘The world, the text, and the Carolingian: royal, aristocratic and masculine identities in Nithard’s Histories’, in Wormald and Nelson, eds, Lay Intellectuals, 51–76. Philippe Lauer’s edition and translation, Nithard. Histoire des fils de Louis le Pieux, Les Classiques de l’histoire au moyen âge 7 (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1926), has recently been revised with a new Introduction by Sophie Glansdorff (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2012), and my citations below are from this welcome revision. 39 Nithard, Histoire, I, 7, pp. 36–7, 38–9. 40 Nithard, Histoire IV, 7, pp. 156–7, citing Hos. 14.10; Ezek. 33.20; Acts 13.10; 2 Sam. 15.23; Prov. 5.21. 41 Peter Godman, Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance (London: Duckworth, 1985), 48–9, and for an edition and translation of the poem, 262–4. 42 Godman, Poetry, 49, 263, notes that Paulinus of Aquileia quoted the same verse in his lament for the slain Duke Eric of Friuli, but doesn’t comment on those over whom David grieved. 43 For Dhuoda’s mention of Judas Maccabaeus, see Liber Manualis, ed. as Manuel pour mon fils, with introduction and notes by Pierre Riché, with French trans. by Bernard de Vregille and Claude Mondésert, Sources chrétiennes 225 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1975), VIII, 16, p. 322; and cf. Hrabanus Maurus’s letter to Louis the German, dedicating to him his Commentary on Maccabees, MGM Epp. V, no. 35, ed. Dümmler, 469–70; and praise for Count Robert, killed by Danes at Brissarthe (dép. Maine-et-Loire), as a new Maccabaeus in Annales Fuldenses, ed. Friedrich Kurze, MGH SRG 7 (Hannover: Hahn, 1905), s.a. 867, recte 866, p. 66. See also Jean Dunbabin, ‘The Maccabees as Exemplars in the tenth and eleventh centuries’, in Kathleen Walsh and Diana Wood, eds, The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 31–41, and Hagen Keller, ‘Machabaeorum pugnae. Zum Stellenwert eines biblischen Vorbilds in Widukinds Deutung der ottonischen Königsherrschaft’, in Hagen Keller and Nikolaus Staubach, eds, Iconologia sacra. Festschrift für Karl Hauck (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1994), 417–37. 44 Godman, Poetry, 264, notes the citations and echoes of Jer. 20.14, 3.31, and Job 3.4-6. 45 Dhuoda, Manuel pour mon fils, ed. Riché; Dhuoda, Handbook for her Warrior Son. Liber Manualis, ed. and trans. Marcelle Thiébaux (Cambridge: CUP, 1998); Handbook for William, trans. Carol Neel (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991). See further Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: CUP, 1984), 36–54, with nn. 290–3; Régine Le Jan, ‘Dhuoda

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ou l’opportunité du discours féminin’, in Cristina La Rocca, ed., Agire da donna. Modelli e pratiche di rappresentazione (secoli VI – X) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 109–28, and idem, ‘The multiple identities of Dhuoda’, in Richard Corradini, Matthew B. Gillis, Rosamond McKitterick and Irene van Renswoude, eds, Ego Trouble: Authors and Their Identities in the Early Middle Ages (Vienna: University of Vienna, 2010), Denkschriften. Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Philosophische-Historische Klasse, 385, 211–20; Nelson, ‘Kingship and Empire’, in James H. Burns, ed., The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought (Cambridge: CUP, 1988), 211–51, at 221–2; idem, ‘Dhuoda’, in Wormald and Nelson, eds, Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World (Cambridge: CUP, 2007), 106–20; idem, ‘Dhuoda on Dreams’, in Conrad Leyser and Lesley Smith, eds, Motherhood, Religion, and Society in Medieval Europe. Essays presented to Henrietta Leyser (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 41–54; and idem, ‘Dhuoda’s contexts’, in Laurent Jégou, Sylvie Joye, Thomas Lienhard and Jens Schneider, eds, Faire lien – aristocratie, réseaux et échanges compétitifs: mélanges en l’honneur de Régine Le Jan (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2015), 453–63. In this chapter, I cite the page numbers in Riché’s edition. 46 Manuel, X, 3, ed. Riché, 346, with trans. 347. 47 The reference is not to David, pace Riché, Manuel, 328, n. 1: ‘Dhuoda fait allusion à David’, echoed by Thiébaux, Dhuoda. Handbook, 272, n. 11, ‘The allusion is to David.’ Dhuoda’s gives Old Testament examples of faithful servants, counsellors and generals in Manuel, III, 2–5, 7–8; IV, 6. 48 Manuel, III, 9, p. 170: ‘In domo etenim magna ut est illa [i.e. the king’s palace], fuitque et erit, si iusserit Pius [deus], collationes conferuntur multae’; X, 3, pp. 346–8: ‘Volo enim et ortor ut cum auxiliante Deo ad perfectum perveneris tempus, domum tuam per legitimos gradus utiliter disponas … et in re publica cuncta ordinabili cursu fidenter perage.’ 49 Riché, Manuel, trans. 349, Thiébaux, Dhuoda, Handbook, 225; Neel, Handbook, 98. 50 Bede, In Regum Librum XXX Quaestiones, ed. David Hurst, Bedae Venerabilis Opera, Pars II, Opera Exegetica, CSEL CXIX (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962), Q. 9, p. 303. See W. Trent Foley, trans., Thirty Questions on the Book of Kings, in Bede: A Biblical Miscellany (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), Q. 9, p. 104: ‘Here is designated at one and the same time the man’s valour in war and his unassuming gentility. For a tender little wood worm’s entire body seems fragile and also very small, yet it eats up the strongest kind of wood by destroying and rotting it. (For it gets the name “worm” by wearing down the wood.) In a similar way, that man seemed friendly to all at home, even quiet and humble, yet showed himself as firm and unstoppable to an enemy when battling for the common good.’ Foley notes in his Introduction to Thirty Questions, Bede, 86,



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that the Latin name for woodworm is teredo, and plausibly suggests that, though Bede ‘never mentions [Isidore], the whole of Bede’s explanation in Q. 9 seems to hinge on the derivation of the word teredo (wood worm) which Bede gets from Isidore’s Etymologies’; see Isidore, Etymologiae 12.5.10, ed. William M. Lindsey, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), vol. 2 [no pagination], ‘teredo a terendo’. Bede was responding to a list of specific questions from Nothelm, and, as Foley points out, 85, ‘Bede is largely commenting on passages for which there has been no previous commentary.’ 51 On civilitas as a key value in acculturating barbarians, see Peter Heather, ‘The Barbarian in Late Antiquity’, in Richard Miles, ed., Constructing Identities in Late Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1999), 234–58, esp. 236, 250. Foley’s translation, ‘gentility’, is inappropriate. 52 For personal humility and the needs of the res publica or publica utilitas in other texts near-contemporaneous with Dhuoda’s, see Hans Hubert Anton, Fürstenspiegel und Herrscherethos in der Karolingerzeit (Bonn: Ludwig Röhrscheid, 1968), 250–4, 267–81, esp. 279–80; Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘Regnum’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Germanistische Abteilung 104 (1987): 110–89, repr. in his collected papers, Vorstellungsgeschichte (Bochum: Dieter Winkler, 2007), 219–72, esp. 232–3, 261, 265–72; Nelson, ‘Kingship and Empire’, 221–2, 227; and see now Matthew Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 52–81, esp. in the present context, 55–6. 53 III, 8, III, 9, III, 10, IV, 4, Manuel, pp. 166, 170, 174, 178, 216. See Nelson, ‘Peers in the early Middle Ages’, in Pauline Stafford, Janet L. Nelson and Jane Martindale, eds, Law, Laity and Solidarities. Essays in Honour of Susan Reynolds (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 27–46, repr. Nelson, Courts, Elites and Gendered Power in the Early Middle Ages (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), Chapter VI, esp. 41–2. 54 So, Foley, Bede, 104, n. 4. 55 Hrabanus Maurus, MGH Epp. V, Epp. KA III, no. 31, ed. Dümmler, 455–62, esp. 455: ‘Prius notandum est quod ubi veteris legis praecepta necessaria sunt in testimonia adsumenda, non sunt despicienda, quia unus atque idem auctor veteris et novi testamenti est Deus’; cf. 456–61, for allegorizing readings from Ambrose et al. Rachel Stone kindly pointed me to this letter, on which see Mayke de Jong, ‘Old law and new-found power: Hrabanus Maurus and the Old Testament’, in Jan W. Drijvers and Alasdair A. Macdonald, eds, Centres of Learning: Learning and Location in Pre-Modern Europe and the Near East (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 161–76, at 171, but for a rather different take, stressing the ‘potential for tension’ here, and ‘the possibility of misinterpreting specific Biblical stories’, see the forthcoming paper of Rachel Stone (to whom go my thanks

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for a preview), ‘Beyond David and Solomon. Biblical models for Carolingian laymen’, in Steffen Patzold and Florian Bock, eds, Gott handhaben: Religiöses Wissen im Konflikt um Mythisierung und Rationalisierung (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015). On Carolingian treatments of incest, see now Karl Ubl, Inzestverbot und Gesetzgebung. Die Konstruktion eines Verbrechens (300–1100) (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), esp. 374–80. 56 Rachel Stone, ‘The Invention of a Theology of Abduction: Hincmar of Rheims on Raptus’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 60 (2009): 433–48; idem, Morality and Masculinity in the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge: CUP, 2012), esp. 287–9, and see also Index s.v. ‘Biblical models’. 57 Stone, ‘The Invention’, 442–3, 445, citing De coercendo c. 16, PL 125, col. 1030, and for the way landlords could exploit the priests of their proprietary churches, see Agobard of Lyons, Ep. 5, MGH Epp. KA III, ed. Dümmler (Berlin: n.p., 1898–9), 203. 58 Stone, ‘The Invention’, 442–3. 59 Ibid., 444. 60 Ibid., 445, and 446 citing Jonas of Orleans, De institutione laicali II, 3, PL 106, cols. 172–3. 61 See the reference in the first footnote of the present chapter. 62 Nelson, ‘Dhuoda on Dreams’. 63 Nelson, ‘Peers’, 38, and idem, ‘Why are there so many different accounts of Charlemagne’s imperial coronation?’, in Nelson, Courts, Elites, chapter XII, 16; Stone, Morality, 176, 205, 208. 64 Diesenberger, Predigt und Politik, Chapter 3, drawing on the exceptionally rich local charter material from Bavaria in this period. 65 Dhuoda, Manuel, VIII, 1, p. 306.

Jeremiah, Job, Terence and Paschasius Radbertus: Political Rhetoric and Biblical Authority in the Epitaphium Arsenii 1 2

3

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With my thanks to Jinty Nelson for her encouragement and advice. Mayke de Jong, The Penitential State. Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious (814–840) (Cambridge: CUP, 2009); Courtney M. Booker, Past Convictions. The Penance of Louis de Pious and the Decline of the Carolingians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). Mayke de Jong, ‘Exegesis for an empress’, in E. Cohen and M. de Jong, eds, Medieval Transformations: Texts, Power and Gifts in Context (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 69–100. Hrabanus Maurus, De honore parentum, ad Ludovicum I. Pium, ed. E. Dümmler,



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MGH Epp. V, no. 15, pp. 403–15; Mayke de Jong, ‘Hrabanus as mediator: De honore parentum (autumn 834)’, in L. Jégou, S. Joye, Th. Lienhard and J. Schneider, Splendor reginae. Mélanges en l’honneur de Régine Le Jan, Collection Haut Moyen Âge 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 49–57. 5 Paschasius Radbertus, Epitaphium Arsenii, ed. E. Dümmler, Abhandlungen der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Philosophische und historische Klasse 2 (Berlin: Verlag der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1900), cited fortwith as EA; also Migne, PL 120, cols 1557–650, which is Dom Jacques Mabillon’s text. On this text and the rebellions against Louis the Pious, see David Ganz, ‘The Epitaphium Arsenii and opposition to Louis the Pious’, in Peter Godman and Roger Collins, eds, Charlemagne’s Heir. New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814–840) (Oxford: OUP, 1990), 537–50; De Jong, Penitential State, 102–11; Booker, Past Convictions, 42–50. The best treatment of Wala is still Lorenz Weinrich, Wala. Graf, Mönch und Rebell: Die Biographie eines Karolingers, Historische Studien 386 (Lübeck and Hamburg: Matthiesen, 1963). I am in the final stages of a book called Epitaph for an Era. Paschasius Radbertus and his Lament for Wala, (Cambridge: CUP, forthcoming). Most recently by Johannes Fried, Donation of Constantine and Constitutio 6 Constantini. The Misinterpretation of a Fiction and its Original Meaning. With a Contribution by Wolfram Brandes: ‘The Satraps of Constantine’, MillenniumStudien zu Kultur und Geschichte des ersten Jahrtausends n. Chr. 3 (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2007), 99–103. 7 Radbert, Vita Adalhardi, cc. 33–4, Migne PL 120, cols 1527–8. 8 Henri Peltier, Pascase Radbert, abbé de Corbie. Contribution à l’étude de la vie monastique et de la pensée chrétienne aux temps carolingiens (Amiens: L.-H. Duthoit, 1938); Paschasius Radbertus, De partu virginis, CCCM 56C, ed. E. Ann Matter (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985), 9–12; Mayke de Jong, In Samuel’s Image. Child Oblation in the Early Medieval West (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 126–7, 180. Paschasius Radbertus, De corpore et sanguine domini, ed. B. Paulus, CCCM 16 9 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969). 10 Written not long after the Vikings plundered the Seine valley in 845, an event which Radbert described as both deeply shocking and quite recent: ‘[N]ot so long ago,’ he said, ‘no earthly king, nor any inhabitant of this earth, could have imagined that the enemy would invade our Paris (Parisius noster)’; Paschasius Radbertus, Expositio in lamentationes Hieremiae libri quinque, IV, c. 14, ed. Beda Paulus, CCCM 85 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1988), 282, ll. 1218–21. In opting for this date, I follow David Ganz, Corbie in the Carolingian Renaissance. Beihefte der Francia 20 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1990), 31. 11 EA I, c. 15, pp. 43–4 deals with the foundation of Corvey. 12 EA I, c. 11, p. 39; cf. Karl Heinz Krüger, ‘Zur Nachfolgereglung von 826 in den

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Klöstern Corbie und Corvey’, in Norbert Kamp and Joachim Wollasch, eds, Tradition als historische Kraft. Festschrift Karl Hauck (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1982), 181–96. 13 Radbert called himself a senex in his prologue to book 5 of Expositio in Matheo (ed. Beda Paulus, CCCM 56A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1984), 469, ll. 213–15). On Radbert’s biblical commentary, see Ganz, Corbie, 31–3, 82–7. 14 Paschasius Radbertus, Vita Adalhardi, PL 120, cols 1507–82; cf. Chiara Verri, ‘L’arte di ritratto. La descrizione del santo nel Vita Adalhardi di Pascasio Radberto’, in J. Elfassi, C. Lanéry and A.-M. Turcan-Verkerk, eds, Amicorum Societas. Mélanges offerts à François Dolbeau pour son 65e anniversaire, Millennio Medievale 96; Strumenti e Studi 34 (Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Gallazzo, 2013), 635–56. 15 EA II, c. 21, p. 92: Hinc est quod multi eum reprehendere conantur, quia suum in quo professus et electus est, reliquit, et aliud, quasi cupiditate ductus, quolibet pacto preripuit (‘This is what many try to blame him for, that he left his own [monastery] in which he had been professed and elected, and by some kind of bargain snatched up another one, as if driven by cupidity’). 16 De Jong, Penitential State, 108–9. 17 Regesta imperii no. 406 (ed. Irmgard Fees, Regesten Karls des Kahlen); Paschasius Radbertus, De corpore, 8 (prologue). 18 The precise years of Paschasius Radbertus’s birth and death are not known. A birth around 790 would fit his entry into Corbie in 812, as a young adult. Radbert’s last project was a treatise on the Benedictions of the Patriarchs. It had been requested by Marcward, abbot of Prüm (829–53), but was only completed after Marcward’s death, for Radbert dedicated it to Prüm’s new abbot Eigil (853–60). Radbert’s death, therefore, must have occurred some time during Eigil’s abbacy, that is, between 853 and 860. Cf. Ganz, Corbie, 86–7. 19 Paschasius Radbertus, Vita Adalhardi c. 7, PL 120, col. 1539. 20 EA I, c. 15, p. 43. 21 Ganz, ‘The Epitaphium Arsenii’, 543; Peter von Moos, Consolatio. Studien zur mittellateinischen Trostliteratur über den Tod und zum Problem der christlichen Trauer, 4 vols, Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften 3 (Munich: W. Fink, 1971–2), 1, pp. 140–2, and 2, pp. 100–1. Ambrose, De excessu fratris Satyri, ed. Otto Faller, CSEL 73 (Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1955), 207–325. The Vita Adalhardi was also composed as a funeral oration; see on this, and on the rhetorical structure of the Epitaphium, the pertinent comments of Matthew Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 196–208. 22 Ganz, Corbie, 116. 23 Ganz, Corbie, 113, with reference to B. R. Voss, Der Dialog in der frühchristlichen



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Literatur, Studia et testimonia antiqua (Munich: W. Fink, 1970); also Chiara Verri, ‘Il libro primo dell’Epitaphium Arsenii di Pascasio Radberto’, Bulletino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo 103 (2001/2): 33–131. EA II, prologue, 60: Post innumeras intus officii curas, post immensas exterius occupationum causas, post varios rerum negotiorumque eventus et vitae dispendia, post longa huc illucque diversi itineris fatigia et concursus ubique, post indefessas omnium pressuras; tandem divino dispensante judicio, relictis omnibus, quia tibi, Paschasi, reddita est quies et libertas animi, recordari oportet quod omisimus olim, quatenus deinceps aliquando epitaphii Patris formam expleamus, quam commendare litteris coepimus pridem: alioquin esset honestius non inchoasse, quam inchoata non explere (After innumerable cares concerning duty inside the monastery, after tremendous preoccupation with issues in the outside world, after various concerns with material worries and the expenditures of living, after the long weariness of sundry travel, hither and thither, and running about everywhere, after relentless oppression on all fronts, it is at long last, by the disposition of a divine judgement, that to you, Paschasius, having left everything behind (Lk. 5.11; 5.28) has been given back [your] tranquillity and freedom of mind; [now] is the moment to call to mind what we have omitted in the past (olim), so that later, at a given time, we may complete the plan of [our] father’s funeral oration, which we began to write up before. Anyway, it would be more respectable not to have started it, than not to finish what has been started). On these bynames and pseudonyms, see Mayke de Jong, ‘Becoming Jeremiah: Radbert on Wala, himself and others’, in Richard Corradini, Rob Meens, Christina Pössel and Philip Shaw, eds, Ego Trouble: Authors and their Identities in the Early Middle Ages, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 15 (Vienna: University of Vienna Press, 2010), 185–96. Paris, BnF, lat. 13909; cf. Ganz, Corbie, 145. It is possible that the corrector was the author himself; I will try to answer this question elsewhere. EA II, c. 24, p. 97. Cf. Janet L. Nelson, ‘The search for peace in a time of war: The Carolingian Brüderkrieg’, in Johannes Fried, ed., Träger und Instrumentarien des Friedens im hohen und späten Mittelalters, Vorträge und Forschungen vom Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für mittelalterliche Geschichte 43 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1996), 87–114. EA II, c. 7, p. 67. Leningrad, Lat. F v I 11; Walter Jacob and Rudolf Hanslik, Die handschriftliche Überlieferung der sogenannten Historia Tripartita des Epiphanius-Cassiodor, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 54 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1954), 10–11; Ganz, Corbie, 143; Rosamond McKitterick, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge: CUP, 2004), 194, 233–8. The colophon on f. a verso reads: ‘hic codex hero insula

212

Notes to pages 62–5

scriptus fuit iubente patre Adalhardo dum exularet ibi’ (from 814 to 821). On the Historia tripartita in Corbie, see Klaus Zechiel-Eckes, ‘Ein Blick in PseudoIsidors Werkstatt. Studien zum Entstehungsprozess der falschen Dekretalen. Mit einen exemplarischen Editorischen Anhang’, Francia 28:1 (2001): 37–90. 30 De Jong, ‘Becoming Jeremiah’, 190–1. 31 Paschasius Radbertus, De corpore, prologus ad Warinum, ed. Paulus 3: ‘quod Arsenius noster quem nostra nunc nobis saecula Hieremiam alterum tulerunt ab illo, in fidei te mihi commiserit ratione’. 32 EA I, prologue, 19: ‘An ignoras, Severe, quod nostrae hunc infelicissimae vitae saecula Heremiam alterum tulerunt ab illo? Audisti namque et ipse quam saepe, ut recolo, hunc Arsenium fusis lacrymis proclamare: Vae mihi, mater mea, quare genuisti me virum rixae, virum discordiae in universa terra?’ 33 Ibid., c. 2, p. 23 34 Ibid., c. 2, p. 24. 35 EA II, c. 5, p. 66; EA II, c. 8, p. 77; EA c. 15, p. 82. 36 EA II, c. 15, p. 82: ‘Alioquin nullus monachorum maior vel sanctior Johanne, qui ideo decollatus est, nullus acceptior Helia, nullus religiosior Heliseo, seu caeteris sanctis et prophetis, qui viriliter regibus restiterunt, et pro iustitia decertarunt usque ad mortem. Nam Zacharias ideo peremptus, Isaias secatus, Jeremias in lacum demersus: sed iste longe inferior in specu altissima est levatus’ (‘In any case, there was no monk greater and holier than John, who was therefore decapitated, no-one more liked than Elijah, nobody more devoted (religiosor) than Elishah, or than the other saints and prophets who vigorously resisted kings and fought for justice until death followed. For thus Zachary was killed, Isaiah cut in half, and Jeremiah plunged into a cistern, but this much inferior man [i.e. Wala] has been lifted to the highest cave …’). On John the Baptist: EA II, c. 12, p. 70; ibid., c. 13, p. 79. 37 EA II c. 8, p. 77: ‘Sic itaque Jeremias propheta post increpationes, post persecutiones et impulsiones, ad lamenta se convertit, et omnia quae acciderunt pro delictis, amarissime deflevit.’ 38 Ibid., c. 6, p. 67. 39 A phenomenon discussed at greater length by Irene van Renswoude, ‘License to Speak. The Rhetoric of Free Speech in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’ (PhD thesis, Utrecht, 2011; this will appear as a book with CUP). 40 EA II, c. 2, p. 63: ‘Ut sentio, non immerito tu alterum eum Jeremiam dicebas, ob constantiam fidei et frontis duritiam, qui tam audenter Augusto invexit, tanta quae vidimus, ob luxus desidiam, necnon et pessimas regum consuetudines, officii sui negotia, cum esset praeoccupatus vanis rebus, praetermisisse.’ 41 Ibid., c. 5, p. 67 42 Ibid., c. 5, p. 65–6: ‘ Non ignoras, frater, quod is erat iste, quem nec terror



Notes to pages 65–9

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minarum, nec vis rerum, nec spes praesentium, nec metus futurorum, nec promissa facultatum, aut interminata suppliciorum genera, aut ulla auctoritas poterat revocare a charitate Christi a dilectione patriae et populi, ab amore ecclesiarum et fide imperatoris. Propterea igitur talia et quamplura, veluti alter Jeremias, constanter loquebatur.’ See Van Renswoude, ‘Licence to Speak’, 34: ‘Constantia became an important notion in the Christian discourse of free speech. It was one of the terms with which occurrences of parrhesia in the Greek New Testament were translated into Latin.’ 43 Mayke de Jong, ‘“Heed that saying of Terence”. On the use of Terence in Radbert’s Epitaphium Arsenii’, in M. Teeuwen and S. O’Sullivan, eds, Carolingian Scholarship and Martianus Capella: Ninth-century Commentary Traditions on Martianus’s De nuptiis in Context, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 12 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 277–305. 44 Radbertus, Expositio in lamentationes Hieremiae V, prologue, ed. Beda Paulus, CCCM 85, p. 310, ll. 4–7. 45 Beda, Libri II de arte metrica et de schematibus et tropis, I, c. 25, ed. and transl. Calvin B. Kendall, Bibliotheca Germanica, Series Nova 2 (Saarbrücken: AQ-Verlag 1991), 164–6: ‘… Coenon est vel micton in quo poeta ipse loquitur et personę loquentes introducuntur, ut sunt scripta Ilias et Odisia Homeri et Eneidos Virgilii et apud nos storia beati Iob, quamvis hęc in sua lingua non tota poetica, sed partim rhetorico, partim sit metrico vel rhitmico scripta sermone’. I have not followed Kendall’s emendations to the mansucript (Codex Sangallensis 876) for these are superfluous. 46 See De Jong, ‘On the use of Terence’. 47 De Jong, ‘Heed that saying of Terence’, 297–300. 48 EA I, c. 25, p. 54–5. 49 Rosamond McKitterick, ‘Perceptions of justice in Western Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries’, La giustitizia nell’ alto medioevo (secoli ix-xi), vol. 2, Settimane di studio 44 (Spoleto: Centro di Studi, 1997), 1074–102. 50 For the text and my English translation, see the appendix to this chapter. 51 EA I, c. 3, p. 25: ‘ac per hoc omnibus fit illud quod comicus ait: Volo, nolo; noloque, volo, et est singulis infelix nimium ac puerilis vertigo’ (‘and frivolous power swells up everywhere, and through all this, what the comic says, happens: “I will, I won’t; I won’t, I will,” and there is a most unfortunate and childish giddiness in every single person’). 52 EA II, c. 21, pp. 90–3. 53 EA II, c. 18, p. 89; De Jong, Penitential State, 217–20, 224–8. 54 Please see the appendix to this chapter. 55 Relatio episcoporum (833), MGH Capit. II/2, no. 197, pp. 51–5; De Jong, Penitential State, 271–7.

