Memoirs of Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America Author(S): James J
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Medieval Academy of America Memoirs of Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America Author(s): James J. John, John Van Engen, William J. Courtenay, George Hardin Brown, Ruth Mellinkoff, William Chester Jordan, Karl F. Morrison, Thomas F. X. Noble, John J. Contreni, Robert Hollander, Victoria Kirkham, Teodolinda Barolini, Robert E. Lerner and Marcia L. Colish Source: Speculum, Vol. 81, No. 3 (Jul., 2006), pp. 972-984 Published by: Medieval Academy of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20463923 . Accessed: 01/04/2013 12:49 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Medieval Academy of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Speculum. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.59.161.75 on Mon, 1 Apr 2013 12:49:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Memoirs of Fellows andCorresponding Fellows of the MedievalAcademy of America ASTRIK LADISLAS GABRIEL On May 16, 2005, with the passing of Astrik L. Gabriel at age 97 inDujarie House at Holy Cross College, Notre Dame, Indiana, medieval studies inNorth America and Europe lost one of themost prominent and memorable medieval historians. Professor emeritus of theUniversity ofNotre Dame, where he taught from1948 to 1973, and director of itsMedieval Institute from 1953 to 1975, Astrik L. Gabriel was born into a familyof French origin on December 10, 1907 at Pecs (Funfkirchen),Hungary, in theheart of theAustro-Hungarian Empire. After graduation from the Szechenyi Real-Gymnasium, summa cum laude, in 1926, he entered theOrder of Canons of Premontre and spent the next three years in its studium theologicum at Jaszo, Hungary. In 1929 he matriculated at theUniversity of Budapest, where he took courses in the history of French civilization, linguistics, and medieval history, receiving his doctorate there, summa cum laude, in 1936. Four of his six years of doctoral studywere spent in Paris as a boursier of the E1cole pratique des hautes etudes (1932-36), attending lectures inOld French literaturebyJoseph Bedier and Gustave Cohen, inmedieval history by Paul Hasard, and inmedieval philosophy by Etienne Gilson, who continued to conduct seminars at the Ecole pratique after his election to theCollege de France in 1932. Cohen's lectures on themiracle of Theophilus may have been responsible forCanon Gabriel's brief theatrical careerwith theTheophilien theater group inwhich he played Saladin in a 1933 production. Gabriel's sense of stage presence and timingof lines served him well in his professorial career, as anyone can attest who saw him lecture or enjoyed his vivid repartee at table.While in Paris he also attended seminarswith Alain De Bouard in diplomatics and Charles Samaran in paleography at the Ecole des chartes. Samaran, who died in 1982 at the age of 102, and whose longevity Gabriel admired and aspired tomatch, became a lifelong friend. Canon Gabriel began his teaching career in 1938 as the founding director of the Lyc6e francais in the Premonstratensian Gymnasium at Godollo, which from 1941 on he com bined with an appointment as Privatdozent and later professor at theUniversity of Buda pest. The predominant theme of his early publications was the connection ofHungary and western Europe, particularly Franco-Hungarian relations as evidenced through the activi ties of Hungarian students and masters at themedieval University of Paris. As Eastern Europe, includingHungary, became separated from theWest through the political settle ment at theend of theSecond World War, Gabriel abandoned his homeland in 1947, leaving behind most of his libraryand research papers. Returning to Paris, he approached Etienne Gilson, throughwhom he found temporary refuge as a senior fellow for a three-month appointment at the Pontifical Institute ofMediaeval Studies in Toronto, which was ex tended for the academic year.At the time, according to Gilson, Gabriel was planning on embarking on a project to catalogue all themedieval manuscripts inHungary, which would have been an enormous enterprisemade even more difficultby political conditions. His research plans soon shifted. In 1948 Philip S. Moore, C.S.C., founder of theMedieval Institute at theUniversity of Notre Dame, and Gerald B. Phelan, its firstdirector, helped create a professorship inOld French literatureand in thehistory ofmedieval education for Gabriel. In 1953 he succeeded Phelan as director of theMedieval Instituteand in the same year became a naturalized citizen of theUnited