214 56 57 58 59 60

61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

70 71 72 73 74

Notes to pages 70–5 Radbert may have known Cicero’s De officiis as well as Ambrose’s Christian variation on this theme. Job 12.20: ‘commutans labium veracium et doctrinam senum auferens’. EA II, c. 20, p. 91: ‘Commutatum namque erat labium veratium, at ablata doctrina senum.’ The assembly of Compiègne in October 833. Deut 6.15: quoniam Deus aemulator Dominus Deus tuus in medio tui nequando irascatur furor Domini Dei tui contra te et auferat te de superficie terrae … One of many biblical texts with God’s furor. Job 12.16: abundant tabernacula praedonum et audacter provocant Deum cum ipse dederit omnia in manibus eorum. Job 12.13: apud ipsum est sapientia et fortitudo ipse habet consilium et intellegentiam. Job 12.14: si destruxerit nemo est qui aedificet et si incluserit hominem nullus est qui aperiat. Job 12.16: apud ipsum est fortitudo et sapientia ipse novit et decipientem et eum qui decipitur. Blois, 834; defero = to honour (and, to submit to): Niermeyer nr. 1. Job 12.17-18: adducit consiliarios in stultum finem et iudices in stuporem balteum regum dissolvit et praecingit fune renes eorum. Which reflects on Louis’s penance – the cord of the penitential/monastic garb versus the cingulum militiae. Job 12.19: adducit sacerdotes inglorios et optimates subplantat (Douay-Reims: ‘He leadeth away priests without glory, and overthroweth nobles’). Ps. 43.16: tota die confusio mea contra me et ignominia faciei meae cooperuit me (Douay-Reims: ‘All the day long my shame is before me: and the confusion of my face hath covered me’); Isa. 19.28: quandocumque pertransierit tollet vos quoniam mane diluculo pertransibit in die et in nocte et tantummodo sola vexatio intellectum dabit auditui (‘and vexation alone shall make you understand what you hear’). Job. 12.20: commutans labium veracium et doctrinam senum auferens. Job 12.2’: effundit despectionem super principes et eos qui oppressi fuerant relevans. A reference to the fraternal wars of 840–3. Job 12.24: qui inmutat cor principum populi terrae et decipit eos ut frustra incedant per invium. Job. 41.15: cor eius indurabitur quasi lapis et stringetur quasi malleatoris incus; Exod. 4.21: dixitque ei Dominus revertenti in Aegyptum vide ut omnia ostenta quae posui in manu tua facias coram Pharaone ego indurabo cor eius et non dimittet populum.



Notes to pages 75–7

75 76

77

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Job 12.25: palpabunt quasi in tenebris et non in luce et errare eos faciet quasi ebrios. Job 23.13: ipse enim solus est et nemo avertere potest cogitationem eius et anima eius quodcumque voluerit hoc facit (‘ For he is alone, and no man can turn away his thought: and whatsoever his soul hath desired, that hath he done). Literally, ‘of the highest honour’; the implication is that Wala was offered his former position of secundus in imperio.

Biblical Readings for the Night Office in Eleventh-Century Germany: Reconciling Theory and Practice 1

2 3

Stephen J. P. van Dijk, ‘The Bible in Liturgical Use’, in Geoffrey W. H. Lampe, ed., The Cambridge History of the Bible, II: The West from the Fathers to the Reformation (Cambridge: CUP, 1969), 220–52; Pierre-Marie Gy, ‘La Bible dans la Liturgie au Moyen Age’, in Pierre Riché and Guy Lobrichon, eds, Le Moyen Age et la Bible, Bible de tous les Temps 4 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984), 537–54; Joseph Dyer, ‘The Bible in the Medieval Liturgy, c. 600–1300’, in Richard Marsden and E. Ann Matter, eds, The New Cambridge History of the Bible, II: From 600 to 1450 (Cambridge: CUP, 2012), 659–79. Throughout this chapter I use the terms ‘Night Office’ and its modern equivalent ‘Matins’ interchangeably. Otherwise, the capitalized word ‘Office’ (or ‘Divine Office’) refers to the daily round of prayer, whereas ‘office’ is used in relation to specific services. I also use the abbreviation RB for the Regula Benedicti. I wish to thank Tessa Webber and Zachary Guiliano for sharing their own insights into medieval reading practices. Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, trans. Catharine Misrahi, rev. edn (London: Fordham University Press, 1978), 71. On the Bible and the laity, see Chapter 3 in this volume, by Jinty Nelson. On the architectural concessions to lay participation in this period, see Jean Hubert, ‘La Place faite aux Laïcs dans les Églises Monastiques et dans les Cathédrales aux XIe et XIIe Siècles’, in I Laici Nella “Societas Christiana” dei Secoli XI e XII: Atti della Terza Settimana Internazionale di Studio Mendola, 21–27 Agosto 1965, Miscellanea del Centro di Studi Medioevali 5 (Milan: Centreo di Studi, 1968), 470–87. Wider social connections with communities at prayer are discussed in connection with land transactions in Barbara H. Rosenwein, To Be The Neighbour of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny’s Property, 909–1049 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), esp. 202–7; and in relation to child oblation (itself a biblically-derived practice) in Mayke de Jong, In Samuel’s Image: Child Oblation in the Early Medieval West (Leiden: Brill, 1996), esp. 224–7, 267–89.

216 4

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Notes to pages 77–8 RB 9.8: ‘Codices autem legantur in vigiliis divinae auctoritatis, tam veteris testamenti quam novi, sed et expositiones earum, quae a nominatis et orthodoxis catholicis patribus factae sunt.’ Ibid., 11. On the basic shape of the central medieval Office, see John Harper, The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: OUP, 1991); for earlier forms, see Robert F. Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West: The Origins of the Divine Office and its Meaning for Today (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1986). See, among others, S. J. P. van Dijk and J. Hazelden Walker, The Origins of the Modern Roman Liturgy (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1960). Earlier sources of biblical readings for the Office are rare and indicate no consensus: for a small (if incomplete) inventory, see Klaus Gamber, Codices Liturgici Latini Antiquiores, 2 vols, Spicilegii Friburgensis Subsidia 1 (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1968), 2, pp. 589–92. For further background, see Hilaire Marot, ‘La Place des Lectures Bibliques et Patristiques de l’Office Latin’, in Bishop Cassien and Bernard Botte, eds, La Prière des Heures, Lex Orandi 35 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1963), 149–65; Aimé-Georges Martimort, Les Lectures Liturgiques et Leurs Livres, Typologie des Sources du Moyen Age Occidental 64 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992), 67–105. By contrast, there were several different traditions of homiliaries for the Office, on which the classic study is Réginald Grégoire, Homéliaires liturgiques médiévaux: analyse de manuscrits (Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi, 1980). On passionals and legendaries, see Guy Philippart, Les Légendiers Latins et Autres Manuscrits Hagiographiques, Typologie des Sources du Moyen Age Occidental 24–5 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1977). The shorter Office readings, or capitula (short biblical extracts read at the lesser Office hours by the person presiding), were copied more frequently than their Night Office counterparts, and their course began to solidify in the tenth century. For good overviews, see Pierre-Marie Gy, ‘Collectaire, Rituel, Processionnal’, Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 44 (1960): 441–69, and the introduction to The Durham Collectar, ed. Alicia Corrêa, Henry Bradshaw Society 107 (London, 1992). This manner of biblical reading does not concern me here. Statuta sanctarum virginum, Ch. 69: ‘Privatis vero diebus in vigiliis ordine suo libri novi vel veteris testamenti legantur.’ Sancti Caesarii episcopi arelatensis Opera omnia nunc primum in unum collecta, ed. Germain Morin, 2 vols (Bruges: Maretioli, 1937–42), 2, p. 122. St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 11, p. 419: ‘Cantatur autem omnis scriptura sancti canonis ab initio anni usque ad in finem’. Ed. in Les Ordines Romani du Haut Moyen Age, ed. Michel Andrieu, Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense 11, 23–4, 28–9, 5 vols (Leuven, 1931–61), 3, pp. 39–41.



Notes to pages 78–80

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Les Ordines, ed. Andrieu, esp. vols 2 and 3. See Peter Jeffery, ‘The Early Liturgy of Saint Peter’s and The Roman Liturgical Year’, in Rosamond McKitterick, John Osborne, Carol M. Richardson and Joanna Story, eds, Old Saint Peter’s, Rome (Cambridge: CUP, 2013), 157–76. 11 Ernst von Dobschütz, Das Decretum Gelasianum de Libris Recipiendis et non Recipiendis (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1912); the relevant text is edited at 24–8; see also Rosamond McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge: CUP, 1989), 202–4. 12 To give but one example, the ninth-century German volume Stuttgart, Württembergischen Landesbibliothek, HB II 54 divides into two distinct sections: Pauline Epistles (Post-Christmas); and Acts, Canonical Epistles and Revelation (Post-Easter). For further instances, see Bonifatius Fischer, ‘Bibelausgaben des frühen Mittelalters’, in La Bibbia nell’alto Medioevo, Settimane di studio del centro Italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 10 (Spoleto: Centro di Studi, 1963), 519–600, esp. 531; see also Samuel Berger, Histoire de la Vulgate Pendant les Prèmiers Siècles du Moyen Age (Paris: Hachette, 1893), 305–6, 338–9. On liturgical ordering within Beneventan bibles, see Richard Gyug, ‘Early Medieval Bibles, Biblical Books, and Liturgy’, in Susan Boynton and Diane J. Reilly, eds, The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages: Production, Reception, and Performance in Western Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 34–60. 13 Grégoire, Homéliaires liturgiques; see also Grégoire, Les Homéliaires du Moyen Age: Inventaire et Analyse des Manuscrits (Rome: Herder, 1966). On Ælfric’s liturgical tendencies, see Milton McC. Gatch, ‘The Office in late Anglo-Saxon Monasticism’, in Michael Lapidge and Helmut Gneuss, eds, Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies presented to Peter Clemoes on the Occasion of his Sixty-fifth Birthday (Cambridge: CUP, 1985), 341–62, at 356–62. 14 See, for example, Umberto Franca, Le Antifone Bibliche dopo Pentecoste: Studio Codicologico Storico Testuale con Appendice Musicale, Studia Anselmiana 73 (Rome: Editrice Anselmiana, 1977); Brad Maiani, ‘Readings and Responsories: The Eighth-Century Night Office Lectionary and the Responsoria Prolixa’, Journal of Musicology 16 (1998): 254–82; Ruth Steiner, ‘Gregorian Responsories based on texts from the Book of Judith’, in Terence Bailey and Alma Santosuosso, eds, Music in Medieval Europe: Studies in Honour of Bryan Gillingham (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 23–34; Thomas Forrest Kelly, ‘Old-Roman Chant and the Responsories of Noah: New Evidence from Sutri’, Early Music History 26 (2007): 91–120. The relevant chant texts are accessible in Corpus Antiphonalium Officii, ed. René-Jean Hesbert, 6 vols, Rerum Ecclesiasticarum Documenta, Series Maior 7–12 (Rome: Herder, 1963–79); and Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Archivio S. Pietro B 79: Antifonario della Basilica di S. Pietro (Sec. XII), ed.

9 10

218

15

16

17

18 19

20 21

22

23

Notes to pages 80–1 Bonifacio Giacomo Baroffio and Soo Jung Kim, 2 vols (Rome: Edizioni Torre d’Orfeo, 1995). Liber de Ordine Antiphonarii, Chs 71–6, as found in Amalarii Episcopi Opera liturgica omnia, ed. J. M. Hanssens, 3 vols, Studi e testi 138–40 (Vatican: Bibliotheca apostolica vaticana, 1948–50), 3, pp. 100–7. Liber de Ordine Antiphonarii, chs 33, 37, 39, 41–2 as found in Amalarii Episcopi Opera liturgica omnia, ed. Hanssens, 3, pp. 70–7. See also Kelly, ‘Old-Roman Chant’, 116–17. Vita et Regula SS. P. Benedicti, una cum Expositione Regulæ a Hildemaro tradita, III: Expositio Regulae ab Hildemaro Tradita et Nunc Primum Typis Mandata, ed. R. Mittermüller (Regensburg: Puster, 1880). This text actually circulated in at least three distinct versions, on whose probable oral origins, see Klaus Zelzer, ‘Überlegungen zu einer Gesamtedition des frühnachkarolingischen Kommentars zur Regula S. Benedicti aus der Tradition des Hildemar von Corbie’, Revue Bénédictine 91 (1981): 373–82; see also Mayke de Jong, ‘Growing up in a Carolingian Monastery: Magister Hildemar and his Oblates’, Journal of Medieval History 9 (1983): 99–128. Ælfric’s Letter to the Monks of Eynsham, ed. Christopher A. Jones (Cambridge, CUP, 1998), 148–9. Ælfric’s Letter, ed. Jones; Diane J. Reilly, ‘The Cluniac Giant Bible and the Ordo Librorum ad Legendum: A Reassessment of Monastic Bible Reading and Cluniac Customary Instructions’, in Susan Boynton and Isabelle Cochelin, eds, From Dead of Night to End of Day: The Medieval Customs of Cluny, Disciplina monastica 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 163–89. See note 6, page 216. For an inventory of the earliest sources, see Susan Rankin, ‘Beyond the Boundaries of Roman-Frankish Chant: Alcuin’s De Laude Dei and other Early Medieval Sources of Office Chants’, in Michael Scott Cuthbert, Sean Gallagher and Christoph Wolff, eds, City, Chant, and the Topography of Early Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Department of Music, 2013). For a means of comparison, see Corpus Antiphonalium Officii, ed. Hesbert. Pierre Batiffol, Histoire du Bréviaire Romain (Paris: A. Picard, 1893); Suitbert Bäumer, Histoire du Bréviaire, trans. Réginald Biron, 2 vols (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1905); Pierre Salmon, L’Office Divin au Moyen âge: Histoire de la Formation du Bréviaire du IXe au XVIe Siècle, Lex Orandi 27 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1967). For a wider sense of bibles annotated for liturgical use, see Martimort, Les Lectures Liturgiques, 22–6; for a specific example, see Ursula Lenker, ‘The West Saxon Gospels and the Gospel-Lectionary in Anglo-Saxon England: Manuscript Evidence and Liturgical Practice’, Anglo-Saxon England 28: 141–78. For a brief



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25

26 27

28

29

30 31

32

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treatment of biblical singing, see Dyer, ‘The Bible in the Medieval Liturgy’, 672–4. Respectively, Gyug, ‘Early Medieval Bibles’; Raymond Étaix, ‘Le Lectionnaire de l’Office à Cluny’, Recherches Augustiniennes 11 (1976): 91–159, as well as Candida Elvert, ‘Die Nokturnenlesungen Klunys im 10.-12. Jahrhundert’, in Clavis Voluminum CCM VII / 1–3, Corpus Consuetudinum Monasticarum VII.4 (Siegburg: F. Schmitt, 1986), 37–126; J. R. Hall, ‘Some Liturgical Notes on Aelfric’s Letter to the Monks at Eynsham’, Downside Review 93 (1975): 297–303; Anselme Davril, ‘La Longueur des Leçons de l’Office Nocturne: Étude Comparative’, in Paul de Clerck and Eric Palazzo, eds, Rituels: Mélanges Offerts à Pierre-Marie Gy (Paris: Le Cerf, 1990), 183–97. See, for example, Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church, III: The Medieval Church (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1999), 149, who finds in OR XIII ‘a progressive tendency to nail down the readings with ever greater precision’. Jeffery, ‘The Early Liturgy of Saint Peter’s’. Andrieu first christened the tradition in his book Immixtio et Consecratio: La Consécration par Contact dans les Documents Liturgiques du Moyen Age (Paris: A. Picard, 1924), 59–64. His project to establish a text was realized posthumously in Le Pontifical Romano-Germanique du Dixième Siècle, ed. Cyrille Vogel and Reinhard Elze, 3 vols, Studi e Testi (Vatican: Bibliotheca apostolica vaticana, 1963–72), 226–7, 269. For a summary of the main problems of the PRG concept as encountered in its 1963 edition, see Henry Parkes, ‘Questioning the Authority of Vogel and Elze’s Pontifical Romano-Germanique’, in Sarah Hamilton and Helen Gittos, eds, Understanding Medieval Liturgy: Essays in Interpretation (Aldershot: Ashgate, in press). Edited in Melchior Hittorp, De Divinis Catholicae Ecclesiae Officiis et Mysteriis Varii Vetustorum Aliquot Ecclesiae Patrum ac Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Libri (Cologne: n.p., 1568), cols 21–94; re-edited in Les Ordines, ed. Andrieu, vol. 5. Les Ordines, ed. Andrieu, 5, pp. 89–99. Hartmut Hoffmann, Buchkunst und Königtum im ottonischen und frühsalischen Reich, 2 vols, Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica 30 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1986), 1, p. 211; Günter Glauche, Katalog der lateinischen Handschriften der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München. Die Pergamenthandschriften aus dem Domkapitel Freising, II: Clm 6317–6437 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011), 254–9. The substitution of these different titles was justified in Michel Andrieu, ‘Melchior Hittorp et l’Ordo Romanus Antiquus’, Ephemerides Liturgicae 46 (1932): 3–21.

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41 42

43

Notes to pages 83–5 For the broadest summary, see Cyrille Vogel, Medieval Liturgy: An Introduction to the Sources, trans. William G. Storey and Niels Krogh Rasmussen (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1986). The edition is Le Pontifical Romano-Germanique, eds Vogel and Elze. Vogel, ‘Contenu et ordonnance du Pontifical romano-germanique’, in Atti del VI Congresso internazionale di archeologia cristiana, Ravenna 23–30 Settembre 1962, Studi di Antichità Cristiana 26 (Vatican: Pontificio Instituto di archeologia cristiana, 1965), 243–65, at p. 243: ‘un directoire pratique pour l’accomplissement du culte’. Eric Palazzo, ‘The Image of the Bishop in the Middle Ages’, in John S. Ott and Anna Trumbore Jones, eds, The Bishop Reformed: Studies of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 86–91. Les Ordines, ed. Andrieu, 1, p. 526: ‘Visiblement, le rédacteur primitif n’avait pas une claire notion de ce que devait être un pontifical.’ See also Les Ordines, 5, pp. 75–6; Vogel, ‘Le Pontifical Romano-Germanique du Xe Siècle: Nature, Date et Importance’, 42, including n. 68. Some of these issues are considered further in Parkes, ‘Questioning the Authority’. Hall, ‘Some Liturgical Notes’, 301. A preliminary list may be found in Henry Parkes, Liturgy and Music in Ottonian Mainz, 950–1025, unpublished PhD dissertation (University of Cambridge, 2012), 108–10 and 274–5. On papal enthronement, see Roger E. Reynolds, ‘Image and Text: The Liturgy of Clerical Ordination in Early Medieval Art’, Gesta 22 (1983): 27–38, at 37–8; Reynolds, ‘The Ritual of Clerical Ordination of the Sacramentarium Gelasianum saec. VIII: Early Evidence from Southern Italy’, in Paul de Clerck and Eric Palazzo, eds, Rituels: Mélanges offerts à Pierre-Marie Gy (Paris: Le Cerf, 1990), 437–45, at 438–9. No one article has sought to explode the hypothesis about coronations, but the claim has often been questioned, most recently in David Warner, ‘Rituals, Kingship and Rebellion in Medieval Germany’, History Compass 8 (2010): 1209–20, at 1212. Text ed. in Dobschütz, Das Decretum Gelasianum, 49–60. Les Ordines, ed. Andrieu, 2, pp. 509–10. For a short introduction to Burchard, see Lotte Kéry, Canonical Collections of the Early Middle Ages (ca. 400–1140): A Bibliographical Guide to the Manuscripts and Literature (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1999), 134–55. The sixteenth-century edition of Foucher was reprinted in PL 140, cols 537–1065; the text in question belongs to book 3. According to the database published in Linda Fowler-Magerl, Clavis Canonum: Selected Canon Law Collections before 1140, MGH Hilfsmittel 21 (Hanover:



Notes to pages 85–92

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Hahn, 2005), the text was included in at least eight collections. On CDP, see Kéry, Canonical Collections, 155–7; also Jörg Müller, Untersuchungen zur Collectio Duodecim Partium, Abhandlungen zur rechtswissenschaftlichen Grundlagenforschung 73 (Ebelsbach: R. Gremer, 1989). 44 This is a topic which I intend to explore in greater detail elsewhere. 45 All manuscripts from Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Information compiled from: Natalia Daniel, Handschriften des zehnten Jahrhunderts aus der Freisinger Dombibliothek (Munich: Arbeo-Gesellschaft, 1973); Elisabeth Klemm, Die ottonischen und frühromanischen Handschriften der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, 2 vols (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2004); Glauche, Katalog (as note 31). For bibliography relating to CDP, refer back to note 42. 46 The earliest known example of a breviary is represented by the fragments Nürnberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Kupferstichkab., Kapsel 536/SD 2815 and 2816 (Reichenau, before 846). See Bischoff, Katalog der festländischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts, Teil II: Laon-Paderborn (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004), no. 3644. For more general literature, see notes 6 and 22; for an excellent recent overview, see Jesse D. Billett, The Divine Office in AngloSaxon England 597–c.1000, Henry Bradshaw Society Subsidia 7 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014). 47 Pierre-Marie Gy, ‘Les Premiers Bréviaires de Saint-Gall (Deuxième Quart du XIe s.)’, in Walter Dürig, ed., Liturgie: Gestalt und Vollzug (Munich: M. Hueber, 1963), 104–13. 48 Ibid., 108–9. 49 Information from Gy, ‘Les Premiers Bréviaires’; Gustav Scherrer, Verzeichniss der Handschriften der Stiftsbibliothek von St. Gallen (Halle: n.p., 1875); Anton von Euw, Die St. Galler Buchkunst vom 8. bis zum Ende des 11. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols (St Gall: Klosterhof St Gallen, 2008). 50 Gy, ‘Les Premiers Bréviaires’, 109–13. 51 See the list of manuscripts in Les Ordines, ed. Andrieu, 1, pp. 325–43. 52 Davril, ‘La Longueur des Leçons’. 53 Margot Fassler, ‘The Office of Cantor in Early Western Monastic Rules and Customaries: A Preliminary Investigation’, Early Music History 5 (1985): 29–51. 54 This final calculation relies upon the permutation that the biblical books for August could be begun on Sunday 29, 30 or 31 July if 1 August fell on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. This was a matter of some interest for medieval liturgists, as I discuss below. 55 RB 9.9, 11.2, 11.5. Peter Jeffery, ‘A Window on the Formation of Medieval Chant Repertories: The Greek Palimpsest Fragments in Princeton University MS Garrett 24’, in László Dobszay, ed., The Past in the Present: Papers Read at the IMS Intercongressional Symposium and the 10th Meeting of the CANTUS

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56 57 58 59 60

61 62

63

64

65

Notes to pages 92–4 PLANUS, Budapest & Visegrád, 2000, 2 vols (Budapest: n.p., 2003), 2, esp. pp. 5–8. SG 390, 11, 13. Les Ordines, ed. Andrieu, 2, p. 500: ‘Ponunt actus apostolorum et septem epistolas canonicas, sive apocalipsin Iohannis.’ Ibid., p. 514; pp. 483–4. See note 16, page 218. The identity of the feasts is ambiguous in SG 414 until one sees that the next feast on p. 488 is Quinquagesima; for corroboration, see SG 390, 136. Presumably the Heptateuch was begun at Sexagesima in the period when those Office chants were formed, and this is certainly the implication of the eighthcentury Anglo-Saxon manuscript St Paul in Kärnten MS 2/1, recently brought to wider attention by Peter Jeffery. See Jeffery, ‘A Window on the Formation of Medieval Chant Repertories’, 8–9. Fulda, Hochschul- und Landesbibliothek, Aa 11. This much is clear from the non-pitch-specific (or adiastematic) manner in which the chants were notated. For an accessible introduction, see Susan Rankin, ‘Carolingian Music’, in Rosamond McKitterick, ed., Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation (Cambridge: CUP, 1994), 275–316, esp. at 292–303. See, chiefly, Johanne Autenrieth, Die Domschule von Konstanz zur Zeit des Investiturstreits: die wissenschaftliche Arbeitsweise Bernholds von Konstanz und zweier Kleriker dargestellt auf Grund von Handschriftenstudien (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1956), 57–9; Ian S. Robinson, ‘The Bible in the Investiture Contest: The South German Gregorian Circle’, in Katherine Walsh and Diana Wood, eds, The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 61–84; Henry Parkes, ‘Cantor or Canonicus? In Search of Musicians and Liturgists from Late Eleventh-Century Constance’, in Margot Fassler, Katie Bugyis and Andrew Kraebel, eds, Music, Liturgy, and the Shaping of History (800–1500) (Woodbridge: Boydell, in press). Daniel S. Taylor, Bernold of Constance, Canonist and Liturgist of the Gregorian Reform. An Analysis of the Sources in the Micrologus de Ecclesiasticis Observationibus, unpublished PhD dissertation (University of Toronto, 1995), esp. 185–267, 315–16. For a broader overview, see Taylor, ‘A New Inventory of Manuscripts of the Micrologus de Ecclesiasticis Observationibus of Bernold of Constance’, Scriptorium 52 (1998): 162–91. The only edition currently available is PL 151, cols 973–1022. Ed. in Les Ordines, ed. Andrieu, 2, pp. 521–6. A Constance origin has never formally been put forward for this latter portion of the manuscript, but the manuscript certainly resided in the vicinity, as suggested both by the copy of the



Notes to pages 94–6

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Micrologus and by subsequent local provenance. According to Beat Matthias von Scarpatetti, Die Handschriften der Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen, I: Abt. IV. Codices 547–669. Hagiographica, Historica, Geographica 8.-18. Jarhhundert (Wiesbaden, 2003), 198, the manuscript was ‘partially’ (‘teilweise’) from St Gall. 66 Outer margin on pages 197–205; two hands copied the main text while the rubric was the work of a third, who, Autenrieth suggested, could have been Bernold himself. See Autenrieth, Die Domschule, 81. The codex SG 671 is itself a copy of the Dionysio-Hadriana canon law collection. 67 Folios 97r–107v. Over and above the findings of Autenrieth, Die Domschule, 106–15, the case for Bernold’s involvement was made in Daniel S. Taylor, ‘An Early Liturgical Compilation of Bernold of Constance? A Comparative Analysis of Codex Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibl. HB VI 107 and Bernold’s Micrologus’, Sacris Erudiri 37 (1997): 163–83. It is not entirely accurate, however, to suggest that elements of the text under consideration were ‘transcribed’ from the PRG tradition, as on p. 166. 68 Herbert Köllner and Christine Jakobi-Mirwald, Die illuminierten Handschriften der Hessischen Landesbibliothek Fulda. Teil 1 Handschriften des 6. bis 13. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1976–93), 2, pp. 32–4, 54–6. 69 Jones, Ælfric’s Letter, 144–9 and 217–28; Diane J. Reilly, ‘The Cluniac Giant Bible and the Ordo Librorum ad Legendum’, esp. at 171–3; the Douai manuscript is described in Les Ordines, ed. Andrieu, 1, p. 117, and edited as source E in ibid., 2, pp. 481–6. 70 This is also the case in the late eleventh-century Cluniac customary of Bernard. See Vetus Disciplina Monastica seu Collectio Auctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti [etc.], ed. Marquard Herrgott (Paris: n.p., 1726), 325. 71 Bernold, Micrologus, ch. 47, ed. in PL 151, col. 1012. 72 According to Taylor, Bernold of Constance, 299: ‘The source of Bernold’s two references to Alexander II … has not yet been located’; see also 205–6. 73 Roger E. Reynolds, ‘Liturgical Scholarship at the Time of the Investiture Controversy: Past Research and Future Opportunities’, Harvard Theological Review 71 (1978): 109–24. 74 Robinson, ‘The Bible in the Investiture Contest’, esp. 66–76. 75 Autenrieth, Die Domschule, 57–9. 76 Köllner/Jakobi-Mirwald, Die illuminierten Handschriften, 2, pp. 54–6. Autenrieth found the same hand in Stuttgart HB VII 9 (Jerome), Stuttgart HB XIV 13 and HB XIV 16 (Passionals), and Fulda Aa 24 (Augustine). See Autenrieth, Die Domschule, 166, n. 259. To these we could add the homiliary Fulda Aa 12, where marks begin on f. 38r, as well as two further sources which I have not seen, but whose catalogue descriptions are suggestive: Stuttgart HB XIV 14 (Passional) and Stuttgart HB XIV 3 (John the Deacon’s Life of Gregory).

224 77

Notes to pages 91–100

If one follows the early Mass lectionary, five is actually the correct number. Bernold was fully aware of this, as was Amalarius before him: see Bernold, Micrologus, Ch. 62, ed. in PL 151, col. 1022B; Taylor, Bernold of Constance, 265–6. 78 Autenrieth, Die Domschule, 59. 79 Mittermüller, Expositio, 277. The manuscripts are: Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 142 and Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Cod. Aug. perg. 203. See Autenrieth, Die Domschule, 75–8. 80 Specifically, OR XIII D, para. 20; see Les Ordines, ed. Andrieu, 2, p. 524. 81 The scribe’s description of the ordo corresponds to OR XIII A, OR XIII C. This arrangement is also found in the St Gall breviary SG 414. 82 On these Carolingian behaviours, see, for example, Raymond Kottje, ‘Einheit und Vielfalt des kirchlichen Lebens in der Karolingerzeit’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 76 (1965): 323–42; Rosamond McKitterick, ‘Unity and Diversity in the Carolingian Church’, in Robert N. Swanson, ed., Unity and Diversity in the Church, Studies in Church History 32 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 59–82; Rankin, ‘Carolingian Music’; Yitzhak Hen, ‘The Romanization of Frankish Liturgy: Ideal, Reality and the Rhetoric of Reform’, in Claudia Bolgia, Rosamond McKitterick and John Osborne, eds, Rome Across Time and Space, c. 500–1400: Cultural Transmission and the Exchange of Ideas (Cambridge: CUP, 2011), 111–23; and Daniel J. DiCenso, Sacramentary-Antiphoners as Sources of Gregorian Chant in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries, unpublished PhD dissertation (University of Cambridge, 2011). 83 Bernold, Micrologus, Ch. 55, ed. in PL 151, col. 1018A; trans. from Taylor, Bernold of Constance, 243. 84 Reilly, ‘The Cluniac Giant Bible and the Ordo Librorum ad Legendum’, 178; see also 183. This is shown in a different manner in Elvert, ‘Die Nokturnenlesungen Klunys’. On the underlying variance of Cluniac customs, see Giles Constable, ‘Monastic Legislation at Cluny’, in Stephan Kuttner, ed., Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Toronto, 21–25 August, 1972 (Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1976), 151–61. 85 The linguistic subtleties are brought out in Julia Barrow, ‘Ideas and Applications of Reform’, in Thomas F. X. Noble and Julia M. H. Smith, eds, Cambridge History of Christianity, III: Early Medieval Christianities, c. 600–c. 1100 (Cambridge: CUP, 2008), 345–62.



Notes to pages 101–3

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‘Quid nobis cum allegoria?’ The Literal Reading of the Bible in the era of the Investiture Conflict Annales Augustani, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH SS III (Hanover: Hahn, 1839), 123–36, ad an. 1079, p. 130: ‘they all come in twos … popes come in twos, bishops come in twos, kings come in twos, dukes come in twos’. 2 Gerd Althoff, ‘Zu den Grundlagen des Gregorianischen Amtsverständnisses’, in Wolfgang Hasberg and Hermann-Josef Scheidgen, eds, Canossa: Aspekte einer Wende (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 2012), 73–87; for a more extended account, see idem, ‘Selig sind, die Verfolgung ausüben’. Päpste und Gewalt im Hochmittelalter (Stuttgart: Theiss, 2013). Cf. Kathleen G. Cushing, Papacy and Law in the Gregorian Revolution. The 3 Canonistic Work of Anselm of Lucca (Oxford: OUP, 1998), 129. Ian Stuart Robinson, ‘The Bible in the investiture contest: the south German 4 Gregorian circle’, in Katherine Walsh, ed., The Bible in the Medieval World. Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 61–84; Althoff, ‘Grundlagen’; idem, ‘Selig sind’; for further literature on the investiture conflict, see the illuminating synthesis recently published by Stuart Airlie, ‘A View from Afar. English Perspectives on Religion and Politics in the Investiture Conflict’, in Ludger Koerntgen and Dominik Waßenhoven, eds, Religion und Politik im Mittelalter. Deutschland und England im Vergleich (Religion and Politics in the Middle Ages. Germany and England by Comparison) (Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2013), 71–88. Still invaluable is the path-breaking paper of Karl Leyser, ‘The Polemics of the Papal Revolution’, in Beryl Smalley, ed., Trends in Medieval Political Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965), 42–64, repr. in Leyser, Medieval Germany and its Neighbours, 900–1250 (London: Hambledon,1982), 138–60. 5 Percy Ernst Schramm, Kaiser, Rom und Renovatio. Studien zur Geschichte des römischen Erneuerungsgedankens vom Ende des Karolingischen Reiches bis Investiturstreit (Leipzig: Teubner, 1929), I, p. 124. Sigebert of Gembloux, Epistola Leodicensium adversus Paschalem papam, ed. 6 Kuno Francke, MGH Libelli de lite II (Hanover: Hahn, 1892), 451–64, at 462; Ian S. Robinson, ‘Reform and the Church, 1073–1122’, in David Luscombe, ed., NCMH 4, c. 1024–c.1198, Part 1 (Cambridge: CUP, 2004), 268–334, at 276. Sigebert of Gembloux, Epistola Leodicensium, 462. 7 8 Hartmut Hoffmann, ‘Die beiden Schwerter im hohen Mittelalter’, Deutsches Archiv 20 (1964): 78–114. 9 PL 144, col. 340; and similarly in the Glossa ordinaria, cf. J. A. Watt, ‘Spiritual and temporal powers’, in James H. Burns, ed., The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c. 350–c. 1450 (Cambridge: CUP, 1988), 367–423, at 370. 10 Alcuin, Epistola 136, MGH Epp. Karolini Aevi II, ed. Ernst Dümmler (Berlin: 1

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Notes to pages 103–4

Weidmann, 1895), 206, lines 6–9; translated in Mary Alberi, ed., ‘“The Sword Which You Hold in Your Hand”: Alcuin’s Exegesis of the Two Swords and the Lay Miles Christi’, in Celia Chazelle and Burton Van Name Edwards, eds, The Study of the Bible in the Carolingian Era (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 117–31, at 118. 11 Ibid.,121. 12 Alcuin, Epistola 136, p. 206, lines 11–12. 13 For this listing, see Alberi, ‘Sword’, 122–3. 14 Ibid.,125. 15 Hoffmann, ‘Schwerter’, 78. 16 Cushing, Papacy and Law, 32–3. 17 Die Briefe Heinrichs IV., MGH Deutsches Mittelalter Epp. Selectae I, no. 13, ed. Carl Erdmann (Hanover: Hiersemann, 1937), 19: ‘[Pope Gregory] despised the merciful ordinance of God, which he willed should principally consist of two things, that is regnum and sacerdotium, as the Saviour himself signified in his passion should be understood in the sufficiency of two swords.’ 18 Cf. Althoff, ‘Grundlagen’; idem, ‘Selig sind’. 19 Liber canonum contra Heinricum quartum, ed. Friedrich Thaner, MGH Libelli de lite I (Hanover: Hahn, 1891) 471–516, at 492, lines 16–27. 20 Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda, ed. Wilhelm Schwenkenbecher, MGH Libelli de lite II (Hanover: Hahn, 1892), 173–284, at 187, line 2; 225, lines 44–6; and 231, line 8. 21 Hugh of Fleury, Tractatus de regia et sacerdotali dignitate, ed. Ernst Sackur, MGH Libelli de lite II (Hanover: Hahn, 1892), I, 2, pp. 465–494, at p. 468, lines 22–3. 22 Bernold of Constance, Apologeticae rationes contra scismaticorum obiectiones, ed. Friedrich Thaner, MGH Libelli de lite II (Hanover: Hahn, 1892), 95–101, at 97, lines 10–17. 23 Norman Anonymus: Tractatus Eboracenses, ed. H. Boehmer, MGH Libelli de lite III (Hanover: Hahn, 1897), 642–87, at 663, lines 27–8; 668, lines 32–3; and 684, lines 45–7. This work has been convincingly reassigned to Rouen: George H. Williams, The Norman Anonymous of 1100 (Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951). 24 Tractatus de scismaticis, ed. Julius Dietrich and Heinrich Boehmer, MGH Libelli de lite III (Hanover: Hahn, 1897), 109–30, at 125, lines 28–32. 25 De paenitentia regum et de investitura regali collectanea, ed. Heinrich Boehmer, MGH Libelli de lite III (Hanover: Hahn, 1897), 608–14, at 610, lines 27–9. 26 Sigebert of Gembloux, Epistola Leodicensium, 452, line 27. 27 Honorius Augustodinensis, Summa Gloria, ed. Julius Dieterich, MGH Libelli de lite III (Hanover: Hahn, 1897), 63–80, at 75, line 15. 28 Gerhoh of Reichersberg, De investigatione Antichristi, ed. Ernst Sackur,



29 30

31

32 33 34

35

36

37

Notes to pages 104–6

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MGH Libelli de lite III (Hanover: Hahn, 1897), 304–95, at 343, line 44; idem, Opusculum ad cardinales, 399–411, at 408, line 8. Tractatus Eboracenses, 678, line 2. Gerard E. Caspary, Politics and Exegesis: Origen and the Two Swords (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1979), 1: ‘Ecce duo gladii hic’ (‘Behold, here are two swords’). The passage could be used simply as a pious platitude in order to back up the admitted truism that there were indeed two powers, the material and the spiritual. But it could also be used polemically, equally by both sides: by royalists … and by curialists. For the quotation of Luke 22.38 in the polemics, cf. Max Hackelsperger, Bibel und mittelalterlicher Reichsgedanke. Studien und Beiträge zum Gebrauch der Bibel im Streit zwischen Kaisertum und Papsttum zur Zeit der Salier (Bottrop: W. Postberg, 1934), 52–4. Briefe Heinrichs IV, no. 34, p. 43: ‘they seemed to persecute us out of anger and resentment rather than out of zeal for justice’. Caspar’s comment in Registrum Gregorii VII, ed. Erich Caspar, MGH Epp. sel. 2 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1920–3), I, p. 15, n. 2. Registrum Gregorii VII, I, 9, p. 15: ‘But if, and this is not what we hope, [Henry] unfairly gives back to us hatred for love, and to Almighty God in return for the great honour conferred on him, a pretence of being content with his justice, let there not come upon us that statement in which it is said, “Cursed be he who keepeth back his sword from blood”.’ Ibid., VII, II, 5, p. 130: ‘who is said to be not a king but a tyrant, and, at the Devil’s persuasion, the head and cause of all the following: that is, perjury, sacrilege, incest, slaughter, burnings and so forth’; and, for Philip’s evil-doing, ibid.: ‘Nunc autem omnes malitia quasi quodam pestilentię morbo repleti horrenda et multum execranda facinora multotiens nemine impellente committunt, nihil humani nihilque divini attendunt, periuria sacrilegia incestum perpetrare sese invicem tradere pro nichilo ducunt et, quod nusquam terrarum est, cives propinqui fratres etiam alii alios propter cupiditatem capiunt et omnia bona eorum ab illis extorquentes vitam in extrema miseria finire faciunt, peregrinos ad apostolorum limina euntes et redeuntes, uti cuique oportunum fit capientes in carceres trudunt et acrioribus quam paganus aliquis eos tormentis afficientes sępe ab illis plus quam habeant pro redemptione exigent.’ Ibid. III, 4, p. 249: ‘For if we think our brethren to have gone astray and yet keep silent, have we ourselves not gone astray, and shall we not be rightly judged to have erred? Further, he who neglects to emend faults commits them … And this is what the Lord said through the prophet: “Cursed be he who keepeth not his sword from blood”.’ Ibid., IV, 1, pp. 291–2.

228 38 39

40

41 42 43

44

45 46 47

48

49 50 51 52

Notes to pages 106–8 Ibid., 2, pp. 296–7. Bonizo of Sutri, Liber ad amicum, ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH Libelli de lite I (Hanover: Hahn, 1891), 571–620, at 571: ‘if it had ever been permissible, or had now become permissible, for a Christian to fight for dogma with violence’. Manegold of Lautenbach, Liber ad Gebhardum, ed. Kuno Francke, MGH Libelli de lite I (Hanover: Hahn, 1891), 300–430, at 359, 371, 372, 377, 379, 381, 396; cf. Anselm of Lucca, Liber contra Wibertum, ed. Ernst Bernheim, MGH Libelli de lite I (Hanover: Hahn, 1891), 517–28, at 526, again quoting Jeremiah 48.10. See Wenrich of Trier, Epistola sub Theoderici episcopi Virdunensis nomine composita, ed. K. Francke, MGH Libelli de lite I (Hanover: Hahn, 1891), 284–99. Ibid., cap. 4, p. 290. Honorius Augustodunensis, Summa Gloria, 65, lines 4–6: ‘Sed imperitis et seculari tantum scientia obcecatis nil ratum videtur, nisi plurimis scripturarum testimoniis roboretur’ (‘But for the unlearned and those deprived of all but secular knowledge, nothing seemed well considered unless it was strengthened by many testimonies from the Scriptures’). Robinson, ‘Reform’, 305: ‘He translated the reforming ideas of the 1050s and 1060s into resolute action against simoniacs, married clergy and the champions of investiture.’ Sigebert of Gembloux, Apologia, ed. Sackur, MGH Libelli de lite II (Hanover: Hahn, 1892), 437–48, at 438; Robinson, ‘Reform’, 278. Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda, 186, lines 38–9. Ibid.: ‘Omnes res tutae esse non possunt, nisi quae … et regia et sacerdotalis defenderet auctoritas’ (‘All things cannot be safe except for … those things that royal and priestly authority defends’). Ibid., p. 187, lines 1–3; the author quotes Gelasius rather approximately: ‘Deus … haec duo, quibus principaliter hic mundus regatur, regalem scilicet potestatem et sacratam pontificum auctoritatem ordinaverit’ (‘God ordained … these two [things] by which this world is chiefly ruled, that is to say, royal power and the sacred authority of bishops’). Ibid., p. 187, lines 4–6. Romans 13.1-2, Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda, p. 187, lines 6–9. Romans 13.3-4, Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda, 187, lines 12–15. Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda, p. 187, lines 15–17: ‘Ex his certe apostoli verbis apparet ordinasse Deum non per antistites et ecclesiarum principes omnia crimina vindicari, sed ea, quae excedunt districtionem ecclesiasticae lenitatis, vindicari per iudicem mundi’ (‘Indeed from those words of the Apostle it is clear that God did not ordain that all crimes were to be punished by the priests and chief men of the churches, but rather that those crimes which exceed the



53 54 55 56 57

58

59 60 61 62

63

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65 66 67 68 69

Notes to pages 108–10

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punishment of ecclesiastical mildness were to be avenged by the judge of the world’). Ibid., lines 18–20. Eph. 6.17. Mt. 22.21. Rom. 13.1-2. 1 Peter 2.13; Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda, 218, lines 10–12: ‘subiecti estote omni humanae creaturae propter Dominum sive regi quasi praecellenti sive ducibus tamquam ab eo missis ad vindictam malefactorum laudem vero bonorum’. Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda, 268, lines 32–7: ‘Ego, inquiens, dedi omnes terras istas in manu Nabuchodonosor regis Babylonis servi mei, insuper et bestias agri dedi ei, ut serviant illi, et servient ei omnes gentes et filio eius et filio filii eius; gens autem et regnum, quod non servierit Nabuchodonosor regi Babylonis et quicunque non incurvaverit collum suum sub iugo regis, in gladio et fame et peste visitabo super gentem illam, ait Dominus, donec consumam eos in manu eius.’ Ibid., lines 40–4; Jer. 27.14-17. Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda, 222, lines 24–5: ‘if he had taken up arms against [King Henry] who, being excommunicate, was now unable to be king’. Ibid., lines 28–30: ‘New and unheard-of is preaching of that kind, since the Church has no sword conceded to it except the Spirit, which is the word of God’. Ibid., 224, lines 18–20; cf. Romans 13.4: ‘for he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain.’ MGH Constitutiones et acta publica imperatorum et regum inde ab a. DCCCCXI usque ad a. MCXCVII (911–1197), ed. Ludwig Weiland (Berlin: Hahn, 1893), I, 70, p. 180, lines 36–8: ‘since “that chosen vessel” [Paul] (Acts 9.15) testifies that the prince does not bear the sword in vain’. Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda, 237, lines 10–14: ‘False bishops … were striving to destroy King Henry’s kingdom, given him by God, by resisting him and opposing him as far as to shed blood of many men. From this most cruel heresy many heresies and schisms have emerged, so that neither divine nor human laws are able to count for anything with them.’ Ibid., 222, lines 35–6: ‘what is most burdensome for us, they advance against us testimonies from the Holy Scriptures’. Ibid., 224, lines 34–7. Ibid., 255, lines 1–2: ‘haberet utpote minister Dei vindicem in impios gladium’. Ibid., line 2. Wido of Ferrara, De scismate Hildebrandi, ed. Roger Wilmans and Ernst

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Dümmler, MGH Libelli de lite I (Hanover: Hahn, 1891), 1, 15, pp. 529–67, at 545. 70 Wibert, Decretum, ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH Libelli de lite I (Hanover: Hahn, 1891), 622–6, at 625: ‘For it is right that wherever you can … you should track down with all your might Henry the head of the heretics and his supporters … This we command for you and your soldiers in remission of your sins … that by your toils and triumphs you may reach the heavenly Jerusalem with God as your leader!’ 71 Sigebert of Gembloux, Epistola Leodicensium, 452, lines 4–13. 72 Ibid., lines 17–19. 73 Ibid., lines 22–5: ‘qui est angelus Domini, stantem extento gladio super aecclesiam. David orabat, ne populus occideretur, angelus noster porrigens Roberto gladium super aecclesiam. Unde iste gladius nostro angelo?’ 74 Ibid., lines 29–31: ‘magis contra carnales affectus, quam contra mundi assultus’. 75 Ibid., 454, lines 34–6: ‘but only for the defence of the city and the Church. But we have never read of wars being proclaimed for the Church through the canonical authority of the Scriptures.’ 76 Ibid., 454, lines 36–7. 77 Ibid., 459, lines 3–12. 78 Ibid., 460, lines 17–18: ‘Hildebrandus papa – qui auctor est huius novelli scismatis, et primus levavit sacerdotalem lanceam contra diadema regni.’ 79 Ibid., 461, lines 27–8: ‘unde haec auctoritas apostolica, ut praeter spiritualem gladium exercat in subiectos alterum occisionis gladium?’ 80 Ibid., 462, lines 37–9: ‘Quis pontificum Romanorum suis umquam decretis auctorizavit, ut debeat pontifex gladio belli in peccantes uti?’ 81 Ibid., 462, lines 4–6: ‘up to the latest Gregory, that is, Hildebrand, who was the first to gird himself, and through his example other pontiffs, with the sword of war’. 82 Ibid., 459: ‘reddentes caesari que erant cesaris et Deo quae erant Dei’. Cf. Mt. 22.21. 83 Bonizo of Sutri, Liber ad amicum, 571–620, at 572, line 16: ‘Set quid nobis cum allegoria? Veniamus iam ad evangelicam veritatem.’ 84 Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda, 442: ‘ ut causa longae concertationis, quae non possit confici gladiis, terminaretur libris’. 85 Leidulf Melve, Inventing the Public Sphere. The Public Debate during the Investiture Contest (c. 1030–1122), Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 154 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007). 86 Hugh of Fleury, Tractatus, 65–9. 87 Jean Leclercq, ‘Usage et abus de la Bible au temps de la réforme Gregorienne’, in W. Lourdaux and D. Verhelst, eds, The Bible and Medieval Culture (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1979), 89–108, at 107.



Notes to pages 112–14

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88 Melve, Inventing, 243. 89 Ibid., 516. 90 Ibid., 517. 91 Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae et Capitula Angilramni, ed. Paul Hinschius (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1863), 616. 92 For example Bernold of Constance, De fontibus iuris ecclesiastici, ed. D. Stöckly, MGH Fontes iuris Germanici antiqui 15 (Hanover: Hahn, 2000), 120–87, at 182, lines 14–19; the same passage is quoted by Peter Crassus, Defensio Heinrici IV, ed. Lothar von Heinemann, MGH Libelli de lite I (Hanover: Hahn, 1891), 432–53, at p. 439, line 37–p. 440, line 1. A few lines later, Peter quotes an unidentified passage of St Augustine which states the difficulty of detecting the meaning of what was obscure. These obscure expressions could be understood by learned people only. 93 Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda, lib. I, c. 5, p. 190, lines 36–8. See above, pp. 107–8. 94 Caspary, Politics, 183–90. 95 See, in general, the inspiring work of Caspary, Politics; for the different methods of interpretation, see Joachim Ehlers, ‘“Historia”, “allegoria”, “tropologia” – Exegetische Grundlagen der Geschichtskonzeption Hugos von St. Viktor’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 7 (1972): 153–60. 96 Origen, De Principiis, IV, pp. 11, 18. 97 Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell, 1952), 24. 98 Ibid., 15–22. 99 Cushing, Papacy and Law, 35; Hoffmann, ‘Schwerter’, 84. 100 Bonizo of Sutri, Liber ad amicum, 572, line 16; see above, n. 8. 101 Melve, Inventing, 522. 102 Cf. ibid., 543. 103 Wilfried Hartmann, ‘Wahrheit und Gewohnheit. Autoritätenwechsel und Überzeugungsstrategien in der späten Salierzeit’, in Bernd Schneidmüller and Stefan Weinfurter, eds, Salisches Kaisertum und neues Europa. Die Zeit Heinrichs IV. und Heinrichs V. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftlicher Buchgesellschaft, 2007), 65–84, at 80. 104 Honorius Augustodinensis, Summa Gloria, 65, lines 4–6: ‘Sed imperitis et seculari tantum scientia obcecatis nil ratum videtur, nisi plurimis scripturarum testimoniis roboretur.’ Cf. above, n. 43. 105 Gregorius Magnus, Registrum Epistolarum I, ed. Dag Norberg, CCSL 140 (Turnhout: Brill, 1982) I, 24, p. 32. 106 Cf. Gebhard of Salzburg, Epistola ad Herimannum Mettensem episcopum, ed. Kuno Francke, MGH Libelli de lite I (Hanover: Hahn, 1891), 261–79, at

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268: ‘audiant, quid sanctus Gregorius de auctoritate quattuor conciliorum principalium, quorum istud precipuum est, sentiat. Siquidem in epistola Alexandrino, Antiocheno, Hierosolimitano patriarchis directa sic ait: Sicut sancti euangelii IIII libros, sic IIII concilia suscipere et venerari me fateor, quia in his velut in quadrato lapide sanctae fidei structura consurgit, et cuiuslibet vitae atque actionis existat. Quisquis eorum soliditatem non tenet, etiamsi lapis esse videatur, tamen extra edificium iacet’; ibid., 348, lines 34–6; Manegold of Lautenbach, Liber ad Gebehardum, 341, lines 2–14; Bernold of Constance, Apologeticus, ed. Friedrich Thaner, MGH Libelli de lite II (Hanover: Hahn, 1892), c. 2, pp. 58–88, at 61. 107 Augustine of Hippo, De doctrina Christiana, III, 28, p. 39: ‘Ubi autem talis sensus eruitur, cuius incertum certis sanctarum Scripturarum testimoniis non possit aperiri, restat ut ratione reddita manifestus appareat, etiam si ille cuius verba intellegere quaerimus eum forte non sensit. Sed haec consuetudo periculosa est; per Scripturas enim divinas multo tutius ambulatur. Quas verbis translatis opacatas cum scrutari volumus, aut hoc inde exeat quod non habeat controversiam, aut, si habet, ex eadem Scriptura ubicumque eius inventis atque adhibitis testibus terminetur.’ 108 Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda, 187, lines 6–9. 109 Peter Crassus, Defensio Heinrici, 450, lines 8–9; line 13; lines 18–19. 110 Wido of Ferrara, De scismatis Hildebrandi, 566, line 2. 111 Hugh of Fleury, Tractatus, 470, lines 9–10: ‘Thus a good king is given to men when God is merciful, and a bad one when God is angered, as he himself says as a witness to the people of Israel through the prophet, saying, “I shall give you a king in mine anger”’ (Hos. 13.11). 112 Gregory of Catino, Orthodoxa defensio imperialis, ed. Lothar von Heinemann, MGH Libelli de lite II (Hanover: Hahn, 1892), 534–42, at 541, lines 25–7. 113 Hugh of Fleury, Tractatus, 469, lines 31ff.; cf. n. 111 above. 114 Ibid.; cf. Hackelsperger, Bibel, 32–3. 115 Robinson, ‘Reform’, 311. 116 Ibid. 117 Hugh of Fleury, Tractatus, 471, lines 22–6: ‘Nam armis praesulem quemlibet contra regem vel imperatorem contendere, et sacra loca ac Deo dicata humano sanguine polluere nefarium et teme rarium est. Quod dominus Iesus Christus salvator et conditor noster tunc manifestissime docuit, cum Petrus apostolus gladium suum extrahens pontificis servum apprehendit et eius auriculam amputavit. Ait enim illi: “Converte gladium tuum in vaginam”.’ 118 Ibid., 491, lines 4–7, 15–17. 119 Tractatus de investitura episcoporum, ed. Ernst Bernheim, MGH Libelli de lite II (Hanover: Hahn, 1892), 498–504, at 502, lines 22–4.



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120 J. Krimm-Beumann, ‘Der Traktat “De investitura episcoporum” von 1109’, Deutsches Archiv 33 (1977): 37–83, with a new edition at 66–83; for another author at Bamberg, perhaps Ekkehard of Aura himself, cf. Matthias M. Tischler: http://www.sankt-georgen.de/hugo/forschung/Tractatus_de_investitura_ episcoporum.php (last accessed 23 April 2015). 121 Sigebert of Gembloux, Epistola Leodicensium, 460, lines 2–4: ‘The Lord says in the Gospel, “If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil” (Jn 18.23). And the Apostle Paul resisted Peter, prince of the Apostles, to his face (Gal. 2.11). Therefore, if the false image of Roman flattery is removed, why are the Bishops of Rome not reprehended and corrected concerning grave and manifest matters?’ 122 Hugh of Fleury, Tractatus, 491, lines 15–17. 123 Elazar Touitou, ‘Quelques critères pouvant aider à établir la version originale du commentaire de Rashi sur le pentateuque’, in Gabrielle Sed-Rajna, ed., Rashi 1040–1990 (Paris: Cerf, 1993), 399–409, at 408. For the relationship between Jewish and Christian exegesis in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, see David E. Timmer, ‘Biblical Exegesis and the Jewish-Christian Controversy in the Early Twelfth Century’, Church History 58 (1989): 309–21; Brigitte Bedos-Rezak, ‘The confrontation of orality and textuality: Jewish and Christian literacy in eleventhand twelfth-century northern France’, in Gabrielle Sed-Rajna, ed., Rashi, 541–58, at 553. 124 For further citations, see Althoff, ‘Selig sind’; for Origen’s distinction between the two swords as symbolizing ‘the allegorization of Old Testament violence’ and ‘its transfiguration into spiritual warfare’, see Caspary, Politics, 38. 125 See n. 57 above, for Jer. 27.6-8. 126 Ronald G. Witt, The Two Latin Cultures and the Foundation of Renaissance Humanism in Medieval Italy (Cambridge: CUP, 2012), 181. 127 Ibid., 182. 128 Bonizo of Sutri, Liber ad amicum, 572, line 16.