States. His career atNotre Dame coincided 972 This content downloaded from 128.59.161.75 on Mon, 1 Apr 2013 12:49:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Memoirsof Fellows and Corresponding Fellows 973 with the remarkable presidency ofTheodore M. Hesburgh, whose patronage and friendship he enjoyed until his death. Although Professor Gabriel retained his love of medieval Latin and French literature throughout life, especially Goliardic verse and the poems of Francois Villon, medieval universities became the central focus of his teaching and research.The following years saw a series of important articles on students in the English-German nation of the faculty of arts at Paris, as well as studies of Parisian colleges. His Student Life inAve Maria College appeared in 1955 and was awarded theThorlet Prize of theAcademie des inscriptions et belles-lettres in Paris. This was followed in 1960 by thepublication of Skara House at the Mediaeval University of Paris, which surveyed as well the other Swedish collegiate foun dations at Paris. Many of his articles on theUniversity of Paris and its colleges were col lected in two volumes, Garlandia (1969) and The Paris Studium: Robert of Sorbonne and His Legacy (1992). Itwas his intention to edit the statutes and other documents connected with Parisian colleges thatHeinrich Denifle had planned as volume 2, part 2, of theChar tulariumUniversitatis Parisiensis, but which was never realized. Toward thatgoal Gabriel collected on filmand in filesmuch of the documentation and visual evidence on Parisian colleges, which enriched his lectures but still remain unpublished. He did, however, edit the fifteenth-centuryLiber receptorum of the English-German nation at Paris, which he had begun towork on in 1954 and which appeared as a substantial volume in theAuc tariumChartularii Universitatis Parisiensis series in 1964. Itwas awarded theDourlans Prize by theFrench Academy in the following year.As a by-product of thatproject, Gabriel assembled filecabinets of biographical informationon fifteenth-centuryParisian masters, which may eventually aid in the realization of a biographical register for themedieval University of Paris. Gabriel never abandoned his interest in Franco-Hungarian intellectual contacts and in the broader issue of studentmigrations and relations between theUniversity of Paris and universities inHungary and eastern Europe. In addition to articles on foreignstudents and on migrations between Paris and theUniversities of Cologne, Louvain, Krak6w, and the country ofHungary, some ofwhich were reprinted in his Paris Studium, he authored The Medieval Universities of Pecs and Pozsony (1969) and The University of Paris and Its Hungarian Students and Masters (1986). With JosephN. Garvin in 1953 Gabriel established the series Texts and Studies in the History ofMediaeval Education, inwhich works by Jerome Taylor, Loren MacKinney, Curt Buhler, and Pal6mon Glorieux appeared. He was also instrumental in arranging for the photographing of themanuscript collection of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana inMilan. That project, which began in 1965, brought to theMedieval Institute at Notre Dame a microfilm collection of 12,500 manuscripts, 15,000 photographs of illuminations and fig ures, 2,500 colored slides, and 500 Echtachromes that constitute the Frank M. Folsom Ambrosiana Microfilm and Photographic Collection. In 1966, at the request of Pope Paul VI, Gabriel was made honorary doctor of theAmbrosiana Library. In addition to his directorship of theMedieval Institute,Gabriel spent time as visiting professor at other universities.He was three times a Fulbright Exchange Professor, firstat the International University of Comparative Sciences at Luxembourg in the summer of 1958, at theUniversity ofMunich for one semester in 1962, and for one semester at the University of Paris in 1967. As a result of his stay at Luxembourg he served a term as regentof that university from 1958 to 1963. At Munich he developed a lifelongfriendship with Karl Bosl that often took him toMunich inDecember for the celebration of their respective birthdays.He was twice a visitingmember of the Institute forAdvanced Study at Princeton (1950-51 and for theJanuary-April term in 1980), where he associated with Erwin Panofsky and E. A. Lowe during his firstresidency and with Marshall Clagett and Kenneth Setton on his second visit. An inscribed photograph of Lowe was among the pictures proudly displayed in his office.He also spent an enjoyable year as the firstChauncy Stillman Professor of Roman Catholic Studies at Harvard Divinity School (1963-64).