Sibyls, Tanners and Leper Kings: Taking Notes from and about the Bible in Twelfth-Century England 1

I am deeply grateful to Jinty Nelson and Damien Kempf for asking me to contribute to this volume, and for their kindness and guidance since then. I would like to thank Elisabeth van Houts, Nicholas Vincent and Robert Bartlett for reading drafts of this chapter. The corrections and improvements they suggested made this chapter a much better one; any remaining mistakes are of course fully my own. My gratitude also goes to Tessa Webber, who with characteristic generosity helped me date and place the script of the glosses.

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Notes to pages 119–20 On the medieval manuscript miscellany, an excellent starting point remains Malcolm B. Parkes, ‘The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the Development of the Book’, in James J. G. Alexander and Margaret T. Gibson, eds, Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays presented to Richard William Hunt (Oxford: OUP, 1976), 115–41, repr. in Malcolm B. Parkes, Scribes, Scripts and Readers: Studies in the Communication, Presentation and Dissemination of Medieval Texts (London: Hambledon, 1991), 35–70. See also Julia Boffey and John J. Thompson, ‘Anthologies and Miscellanies: Production and Choice of Texts’, in Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall, eds, Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375–1475 (Cambridge: CUP, 1989), 279–315. On issues related to the category of ‘miscellany’, see Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel, eds, The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), especially the introduction and the essays by E. Ann Matter and Barbara A. Shailor. Cf. Montague R. James, The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover: The Catalogues of the Libraries of Christ Church Priory and St Augustine’s Abbey at Canterbury and of St Martin’s Priory at Dover (Cambridge: CUP, 1903). Our manuscript appears there among the ‘Libri Nicholai de Sandwico’, described rather oddly as a ‘Liber officiorum ecclesiasticorum’ (no. 1389, p. 118). On Nicholas of Sandwich, see David M. Smith and Vera C. M. London, eds, The Heads of Religious Houses: England and Wales. II. 1216–1377 (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), 27. See the full description in Montague R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College (Cambridge: CUP, 1912), 2, pp. 58–63. James Nasmith, Catalogus librorum manuscriptorum quos Collegio Corporis Christi et B. Mariae Virginis in Academia Cantabrigiensi legavit reverendissimus in Christo pater Matthaeus Parker, archiepiscopus Cantuariensis (Cambridge: n.p., 1777), 324. The script is legible and regular, but it makes a liberal use of abbreviations. The last two folios are damaged, probably by water, making the text very faint and difficult to read in places. On the gloss as the ‘most elementary structure’ of medieval exegesis, see Gilbert Dahan, L’exégèse chrétienne de la Bible en Occident médiéval. xiie–xive siècles (Paris: Cerf, 1999), 123–9. Andrew of St Victor, Expositio hystorica in librum Regum, ed. Frans van Liere, CCCM 53A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), xl. On Andrew, see Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 3rd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 112–95, and Rainer Berndt, André de Saint-Victor (†1175), exégète et théologien (Paris and Turnhout: Brepols, 1991).



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10 Andrew of St Victor, Expositio hystorica in librum Regum, li. 11 Dahan, L’exégèse chrétienne de la Bible, 126. 12 The most convenient edition remains, for all its faults, that in Migne’s Patrologia Latina (PL 198, 1053–1644). On the Historia, see Dahan, L’exégèse chrétienne de la Bible, 276–81; Saralyn R. Daly, ‘Peter Comestor, Master of Histories’, Speculum, 32 (1957): 62–73; David Luscombe, ‘Peter Comestor’, in Katherine Walsh and Diana Wood, eds, The Bible in the Medieval World. Essays in Honour of Beryl Smalley (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 109–29. 13 On the reliance of Peter Comestor on Andrew, heavier than had been previously thought even by Beryl Smalley, see Rainer Berndt, ‘Pierre le Mangeur et André de Saint-Victor. Contribution à l’étude de leurs sources’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 61 (1994): 88–114. 14 F.121r: ‘Post Xersem filium Artaxersis sub quo Neemias edificauit ciuitatem regnauit Artaxerses alius quia plures fuerunt artaxerses.’ 15 F.116v: ‘et Xerses habuit filium qui dictus Greca lingua Artaxerses Hebraice Asserus’. 16 For references to the Latin Eusebius, I have used Chronicon, in Eusebius Werke, Die Chronik des Hieronymus ed. Rudolf Helm, 2nd edn (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1956), referred to below simply as Eusebius. About Artaxerxes/Assuerus, cf. 117: ‘Ipse quippe est, qui ab Hebraeis Asuerus et a LXX interpretibus Artaxerxes uocatur.’ 17 F.113r: ‘In tercio anno regni natus Ieremias. Ab hoc loco inuenitur historie diuerse et contrarie de captiuitate nec possunt concordari fortasse propter barbara nomina uel propter multitudinem annorum et diuersos hystoriographos.’ 18 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 51. Here the tables arranged according to ‘Olympiades’ begin at p. 53 (‘Hinc decedentibus et succedentibus regnis nouus ordo consurgit’). From this point onwards, across many pages, eight columns are used to distinguish eight different geographical areas (‘Iude. Israel. Med. Ath. Latin. Maced. Lydorum. Egypt’). 19 Bede, De temporum ratione liber, CCSL 123B, ed. Charles W. Jones (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997). This consists in fact, for chapters 1–65, of a reprint of Jones’s edition: Bedae Opera de temporibus (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1943). For the chronicle (= chapters 66–71), it is a reprint of the edition by Theodor Mommsen: Chronica Minora III, MGH (Berlin: Weidmann, 1898). The chronicle circulated both with chapters 1–65 and independently. 20 F.121r: ‘Tunc xenones galli brennio duce romam inuaserunt.’ Compare Eusebius, 118: ‘Galli Senones Romam inuaserunt excepto Capitolio’, and Bede, De temporum ratione, 487: ‘Galli Senones duce Brenno romam inuaserunt excepto Capitolio, et incensam sex mensibus uastauerunt.’

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Notes to pages 122–3

F.111v: ‘His diebus natus Romulus.’ F.111r: ‘Quadragesimo nono anno regni eiusdem Ozie inuenta est olimpias ludus ille apud Olimpium montem ab Yphito.’ 23 Imago mundi, ed. V. Flint, in Archives d’Histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age 49 (1982): 109: ‘Olympias sunt quatuor anni. Apud Elidem civitatem Graeciae est institutum, post quatuor annos ad Olympium montem convenire, et ibi palaestrales ludos agere, et inde dicuntur olympiades.’ 24 Cf. Pausanias, Description of Greece, ed. W. H. Jones and H. A. Ormerod, vol. 2 (London: Loebl; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926), V.4.5 and V.8.5–6, 398–9 and 420–1. 25 Eusebius, 86a: ‘Elii agunt quinquennale certamen quattuor annis in medio expletis. Quam olympiadem Ifitus, filius Praxonidis siue Haemonis, primus constituit.’ 26 A rare exception can be found in the ninth-century Histories of Frechulphus of Lisieux, Historiarum libri XII, CCCM 169A, ed. Michael I. Allen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), 172: ‘Quam Olymphiadem Ifitus, filius Praxonidis siue Emonis, primus constituit, in qua Coroebus Eliensis extitit uictor.’ 27 Cf. PL 198, 1405. 28 F.121r: ‘tempore huius Plato … uenit in Egiptum et libros Moysi de Egiptiaca in Gregam linguam transtulit et secum portauit’. 29 The bibliography is enormous. See, for instance, the recent and imposing Jan M. Ziolkowski and Michael C. J. Putnam, eds, The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). 30 Cf. Paul Ciholas, ‘The Attic Moses? Some Patristic Reactions to Platonic Philosophy’, The Classical World 72 (1978–9): 217–25. 31 This is known only through Augustine, apparently from the (now lost) De sacramento regenerationis sive de philosophia, where it formed part of the more general argument that pagan philosophers borrowed from the JudeoChristian tradition, rather than the other way round. On this, see G. Madec, Saint Ambroise et la philosophie (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1974), 249–53. Augustine initially accepted the argument about Jeremiah and Plato in the De Doctrina Christiana, ed. Joseph Martin, CCSL 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), 63. 32 De Ciuitate Dei, ed. Bernard Dombart and Alphonse Kalb, CCSL 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), 227–8. 33 Iohannis Saresberiensis Policratici I–VIII, 2 vols, ed. Clement C. Webb (Oxford: Clarendon, 1909), 2, p. 108; Abelard, Theologia ‘Summi boni’ CCCM 13, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert and Constant J. Mews (Turnhout: Brepols, 1987), 107. 34 Ambrose, Expositio psalmi cxviii, ed. Michael Petschenig (Vienna: Tempsky, 1913), 398: ‘Discite unde Plato haec sumpserit eruditionis gratia in Aegyptum



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profectus, ut Moysi legis oracula, prophetarum dicta cognosceret, audiuit consolationem populi, qui supra peccati modum uidebatur fuisse punitus, et hunc locum quadam adopertum dote uerborum in dialogum transtulit quem scripsit de uirtute.’ F.111v–112r: ‘Tunc Roma condita tunc prophetauit de Christo uenturo Sibilla Erictrea, ita aperte ac si uidisset, dicens quod nascetur saluator et tradetur in manibus infidelium et darent ei alapas et de spinea corona et lancea. Decem fuerunt Sibille. Ista fuit quinta et Sibilla non proprium nomen sed generale prophetissarum et unaqueque habebat aliud nomem proprium. Ista dicebatur Berofilia babylonica quia de Babylone fuit. Dicta et Erictrea ab erictros [sic] insula ubi inuente eius prophecie. Et xxvi uersus prophecie eius translati in nostram linguam scilicet iudicii signum. Sed male translati ut dicit Ieronimus quia in Greco littere a quibus incipiunt sonant Iesus Christus Theusios id est filium Dei sother id est saluator. Sed non potuit obseruare translator unde dicunt quidam quod in principio unius cuiusque uersus debet istud scrib[end?]i Iesus Christus Theusios Sother.’ VIII.8: ‘quinta Erythraea nomine Herophila in Babylone orta, quae Graecis Ilium petentibus uaticinata est perituram esse Troiam, et Homerum mendacia scripturum. Dicta autem Erythraea, quia in eadem insula eius inuenta sunt carmina.’ De ciuitate Dei, VIII.23. On this, see Jean-Michel Roessli, ‘Augustin, les sibylles et les Oracles sibyllins’, in Pierre-Yves Fux, Jean-Michel Roessli and Otto Wermelinger, eds, Augustinus afer. Saint Augustin: Africanité et universalité. Actes du colloque international, Alger-Annaba, 1–7 avril 2001 (Freiburg: Éditions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse, 2003), 263–86. See Patrizia Lendinara, ‘The Versus Sibyllae de die iudicii in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Kathryn Powell and Donald Scragg, eds, Apocryphal Texts and Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), 85–101, particularly 93 for these examples. On the medieval understanding of the Sibyls, cf. Bernard McGinn, ‘Teste David cum Sibylla: the Significance of the Sibylline Tradition in the Middle Ages’, in Julius Kirshner and Suzanne F. Temple, eds, Women of the Medieval World: Essays in Honor of J. H. Mundy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 7–35. F. 116v: ‘Reges semper fuerunt superbi … Canopeum pannus subtilis ad modum retis factus quod solet poni super altaria et lectos diuitum ad repellendas muscas.’ The remark about the ways of the wealthy is absent from other explanations of the word ‘canopeum’ when used in Judith (Jdt. 10.19). Cf. Historia scolastica, PL 198, 1477. F.119r: ‘Et iste congregauit multam pecuniam et cum multo exercitu iuit in Greciam.’

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Notes to pages 125–6 F.119r: ‘Post eum regnauit Xerses cuius pincerna fuit Neemias quem misit cum multa pecunia ad edificandum templum in Ierusalem.’ Cf. Jerome, In Danielem: ‘siquidem, ad Cyri regis imperium qui uolentibus reuerti Hierusalem iam dederat potestatem, iesus pontifex et Zorobabel et postea Ezras sacerdos et ceteri, qui cum eis proficisci uoluerunt, templum et urbem et muros eius aedificare conati sunt’ (III.9) and ‘eo Xerxen filium genuit, qui potentissimus rex et ditissimus aduersum Graeciam innumerabilem duxit exercitum et ea gessit quae Graecorum narrant historiae’ (III.11). F.112r: ‘Tunc rex Assyriorum collegit agricolas et precipue de v. diuersis nationibus et linguis quos posuit in Samaria ut colerent agros et uineas redderent ei singulis annis fructus et tributa.’ 2 Kings 17.24: ‘adduxit autem rex Assyriorum de Babylone et de Chutha et de Haiath et de Emath et de Sepharvaim et conlocavit eos in civitatibus Samariae pro filiis Israhel qui possederunt Samariam et habitaverunt in urbibus eius’. F.111r : ‘Ioatan filius eius erat administrans regalia; non quod patre uiuente fuisset rex. Tamen siinuenitur quod dicatur fuisse rex ita intellige: id est administrans regalia.’ Cf. 2 Kings 15.5: ‘[Oziah] fuit leprosus usque in diem mortis suae et habitabat in domo libera seorsum Ioatham vero filius regis gubernabat palatium et iudicabat populum terrae’, and 2 Chronicles 26.21: ‘Fuit igitur Ozias rex leprosus usque ad diem mortis suae et habitavit in domo separata plenus lepra ob quam et eiectus fuerat de domo Domini porro Ioatham filius eius rexit domum regis et iudicabat populum terrae.’ Cf. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, in Flavii Iosephi, Patria Hierosolymitani, religione Iudaei … opera quaedam Ruffino presbytero interprete etc. (Basel: Frobenius, 1524), 175: ‘licet filio eius Ioathan regnum suscipiente, deinde moestitia gestorum faciente’. The 1524 Basel edition, referred to below as ‘Josephus’, is the best printed entry-point to the Latin Josephus as circulated in the Middle Ages. Only books I–V of the Jewish Antiquities are available in the modern edition of Franz Blatt: The Latin Josephus. I Introduction and Text: The Antiquities, Books i–v (Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget, 1958). On the importance of Josephus in twelfth-century England, see Nicholas Vincent, ‘William of Newburgh, Josephus and the New Titus’, in Sarah Rees Jones and Sethina Watson, eds, Christians and Jews in Angevin England: The York Massacre of 1190, Narratives and Contexts (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013), 57–90, particularly 63–8. F.115v: ‘Iste Cambises superbissimus fuit, et ante quam pater eius moreretur, cum iam esset adultus, uenit ad patrem. et dixit ei ut daret si aliquam partem regni, unde posset habere necessaria sibi. Et dedit ei Assyriam et patre uiuente regnabat Cambises in Assyria.’ PL 198, 1475: ‘Nabuchodonosor vero rex Assyriorum, qui regnavit in Ninive, anno duodecimo regni sui obtinuit Arphaxad in campo Ragau, qui est inter



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Euphraten et Tigrim. Hic est Cambyses, cui adhuc pater vivens Ninivem et regnum Assyriorum concessit, et Nabuchodonosor cognominavit.’ John W. Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants. The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and his Circle, 2 vols (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970); Philippe Buc, L’Ambiguïté du Livre: prince, pouvoir et peuple dans les commentaires de la Bible au Moyen Âge (Paris: Beauchesne, 1994). F.112v: ‘Manases fecit in honore solis currum et equos trahentes … et in introitu atrii interioris posuit, multos bonos ad ydolatriam coegit, et filium in honore demonum per ignem tophet traiecit. Ignis tophet idem quod iehennon ubi erat iugis constitur arce [sic] magica. Quidam dicunt quod dicitur ignis tophet a lapidibus quibus ignis ille egrediabatur. Alii quod ab arboribus quibus egrediebatur.’ 2 Kings 21.3-6: ‘[Manasseh] fecit lucos sicut fecerat Ahab rex Israhel et adoravit omnem militiam caeli et coluit eam extruxitque aras in domo Domini de qua dixit Dominus in Hierusalem ponam nomen meum et extruxit altaria universae militiae caeli in duobus atriis templi Domini et transduxit filium suum per ignem.’ Cf. Andrew of St Victor, Expositio hystorica in librum Regum, 130–1. Historia scolastica, PL 198, 1414: ‘Post Ezechiam regnavit Manasses filius ejus pro eo … Aedificavit enim excelsa, quae dissipaverant patres ejus, et erexit aras Baal, et lucos, et exstruxit altaria militiae coeli in duobus atriis templi, et posuit idolum luci in templo Domini, et traduxit quemdam filium suum per ignem Tophet.’ Historia scolastica, PL 198, 1574: ‘Hoc autem nomen gehenna evangelicum est tantum, et creditur a Domino inventum ob ignem inexstinguibilem, qui erat sacratus idolis in valle juxta Jerusalem, quae dicebatur Topheth; vel etiam Gehennon, quasi terra filiorum Ennon, id est hominis sic vocati per quem idololatrae trajiciebant parvulos suos, sicut nos trajicimus eos per aquam baptismi. Ignis quoque dicebatur Topheth, non satis nota causa. Vel forte quia quodam artificio de visceribus terrae per lapides spongiosos, quos tophos dicimus, jugiter erumpebat.’ 2 Kings 23.10-11: ‘contaminavit quoque Thafeth quod est in convalle filii Ennom ut nemo consecraret filium suum aut filiam per ignem Moloch, abstulit quoque equos quos dederant reges Iudae soli in introitu templi Domini iuxta exedram Nathanmelech eunuchi qui erat in Farurim currus autem solis conbusit igni’. F.121r–121v: ‘Iste laborauit subiugare Egiptum sed Nectalamus magus peritus in astronomia et magica arte arte [sic] quamdam fecit turrem mire altitudinis in medio maris, quam fecit stare insuper quatuor cancros uitreos quia in abysso maris non poterat fundare turrem, et stabat in summitate turris illius, et erat peluis eneus aque plenus ante eum et habebat specula smaraddina circumquaque

240

57

58 59

60

61 62

Notes to pages 127–8 lata. Et cum Artaxerses parabat (f.121v) naues et milites quos mittere uolebat in Egyptum et cum ingrediebantur mare statim aspiciebat et uidebat eos in speculo et accipiebat nauem ceream cum remis et militibus cereis factam magica arte. Ponebat eam in peluim ubi erat aqua et faciebat eam submergi. Et statim submergebantur in mari naues Artaxersis cum militibus Artaxersis. Tandem comperit hoc Artaxerses per astronomicos et magos, et fecit per magicam artem nauem, et quadam die uisum fuit Nectalamo quod omnes montes et silue ingrederentur mare, et cognouit quod Artaxerses artem contra artem fecerat. Et uidens non posse resistere fugit ad Phylippum patrem Alexandri.’ Iulii Ualerii Epitome, in Pseudocallisthenes: Forschungen zur Kritik und Geschichte der ältesten Aufzeichnung der Alexandersage, ed. Julius Zacher (Halle: Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1867), 1–3. The Epitome summarized Julius Valerius’s Res gestae, itself a fourth-century translation of the PseudoCallisthenes’s Life of Alexander. The manuscript is Liegnitz, Petro-Paulinischen Kirchenbibliothek MS 51. Alfons Hilka, ‘Studien zur Alexandersage. I. Die Liegnitzer “Historia Alexandri Magni”’, Romanische Forschungen 29 (1911): 16: ‘Iste multum laborauit, ut posset subiugare Egiptum. Sed Neptabanus magus, qui erat peritus in astronomia et artibus magicis, fecit quadam arte turrem mire magnitudinis in medio mari, quam fecit stare super 4 cancros vitreos, quia in abisso maris non poterat fundare turrem. Et stabat in summitate turris illius peluis plena aqua ante eum et habebat specula smaragdina circumquaque alta. Et cum Artaxerses parabat milites et naues, quas mitteret in Egiptum, cum ingrediebatur mare, statim aspiciebat et uidebat eas in speculo. Et accipiebat navim ceream cum remis et militibus cereis factam arte magica et ponebat eam in peluim, ubi aqua erat, et faciebat eam submergi et statim submergebantur naues Artaxersis cum militibus. Tandem comperit hoc Artaxerses. Conuocans astronomos et magos, qui habundabant in regno Persarum, et fecit fieri per artem magicam navem. Tunc quadam die visum et Neptabano, quod omnes montes et silue ingredenretur in mare, et congnouit [sic], quod Artaxerses artem arte deluserat et uidens se non posse resistere fugit ad Philippum, regem Macedonum, qui postea dicebatur pater Allexandri [sic].’ The full text of the Liegnitz Epitome is edited pp. 16–30. Hilka devotes considerable attention to the more striking elements of the text – bronze basin, glass crabs and emerald mirrors (ibid., 6–12). Ibid., 2. Hilka grounded his opinion here on the placement of the Alexander story within the world chronicle of Ekkehard of Aura, the Pantheon of Godfrey of Viterbo and the Speculum historiale of Vincent de Beauvais. George Cary, The Medieval Alexander, published posthumously by David J. A. Ross (Cambridge: CUP, 1956), 26. Our text rules out any possibility that the Liegnitz historia Alexandri was a prose



Notes to pages 128–30

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version composed in the fifteenth century, for which see Cary, ibid. The Liegnitz text is clearly a fifteenth-century copy of what we can now prove was a much earlier epitome. 63 Hilka suggested Peter Comestor as a direct source in ‘Studien zur Alexandersage’, 2–3, 16 and 23. 64 PL 198, 1480: ‘Post Cambysem unus de septem magis, qui judicabant regnum Persarum, Smerdes nomine, obtinuit regnum Persarum; ducens Panthaei, filiam Cambyse, in uxorem, simulat se non velle sibi regnare, sed conservare regnum Mergi fratri Cambyse, quia puer erat. Hunc tamen Mergum Cambyses prius occiderat in penetralibus templi, solo isto Smerde conscio hujus sacrilegii et parricidii. Cumque post septem menses regni sui moreretur Smerdes, substituit sibi fratrem, juvenem elegantem forma et viribus, dicens hunc esse Mergum Cyri filium, et Cambysis fratrem. Haec autem occultatio regum de facili fieri potuit in Perside, quia ad regem nullus fere intrabat praeter domesticos ejus. Unus autem de septem magis coepit illum habere suspectum, suspicans non esse Mergum. Hic magus inter concubinas regis filiam habebat; qui secretius loquens cum ea, monuit eam, ut de nocte attentius palparet caput regis, et deprehenderet utrum auriculas haberet. Hunc enim fratrem Smerdis, quondam sibi offensum, Cambyses mutilaverat auribus. Cumque puella deprehendisset eum aures non habere, indicavit hoc patri. Qui cum reliquis magis hoc indicasset, conjuraverunt in eum, et occiderunt eum, et non repugnaverunt nisi per annum isti duo fratres.’ 65 This also leaves open the question of where Peter Comestor found his story. 66 F.119r: ‘Tres reges erant in Perside post Cirum. et sequitur quartus qui multiplicabit opes et augmentabit regnum, et post sequitur alius mirabilis … Post Cirum regnauit Cambises filius eius viii. annos et mortuus, et non reliquit filium sed filiam que dicebatur Panteis. Septem sapientes semper erant iuxta latus regis quorum consilio cuncta gerebantur in regno, et sic uocabantur apud orientales magi, non a magica arte sed magnitudine scientie. Et tunc inter illos septem erant duo fratres sapientores ceteris. Et unus ex illis nomine Elimeides duxit uxorem Panteidem et regnauit. Ceteri sapientes inuidentes posuerunt ei insidias, et infra annum mortuus, et regnauit fratrer eius. Sed isti duo fratres uix regnauerunt per annum, et ideo pro uno rege reputati sunt.’ 67 Josephus, 306: ‘Post magorum uero interitum, qui defuncto Cambyse principatum Persarum anno tenuerunt, hi qui septem domini nuncupabantur apud Persas filium Hispaspis Darium regem ordinauerunt.’ 68 Cf. previous footnote. 69 Bede, De temporum ratione, 484–5: ‘Inter Darium et Cambysen regnasse duos fratres magos in libris Chronicorum Eusebii repperimus; uerum Hieronimus in expositione danihelis scribit: post Cambysen Smerdem magum regnasse, qui Panthapten, inquit, filiam Cambysis duxit uxorem.’

242 70

Notes to pages 130–1

CCCC MS 51, p. 64: ‘Post cambisem tres fratres regnauerunt menses vii. Post quos darius annis xxxvi.’ 71 See Jerome’s In Danielem, Bede, Ado of Vienne (PL 123, 51, who fuses the two brothers into a single magus, as our author says some people did), Honorius Augustodunensis (Imago Mundi, ed. Flint, 137) and Peter Comestor (PL 198, 1480). 72 Acts 13.8: ‘resistebat autem illis Elymas magus sic enim interpretatur nomen eius quaerens avertere proconsulem a fide’. See also, as a possible misguided source, the opulent city of Elymais in Persia in 1 Macc. 6.1: ‘et rex Antiochus perambulavit superiores regiones et audivit esse civitatem Elymaidem in Perside nobilissimam et copiosam in argento et auro’. Jerome, in his In Danielem with which our author seemed familiar, wrote ‘quod audiens Antiochus – qui contra “principem principum” surrexerat, id est “dominum dominantium” et “regem regum” – in Elymaidem, quae regio Persarum est …’ Could our author have misread ‘regio persarum’ for ‘regem persarum’? 73 Cf. Josephus, 302: ‘Dum ergo Daniel sic esset insignis et clarus, eo quod reliogiosus existeret, aedificauit in Egtabanis Mediae mausoleum ualde praeclarum et mirabiliter nimis instructum … Hactenus enim sepeliuntur ibi Medorum reges atque Persarum pariter et Parthorum, et cui haec cura committitur, sacerdos Iudaeorum, et hoc sit usque ad praesens tempus.’ Compare Jerome, In Danielem, 851: ‘Susae autem metropolis est regionis Elamitarum, in qua Daniel, secundum historiam Josephi: Turrem exstruxit excelsam et quadro aedificatam marmore, tantae que magnitudinis ac pulchritudinis ut usque in praesens esse noua uideatur; in ea que regum Persarum atque Medorum conduntur reliquiae, et custos, siue aedituus, ac sacerdos eiusdem loci Iudaeus est.’ 74 Hrabanus, Expositio in librum Judith (PL 109, 544): ‘sicut et Josephus narrat Danielem prophetam sub Dario rege in eadem civitate Mediae mausolaeum valde praeclarum et mirabiliter nimis instruxisse … Hactenus enim sepeliuntur ibi Medorum reges atque Persarum, pariter et Parthorum. Et cui haec cura committitur, sacerdos est Judaeorum, et hoc fit usque ad praesens tempus.’ 75 F.115v: ‘et iste edificauit Hectabanam uel Hecchatamam. Hectabanis ciuitas est in media ubi fuit Daniel qui condidit ibi mausoleum id est spiram regale sepulcrum ubi post sepelierunt se omnes reges Medorum … et quia Daniel construxit numquam est custos illius mausolei nisi hebreus.’ 76 PL 198, 1459: ‘[Daniel] faciebat opera regis, forte mausoleum in Ecbatanis, quod hactenus manet, ut dicit Josephus, ita mirabile, ut ea die qua conspicitur putetur esse constructum. Ibi sepeliuntur Medorum reges et Persarum pariter, et Parthorum; et cui cura illius committitur sacerdos est Medorum.’ 77 2 Kings 22.14.

78

Notes to pages 131–2

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F.113r: ‘Tunc enim erat civitas distincta et circumdata tribus muris, et intra ambitum prioris ubi templum erat habitabant sacerdotes et reges et levite. Infra ambitum secundi alii nobiles et principes. Infra ambitum terci pellipelarii et alii qui seruilia opera faciebant. Medius ambitus uocabatur secunda ierusalem.’ 79 F.121r: ‘Tunc duobus muris fuit munita ciuitas a neemia. Post habuit tercium murum.’ 80 PL 113, 690: ‘(Hieron.) Oldam uxor fuit Sellum avunculi patris Jeremiae, et patris Ananeel. Habitabat in secunda. Locus erat Jerosolymitanus extra murum civitatis et antemurale, qui vocabatur secunda: cujus mentio fit in Sophonia propheta.’ The reference to Jerome is actually to the Pseudo-Jerome’s Quaestiones hebraicae in Libros Regum. They were written around 800 and were widely used by Hrabanus and later firmly established in the Hieronymian canon. Cf. PL 23, 1400: ‘Locus enim erat Hierosolymis extra murum, id est, inter murum civitatis et antemurale, qui vocabatur secunda: cujus mentio fit in Sophonia propheta.’ 81 PL 198, 1417: ‘id est secundo ambitu muri, quem fecerat Ezechias, de quo dixit Sophonias: “Et ululatus a secunda parte”, scilicet quia pars secundo muro circumdata prius capta est.’ 82 See, for instance, Adrian J. Boas, Jerusalem in the Time of the Crusades (London: Routledge, 2001), 140. 83 Levictus 11.39: ‘sin autem quispiam aqua sementem perfuderit et postea morticinis tacta fuerit ilico polluetur’. 84 For the full description of the rebuilding, see Nehemiah 3. The Book of Nehemiah was also known in the Middle Ages as the Second Book of Ezra (2 Esdras). 85 PL 113, 714–17. 86 Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam, CCSL 119A, ed. David Hurst (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969), 237–392. 87 F.121r: ‘De portis interioris muri non inuenimus mencionem factam nisi de tribus scilicet de porta iudiciali et istis tribus fiebant accessus ad templum.’ 88 Cf. the texts edited as Itineraria et alia geographica, CCSL 175, ed. Paul Geyer, Otto Cuntz, Ezio Francheschini, Robert Weber, Ludwig Bieler, John Fraipont and François Glorie (Turnhout: Brepols, 1965). 89 For all their faults, the over 2,000 pages of Itinera Hierosolymitana crucesignatorum (saec. XII–XIII), ed. Sabino De Sandoli, 4 vols (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1978–84), give some sense of the sheer volume of Crusader topographical writing. Many of these authorities, at least in the twelfth century, included some form of description of Jerusalem. For a more scholarly edition of three twelfth-century pilgrimage narratives, see Peregrinationes tres: Saewulf, John of Würzburg, Theodericus, ed. Robert B. C. Huygens, CCCM 139 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994).

244 90

Notes to pages 132–3

For this remark about John of Würzburg, see R. B. C. Huygens’s introduction to Peregrinationes Tres, 18. 91 F.120v: ‘et eliasapha summus sacerdos et iste cum sacerdotibus edificauit portam gregis et piscinam probaticam. Due piscine erant in ciuitate id est duo lacus siue receptacula aquarum et una erat uicina templo. ad quam uenebant [sic] ministri ad abluendas carnes sacrificiorum et dicebatur probatica. probaton ouis siue pecus quia ibi solebant lauari carnes pecudum et iuxta illam erat porta illa que dicebatur porta gregis. quia animalia inde introducebatur necessaria ad hostias.’ 92 See, for instance, Itinerarium Burdigalense, ed. Paul Geyer and Otto Cuntz, in Itineraria et alia geographica: ‘Sunt in hierusalem piscinae magnae duae ad latus templi, id est una ad dexteram, alia ad sinistram, quas salomon fecit, interius uero ciuitati sunt piscinae gemellares quinque porticus habentes, quae appellantur Behtsaida.’ For a version closer to our text, see William of Tyre, Chronicon, VIII.4, CCCM 63, ed. Robert B. C. Huygens, Hans E. Mayer and Gerhard Rösch (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986), 390: ‘in piscinas duas maxime quantitatis, que circa Templi ambitum … quarum altera usque hodie Probatica Piscina reputatur’. 93 Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam, 345: ‘Meminit huius loci et Hieronimus in libro locorum ita scribens: Bethsaida piscina in Hierusalem quae uocatur προβατική et a nobis interpretari potest pecualis … nam hostias in eo lauari a sacerdotibus solitas ferunt unde et nomen acceperit. Ex quibus omnibus uidetur porta gregis uicina esse piscinae probaticae ut per hanc uidelicet adferrentur hostiae quae in illa lauarentur.’ 94 John 5.2-11, which begins ‘est autem Hierosolymis super Probatica piscina quae cognominatur hebraice Bethsaida quinque porticus habens’. 95 Cf. Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam, 345: ‘piscinam probaticam, cuius nominis meminit in euangelio suo Iohannes, Est autem, inquiens, Hierosolimis super probatica piscina quae cognominatur Hebraice Bethsaida quinque porticus habens, in his iacebat multitudo magna languentium, et cetera’. For another such mention of the Pool, see what follows in William of Tyre, Chronicon: ‘in qua olim immolaticie lavabantur hostie, que in evangelio quinque porticus dicitur habere et in quam angelus dicebatur descendere et aquam movere illo effectu, ut qui primus post motionem aque descenderet in piscinam sanaretur, in qua et dominus paraliticum curatum grabatum iussit tollere’. 96 F.120v: ‘et super portam illam edificauerunt turrim. que dicebatur turris ophet [sic] id est nebulosa quia tante erat altitudinis quod summitate transcendebat nubes. Secundam scilicet portam piscium edificauerunt filii asanaa et dicebatur porta piscium quia erat uersus mare tirrenum ex quare parte ueniebant pisces et hee due porte erant uersus occidentem.’



Notes to pages 133–4

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97 Cf. Glossa Ordinaria, PL 113, 688: ‘Ophel. Turris erat non longe a templo, mirae altitudinis. Unde et Ophel, id est, tenebrarum vel nubili nomen accepit. Ubi autem in Michaea scriptum est: Et turris gregis nebulosa filiae Sion: In Hebraeo habetur, turris Ophel. Turris Ophel eminentiam Scripturae significat, quae in historia fundata spiritualis sensus caput inter nubila condit, dum scientiae magnitudinem ab oculis hominum abscondit.’ Compare Jerome, In Micheam, CCSL 76, ed. Marcus Adriaen (Tunhout: Brepols, 1969), 474: ‘Turrem gregis nebulosam siue squalentem, quod Hebraice dicitur ophel nullam aliam debemus accipere, nisi illam de qua Esaias ait: Et aedificaui turrim in medio eius, id est uineae. Vinea autem domini domus israel est haec turris quamdiu habet torcular, id est altare …’ 98 Micah 4.8: ‘et tu turris Gregis nebulosa filiae Sion usque ad te veniet et veniet potestas prima regnum filiae Hierusalem’. 99 Andrew of St Victor, In Micheam, CCCM 53G, ed. Frans Van Liere and Mark A. Zier (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 197: ‘Turrem gregis nebulosam siue squalentem, quod Hebraice dicitur “ofel,” nullam aliam debemus accipere nisi illam de qua Ysaias ait: Et edificauit turrim in medio eius, id est uinee. Vinea autem Domini Sabaoth domus Israel est. Hec turris quamdiu habet torcular, id est altare …’ 100 Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam, 345–6: ‘Portam piscium uocat eam quae Ioppen ac Diospolim, id est Lyddam, respiciebat et uicinior mari fuit inter cunctas uias Hierusalem quae nunc porta Dauid fertur appellari et esse prima portarum ad occidentem montis Sion.’ Bede none the less carried on with allegorical and moral interpretations of the gate, such as ‘Porta ergo piscium aedificatur in hierusalem cum illi gradus ordinantur in ecclesia per quos electi a reprobis quasi boni pisces a malis segregati ad consortium perpetuae pacis inferantur’, etc. 101 Boas, Jerusalem in the Time of the Crusades, 50–3. 102 Ibid., 69. 103 F.120v: ‘Sextam portam edificauerunt filii ysaie que dicitur porta draconis siue fontis quia per eam ibant ad fontem quendam que oriebatur ad radicem montis qui [sic] non fluebat iugibus aquis nec iugibus horis et habebat uias subterraneas et lapidosas in quibus solebant habitare dracones et cum fluebat aqua faciebat strepitum cum sonitu et ideo dicebatur porta draconis et tamen frequentius dicitur porta fontis.’ 104 Bede, In Ezram and Neemiam, 349: ‘Narrant autem scriptores quod ab ea fronte montis sion quae praerupta rupe orientalem plagam spectat intra muros atque in radicibus collis fons siloae prorumpat qui alternante quidem accessu aquarum in meridiem fluit, id est non iugibus aquis sed incertis horis diebus que ebullit, et per terrarum concaua et antra saxi durissimi cum magno sonitu uenire consueuit.’ Compare Jerome, In Esaiam, 113: ‘Siloe autem fontem esse ad radices

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montis Sion, qui non iugibus aquis, sed in certis horis diebus que ebulliat, et per terrarum concaua et antra saxi durissimi cum magno sonitu ueniat.’ 105 Even though there is a verse in Isaiah about ‘the dens where dragons once dwelt’ becoming green and lush, and the thirsty land turning into ‘springs of water’. The vocabulary is similar to that used by our author, so it is possible that there was a faint echo here. Cf. Isaiah 35.7: ‘et quae erat arida in stagnum et sitiens in fontes aquarum in cubilibus in quibus prius dracones habitabant orietur viror calami et iunci’. 106 See The Historia Brittonum 3: The ‘Vatican’ Recension, ed. D. Dumville (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1985), 90–1. 107 On distinctiones and concordances, cf. Dahan, L’exégèse chrétienne de la Bible, 331–5 and 350–8. For the De panibus, see PL 202, 929–1046, and Jean Leclercq, La spiritualité de Pierre de Celle (1115–1183) (Paris: Vrin, 1946). 108 On this, see Dahan, L’exégèse chrétienne de la Bible, 248–52. 109 Jdt 10.19: ‘videns itaque Holofernem Iudith sedentem in conopeo quod erat ex purpura et auro et zmaragdo et lapidibus pretiosis intextum’. 110 F.116v: ‘Canopeum pannus subtilis ad modum retis factus quod solet poni super altaria et lectos diuitum ad repellendas muscas a canopo opido ubi primo inuenitus uel conopeum a cono quia ad modum coni factus’. Compare with the Historia scolastica, PL 198, 1477–8: ‘Sedebat autem Holofernes in canopoeo purpura, et auro et gemmis contexto, hoc est sericum reticulum muscarum, dictum sic a Canopo oppido Aegypti in quo inventum est. Alii dicunt conopoeum, quoniam instar coni a lato ascendit in acutum.’ 111 Tobit 8.2: ‘recordatus itaque Tobias sermonem angeli protulit de cassidile suo partem iecoris posuitque eam super carbones vivos’. 112 Luke 10.4: ‘nolite portare sacculum neque peram neque calciamenta’. 113 Papias, Elementarium doctrinae rudimentum (Venice: n.p., 1496), 28. On medieval lexicography in general and Papias in particular, see Richard Sharpe, ‘Vocabulary, word formation, lexicography’, in Frank A. C. Mantello and Arthur G. Rigg, eds, Medieval Latin: An Introduction and Bibliographical Guide (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 93–105. 114 F.115v: ‘Iuxta caria sephet id est ciuitatem scriptorum habitabat tobias ubi omnes tam uiri quam mulieres exercebant scribendi officium.’ 115 Tobit 1.1: ‘Tobias ex tribu et civitate Nepthalim quae est in superioribus Galileae supra Naasson post viam quae ducit ad occidentem in sinistro habens civitatem Sephet.’ 116 PL 198, 1269: ‘Et ascendens inde, obsedit civitatem Dabir, quae prius vocabatur Cariatsepher, id est civitas litterarum. Cives enim ejus scriptores erant.’ 117 The Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot, ed. Adrian Morey and Christopher N. L. Brooke (Cambridge: CUP, 1967), 264: ‘Attende quid sit moram fecisse



118

119

120

121

122 123 124

125

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Bononie, et ea quibus iamdicta ciuitas insignis effecta est turpiter ignorare. Hec altera iam Carihatsepher quod est ‘ciuitas literarum’ digne meruit appellari …’ About Hezekiah, f.112r: ‘Ezechias infirmabatur quodam apostemate quod dicitur antrax quia post incredibiles triumphos non reddidit grates.’ For the scourges of the Samaritans, f.112r: ‘inmisit dominus pestem ursos lupos leones qui deuorarent eos et animalia eorum’. F.116v: ‘Lxx multa pretermiserunt de hebraica ueritate et multa addiderunt que non in hebreo. et cum inuenit ieronimus inponebat obelum signum ad modum sagitte habens alas. Reges semper fuerunt superbi et inter eos fuit quidam qui dicebatur menfres in cuius tempore nilus inundauit quod plus nocuit quam profecisset. quod uidens menfres accepit arcum et sagittam direxit in nilum indignans de solio et statim factus cecus et consuluit ariolos. illi dixerunt quod apolo ei fuit iratus et ut faceret aliquid in honore ipsius et fecit porticam altitudinis LXX pedum et in summitate posuit duas sagittas aureas in honorem apollonis … sic recuperauit uisum.’ Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive originum libri XX, ed. William M. Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911), vol. 2, XVIII.31.1: ‘Oboliscum Mesfres rex Aegypti primus fecisse refertur tali ex causa. Quum quodam tempore Nilus uiolenti inundatione Aegyptum nocuisset, indignatus rex tamquam poenas a flumine exigeret, sagittam in undas misit. Non multum post graui ualitudine correptus lumen amisit, qui post caecitatem uisu recepto duos oboliscos Soli sacrauit. Oboliscus enim sagitta dicitur, qui ideo in medio Circo ponitur quia per medium mundum sol currit.’ Praefatio in libro Paralipomenon de graeco emendato, in Biblia Sacra iuxta Latinam Vulgatam Versionem ad codicum fidem … VII: Liber Verborum dierum (Rome: Vatican, 1948), 9: ‘ubi uero obelus, transuersa scilicet uirga, praeposita est, illic significatur quid Septuaginta interpretes addiderint uel ob decoris gratiam uel ob spiritus sancti auctoritatem, et in Hebreis uoluminibus non legatur’. For the entry on obelus in the Etymologies, cf. I.21. For the story of Susanna, see Daniel 13. F.118v: ‘Duo senes persuadebant se de genere Iuda et quod Christus ex eis nasciturus et ita persuadebant iuuenibus ut concedent se illis ut Christus ex eis nasceretur Dicunt Hebrei quod isti fuerunt Achimas et Sedechias de quibus in Ieremia quia cum volebant inproperare alicui dicebant [‘dicebantur’ was probably meant here], “Fiat tibi sicut factum est Achime et Sedechie” quos frixit rex Babilonis quia, fortasse convicti a Daniele, traditi sunt regi a populo et ipse facit exuri, vel quia precepto regis lepidati sunt a populo.’ Cf. Jeremiah 29.21-2: ‘haec dicit Dominus exercituum Deus Israhel ad Ahab filium Culia et ad Sedeciam filium Maasiae qui prophetant vobis in nomine

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meo mendaciter ecce ego tradam eos in manu Nabuchodonosor regis Babylonis et percutiet eos in oculis vestris et adsumetur ex eis maledictio omni transmigrationi Iuda quae est in Babylone dicentium ponat te Dominus sicut Sedeciam et sicut Ahab quos frixit rex Babylonis in igne’. 126 In Hieremiam, 284: ‘Aiunt Hebraei hos esse presbyteros, qui fecerint stultitiam in Israhel et moechati sunt uxores ciuium suorum, quorum uni loquitur danihel: inueterate dierum malorum et alteri: semen Chanaam et non Iuda, species decepit te et concupiscentia peruertit cor tuum! sic faciebatis filiabus Israhel et illae metuentes loquebantur uobis cum; sed non filia Iudae sustinuit iniquitatem uestram. quod que propheta nunc loquitur: et locuti sunt uerbum in nomine meo mendaciter, quod non mandaui eis, illud significari putant, quod miseras mulierculas, quae circumferuntur omni uento doctrinae, sic deceperint, quo dicerent eis, quia de tribu erant Iuda, christum de suo semine esse generandum; quae inlectae cupidine praebebant corpora sua quasi matres futurae Christi.’ 127 In Danielem: ‘et constituti sunt duo senes de populo iudices in anno illo [Dan. 13.5]. referebat Hebraeus: istos esse Achiam et Sedeciam [de quibus scripsit Hieremias: faciat te dominus sicut Achiam et Sedeciam] quos frixit rex Babylonis in igne propter iniquitatem quam fecerant in Israel, et adulterabant uxores ciuium suorum’. 128 In Hieremiam, 284: ‘Sed illud, quod in praesentiarum dicitur: quos frixit rex Babylonis in igne, uidetur Danihelis historiae contrarie. ille enim asserit eos ad sententiam Danihelis a populo esse lapidatos; hic uero scriptum est, quod frixerit eos rex Babylonis in igne.’ See Daniel 13.62: ‘ut facerent secundum legem Moysi et interfecerunt eos et salvatus est sanguis innoxius in die illa’. 129 In Hieremiam, 284–5: ‘Unde et a plerisque ac paene omnibus Hebraeis ipsa quasi fabula non recipitur nec legitur in synagogis eorum. “Qui enim”, inquit, “fieri poterat”, ut captiui lapidandi principes et prophetas suos haberent potestatem? Magis que hoc esse uerum affirmant, quod scribit Hieremias, conuictos quidem esse presbyteros a Danihele, sed latam in eos sententiam a rege Babylonis, qui in captiuos ut uictor et dominus habebat imperium.’ This argument considerably weakened the validity of this part of the text of Daniel. 130 Hrabanus, Super Jeremiam, PL 111, 1021, who repeats Jerome. See also Historia Scolastica, PL 198, 1423: ‘Hos duos tradunt Hebraei fuisse illos duos senes, quos postea dijudicavit Daniel. Nec obest, quod dicitur rex Babylonis frixisse, cum Daniel dicat eos lapidatos.’ 131 F.113r: ‘Tunc dixit Helchias ad Sapham scribam: “Inueni librum in templo”. Creditur fuisse deuteronomius legitur quod in campestibus Moab Moyses scripsit deuteronomium et tradidit leuitis et precipit ut ponerent in latere arche ubi erat uirga Aaron … et semper in septennio legeretur semel coram populo in festo scenophegie, et ipsi reposuerunt et non legerunt. Et ideo creditur quod



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helchias inuenerit et legerit ad Sapham. Sapham accepit et tulit ad Iosiam et legit ante eum.’ 132 Deuteronomy 31.9-11: ‘Scripsit itaque Moses legem hanc et tradidit eam sacerdotibus filiis Levi qui portabant arcam foederis Domini et cunctis senioribus Israhelis, praecepitque eis dicens post septem annos anno remissionis in sollemnitate tabernaculorum, convenientibus cunctis ex Israhel ut appareant in conspectu Domini Dei tui in loco quem elegerit Dominus leges verba legis huius coram omni Israhel audientibus eis’ and 24-6: ‘Postquam ergo scripsit Moses verba legis huius in volumine atque conplevit, praecepit Levitis qui portabant arcam foederis Domini dicens, tollite librum istum et ponite eum in latere arcae foederis Domini Dei vestri ut sit ibi contra te in testimonio.’ 133 Numbers 17.10: ‘Dixitque Dominus ad Mosen refer virgam Aaron in tabernaculum testimonii.’ 134 F.120r–120v: ‘Hoc anno incipit Hesdras … ad miniculo exemplaris cordetenus dictante spiritu sancto conscripsit uiginti duo uolumina que in canone Hebreorum. Quidam tamen dicunt quod habuit quinque libros Moysi a Samaritanis sed in prophetis et psalmis nullum exemplar quedam mutauit quia psalmi titulos apposuit et ordinauit eos et in prophetis quedam addidit. Ieronimus et quidam autumant quod dictus sit uelox scriba quia tunc temporis Hebrei habebant figuras difficiliores ad scribendum et pronuntiandum et iste inuenit faciliores ad scribendum et pronuntiandum quibus nunc utuntur Hebrei.’ 135 For Judith, see f.115v (starts ‘Hystoriam uidue iudith ieronimus de caldeo in latinum transtulit’), for Esther f.116v (‘Hystoria hester habetur inter agiographa a ieronimo translata de hebreo in latinum ad preces paule et eustochii filie eius sed cum magno labore propter mendosos codices’), and for Daniel f.117r (starts ‘Liber danielis apud hebreos inter agiographa et dicunt plura que ibi continetur esse apocripha et fabulosa ut de susanna et tribus pueris et abacuc et pluribus aliis’). 136 Jerome, Praefatio Hieronymi in Danielem prophetam, PL 28, 1292: ‘Verum adhortante me quodam Hebraeo, et illud mihi crebrius in sua lingua ingerente, Labor omnia vincit improbus, qui mihi videbar sciolus inter eos, coepi rursum discipulus esse Chaldaicus.’ The quotation is from Virgil, Georgics, I.145–6: ‘Labor omnia vicit / improbus.’ 137 F.117r: ‘et cum uellet transferre Danielem multum laborabat quia non poterat exprimere Caldaicum sermonem qui multum asperitatis habuit in pronunciationem. Et inceptum multociens dimittebat, sed quidam Iudeus aiabat, eum dicens : “Labor improbus omnia uincit”. Tandem fecit sibi secari dentes et ut melius posset exprimere Caldaicum sermonem.’ 138 On this, see Dennis Brown, Vir Trilinguis: A Study in the Biblical Exegesis of

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Saint Jerome (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1992), 71–5 for Hebrew and 82–5 for Aramaic. 139 See The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle 1 (1823): 223: ‘It is said of St Jerome that he filed his teeth to the very gums that he might pronounce Hebrew with greater facility.’ See also The London Medical and Physical Journal 36 (1816): 256. 140 All Peter Comestor wrote about this was: ‘Librum ejus transtulit Hieronymus ad petitionem Paulae et Eustochii cum magna difficultate. Scriptus enim erat Hebraicis litteris, sed Chaldaico sermone’ (PL 198, 1447). 141 Boncompagnus 1.23.3, 48: ‘Item Ieronimus sibi dentes fecit acui et limari, ad hoc quod Hebreorum et Chaldeorum ydioma rectius pronuntiare ualeret’, as quoted by Gary P. Cestaro, ‘Dante, Boncompagno da Signa, Eberhard the German, and the Rhetoric of the Maternal Body’, in Brenda Deen Schildgen, ed., The Rhetoric Canon (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997), 192. 142 F. 119v: ‘Hucusque que in Ebraica ueritate, cetera in edicione Theodocionis.’ 143 Cf. Daniel 13.54: ‘nunc ergo si vidisti eam dic sub qua arbore videris eos loquentes sibi qui ait sub scino’, and 58: ‘nunc ergo dic mihi sub qua arbore conprehenderis eos loquentes sibi qui ait sub prino’. 144 F.119v–120r: ‘Sub cino [sic] et cetera. Hebreus magister Ieronimii hinc conicit non esse autenticum, dicens quod uerbum istud redolet eloquentiam grece locutionis. Est enim in Greco uerbi allusio id est ornatus quidam qui non potuit obseruari nec in Ebreo nec in Latino.’ 145 Jerome, Commentarii in Danielem, CCSL 75A, ed. François Glorie (Turnhout: Brepols, 1964), 948–9: ‘Quia Hebraei reprobant historiam Susannae, dicentes eam in Danielis uolumine non haberi, debemus diligenter inquirere: nomina “schini” et “prini” – quae latini “ilicem” et “lentiscum” interpretantur – si sint apud Hebraeos, et quam habeant ἐτυμολογίαν: ut ab “schino” “scissio” et a “prino” “sectio” siue “serratio” dicatur lingua eorum. Quod si non fuerit inuentum, necessitate cogemur et nos eorum acquiescere sententiae, qui Graeci tantum sermonis hanc uolunt esse περικοπὴν quae graecam tantum habeat ἐτυμολογίαν et hebraicam non habeat; quod si quis ostenderit duarum istarum arborum scissionis et sectionis et in hebraeo stare ἐτυμολογίαν, tunc poterimus etiam hanc scripturam recipere.’ 146 On the canonicity of the Susanna story, see Theodoor C. Vriezen and Adam S. van der Woude, Ancient Israelite and Early Jewish Literature, trans. Brian Doyle (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), 546–50, as well as 472–83 for a wider presentation of the textual tradition of Daniel. For a more detailed discussion, see Helmut Engel, Die Susanna-Erzählung Einleitung, Übersetzung und Kommentar zum Septuaginta-Text und zur Theodotion-Bearbeitung (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, and Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1985), 17–29.



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147 F.115v: ‘Casiodorus qui glosat librum istum dicit legite omnes annales libros regum Assiriorum et neminem regum Assiriorum inuenietis uocatum nab. Similiter legite omnes annales regum Medorum et neminem inuenietis uocatum Arphaxat.’ 148 Cassiodorus, Institutiones, ed. Roger A. B. Mynors, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), 26: ‘Tobit autem in libris V, Hester in libris VI, Iudith in libris VII et Machabaeorum in libris X expositio in Latinum sermonem praedicti Bellatoris presbyteri, ut praevalet, labore collecta est.’ 149 PL 109, 541: ‘Quidam quaerendum putant, historia Judith quo tempore, quibusve sub regibus edita fuerit; ob hoc maxime, quia ipsi reges in historia notati sunt, hoc est, Arphaxad et Nabuchodonosor, apud eos qui Assyriorum vel Medorum historias conscripsere, in ordine regum utriusque regni inserti non reperiuntur.’ 150 F.115v: ‘Divertendum ergo ad Hebreorum tradicionem. Dicunt quod hoc factum fit tempore Cambisis filii Cyri regis Medorum.’ 151 PL 109, 543: ‘Caeterum Eusebius in Chronicis suis asserit Cambysem filium Cyri, qui post patrem triginta annis regnantem octo annis in Perside regnavit, ab Hebraeis secundum Nabuchodonosor vocari, sub quo Judith historia conscripta sit.’ 152 F.113v: ‘Circa finem uite pharao Necao congregauit infinitum exercitum contra regem Asyriorum. Josephus dicit contra regem Medorum et Persarum.’ Peter Comestor’s version also involved the Medes, but differently, and cannot therefore be a source: ‘Audierat enim [Nechao] eum [regem Assyriorum] jam debilitatum, quia Medi, et Babylonii a monarchia ejus recesserant, et aestimabat quod de facile posset obtinere Syriam’ (PL 198, 1418). The Glossa ordinaria supplies only an allegorical interpretation borrowed from Hrabanus (PL 113, 627). 153 F.113v: ‘Quedam hystorie dicunt quod Necao uocauit eum secreto ad collocutionem in campo Maiedo iuxta arborem ubi erat fons et uenerunt tres ex una parte tres ex alia ut colloquerentur. Quidam sagittarius quem posuerat Necao in insidiis dolose direxit sagittam in Iosiam et uulnerauit letaliter, et propter inmanitatem sceleris statim aruit arbor et exsiccatus fons. Due hystorie dicunt quod cum disponeret exercitum ibi et descenderet de curru uolens expedicior esse quidam sagittarius uulnerauit eum.’ Peter Comestor has a version that also involves a spring and a tree, but in a different way, making it improbable that he can be our author’s source (PL 198, 1418). 154 F.118r: ‘Ita exponit Beda et competenter. Affricanus aliter exponit nec discordat ab ista expositione nisi in hoc quod ille exponit de morte ubi nos dicimus de baptismo et ita in tribus annis. Tertullianus multum discordat ab ista et in multis fallitur et exponit ita.’ 155 Tertullian, Aduersus paganos, chapter 8, for which see Geoffrey D. Dunn,

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Notes to pages 142–7 Tertullian’s Aduersus Iudaeos: A Rhetorical Analysis (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 119–20. Daniel 5.5 : ‘in eadem hora apparuerunt digiti quasi manus hominis scribentis contra candelabrum in superficie parietis aulae regiae et rex aspiciebat articulos manus scribentis’, and 30-31 : ‘eadem nocte interfectus est Balthasar rex Chaldeus et Darius Medus successit in regnum’. F.117r: ‘Cyrus nepos Baltasar filius sororis eius, cum Baltasar noluit dare partem regni Caldeorum Cyrus congregato exercitu obsedit cum Dario auunculo et Balthasar in derisionem obsidionis fecit conuiuium. Alii aliter.’ Josephus, 299–300: ‘Quem dum obsident [Cyrus and Darius] in Babylonia, mirabile quoddam prodigium contigisse dinoscitur. Iacebat nanque coenans in domo maxima et conuiuiis regalibus opportuna cum suis concubinis pariter et amicis.’ Historia scolastica, PL 198, 1456 : ‘Factum est ut Cyrus et Darius obsiderent Baltassar in Babylone. Baltassar vero fecit grande convivium optimatibus suis mille, et fecit ut afferrentur vasa … Secundum Josephum, solemnitas erat in Babylone instituta ob tuitionem urbis. Fabulantur Hebraei quod Baltassar intellexerat septuaginta annos captivitatis, quos praedixerat Jeremias fluxisse, et tamen Hebraei non erant liberati a jurisdictione sua; unde exsultabat, et diis suis gratias agebat.’ The manuscript is Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.15.5; I am grateful to Nicholas Vincent for pointing out the glosses to me. The glosses on the Muses are in the bottom margins of f.132v–133r. On the complex notion of ‘school’ in the twelfth century, see the penetrating analysis of Cédric Giraud in Per verba magistri. Anselme de Laon et son école au xiie siècle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 19–21, especially on the distinction between ‘école à’ (Chartres, Paris, Laon) and ‘école de’ (for instance Anselm, Abelard according to David Luscombe, etc.). See also the texts quoted by Henri de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale, I/1 (Paris: Aubier, 1959), 84–5. On Andrew at Wigmore, see Berndt, André de Saint-Victor.

Violence, Control, Prophecy and Power in Twelfth-Century France and Germany 1

I am extremely grateful to Jinty Nelson for all her comments and editorial remarks. Cf. Gabrielle M. Spiegel, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 124. The number of publications on the imperial legacy and twelfthcentury politics is huge. See, for example, Walter Kienast, Deutschland und



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Frankreich in der Kaiserzeit (900–1270): Weltkaiser und einzelkönige (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1974); Karl Ferdinand Werner, ‘Das hochmittelalterliche Imperium im politischen Bewusstsein Frankreichs (10.-12. Jahrhundert)’, Historische Zeitschrift 200 (1965): 1–60; Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ‘La notion de la légitimité et la prophétie à la cour de Philippe Auguste’, in R.-H. Bautier, ed., La France de Philippe Auguste: Le temps des mutations (Paris: Editions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1982), 77–110; Matthew Gabriele, ‘The Provenance of the Descriptio qualiter Karolus Magnus: Remembering the Carolingians in the Entourage of King Philip I (1060–1108) before the First Crusade’, Viator 39 (2008): 93–117; Timothy Reuter, ‘Past, Present and No Future in the Regnum Teutonicum’, in Paul Magdalino, ed., The Perception of the Past in TwelfthCentury Europe (London: Hambledon Press, 2003), 15–36; Stefan Burkhardt, ‘Barbarossa, Frankreich und die Weltherrschaft’, in Stefan Burkhardt e.a., ed., Staufisches Kaisertum im 12. Jahrhundert: Konzepte-Netzwerke-Politische Praxis (Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 2010), 133–58; and especially the literature cited below for further references. Elizabeth A. R. Brown and Michael W. Cothren, ‘The Twelfth-Century Crusading Window of the Abbey of Saint-Denis: Praeteritorum Enim Recordatio Futurorum est Exhibitio’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 49 (1986): 1–40 (at 23–4, n. 101). Knut Görich remarks that the political implications of the canonization and employment of the term sacrum imperium should not be overstated, however, as Frederick Barbarossa generally continued to call his Empire a Romanum imperium; cf. Knut Görich, Friedrich Barbarossa: Eine Biographie (Munich: Beck C. H., 2011), 633–6. Alcuin was the first to state that knowledge had been translated to Paris. It was repeated by Notker the Stammerer in the ninth century, who related it to the parallel movement of the translatio imperii. See Serge Lusignan, ‘L’université de Paris comme composante de l’identité du royaume de France: étude sur la thème de la translatio studii’, in Rainer Babel and Jean-Marie Moeglin, eds, Identité régionale et conscience nationale en France et en Allemagne du Moyen Age à l’époque modern (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1997), 59–72 (at 59–61). David Louis Gassman, Translatio studii: A Study of Intellectual History in the Thirteenth Century, 2 vols, micr. dissertation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1973); Ulrich Krämer, Translatio imperii et studii: Zum Geschichtsund Kulturverständmis in der französischen Literatur des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit (Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1996), esp. ch. 5; Herbert Grundmann, ‘Sacerdotium – Regnum – Studium. Zur Wertung der Wissenschaft im 13. Jahrhundert’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 34 (1951): 5–21; Édouard

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Notes to pages 147–9 Jeauneau, The Transmission of Learning: A Gilsonian Theme, Translatio studii (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1995). Cf. Daniel 2 and 7. References are to the Latin Vulgate. The stereotype furor Teutonicus was first coined by Lucan, Pharsalia, I, lines 255–6. For the reintroduction of the concept of the furor Teutonicus, see Ernst Dümmler, ‘Über den furor Teutonicus’, Sitzungsberichte der königlich Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin 9 (1897): 112–26; W. R. Jones, ‘The Image of the Barbarian in Medieval Europe’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 13 (1971): 376–407 (at 398); for the Late Middle Ages, see Len Scales, ‘Germen Militiae: War and German Identity in the Later Middle Ages’, Past and Present: A Journal of Historical Studies 180 (2003): 41–82 (at 66–74); Halvdan Koht, ‘The Dawn of Nationalism in Europe’, American Historical Review 52:2 (1947): 265–80 (at 269). See Stephen D. White’s discussion of the public political discourse of anger and its appropriate use in ‘The Politics of Anger’, in Barbara H. Rosenwein, ed., Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 127–52 (at 131–7). According to ancient and medieval climate theory, the natural environment (the weather, proximity to water, altitude) influenced man’s physical characteristics and mental disposition. Those living in the most temperate region were purportedly endowed with the most desirable characteristics. By the twelfth century, northern France especially was presenting itself as a soft (douce), temperate territory, where chivalry and courtliness flourished. For the application of climate theory in the later Middle Ages, see Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Benjamin Isaac and Joseph Ziegler, eds, The Origins of Racism in the West (Cambridge: CUP, 2009). Horst Fuhrmann, ‘Quis Teutonicos constituit iudices nationum? The Trouble with Henry’, Speculum 69:2 (1994): 344–58 (at 351). For eschatological thought in this period, see Brett Edward Whalen, Dominion of God: Christendom and Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2009), esp. 17–18 and 39–40. An excellent discussion of the power of ethnic stereotypes as a form of sociocultural capital can be found in Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (New York: Routledge, 2000). For an overview of literature on ethnic stereotypes in the later Middle Ages, see Claire Weeda, ‘Ethnic identification and stereotypes in Western Europe, c. 1100–1300’, History Compass (forthcoming). Scales, ‘Germen Militiae’, 63. See also Len Scales, ‘Born to Kill: “Warrior Races” in Medieval Europe’, History Today 55:1 (2005): 47–53. Gerd Althoff, ‘Ira Regis: Prolegomena to a History of Royal Anger’, in Barbara



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H. Rosenwein, ed., Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 59–74 (at 59–66). Andrew Cowell, ‘Violence, History, and the Old French Epic of Revolt’, in Noah D. Guynn and Zrinka Stahuljak, eds, Violence and the Writing of History in the Medieval Francophone World (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2013), 19–34 (at 23–4). Ibid., 21–5. Frederick H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: CUP, 1975), 16–39. Jonathan Riley-Smith, ‘Crusading as an Act of Love’, History 65 (1980): 44–60 (at 52–5). Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae xviii 1, 2, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford: OUP, 1911): ‘Iustum bellum est quod ex praedicto geritur de rebus repetitis aut propulsandorum hostium causa. Iniustum bellum est quod de furore, non de legitima ratione initur’; The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach and Oliver Berghof (Cambridge: CUP, 2006), 359. Cf. Russell, Just War, 27; Scales, ‘Germen Militiae’, 69–71. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae ii 21, 5 and x 1, 129. See Richard E. Barton, ‘Gendering Anger: Ira, Furor, and Discourses of Power and Masculinity in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, in Richard Newhauser, ed., In the Garden of Evil (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2005), 371–92 (at 383–4) for numerous examples of the negative interpretation of fury as heedless violence. Richard E. Barton, ‘Emotions and Power in Orderic Vitalis’, Anglo-Norman Studies 33 (2011): 41–59 (at 50). Barton, ‘Gendering Anger’, 389. Maureen C. Miller, ‘Masculinity, Reform, and Clerical Culture: Narratives of Episcopal Holiness in the Gregorian Era’, Church History 72:1 (2003): 25–52 (at 27–8, 49). Miller thus challenges R. N. Swanson’s concept of the clergy constituting a ‘third gender’; cf. ‘Angels Incarnate: Clergy and Masculinity from Gregorian Reform to Reformation’, in D. M. Hadley, ed., Masculinity in Medieval Europe (London: Routeldge, 1999), 60–177. See also Jo McNamara, ‘The Herrenfrage. The Restructuring of the Gender System, 1050–c. 1150’, in C. A. Lees, T. Fenster and J. McNamara, eds, Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 3–29; Kirsten A. Fenton, ‘Ideas and Ideals of Secular Masculinity in William of Malmesbury’, Women’s History Review 16:5 (2007): 755–72 (at 756). For discussions of effeminacy, hair and clothing and ethnic lay identities, see Robert Bartlett, ‘Symbolic Meanings of Hair in the Middle Ages’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 4 (1994): 43–60; Pauline Stafford, ‘The Meanings of Hair in the Anglo-Norman World: Masculinity, Reform, and National Identity’,

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Notes to pages 150–2 in Mathilde van Dijk and Renée Nip, eds, Saints, Scholars, and Politicians: Gender as a Tool in Medieval Studies (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 153–71; Constant J. Mews, The Lost Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 76–9; H. Platelle, ‘Le Problème du scandale: Les nouvelles modes masculines aux xie et xiie siècles’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 53 (1975): 1071–96. Richard E. Barton, ‘“Zealous Anger” and the Renegotiation of Aristocratic Relationships in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century France’, in Rosenwein, ed., Anger’s Past, 153–70 (at 157). Alain of Lille, Distinctiones, PL, CCX, cols 0802A–0802B: ‘Furor, proprie, est vindicta divina; unde in Psalmo: Domine, ne in furore tuo arguas me. Dicitur etiam malitia, unde ibidem: Furor illis secundum similitudinem serpentis.’ Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 185–6; Catherine Peyroux, ‘Gertrude’s furor: Reading Anger in an Early Medieval Saint’s Life’, in Rosenwein, ed., Anger’s Past, 36–55 (at 51). Cowell, ‘Violence, History, and the Old French Epic of Revolt’, 22–3. Matthew Gabriele, An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks and Jerusalem Before the First Crusade (Oxford: OUP, 2011), 99–101. Althoff, ‘Ira Regis’, 70–4. According to Gerd Althoff the ascendancy of the value of just fury was a general twelfth-century development; yet the appraisal of divine wrath seems to be restricted to texts in the context of eschatology and establishing of imperial world authority. Scales, ‘Germen Militiae’, 68. See, for example, the Aquitainian ninth-century monk Ermoldus Nigellus’s remark that the name of the Franks brings shudders of fear, in Carmen in honorem Hludowici, ed. and trans. E. Faral (Paris: Champion, 1932), i, line 378. This was a classical stereotype which might be interpreted, for example, in the Liber Historiae Francorum, within the Trojan descent myth: Franci were called Trojans by Emperor Valentinian after they had driven the Alans out of the Maeotic swamps; cf. Ian Wood, ‘Defining the Franks: Frankish Origins in Early Medieval Historiography’, in Simon Forde, Lesley Johnson and Alan V. Murray, eds, Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages (Leeds: University of Leeds Press, 1995), 47–58 (at 50). The etymology that Franci were free men is discussed later by Alexander of Roes in his thirteenth-century Noticia saeculi, who says that the German Franks were free in view of their imperial role. See Leonard E. Scales, ‘France and the Empire: The Viewpoint of Alexander of Roes’, French History 9:4 (1995): 394–416 (at 408); Reinhard Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfassung: das Werden der frühmittelalterlichen gentes (Cologne: Böhlau, 1961), 513–14. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae ix 2, 101: ‘Alii eos a feritate morum nuncupatos



Notes to pages 152–3

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existimant. Sunt enim in illis mores inconditi, naturalis ferocitas animorum’; trans. Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach and Oliver Berghof, Etymologies, 198. 32 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum ii 106, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, Oxford Medieval Texts, 2 vols (Oxford, OUP: 1998), 1, pp. 152–3: ‘Est enim gens illa et exercitatione virium et comitate morum cunctarum occidentalium facile princeps.’ This high opinion of the French expressed by William of Malmesbury in the 1120s refers to Francia shortly before the year 800, where King Ecgberht lived in exile for a number of years. According to William, he used this period ‘as a whetstone with which to sharpen the edge of his mind by clearing away the rust of indolence, and to acquire a civility of manners very different from the barbarity of his native land’. This seems to reflect a transposition of the French twelfth-century reputation to earlier times. 33 For an overview of scholarship on the concept of chivalry, see David Crouch’s introduction in The Birth of Nobility: Constructing Aristocracy in England and France: 900–1300 (Harlow: Routledge, 2005). See in general, Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 143–58; Richard Barber, The Knight and Chivalry (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2000); Constance Brittain Bouchard, ‘Strong of Body, Brave and Noble’: Chivalry and Society in Medieval France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). For ideas of civility in twelfth-century Anglo-Norman society, see John Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity and Political Values (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2000). 34 Crouch, The Birth of Nobility, 32 and 46. 35 Alexander Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford: OUP, 1986), 126. 36 Ibid., 126–7 and 132–6. 37 See Claire Weeda, ‘Images of Ethnicity in Later Medieval Western Europe’ (PhD diss., University of Amsterdam, 2012), chapter 7. 38 See n. 3, page 253, for earlier examples of the concept of the translatio studii. Although the theme of the translation of knowledge was formulated first at the court of Charlemagne, it resurfaced at the end of the twelfth century with the strengthening of the legal, institutional and ideological power base of the Capetian monarchy in Paris. 39 Chrétien de Troyes, Cligès, lines 30–43, ed. and French trans. Laurence Harf-Lancner (Paris: H. Champion, 2006), 63. 40 Cf. the Grandes Chroniques de France, prologue, vols I–X, ed. Jules Viard (Paris: Société de l’histoire de France, 1920–53), 5–6: ‘Si com aucun veulent dire, clergie et chevalerie sont touz jors si d’un acort, que l’une nu puet sanz l’autre.’

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Cf. Krämer, Translatio imperii et studi, esp. chapter 5; Gassman, Translatio studii, 125–35. 41 Even before Chrétien de Troyes, in Athis and Porphilias, lines 170 and 161–2, Athens is said to be the seat of clergie and Rome of chevalerie. Afterwards Athens is conquered by Rome and the clergy unites with chivalry in Rome; Krämer, Translatio imperii et studii, 119. 42 Krämer, Translatio imperii et studii, 126–7. 43 Lusignan, ‘L’université de Paris’, 61–2. The translation idea was related to the confusing of St Denis with Denis the Aeropagite, from Athens, who purportedly brought learning to France. 44 Idem, 63. 45 Landulf of Milan, Historiae Mediolanensis ii 22, ed. Ludwig Konrad Bethmann and Wilhelm Wattenbach, MGH Scriptores 8 (Hanover: Hahn, 1848), 59: ‘Gulositatem et animos vino deditos … saevissimi Theutonici qui nesciunt quid sit inter dexteram et sinistram’. 46 Donizone, Vita Mathildis ii 5, lines 529–35, ed. Ludwig Konrad Bethmann, MGH Scriptores 12 (Hanover: Hahn, 1856), 390: ‘Nunc celebras Pascha cum falsis ex Alemanna / Qui peramant Bachum, flagrant ad luxuriandum: / Illorum linguas nescis faciles quoque rixas. / Cum sunt potati, pro verbis fertur amaris / Ensem denudant, sociorum viscera truncant; / Mordent more lupi cum sumunt pabula cuncti; / Atria sanctorum violenter frangere norunt.’ 47 Vita Ludovici vii xx, Historiae Francorum Scriptores, 5 vols, ed. A. Duchesne (Paris: n.p., 1636–49), 4, p. 406: ‘Teutonici utpote homines impatientissimi et qui non sunt in armorum negotiis circumspecti, sed propria capitis dementia furibundi.’ See also, for example, the Chronicon Sancti Martini Turonense, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum 26 (Hanover: Hahn, 1882), 468: ‘Theutonum cervicosa furiositas’. See Ernst Dümmler, ‘Über den Furor Teutonicus’, Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin 9 (1897): 112–26, for many additional sources. 48 In the twelfth century, this reputation was explained by saying that the Teutons in ancient times were descended from giants; cf. Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum iii 5, 40 (‘De monstruosis hominibus orientes’), ed. Helmut Boese (Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 1973), 100. In many glosses on Lucan’s Pharsalia, the god Teutates was identified as Mars or Mercurius, and in the eleventh century had been appointed as name-giver of the Germans; in the middle of the thirteenth century, the discovery of a repository of bones near Vienna was identified as the grave of Teutonic giants. See Hannes Kästner, ‘Der groβmächtige Riese und Recke Teuton: Etymologische Spurensuche nach dem Urvater der Deutschen am Ende des Mittelalters’, Zeitschrift für deutsche



49

50

51

52

Notes to pages 153–5

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Philologie 110 (1991): 68–97 (81–2); cf. Lucan, Pharsalia I 144 ff., who writes about the Celtic god Teutates. Karl Ludwig Zimmermann, ‘Die Beurteilung der Deutschen in der französischen Literatur des Mittelalters mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der chansons de geste’, Romanische Forschungen 29 (1911): 222–316 (230–42). Mireille Schmidt-Chazan, ‘Le point de vue des chroniqueurs de la France du Nord sur les Allemands dans la première moitie du xiième siècle’, Centres de recherches relations internationals de l’Université de Metz: Travaux et Recherches 5 (1973): 13–36 (at 34). Carol Sweetenham, ‘Introduction’, in Robert the Monk’s history of the First Crusade: Historia Iherosolimitana, trans. Carol Sweetenham (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 51–5; Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (London: Continuum, 1986), 142. Notably Robert the Monk’s history achieved great popularity in the German territories; cf. Damien Kempf, ‘Towards a Textual Archaeology of the First Crusade’, in Damien Kempf and Marcus Bull, eds, Narrating the First Crusade: Historiography, Memory and Transmission in the Narratives of the Early Crusade Movement (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2013), 116–26; Alan V. Murray, ‘National Identity, Language and Conflict’, in Conor Kostick, ed., The Crusades and the Near East (London: Routledge, 2011), 107–30 (at 124). For discussions about the emergence of the notion of Frankish chosenness in the early Middle Ages, see Mary Garrison, ‘The Franks as the New Israel? Education for an Identity from Pippin to Charlemagne’, in Yitzhak Hen and Matthew Innes, eds, The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), 114–61; Mary Garrison, ‘Divine Election for Nations: A Difficult Rhetoric for Medieval Scholars?’, in L. B. Mortensen, ed., The Making of Christian Myths in the Periphery of Latin Christendom (c.1000–1300) (Copenhagen: Museum of Tusculanum Press, 2006), 275–314; Anthony D. Smith, Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity (Oxford: OUP, 2003), 106–7; Matthew Gabriele, ‘The Chosen Peoples of the Eleventh and Twenty-First Centuries’, Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception 2:2 (2012): 281–90. Rudi Künzel, Beelden en zelfbeelden van middeleeuwse mensen (Nijmegen: SUN, 1997), 55, has argued that superbia, pride, was typical of the aristocracy as it was necessary for them to emphasize social differences, especially when subordinates attempted to rise on the social ladder. Mireille Schmidt-Chazan, ‘Le point de vue des chroniqueurs’, 17. For sources referring to the pride of the Franks, see Paul Kirn, Aus der Frühzeit des Nationalgefühls: Studien zur deutschen und französischen Geschichte sowie zu den Nationalitätenkämpfen auf den britischen Inseln (Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1943), 48; Julius Malsch, Die Characteristik der Völker im altfranzösischen nationalen Epos (Heidelberg: Buchdruckerei Gebr. Huber Nachf., 1912), 22–3 and 31; Murray, Reason and Society, 252.

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The Deeds of the Franks and the other Pilgrims to Jerusalem, ed. and trans. Rosalind Hill (Oxford: OUP, 1972), 3: ‘Franci tumebant superbia’. For the background of the anonymous author, see xi–xiii. The author, probably of Norman descent, came from southern Italy, most likely Apulia, and served in Bohemund’s army as his vassal. The Franks’ pride is repeated by, among others, Peter Tudebode, Historia de Hierosolymitano (c. 1111), ed. and trans. John Hugh Hill and Laurita L. Hill (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1974), 18. Cf. George G. Coulton, ‘Nationalism in the Middle Ages’, Cambridge Historical Journal 5:1 (1935): 15–40 (at 18). 54 Guibert of Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), 124, trans. Robert Levine, The Deeds of God through the Franks: A Translation of Guibert de Nogent’s Gesta Dei per Francos (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1997), 49: ‘Franci namque, juxta naturam nominis, magnae quidem sunt titulo vivacitatis insignis, sed, nisi rigido frenentur dominio inter aliarum gentium turbas sunt justius equo feroces.’ Cf. n. 31, page 256. 55 Susan B. Edgington, ‘Introduction’, in Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana. History of the Journey to Jerusalem, ed. and trans. Susan B. Edgington (Oxford: OUP, 2007), xxiii–xxviii. 56 Ibid., xxxi–xxxii. 57 Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana iv 28, ed. and trans. Edgington, 288–9: ‘nulla plaga mundi ante Galliam audaciores et in bello promptiores nutriat’. Cf. Murray, ‘National Identity, Language’, 123, who notes that Albert also stressed Godfrey of Bouillon’s ‘German’ identity as Duke of Lower Lotharingia, despite the fact that Godfrey was French-speaking. 58 Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana i, 10–11, ed. and trans. Edgington, 22–3: ‘Convocat sapientiores et magis sensatos de exercitu … “Grave et durum nobis infortunium ex furore insipientium Theutonicorum ortum imminet.”’ 59 Idem: ‘In hac itaque intentione et consilio Petrus cum prudentioribus dum satageret, et verbis cautis excusationem suam ordinaret, mille insensatorum hominum, iuventus nimie levitatis et dure cervicis, gens indomita et effrenis, sine causa, sine ratione trans predictum pontem lapideum ad menia et portam civitatis in gravi assultu vadunt.’ Guibert of Nogent, writing in the 1100s, speaks of the ‘insanity of men’ in Peter the Hermit’s entourage. Guibert is, however, also known for his dislike of the poor, whom he considered foolish and dangerous, and his remarks may not be of a specifically ethnic nature. Levine, ‘Introduction’, 9, in Guibert of Nogent, The Deeds of God. 60 Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana i 23, ed. and transl. Edgington, 44–7: ‘sicut gens rusticano more insulsa, indisciplinata et indomita’. 61 Albert literally calls them stiff-necked (the translation says: headstrong), a trait 53



62

63 64

65

66

67

68

69

Notes to pages 156–7

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attributed to the Jews, in reference to the Israelites breaking the covenant in Exod. 32.9. Odo of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici vii in orientem iii, ed. and trans. Virginia Gingerick Berry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948), 42–3: ‘Nostris etiam erant importabiles Alemanni.’ Berry translates: ‘The Germans were unbearable even to us.’ For the prejudiced view of Odo of Deuil, see Giles Constable, ‘The Second Crusade as Seen by Contemporaries’, Traditio: Studies in Ancient and Medieval History, Thought and Religion 9 (1953): 213–79 (at 217–19). Coulton, ‘Nationalism in the Middle Ages’, 18–19. Odo of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici vii in orientem ii, ed. Berry, 27: ‘Hic primam nostri populi stultam superbiam sensimus’; v, ed. Berry, 57: ‘Heu, quam miseranda fortuna Saxones Bathavosque truces et alios Alemannos, quos in antiquis hystoriis legimus quondam Romanam fortitudinem timuisse, nunc dolis Grecorum inertium tam miserabiliter interisse.’ Bernd Schneidmüller, Nomen patriae: Die Entstehung Frankreichs in der politisch-geographischen Terminologie (10.-13. Jahrhundert) (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1987), 114. Guibert of Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos ii 1, ed. Huygens, 108, trans. Levine, 40: ‘Ceteris enim gentibus erga beatum Petrum ergaque pontificalia decreta timoratius humiliusque se habuit gens eadem nec temeritate, qua alii assolent, velamen malitiae arripere contra deum voluit libertatem. Videmus iam annis emensis pluribus Teutonicos, immo totius Lotharingiae regnum, beati Petri eiusque pontificum preceptis barbarica quadam obstinatione reniti.’ Robert Levine says that the archbishop is clearly making a reference to their animal-like behaviour, referring to Isidore’s etymological explanation that the word Franci comes from feritas; cf. Guibert of Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos ii, trans. Levine, at 41, n. 80. However, I fail to see the relationship between ferocity and the name Francones. Perhaps Francones is meant to refer to inhabitants from Franconia, the northern part of modern Bavaria – thus the archbishop of Mainz would be intimating that the French originated from northern Bavaria. Guibert of Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos ii 1, ed. Huygens, 108, trans. Levine, at 41: Si ita eos inertes arbitraris et marcidos ut celeberrimum usque in Oceanum Indicum nomen fede garriendo detorqueas, dic michi ad quos papa Urbanus contra Turcos presidia contracturus divertit: nonne ad Francos? Hi nisi preissent et barbariem undecumque confluentium gentium vivaci industria et impavidis viribus constrinxissent, Teutonicorum vestrorum, quorum ne nomen quidem ibi sonuit, auxilia nulla fuissent. For Frankish identity in the Crusader states, see Alan V. Murray, ‘Ethnic Identity in the Crusader States: The Frankish Race and the Settlement of Outremer’, in

262

70

71

72

73

74

75

76

Notes to pages 157–9 Simon Forde, Lesley Johnson and Alan V. Murray, eds, Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages (Leeds: University of Leeds Press, 1995), 59–73; cf. Murray, ‘National Identity, Language’, 107–30. Xavier de Planhol and Paul Claval, A Historical Geography of France, trans. Janet Lloyd (Cambridge: CUP, 1994), originally published as Géographie historique de la France (Paris: Fayard, 1988), 100–8. Idem, 96–100. In the fourteenth century, the image of the French as an elect nation and its king as rex Christianissimus (which became popular from the reign of Philip IV the Fair) encouraged the notion of royal miraculous blood. Gradually, with the expansion of the royal house’s control over larger lands came the Christianization of a wider ‘French’ territory. B. Guenée, ‘Les généalogies entre l’histoire et la politique: la fierté d’être Capétien, en France, au Moyen Age’, Annales Économies Sociétés Civilisations 33:3 (1978): 450–77 (at 464); Gabrielle M. Spiegel, ‘The Reditus Regni ad Stirpem Karoli Magni: A New Look’, French Historical Studies 7:2 (1971): 145–74 (at 158); Brown, ‘La notion de la légitimité’, 77–110. Anne A. Latowsky, Emperor of the World: Charlemagne and the Construction of Imperial Authority, 800–1229 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), 221 and n. 26 for further references; cf. J. L. Nelson, ‘Kingship and Empire in the Carolingian World’, in R. McKitterick, ed., Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation (Cambridge: CUP, 1994), 52–87 (at 77); Gabrielle Spiegel, ‘The Cult of Saint Denis and Capetian Kingship’, Journal of Medieval History 1 (1975): 43–69; Robert Barroux, ‘L’abbé Suger et la vassalité du Vexin en 1124’, Le Moyen Âge 64 (1958): 1–26. Jeremy duQuesnay Adams, ‘The Regnum Francie of Suger of Saint-Denis: An Expansive Ile-de-France’, Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques, 19:2 (1993): 167–88. Oeuvres complètes de Suger, ed. A. Lecoy de la Marche (Paris: Société de l’histoire de France, 1867), 33; The Deeds of Louis the Fat, trans. Richard Cusimano and John Moorhead (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1992), x, 48: ‘sicut antecessorum regum Francorum Caroli Magni et aiiorum mos inolevit, tyrannis et ecclesiae hostibus et potissimum Henrico imperatori audacter resistere’. Oeuvres complètes de Suger, ed. A. Lecoy de la Marche, 38; The Deeds of Louis the Fat, trans. Richard Cusimano and John Moorhead, x, 52–3: ‘ficta litis occasione, furor Teutonicus frendens debacchatur: exertis gladiis, velut pleni mania discurrentes, Romanos tali in loco jure inermes aggrediuntur, clamant jurejurando ut clerus romanus, omnes tam episcopi quam cardinales capiantur aut trucidentur: et quod ulla non potest attingere insania, in dominum papam manus impias injicere non verentur’. Cf. Kirn, Frühzeit des Nationalgefühls, 46;



Notes to pages 159–61

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Dümmler, ‘Über den furor Teutonicus’, 120–1; Florin Curta, ‘Ethnic Stereotypes in Suger’s Deeds of Louis the Fat’, Haskins Society Journal: Studies in Medieval History 16 (2005): 62–76. 77 Latowsky, Emperor of the World, 222–3 and n. 33. 78 Curta, ‘Furor Teutonicus’, 73–4. 79 Oeuvres complètes de Suger, ed. A. Lecoy de la Marche, 35: ‘cervicosi … legati’. 80 Jeremy duQuesnay Adams, ‘The Patriotism of Abbot Suger’, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History 15 (1988): 19–29 (at 20). 81 Ibid., 23. For earlier imagery of the Italians, see Philippe Buc, The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory (Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001), 51–87. 82 Timothy Reuter, Germany in the Early Middle Ages: c. 800–1056 (London: Routledge, 1991), 122. 83 For the Last World Emperor legend, see Latowsky, Emperor of the World; Gabriele, Empire of Memory; Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 44–50; Matthew Gabriele, ‘Asleep at the Wheel? Messianism, Apocalypticism and Charlemagne’s Passivity in the Oxford Chanson de Roland’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 43 (2003): 46–72; Judith Weiss, ‘Emperors and Antichrists: Reflections of Empire in Insular Narrative, 1130–1250’, in Phillipa Hardman, ed., The Matter of Identity in Medieval Romance (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), 87–102; Frank Shaw, ‘Friedrich II as the “Last Emperor”’, Journal of the German History Society 19:3 (2001): 321–39; Marjorie Reeves, ‘Joachimist Influences on the Idea of a Last World Emperor’, Traditio 17 (1961): 324–70. 84 Matthew Gabriele, ‘Otto III, Charlemagne, and Pentecost A.D. 1000: A Reconsideration Using Diplomatic Evidence’, in Michael Frassetto, ed., The Year 1000: Religious and Social Response to the Turning of the First Millennium (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 111–32. 85 Gabriele, Empire of Memory, 16–22. 86 Idem, 22. 87 Idem, 101–5; Joachim Ehlers, ‘Karolingische Tradition und frühes Nationalbewuβtsein in Frankreich’, Francia 4 (1976): 213–35 (at 213); Nelson, ‘Kingship and Empire’, 76; Spiegel, ‘Reditus’, 160. 88 Daniel Verhelst, ‘Adso of Montier-en-Der and the Fear of the Year 1000’, in Richard Allen Landes, Andrew Gow and David C. van Meter, eds, Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious Expectation and Social Change, 950–1050 (Oxford: OUP, 2003), 81–92. 89 Auke Holdenried, The Sibyl and her Scribes: Manuscripts and Interpretation of the Latin ‘Sibylla Tiburtina’ c. 1050–1500, Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), xxi.

264 90 91

Notes to pages 161–3

Ibid., xvii–xxi. Matthew Gabriele, ‘The Provenance of the Descriptio qualiter Karolus Magnus: Remembering the Carolingians in the Entourage of King Philip i (1060–1108) before the First Crusade’, Viator 39 (2008): 93–117 (114). 92 The call for help is prompted by Emperor Constantine’s dream in which a Son-of-Man-type bearded old man appears before him. Cf. Gabriele, Empire of Memory, 116; Latowsky, Emperor of the World, 79–81, compares this figure to a dream in the fifth-century ‘Letter of Lucianus to the Whole Church’. 93 Gabriele, Empire of Memory, 120–2. 94 Idem, 108–12; Timothy Reuter, Germany in the Early Middle Ages, 103. 95 Gabriele, Empire of Memory, 132–7. 96 Lesley Ann Coote, Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2000), 75–6; Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford: OUP, 1969), 312; Bernhard Töpfer, Das kommende Reich des Friedens: zur Entwicklung chiliastischer Zukunftshoffnungen im Hochmittelalter (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1964), 185–6. The verse ‘Gallorum levitas Germanos iustificabit’ is published in Oswald Holder-Egger, ‘Italienische Prophetieen des 13. Jahrhunderts’, Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde 33 (1908): 95–187 (at 125–6). 97 Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici, ‘Proemium’, ed. G. Waitz, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 46 (Hanover: Hahn, 1912), 10: ‘Tibi dico e L pastor corporum primo elemento materiae silvae tuae, quem inspiravit spiritus diei peregrini Dei.’ 98 Idem, 11; Gabriele, Empire of Memory, 62. Spiegel, ‘Reditus’, 165, refers to a thirteenth-century source which quotes the twelfth-century French 1147 Sibylline prophecy. 99 Latowsky, Emperor of the World, 223 and n. 35, states that the window has been dated to the late 1150s, although Brown and Cothren mention 1158 as only one of various possible dates, leaving open the possibility that the window was made under Suger’s abbacy. Cf. Brown and Cothren, ‘The Twelfth-Century Crusading Window’, 38. 100 Brown and Cothren, ‘The Twelfth-Century Crusading Window’, 21, 28 and n. 100. Anne Latowsky, on the other hand, suggests that the window was erected in reaction to Otto’s taunts; cf. Latowsky, Emperor of the World, 223–4. 101 Idem, 143. 102 Idem, 139–40. 103 Fuhrmann, ‘The Trouble with Henry’, 346; Latowsky, Emperor of the World, 147. 104 The play was probably written between 1159 and 1162 by a monk from Bavarian Tegernsee. Whether or not the play was actually performed out of doors is



Notes to pages 163–5

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contested. See Hellmut Rosenfeld, ‘Die Buhne des Tegernseer Antichristspiels als Orbis terrarum’, in A. Onnerfors, J. Rathofer and F. Wagner, eds, Literatur und Sprache im europaischen Mittelalter: Festschrift fir Karl Langosch zum 70. Geburtstag (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973), 63–74 (at 64). 105 J. Wright, ‘Introduction’, in The Play of the Antichrist, 11–20, 24. 106 Der Ludus de Antichristo, ed. Friedrich Wilhem (Munich: n.p., 1912), 7: ‘Cuius imperii virtus est formidanda / honor et gloria maneant veneranda’; trans. Wright, The Play of the Antichrist, 73. 107 Idem, 18: ‘Tibi profiteor decus imperiale / quo tibi serviam, ius postulo regale’; trans. 85. 108 Idem, 19: ‘Hi secum pugnantibus sunt pessima pestis / hos nobis subicite donis si potestis’; trans. 86. 109 Idem, 20: ‘Tuam Germania blasphemat dicionem / extollit cornu contra religionem’; trans. 87. 110 Idem, 21: ‘Teotonicum condempnet furorem’; trans. 88. 111 Idem: ‘Sanguine patriae honor est retinendus, / virtute patriae est hostis expellendus. / Jus dolo perditum est sanguine venale. / Sic retinebimus decus imperiale’; trans. 89. 112 Latowsky, Emperor of the World, 150–4. 113 Cf. Weiss, ‘Emperors and Antichrists’, 95; Martin Wagendorfer, ‘Eine bisher unbekannte (Teil) Überlieferung des Saladin-Briefs an Kaiser I. Barbarossa’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 65 (2009): 565–84. 114 Curta, ‘Furor Teutonicus’, 70, for example, John of Salisbury’s view of the Germans. See also Fuhrmann, ‘Quis Teutonicus’; Timothy Reuter, ‘John of Salisbury and the Germans’, in Michael Wilks, ed., The World of John of Salisbury (Oxford: OUP, 1984), 415–25; Peter Godman, ‘Transmontani: Frederick Barbarossa, Rainald of Dassel, and Cultural Identity in the German Empire’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 132 (2010): 200–29 (at 201–2). 115 Joseph R. Strayer, ‘France: the Holy Land, the Chosen People, and the Most Christian King’, in Theodore K. Rabb and Jerrold E. Seigel, eds, Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Memory of E. H. Harbison (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 3–16 (at 6). 116 Quoted by Strayer, ‘France and the Most Christian King’, 14. 117 See Leonard E. Scales, ‘France and the Empire: The Viewpoint of Alexander of Roes’, French History 9:4 (1995): 394–416. 118 Idem, 402–7; Mohr, ‘Frage des Nationalismus’, 113ff. 119 Peter Hoppenbrouwers, ‘Medieval peoples imagined’, in Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen, eds, Imagology: The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007), 45–62 (at 11).

266

Notes to page 165

120 Alexander of Roes, Memoriale xv and xviii, in Alexander von Roes Schriften, ed. Herbert Grundmann and Hermann Heimpel, MGH Staatsschriften 1 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1958), 105–8 and 113–15; and Notitia saeculi xiii and xiv, in Alexander von Roes Schriften, 160–1. Cf. Scales, ‘France and the Empire’, 408. In n. 70, Leonard Scales writes that the positive traits attributed to the French by Alexander seem to suggest less the ideal scholar than the ideal knight. However, these are ideals upheld by clerical scholars serving at the court. Notably, Alexander relates the French superbia and luxuria (Notitia saeculi, ed. Grundmann and Heimpel, 160–1) to the clerical order, which reigns in France. Cf. Coulton, ‘Nationalism in the Middle Ages’, 33–4, who quotes the Franciscan Salimbene denouncing the arrogance of the French in thinking they rule the world in 1287. Compare also the accusation made by the English author of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi of the French being arrogant, fickle and lazy, in contrast to their Carolingian ancestors; cf. Murray, ‘National Identity, Language’, 122. 121 Alexander of Roes, Memoriale xxxiii, ed. Grundmann and Heimpel, 142; Scales, ‘France and the Empire’, 400. 122 Idem, 408–10. 123 L. M. Paterson, The World of the Troubadours (Cambridge: CUP, 1993), 5–6.

Bibliography Introduction Boynton, Susan and Riley, Diane J., The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages: Production, Reception and Performance in Western Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). Contreni, John J., ‘Carolingian Biblical Studies’, in idem, Carolingian Learning, Masters and Manuscripts (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1992), ch. 5. de Lubac, Henri, Medieval Exegesis (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998). Luscombe, David, ‘Thought and Learning’, in NCMH IV (i), ed. David Luscombe and Jonathan Riley-Smith (Cambridge: CUP, 2004), 461–98. Marsden, Richard and Matter, E. Ann, eds, The New Cambridge History of the Bible, Vol. 2, From 600 to 1450 (Cambridge: CUP, 2011). Smalley, Beryl, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 3rd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984). Smith, Lesley, The Glossa Ordinaria. The Making of a Medieval Bible Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2009).

Chapter 1: Twelfth-Century Notions of the Canon of the Bible Texts Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, I, ed. Norman P. Tanner (London: Sheed and Ward; and Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 567–83. Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon de studio legendi, ed. C. H. Buttimer (Washington DC: n.p., 1939). Hugh of St Victor, De sacramentis Christianę fidei, ed. Rainer Berndt (Münster: Aschendorff, 2008). Robert of Melun, Sententiae, in Oeuvres de Robert de Melun, ed. Raymond M. Martin, 3 vols, Spicilegium sacrum lovaniense (Louvain: Université catholique de Louvain, 1932–52), III.

268 Bibliography

Contexts Berndt, Rainer, ‘Gehören die Kirchenväter zur Heiligen Schrift? Zur Kanontheorie des Hugo von St Viktor’, Jahrbuch für Biblische Theologie 3 (1988): 191–9. Campenhausen, Hans von, Die Entstehung der christlichen Bibel (Tübingen: Mohr, 1968). McDonald, Lee Martin, The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007). Metzger, Bruce M., The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford and New York: OUP, 1987, repr. 1988). Mews, Constant J., ‘Between the Schools of Abelard and Saint-Victor in the Mid-Twelfth Century: The Witness of Robert of Melun’, in Dominique Poirel, ed., L’école de Saint-Victor de Paris. Influence et rayonnement du moyen âge à lépoque moderne (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 121–38. Smalley, Beryl, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 3rd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984). Spicq, Ceslas, Esquisse d’une histoire de l’exégèse latine au moyen âge (Paris: J. Vrin, 1944).

Chapter 2: The Orator as Exegete: Cassiodorus as a Reader of the Psalms Text Cassiodorus, Expositio psalmorum [EP], ed. Marc Adriaen, CCSL, 97–8 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1958); English translation, Patrick Walsh, Cassiodorus: Explanation of the Psalms, 3 vols, Ancient Christian Writers 51–3 (New York: Paulist Press, 1990–1).

Contexts Agosto, Mauro, Impiego e definizione di tropi e schemi retorici nell’Expositio psalmorum di Cassiodoro (Montella: Accademia Vivarium Novum, 2003). Astell, Ann, ‘Cassiodorus’ commentary on the psalms as an ars rhetorica’, Rhetorica 17:1 (1999): 37–75. Barnish, Samuel, ‘The work of Cassiodorus after his conversion’, Latomus 48 (1989): 157–87. Brown, Peter, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992). Cameron, Averil, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire. The Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

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Chazelle, Celia and Cubitt, Catherine, eds, The Crisis of the Oikumene. The Three Chapters and the Failed Quest for Unity in the Sixth-Century Mediterranean (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007). Giardina, Andrea, Cassiodoro politico (Roma: ‘L’Erma’ di Bretschneider, 2006). Halporn, James, ‘After the schools: Grammar and rhetoric in Cassiodorus’, in Carol Dana Lanham, ed., Latin Grammar and Rhetoric: From Classical Theory to Medieval Practice (London and New York: Continuum, 2002), 48–62. Heydemann, Gerda, ‘Biblical Israel and the Christian gentes’, in Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann, eds, Strategies of Identification. Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 143–208. Leanza, Sandro, ed., Flavio Aurelio Magno Cassiodoro (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 1986). Maas, Michael, Exegesis and Empire in the Early Byzantine Mediterranean. Junillus Africanus and the ‘Instituta regularia divinae legis’ (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003). Meier, Mischa, Das andere Zeitalter Justinians. Kontingenzerfahrung und Kontingenzbewältigung im 6. Jahrhundert n. Chr. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004). O’Donnell, James, Cassiodorus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979). Schlieben, Reinhard, Cassiodors Psalmenexegese: Eine Analyse ihrer Methoden (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1979). Stoppacci, Patricia, ‘Stadi redazionali nella tradizione manoscritta dell’Expositio psalmorum di Cassiodoro’, Studi medievali ser. 3 50 (2009): 499–559. Vessey, Marc, ‘Introduction’, in Cassiodorus: Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning. On the Soul, trans. James Halporn, Translated Texts for Historians 42 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004), 1–101. Young, Frances, ‘The rhetorical schools and their influence on patristic exegesis’, in Rowan Williams, ed., The Making of Orthodoxy. Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: CUP, 1989), 182–99.

Chapter 3: Lay Readers of the Bible in the Carolingian Ninth Century Texts Admonitio generalis Karls des Großen, ed. Hubert Mordek, Klaus Zechiel-Eckes and Michael Glatthaar, MGH, Fontes iuris Germanici antiqui XVI (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013). Angelbert, Poem on the Battle of Fontenoy, in Peter Godman, ed. and trans., Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance (London: Duckworth, 1985), 48–9. Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. Alfred Boretius, in MGH Capitularia regum Francorum I (Hannover: Hahn, 1883).

270 Bibliography Dhuoda, Liber Manualis, ed. as Manuel pour mon fils, with introduction and notes by Pierre Riché, with French trans. by Bernard de Vregille and Claude Mondésert, Sources chrétiennes 225 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1975); also Dhuoda, Handbook for her Warrior Son. Liber Manualis, ed. with English trans. Marcelle Thiébaux (Cambridge: CUP, 1998). Einhard, Epistolae, ed. Karl Hampe, MGH Epp. V (Hannover: Hahn, 1898–9), trans. Paul Edward Dutton, Charlemagne’s Courtier. The Complete Einhard (Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 1998). Nithard, Histoire des fils de Louis le Pieux, ed. and trans. Philippe Lauer, Les Classiques de l’histoire au moyen âge 7 (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1926); revised with new Introduction by Sophie Glansdorff (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2012). Opus Caroli regis contra Synodum (Libri Carolini), ed. Ann Freeman, with Paul Meyvaert, MGH Concilia II, Supplementum1, MGH: Hannover, 1998.

Contexts Bullough, Donald A., Alcuin. Achievement and Reputation (Leiden: Brill, 2004). Diesenberger, Maximilian, Predigt und Politik im frühmittelalterlichen Bayern (Vienna: University of Vienna Press, 2014). Ganz, David, ‘Some Carolingian questions from Charlemagne’s days [in Paris BNF Latin 4629, ff. 15v–18v]’, in Paul Fouracre and David Ganz, eds, Frankland. The Franks and the World of the Early Middle Ages. Essays in Honour of Dame Jinty Nelson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), 90–100. de Jong, Mayke, ‘Charlemagne’s Church’, in Joanna Story, ed., Charlemagne. Society and Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 103–35. Mayr-Harting, Henry, ‘Charlemagne’s religion’, in Peter Godman, Jörg Jarnut and Peter Johanek, eds, Am Vorabend des Kaiserkrönung (Berlin: Akademie, 2002), 113–24. McKitterick, Rosamond, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge: CUP, 1989). Nelson, Janet L., ‘The search for peace in a time of war: the Carolingian Bruderkrieg, 840–43’, in Johannes Fried, ed., Träger und Instrumentariens des Friedens im hohen und späten Mittelalter (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1996), 87–114. Noble, Thomas F. X., ‘Secular sanctity: forging an ethos for the Carolingian nobility’, in Patrick Wormald and Janet L. Nelson, eds, Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World (Cambridge: CUP, 2007), 8–36. Stone, Rachel, ‘The invention of a theology of abduction’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 60 (2009), 433–48.

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Chapter 4: Jeremiah, Job, Terence and Paschasius Radbertus: Political Rhetoric and Biblical Authority in the Epitaphium Arsenii Texts Beda, Libri II de arte metrica et de schematibus et tropis, I, ed. and trans. Calvin B. Kendall, Bibliotheca Germanica, Series Nova 2 (Saarbrücken: AQ-Verlag 1991). Hrabanus Maurus, De honore parentum, ad Ludovicum I. Pium, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH Epp. V, no. 15. Paschasius Radbertus, Vita Adalhardi, PL 120, cols 1507–82. Paschasius Radbertus, Epitaphium Arsenii, ed. E. Dümmler, Abhandlungen der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Philosophische und historische Klasse 2 (Berlin: Verlag der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1900). Paschasius Radbertus, De corpore et sanguine domini, ed. Beda Paulus, CCCM 16 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969). Paschasius Radbertus, Expositio in Matheo, ed. Beda Paulus, CCCM 56A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1984). Paschasius Radbertus, De partu virginis, ed. E. Ann Matter CCCM 56C, (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985). Paschasius Radbertus, Expositio in lamentationes Hieremiae libri quinque, ed. Beda Paulus, CCCM 85 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1988).

Contexts Ganz, David, Corbie in the Carolingian Renaissance. Beihefte der Francia 20 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1990). Ganz, David, ‘The Epitaphium Arsenii and opposition to Louis the Pious’, in Peter Godman and Roger Collins, eds, Charlemagne’s Heir. New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814–840) (Oxford: OUP, 1990), 537–50. de Jong, Mayke, In Samuel’s Image. Child Oblation in the Early Medieval West (Leiden: Brill, 1996). de Jong, Mayke, The Penitential State. Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious (814–840) (Cambridge: CUP, 2009). de Jong, Mayke, ‘Becoming Jeremiah: Radbert on Wala, himself and others’, in Richard Corradini, Rob Meens, Christina Pössel and Philip Shaw, eds, Ego Trouble: Authors and their Identities in the Early Middle Ages, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 15 (Vienna: University of Vienna Press, 2010), 185–96. McKitterick, Rosamond, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge: CUP, 2004).

272 Bibliography

Chapter 5: Biblical Readings for the Night Office in EleventhCentury Germany: Reconciling Theory and Practice Texts Ælfric’s Letter to the Monks of Eynsham, ed. Christopher A. Jones (Cambridge: CUP, 1998). Amalarius, Amalarii Episcopi Opera liturgica omnia, ed. J. M. Hanssens, 3 vols, Studi e testi 138–40 (Vatican: Bibliotheca apostolica vaticana, 1948–50). Andrieu, Michel, ed., Les Ordines Romani du Haut Moyen Age, Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense 11, 5 vols (Leuven: Administration, 1931–61). von Dobschütz, Ernst, ed., Das Decretum Gelasianum de Libris Recipiendis et non Recipiendis (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1912). Fowler-Magerl, Linda, Clavis Canonum: Selected Canon Law Collections before 1140, MGH Hilfsmittel 21 (Hannover: Hahnsche, 2005). Le Pontifical Romano-Germanique du Dixième Siècle, ed. Cyrille Vogel and Reinhard Elze, 3 vols, Studi e Testi, 226–7, 269 (Rome: Vatican, 1963–72).

Contexts Autenrieth, Johanne, Die Domschule von Konstanz zur Zeit des Investiturstreits: die wissenschaftliche Arbeitsweise Bernholds von Konstanz und zweier Kleriker dargestellt auf Grund von Handschriftenstudien (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1956). Dyer, Joseph, ‘The Bible in the Medieval Liturgy, c. 600–1300’, in Richard Marsden and E. Ann Matter, eds, The New Cambridge History of the Bible, II: From 600 to 1450 (Cambridge: CUP, 2012), 659–79. Gy, Pierre-Marie, ‘Les Premiers Bréviaires de Saint-Gall (Deuxième Quart du XIe s.)’, in Walter Dürig, ed., Liturgie: Gestalt und Vollzug (Munich, 1963), 104–13. Gy, Pierre-Marie, ‘La Bible dans la Liturgie au Moyen Age’, in Pierre Riché and Guy Lobrichon, eds, Le Moyen Age et la Bible, Bible de tous les Temps 4 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984), 537–54. Gyug, Richard, ‘Early Medieval Bibles, Biblical Books, and Liturgy’, in Susan Boynton and Diane J. Reilly, eds, The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages: Production, Reception, and Performance in Western Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 34–60. Jeffery, Peter, ‘The Early Liturgy of Saint Peter’s and The Roman Liturgical Year’, in Rosamond McKitterick, John Osborne, Carol M. Richardson and Joanna Story, eds, Old Saint Peter’s, Rome (Cambridge: CUP, 2013), 157–76. Martimort, Aimé-Georges, Les Lectures Liturgiques et Leurs Livres, Typologie des Sources du Moyen Age Occidental 64 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992). Parkes, Henry, ‘Questioning the Authority of Vogel and Elze’s Pontifical

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Romano-Germanique’, in Sarah Hamilton and Helen Gittos, eds, Understanding Medieval Liturgy: Essays in Interpretation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015). Reilly, Diane J., ‘The Cluniac Giant Bible and the Ordo Librorum ad Legendum: A Reassessment of Monastic Bible Reading and Cluniac Customary Instructions’, in Susan Boynton and Isabelle Cochelin, eds, From Dead of Night to End of Day: The Medieval Customs of Cluny, Disciplina monastica 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 163–89. Reynolds, Roger E., ‘Liturgical Scholarship at the Time of the Investiture Controversy: Past Research and Future Opportunities’, Harvard Theological Review 71 (1978): 109–24. van Dijk, Stephen J. P., ‘The Bible in Liturgical Use’, in Geoffrey W. H. Lampe, ed., The Cambridge History of the Bible, II: The West from the Fathers to the Reformation (Cambridge: CUP, 1969), 22–52.

Chapter 6: ‘Quid nobis cum allegoria?’ The Literal Reading of the Bible in the era of the Investiture Conflict Texts Anselm of Lucca, Liber contra Wibertum, ed. Ernst Bernheim, MGH Libelli de lite I (Hanover: n.p., 1891). Bernold of Constance, Apologeticae rationes contra scismaticorum obiectiones, ed. Friedrich Thaner, MGH Libelli de lite II (Hanover: n.p., 1892). Bonizo of Sutri, Liber ad amicum, ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH Libelli de lite I (Hanover: n.p., 1891). De paenitentia regum et de investitura regali collectanea, ed. Heinrich Boehmer, MGH Libelli de lite III (Hanover: n.p., 1897). Die Briefe Heinrichs IV. MGH Deutsches Mittelalter Epp. Selectae I, no. 13, ed. Carl Erdmann (Hanover: Hiersemann, 1937). Gebhard of Salzburg, Epistola ad Herimannum Mettensem episcopum, ed. Kuno Francke, MGH Libelli de lite I (Hanover: n.p., 1891). Gerhoh of Reichersberg, De investigatione Antichristi, ed. Ernst Sackur, MGH Libelli de lite III (Hanover: n.p., 1897). Honorius Augustodunensis, Summa Gloria, ed. Julius Dieterich, MGH Libelli de lite III (Hanover: n.p., 1897). Hugh of Fleury, Tractatus de regia et sacerdotali dignitate, ed. Ernst Sackur, MGH Libelli de lite II (Hanover: n.p., 1892), I, 2. Liber canonum contra Heinricum quartum, ed. Friedrich Thaner, MGH Libelli de lite I (Hanover: Hahn, 1891). Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda, ed. Wilhelm Schwenkenbecher, MGH Libelli de lite II (Hanover: n.p., 1892).

274 Bibliography Manegold of Lautenbach, Liber ad Gebhardum, ed. Kuno Francke, MGH Libelli de lite I (Hanover: n.p., 1891). Norman Anonymous: Tractatus Eboracenses, ed. H. Boehmer, MGH Libelli de lite III (Hanover: n.p., 1897). Registrum Gregorii VII, ed. Erich Caspar, MGH Epp. sel. 2, 3 vols (Berlin: Weidmann, 1920–3). Sigebert of Gembloux, Epistola Leodicensium adversus Paschalem papam, ed. Kuno Francke, MGH Libelli de lite II (Hanover: Hahn, 1892). Tractatus de scismaticis, ed. Julius Dietrich and Heinrich Boehmer, MGH Libelli de Lite III (Hanover: n.p., 1897). Wenrich of Trier, Epistola sub Theoderici episcopi Virdunensis nomine composita, ed. K. Francke, MGH Libelli de lite I (Hanover: n.p., 1891). Wido of Ferrara, De scismate Hildebrandi, ed. Roger Wilmans and Ernst Dümmler, MGH Libelli de lite I (Hanover: n.p., 1891).

Contexts Althoff, Gerd, ‘Selig sind, die Verfolgung ausüben’. Päpste und Gewalt im Hochmittelalter (Stuttgart, 2013). Caspary, Gerard E., Politics and Exegesis: Origen and the Two Swords (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, and London: University of California Press, 1979). Hackelsperger, Max, Bibel und mittelalterlicher Reichsgedanke. Studien und Beiträge zum Gebrauch der Bibel im Streit zwischen Kaisertum und Papsttum zur Zeit der Salier (Bottrop: W. Postberg, 1934). Melve, Leidulf, Inventing the Public Sphere. The Public Debate during the Investiture Contest (c. 1030–1122), Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 154 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007). Robinson, Ian S., ‘The Bible in the investiture contest: the south German Gregorian circle’, in Katherine Walsh, ed., The Bible in the Medieval World. Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 61–84. Robinson, Ian S., ‘Reform and the Church, 1073–1122’, in David Luscombe, ed., NCMH 4, c.1024–c.1198, Part 1 (Cambridge: CUP, 2004), 268–334.

Chapter 7: Sibyls, Tanners and Leper Kings: Taking Notes from and about the Bible in Twelfth-Century England Manuscripts Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 51, late twelfth-century copy of the JeromeEusebius Chronicle, made at Christ Church Canterbury.

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Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 288, composite manuscript compiled in the thirteenth century at Christ Church Canterbury, with at f.111r–f.124v glosses on several Old Testament books dating from the third quarter of the twelfth century. See Montague R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College (Cambridge: CUP, 1912), 2, pp. 58–63.

Texts Abelard, Theologia ‘Summi boni’ CCCM 13, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert and Constant J. Mews (Turnhout: Brepols, 1987). Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam, CCSL 119A, ed. David Hurst (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969). Honorius Augustodunensis, Imago mundi, ed. Valerie Flint, in Archives d’Histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age, 49 (1982). Hrabanus Maurus, Expositio in librum Judith, PL 109, cols 539–636. Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive originum libri XX, ed. William M. Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911). Itineraria et alia geographica, CCSL 175, ed. Paul Geyer, Otto Cuntz, Ezio Francheschini, Robert Weber, Ludwig Bieler, John Fraipont and François Glorie (Turnhout: Brepols, 1965). Iohannis Saresberiensis Policratici I–VIII, 2 vols, ed. Clement C. Webb (Oxford: Clarendon, 1909). Josephus, The Latin Josephus. I Introduction and Text: The Antiquities, Books i–v, ed. Franz Blatt (Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget, 1958).

Contexts Boffey, Julia and Thompson, John J., ‘Anthologies and Miscellanies: Production and Choice of Texts’, in Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall, eds, Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375–1475 (Cambridge: CUP, 1989), 279–315. Dahan, Gilbert, L’exégèse chrétienne de la Bible en Occident médiéval. xiie–xive siècles (Paris: Cerf, 1999). Luscombe, David, ‘Peter Comestor’, in Katherine Wash and Diana Wood, eds, The Bible in the Medieval World. Essays in Honour of Beryl Smalley (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 109–29. Parkes, Malcolm B., ‘The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the Development of the Book’, in James J. G. Alexander and Margaret T. Gibson, eds, Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays presented to Richard William Hunt (Oxford: OUP, 1976), 115–41, repr. in Malcolm B. Parkes, Scribes, Scripts and Readers: Studies in the Communication, Presentation and Dissemination of Medieval Texts (London: Hambledon, 1991).

276 Bibliography Ziolkowski, Jan and Putnam, Michael C. J., eds, The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).

Chapter 8: Violence, Control, Prophecy and Power in Twelfth-Century France and Germany Texts Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana. History of the Journey to Jerusalem, ed. and trans. Susan B. Edgington (Oxford: OUP, 2007). Alexander of Roes, Memoriale, in Alexander von Roes Schriften, ed. Herbert Grundmann and Hermann Heimpel, MGH Staatsschriften 1 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1958). Donizone, Vita Mathildis, ed. Ludwig Konrad Bethmann, MGH Scriptores 12 (Hanover: Hahn, 1856). Gesta Francorum, The Deeds of the Franks and the other Pilgrims to Jerusalem, ed. and trans. Rosalind Hill (Oxford: OUP, 1972). Guibert of Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996). Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford: OUP, 1911), trans. Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach and Oliver Berghof, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (Cambridge: CUP, 2006). Der Ludus de Antichristo, ed. Friedrich Wilhem (Munich: n.p., 1912).

Contexts Frassetto, Michael, ed., The Year 1000: Religious and Social Response to the Turning of the First Millennium (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002). Gabriele, Matthew, An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks and Jerusalem Before the First Crusade (Oxford: OUP, 2011). Jeauneau, Édouard, Translatio studii: The Transmission of Learning: A Gilsonian Theme (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1995). Kempf, Damien and Bull, Marcus, eds, Narrating the First Crusade: Historiography, Memory and Transmission in the Narratives of the Early Crusade Movement (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013). Latowsky, Anne A., Emperor of the World: Charlemagne and the Construction of Imperial Authority, 800–1229 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013). Miller, Maureen C., ‘Masculinity, Reform, and Clerical Culture: Narratives of Episcopal Holiness in the Gregorian Era’, Church History 72:1 (2003), 25–52. Murray, Alexander, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford: OUP, 1986).

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Reeves, Marjorie, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford: OUP, 1969). Rosenwein, Barbara H., Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006). Rosenwein, Barbara H., ed., Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). Scales, Len, ‘France and the Empire: The Viewpoint of Alexander of Roes’, French History 9:4 (1995), 394–416. Spiegel, Gabrielle M., The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).

Index Aachen 155, 156, 160, 161, 163 Abbo of Fleury 160 Abelard, Peter 15, 17, 123 influence on Robert of Melun 15, 17 Sic et non 142 Adalard 48–50 Adalhard 59, 61 Adeodatus 61, 64, 67 Adso 161 Letter to the Antichrist 162, 163 Ælfric of Eynsham 80, 81, 82, 95, 100 Africanus, Julius 31, 142 Agobard, archbishop of Lyons 54 Alan of Farfa, homiliary of 80 Alan of Tewkesbury, prior of Christ Church 119 Albert of Aachen 155–6 Albert the Great, St 18 Alcuin of York 44–8, 55, 103, 106, 114, 147 Alexander II, pope 95, 105 Alexander III, pope 147 Alexander romance/tradition 127–8, 136 Alfred, king of West Saxons 3 allegory 6, 26, 112, 114, 117, 133 Althoff, Gerd 149 Amalarius of Metz 80 Ambrose, St 2, 11, 29, 58, 62, 63, 123 De excessu fratris Satyri 61 Andrew of St Victor 120, 121, 127, 133, 144, 145 Andrieu, Michel 78, 81–5, 94 Angelbert 48, 51 Angilbert, father of Nithard 50 Antichrist see eschatology apocalypse see eschatology Arator, Roman subdeacon 19–20, 21, 41 aristocrat(s) 5, 20, 44, 55, 101, 112, 114 Aristotle 45 Arsenius see Wala Asaph 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 40

Augustine of Hippo, St 2, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 24, 25, 29, 32, 33, 38, 45, 53, 61, 113, 114, 115, 123, 149 canon of the Bible 15, 17, 19, 21, 25, 27, 29, 33, 35 City of God 123, 124 De doctrina christiana 9, 25 Enarrationes in psalmos 29 Baldwin, John 126 Barton, Richard 150 Bede 2, 3, 11, 52, 53, 66, 122, 130, 132, 133, 134, 142 De arte metrica 66 De temporum ratione 122 Belisarius, general 27 Benedict of Monte Soratte: Chronicon 162 Bernard, duke of Septimania 60, 62 Bernold, archbishop of Constance 94, 95, 96, 100, 104 Micrologus de Ecclesiasticis Observationibus 94, 95, 96 Bertha, daughter of Charlemagne 50 Bobbio, abbey of 58, 59 Boethius 20, 61 Bologna 136 Bonaventure, St 18 Bonizo, bishop of Sutri 6, 106, 114, 117 Buc, Philippe 126 Bullough, Donald 46–8 Buoncompagno da Signa: Rhetorica antiqua 140 Burchard of Mount Zion 133 Burchard of Worms 85 Caesarius of Arles 78 canon law 85, 86, 102, 111, 114, 115 Cariath Sepher 135, 136, 145 Cassiodorus 3, 19 canon of the Bible 15 commentary on Psalm 31 30

280 Index commentary on Psalm 72 32, 34, 35, 36 commentary on Psalm 73 19, 27, 31, 37, 39 commentary on Psalm 76 39 commentary on Psalm 78 29, 31 commentary on Psalm 81 40 commentary on Psalm 89 25 commentary on Psalm 137 37 commentary on Psalm 142 36 De Anima 22 Edictum Theoderici 31 Expositio Psalmorum 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 39 Historia ecclesiastica tripartita 62 Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum 10, 15, 24, 31 polemics against Arians 21, 39 role of quaestor 23 use of rhetoric 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 40, 41, 42 Variae 22, 23, 24, 25, 31, 41, 42 Cethegus 41 Chaldeans 139–40 chansons de geste 154 Charlemagne, king and emperor 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 50, 51, 55, 58, 59, 103, 147, 151, 154, 156, 159–63 canonization of 147 Charles the Bald, king of West Francia 49, 50, 55, 60, 62, 69, 161 chivalry 147, 152–3, 155, 157, 165 Chrétien de Troyes: Cligès 152 Church Fathers see Fathers Church reform 100, 101, 105, 117, 150 Cicero 24, 33, 61, 123 Cluny, customaries of 81 Collectio duodecim partium 85 Compiègne, abbey of 147 Compiègne, assembly of 70 Conrad III, emperor of Germany 156 Constance, cathedral of 81, 93–100 Constantinople 20, 21, 41, 156, 161, 163 Corbie, abbey of 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 72 Corippus 38 Corvey, abbey of 59, 72 Council of Carthage, canon of the Bible 8 Council of Chalcedon 22, 35, 39, 40 Council of Constantinople 22

Council of Florence, canon of the Bible 7 Council of Rome, canon of the Bible 8 Crusades, the 132, 148, 154, 157, 160, 163, 164 First Crusade 152, 154, 155 Second Crusade 156, 162, 163 Daniel 120, 121, 125, 130, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 147 decretals 11, 106, 113, 114, 116 Decretum Gelasianum 78, 79, 84, 89, 94, 116 demon(s) 49–51 De paenitentia regum et de investitura regali collectanea 104 destruction see violence Dhuoda 4, 5, 48, 52, 53, 55 dialogue form 4, 5, 58, 59, 61, 65–6 Donizo of Canossa 153 Egilbert, bishop 82 Einhard 44, 48–9 Elijah 63, 161, 163 elite(s) see aristocrats emperor, empire see ruler, rulership England 3, 14, 83, 119–46 Epitome Julii Valerii 128 Ermengard, empress 49 eschatology 2, 13–14, 27, 63–4, 121, 124, 131, 138, 142, 147–65 Eusebius of Caesarea 130 Chronicle 122 Fathers see Patres Flanders 155 Flavius Josephus 27 Fontenoy, battle of 50–1 France, French 2, 147, 152, 153, 154–9, 162–4 Franks as Chosen People 55, 151, 155, 157, 159, 163 Frederick Barbarossa, emperor of Germany 147, 151, 158, 160, 162, 163, 164 Frederick II, emperor of Germany 119 Freising, bishopric of 81–6, 99, 100 Gelasius I, pope 78, 102, 103 Gelasian, doctrine 102, 104, 107–8, 111–12

Index Alcuin on 103 Humbert of Silva Candida on 103 Peter Damian on 103 Pope Gregory VII on 103 Walahfrid Strabo on 103 gender 150, 159–60, 166 Gentiles 27 Geoffrey of Monmouth 134 Geoffrey, duke of Lorraine 105, 118 Gerhoh of Reichersberg 104 Germany, Germans 2, 6, 77–118, 147–8, 151–65 Gesta Francorum 155 gloss(es) 2, 5, 120, 121, 124, 125, 128–31, 133–5, 139–45 Glossa ordinaria 2, 131, 133, 141 Godfrey of Bouillon 155 History of Jerusalem 155 Gratian: Decretum 142 Gregory I the Great, pope 2, 3, 11, 92, 111, 114 Moralia in Job 2 Gregory IX, pope 136, 157 Gregory of Catino 115 Gregory VII, pope 6, 101–18 letter to Geoffrey, duke of Lorraine 105 letter to the French bishops about King Philip 105 Guibert of Nogent: The Deeds of God through the Franks 155, 157 Gy, Pierre-Marie 86, 88 Hatto, abbot of Fulda 54 Hebrew(s) see Jew(s) Henry II, emperor of Germany 125, 126 Henry IV, king of Germany 101, 103–11, 117, 162 Henry of Eastry 119, 120 Henry the Young King 126 Henry V, emperor of Germany 159 Heptateuch 78, 80, 89, 93, 95, 100 Herbert of Bosham 145 Hereford, bishop of see Robert of Melun Hermann, bishop of Metz 106 Hildegard of Bingen 119 Hildemar, abbot of Corbie 80, 98 Hincmar, archbishop of Reims 54 Holy Land 5, 126, 132

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Honorius Augustodunensis 104, 107, 114, 123 Imago mundi 123 Hrabanus Maurus 5, 49, 54, 57, 130, 131, 138, 141, 142 De uniuerso 124 Hugh of Fleury 104, 112, 114, 115, 116 Hugh of Folieto 134 Hugh of St Cher 18 Hugh of St Victor 7, 10–18 corpus textus 13 De sacramentis 17, 15, 19 De scripturis et scriptoribus sacris 10, 11, 13, 15 Didascalicon 10, 11, 12, 14 Patres 11–15, 17, 18 Sententiae de divinitate 10, 11, 15, 16, 17 humour 45, 67–8 Investiture Contest 6, 101–18, 157, 159 Irmingard, empress 62 Isabella of Hainault 158 Isidore of Seville, St 8, 11, 18, 45, 124, 137, 150, 152 Etymologies 124, 136, 137, 149, 150, 152 Italy 2, 3, 19, 20, 23, 28, 31, 38, 41, 58, 59, 62, 68, 76, 110, 117, 155 Jeremiah 5, 6, 8, 9, 49, 51, 57, 58, 62, 63, 64, 65, 68, 72, 78, 105, 106, 108, 111, 115, 117, 118, 122, 123, 137, 138 Jerome, St 2, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 18, 122, 124, 125, 130, 131, 133, 134, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 161 canon of the Bible 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 18 influence on Hugh of St Victor 11, 14 Prologus galeatus 8 translation of the Bible 9 Jerusalem 19, 20, 27, 28, 36, 39, 111, 121, 122, 125, 127, 131, 132, 133, 143, 144, 146, 155, 162, 163, 164 Jew(s) 1, 6, 27–8, 40, 47, 116, 123–4, 130, 132, 141, 154, 156, 161, 165 Job 14, 25, 58, 62, 64–72 John of Salisbury 123, 145

282 Index Jonas, bishop of Orleans 54, 55 Jordan the Friar 119 Josephus: Antiquitates 126, 129, 130, 131, 142, 143 Judith, empress 60, 63 Junillus Africanus, quaestor 31, 38, 41–2 Justinian I, emperor 22, 27, 31, 38, 39, 40, 41, 63 King(s), kingship see ruler, rulership Lambert of St Omer: Liber Floridus 124 Landulf of Milan 153 Last Emperor legend 151, 159, 160–3 Tiburtine Sibyl on 161 Leo I, pope 107, 108, 113 Lex Salica 152 Liber canonum contra Heinricum quartum 104 Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda 104, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 113, 115 Liber Pontificalis 82 Liebeschütz, Hans 44 Life of Louis VII 153 literacy 3, 4, 44–5, 55 literal meaning 114, 115, 117, 121 liturgy 77–118, passim Night Office 4, 77–100 ordines Romani 78, 82 Ordo Romanus Antiquus 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 94 Ordo Romanus L 82, 83, 86 Ordo Romanus XIII 79, 84, 90, 91, 93, 96 Ordo Romanus XIII A 86, 93 Ordo Romanus XIII B 86, 92 Ordo Romanus XIII C 85, 86, 93 Ordo Romanus XIII D 82, 94, 96, 98 Ordo Romanus XX 82 Pontifical Romano–Germanique 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 98 Lorraine 155 Lothar I, son of Louis the Pious, Carolingian emperor 49, 50, 51, 57, 58, 59, 60, 63, 68, 69, 74, 75, Lothar II, king of Lotharingia 60 Louis the Pious, Carolingian emperor 49, 50, 57, 58, 59, 60, 63, 68, 69, 70, 71, 74, 75 Louis VI, king of France 147, 158

Louis VII, king of France 156, 160, 162, 163 Louis VIII, king of France 158 Lupus Servatus, abbot of Ferrières 49 magi, magic, magus 126–30 Manegold of Lautenbach 106 Mantua 153 masculinity see gender McKitterick, Rosamond 4, 54 Menephres, pharaoh 136 Milan 29 military force see violence militia Dei 6, 154, 158, 164 Miller, Maureen 150 Moses, mosaic law 25–6, 42, 123–4, 139 Muslims 150, 154 Nectanabo, pharoah 127–8, 129 Nicholas of Gorran 18 Nicholas of Sandwich, prior of Canterbury Cathedral Priory 119 Nicolas II, pope 105 Nithard 48, 50–1 Histories 50–1 Norman Anonymous 104 Notker the Stammerer 147 Notre Dame Soissons, nunnery 59 number symbolism 11–14, 16, 18 Odilman 61, 67 Odo of Deuil 156, 162 orality 43, 45, 46 Orderic Vitalis 150 Origen 11, 113 Other, the 148–9, 154, 157, 165 Otto III, emperor 160, 161 Otto of Freising 151, 160, 162, 163 Palazzo, Eric 83 Papias: Elementarium 135 Paris 5, 121, 126, 128, 136, 144, 145, 147, 152, 153 Paschal II, pope 102, 110, 111, 158 Paschasius Radbertus, abbot of Corbie 5, 58, 59–67 Epitaphium Arsenii 57–76, passim Patres 11–18, 123 Paul the Deacon, homiliary of 80

Index Peace of God 154 Pelagius, pope 41 Penance, penitence 30, 36, 49–50, 57, 63, 154 performance 3, 4, 19, 30, 34, 77, 81, 84, 87, 153 Peter Auriol 18 Peter Comestor 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 135, 138, 143, 144, 145 Historia scolastica 121, 122, 123 Peter Crassus 115 Peter Damian 103, 114, Peter Lombard: Sentences 142 Peter of Celle: De panis 134 Peter the Chanter 120, 126 Peter the Hermit 156–7 Peter, St 19, 104, 113, 115, 116, 157 Peters, Edward 47–8 Philip Augustus, king of France 158 Philip I, king of France 105, 158, 160, 161 Placidius see Warin Plato 121, 123 Play of the Antichrist 151, 163–4 Priscian: Institutiones 86 Procopius, historian 38 prophecy, prophets see eschatology, Sibyl(s) Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals 113 public discourse/opinion/sphere 70–2, 101–18, passim Quintilian, grammarian 33 Rahewin, continuator of Gesta Frederici 151, 163 Ralph Niger, theologian 126 Raschi, French rabbi and commentator on the Talmud 116 Rashbam, commentator on the Talmud 116 Ravenna 20, 21 reditus regni ad stirpem Karoli 158 Reims 55, 158 res publica 23, 52–3, 64–5 revolt see violence Reynolds, Roger 96 rhetoric 4, 5, 20–2 23–42, 54, 64, 65, 66, 64, 98, 110, 111, 147, 154, 158, 165, 182, 183, 184

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Richard of St Victor 134 Richard the Premonstratensian 119 Rimini, synod of (Ariminum) 84, 94 Robert of Melun 7, 14–18 canon of the Bible 14–18 cardinal virtues 16 Quaestiones de epistolis Pauli 16 Sententie 15, 16, 17 Robert the Monk 155 Robert, count of Flanders 102, 110, 111 Robinson, Ian 96 Rome 8, 19, 20, 27, 28, 78, 82, 96, 101, 105, 111, 122, 124, 147, 151, 152, 159, 161, 163 sack of 29, 122 Rudolf, king 107 Rufinus, canon of the Bible 9, 10 Expositio symboli 9 Rule for Nuns 78 Rule of St Benedict 77, 80, 88, 92, 98 ruler, rulership 1–6, 8, 20, 22–4, 28–30, 35, 40, 43–55, 57–61, 64–6, 69–72, 112, 121–2, 124–31, 134, 136–7, 142–3, 147–51, 157–66 Rupert of Deutz canon of the Bible 12 Super quaedam capitula regulae divi Benedicti abbatis 12 St Columbanus, monastery of 76 St Denis, abbey of 153, 156, 158, 159, 161, 162 St Gall, abbey of 78, 81, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 99, 100 St Peter, church of 78, 81 St Riquier, abbey of 50, 60 Sainte Geneviève, abbey 14 Sallust, Roman historian 50 San Pietro in Vincoli, church 19 Scales, Len 148, 151, 165 Sibyl(s) 5, 124, 161, 162 Sigebert of Gembloux 102, 104, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116 Simony, simoniacs 6, 101, 105 Smalley, Beryl 120, 167 Soissons, abbey of 57, 59, 69 Stephen Langton, scholar, archbishop of Canterbury 120, 126, 145 Suger, abbot of Saint-Denis 162

284 Index Deeds of Louis the Fat 158, 159 Sulpicius Severus 61, 65 Surgentius, papal primicerius 19 Switzerland 3 Synod of Brixen 109 Terence, Roman author of comedies 62, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72 Tertullian, exegete 142 Theoderic, king 20, 23, 39 Theodosius, emperor 58, 62, 63 Theodrada, abbess of Notre Dame, Soissons 59 Theofrastus 61 Thomas Aquinas 18 Three Chapters, condemnation of 22, 39, 40, 41 Thutmosis III, pharaoh 136 Totila, king of the Ostrogoths 19 Tours 48, 55 Tractatus de investitura episcoporum 116 Tractatus de scismaticis 104 Truce of God 154 Urban II, pope 105 call for the First Crusade 157

vernacular(s) 3, 6, 46, 147, 157 Victor IV, pope 147 Vigilius, pope 19, 21, 41 violence 23, 27–9, 32, 35–9, 47, 49–52, 57–8, 60, 64, 68, 101–18, passim Virgil 123, 139 Vivarium, abbey 20, 21 Vogel, Cyrille 83 Wala, abbot of Corbie, then abbot of Bobbio 58–65, 67–9, 70, 71, 72, 75, 76 Walahfrid Strabo, abbot of Reichenau 103 war see violence Warin, pupil of Paschasius Radbertus 63 Wenrich of Trier 107, 113 Wibert of Ravenna 110 Wido of Ferrara 110, 115 William of Malmesbury 152 William of Nangis 153 William, son of Dhuoda 52 women 4, 44–5, 54–5, 135–6, 138